The deafening bell was followed by a brief stampede. The boy had left me behind, and so I waited quietly on the cool surface of the desk. A long period of nothing ensued.
Again with the bell! This time the stampede was inward. A face loomed into view, hovered for a moment, and then I was thrust aside to another desk, from which I promptly fell onto the seat. How rude.
The girl came in just as the bell rang, AGAIN. Her face above me looked confused. "Kenneth?" she asked the boy behind her.
"It was sitting on my desk," he said. She gave him a quizzical look and sat on me. What. The. Hell.
Being a piece of paper sucks. Already that day some kid had scraped his pencil across my front, and then I had a blue-jeaned girl butt on me. Those little metal things hurt, you know.
All the sound was muffled, so I had no idea what was going on. Finally the stupid girl saw fit to pull me out from underneath her.
"mph mmfff mmm have to write a list of usted commands?"
"Yes, Dillon." The blonde boy to my left was Dillon. The side of the girl's binder poked into me. Someone say her name, someone say her name -
"Bea, you do realize that you'll be doing most of this?" Bea! Be sure I'll get my revenge, Bea. See how you like being smothered!
"I know, James," replied the girl. "I can't think of anything good, though."
"Don't you need some socks for your soup?" asked the dark-haired boy, James.
Bea gave a twisted little smile. "You're never going to forget that, are you."
"Nope."
She laughed. "Fine. 'Déme...unos...calcetines...para...mi...sopa.' Next!"
On and on it went. It would have been more bearable had I not already sat through the same exercise earlier that morning. I'm a piece of paper and I now speak Spanish better than some of these morons.
"One more, and let's make it a good one. Anything from Python, James?"
"Um…hold up…GOT IT! 'Cut down the mightiest tree in the forest - "
Here the girl joined in, loudly. "- wiiith...aaa....HERRING!" They fell about laughing, as if this was the most hilarious thing anyone had ever said, ever. The girl leaped up, still giggling, to fetch a dictionary.
I won't bore you with the tedium of someone else's dictionarial exploits. The sentence that they finally came up with was along the lines of "Corte el árbol más grande del bosque con un pescado." They couldn't even be bothered to look up "herring", so they just said "fish."
"We need a fish," the girl blurted out. What her thought process was I'll never know.
"How are we going to get a fish?" asked Dillon. Sensible man. These people were insane.
"We'll draw one," James said.
Bea grabbed me and folded me in thirds. The pain was unbelievable. Have you ever been folded flat in two places? And then had the creases run down by a fingernail? I'm hurting just remembering it. Ooh. Ouch.
Through that torture, I felt a scratching on one side. Those bastards, they had the arrogance to laugh at my pain.
"That...that is..." gasped James, clutching his side. "That is the worst...worst fish I have ever seen! It looks like a shark!"
Bea was tearing up. "A mutant shark, maybe...you know you're just jealous of my artistry!"
"Kenneth the fish. You going to read that sentence?"
James nodded, still chuckling. I lay there fuming. It’s hard to fume properly when you have no brows to frown or teeth to clench, but I did my best.
The woman in charge called something out. I was crushed in a giant hand as the group traipsed up to stand awkwardly before the class. They rattled off their sentences, falling widely across the spectrum from “native speaker” to “Homo habilis.” The boy’s hand clenched tighter around me as they progressed.
Finally, they came to the end of their list. Bea passed the paper over to James and started shaking with silent laughter. The class was confused and unimpressed. Good reaction, people.
“iCorte el árbol más grande del bosque con un-” he thrust me out in front of him –“PESCADO!”
The girl cracked up. The class gave no reaction until -
“Wait…what?”
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