The most beloved fake club at OHS: the Backyardigans Roleplay Club
By McKenna Worsham
The rise and fall of Owasso High’s favorite (fake) club has been an emotional time for students who were simply trying to build student involvement with their peers. The club’s genesis was a humorous flier that was posted mysteriously around the hallways at OHS, only to be discovered by admin four short days later, who tore down the posters destroying the club’s and the students’ spirits. The poster left everyone, teachers and students alike, in total confusion. Was this club real? Who created it? Why post it around the entire school?
Picture of BRC flier provided by Eric Reed.
This poster quickly became famous, leaving everyone wanting to know what comedic genius was anonymously backing this club and what they were thinking during its inception. With multiple students involved in the promotion of the club, it was quickly revealed that it was created just to be something funny and sentimental for the students to talk about.
“It was funny and ambiguous, it also helped that we had school administrators puzzled…”, senior Eric Reed stated.
Somehow, the Backyardigans seemed to spark something in Owasso’s students. A sense of nostalgia, sarcasm alongside a funny meme can always lead to a laugh. In this case it caused an uproar in everyday life here at OHS, seeming to be brought up by every student in every classroom.
Another Backyardigans enthusiast, Sara Chesley Cobb said, “It’s a show that most of us grew up watching…I had gone so long without even thinking of it,” expressing the nostalgia and playfulness the club had brought back into OHS.
Though it was a silly way to express that shared hope to be little kids again, for a moment it felt as if the students of OHS would never have to grow up. This meme that had found its way around the school hallways meant more to the students than it had seemed to. At surface level this poster was a stupid joke for everyone to poke fun at in the halls, but it has quickly become a symbol for the chapter of childhood, that for many at OHS will soon come to a close. While it is no secret that high school is not easy, doesn’t everyone wish to stay young just a little bit longer?
While others, such as junior Ella Hasselbring, who spends almost all of her time in the school’s Agriculture Building, had no idea this was happening as she so boldly asks, “What the heck? This is a real thing?!”
Though it is not a real club, it was a necessary mood-booster for the students just looking to have some fun before growing up and moving on from the comforting walls of OHS.
Senior Eric Reed melancholically explains, “It was never meant to be real…it was just meant to spark a flame of hope, that we could all be Backyardigans again…”.
For just a little while everyone was focused on this mock-up club, rather than the unprecedented future. So why did these students feel the need to spread around a fake club? Maybe for the same reason people do anything: the simple hope of feeling safe and secure for just a few moments longer.