Positive Post-Its

What’s a whole lot better than finding salt in your sugar bowl and toothpaste on your toilet seat? How about a sticky note on your locker that tells you how much you matter? That’s the kind of “positive prank” that students encountered at William Aberhart High School in Calgary, Alberta, when they showed up for classes earlier this month. A small group of graduating students decided to try something new to mark their rite of passage. They entered the school at 7:00 a.m. on a Friday and made a point of posting special comments throughout the hallways. Notes sported uplifting slogans like: “You are loved,” “You are beautiful inside and out,” “You matter,” and “You are SO attractive.”

“It’s our last kind of hurrah to make people feel good about themselves,” Hannah Rumpel, one of the students responsible for the guerrilla goodness, told a reporter.

Did it work? A student in this CBC video shares what was on the locker note she received: “It said, ‘You’re dope.’ It was pretty sick.” (We assume, because she’s smiling, that those are both good things.)

The graduating group originally tried to keep a low profile. But apparently it didn’t take long for the rest of the student population to pinpoint the positive pranksters. “We’ve heard lots of different stories about people that were really touched by [the notes],” Hannah says.