The Top 10 Things I Liked About School

Tried all week. But when you get there, it looks great. The Sadurday is a day of rest, a time of joy and rejoicing. And so is the Sunday.

#10 Band

Band was the best part of school. We made movies documenting all of our student wars, and unlike ordinary marching bands, we weren’t some harmless travel group. We had rock, pop, various metals and many different kinds of alcohol. Our competitions against rival schools were vicious. Sometimes the bands fought so hard that some died, which is why our three-year-old marching-band defensive lineup trained constantly. We had offensive formations, defensive formations and special teams. I played trumpet, although depending on the opponent I sometimes finished the performance with a trumpet and a head wound. You haven’t experienced music until you’ve tried to maintain proper embouchure while the opposing trombone section is blitzing from your blind side. By my final year, I was considered the star rookie on the team, which doesn’t make chronological sense but looked excellent on my varsity band jacket.

Our fiercest competition came after we were condemned by a music representative and forced to perform music selected by the judges. We pushed ahead, rang the bell and unleashed the most corrupt sounds of Van Halen upon the stadium. The audience became furious because, as everyone knows, everybody hates Van Halen. Nevertheless, we kept playing. Trumpets screamed. Drums thundered. The defensive line held. Eventually our team won the match, and I experienced two major milestones that day: my first marching-band victory and my first kiss from a fellow human who was not related to me. I don’t know why I felt the need to specify either human or not related to me, and I will not be accepting questions. Anyway, that’s why Band is #10. We came for the music. We stayed for the bloodshed and Van Halen.

#9 Gym Class

I hated gym in eighth grade. Every week we played an extremely violent form of dodgeball called Murder With Bullets, and everybody feared it. My survival strategy was to stand behind a big friend whom I could use as a human shield. He would absorb most of the incoming fire while I stayed safely behind him and occasionally threw a ball at somebody who wasn’t looking. Unfortunately, every Friday the teacher reviewed everyone’s performance, and whichever student had done the worst that week was executed from the game and sent to sit on the bench. My big friend only managed two kills that week, so he was terminated. One moment he was protecting me from the enemy; the next he was sitting against the wall drinking from the water fountain. War is hell.

This is why our school desperately needed a Necromancy class. If students had been taught even basic resurrection magic, I could have brought my big friend back from the bench and continued using him as protective cover. Instead, once someone was eliminated, the educational system simply abandoned them until the next round. I know many of the students I killed were also my friends, but Murder With Bullets was an angry sport. Friendships disappeared the moment that whistle blew. You could share a lunch table with somebody at noon and drill them directly in the face with a rubber ball at 1:15. That’s gym class. I hated every second of it, which naturally makes it #9 on my list of things I liked about school.

#8 Math

There was a time when I could be together with all my friends and favorite teachers, and that time was math class. I never thought I would become hungry for mat problems, but I’m okay!! Every day the teacher handed out worksheets filled with equations, and we eagerly completed them. Then, when the worksheets were finished, we spoke of how much we loved the worksheets. “That was a good worksheet,” someone would say. “Yes,” another student would reply. “I particularly enjoyed problems 14 through 19.” Sometimes we’d finish early and simply sit there remembering all the wonderful math we’d just done. Addition. Subtraction. Fractions. The memories we made with denominators will stay with me forever.

Eventually the bell would ring. Not much of a vision of how the bells can move you, but somehow that sound always meant our beautiful mathematical time together had ended. I love math because it sets me apart, especially because so many other people are also good at math, which apparently makes me even more unique. Seeing everyone else understand numbers motivated me to do what I wanted: understand additional numbers. There were no marching-band fatalities. Nobody was terminated during Murder With Bullets. Nobody needed Necromancy. Just me, my friends, my favorite teachers and a stack of worksheets. I was hungry for mat problems. But I’m okay!!

#7 Funny People

There were always a few funny people at school. When my parents sent me to military school in Bulgaria, one student did an incredible impression of our teacher. He stood at the front of the classroom, adopted a terrifying military posture and shouted, “Ще свършите тази задача до десет минути!”—basically ordering everyone to finish the assignment within ten minutes while adding several increasingly dramatic threats of imaginary punishment. I found it beautiful. He even made students write their answers on the board while he inspected them like a disappointed general. Another student once created a hilarious story about the Revolutions of 1989, but the moment he said the word “communist,” everything became chaotic and I somehow ended up getting attacked. Bulgarian military-school comedy was extremely interactive.

Fifth grade was even better. Students would play chaotic soccer matches against the teachers while giving their teammates ridiculous names, leaving one confused teacher shouting, “Why do so many student name join this group!” Congratulations to those students, because from then on I actually looked forward to school. In seventh grade my friend became frustrated and yelled, “Mr. Teacherman, I’ll put yo ass in the grave, motherfucker!” I couldn’t stop laughing. It was like imitating a girl who drove 10,000 times back to elementary school, which is apparently another thing I found hilarious. But the funniest moment happened while we were playing Frisbee. One guy suddenly made this sound: “Ah!” That’s it. Just “Ah!” I laughed so hard I peed all over myself. Forget professional comedians. Forget carefully constructed jokes. Some kid said “Ah!” and delivered the greatest comedy performance of my educational career.

#6 Happy Hour

Happy Hour was the best time for me in the 5th grade because it was a race to drink as much alcohol as possible in one hour. I hated working sober in 5th grade, so I have to drink as relentlessly as I possible just to get through science classes. Some of my friends weren’t as cool, they couldn’t carry their alcohol and they wouldn’t pass class. Many of them wanted to go to the bathroom and later we found out that they were vomiting and passing out.

#5 Girl Students

Girls were great because I liked flirting with them, talking to them and occasionally discovering that one of them actually liked me back. They could also be annoying because of the gossip, which spread through school faster than any legitimate information. I was rarely alone because people were constantly approaching me with updates about my own life that I hadn’t previously known. Apparently I had girlfriends in classes I’d never taken, had broken up with girls I’d never met and once had several children despite being in eighth grade. None of this was true, but everybody knew about it, so eventually I started learning things about myself from strangers. “Hey, sorry about your divorce.” What divorce? “You know.” No, I absolutely did not know. Middle school was basically social media without computers.

There was one girl in eighth grade whom I’d liked all year, but she wanted nothing to do with me because she’d heard all the ridiculous stories about the other girls. Then one day her friend approached me and said she actually liked me. I didn’t believe it, so I waited several days while everyone discussed the situation until enough independent sources confirmed the report. Finally I went to her house and attempted to ask her to be my girlfriend, except I panicked and asked whether she would become “my sleeping companion.” She stared at me for a very long time. I explained that I meant girlfriend and had apparently selected the worst possible combination of words available in the English language. Somehow, she said yes. She became my first actual girlfriend, and within approximately six hours the school had already invented three pregnancies, an engagement and a custody dispute. Girls were great. The gossip was fucking exhausting.

#4 Recess

My school canceled recess because it would be “dangerous” since every kid had guns and used them as they wanted. It was easier to build a shooting range at the elementary school and give us a place to fire our guns at targets instead of each other. But what was really dangerous was 8th grade gym class where we were required to fire guns at each other. We had to kill each other! It’s fitness is what they said to us. I was shot 10 times, once in the head. The game was always more dangerous if you were unconscious, it made you an easy target!

#3 The Last Day of School

It doesn’t have to be this way! Why does the school get to dictate whether you can grow up or not? Why do you have to love your teacher? My second grade teacher was Aretha Franklin and we also had to R-E-S-P-E-C-T her. I told her “I will give it to you if you give me a YoYo!” and she finally did, on the last day of school. But with too many projects and ridiculous chores, it always feels like prison waiting for the end of the school year. 8th grade was one of my favorites! We all survived and were able to get away from the murder class.

#2 Leaving School

Hahahaha, I will be glad.
Seriously though So what’s the point of any school? To destroy your life and your soul? To get good grades? I want to let you know what’s left to say? Now, I just want to say – whoever told me I was leaving school, I just wanted to thank you. And now I know they are leaving, yes, it’s great when it’s time to go home. I guess it will confuse a lot of people. But I understand that.

#1 Friends

I feel like I have my friends get involved in my crazy stuff too much. And since they are all bad, they will get me in trouble One time in first grade, when we were being forced to make Nike clothes for 10 hours a day, my “friend” wanted to steal some food and escape with her. I wanted to do it, I was starving and sitting in my clothes wet with pee. But I refused because it was very scared and I knew I we would be caught and punished. I’m glad I didn’t, because she ended up getting caught and beaten almost to death by the teacher.

Meeting friends is what makes a school great. School offers an excuse to go out and hang out with your friends. Unless your friend is at school or doesn’t have friends at school. You should meet them 5 days a week for 9 months. This is great! Now yes, you can meet your friends on weekends, but not 7 hours, and friends that you can only see at school. Plus, you can’t go out with all your friends on the weekend. But you can go to school.