Strange as it may seem, this isn't an anecdotal compilation or anything. This all happened in one school day (Thursday, April 26). And while today was a little more colorful than most, this is pretty much what it's like to be surrounded by IB kids all day. I'm stretching it out into 2 posts because it's long. This is also your formal introduction to 5, Red Dog (*eyeroll*) and Ex.
First Hour – Psychology
Today we’re working on a worksheet that gives us situations in life and has us write down all the parts of the brain that it takes. At the end, you have to come up with a few examples. Since Psych is the smallest class we have, personal discussions have a tendency to become class discussions. This causes some tension between Roi, who sits behind me, and her ex-boyfriend, who has a tendency to make inane or obnoxious comments, to which we respond with an irritated snarkiness fueled (at least in my case) more by amusement than any true grievance. So for one of my examples, I wrote “Ex makes a stupid comment, and you get annoyed”. Roi and I find this incredibly hilarious and share with Goa, another member of 5 (our 5-girl ‘clique’ composed of me (Sal), Roi, Geo, Goa, and Meg). One of Ex’s friends reads it and informs us that we are being “bitchy” about the assignment, to which Roi replies “so?” which cracks me up again. Later on, Ex is having a conversation with another of his friends across the room, and says “but retarded people are always happy!” I turn around, looking confused, and say “but you get into bad moods all the time!”
“I’m not retarded!” he snaps back, and right on cue, Ex’s friend shouts “That’s not true!” in response to Ex’s original statement. The overlapping banter keeps us amused for a while.
Today we’re working on a worksheet that gives us situations in life and has us write down all the parts of the brain that it takes. At the end, you have to come up with a few examples. Since Psych is the smallest class we have, personal discussions have a tendency to become class discussions. This causes some tension between Roi, who sits behind me, and her ex-boyfriend, who has a tendency to make inane or obnoxious comments, to which we respond with an irritated snarkiness fueled (at least in my case) more by amusement than any true grievance. So for one of my examples, I wrote “Ex makes a stupid comment, and you get annoyed”. Roi and I find this incredibly hilarious and share with Goa, another member of 5 (our 5-girl ‘clique’ composed of me (Sal), Roi, Geo, Goa, and Meg). One of Ex’s friends reads it and informs us that we are being “bitchy” about the assignment, to which Roi replies “so?” which cracks me up again. Later on, Ex is having a conversation with another of his friends across the room, and says “but retarded people are always happy!” I turn around, looking confused, and say “but you get into bad moods all the time!”
“I’m not retarded!” he snaps back, and right on cue, Ex’s friend shouts “That’s not true!” in response to Ex’s original statement. The overlapping banter keeps us amused for a while.
Second Hour – History
It’s Meg's birthday today, so History Teacher calls her up to the front. We sing to her. “Spanish!” the class shouts, and despite the genuine Spanish-speakers protesting that the version we learn in Spanish class “isn’t even the real song”, we perform a rousing rendition anyway. After singing it a third time in French, a girl who knows Farsi sings that version. Then History Teacher gets into the act, demanding multilingual versions of the Birthday Song from all the bilingual kids in class. We hear it in Albanian, Japanese, Romanian, Chinese, and Hindi, even though “Hindi doesn’t have a birthday song!” The +1 Guy member of 5 - who is henceforth referred to as "Red Dog" (don't look at me, he chose it) - decides to write his own Chinese version and starts singing “Mao ze Dong, Chiang Kai Shek” to the tune of the Birthday Song. Then we talk about the JFK assassination.
Third Hour – Spanish
We’re working on the skit for the Cinco de Mayo skit competition. Our skit is a life-size re-enactment of the board game Clue. You may remember from your childhood that one of the weapons is a lead pipe. What you may not know is that when you try to make a long, cylindrical item like that out of a large piece of cardboard, the outcome is, as Spanish Teacher put it, “wrong”. Add that to the fact that the Spanish word for pipe is “pipa”, pronounced “pee-pah”, and you’ve got a problem. We decide to change the weapon to poison in a chalice. The problem is, the kid playing the pipa just won’t let go of the idea, and insists that he cam find a way to make it work. What he ends up doing is making a long cardboard thing that attaches to the front of him. To kill the victim, a tall, muscular football player, instead of hitting him over the head with a long piece of cardboard, he sort of… jumps at/on him a few times.
We start working on the chalice.
Fourth Hour – Lunch
We eat outside, at a table adjacent to the IB Seniors. One of them explains his “Homie don’t right-click” t-shirt to Meg. A “nerdy t-shirt” discussion follows. (Favorites: “I wish I were DNA Helicase so I could unzip your genes”, and one that says “Schrödinger’s cat is dead” on the front and “Schrödinger’s cat is not dead” on the back.) Food is thrown. I am informed that “emo kid” (from the scavenger hunt) goes to our school and was spotted in the hallway that morning. More food is thrown.
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