The Trials of Peter Stuyvesant

Massive upheaval was incited in the past week as our headmaster, Principal Yu, was forced to step down upon the demands of a student who reportedly received the treasure and inheritance of our school’s namesake, Peter Stuyvesant. This student, who shall remain anonymous until all details have been sorted out, is currently lounging on Principal Yu’s private bed in the principal’s office and enjoying an afternoon nap. The esteemed Humor Department was the first on the scene, excitedly interviewing the student to hear about what has transpired in the past few days. Here is the transcript of the conversation:

How and where did you find this will of Peter Stuyvesant?

So first, I was with a group of friends sitting on the second floor hallway, next to the main staircase that leads down to the first floor atrium. We felt incredibly bored after a trip to Whole Foods, and someone suggested, “Hey, what if, just what if, completely hypothetically, we toss the rotisserie chicken we got around like a hot potato?” This went fairly well until one of the kids, a pitcher on the varsity baseball team, decided to go all out. Traveling like a speeding bullet, the chicken missed the hands of the receiver, passed over the head of a roaming student, and went completely through the noble painting of Peter Stuyvesant on the wall.

All our eyes instinctively shot toward Mr. Stuyvesant, and, to our dismay, we had crippled him even further! He was going to need two peglegs now. Peering through the hole where Mr. Stuyvesant's leg used to be, instead of finding chicken, we found that the front wall was indented inward to create an alcove. Fitted right on the inside wall was a large, yellow piece of paper that read:

“My dear descendants, it is with the greatest and utmost pleasure that I finally get to meet you… Nah I hate talking so formally. Lads, congrats! You’ve found my secret, but can you find the rest of them? For the first trial, you must seek the most historical room within the school. All right, no more hints, no more leads, you’re Stuy kids, figure it out. Remember: school is a myth, life is a mystery, and buy gold. Bye!”

We thought he was a complete nut job, but his pegleg did give off some pirate vibes so we decided to continue onward.

What happened then?

Yeah, so I thought the first trial was to solve the puzzle laid out for us in the old room with all of the graffitied tables. To be honest, it was a perplexing situation, but we eventually noticed that some of the tables had cut marks and numbers that were too clean to have been done with a pencil. The specific marks turned out to be Dutch words and there were a total of 11 of them. Using the top-secret and illegal software commonly referred to as Google Translate, we were able to decipher the clue, which told us that our next trial was with one of the lunch ladies in the fifth floor cafeteria.

Was the second trial just as successful as the first?

Oh no no no, the cafeteria trial was a million times harder than the graffiti table one. The first hurdle to completing this trial was asking one of the lunch ladies for the clue. Socialization! Absolutely terrifying! After asking a friend’s friend, who asked someone else who was a certified extrovert (certificate and everything), we were able to figure out that the cafeteria trial was simply to go up to one of the lunch ladies and tell them their most played song while serving lunch. Pretty easy, right? Yes, until we realized we never pay attention to their music, so we had to go through a trial-and-error procedure for every single song ever created to find the right one.

How were the next few trials?

I’ll be honest: the trials definitely got harder as time went by. A notable one was trial number nine, a test of physical endurance where we had to climb from the first floor to the 10th floor in less than five minutes. Trial number 45 was a test of mental strength and willpower, where we were first sleep-deprived and then challenged to not fall asleep while watching a historical documentary in a dim room. Others were less torturous. Trial number 69 was to write an article for every single Spectator department completely blindfolded, while trial 88 was to find and mark every single glass time capsule in the building in chronological order.

It sounds like you went through a lot of trouble for this, so what exactly was the treasure?

So at the end, after collecting all the chaos emeralds and infinity stones, we were able to open up the locked door that led up to the 11th floor. To our utmost surprise, inside was a massive pool, easily the size of five Olympic swimming pools. In the middle of this massive lake-like pool was a paddle board and a rolled up scroll of paper. As we later found out (after fishing out the paper using a 20-foot pole), it simply said that the real will of Peter Stuyvesant was on the back of the large piece of paper in the alcove behind the portrait on the second floor. It read “Whoever holds this paper holds power over the school. They are the law, and shall be treated as royalty.”

What are you going to do with your great, newfound power? (have you considered allowing full Humor takeover of Stuyvesant? *wink wink*)

Great question. I honestly don’t know yet. At the moment, I’m considering establishing a dictatorship and ruling the school with an iron fist. I also thought about making some quality of life changes. For instance, granting heavy funds to the Stuyvesant Flow club so we can decorate the entire school in lights, or leaving PSAL so we can focus on sports that actually matter, like cheese rolling or cheese curling.

This article will be updated by the Humor Department as more information comes from the PA and after the DOE’s decision regarding the appointment of our new headmaster.