When Ben got up and started to walk to the front of the room, Tessa promptly and insistently offered to hold up Ben’s poster (as she had offered to almost all the presenters before Ben whether they were actually 2D or not). The conversation went something like this:
“Ben!” Tessa sits up straighter in her seat. “Do you need someone to hold your poster?” She asked, rather intensely.
“Uh, well, I sorta pictured myself holding the poster..like this,” He demonstrated. He looked back at Tessa.
She was silent. He looked back at his poster.
“’Cause I can hold it for you if you want.”
Ben looks at Tessa, then his poster.
“’Cause, you know, you might gesture or something.”
“Well, I guess..”
“Cool!” Tessa jumps up from her seat, grabs the poster from Ben, turns to display it to the class and smiles.
On the poster was some sort of sad and dark diorama of the battle, which seemed to be leaking sand. Ben immediately dove into his long and complicated explanation with all the abandon of someone doing a very broad brainstorm on breakfast foods. Ten minutes later I could only feel the sweet satisfaction of watching Tessa visibly start to regret volunteering for Ben as the poster slowly sagged lower and lower.
Ben’s rambling presentation lasted for a good fifteen minutes before suddenly, he slowly muttered off into silence, apparently to survey the class. Then, suddenly he turned to look Tessa, who was positioned with her arms braced against her stomach so they would support her head, which has fallen forward, her forehead leaned against the back of the hand which was holding the poster but floppily, so people on one side of the room couldn’t see the other side and vice versa.
He says, “Are you okay?”
She jerks, looks up, and says “What? Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah…”
Ben turns away then back to her. “Am I annoying you?” He asks in the middle of his presentation.
“No…” it sounds like a question.
Ben turns back to the room at large and looks at the half asleep class. “Am I annoying you guys?”
We all look at him, blankly.
“I feel like I’m being annoying.”
Jeff says, very gently, “No, Ben you’re not annoying us, why would you be?”
“I don’t know but I feel like I’m being annoying right now and I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
There are choruses of “No, Ben, you’re not being annoying.”
Ben apologizes self-deprecatingly for being so annoying.
This time most of the class nearly yells at him that he’s not annoying, several people putting in how he has to get back to his presentation.
He apologized a couple more times, but then suddenly I burst out laughing and nearly couldn’t contain myself enough to be at least respectful. I looked around through my tears of mirth and meet the gazes of Roop and Sasha, who subsequently started cracking up. Next, Calista fell victim to the utter ridiculousness of the situation and unfortunately I don’t remember anything else from the last 10 minutes of Ben’s presentation
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Dream
I woke up at 6 in the morning and, realizing I didn’t have to be up for at least another hour, struggled to fall back asleep for around 13 minutes. I then suddenly got the feeling I was in grave danger from an especially large and malicious looking bug of some sort that happened to be hovering around my slightly open window. Next thing I knew the bug had figured out how to open the screen and as it lifted it using tiny arms, I promptly ran screaming from the room. I got my mother and somehow transported the window to her, with the bug crawling around the frame, out of her sight. Then she wouldn’t believe me about the bug and I was practically freaking out about it because I could see it, was looking right at it but she couldn’t from her angle. Then she went to turn the window frame to get a better look and put her hand right on the giant bug, squashing it to bits and jell-o like guts. She recoiled from the sensation, looked at me and said “You’ve got something sticky on your window frame.” And proceeded to bring her bug-guts contaminated hand closer and closer to her face to apparently taste the sticky substance. I started yelling at her in horror and really freaking out when suddenly my mother, in the flesh, barged into my room and said, “Get up, Parisa. Don’t you know what time it is? Come on…” Then we started arguing about my getting up in the morning or something, it was all very confusing, I think because my feelings of panic from yelling at her frantically to not lick her hand were still left over from the dream.
Group Work in French Class
Kethry (the girl who seems to have more mysterious illnesses than an encyclopedia) in French class;
Kethry: “It’s relantissent.”
I take out a text book to look it up.
Kethry: “I’m pretty sure it’s relantissent.”
I continue to look it up, find out that it is, indeed, relantissent.
Kethry: “Why do you guys think I’m wrong?”
Jenna and I glance at each other.
Me: “Well, we don’t know how it’s spelled so I’m just looking it up to be sure.”
Jenna: “Yeah.”
Kethry (snobbishly): “Well, I could try to not spell it in French for you guys.”
Silence.
Jenna and I exchange a glance.
Jenna and I both stare at her for a good minute, she starts to fidget a little.
Jenna makes a snorting/coughing sound into her fist, cocks an eyebrow at me, and and bends industriously over her paper.
I look back at Kethry and think: Well I’m sorry if I have some hesitations about entrusting my grade in this class to the knowledge of the girl who is absent more than half the time.
Kethry: “It’s relantissent.”
I take out a text book to look it up.
Kethry: “I’m pretty sure it’s relantissent.”
I continue to look it up, find out that it is, indeed, relantissent.
Kethry: “Why do you guys think I’m wrong?”
Jenna and I glance at each other.
Me: “Well, we don’t know how it’s spelled so I’m just looking it up to be sure.”
Jenna: “Yeah.”
Kethry (snobbishly): “Well, I could try to not spell it in French for you guys.”
Silence.
Jenna and I exchange a glance.
Jenna and I both stare at her for a good minute, she starts to fidget a little.
Jenna makes a snorting/coughing sound into her fist, cocks an eyebrow at me, and and bends industriously over her paper.
I look back at Kethry and think: Well I’m sorry if I have some hesitations about entrusting my grade in this class to the knowledge of the girl who is absent more than half the time.
Friday, June 24, 2011
English does have its ups and downs
• English is, surprisingly, not as bad as I initially thought. However, Zohra, dropping little kiss-ass comments to Ms. Regan, is starting to really annoy me. These comments consist of; how Zohra just sees so much now, her horizons have been broadened, she notices connections where she didn’t think they existed, and what not. Also, Zohra apparently sees herself as the number one journalist, the only and expert authority on writing articles, which I find ever so slightly ironic, along with mostly irritating, because her word choice is often questionable, like she looked the meanings up in a dictionary but doesn’t actually know how they’re used in everyday life.
English does have its ups and downs.
A down side is that being in AP English is rather discouraging. Not because the work is hard, or I don’t understand things, but because Ms. Regan openly says she hates grade-grubbers and the like, which is what her fourth period mainly consists of, and yet as I look around the class when she says things like this I see blatantly sympathetic nods, signaling an agreement in opinion, from exactly the same people who are widely known to be dirty little grade-grubbers and kiss-asses, hated secretly and sometimes openly, if not just avoided entirely by the general population. The first few times Ms. Regan had disclosed her low opinion of teachers’ pets to us, I had foolishly thought, “Ha ha, suckers! Victory!” to a few particular classmates of mine sitting not a few meters away. Yet I forgot how adaptive humanity is. So classmates like Zohra are still finding ways to try and snuggle up to the teacher, even while denouncing ass-kissers. I think this is the trait that helped us survive the Ice Age, “Oh, hey ice, looks like you’re moving into my habitat, but don’t worry, it’s cool, we were thinking of moving on anyway.” Or economic downturns, “What missing money? Well, the company doesn’t have as much money as it should either but that sure isn’t our fault, we shouldn’t have to give up what little we do have. So, anyway, I’ll be in my Hampton house; call me when you figure something out.”
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
English does have its ups and downs.
A down side is that being in AP English is rather discouraging. Not because the work is hard, or I don’t understand things, but because Ms. Regan openly says she hates grade-grubbers and the like, which is what her fourth period mainly consists of, and yet as I look around the class when she says things like this I see blatantly sympathetic nods, signaling an agreement in opinion, from exactly the same people who are widely known to be dirty little grade-grubbers and kiss-asses, hated secretly and sometimes openly, if not just avoided entirely by the general population. The first few times Ms. Regan had disclosed her low opinion of teachers’ pets to us, I had foolishly thought, “Ha ha, suckers! Victory!” to a few particular classmates of mine sitting not a few meters away. Yet I forgot how adaptive humanity is. So classmates like Zohra are still finding ways to try and snuggle up to the teacher, even while denouncing ass-kissers. I think this is the trait that helped us survive the Ice Age, “Oh, hey ice, looks like you’re moving into my habitat, but don’t worry, it’s cool, we were thinking of moving on anyway.” Or economic downturns, “What missing money? Well, the company doesn’t have as much money as it should either but that sure isn’t our fault, we shouldn’t have to give up what little we do have. So, anyway, I’ll be in my Hampton house; call me when you figure something out.”
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
AP ENGLISH - First day of Junior Year
AP English and I did not get off on a positive start. Ms. Regan seems to have an affinity for the style that Moby Dick- our summer reading book- is written in, a style that mainly consists of long winded sentences. Speaking of long winded- which can sometimes be used as a delicate word to describe those who talk way too much- the class consists of Sasha, Ben, Zohra, Analise, and Hannah. When in conversation with Sasha, one is lucky to get a word in. Ben has been known to prattle on and ask way too many unnecessary questions. Zohra can single handedly use up most of the oxygen in a room. Analise, I believe, has evolved to breathe through her ears, that way she doesn't have to pause when talking to inhale.
A few minutes into the class, the dreaded Caitie Horan walked into the room and the little hope I had left of actually enjoying English class this year drained away.
Ms. Regan asked us how our first day was going- her first mistake. Immediately several of the above people jumped to express their dissatisfaction with the school's new policy of no cell phones whatsoever, which we had learned of a few hours previous. This was introduced to the entire school's population, admittedly rather abruptly, by Ms. Boudreau, the school's new assistant headmaster. Mr. Watson, the new headmaster, had just finished a great, enthusiastic, and charismatic speech, introducing himself. Not only did she not exactly introduce herself, like he did, she also sort of launched right into the "nuts and bolts" of how this year would operate. As soon as she said this bit about cell phones a great many students in the auditorium started booing her. It turned out that a lot of people like using their phones during the day to check out Facebook, text friends in other classes cheat on tests and anything else that would help them actually learning and doing work in school.
In fact a few of these such kids happen to be in my AP English class, such as Hannah and Analise, who immediately jumped upon voicing their obviously well thought out, experienced, and not at all judgmental opinions on, to put it in Hannah's words, "that woman," saying that they didn't like her from the start, from when they first laid eyes on her. They simultaneously knew in their hearts that this woman was a bad apple. Ms. Regan explained to us exactly why this new rule had been put in place, that it was being put in place in all of the school systems all over Massachusetts because of the Phoebe Prince tragedy, a girl who was new from Ireland and was being bullied in school, via texts, and eventually hanged herself in her closet. Everyone agreed that this was a good reason but that Ms. Boudreau had failed to explain this to us so we didn't see the sense of this decision at the time. A critique of Ms. Boudreau started up what was sort of a repeat of their criticizing of her earlier. Around this time, about twenty minutes into the class, I raised my hand to point out a few key things about the situation that they might not have known and might change their opinion. I would continue to raise my hand for the next forty minutes, as Hannah H. was called on three times, Analise twice, Zohra twice, and that is not including how many times they called out. I raised my hand through three "sub"-topics, the biggest one being respect versus fear. It seemed that most of the class thought that true respect could only exist with some feelings of affection. That you had like the people you respected. That respect with fear was not "real" respect. Now, I strongly disagreed but it's not like I got to voice my opinion on that matter because I was still raising my hand for my first thing about Ms. Boudreau. Throughout this discussion about respect and fear I could not ignore the dawning sense of a certain approaching doom. I realized that despite the high hopes for this class that I had carried through the door of this classroom not an hour before, I was not going to actually enjoy myself in English for another year in a row, that this class was only going to be a little less boring than the others because it might be fun to watch the budding relationships of Analise and Zohra crash and burn during the year. But it wouldn't be that entertaining so the first was still a condemning thought. I also realized that these girls were fools, absolute fools, because if there was one thing out all of the life lessons that I know, it is that respect cannot exist without fear. The two go together hand in hand, no matter what. Any kind of respect must at least have a little fear otherwise there is no basis for that respect.
At some point I became incredibly fed up. Both my arms had fallen asleep from being thrust up in the air, which caused the blood to drain out of them. So I stuck my hands in the air one last time and sort of flapped them around, hoping Ms. Regan would at last somehow spot the movement coming from the back of the room (i.e. the other side of the world). It didn't work. So I planned to do it one more time in a last attempt to attract her attention. Hoping I looked like a bad case of occasional epilepsy, I timed it so that when her head swung my way, my hand shot up in the air.
It worked and she said, “Oh, yes?” in an encouraging way that suggested I had finally had some sort of brain connection and put up my hand just then, for the first time. I said, “Um, I’ve been raising my hand for sort of a long time so –”
“Oh, my gosh, are you ok? Are you gonna be all right?” She interrupted me, sarcastically, midsentence.
“My heart!” I cried, just going along with it to show her I wasn’t really complaining, even though I was rather pissed.
She put her hand to her ear and cried back, “I can hear it breaking!”
“Um, what I mean is that what I’m going to say is about Ms. Boudreau. She’s new to this position, her old job was some sort of corporate one, so she might not be used to dealing with kids our age, whereas Mr. Watson used to be a headmaster at some other school. He has a lot more experience catering to students, and we do take some catering to. The former administration who left at the end of last year, just let everything go, they had everyone just throw their locks in giant boxes, without the combinations or anything, so this administration has a lot of other work and organizing to do.”
Later that day I was waiting in the hall for someone who was going to give me a ride, when I heard the wonderfully nasal voice of Tessa complaining about yours truly. Apparently I had somehow annoyed her with my comment, and here she imitated a high-voiced version of me, “I’ve been raising my hand foreverrrrrr-”
So I came around the corner of the hall, fast. I looked at her. She looked at me and said something like “uh,…”
Which I sweetly interrupted her with an excited, “Tessa!” I widened my eyes innocently, smiled in a friendly, pleasant manner, “You have one of the loudest voices I’ve ever heard. It’s almost like people don’t need to even bother getting close to you. They can here you from all the way down the hallway! Ha ha” I walked away. I wonder if she appreciated my wit. Probably not.
A few minutes into the class, the dreaded Caitie Horan walked into the room and the little hope I had left of actually enjoying English class this year drained away.
Ms. Regan asked us how our first day was going- her first mistake. Immediately several of the above people jumped to express their dissatisfaction with the school's new policy of no cell phones whatsoever, which we had learned of a few hours previous. This was introduced to the entire school's population, admittedly rather abruptly, by Ms. Boudreau, the school's new assistant headmaster. Mr. Watson, the new headmaster, had just finished a great, enthusiastic, and charismatic speech, introducing himself. Not only did she not exactly introduce herself, like he did, she also sort of launched right into the "nuts and bolts" of how this year would operate. As soon as she said this bit about cell phones a great many students in the auditorium started booing her. It turned out that a lot of people like using their phones during the day to check out Facebook, text friends in other classes cheat on tests and anything else that would help them actually learning and doing work in school.
In fact a few of these such kids happen to be in my AP English class, such as Hannah and Analise, who immediately jumped upon voicing their obviously well thought out, experienced, and not at all judgmental opinions on, to put it in Hannah's words, "that woman," saying that they didn't like her from the start, from when they first laid eyes on her. They simultaneously knew in their hearts that this woman was a bad apple. Ms. Regan explained to us exactly why this new rule had been put in place, that it was being put in place in all of the school systems all over Massachusetts because of the Phoebe Prince tragedy, a girl who was new from Ireland and was being bullied in school, via texts, and eventually hanged herself in her closet. Everyone agreed that this was a good reason but that Ms. Boudreau had failed to explain this to us so we didn't see the sense of this decision at the time. A critique of Ms. Boudreau started up what was sort of a repeat of their criticizing of her earlier. Around this time, about twenty minutes into the class, I raised my hand to point out a few key things about the situation that they might not have known and might change their opinion. I would continue to raise my hand for the next forty minutes, as Hannah H. was called on three times, Analise twice, Zohra twice, and that is not including how many times they called out. I raised my hand through three "sub"-topics, the biggest one being respect versus fear. It seemed that most of the class thought that true respect could only exist with some feelings of affection. That you had like the people you respected. That respect with fear was not "real" respect. Now, I strongly disagreed but it's not like I got to voice my opinion on that matter because I was still raising my hand for my first thing about Ms. Boudreau. Throughout this discussion about respect and fear I could not ignore the dawning sense of a certain approaching doom. I realized that despite the high hopes for this class that I had carried through the door of this classroom not an hour before, I was not going to actually enjoy myself in English for another year in a row, that this class was only going to be a little less boring than the others because it might be fun to watch the budding relationships of Analise and Zohra crash and burn during the year. But it wouldn't be that entertaining so the first was still a condemning thought. I also realized that these girls were fools, absolute fools, because if there was one thing out all of the life lessons that I know, it is that respect cannot exist without fear. The two go together hand in hand, no matter what. Any kind of respect must at least have a little fear otherwise there is no basis for that respect.
At some point I became incredibly fed up. Both my arms had fallen asleep from being thrust up in the air, which caused the blood to drain out of them. So I stuck my hands in the air one last time and sort of flapped them around, hoping Ms. Regan would at last somehow spot the movement coming from the back of the room (i.e. the other side of the world). It didn't work. So I planned to do it one more time in a last attempt to attract her attention. Hoping I looked like a bad case of occasional epilepsy, I timed it so that when her head swung my way, my hand shot up in the air.
It worked and she said, “Oh, yes?” in an encouraging way that suggested I had finally had some sort of brain connection and put up my hand just then, for the first time. I said, “Um, I’ve been raising my hand for sort of a long time so –”
“Oh, my gosh, are you ok? Are you gonna be all right?” She interrupted me, sarcastically, midsentence.
“My heart!” I cried, just going along with it to show her I wasn’t really complaining, even though I was rather pissed.
She put her hand to her ear and cried back, “I can hear it breaking!”
“Um, what I mean is that what I’m going to say is about Ms. Boudreau. She’s new to this position, her old job was some sort of corporate one, so she might not be used to dealing with kids our age, whereas Mr. Watson used to be a headmaster at some other school. He has a lot more experience catering to students, and we do take some catering to. The former administration who left at the end of last year, just let everything go, they had everyone just throw their locks in giant boxes, without the combinations or anything, so this administration has a lot of other work and organizing to do.”
Later that day I was waiting in the hall for someone who was going to give me a ride, when I heard the wonderfully nasal voice of Tessa complaining about yours truly. Apparently I had somehow annoyed her with my comment, and here she imitated a high-voiced version of me, “I’ve been raising my hand foreverrrrrr-”
So I came around the corner of the hall, fast. I looked at her. She looked at me and said something like “uh,…”
Which I sweetly interrupted her with an excited, “Tessa!” I widened my eyes innocently, smiled in a friendly, pleasant manner, “You have one of the loudest voices I’ve ever heard. It’s almost like people don’t need to even bother getting close to you. They can here you from all the way down the hallway! Ha ha” I walked away. I wonder if she appreciated my wit. Probably not.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sophomore English Class, Day of Silence 2010
Today was Day of Silence in support of gays/lesbians and also the last day before April vacation, so we didn’t any actually work in our classes. In English, Ms. Gilmartin decided that we were going to divide the class into two groups and play tic-tac-toe, then hangman with the latest vocabulary, even though half the class was silent.
A few minutes into class, Joe Markarian, one of the few truly gorgeous boys in our school, appeared to suddenly take it upon himself to be very proactive. He had been walking about the room in his usual aimless yet speedy way when the teacher started to explain what we were doing. By the end of her explaining it all, he was sitting down in his seat, highly unusual for this time of class, with his back straight and all his attention on Ms. Gilmartin. He raised his hand and asked if he could be the captain of his team. She seemed to consider this for a minute then said,
“If the rest of your team agrees, then fine.”
Joe agreed this was reasonable. Then she told us who the teams were.
“Uh, wait, no! Don’t the captains get to pick who’s on their team?”
She said no.
“What, why not? Ms. Gilmartin, that’s how it usually works.”
But not in English class.
“Fine, fine… Then can’t you divide up the class differently? Like this way?” He closed one eye and making vague hand motions, drew a line in a way that might have been considered diagonal to cut the class in half.
“No, Joe,” She said with a mixture of good humor and patience. “If you’re captain then your team would be there.” She motioned to the students sitting in the rows behind Joe. “And everybody behind them and then over.”
Joe did a double take at us all sitting behind him and said “Oh,” in a way that sounded suspiciously like a moan. He then turned fully to us and said in a rather rushed manner, “Alright, I’m the team leader, ok? I’m the captain… So everybody has to listen to me and obey me.”
(This, of course, caused some general outcry. You see, Joe is not the most attentive student in our grade. He might even be the least. During the trial of George Milton, back when we were doing Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, we recreated a courtroom, with everybody having a certain role. I was the Defense Attorney, my client being Linh, who was playing George, who was being tried for first degree murder. We did this in class for three days. On the second day of the trials, halfway through the period, Joe, who was a Juror, suddenly perked up and asked Ms. Gilmartin, “Wait, uh, Ms. Gilmartin? Um, are we doing that trial thing now?” Everyone either looked at him in amazement, or burst out laughing. He then had to ascertain which set of people were the Prosecuting Attorney, who was the Defendant, what George was being prosecuted for, and what Ben Wetherbee, the Judge, was doing sitting at Ms. Gilmartin’s desk, banging that three hole puncher around in what seemed to Joe a very random way.)
I looked back at Linh who was frowning at Joe with a mixture of skepticism and amusement. Alicia Tardiff yelled from the back for Joe to sit down. Others were too confused by the sudden change from Ms. Gilmartin’s voice to Joe’s rather loud and incoherent voice to respond.
Joe turned back to the front where Ms. Gilmartin had just finished drawing the nine tic-tac-toe boxes with vocabulary words in each box.
“Ok, we pick the middle box, ‘axiom.’”
Ms. Gilmartin said, “Hold on, Joe, the other team’s not ready yet.”
“That’s ok.” The words seemed to want to get out of Joe’s mouth faster than he could move his lips.
Someone from the other team yelled “How come they’re going first?!”
Joe rolled his eyes, “Alright, alright, alright. We’ll flip a coin.”
He pulled one out of his pocket and started to flip it while calling heads, it landed on the floor, he looked at it, picked it up and flipped it again, caught it, looked at it, flipped it over in his palm, looked at it again.
“Ok, alright, we’re going first. ‘Axiom’”
Ms. Gilmartin said, “Joe, I’ll flip the coin. I don’t think you’re particularly impartial right now.”
Joe grudgingly handed over the quarter.
She tossed it up and didn’t quite manage to catch it so it landed on the floor. Joe promptly lunged at it.
“Hold on, Joe, you didn’t call heads or tails.”
“What, yeah I did. I called heads.” Of course Joe had already seen what the coin had landed on.
Ms. Gilmartin glanced at the other team, who was rather lethargic in their organizing, perhaps because most of them were mute for the day.
“Alright, fine.”
“Yessssssssss!” Joe turned back to us, “Ok, so you guys, we are gonna win this, alright? I swear to God. Otherwise, you can have my Gatorade.” He looked at his Gatorade. “Actually, no, never mind. But we are going to win this.” The entire time since class had started he had been constantly moving, sitting down, bouncing his feet on the floor, standing up, pacing, putting his backpack on, taking it off, pushing his sleeves up, pulling them down. For the duration of his inspirational speech he had been waving his bottle of Gatorade around.
Everyone quickly sat down as Ms. Gilmartin went up to the board and erased “axiom.”
“Uh, Ms. Gilmartin? We’re X.”
“Ok, Joe.”
Joe was surprised when Ms. Gilmartin asked for the definition, part of speech, and to use the word in a sentence, but remained undeterred in his ultimate goal of winning. However our group soon dissolved into fighting over the definition, part of speech and the sentence. So I yelled out a sentence, which she accepted but Joe did not. He turned around and yelled at the group, the Gatorade bottle waving manically, “Hey, I’m the leader, here. I’m saying it!”
I eyed the Gatorade bottle. I happened to be sitting the closest to it.
Derek said gently, “Now Joe, are we really sure you know what an axiom is?”
More fighting issued and someone from the other group yelled “They’re taking too long!” Joe told them to shut up.
Linh soon came up with the definition and part of speech with a few surreptitious glances under the desk, earning our group a point to which Joe went, “YESSS!!!” Then turned to the other group and went “HA! See that? We’re winning.”
When the other team was discussing what they should choose and what the answers were (mostly done through writing and mostly done in silence), Joe called out in whiny, imitating voice, “Uh huh, they’re taking too long!” laughter on our side of the room, confusion on the other team’s because some of them didn’t hear what he said.
The other team soon caught up to us in what Joe obviously considered an especially gripping game of tic-tac-toe. So Joe brandished the Gatorade bottle aloft and yelled at the other team, “You guys have a one hundred percent chance of NOT winning!” As things on our side of the room started to get a bit hysterical, I glanced across the room towards the other team to meet the blank stares of Jenna and Sasha who had very little or no idea what was going on.
Then we caught up to them again, thanks to Linh and I, but not thanks to Joe, who had gotten into his head to start yelling random things out and try to dominate the game. I quickly decided the best course of action would be to just yell the answers straight to Ms. Gilmartin, or if I needed to, confer hurriedly with Linh and some other teammates. There soon developed a sort of power struggle within the team between Joe and others who had issues with his authority, which was nearly everybody present.
Joe was so utterly intent on winning he was becoming rather crazed. I started to wonder if he had had a massive intake of sugar that went directly into the blood stream instead of lunch.
Then it was our team’s turn and suddenly Nerses yells his choice out before we could say anything. I just went with it but Joe seemed unable to. He whipped around and yelled at us, saying now we couldn’t win and it was all our fault. At this point I became rather concerned for my survival as the Gatorade bottle flew in hectic circles rather close to my face. Teammates started to disagree with him; Nerses’ choice hadn’t been that bad.
Joe put his head on his desk and said dramatically “It’s over. It’s done.” He picked his head up, looked at Ms. Gilmartin who, among others, was frowning at him in confusion. “Ms. Gilmartin? We quit.”
“No, we don’t!” Linh yelled out.
“Fine. I quit. Ms. Gilmartin, Can I quit?” When she asked him why he said, “Because this team is horrible and we’re not gonna win.”
I said, “Joe, we can still win, there’s still time.”
“No, we can’t. It’s over. We can never win.” He said tragically, getting up from his chair to pace and accidentally knocking the Gatorade bottle onto the floor.
“Joe, calm down,” said Ms. Gilmartin.
Almost everybody on our team and the talking people on the other team started yelling or laughing or both.
Joe, still pacing, “No, it’s completely over. Don’t you see? There’s no point to keep going, you guys are so stupid. I hate this team.” He retrieved the Gatorade bottle.
“Mutiny!” I yelled then dodged the Gatorade bottle as Joe’s arms swung up and around.
“Joe, you’re fired as team leader!” Someone else yells.
“I don’t care” He yells. He throws himself back in his seat, then sits up and says, “Ms. Gilmartin? Can we, like, have a vote or something? And switch team leaders? Can I switch teams?”
“Why?”
“This team sucks!”
“This team thinks you suck!” Someone from the back says audibly while everyone else is occupied with the hilarity of the situation.
“Joe, why are you so bipolar today?” I ask, laughing so hard I can just barely get the words out.
Joe glances back at me, distracted, does a double take, then “What?”
“Did you have, like, four Redbulls instead of lunch today?”
“No, I had a sandwich.” Blank look. “And for breakfast I had, um, I think I had cereal or something”
The game quickly dissolved in chaos. Joe turns back and goes on about how his team sucks, our side of the room is laughing hysterically while the other side looks on with bemused expressions.
“All right, why don’t we just move on to Hangman?” Ms. Gilmartin tries to make a tactical decision.
However Hangman produces a similar result. Joe begged to be the guy that stood up at the board and drew the hanged man so he wouldn’t have to be on a team. It was all going along swimmingly. Then he started to try and mouth letters to our team.
“Joe, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be telling the teams what to do.” says Ms. Gilmartin, shocked.
“I’m not? But I thought I was their team leader. I mean, I’m still their team leader, right?” Joe frowned.
“No, Joe. Remember you said you didn’t want to be on a team anymore? That’s why I gave you this job.” Ms. Gilmartin frowned back in dismay; this had apparently been very clear to her.
“Oh,” Joe eyed Ms. Gilmartin in the way someone eyes something inconvenient or messy or both which has suddenly landed in front of them, “Oh, yeah.”
He turned back to the white board and started drawing an angry looking sun above the hangman’s noose. He then decoratively added dead bodies with big X’s for eyes strewn across the bottom of the board, arms and legs akimbo. Then he turned back around to Ms. Gilmartin.
“So, does this mean I can’t be a team leader?” He tried to confirm his suspicions.
“No, Joe!” Ms. Gilmartin said, alternating between amusement and utter dismay. She then tried to turn back to the other team and read a piece of paper a student was shoving at her.
“Um, wait, Ms. Gilmartin? Can I ask why?”
“Joe, how can you be a team leader if you are also not on a team?”
“Ohhhhh,” Joe looked around, “Hey, where’d my Gatorade go?”
It had been essential to take out that Gatorade before someone got hurt.
Joe eyed Derek rather suspiciously before launching himself at him. Derek then tried to throw the bottle to one of the boys in the back but unfortunately it hit Alicia Cotoni’s face instead. Alicia Tardiff grabbed the bottle off the floor and quickly before Joe could tackle her, hurled it over her shoulder with a squeal. The bottle bounced off the wall, landed on silent Sandra’s desk and suddenly went skidding off to the other side of the room as Alex Hayek, Tim Geagan, and Joe all dove at it. Joe overturned a desk in his haste to claim his bottle. Ms. Gilmartin tried in vain to gain control of the class once more. Then the bell rang and a good number of people bolted for the door. Joe succeeded in wrestling his Gatorade away from Dino Flori and ran out the door, tossing a “Bye, Ms. Gilmartin!” over his shoulder.
“Oh my goodness!” was all her reply.
A few minutes into class, Joe Markarian, one of the few truly gorgeous boys in our school, appeared to suddenly take it upon himself to be very proactive. He had been walking about the room in his usual aimless yet speedy way when the teacher started to explain what we were doing. By the end of her explaining it all, he was sitting down in his seat, highly unusual for this time of class, with his back straight and all his attention on Ms. Gilmartin. He raised his hand and asked if he could be the captain of his team. She seemed to consider this for a minute then said,
“If the rest of your team agrees, then fine.”
Joe agreed this was reasonable. Then she told us who the teams were.
“Uh, wait, no! Don’t the captains get to pick who’s on their team?”
She said no.
“What, why not? Ms. Gilmartin, that’s how it usually works.”
But not in English class.
“Fine, fine… Then can’t you divide up the class differently? Like this way?” He closed one eye and making vague hand motions, drew a line in a way that might have been considered diagonal to cut the class in half.
“No, Joe,” She said with a mixture of good humor and patience. “If you’re captain then your team would be there.” She motioned to the students sitting in the rows behind Joe. “And everybody behind them and then over.”
Joe did a double take at us all sitting behind him and said “Oh,” in a way that sounded suspiciously like a moan. He then turned fully to us and said in a rather rushed manner, “Alright, I’m the team leader, ok? I’m the captain… So everybody has to listen to me and obey me.”
(This, of course, caused some general outcry. You see, Joe is not the most attentive student in our grade. He might even be the least. During the trial of George Milton, back when we were doing Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, we recreated a courtroom, with everybody having a certain role. I was the Defense Attorney, my client being Linh, who was playing George, who was being tried for first degree murder. We did this in class for three days. On the second day of the trials, halfway through the period, Joe, who was a Juror, suddenly perked up and asked Ms. Gilmartin, “Wait, uh, Ms. Gilmartin? Um, are we doing that trial thing now?” Everyone either looked at him in amazement, or burst out laughing. He then had to ascertain which set of people were the Prosecuting Attorney, who was the Defendant, what George was being prosecuted for, and what Ben Wetherbee, the Judge, was doing sitting at Ms. Gilmartin’s desk, banging that three hole puncher around in what seemed to Joe a very random way.)
I looked back at Linh who was frowning at Joe with a mixture of skepticism and amusement. Alicia Tardiff yelled from the back for Joe to sit down. Others were too confused by the sudden change from Ms. Gilmartin’s voice to Joe’s rather loud and incoherent voice to respond.
Joe turned back to the front where Ms. Gilmartin had just finished drawing the nine tic-tac-toe boxes with vocabulary words in each box.
“Ok, we pick the middle box, ‘axiom.’”
Ms. Gilmartin said, “Hold on, Joe, the other team’s not ready yet.”
“That’s ok.” The words seemed to want to get out of Joe’s mouth faster than he could move his lips.
Someone from the other team yelled “How come they’re going first?!”
Joe rolled his eyes, “Alright, alright, alright. We’ll flip a coin.”
He pulled one out of his pocket and started to flip it while calling heads, it landed on the floor, he looked at it, picked it up and flipped it again, caught it, looked at it, flipped it over in his palm, looked at it again.
“Ok, alright, we’re going first. ‘Axiom’”
Ms. Gilmartin said, “Joe, I’ll flip the coin. I don’t think you’re particularly impartial right now.”
Joe grudgingly handed over the quarter.
She tossed it up and didn’t quite manage to catch it so it landed on the floor. Joe promptly lunged at it.
“Hold on, Joe, you didn’t call heads or tails.”
“What, yeah I did. I called heads.” Of course Joe had already seen what the coin had landed on.
Ms. Gilmartin glanced at the other team, who was rather lethargic in their organizing, perhaps because most of them were mute for the day.
“Alright, fine.”
“Yessssssssss!” Joe turned back to us, “Ok, so you guys, we are gonna win this, alright? I swear to God. Otherwise, you can have my Gatorade.” He looked at his Gatorade. “Actually, no, never mind. But we are going to win this.” The entire time since class had started he had been constantly moving, sitting down, bouncing his feet on the floor, standing up, pacing, putting his backpack on, taking it off, pushing his sleeves up, pulling them down. For the duration of his inspirational speech he had been waving his bottle of Gatorade around.
Everyone quickly sat down as Ms. Gilmartin went up to the board and erased “axiom.”
“Uh, Ms. Gilmartin? We’re X.”
“Ok, Joe.”
Joe was surprised when Ms. Gilmartin asked for the definition, part of speech, and to use the word in a sentence, but remained undeterred in his ultimate goal of winning. However our group soon dissolved into fighting over the definition, part of speech and the sentence. So I yelled out a sentence, which she accepted but Joe did not. He turned around and yelled at the group, the Gatorade bottle waving manically, “Hey, I’m the leader, here. I’m saying it!”
I eyed the Gatorade bottle. I happened to be sitting the closest to it.
Derek said gently, “Now Joe, are we really sure you know what an axiom is?”
More fighting issued and someone from the other group yelled “They’re taking too long!” Joe told them to shut up.
Linh soon came up with the definition and part of speech with a few surreptitious glances under the desk, earning our group a point to which Joe went, “YESSS!!!” Then turned to the other group and went “HA! See that? We’re winning.”
When the other team was discussing what they should choose and what the answers were (mostly done through writing and mostly done in silence), Joe called out in whiny, imitating voice, “Uh huh, they’re taking too long!” laughter on our side of the room, confusion on the other team’s because some of them didn’t hear what he said.
The other team soon caught up to us in what Joe obviously considered an especially gripping game of tic-tac-toe. So Joe brandished the Gatorade bottle aloft and yelled at the other team, “You guys have a one hundred percent chance of NOT winning!” As things on our side of the room started to get a bit hysterical, I glanced across the room towards the other team to meet the blank stares of Jenna and Sasha who had very little or no idea what was going on.
Then we caught up to them again, thanks to Linh and I, but not thanks to Joe, who had gotten into his head to start yelling random things out and try to dominate the game. I quickly decided the best course of action would be to just yell the answers straight to Ms. Gilmartin, or if I needed to, confer hurriedly with Linh and some other teammates. There soon developed a sort of power struggle within the team between Joe and others who had issues with his authority, which was nearly everybody present.
Joe was so utterly intent on winning he was becoming rather crazed. I started to wonder if he had had a massive intake of sugar that went directly into the blood stream instead of lunch.
Then it was our team’s turn and suddenly Nerses yells his choice out before we could say anything. I just went with it but Joe seemed unable to. He whipped around and yelled at us, saying now we couldn’t win and it was all our fault. At this point I became rather concerned for my survival as the Gatorade bottle flew in hectic circles rather close to my face. Teammates started to disagree with him; Nerses’ choice hadn’t been that bad.
Joe put his head on his desk and said dramatically “It’s over. It’s done.” He picked his head up, looked at Ms. Gilmartin who, among others, was frowning at him in confusion. “Ms. Gilmartin? We quit.”
“No, we don’t!” Linh yelled out.
“Fine. I quit. Ms. Gilmartin, Can I quit?” When she asked him why he said, “Because this team is horrible and we’re not gonna win.”
I said, “Joe, we can still win, there’s still time.”
“No, we can’t. It’s over. We can never win.” He said tragically, getting up from his chair to pace and accidentally knocking the Gatorade bottle onto the floor.
“Joe, calm down,” said Ms. Gilmartin.
Almost everybody on our team and the talking people on the other team started yelling or laughing or both.
Joe, still pacing, “No, it’s completely over. Don’t you see? There’s no point to keep going, you guys are so stupid. I hate this team.” He retrieved the Gatorade bottle.
“Mutiny!” I yelled then dodged the Gatorade bottle as Joe’s arms swung up and around.
“Joe, you’re fired as team leader!” Someone else yells.
“I don’t care” He yells. He throws himself back in his seat, then sits up and says, “Ms. Gilmartin? Can we, like, have a vote or something? And switch team leaders? Can I switch teams?”
“Why?”
“This team sucks!”
“This team thinks you suck!” Someone from the back says audibly while everyone else is occupied with the hilarity of the situation.
“Joe, why are you so bipolar today?” I ask, laughing so hard I can just barely get the words out.
Joe glances back at me, distracted, does a double take, then “What?”
“Did you have, like, four Redbulls instead of lunch today?”
“No, I had a sandwich.” Blank look. “And for breakfast I had, um, I think I had cereal or something”
The game quickly dissolved in chaos. Joe turns back and goes on about how his team sucks, our side of the room is laughing hysterically while the other side looks on with bemused expressions.
“All right, why don’t we just move on to Hangman?” Ms. Gilmartin tries to make a tactical decision.
However Hangman produces a similar result. Joe begged to be the guy that stood up at the board and drew the hanged man so he wouldn’t have to be on a team. It was all going along swimmingly. Then he started to try and mouth letters to our team.
“Joe, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to be telling the teams what to do.” says Ms. Gilmartin, shocked.
“I’m not? But I thought I was their team leader. I mean, I’m still their team leader, right?” Joe frowned.
“No, Joe. Remember you said you didn’t want to be on a team anymore? That’s why I gave you this job.” Ms. Gilmartin frowned back in dismay; this had apparently been very clear to her.
“Oh,” Joe eyed Ms. Gilmartin in the way someone eyes something inconvenient or messy or both which has suddenly landed in front of them, “Oh, yeah.”
He turned back to the white board and started drawing an angry looking sun above the hangman’s noose. He then decoratively added dead bodies with big X’s for eyes strewn across the bottom of the board, arms and legs akimbo. Then he turned back around to Ms. Gilmartin.
“So, does this mean I can’t be a team leader?” He tried to confirm his suspicions.
“No, Joe!” Ms. Gilmartin said, alternating between amusement and utter dismay. She then tried to turn back to the other team and read a piece of paper a student was shoving at her.
“Um, wait, Ms. Gilmartin? Can I ask why?”
“Joe, how can you be a team leader if you are also not on a team?”
“Ohhhhh,” Joe looked around, “Hey, where’d my Gatorade go?”
It had been essential to take out that Gatorade before someone got hurt.
Joe eyed Derek rather suspiciously before launching himself at him. Derek then tried to throw the bottle to one of the boys in the back but unfortunately it hit Alicia Cotoni’s face instead. Alicia Tardiff grabbed the bottle off the floor and quickly before Joe could tackle her, hurled it over her shoulder with a squeal. The bottle bounced off the wall, landed on silent Sandra’s desk and suddenly went skidding off to the other side of the room as Alex Hayek, Tim Geagan, and Joe all dove at it. Joe overturned a desk in his haste to claim his bottle. Ms. Gilmartin tried in vain to gain control of the class once more. Then the bell rang and a good number of people bolted for the door. Joe succeeded in wrestling his Gatorade away from Dino Flori and ran out the door, tossing a “Bye, Ms. Gilmartin!” over his shoulder.
“Oh my goodness!” was all her reply.
@ the Supermarket
(I'm a cashier, I won't say where, but anything titled "@ the Supermarket" deals with my job)
Sequence of Events: Little girls shove into line, pushing aside a pregnant lady who makes a face, and commence expert begging for stuffed bunnies (“I NEED IT!!!!”), fighting with mom ensues, mom says no, hands bunnies to cashier, cashier stashes them under register, girls go ballistic.
One sneaks around to cashier’s special area and tries to grab bunnies back, mom starts yelling punishments, cashier has to defend bunnies with body against girl while trying to ring up groceries, other girl starts pulling things out of bags and throwing them back onto the counter while yelling at mom, cashier tells first girl in a stern voice that she has to go back to her mom’s side of the register, now, that she can’t be on this side, girl gives cashier an evil look, then proceeds to use her arms to stop the groceries on the conveyor belt, both girls start to try and dump things on floor.
Cashier loses patience and yells at demon girl, then ignores her. Both girls stop obstructing the checking out process for about 2 minutes, mom speaks to girls in other language severely, girl goes to the right side of register, mom grabs both girls and speaks very softly and very fast in their ears, they gather up their things and exit the store. Cashier trying hard not to laugh out loud.
Pregnant woman looks horrified.
Sequence of Events: Little girls shove into line, pushing aside a pregnant lady who makes a face, and commence expert begging for stuffed bunnies (“I NEED IT!!!!”), fighting with mom ensues, mom says no, hands bunnies to cashier, cashier stashes them under register, girls go ballistic.
One sneaks around to cashier’s special area and tries to grab bunnies back, mom starts yelling punishments, cashier has to defend bunnies with body against girl while trying to ring up groceries, other girl starts pulling things out of bags and throwing them back onto the counter while yelling at mom, cashier tells first girl in a stern voice that she has to go back to her mom’s side of the register, now, that she can’t be on this side, girl gives cashier an evil look, then proceeds to use her arms to stop the groceries on the conveyor belt, both girls start to try and dump things on floor.
Cashier loses patience and yells at demon girl, then ignores her. Both girls stop obstructing the checking out process for about 2 minutes, mom speaks to girls in other language severely, girl goes to the right side of register, mom grabs both girls and speaks very softly and very fast in their ears, they gather up their things and exit the store. Cashier trying hard not to laugh out loud.
Pregnant woman looks horrified.
I'M BACK!!!!!
Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've been caught up with high school. But I have still been writing (somewhat)!! And shall now commence posting!!!!
I apologize for the unofficial hiatus, blame what society has made an 11th grader's life.
I apologize for the unofficial hiatus, blame what society has made an 11th grader's life.
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