It Keeps Getting Better

WARNING: title statement loaded with heavy sarcasm.

It started with that stupid coldsore, which is clearly dying at this point... and then on Tuesday, I got a needle. Vaccination for tetanus and whooping cough and... whatever.

Oh, man, it was PAINFUL.

So there we were, loitering about like cattle for the slaughterhouse, and the charming boys in our class decided to make Star, Jane and I feel better by telling us medical horror stories, only to say we were getting this tiny leetle needle that was nothing in comparison. Psh.

But everyone was leaving looking okay, and even though I still had the skeevies, I thought I could man it up. I mean, when I was little, so long as there was a sticker promised at the end, I had no issues. Nothing. At. All.

In... year seven... it hurt, a bit, and I had the tearspricklinginmyeyes sensation, but I was over it quickly.

This time, the shot was uber painful. And I held it together for the most part, though I was ... nauseous... I watched this girl being made to lie down, take another shot with adrenaline, and then have all this equipment placed on her because she had an allergic reaction. Star and I were the last ones there, and then I just burst into tears.

But I managed to walk away, anyway, get to class, and make it all the way through school. Come home, my arm is still aching, so my mother makes me do nothing for the rest of the day. The next day, joy, oh joy, my arm hurts even more. Apparently this was how it was supposed to be - all the people in our year level were feeling it too. But on top of that, I had this massive headache.

At the end of the day, I 'lost' my locker keys. I had to stay back ot find them, and then, after waiting for this teacher in her excessively long phone conversation, she finally brings out the lost keys and lo and behold, there's mine. Thank God my mother loves me enough to pick me up that day.

At home, I go straight to bed in my uniform, and barely scrape it to iftar. I'm a zombie with a fever after that. Come today and my mother decides I'm incapable of fasting, I ditch school and go to the doctor's. I'm diagnosed with some kind of virus/infection. She says I just have to suck it up, if it's too bad I can have antibiotics.

But then, I'm sort of getting better, you know?

Come home, bludge away. 

Star gets home from school and just brightens my day. I have 2 SACs next week - both really hard, the maths one even the smartest maths dude doesn't understand.

Just. Great.

(Course it's not Star's fault, she was just being the messenger.)

BUT. I'm going to have to suck it up. I've always spent time telling people there's nothing they can do, suck it up, and someone in the world always has it worse. So it's time I take my own advice. Besides, in my religion, getting sick is also a way of purifying yourself. I think, if you remain sincere, and really ask for it, your sins get uhm - expelled? - easier. Thank God. Literally.

Also, I have three new Lenka songs to listen to. I particularly like this one called 'Deep Blue', which is not an original of hers, but it sounds nice, and it's basically about how techonology is eating up our lives and how we, as humans, are having less to offer.

I've begun on my Lisa McMann story too, it involves the Russian Mafia and certain death for my protaganist :) 

Fabulous.

And Eid, Eid is insha'allah on Tuesday! So. So. So excited. Despite the rest of the crepe-filled week that should follow. Whatever.

So in order to boost my spirits, and maybe yours, the song of today is Not Afraid to Stand Alone, by Native Deen. I love it - we used to have the album but we gave it to our cousins in Sri-Lanka, and, as young as they were, they ended up destroying it. Morons.

Peace in,

Laila

Crazy intelligence

I don't really think on how insane my class can be, but they sure are.

Today, last period, we had Literature, but Mr A was at a meeting and because it's a yr 11 class, it doesn't get covered by a sub. So the yr 11's go home, and we have to stay 'cause we're in yr 10. It's happened before, nothing unusual.

So I was sitting there with Star, moping. SS and R were in front of us, playing two-square on the table with a tennis-ball-without-tennis (INSIDE JOKE :P  - basically it didn't have the green fluff). I asked Jane what to do, and she told me to go through the back wall and make spelling corrections on all the posters and such. It's a VCAL classroom too you see, and that's a hands-on form of education, not 'academic', so to speak. So they have all these posters about their camping trips and work experiences and blah blah blah and they have TERRIBLE spelling and grammar. And she was just joking, but I went ahead and grabbed a pen and started going through them, correcting away.

What normal teenager corrects work for fun?

Then I got sick of it, and I sat down with the rest of the class (we usually have 9 in our class, but Mitch went home) and they were talking about I don't know what, and we just sat on the tables, kicked back, did nothing. Seriously. And Mr H (my favourite English teacher) comes in and gives us that stern look, and goes, 'what's going on guys?'

And SL is like, 'uh, class?'

And Mr H proceeds to ask us where our teacher is, what subject we're in, what we're studying, and we answer him. The classroom looks a mess, though we haven't done anything, and he just tells us to straighten things up, and he leaves.

Just like that. Nevermind giving us work or sending another teacher in. See how they trust us? ^^

So then, after staightening things out, we sit down, 'cause we don't know if he'll come back. And Shags gets up and decides to play teacher. It's so stupid, but he gets into it. He connects the wire from the TV to his 'laptop' (i.e. his diary that's brimming with excessive papers), and tries to imitate Mr A by pretending not to know how to use it. He then tells us that today we're watching Monsters Inc 3, which actually comes out tomorrow, but we're watching it today because he has an illegal copy. He sets a paper on the board, tells us to watch it, and says a magic screen will eventually appear. Then he sits right in front of it, so we can't see it. R 'sneaks up' to him (it was rather obvious) and throws a the tennis-ball-without-tennis at his head, and they run around the room for a bit. When the shows over, we're back to sitting, looking dull.

Then Star and I start talking, and we randomly decide to arm wrestle (btw, I bet Dory in bio! I'm awesome! They said my arms were too skinny to beat her, BUT I DID!), and everyone bets on Star, remember that I do taekwondo, and start betting on me. We were actually a draw - I had her bent to my side, but I couldn't push her hand down, and she couldn't push mine back. Afte a while, we were both aching, so we called a truce.

But then we started reminiscing over taekwondo, and we got up, trying to remember our self-defense moves, and I remembered one, but that was it. I demonstrated on her, and they wanted me to knock SS over, but he's a guy and I felt too awkward, so we sat down again. Then we started playing catch with the tennis-ball-without-tennis, all of the class spread around the room. And kept throwing it low, so the occasional teacher outside couldn't see it flying around.

And then, near the end of class, we were in a position with Shags in the corner lying down, everyone sprawled about everywhere, and Mr I walks in. And he's like, 'who's in charge guys?'

And SL is like, 'the guy on the floor.'

And he asks us again, and Shags eventually groans, gets up, and sits in the teacher's chair, then says, 'I am.'

And Mr I is like, 'Oh, now I see, I didn't realise before, when you were on the floor, but in that chair you look more authorative'.

And he asks us the same questions, what's up, what class this is, what're we studying. When we tell him it's Pride and Prejudice, he begins to say characters names, just like: 'Mr Darcy!' (class nods) 'Mr Wickham!' (class nods) 'Mrs Benett!' (class nods)

Then Shags stops him by saying, 'Sir, please don't, you're disrupting my class.'

And Mr I is like, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I was just trying to engage them. So who's proud and who's prejudiced in the book?'

'Mr Darcy's proud, and I donno what prejudice means,' Shags replies. 

'Yes you do," Jane sighs, and when Shags continues to say he doesn't, she goes, 'You know, discriminating and stuff.'

And Shags says, 'Oh, yeah, Elizabeth's prejudiced!'

And Mr I is like, 'I love the way you teach! You know, saying you don't know what a word means, which prompts the class into answering!'

'And sometimes,' Shags says wisely, 'the students teach the teachers!'

And they just banter back and forth, playing along to this silly story, and the bell goes, and we all go home. But seriously, our class is so quiet and strange, and the teachers just never know what to do with us. Other classes in our year level, put them in the same position and they talk loudly, probably wag class altogether, annoy other classes, turn the room upside down, etc. We're just so...  simple, I guess. I love our class, us eccentric brainiacs, the small number of us. I liked us last year too, though there was fourteen then. 

Still.

Ok, I just felt like being sentimental.

Here's the song of the day, by one of my favourite groups, Outlandish. It's just about a girl called Aicha (that's ay-sha) :)

Peace in,

Laila