I‘m going to write a short narrative. It’s a simple story, a story that could happen to me or you or anyone who could imagine it. It takes place in a college classroom, the type of classroom where nearly eighty students sit and squirm looking at their watches, looking at the board, and looking at their fellow classmates making the “mates” part of the word come to life.
The girl in the back of the room is sleeping. Some of the other girls nearby, decorated with logos of A & E talk about how she is always sleeping, how she doesn’t care about this class or any other because her parents are paying for her education. What they don’t know is that she sleeps to forget that her parents are paying for her to be at college, her parents who try to tell her they still love her the same, they just love other people now, her parents who are separated.
The boy in the middle front of the room isn’t sleeping. He is sitting up straight. Straight as a board. He has carefully combed his hair with a toothed comb, his hair retains each and every bite mark, and the lines make little garden rows perfect for planting. In elementary school he hadn’t combed his hair and he was the kid who got lice; it wouldn’t happen again. He raises his hand up straight like the rest of his body, it looks likes his hailing someone.
Now the couple on the side of the room, in front of the girl who is dressed in black and refuses to smile. The couple takes turns every day sitting in front of each other for the purpose of scratching each others back. They giggle at each other and sometimes one or the other will lean their head back like a ballerina with that outstretched neck and the other will extend theirs forward like a chicken and they will peck at each other. The girl in black carves more band names into her folder.
The thing with this short narrative is this; I don’t have to finish it. You can finish it. You know where you sit, who you are, at least maybe who you are not.
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