Brettia

I knew the end was nigh on Wednesday morning when I wandered into PE, finding that we didn’t have to dress out (in other words, put on rancid gym shorts and gray shirts with something living in them). I had a brief feeling of sadness as I left the gym after an hour and forty minutes of staring blankly at the wall (final exam schedule, but no finals in PE). I almost cried. Or NOT!

C’mon, you have to know me well enough by now after nearly a year of blogging regularly to realize that that was steeped in sarcasm. My only thought as I left the gym for the last time was: “Thank God I’ll never set foot in here ever again.” But there was a bit of a sentimental moment as I remembered all of the good times in PE (few and far between, but still there). I remember throwing bottles full of water and sticks high up in the air and letting them blow open on the concrete in 7th grade, I remember running the mile and feeling as if I was going to vomit afterward, I remember my friend Jim hitting me with a poorly thrown discus just last quarter. As much as I hated PE, there were so many things that happened during that hellish period.

But its over now, so who cares! Anyway, my second period on Wednesday was actually my third, since final exam days are 1,3,5 one day and 2,4,6 the next day, which was today. Period 3 was Geometry, and we’d already finished half of our final on Tuesday, so all that was left was a multiple choice part. Not hard, but still something to study for. Then 5th period was Biology, which I knew I would bomb because I hated that class, mainly because it was just so boring. Hopefully I won’t crash and burn in Honors Chemistry next year.

Thursday was an exciting day because it was the end, and it seemed like, even after we had been anxiously awaiting it since March, it still came up really fast. My first period (technically, second) was my English final exam, which I suppose I did okay on, though I’ll probably never see the scores on it. That was probably my hardest final yet, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. After that came my World History / Geography final, which was easy, and finally there was lunch, and I was ravenous.

Boxed pizza and Gatorade in hand, I went to our bench located in the pristine wilderness of the Ghetto, an area of our campus that is always littered with trash and goths and theatre kids, and it always seems empty. There’s an opie shrine nearby (a bathroom where pot smokers go), and our tree, the Tree of After-Lunch Conversations, hangs above us. It was recently butchered, which made us unhappy. Oh, and we established our own country, the Province of Yurg, which includes the bench (the Bench of Elevated Seating) and the surrounding area. My friend Jim (who hit me with the discus) is High Inquisitor, my friend Dylan is groundskeeper and flag bearer, and I am director of the Department of Immigration and Naturalization. We pretty much just use our sovereign status to attack people as they walk by.

Warning: The following paragraphs may include content not suitable for people with no sense of nasty humor.
Anyway, we started talking about Everfresh, this canned fruit-flavored drink that is sold at our cafeteria, one of the few things that tastes remotely good, or even has a taste at all. (They were serving charcoal briquettes on buns for lunch Wednesday and Thursday.) After Everfresh the conversation moved to Enzyte, that “male enhancement” pill that features a smiling 50’s family man on its incredibly corny commercials. Then a visiting citizen from an allied province suggested that Everfresh make a male enhancement product of its own called “Everfuck.” This was insanely funny at the time, though it only brings about a chuckle now. The Everfresh cans feature a picture of fruit on the front, depending on the flavor, and we thought that, for Everfuck, there could be a picture of a banana with two peaches next to it. Sick, I know, but we just kept laughing about it for some reason.

Then, later on, when the visiting emissary from a far-off province had already migrated away, Dylan sprawled out on the sidewalk next to our bench, saying that he hoped that if he just looked straight up then some girl with one of those 2-inch long short skirts would walk over him. I guess we were all just feeling perverted at that time, or something. He got up, spilling some of the Everfresh that he was holding, and then he just poured the rest out on the sidewalk. After about ten minutes, it was obvious that the Everfresh was never going to go away; it had just created a huge spot on the normally clean and tidy sidewalks of the Province of Yurg. All I could say was, “Dylan, you’ve Everfucked up.”
This brought lots of laughter from the citizenry of the Province of Yurg, and we came up with Everfucker, and all these other inappropriate terms with “Ever” before them. So yeah, that was my interesting lunch hour, which was actually an hour today, due to the weird schedule. After lunch was my Spanish final, which was easy, but was made harder because people from different classes kept coming in to see Mrs. Nasr (the teacher, who is very popular with students) while we were trying to work. My poor friend Sam Laggren couldn’t even finish (138 questions in 140 minutes is hard) because they kept distracting everyone. I was ready to shoot them.

But then that final bell rang, and I could hear the happy shouts echoing around the campus, and I thought that the only thing that would have made it even better was some fireworks. People were emptying their backpacks and notebooks, spreading loose papers everywhere. Janitors must hate the last day for things like this. And as I walked to my bus, it seemed that chaos reigned: people had just sort of given up on keeping any order or reason. But after only about five minutes, it ended, and we all got on our buses, and we left. My freshman year of high school was over.

I keep having these weird achey heart feelings whenever I think about how it’s all over. No more teachers, no more friends (or at least not as often), no more homework. But it’s not that that leaves me somewhat depressed, its the fact that I only have three years left. To some it may seem like a good thing that I have less school left, but to me it’s like I can see my childhood (see last entry) and my free years just evaporating one after the other. And it won’t be long before I’m off to college, and then….what? I don’t even know what I want to do when I grow up. I don’t know how I want to be, or where I’ll live, or how much money I’ll have. I have so many choices, so many possibilities, and it’s hard to figure out which ones are the right ones. I just don’t want to wake up one day and realize that, not only is school over, but my friends are gone, I’m alone, and I have nothing to do but work. That seems like a pretty unhappy existence, even if you enjoy what you do for a living. I think I’m beginning to understand now why people end up valuing family and love and play more than money and work and stuff. I can only wonder if I’m realizing this too early, if I’m going to miss out on the years of squandering my money on glittery things and partying all night and such. As bad as it maybe, as utterly devoid of true emotion that kind of life may seem, it sounds like fun.

Almost Forgot
Class - Projected Semester Grade - Final Exam Grade ([] = estimated)

• Physical Education - 90% - [40%]
• Honors English- 97% - [94%]
• Honors Geometry - 96% - 90%
• World History / Geography - 98% - 99%
• Biology - 98% - 87%
• Spanish 3-4 - 96% - [96%]

Not exactly my best final exam grades ever, but I no longer care. My As are secure, my GPA will remain a 4.333, and that’s all that really matters.