7:00am
The alarm rings with anger. A good start. Your hand comes down and punishes the device for this disturbance.
7:30am
The alarm rings with loathing for neglect. You’re late. The alarm smugly displays it so. You get up, fall down the stairs, choke on your breakfast, run out the door, curse the sun for its existence, and arrive at school.
8:00am
You get a tardy note from the front desk person, who is nice enough, but they know your fate. You run up the stairs, attempt to be inconspicuous, but, ultimately you still have to deliver the note to the teacher.
8:30am
First period is hell, no, purgatory. Where the seconds are minutes, and the minutes are hours, and the hours are days. And you ask yourself; how hard would it prove, to ditch to the arcade?
9:00am
You manage to slip to second unnoticed, which a blessing it is, you’re safe for now. How long have you been here? Instead of doing the equation being presented to you, you start to solve for “x”. Where “x” is the time left in this place of pointless lessons of subjects which the common core won’t allow for more than an inch of understanding. Any extra would be expensive.
10:00am
Third period and you begin to catch up on lost sleep, the energy of breakfast and the shock of the shower worn off and you were up until two A.M. trying to make something of your existence. You daydream of daydreaming elsewhere, but the teacher uses their compensating-for-a-real-slap-on-the-wrist of a voice to pull you back into the horror you are withstanding. Numb out. Your eyes robotically lock on the teachers and you let your mind drift being ever so careful to appear alert.
11:00am
Food. You need it. And you need it now. The teacher begins to talk about the pros and cons in the after math of the- Food. Right. Now. When. Is. Food. You stifle your grumbling stomach and retreat to your mental safe haven. You convince yourself slowly you’re not really here and suddenly it’s.
12:00pm
Lunch. Finally. You hurriedly speed-walk to the lunch line hoping today’s food won’t make you regret your failure to pack a lunch too horribly. You’re next, you step to the front of the line and your fingers automatically plug in your six-digit student ID. “Thank you” the lunch lady groans as you pass her and reach for a plate of, of, of… What the f*** is that? You can’t eat that. You cannot eat that. The texture and color are that of, of, of… It’s indescribable. You grab the tray reluctantly and begin to look for a poor sucker to trade with, all you need is someone lower than you on the food chain. But there’s no one. You fall in that bottom twenty, or forty, or fifty in your grade that any of the preferable cliques have decidedly passed on. So, you find a desolate corner near the band room and eat in silence. At least it’s better than the company you’d find.
1:00pm
You wait until most people have already gotten to their fourth periods and then you slyly slink to yours. You are nothing but it is better than something noticed as being nothing. In homeroom the teacher tries to be relate and addresses issues of students who do not comprehend the definition of the word. If they had any, they’d keep quiet. You imagine yourself piping up and suggesting the solution to the student in questions problem may be more efficiently solved by removing their cranial cavity from a cavity of a more anal nature. But you don’t speak. You never do.
2:00pm
One hour to go and your brain becomes an eternal countdown, ticking away the seconds and obsessively studying the clock expecting more time to have passed than ever does. During reading time you hide a copy of Shel Silverstein in the center of your textbook, tipping the spine up to a seventy degree angle with your desk to hide the words you are really reading. Shel takes you away from your macabre mental prison to a place of methodical randomisms and intended insanity. The teacher taps you on your shoulder and as you turn around he says proudly with a knowing grin slowly and with pleasurable purpose “Lunch detention”. This brings you down a level and he confiscates your poetry. Suddenly suicide seems immanent, the thought won’t last, ‘tis but pubrity.
3:00
It’s over, you’re free, and the tempest is done. You fly out the door, run with a spring and bolt, thank the sun for not abandoning you, and arrive at home. You take off your bag, throw your homework in the furnace, sit down on the couch, and lose yourself in the adventures of tom sawyer.
All in all, today was one of the better days. If only tomorrow wouldn’t come.