(no subject)
Another Obscure Narrative
The hands on the clock move slowly. Tick, tick, tick; a small, bloodsucking, parasitic arachnid of the family lxodidae. Each fraction the minute hand moves, my eyes droop shut a fraction more. Slip, slip, slip; eyes closed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that now, the teacher will single me out. His radar will pick up and sound the alarm: “STUDENT SLEEPING. MUST CALL ON HER.” His eyebrows will flare up over his coke-bottled glasses, and his low, abrasive voice will bellow my name, and I will have no idea where we are in our math books.
Math is quite an inane subject. There’s no room for interpretation! No room to be an artist! It’s discriminatory against all elegiac thinkers! There’s only one answer to 2+2 in the math world; how boring is that? I could make up a thousand answers, all metaphors, all poems, all beautifully crafted stories with plot and character: but in the mathematical world, this is wrong, all wrong. I would fail a test with that answer. I would fail a test, and then a six weeks, and then the semester, and then I wouldn’t get into college, and I’d never make anything out of myself, because in today’s society, a person is nothing without a college education.
Bill Gates never graduated from Harvard. Bill Gates never earned his college degree. Look what it got him: the status as the one of the world’s richest men. Billions and billions of dollars, and what do you know, Bill Gates dropped out of one of the nation’s most respectable colleges. People can tell you whatever they want - be it that you’ll never get anywhere in life without a degree, or that two plus two always equals four - and the likelihood of it actually pertaining to what will really happen in your life is very slim. Society is made up of all these “this is what will happen if...” and “if you don’t do this...” when in reality, there are an infinite amount of answers to those questions. You can fill it in with whatever you want, metaphors, poems, beautifully crafted stories with plot and character.
The teacher clears his throat. My head snaps up. I look around dumbly for a second, still in a sleeping stupor, and squint at the bright, fluorescent lights. “What?” I stammer finally, realizing that the class’ attention is focused entirely on me.
“I’m not repeating the question,” he booms, his eyebrows flaring up.
I could make up a thousand answers.
Two plus two equals .
Anyone?