Time heals all wounds. So, like the death of a loved one, the pain of high school is gradually fading enough that I can now look back at it and laugh. We were telling stories in my lab today, Wacky High School Antics. I’d like to share (one of many) a story about J, who I went to school.
In tenth grade, J was in my biology class. Bio was normally seventh period, with a once-weekly double period (for lab work), in which the class extended into eighth period. A fine, early spring day was one of those such days.
J had gym class sixth period, right befofre bio. Occasionally, like most of us, he’d get out of gym a minute or two late, and not have enough time to fully change out of his gym clothes. So, on this fine spring day, he had time to change his shirt, but not from his shorts into his jeans. It was fine, at first, being a mild sunny day. The lab, however, was cold.
We spent the first bit of class in the classroom section of the room, reviewing our homework or somesuch. Then, we got up, headed into the lab portion of the room, and started getting our supplies out - spinach to get chlorophyl from, test tubes, filter paper, other various things. Mundane. Meanwhile, J asks our teacher if he may run to the bathroom for a moment, simply to change his pants.
Now, J does not have the best record. He’s got book smarts, but also a quintessential ‘attitude problem’, a ‘problem with authority’, and ‘as much sense as a sack of rocks’. Our teacher, knowing it’s possible he’ll spend a solid hour ‘changing his pants’ (boy, that sounds dirty), declines, and tells him to tough it out.
Fine, J says. I suppose his reasoning was that she said he couldn’t be excused from the classroom, not that he couldn’t change his pants. So, our teacher meanders into the lab with the rest of us. J stays up in front, in the other half of the room. He unzips his bookbag and pulls out his jeans, putting them on the desk before him. He removes his basketball-style shorts, leaving himself clad in a T-shirt and his boxers. He reaches for his jeans.
The fire alarm goes off.
We all - every single person in the room - looks up, our teacher included. J stares back at us, looking very much like a boxer-clad deer in the headlights.
The fire alarm in this wing was new, and meant to be heard, over anything. It’s a shrill screech: Imagine if God ran his fingernails down a galactic-sized challkboard. Now up the volume a bit, and that’s the alarm. There are flashing, strobe-like lights blinking, as well.
Over all of this, we hear our teacher: “J, where are your pants?!” she squeals.
We all glance around at each other, start laughing, and head out of the building. Our teacher approaches J. Several moments later, they join us outside, and J finally pulls his jeans on as our teacher yells at him, relentlessly.
Several months later, J attempted to shoplift a 6-pack from a liquor store. He later said he didn’t think they’d see him. The liquor store elected not to press charges - until, several months after that, he broke into the store at night by shattering the plate-glass window. He got off with something like a year and a half of virtual house arrest, allowed out of the house only for school; it came complete with a big, bulky electronic tracking device firmly affixed around his ankle.
The moral of this, if there is one (very possibly, there’s not) must be: Sometimes, stupid things can be chalked up to bad luck, such as the fire alarm going off mid-pants change. OTher things? Well, they can only be chalked up to idiocy.
Silly hamsters.