Hewitt Seniors Rolled Out a Red Carpet for 8 a.m.

This is the most honest thing ever said at a graduation, and it should be printed on every diploma.

What they planned to remember was a list of moments, which they called their legacy. Twenty people turning up to staple and fold more than 600 programs for the middle school musical. Trivia at town halls. And, on senior prank day, "turning the Hewitt lobby into a red carpet," with every student entering in style and posing "for the paparazzi, even at 8:00 am."

Even at 8:00 a.m. I have never posed for anything at 8:00 a.m. I have barely been photographed at 8:00 a.m., and the one existing photograph is evidence.

It is a prank played on nobody. Nothing was hidden, nothing glued, nobody's car moved. The seniors simply decided that, for one morning, arriving at school should be an event, and the rest of the school agreed.

Hewitt starts rehearsing for this kind of thing early. Its first graders spend weeks on a "Cinderella-ish" unit, reading different versions of the story, noting the stereotypes and assumptions made about her, and watching for when she shapes her own future and when she relies on someone else. Then they perform Just Jeni, an original "Cinderella-ish" play written by one of their teachers, and screen a stop-motion film they made about the whole thing.

First graders interrogating Cinderella's agency. When I was in first grade, my position on Cinderella was that the pumpkin part was cool.

By upper school there are other traditions to belong to. At the 2026 commencement, a graduating senior listed hers, starting with membership in "the incredibly secret Heavy Metal Handbell Society, which sounds fake but is somehow completely real." The school does, in fairness, have a middle and upper school handbell program. Whether any of it is heavy metal, the school's website does not disclose.

I tried the red carpet at home, on a Monday, with a bath mat. The youngest posed. The middle one walked around it. The eldest, sixteen, stepped onto it, took one look at me holding my phone like a photographer, and asked whether this was going on the family group chat. It was. It still is. It's my legacy.