A couple months ago I wrote an article about SMOB candidate Hana O’Looney coming to speak to Watkins Mill students. However, there’s a lot omitted from that article, such as the events that led up to O’Looney visiting. And now that enough time has passed I think it’s safe for me to say what really happened, without getting in too much trouble. Plus I graduated, so like what can they do to me now.

So consider this a letter of confession. An admission of guilt. How I impersonated- well really an entire school club- just to talk to a girl.

It all started on February 17, 2021. The two final candidates had been announced for SMOB, Henry Kaye and Hana O’Looney.

I remember being in a group chat with many of my friends discussing the two candidates. I thought Hana was kinda cute and made a joke about “sliding into her dms,” and my friends jokingly encouraged me. Now, the normal thing to do, would’ve been to just leave it at that, a joke; but if you know anything about me, you know I couldn’t just leave things there.

So it was decided, I would DM Hana. But it’s the twenty-first century. You don’t just dm a girl, you know? You can’t just…be yourself, that won’t get you anywhere. No, no I had to think of a foolproof plan guaranteed to get a response. So I thought, and I thought. Of course I considered the classics:

• Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
• Are you from Tennessee?
• Have you ever been kicked out a movie theater? (because snacks aren’t allowed at the theater)

But alas, none of them were good enough. Finally I came up with a plan. An immoral, stupid, very irresponsible plan, but a plan nonetheless. I would DM her pretending to be the president of a school club. Now I could have just made up a club, but c’mon I’m not that creative. So naturally I picked the club Grace was president of (well, one of the clubs Grace was president of). And so, once it was decided, it was time to put the plan into motion.

And so the waiting game began. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, and hours into what felt like an eternity. Okay, obviously I’m embellishing for dramatic effect, but it really was taking her a while to respond. I was just about to admit defeat when…

The plan was on! I had to act fast. I made a fake presentation to present during the “meeting” and convinced some friends to be the other officers. Everything was going smoothly, I had even managed to round up about 15 random people willing to sit through the meeting. The hardest part was finding an adult to sit in as a sponsor. Now obviously I couldn’t ask a teacher for obvious reasons (well I dunno maybe Ms. Confino would’ve done it), so I had to think outside of the box. Ultimately I ended up asking my sister, who naturally agreed because she had nothing else to do.

And so, my sister and I began practicing how the whole meeting would go. We went all out, like this meeting would’ve felt very real, complete with an interrupting crying baby, just like most real zoom calls.

So, I bet at this point you’re all asking yourselves, “So what happened?” I mean, if this plan really was as good as I claimed, why didn’t I go through with it? The truth is, I really think I could’ve; and I think I would’ve gotten away with it too. And If I really did go through with it, you’d be reading a very different article right now.

It was probably less than 48 hours before the meeting was supposed to happen that people started to have their doubts. After a lot of consideration, everyone had decided we shouldn’t go through with it. But that left one huge glaring problem: Hana O’Looney was still expecting a meeting on Tuesday, and now we didn’t have one. By this point many people had already jumped ship, and I was left alone to try and figure out just how I’d get out of this one.

Obviously I deserved this, I mean the whole thing had been my idea anyway. It was time for me to face the music, I’d have to come clean. Well, okay not to Hana, at least not yet, but to Grace. Seeing as I was too afraid to face Grace’s wrath alone, I had a friend text her apologizing on my behalf.

Upon finding out I had been impersonating her, Grace was understandably pretty upset (Editing Grace: “Yes, I was very upset, not because Caleb impersonated me, but because he had a friend apologize on his behalf. ?”) .  The thing is- by this point we really did have everything planned out. We decided we really had no choice but to go through with the meeting as planned, just with Grace and the real club. We had to act fast to catch the real officers up to speed and get everything ready.

Honestly it’s a miracle everything ran as smoothly as it did. Considering how last minute it all was, I’m very grateful that the real leadership was very understanding and willing to cooperate.

And so the day finally came, and everything was ready to go. We had gotten the word out pretty quickly so that the real members of the club could come. Hana came and gave her presentation before opening the floor and letting us ask her questions. After she left, I apologized to Grace, as well as the other members of the club for all the confusion and stress I had caused.

To be honest though, aside from Grace, I don’t think anyone else had even caught on to the fact that none of this was planned and that the whole meeting was a result of my tomfoolery (Editing Grace: “I’m preoccupied with a lot of things, and I’m pretty oblivious. ?‍♀️”). Still though, it felt good to come clean-kinda.

All in all, I think you could consider the plan a success. Well, if the plan was to get me to talk to Hana, then no, I guess it wasn’t a success. I thanked her for coming and congratulated her when she won, but that was like the only time we talked. However, I learned a lot from this experience.

I learned you can do just about anything if you surround yourself with supportive people, regardless of how stupid that idea may be. And that sometimes it’s okay to go all out for something crazy and dumb like pretending to be president of a school club, I mean how else would you learn? So do I regret any of it? Eh, not really, looking back, I think it’s just really funny, especially how smoothly things turned out (Editing Grace: “I agree!”). And if by any chance Hana is reading this, first of all, Hi! Second of all, I hope you’re not mad, and that you can see the humor in this like I did. In the chance that you are mad, well, you have my number. My line is always open for some hate mail 😉