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.