Not that anyone actually cares, but I am sorry I haven’t posted for five months. To be honest, I just typed that apology down so I feel less guilty about unintentionally killing my own blog.
Looking back at my posts, I realized I spent quite a lot of time narrating past incidents, so I thought it was time for something more contemporary. Instead of just talking about things, and how they happened, I decided it was time to confront a few feelings of nostalgia that came up of late when I thought about school and social situations.
This post is going to be about a few things that have been missing in my life of late after I decided to get homeschooled. I don’t think my thoughts would seem too far-fetched to others either, since most of us have been staying home due to the lockdown.
Part 1: Pre-Pandemic School
(a) Useless Diligence: A few days ago, I had the privilege of being paid a visit by my old friend: schoolwork-induced carpal tunnel. I still do not understand how I convinced myself that finishing a few boring assignments was worth my time. I recalled how I used to submit my work ahead of time back when I used to go to school. Mr. Silent and I would race to finish our homework at school, so we would have time to do more important things at home.
I don’t know how, but now that I think about it: my wrist barely hurt back then. If I recall correctly, the few times I did experience such intense wrist pain was when my friend finished his work before me, which led to me being pressured to do the same. Don’t get me wrong - I still write as quickly as I did before.
I thought about it for a while and decided it probably stemmed from my lack of “actual” writing of late. I tend to type all my notes down, so technically speaking, I hadn’t written in forever.
So much for making fun of people who wrote too slowly.
On that topic, I also miss running around corridors to search for teachers to whom I could submit my homework ahead of time.
(b) Nepotism: I miss the nepotism that came with friendship. The tiny things truly mattered. I remember when subject teachers would come to my class and leave a stack of our notebooks on the table and ask someone to distribute them. My friends and I would just pick out our notebooks from the stack, distribute them among ourselves, and have everyone else mind their own business.
Imagine doing that now. People would be all “YOu cAn cATcH COVID bY ToUcHiNg sOmEoNe’s nOtEbOoK!” (totally not dissing my mom for wiping notebooks with soap and water when I got them)
I also had a habit of bringing like 10 Uniball pens to school every day. To this day, I still do that when I write exams, and I don’t know why. Believe it or not, I still worry about what might happen if ten of those pens magically stop working when I try to write something. I only lent them to my close friends, and I think I was uhh… a bit too generous? Every time a friend asked me for a pen, I would lend them two and never bother to ask them to return it to me. I don’t know how many Uniball pens I have “gifted” my friends, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the number is close to fifty.
(c) Actual Laughter That’s Not “lol”, “lmao” or “lmfao”: I used to laugh when a few others were scolded in class. Contrary to what many believe, I didn’t laugh at everyone, just people I didn’t like, and a few friends (alright, I admit that it’s hard to tell what group of people you belong to).
Alright, I do admit I was kind of a jerk there. Never mind that, but I would like to narrate a funny incident that came to my mind as I typed this.
One particular Wednesday in August (98% sure, it was a Wednesday, 2% chance it was a Monday) after lunch, I had Geography class where my teacher was scolding a boy in my class for not finishing his homework. Mr. Silent sat on one of the benches in the first row, and I sat behind him. We didn’t care much about why he was being scolded, but Mr. Silent spotted something on his jacket: an expiration date sticker dated for a week from the Wednesday when this happened. Instead of keeping it to himself, he decided to point this out to me, and both of us burst out laughing.
If anyone is curious, he did not pass away a week later. Let’s just say it was… unfortunate (not for him, I think? He probably didn’t even know).
The point is: sometimes I was just laughing about something irrelevant when someone got scolded.
(d) Being Called Out For My Quirkiness: Okay, I think I can agree with all of my friends on one thing: my mother is hellishly tolerant. How else does she deal with keeping the roof on in a house where I live? I was just explaining to her how she is my toy and all my friends are puppets, so she should be proud of being a rank higher than them (as a joke, obviously).
I think there were two things about me that were noticed by the general public. I am sure my friends know everything about me is kind of weird.
(i) I washed my hands too many times: I am not sure why, but I have an obsession with multiples of 3. Let’s just say I like the number 3, and I like to think of multiples of a number as friends of a number. In other words, I make no sense, let’s move on to how this is relevant.
I had the common sense to settle on washing my hands three times on most days. Once after class was over, again after dragging my chair slightly away from the table (so I don’t need to use my hands to touch it again), and another time after putting my lunch bag on the table.
There were instances where I had to touch something after washing my hands the third time, and those occasions were marked by intense displeasure on my face. The few people who did observe my odd habit understood why I was pissed, while others were probably clueless about it (as they should be). Any normal person would probably wash their hands one more time, and stop at four - but this is me, so I end up washing my hands for a total of six times.
(ii) I walk way too fast: This is something I have zero regrets for. I might as well make fun of all of you and call you slowpokes. Like Mr. Silent once said, “Why am I wasting my energy running here when you get here faster than me after walking?!”. I think it’s worth noting that he was panting heavily when he said that.
One particular back-bencher (I realize this sounds sort of elitist, and I am not against people who choose to neglect school. I neglect/neglected school myself. I’ll call him this since he’s not worth being given a pseudonym and if it wasn’t already obvious, I am not exactly his biggest fan) went far enough to make a comment on how I walk. I think it’s funny that the only reason he had the opportunity to make that comment was because he was standing out of class for not finishing homework that was due for over a month.
I don’t care who it came from, even if it was meant to be insulting, but I found all comments on my quirkiness to be quite amusing.
(e) Aimless Mornings: Route No. 15 was, on most days, the third bus to arrive at school. Sometimes we would reach school early, and sometimes we would be late. I would say I spent 30% of such mornings finishing pending homework and projects, and the other mornings either talking to friends in the same class, or talking to friends from other sections who periodically visited my class to talk to me about comic books or gaming.
(f) Lunch Period Vibes That I Don’t Know How to Explain: For most lunch periods, there would only be around six people in the class. Most of my classmates would go to the canteen, or eat in other classes. Occasionally, I would eat lunch with my friends in other classes too. Sometimes they would come to my class.
Most of the time (time is kind of ironic because I only have 15 minutes of lunch break left after all the handwashing), however, I would sit in silence and make remarks about random thoughts in my head to one of my friends in class. Sometimes I would be even more chatty and bring up a more interesting topic, like airplanes, cars, or even a question on a test. As much as I secretly like listening to people talk, it’s nice to have a bit of peace and quiet for 15 minutes.
I also remember glaring at a certain friend every time he “dropped” rice and felt like he owed me an explanation.
(g) Computer Lab and Furious Typing: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to go to a computer lab to code, I am perfectly happy doing that at the comfort of my home. However, I always got a weird look from people sitting near me at the lab since I had a habit of typing fairly quickly. I once had a computer teacher ask me if I went to typing classes, and I was puzzled about why there were classes for that. Honestly, I still am.
On a related note, I remember sixth grade when we were introduced to the “Find and Replace” box. My friend and I attempted to find stupid monkeys and replace them with intelligent human beings.
Look around you, tell me if it worked. I am going to go out on a limb here and say it did not.
(h) Group Projects: I think I speak for everyone when I say there are three types of group projects (i) ones you do with friends, (ii) ones you do with random people, and (iii) ones you do with a few friends and a few random people.
I will admit that I had a habit of procrastinating on projects since it requires far more effort than regular homework. When I did projects with my friends, we would just talk about random things when we were given time to discuss during class. In ten-minute intervals, one of us would interrupt the conversation and say “Uhh guys, don’t we have a project to discuss?”. In the end, we would get the work done anyway.
How I survived group projects with people I am not too familiar with is still a mystery to me. Sometimes, my friends and I would just get split up into separate groups since we didn’t have the nerve to tell the teacher that we would like to do it together. In such instances, we would take time out of the day to vent to each other about how irritating our teammates are.
Example: On the last “normal” day of school (March 16, 2020), my class teacher tasked us with a project on an English chapter. My friends and I got put in different groups as we didn’t tell the teacher we would like to do it together.
I am glad the lockdown started the day after. I didn’t discuss a thing with my group. All I did was participate in an Xbox vs PS4 debate.
Other times, it was because teachers wanted us to “mingle”. Yeah, the only mingling I did was ignore everybody and do my part all by myself.
Projects with a few friends and a few random people highly depend on who the “few friends” are. I remember a horrific group project I did in 7th grade with Mr. Blabbermouth where he decided to act all bossy and do all the work. He also decided it would be a good idea to rate everyone in our group using a star system.
It’s all cool now, but it was very annoying back then.
(i) The Bus Rides: There are no words that can describe how much I miss bullying third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders. I would give you more details, but why would I when you can read about it here.
Notably, the bus may or may not be the first place where I began giving very useful romantic “advice”.
(j) Whatever the hell I used to do during PE Periods: As much as I would love to give you the details, I am not an advocate for self-incrimination. Let’s just say it is very hard to go missing for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
I don’t hate the outdoors, I love sunlight and warmth. But never am I going to play basketball instead of football.
Part 2: Other Random Things I Miss About Life Pre-Pandemic
(a) This Ancient Ritual Called Breathing: I am not an idiotic anti-masker, but come on - you can’t tell me this is more convenient than what it was before. When I went back to school last year after the… I-don’t-know-how-many lockdowns, it felt like we were all talking in gibberish to each other as it was close to impossible to tell what the other person is saying through a mask. Plus the times I did understand what my friend was saying, he was telling me how hard it was to breathe with a mask. That sounds quite normal, doesn’t it?
(b) Judging People: I am reluctant to use the word “judging” since it hints at something negative, but it has been a while since I used my intuition on people. I can’t help but have an opinion of someone based on their demeanor, and at this point, I find myself barely paying attention to how people carry themselves when I go outside. It’s like I used to go full-on Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out people, and now I have the attention span of Jason from The Good Place (okay, both of those comparisons were exaggerations, but you get my point).
(c) My Emotional Quotient Continues to Peak: ….or at least it looks like it’s peaking if you turn the graph upside down. Most of my communications have been on Discord, where there is more than enough room for misunderstanding. In the first place, I don’t understand why certain people get overly sensitive about literally everything. I get that there could be genuinely good reasons for that, but I expect to be informed about them. I don’t cater to mood swings, online or offline.
That being said, the pros of talking to people on Discord definitely outweigh the cons. For starters, I have a fair amount of friends from my old school friended there, and I also get to speak to some of the smartest people ever. I have learned that I prefer being a small fish in a big pond over being an average-sized fish in a small pond (it’s an analogy, please don’t start calling me a fish from hereon).
Inspiration for this post: The credit goes to Chuck Lorre. Around 10 days ago, I remember reading his vanity card titled “Pandemic Confessions” at the end of a Young Sheldon episode. I found them to be rather relatable and honest, and I decided to reflect on what I learned from the pandemic.