Another
Morning
By Josh
Another morning,
another day at school. So here I was, waiting at the bus stop. 20 minutes early
for God knows why. Being the first and only person at the stop, I had a lot of
time to muse to myself. “Gee, it’d be sweet if I climbed that tree right now. I
could totally ninja attack Anthony from there.” Of course, before I could, I
saw my friend Anthony coming towards me from across the little park where he
lived. “Eh, maybe tomorrow...”
Anthony
walked over, in his casual, but confident walk. As he walked through the small
park he stopped briefly and exaggeratedly admired the cool spring scenery. As
he approached me, he stopped, and glared at me briefly, and then he stared with
a freakish predatory gaze at my heart. “Uh oh,” I thought. “I know where this
is going...”
“Eagle Claw!” he
exclaimed as he shot a hand towards my heart. Reacting the same as usual, I
slapped his hand away to deflect the lethal attack. After I had succeeded in
doing so, he glared at me again, and said through gritted teeth, “I’ll get you
next time.”
“Uh huh,” I said,
my usual response. Both our stances relaxed. “So...” I continued. “Did that
cylinder player come in the mail yet?”
“No,” Anthony said
with a slightly disappointed tone. “If it doesn’t come today, I will have to
destroy the UPS man...”
I laughed. “Well,
I’m sure it’ll come soon. It’s three days late. If it doesn’t, come, we can
teach them all a lesson with our wiffle bats.”
“How would you
kill someone with a wiffle bat?” Anthony wondered aloud.
“Maybe you could
break it and stab people with the sharp edges?” I suggested.
“Maybe they would
just die from internal bleeding if you kept beating them enough with it...” he
continued.
“Hm... not bad, I
like it.” Our conversation continued like this until the bus came. At the next
stop, we looked for our friend Christopher.
“Is he there?”
Anthony asked.
“Nah.” I
responded. “Looks like he’s being a weasel today.”
“That dirty weasel
turd...” Anthony muttered as he shook his fist with the mock rage that burned
against Christopher for going to school chamber choir that morning. After a 15
minute bus ride, and an enthralling conversation on the topics of zombies,
guns, World War II battle tactics, and how ethical assisted suicide is, we
arrived at school. Walking into the school, I asked Anthony the age old
question, “What’s first period?” He gave his usual shrug of indifference and
ignorance, and we continued to our usual meeting spot at the top of the
northeast flight of stairs. The entire gang was there, including Christopher
who had just gotten out of choir practice. We exchanged “heys” and “hellos”
with everyone there as Anthony snuck up on the individual known to us known as
Adman, and violently assassinated him. Adman recovered shortly and brushed the
dirt off his shirt as he got up, and greeted us with open arms. We stood beside
Christopher chatted with him and made sure to call him “weasel” for his missing
riding on the bus today. Life continued on as normal, with everyone making
jokes about video games, work, dead babies, and the like. Our friend Brown was
making fun of his own massive head again, claiming we’re all orbiting around
him due to it generating a massive gravitational field. As we were all jesting
with each other, I took a quick break from the little circle of wit and humour
and looked outside the large glass window behind me. For some reason there was
some Asian guy walking around with a rainbow coloured sombrero on his head
carrying a long board, which was kind of weird. Not long afterwards some drama
students walked past us with large cardboard cupcake props. It was kinda
surreal. I returned my attention to my friends, and wound up getting mock disemboweled
for making a lame pun. Keeling over dead on the floor in front of Terrance’s
girlfriend, she stared at me with eyes only slightly widened, she quickly said,
“Wow, that was violent.”
The bell rang, and
lucky me, it was History with Anthony, and several other friends first block.
History was a joke as it always was. Most of us in our little circle of friends
were breezing though it with A’s no problem. So we spent the majority of our
time being wise guys and cracking jokes and goofing off all class. As I arrived
there, the door was locked. Apparently our teacher hadn’t come yet. So I initiated
my usual ritual. I put my hand on the door handle, and began to rattle it. I
kept at it for a few minutes, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Sure enough,
she rounds the corner, and sees me doing what I’m doing. The change of
expression on her face was a strange one, as if she was expressing, “I can’t
believe I have to put up with this crap.” I step aside to let her unlock the
door, and as she does, she looks at me and asks, “There Josh, are you happy?
The door’s open.”
I look at her with
a face beaming with excitement and relief. “Oh yes! I was afraid that the
doorknob gods had abandoned us, and weren’t going to let us in! But we prayed
and prayed to them, then you came!”
“Great...” she
muttered.
We all filed into
the class, and I continued exclaiming, “Behold! I have seen the light! I have
seen what few men have dared to dream!” As we settled down, our little group
settled down in our usual spot, we made our usual pre-lesson shenanigans. I
looked at the bottom of my poor desk, and saw the usual rainbow colour of gum
brighten up the dingy desk. “Dear goodness,” I said aloud. “This is disgusting,
isn’t it?” I turned to my kleptomaniac neighbour to my right, Flint, just as he
had his hand sticking out to steal my binder sitting on the floor.
“Hi Josh,” he
smiled and waved at me with his other hand. Even after a few good slaps to the
wrist, and one stab with my pencil, he still got away with my binder. Oh well.
He gave it back like, two seconds later. After what seemed like too short of a
time joking around, class actually started, and the teacher began her lesson.
“Today, we’ll be
talking about the Allied invasion of Normandy. It began on a day known as D-day,
and-”
Anthony, sitting
in front of me interrupted her with a kernel of brilliance. “Boy, that is
D-lightful.” The entire class laughed, and the teacher only rolled her eyes and
sighed. But Anthony wasn’t done yet. He turned to me and said, “Hey Josh, I
hate to ask, but did Juno that? I bet you did Nazi that coming.” It was a long
class for the teacher to say the least.
Second Period,
second class, time for Chemistry. I raced a classmate, henceforth known as The
Browski to Chem class. Whoever won typically varied from day to day, but today
I was fortunate enough to win. I let showers of praise rain down upon me in my
head, reveling in my triumph. We sat down beside our usual deskmate Paris, and
chatted with him for a bit.
“Did you guys finish
that worksheet on thermodynamics?” Paris asked.
“Yeppers,” The
Browski said with his trademark campiness.
“What about you
Josh?” Paris looked at me.
“Uh, nope,” I said
with my usual admission of laziness.
“Josh,” he said
with a sarcastic scolding, “You’re not gonna make it through this class. You’re
gonna be like those slacker guys who poured cereal into the sink in the
washrooms this morning.”
“What? Somebody
actually did that?” The Browski asked.
“Oh yeah, I heard
about it this morning. I even saw a picture of it on Adman’s phone.” Adman
turned around from his seat 2 rows in front of us.
“What? Oh the
cereal thing, oh yeah.” Adman walks over to us, and shows the picture of a sink
in one of the boy’s bathroom filled with an entire box of Fruit Loops.
“Huh, that’s
pretty weird,” The Browski said. “I guess that would explain why I heard a
vacuum running in the bathrooms this morning.”
“What
a waste of perfectly good Fruit Loops,” I bemoaned. All present solemnly
agreed. “You know, this kinda reminds me of that time last year when all those
plastic forks and knives were found stuck into the school field.”
“Oh
yeah!” Adman said. “Who did that anyways? Who has the time to come here and
stick hundreds of pairs of forks and knives into the ground?”
“I
thought it was some douches from the school we beat during the big football
game sometime around then,” Paris stated.
“Maybe,” I said. “But-”
I was interrupted as our Chem teacher started class.
One uneventful
note taking class later, we were let loose to wreak havoc during our lunch
break. I stopped by the computer lab, affectionately known as the “nerd cave”
to catch up with some friends there. I stopped by to chat with James, a guy who
has the strange distinction of looking Mexican despite not even being remotely
related to anyone Mexican. As soon as
Anthony showed up, I knew we would improvise some sort of tag team on our
unwitting friend.
“Hey James,
where’s your girlfriend?” Anthony asked.
“She’s at a
doctor’s appointment.” he stated.
“Is she pregnant?”
Anthony asked
“What?
No!” James sputtered out in confusion.
“Are
you positive?” Anthony continued.
“Yes,
I’m positive!” James exclaimed.
“Maybe when she’s
there she’ll find out she’s actually positive too,” I added.
James kinda sorta
lost it at that point. “Twelve! Twelve, you guys are twelve!”
“Your
face is twelve,” I sophisticatedly rebutted.
Suddenly
Christopher jumped in out of nowhere and shouted, “Your mom’s twelve!”
Being
the cool guy I am, I rolled with it. “Your mom’s face is twelve. In bed. If you
know what I mean.”
Anthony
mused for a second. “What does that mean?”
James
just pointed and the door and while laughing said, “Get out.”
Figuring that I
should go meet up with some other friends, I did start to leave. But not before
I walked up to Adman sitting beside Terrance and said, “Women with lots of
chest hair, think about it.” Adman clutched his head and laid his head on the
desk in front of him, laughing or crying, or something, moaning almost as if he
was in pain. Terrance just looked at me with eyes wide open and a face of
horror. Brown who was nearby simply just put his hand on his chin, and looked
contemplative wondering what that actually would be like, and if it would be so
bad. I didn’t stick around to hear his answer.
I
made my way down the hall to the bright yellow metal bench where I eat my
lunch. There I saw most of the so called “We-eat –lunch-together,” club. I said
my greetings to everyone there and sat down in my usual place beside Melissa.
Apparently I had arrived in the middle of a conversation that as usual, was
incredibly weird.
“I
like this one: ‘Do you have any French in you? Do you want some?’” Melissa said
as she laughed.
“I
like your grandma’s Shige. ‘Hey, wanna go smoke some weed?’” Lynn said.
Shige
laughed, and then she spoke. “Oh yeah... That’s a really funny one.”
“How
is that a pick up line?” I asked, whilst grabbing my sandwich from my lunch kit.
“Who
knows,” Shige replied.
We
all continued to sit there for some time eating our lunches and talking about
various mundane things, such as school, books, movies, trannies, and how crazy
insane some dude got when he huffed some Lysol. You know, normal stuff.
Eventually though, the bell rang. Shige, Melissa and I all had French class
coming up next, so we bid goodbye to our lunch companions and departed, though
as it turns out, Shige didn’t wind up going to class because of some reason or
another.
Well, another
French class. Another worksheet. Which was fill-in-the-blanks using a word bank
of all things. I looked at the first question on the sheet.
_____ Un moyen abordable de se déplacer plus facilement, et se moquer de la vie.
Which
kinda trasnlates to :
_____ An affordable way to get around, and have some fun
in life.
Scanning the word
bank, I see “voiture” or car. Somehow though, I get in in my head that
“Hookers,” would be a lot funnier to stick in the blank. I show Melissa, and
another person, Tanner, what I did. We all burst out laughing, and continued to
do that with every single blank, only because it worked so well.
_____ Something
that kids play with.
Hookers.
_____ Someone you
can go see to help you deal with problems in your life
Hookers.
Everyone must’ve
thought we were completely mad giggling like that all through class. Good thing
we didn’t have to hand those sheets in... Afterwards, there was a discussion
about feminine and masculine pronouns, and the French teacher drew those funny
looking male and female signs up on the black board as part of her lesson.
While we were working on yet another worksheet, a girl who sat near me, asked
why the male sign was the male sign, and the female was the female one.
“Well, I dunno for sure, but you know how the
male sign has that thing sticking up? Maybe that’s why?” I answered.
Another girl,
Sarah, who sat beside this girl looked at me and said, “Hey, yeah, that’s what
I was thinking!”
The girl who asked
the question however, did not get it. “What? I don’t understand...”
Everyone in the
general vicinity who heard this just looked at her with a look of just, “What?”
on their faces.
“How could you not
get it?” I asked. “That thing on the male sign sticks up, just like...”
“Don’t tell her
Josh! She’s too innocent.” Sarah jokingly interrupted me.
I laughed.
“Alright, I won’t.”
“No, wait! Tell
me, I still don’t get it!” the clueless girl pleaded.
We never told her.
Last block of the day, physics.
I mostly kept to myself in this here, since I didn’t know many people in this
class. As I walked in I said “Hi” to the two guys I actually did know, Nicholas
and Nathan. Of course, by virtue of being accepted late in that class, I got a
spot nowhere near either of the two. I was way near the front next to a girl I
didn’t know. Basically, all I knew was that her friend Kevin who sat behind
her, had a bit of a crush on her. He made it too obvious in the way he talked
to her, though lately he hadn’t been terribly happy around her. After working
dully a bit, finishing all the work I had been given for the class in 15
minutes, Ashley, the girl I barely knew, said my name.
“Hey Josh, could
you come help me with question seven?”
“Oh, sure, no
problem,” I said.
After helping her
with the question, I asked whether she needed anymore help. She looked briefly
at the questions left in the workbook. She laughed a bit and said, “Probably
all the rest of them.”
I laughed too.
“Well, I’ll just move my desk over here then.”
So we worked on
the problems and got them all finished with time to spare. So we sat, and
talked and laughed a bit. We were getting along pretty good actually. After a
while, of this, the teacher handed us back some partner projects we had done,
though with me being the black sheep in the class, I had struck it out alone.
When Ashley got her partner project back, she looked... not terribly thrilled
about the mark. She handed it to her partner on it, Kevin, who sat behind her.
He looked at it briefly and said, “Hey, I think we did alright on this.”
Ashley looked
frustrated. “But we could’ve done so much better...” She turned to me. “What
did you get Josh?”
“Uh... I kinda
aced it.” I said, not quite succeeding in masking my pleasure.
“Haha, wow,
really?” Ashley laughed as she asked. She was silent for a second. “You know,
how would you like to be lab partners for the rest of the year?”
“Oh, sure, I’d
love to.” I said as I laughed and smiled a little.
Later after class
had ended, I was walking out of the room with Nicholas and Nathan.
“Wow, Josh, that
was pretty sweet what you pulled back there,” Nathan said in amazement.
“What was?” I
asked.
“You know, that
thing you pulled with Ashley. You totally shut Kevin down.”
“Oh, that?” I laughed. “I don’t think she likes me like
that if that’s what you mean. Whatever’s happening to Kevin isn’t my fault.”
“What do you
mean?” Nathan asked.
“Kevin’s hasn’t
been putting moves on her for a bit now, haven’t you noticed?” Nicholas pointed
out.
“Ashley just got a
boyfriend recently.” I continued Nicholas’ point.
“How do you two
know that?”
“We
saw her kissing him outside the room when she came in for class, before you got
here,” I replied, smiling, and mildly amused.
The bus ride home
was the same as the bus ride back, only with Christopher joining Anthony and I
this time. While on the bus, Christopher poked that back of his sister,
Lorraine’s, head.
“Christopher!” Anthony exclaimed
in false shock, “You perforated the back of her head!”
“What?” I asked.
“That wasn’t a perforation! There’s no hole in the back of her head!”
Anthony reasoned, “But
he tried to perforate it! Even though he may not have made it all the way
through, he might’ve made a small divot or something. That counts as
perforating her head!”
“Attempting to
perforate is different than actually perforating! There’s no complete hole
through her skull!” I defended.
Anthony shot back.
“So what, you dig a hole in the ground, you can’t actually call it a hole since
it doesn’t go all the way through the Earth’s crust?”
“Perforation is a
complete hole all the way through something!”
Anthony sighed and
looked sad. “Ugh, poor stupid Josh. Too stupid to realize the truth.”
I looked at
Christopher. “I need a dictionary.”
“Why?” He asked.
“To prove to
Anthony that the definition of perforate is to make a complete hole in
something, and then so I can beat him to death with a large blunt object
after.”
Christopher
laughed and laughed listening to us bicker and threaten each other the rest of
the ride home. Lorraine, listening to all of this, only sighed and probably
wondered why she put up with all our antics.
We had just gotten
off the bus, and Anthony and I were still arguing about it.
“Josh, you’re
dumb, you smell like ham... And you’re dumb.”
“You’re just mad
‘cause I’m right.”
“How? You can’t
prove it.”
“I’ll look it up
tonight, and you’ll see.”
We just reached
the point on our walk home where we parted ways. I looked at him and said,
“Well, alright, I’ll see you tomorrow I guess.”
“Alright, see you
tomorrow. Don’t get killed.”
I laughed. “Like
that UPS delivery guy whenever he shows
up?”
Anthony laughed
too. “Yeah, like that guy. I’ll get him whenever he shows up... with... sharp, pointy sticks.”
“Hahaha, alright,
well see you!”
“See you.”
And we walked our separate ways, looking
forward to tomorrow.
