Ball in the centre

[Zip]

Oh, this lovable school! So much diversity, personality, and anxiety!
Mr. M scribbled something in his book, deciding that today was a left-hand day.
Few by few, students entered the room, dropping books on their desks, muttering and groaning to each other about some match or another.
He sat quietly, listening, but looked distracted as he ate a zuchinni-raisin muffin.
Frowning, he scrawled more, bits of spongey muffin stuck to his (appropriately named) goatee.
"THAT'S IT!" he exclaimed, leaping from his chair on two small hooves. Alarmed, a few students looked up from their conversation. In a jerky, quirky manner, he turned.
Quickly, quickly now!
Squaring off Adam's masterpiece from the previous day, he was putting something on the board.
Two big bold letters:
NO

He then proceeded to pull a table to the front of the room, grabbed a blue softball from beside his desk (which resided amongst other things--mousetraps, a koosh ball, apple nutri-grain bars, and a figure of an owl), and stuck it in the centre, motioning to it not to move.

The bell gave way to sound, the last of students scrambling, chewing noisily on gum and texting under their desk.
"Come now!" he said, clapping his hands with delight, "The bell has belled! Put the assignment in the basket!"
Mr. M seemed oblivious to the fact that when he waved, there was no basket.
"And I need two volunteers!"

[limbo]

Gah, finish this so I can reply!

[Zip]

Oct 12, 2008 16:01:42 GMT -5 limbo said:

Gah, finish this so I can reply!

I DEED. =D

[limbo]

Naivety. This simple yet destructive quality was everywhere in this school. There were the girls who believed if they stared at the boys they admired, somehow they would magically acquire dates to the winter formal. There were the boys who insisted they'd be brothers even when an attractive girl came in to tear their friendship apart. There were teachers who truly thought their students could amount to something more than grocery clerks.

Andy, however, knew that this was completely absurd. How many times had his father taught him survival tricks to cheat the naive? Unfortunately, Andy liked a lot of the people he thought were too optimistic. Wasn't it his responsibility to teach his friends that nothing that happened at Cloud Nine would prepare them for the world outside Monomonon?

Yet despite his abhorrence to the ignorance, he was willing to be patient. Besides, he liked Mr. M sometimes. He was ready to listen, to get ahead. The other students merely enjoyed the class because of Mr. M's unpredictability and laughed at his antics and found his stories calming. Andy, however, could see the barely visible wisdom in the man's head. Mr. M was teaching that life can be unpredictable - just like the eccentric teacher himself. How the other students didn't get that, Andy would always wonder.

Sitting at his desk, an arm hanging over the side of his chair, Andy asked the girl he sat next to to turn in his assignment when she turned hers in. She rolled her eyes, but took the few papers anyway. He smiled at her tight miniskirt.

Mr. M asked for two volunteers.

Andy tore his eyes from the girl's perfectly proportioned hips and stared at Mr. M. The class scurried to and fro, trying to find a place to turn in homework. It didn't seem like anyone was going to volunteer, which was perfectly understandable. Volunteering for Mr. M often brought up the question of a student's sanity. It was not the most intelligent decision to volunteer in his class. You might be volunteering to enlist in the Peace Corps or bike across a tightrope. Sometimes it was just drawing a circle on the chalkboard. Either way, it was often a dangerous idea.

That was why Andy's face flushed with anger when that damn Adam von Lange volunteered first. He hated that guy. Ooh, he was so dangerous! Yeah right. Von Lange didn't even do anything - he sat around, made snide comments during class, and got into fights - and yet he was a glorified student at Cloud Nine. This was why this school needed a reform. So people like Strange Lange wouldn't corrupt everyone's minds with apathy and underachievement.

Andy thought. This could be his chance - his chance to tell people that the school needed to change. His fellow students were suffering but they didn't know it. They had to know. It was his responsibility.

So, before anyone else could volunteer, Andy's hand shot into the air. He looked straight into Adam von Lange's eyes and declared, "I'll volunteer, Mr. M."

[Zip]

"Oh-oh my, what are you kids doing!"
They're skittering and scattering, of course!
"No, no no! See, my hand is out, like this, that universally means that you give it to me!"
The students scrunched up, furiously thrusting papers into his small, pointed hand. Once the last of the last had jostled past, he thrusted the papers into the corner closest to him, took a rock off his desk, and threw it on them.
"Forgive me if that seems a bit rude, hitting your papers like that, but I--uh--only do it so that way they don't run off like little children have a tendency to do."
A few members of the class tittered.
"You can laugh now, but when you lose those precious kids of yours, you know perfectly well that your grade goes down a notch or two, correct? Correct."
Now, who was the young man who--
"ANDY! Yes, Andy, sorry, your name almost escaped me! Now, all I need you to do is sit up here--"
he gestured to one of the seats at the end of the table up front,
"--and you, and whoever else, is going to get that blue ball in the centre. You both are going to close your eyes, I am going to point to someone, and when they say 'now', you both try and get it. Got it?"