Flashback

I composed the following during my time at Lockheed Martin and published it on a previous blog. I still like it, although admittedly it's missing some major characters that I could describe ...

The Class System

The following is a brief list I compiled this morning at a start-of-the-week meeting. The meeting itself was one of those things I'm required to attend but never has anything to do with my work, project, or documents ... so I'm forced to stay awake by my own devices. As I thus lazily glanced around the room, I came to realize that this lecture was almost identical to every large-scale college lecture I've ever sat through. The similarities I then found between the engineers at the meeting and my classmates at college inspired me to make this list ... feel free to add anything that I might have missed.

I hereby present
"The Class System- A Handy Guide to Shallowly Labeling Your Peers while You're Bored in Lecture"

1) The White Rabbit

He's elusive, he's always in a hurry, and much like the rabbit Alice meets in Wonderland, he's the perennial late-arrival. No weekday is complete without this moron scurrying in anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes after class has started, usually making enough noise and disturbance to wake you from your focus and/or slumber. The weirdest part of him is that, despite the fact he can never seem to figure out how to be on time, he will still bust in with even two minutes of class to go ... long after any other clear-thinking student would have abandoned the idea of showing up at all.

Attributes:
-still has the balls to talk to the professor afterwards and ask what he missed
-refuses to sit in the back or on the end; he must push you out of the way to get to his favorite spot, which happens to be third-row center
-typically carries an exceedingly large container of liquid; usually spills it immediately after crashing into his seat like a tranquilized grizzly bear

2) Captain Nemo

Nemo is actually Latin for "no one," and that's basically what this guy is. You'll see him on the first day of class, but within moments of grabbing the syllabus, he'll have vanished in a light gust of wind. Whole weeks will go by with no appearances by the Captain, and logic will tell you that he must have changed sections or dropped the class for some reason. When exam time finally rolls around, though, you stroll in a few minutes early to find ... Nemo? What? Where the hell has that guy been? "Oh well," you say to yourself, "He hasn't been here; his grade will help the curve. How could he possibly do better than me when I've been coming to class regularly?" That's easy to explain, especially when Nemo gets a 98 and beats the curve by 35 points ... he's a shit-load smarter than you and the rest of the plebians who still go to lecture.

Favorite Past-times:
-never, ever, ever handing in daily homework ... ever
-lamenting how easy the exam was on the way out
-not buying the textbooks associated with any of his classes

3) Endymion

Named for the mythological Greek king who chose eternal sleep over death, this character seems to have also forsaken the cycle of life in favor of his own desires. No matter how far you are into class, who's speaking, or how close to the front this guy is, nothing will stop him from slipping into peaceful slumber at the drop of a hat. His friends have suggested everything- chewing a whole pack of gum, having one headphone in during lecture, or even just wearing a hat to make it look like he's not sleeping. Alas, neither man nor beast will slow this narcoleptic juggernaut in his quest to never learn a damned thing. The only question still left ... why does he even bother to go to class at all, let alone every single one of the semester?

Favorite Positions:
-the "Sleepy Kitten" (upper body curled up on the desk, arm possibly over eyes)
-the "Thinking Man" (head leaning sideways on one arm, other hand probably resting on crotch)
-the "Birdshit Receptacle" (head all the way back, mouth open and gaping up to the sky)

4) Doodles

You see this person in class, and at least in the beginning of the semester you think to yourself, "Oh wow. That girl's really paying attention and taking a lot of notes. I might ask to see them when I need to miss class next week." And it's a true observation ... every single day, this person remains wide awake, seemingly focused, and never stops jotting stuff down with their pencil or pen. Eventually the time does come when you will need notes, so you walk up to her, borrow them, and then head out of class thinking you just received the sacred tome that will save your sorry ass come next exam. You sit down to copy the notes that night, only to crack the book and find 153 games of Tic-Tac-Toe, 57 different copies of her signature (she was practicing), and a healthy sampling of the dumb, uninteresting comments she shared with the person next to her. Bitch.

Common Creations:
-that weird-ass dot/line game that only girls know how to play
-nonsensical curves, tracings, stars, and other ventures into the realm of abstract art
-a hand-turkey
-nothing resembling even a glint of knowledge

5) Sloppy McDopolis

Oh man, it a great night last night. What happened? No clue dude, I blacked out around ten. According to my buddies, though, the high point was when I rode the Beirut table down the hill wearing only a jock strap and crashed into the side of a squad car. Shit no, I totally got away. All I really can remember is waking up, still wearing a used condom and laying next to this bitch I didn't know. We were both in a pile of puke, too, but I couldn't tell you if it was mine or hers. Great night, bro.

Things He Usually Forgets:
-a shower/gum/anything that makes him stop smelling like a dumpster filled with horse sweat and jizz
-that the final exam is in 20 minutes

6) The Kid You Want to Murder

You know him, and if it were up to you, he'd be dead by now. He sits front-row center, is on a first-name basis with the professor in a 200-person lecture, knows a heck of a lot more than anyone else in the room ... and has the social skills of a masochistic leper with a superiority complex. Nothing will stop him from raising his hand to point out a mistake on the board. No one can control him if he feels the need to add some bit of information to the lecture that the professor "missed." No man-made structure can contain the unbridled enthusiasm exploding from him when he's finally called on (some might compare it to a normal human reaching orgasm, or experiencing the Rapture). The only thing you know for sure about him, aside from his name, is that you hate him and the fact that he can't just shut the fuck up for 50 minutes at a time.

Fun Things You Think about Doing to Him during Class:
-punching him in the face
-throwing his graphing calculator into the river and watching him jump after it
-taking a dump in his bed sheets