WHAM! No it’s not just the name of the coolest band ever; it is also the sound I hear every time someone slams into me, head-on.
Surviving high school is much easier than I thought it would be when I was a young and impressionable sixth grade student. One thing I never thought would happen is all the altercations that occur in the hallway. Strangers, people I’ve never even seen in my life, roam those mysterious passages. There are so many of these interlopers, in fact, that it is nearly impossible to get anywhere without having some kind of jostling or bumping on the way.
I know that everyone is in a hurry to make it to their classes but I would greatly appreciate it if I was not made a casualty of all the hustling and bustling. We do have five whole minutes between periods to dart across the entire school.
Everyone has the awkward hallway moments of sidestepping each other in order to avoid impact but I feel as if it happens to me far too often. I frequently find myself slowly inching towards someone in the hallway as I try to bypass them, only to end up face to face with them as they yell obscenities to their friends.
I’m starting to wonder if I suddenly become a chameleon the instant I enter the hallway. My first instinct when I see someone walking towards me is to move out of the way and I feel like most would have that same instinct So, if I’m assuming that a primal intuition is to avoid confrontation, and I calculate the number of people I run into in the hallway, I must conclude that I’m invisible.
Maybe I’m not even there at all, like I don’t actually exist in between classes; maybe I enter some kind of limbo that no one else can access. That’s quite a scary thought. What if I never get out? What if, for some reason, I don’t make it to class in time and that means I have to stay in this limbo forever? I could be stuck inside some kind of alternate universe where I have to navigate my way through the school, around all the couples coupling, the cat fights, the teachers reprimanding students; I could be here for eternity.
High school really seems to be some kind of wilderness with wildebeests stampeding throughout the halls as fast as humanly (or wildebeest-ly) possible while the scared little antelopes dart around trying to avoid becoming prey.
I become nervous and frightened at the sound of the bell signaling the end of class. My anxiety comes from the knowledge that I will soon be back out in that mess, trying to maneuver my way through the school. So this has me wondering: if I am scared of the cruel world that is feet from my desk, how do other people cope? I wouldn’t say I was tall, but I believe it’s safe to assume that there are much smaller, shorter people than me out there. How on earth do they survive the confusion and chaos out there?
There should be some kind of safe in-school transport system. Forget about buses, we should institute some kind of trolley or something that gets people to their classes, unscathed.
I feel like any day now, I’ll hear that mysterious announcement woman informing the school body that there was some kind of fatality. The announcer would go on to say this fatality could have been avoided if only they had had the sense to establish some kind of navigation system. I don’t think people should have to worry about being plowed over while walking to class. They’re already stressed out enough about their classes. Obviously this problem needs to be rectified.