Time is Passing -- R U

I am filled with a soft, burning hatred. My world is exploding. My solid belief in the moral nature of man is shattering into a million fragments of disappointment and rage. How could a civilization supposedly advanced as ours fail on such a grand scale? The failure is what gets to me the most. The half-assed attempt and the blatant acceptance of failure. Where is the justice? It is obviously nowhere.

South-West of me is a hip young man with trendy earphones and a Game Boy Advance SP. His head bobs slightly to the music that exists only for him, and his fingers work swiftly to control the characters on the small, beautifully front-lit screen. To the immediate East sit two females, one of which is taking a break from her reading to make a point to a teacher. It is a very ill-conceived point, and I would roll my eyes at it if the effort of such a task didn’t threaten to elevate the excitement level of the room to above the acceptable region and into the realm of unmitigated anarchy. The teacher is giving her a very stern talking-to about her quiz grades. “These grades are an embarrassment and a disgrace. We are all ashamed of you. You are slacking.” His extreme mustache bobs to the tune of his fluid discourse. He turns back to his work. His computer monitor blinks in and out of a sickening, Valentine-esque haze, seemingly at random. It enrages me to see it. I just want to rush over to his desk, fix with a pencil the video cable that is most likely giving him the problem, and promptly bash the screen into non-existence. Elsewhere in the room, a few more scattered people do a few more scattered things. The classroom is otherwise almost utterly silent. Maddeningly so. Sickeningly so.

Somewhere, in other rooms, broken people take broken tests for broken reasons. Inspirational signs and posters litter the hallways along with pink ISIS-system flyers and ill-gotten off-campus passes. People sleep through, read through, work through, and write through all the trouble these tests cause the entire school. Homework is done, card games are played, and education is put on hold.

Slowly, the students will trickle in from wherever they came from (breakfasts, sleeping-in, paintball games), and the mangled, tragic schedule will continue. For some of us, lunch will come earlier, and the time to go home will come later. The periods are shorter, sure, but they are devoid of any life and meaning. The teachers will teach through dead eyes.

But until the rest of the day is put in motion, we few must remain here, in this horrible silence, in this world of earphones and shuffling papers and mind-numbing conversations about reality programming from the back of the room. This world where I sit, reading the same posters on the same walls to pass the time in the same period for two hours and forty minutes.

The poster says “Time is Passing. R U?” I say that neither are passing. Not when the ASB is so intent on shoving terrible slogans into our faces. Not when the forty-minute-periods schedule is in place. Not when the STAR extends its talons into the neck of progress so it may rip the flesh of sanity and partake of the sweet meat.

Not in my back yard, mister!