Picture this!

Picture this!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Life at schools- Part (Whatever)

Aloha.

8th grade. One of the best goddamn phases of my life.

It started pretty awkwardly, what with my bicycle being stolen from the school compound.
Three weeks Ago....

Well, here we go. One fine day, I was just minding my own business, doing what every normal kid does in a classroom. Farting sonic bombs.
The day was kind of ordinary, except when I got to the bicycle stand. I couldn't find my keys. They must have fallen off my pocket when I was playing football earlier. And scoring a hat-trick....but that thought didn't do much to lift my spirits at that time..I had to get the lock sheared apart by a strong blade, asking the school gardener to do it for me.
As you can imagine, I was terrified, wondering what I would tell mom and Dad when I got home.

So..I took the sheared lock home, and claimed that someone else had broken it.My mom, dad and bro did not like the sound of that.
So, the following monday, my dad wrote a letter to the Principal, criticising the security and so on...
And I was, obviously, called upon, when the Principal investigated this serious matter. The guards recognized me at once, even though I put on a chinki face and rumpled up my hair in what I thought would be a hopefully unrecognizable fashion. It's my bad luck that I have hair like Harry Potter...no matter what I do, they always slip back to the same tousled configuration after half an hour.
And, I don't know whether it was because of the extreme heat or the fear I had of the Principal and my Dad, I had a blackout experience for a couple of seconds in the Principal's office, right about the time when she was twisting my ears for lying and accusing the school security, which made her even more furious.
I somehow staggered out of her Office, still alive....
The following day, my Dad was called to the principal's office, and he was filled in about my dishonesty and my "wonderful acting skills" , as the princi called it.
That was the last time I remember weeping in fear, ever. I have never cried since.

Well, three weeks later, when I forgot to take the keys with me, my cycle predictably disappeared. You know how the story goes- never trust the boy who lies. So, long story short, I never found out what happened to it.

That incident apart, life was pretty awesome.
There were inter-house football selections going on, and I impressed the hell out of both my team selectors...flinging the ball into the net with a flourish, following which they gave me a rolling ball from quite a distance, which I whacked the hell out of....it hit the crossbar, almost going in, but it made the impression I was hoping for. There was one loser-ish dude who switched lines and ran up behind me, and said in a sycophantic gushing of words,"Alcoholic Toddler is here, so I came here!"
Then they tried to test my eternal weakness in football skills- dribbling. I had to take on five defenders, which I couldn't quite pull off. But at the end of the day, they were pretty impressed, and next week followed one of the most memorable matches in my football 'career'. All for the wrong reasons.

It started out like an epic battle. Both teams were arguably on an equal footing. Except our opponent were the favourites, because they always won. Our team, on the other hand, had an impressive line-up after many years, so many hopes rested on our shoulders. Our opponents were actually at a slight advantage, as we did not have any competent keeper. But we held the slightly stronger team off, attacking them as well, keeping the game as interesting as an El-Classico fixture. Even my dribbling had created a couple of fluttering moments, but both teams defended fiercely. Then, we had a major breakthrough through my skilful run through the opponent defence. I was through, I was in the box, but I was surrounded. Somehow I flicked the ball onto the hand of one defender, which awarded us a penalty. But, our chance was cheaply lost by the same loser I mentioned earlier, who was made the captain because the teacher didn't know me well. Then five minutes later, in the last stages of the game, another idiot in our team violated a basic backpass rule, which resulted in an indirect free-kick being awarded to our opponent, which they somehow( not with much style) pushed into the back of our net. The whistle blew. We were devastated. My brother was teasing me, I remember...he was the coach of the opponents.

Shit happens. Sigh. Which reminds me...

Remember the Humpty Dumpty I mentioned earlier? Well, it seems he finally ate more than he could handle. There was a highly unpleasant smell wafting around in the classroom. All heads turned here and there, trying to identify the source.
Then one nasal, heavily drawling voice gave us the info we wanted.
"Mam, mere ko pata hai badbu kahan se aa rahi hai..."
One Stupid Guy had fashioned himself a gas mask out of paper and was proudly sporting it. The whole class was abuzz with commentary about how Humpty Dumpty had a huge discharge of faecal matter seeping through his underwear. How unfotunate for him, that our uniform's blinding white.
Eventually, he began to cry, and a good friend of mine went over to him and tried to comfort him. I would have done the same, but i have a very low threshold for withstanding shitty odours. I can't imagine how he walked back to the bus.....

Shit happens...quite literally sometimes....

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