My plan was to drop out of the spelling bee after I won, but everyone kept congratulating me and wishing me luck on the state bee, and by that point it was already too late to chicken out. In the mornings, I usually do schoolwork and socialize once I arrive for a while until the bell rings, but today I got dragged away by the English teacher to do the announcements (the announcements are just videos of the student council reporting some school news that the teachers show to the students). She wanted to announce to the entire school that I had won the spelling bee, which was pointless because
A. Everyone already knows that
and
B. The spelling be happened last week.
It was a huge waste of time, and I also did not want to be part of the announcements. If you didn’t know, the kids in the morning announcements are absolute laughingstocks at my school. Every day, we watch the student council do some cringe-worthy skit on the screen that the teachers thought would be hip with the kids. I know it’s wrong to laugh at other people, but I must admit that I started dying of laughter a few times from some of the weird stuff the teachers cooked up. To give you an idea of some of the lunacy that happens in the announcements, I’ll explain what happened last week. The teachers must’ve thought that the kids at this school have too much negative energy (they’re not wrong), so they decided to have one of the council members do breathing exercises on the morning announcements. For two awkward minutes, all I heard was a girl breathing in and out slowly, while quietly chanting, “I choose kindness.” I think the teachers thought that we would the breathing exercises as well, but most people just sat there and laughed while some kids mockingly breathed in and out really hard.
I always thought that the announcements were recorded in the main office, but it turns out that they were taped in the library. There was a small room with the council members, a green screen, and a computer. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the backgrounds of these announcements. It’s always some cringe-worthy photo of whatever the topic of the video is that day. Let’s say the announcement is mainly about Frosted Flakes. Then they’ll put some giant stock photo of Tony the Tiger behind on the green screen. Whoever thought the green screen was necessary needs to burn.
Anyhow, the English teacher made me stand next to these two girls who would be talking, and then I would say my lines. Oh wait, I didn’t have any lines. My job was to just stand there. I liked and didn’t like the fact that I didn’t have to say anything (the word for this is ambivalent). The first girl said something about the spelling bee, and then the other said something about a new record of 25 rounds gone. Then the second girl said that I won and would be going to the state. She mispronounced my last name horribly, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to stick around any longer than I had to. The teacher wasn’t pleased with the final result because I was looking at the floor and the walls and the ceiling and pretty much anywhere but the camera. She then asked if we wanted a retake. I said no, but everyone else said yes, so I went back to the green screen. After the second take, the teacher realized that I was not going to look at the camera, so she said we were done. It’s already bad enough that I’m going to be laughed at on the announcements, so I’m not going to make it worse by actually showing my face.
Luckily, my homeroom teacher is pretty laid-back, and half of the time he forgets to show the announcements.
When I went upstairs to go to science, I realized that I went to the wrong room. On the days that we’re doing a lab experiment, the teacher moves downstairs to a different science room because that’s where all the glassware is. So, I dashed downstairs to the alternate science room, and made it just before the bell rang. Of course, all the seats were taken, so I sat down at the last table with a bunch of weird people. We were doing an experiment to see what happens when salt water evaporates. I didn’t really care and started to zone out until the teacher said that the salt will start to explode and that piqued my interest. I usually like to do my work alone because most of the other kids can’t be bothered to figure out simple worksheets (most of the time they just look off of my paper). In other words, most partners are just dead weight. Unfortunately, the teacher makes us work in pairs because “scientists work together in the real world”. I was paired with the girl who claims she had ADHD (which I doubt), and she was an utter clown. What you’re supposed to do is filter out the salt-sand-water solution so only the saltwater is left. It’s simple enough, so I had the clown do it while I sat back and took a short nap. Of course, she found a way to screw it up. Some of the sand wouldn’t come out of the cup, so I told her to use put a tiny bit of water on it so it would come out and into the filter. For some reason, this clown thought I meant pour water into the filter, so she dumped an entire cup of water into the filter, rendering all our previous work worthless. I had to remake the solution and remeasure all the sand and salt. After I did all the number work, I let the clown pour everything again. It was a big mistake, because she messed everything up a again by making the exact same mistake as last time. Then when the teacher came over to see why we were taking so long, the clown had the audacity to blame everything on me because I didn’t tell her that she wasn’t supposed to do that, which is untrue, because I clearly remember starting to go nuts and start yelling after she dumped the water the first time.
On our next filtration attempt, I held the filter in place while the clown poured. As I was doing this, some kid shouted that I wasn’t wearing my goggles. It was stupid because I wasn’t even at the boiling part yet (thanks to the clown). The teacher is really strict about goggles though, so she told me to put them on. I couldn’t because I was holding the filter, and if I let go, all the sand might get mixed back in the water. So, the clown tried to shove goggles onto my face while I held the filter. After a bit of the clown sticking the goggles legs into my eyes, I had enough and smacked her hand away so I could put on the goggles myself. The filter dropped, but thankfully the sand didn’t fall. Once we finally filtered the water successfully, the teacher lit our fire and we boiled the salt water. The teacher said that once the salt starts popping, we had to move the fire away from the test tube with the tongs. Of course, the clown wanted to use the tongs, and I foolishly let her. After about thirty seconds of boiling, the clown got scared that the salt would scald her, so she moved her seat all the way back. I told her that she needed to be close when the salt started to blow since she had the tongs, but the clown didn’t listen. Then I told her to give me the tongs if she wasn’t up to the task, but she wouldn’t hand them over. It was lucky that the teacher was watching when our salt started to pop, because she took the tongs away from the clown and moved the fire herself. I took out my science notes and started answering the questions about the lab. As you can probably guess, the clown read off of my notes.