45th Rutherford Day

On Friday it was the '45th Rutherford Memorial Day' as my invitation said! I never knew it was a memorial day! Anyway I got my mum to give me a slight trim and she ended up chopping the sides of my hair off my head so I once again ended up at Rutherford College with a weird haircut!

I was racing against time to capture a tape for the video camera as the one Aonghas did over night malfunctioned while dressing myself. Mr Moore the school principal had given me a new school tie to replace my tie that the school lost (but hey I'm not complaining! My one last year was plain! At least this one had some patterns! Woo!) I ended up wearing my head prefect uniform from last year excluding the blazer, as I couldn't think of anything else that would fit the 'formal dress' requirement. I thought my white shirt would look better than the stripy purple shirt that I wore to the Scholars' Assembly, which Angie called a bit..weird.. However, when I turned up to school I soon discovered I looked a lot like one of the prefects at school! In fact some people even thought I was a current student at the school!

Originally I was going to come to school earlier during morning tea so I could catch up with some of my friends, but once again being an Anderson I arrived just as interval ended! I passed all the senior students who were lining up and came across Alex and Angie, and as I got to the staffroom I met my year 12 English teacher Mrs Betanzo who asked me

(#1) "Oh hi Calum! Are you taking photos today?"

I replied that I was a guest . I caught up with Chen and the head students who directed me to the holding pen for guests (the music room). There were quite a few people who I didn't know in there! I was the odd one out, being the youngest and without my ex-co-head student Heather who was still down in Christchurch! This lady from AUT saw me , came up to me and asked

(#2) "Excuse me, do you know where the toilets are?"

I directed her to the staffroom while trying to hint that I didn't go to this school any more. That's when she asked me if I was an alumni.

While in the music room I had someone else ask me

(#3) "So you here to take photos today?"

I replied I was a guest. Quite a few people gave me odd looks when I told them that, and so I had to explain that I was last year's Head Boy.

Finally it was time to go into the hall. All us guests lined up ahead of the teachers and then we walked down the aisle as the jazz band performed on stage. Apparently the hold up was due to the guest speaker Dean Kent having just proposed to his girlfriend the night before!

It felt really weird to be sitting amongst the guests and staff when for so long you've been one of the ones on stage performing to them! Mr Moore gave a rousing speech at the beginning which was surprisingly pretty good, and this was followed by the choir singing The Rutherford Way Values Song that the music teacher Ms Faaea wrote in one night during one of the school production rehearsals! Now just like the rest of you upon hearing this I was a little sceptical as to how you could possibly write a song about something like that, but Ms Faaea seemed to pull it off! I ended up having that #@$*& song stuck in my head all weekend!

Dean Kent next gave his speech, which he managed to do off the top of his head! It was pretty amusing hearing about how he was a small white guy with no hope at all and soon had the opportunity to represent NZ in swimming. One of the funniest parts was when he went off in a tangent and started bagging Paris Hilton for being scum!

Chen thanked Dean Kent with his typical humorous speech and then it was followed by the Joseph cast and choir performing a medley of songs from the production and Janet performing a song by Norah Jones which got a really loud applause from the students.

The kapa haka group came up next to sing Me Hui Hui, the school song. Their guitarist wasn't present and so the music teacher was playing the piano. The group weren't too familiar with the arrangement and missed their cue though, and so an emergency guitar had to be sought to rescue the performance!

The Rutherford Day ceremony concluded with us walking down the aisle as the jazz band played. After I managed to catch up with Chen, Gwen, Alex and Zahir before being invited to the lunch for guests and staff. I managed to catch up with quite a few teachers, and talked to this student teacher who asked me

(#4) "So..you're like a year 13 student?"

To which I replied,

"No I'm a former student"

So the day turned out to be quite a feel-good day, albeit a little weird to have so many people mistake me for a current student at Rutherford!