School life / August 2024, the first week of senior year
The Senior Parking Spot Paint Ran Out for 40 Miles
In August 2024, so many Edwardsville seniors wanted to paint their parking spaces that the local stores sold out. One senior's solution involved a grandfather in Missouri and a 6 a.m. alarm.
At Edwardsville High School in Illinois, seniors can paint their own parking spaces. In August 2024, according to the student paper, the Tiger Times, they all went for the paint at once, and the local stores ran out over a single weekend.
A Sherwin-Williams employee in Glen Carbon told the paper the store had not expected the volume of orders. "I think we ended up calling essentially every other [Sherwin-Williams] store in the Midwest division," she said. Lowe's and Home Depot ran short too. The Granite City store donated a five-gallon bucket of white paint to the school before running out itself.
One senior told the paper that the paint they needed was sold out within a 40-mile radius. So he called his grandfather, who lives about 60 miles away in Missouri, and asked if he could order it there. On the first painting day the senior got up at 6 a.m. and drove to Washington, Missouri, and back, about an hour and a half, just for the paint.
The parking space had not moved an inch, and it had just acquired a state line.
Others could not make the trip. One senior asked for a refund. The student committee running the event asked seniors to donate their leftover paint, and about 20 quarts came in.
The senior who drove to Missouri was asked to sum it up. The cost, the fatigue from the drive and the other problems, he said, "were not worth it."
He is not alone in the effort, if not the verdict. At Lake High School, whose student paper covered its own painting day in 2025, a teacher said that parking-spot painting had grown from about 70 participants in its first year to over 140, and had turned into an event with parents, grandparents and siblings. Seniors without spots came to help their friends.
The eldest is a junior with a learner's permit, which means she has no car, no license and no parking space. She has, however, a design. It has been taped inside her closet since June. It involves a wave, a sunset and her name. The youngest asked why there is an ocean when we don't live near one. The eldest said that is the point of a design.
I have already called my father to ask what paint stores there are near him. He asked why. I said I'd explain next August. He said he'd be up at six.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Tiger Times: Paint shortage jeopardizes senior parking spaces ehstigertimesonline.com
- Archbishop Chapelle: Seniors Paint Their Parking Spots archbishopchapelle.org
- Lake High School Digital Newspaper: Senior Parking Spot Tradition Sees Largest Turnout lmhsdigitalnews.org
- The Pioneer: Seniors make memories painting parking spots hhspioneernews.com