I enter school at around 7 30, the perfect time to spot all the nerds and loners just waiting for the library to open. They hang around in awkward groups of 6 or 7, counting the seconds left for the first period. An overly peppy ‘still hanging on to the last shred of hope’ girl is trying to entertain the group with pretentious anecdotes which are very obviously not working. The nerds shuffle around, smile awkwardly, one even peeks at her wrist watch. Eventually the peppy girl becomes subdued and walks off in search of a better audience making the nerds even more uncomfortable in silence. One brave soul might try to strike up a conversation about trigonometrical differentiation but one word answers drive it back to wiping off sweat from their palms. Word has it that on a test week one of them cracked and ran off to bang on the library doors, crying to be let in.
Climbing up the stairs to the class room a constant stream of girls is observed headed towards a boy-free corridor. You turn round the corner and BAM! It’s the girl’s washroom. Home of the ‘concentrating with a constipated look’ Mirror Hoggers and the annoyingly giggly ‘Already spilt something on my uniform’ girls. Now you don’t wanna take too long in there or you can come across two hazards. Either you get interrogated by a pouting girl with a frown on her face and trailing eye liner about how her hair looks and if the outward fringes are perfectly in place. Or even worse the giggly girl might ask you if the darkly sinister stain on her sleeve looks like black coffee or a mud pie, in a failed attempt to deal the situation without embarrassing herself. Yeah so just get out of there!
On coming outside to a welcoming bout of fresh air you see that almost everyone is here. A few stragglers are still coming, dragging bags along the ground, launching into a whiny story without wasting a second. They start with how wasted they are, and how they got only 3 hours of sleep and then go on and on about their need for coffee and how the canteen should open first thing in the morning for it. We all know you were wasting hours stalking people on facebook loser, (and that’s fair enough) but we just wish you had gotten high on Samad Bond and maybe eaten some so that we wouldn’t have to hear about the woes of your relationship with the alarm clock. Hate to break this to you dear, but your dusty eyes, eye-watering morning breath and slouchy pose coupled with the yammering at full speed (pretty energetic for a ‘totally wasted’ person) - yeah, not cool at all.
Thankfully the bell rings and you get up casting withering glances to the people who either don’t have a class or are bunking. The former are usually commerce or arts students and are so frequently out and about that they manage to blend in to the red-brick building and become part of the scenery. You don’t look at them if you happen to pass by them, sitting with their backs to the wall of the boys’ washroom, gazing off into the distance. You don’t look at them if they cough or make a weird sound. You don’t look at them if they play a loud and raucous round of ONO. But if they get up to go for a class, your eyes go wide in wonder as you slowly take in each and every single sluggish step they take. A round of applause wouldn’t be uncalled for either. The latter are famous for running around the school, hiding around corners and stairs to avoid being seen and marked bunking, totally unaware of the fact that their efforts are in vain. The teacher doesn’t even bother to look at the painfully obvious clusters of students running and screaming around with bags on their backs. What does very class have a goody-two shoes for anyway! (I have to write a 2000 word essay on “Do you think cultural intermingling due to globalization has affected regional and national culture” for bunking G.P. class. I’m serious, HELP!)
As the bell rings and you head downstairs, bickering over who has to give a lunch treat on what, the Emos come slouching into view. They walk in a group of five or six, each having a different allotted place to scowl at, usually at the sky, the walls or into space. They will walk side by side but never will they make eye-contact with each other or even mumble a sentence or two. Their motto is presumably ‘Life is Shit’, and it may stretch on to become a rant that goes like, ‘Life is shit, this is shit, that is shit, you are shit, Your face is shit!’ Judging by the disgusted look on their faces, it does seem like they have been exposed to a lot of fumy shit.
So you continue on your way to the canteen, hoping that they’re serving their delicious soup. As you reach the end of the commerce building you get the creepiest sensation of being stared at by a dozen eyes. You sensors point to your right where a dozen students sit, watching you with a monotony bound to creep you out so much that your ‘fight or flight’ rush kicks in. Forced to resist your first impulse to stare back and shout ‘WHAT?’ Stone cold Steve Austin style, your pace quickens and thankfully the starers have moved on to a new target. Their hungry gaze reminds one of vultures and their ignorance to the dirty looks they are given drive you crazy. They shall stare, till the end of time.
The stairs leading to the common room are right next to the canteen which is quite convenient since you can just buy food and head up to watch T.V. (don’t get your hopes up, its only news channels or national geographic), play table tennis or just lounge on the sofas. The inconvenient part is the stairs and the people who lounge upon them. You can tell they’re extremely lazy by the way they drape their butts all over the steps and when you come to go up, a senior with a bad sense of humour might even try to convince you that the common room is closed. Try living with two brothers who have bluffed your entire life to make you do stupid stuff and then you might understand how I stepped over you without batting an eye.
Clearing the stairs, (the further up you go, the more chances of there being couples sitting) you make your way into the common room and to an empty sofa. You settle down with your bag and your friends and jump up, shocked as you hear a snore from somewhere very close to you. A quick glance to the right reveals the extremely ordinary; A common room sleeper. Legs stretched to cover three sofas, the unknowing sleeper has either used his bag as a pillow or clutched in his hands like a stuffed toy. Now for friends of the sleeper, this is the perfect opportunity to take pictures to use for blackmail later. Then there’s also the joy of teasing a person in his sleep, be it slapping him hard on his face and shouting ‘FLY’ or poking a straw in his nose, ears, etc. Otherwise he’s just a nuisance for taking up that many seats, startling you when he gets up all of a sudden, leaving you creeped out and wondering if he was eavesdropping.
But when you think twice, the poor thing wasn’t going to get any sleep in the common room anyway. Apart from the usual table tennis enthusiasts, the room is also occupied by the music junkies and the ‘no difference between me and a wild animal’ group. The music junkies are gathered near the Television where they have hooked up their sound system. One feels very thankful to them as they provide free music from their own IPods so there’s no need to whip out your own and risk getting caught. They might also provide you with live music which is extremely entertaining because they perform all the songs you like, but after a while when the less talented friends of the actual musicians take over and give everything a ‘try’ at full volume… Then you’d better get out of there.
The ‘no difference between me and a wild animal’ or ‘potential characters in one of Ke$ha’s music videos’ group probably doesn’t mind though. They own the tennis tables and no one dares to ask them for a game. Loud Indian songs blast from their earphones (you might even find yourself moving your foot to the beat of ‘I am a Disco Dancer’) while they kill your eardrums as they shout to each other to communicate the score and how the other person is going to get skinned alive by their tennis glory. They make guttural noises, prehistoric pterodactyl voices, girly screams, wolfy howls and screeches that would make an owl die of shame. All the while they are jumping about in their monkey-like agility. It’s like watching a howler monkey-wolf-owl-pterodactyl hybrid, God forbid they ever make one of those. One of these boys is even known to dive over the common room sleepers to reach the poor ball. Their rage shoots up fast and comes back down even quicker. They go from throwing chairs at one another to fist shakes and bro-hugs.
Nonetheless your first instinct is to get the hell out of the common room before someone breaks a chair on your head. Walking back towards your building is a tough job if there’s someone on the field, which is the case almost all the time. Whether you’re sitting on a bench or on the ground, walking or standing still, one way or the other you are going to get hit by a ball. Doesn’t matter what kind of ball it is, volleyball, a purple basketball, tennis ball or even a football, you’re in constant danger all right. And the more accident prone people have become paranoid, when balls land on their heads while they’re on the first floor or walking in the corridors. Of course this means that a big portion of the population is into sports. The basketball players are easily identifiable, not by their height but by the constant terror that onlookers have of their pants falling down abruptly. From below the pants might trail on the ground and get dirty but they HAVE to wear them low. A baseball cap and plaster and crutches aren’t that uncommon either.
Then the volley players, who are the professionals and then the other group consisting of anyone who’s basically free and with their whole class. The former find it difficult to adjust with the latter though, on account of the giggling and terrible aims of the female half. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to see someone accidently hit the ball at someone from their own team. It’s called freetainment, also provided when some people decide to play badminton, a seemingly passive game turned into something out of Cannibal Rising by some enthusiasts. Wielding the racket like a hammer and jumping around like a cross between a self damage-inflicting ninja and an awkward ballerina, these people never fail to deliver. You will laugh till tears come to your eyes when you set your gaze on them. The cricket and football people are a lot less entertaining being further from sight than the others, but they still provide the occasional laugh when a fielder wanders into a volley zone and gets hit by a smash.
With the amount of amusement provided by these people, it is really hard to stay home or skip school. The uniqueness they provide and the level of commitment they have for delivering daily is indeed impressive. I am proud to say that I am a part of it all, but I still have to thank the good Lord that we don’t have cheerleaders!
-Abeer Jawed (A1S1) =P
