Ben's Presentation on the Battle of Tippecanoe

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

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.