Thank you, Principal Contreras

Every day here at Stuyvesant High School, we go about our day without appreciating what we have. We don’t appreciate our mostly lead-free water, the arousing scent of the school bathrooms, and the few areas in the school where you can use WiFi. But most importantly, we don’t appreciate the person responsible for it all: our principal, Eric Contreras. That ends today. Here are some anonymous thank-you’s from Stuy students to our great and honorable Principal Contreras.

“Contreras gave me a high five on the escalators the other day. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“He passed by me and my friends the other day when we were all on our phones in the fifth-floor hallway, and unlike some people *cough* Simon *cough*, he did not take our phones. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“I was taking a calculus test, and it was really hard, mostly because none of us actually studied for this thing, and halfway through the test, Contreras passed by our classroom and told us good luck. Fun fact: the class average for that test ended up being a 95. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“I was practicing guitar in the senior atrium, and Contreras said I was doing really well. He then gave me a thumbs-up. I felt so invigorated by his encouragement and ended up having a huge, very unnatural, upward spike in my guitar skills that day. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“I was asking people around me if they had seen my laptop. Then, Contreras came up to me and told me he found this laptop, and what do you know? It looks exactly like the one I lost! I’m so glad that Contreras found it, though I’m pretty sure that my old laptop didn’t glow at night while chanting ancient tomes. It might have done that before, though. I have a pretty bad memory. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“I was about to ask my crush out, right? So I’m talking to myself, practicing what I’m gonna say. Then, Contreras appeared right in front of me. He asked me what was going on, and after some prompting, I admitted that I was gonna ask my crush out. He told me that he wished me luck. After he encouraged me, I got the confidence to ask her out, and she said “yes”! I’m so happy. Also, after he encouraged me, I instantly grew like six inches, my face became perfectly sharp and symmetrical, and whenever I walk into a room, everyone is compelled to compliment me, but that's not important. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“I dropped this huge poster that I made for my World History project onto the subway tracks. As I cried, I felt a familiar hand on my shoulder, and Contreras was there to comfort me. After I regained my composure (seriously, though, this thing was worth 20 percent of my grade), he put something in my hand that looked like a wooden eyeball, and then he was gone. I put the eyeball in my plastic bag that had held the poster, and when I got to school, I had an exact replica of my project in the plastic bag instead of the eyeball, and my World History teacher was missing an eye. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“We lost the finals to Brooklyn Tech this year, which really sucks. We’ve been preparing for this the entire year. It’s the day after, and we’re meeting up and kinda moping about it when Contreras comes to our meeting with a surprise. He got us these really nice and fancy windbreakers. We pointed out to him that we lost the finals, but Contreras said he was still proud of us. He told us that being one of two schools in the finals out of the hundreds of high schools in New York City was an accomplishment in itself. We then pointed out that the windbreakers had tortured, voiceless yet screaming faces of our opponents on the fabric, but he told us that wasn’t important; he was incredibly proud of us. On an unrelated note, Brooklyn Tech’s entire team disappeared under mysterious circumstances that day. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”

“After school, my friends and I were hanging out in Battery Park City, and this random guy started yelling at us. We ran away from him, obviously, but he ran after us and jumped on me. I felt his nails pierce my skin, and I thought that this was the end. But then, all of a sudden, I saw Contreras appear out of nowhere and attack him. It was over quickly; he vaporized the crazy guy in an instant, and all I saw was a flash of light, dust, and Contreras’s eyes and arms melting back into his head and suit. I was gonna report it to someone, but Contreras was gone, and none of my friends could recall that the crazy guy chasing us even existed in the first place. Thank you, Principal Contreras.”