mood: complacent music: 'only in dreams' by weezer

It was the first day of school. The place seemed all too familiar; after all, we only shifted one room down the hall. We gathered outside before school on the area we would later use for lunch.

As the bell rang, we spread out to the area with no tables and just a shallow slope covered in iceplant. Soon enough, a heavyset balding man stepped out of a door across the yard from us carrying a stack of greenish paper; upon closer inspection, they were actually thick pieces of cardboard. Wedged above his ear was a black sharpie, and underneath the familiar school colors of his coach's jacket were a clean white dress shirt and a gold necktie. The fact that his shirt was tucked in made sure that it showed lots of curves. In fact, everything about him showed curves. The down filling and moderate lu.ster of his jacket amplified the roundness of his arms and his cheeks were like flesh-colored beachballs on his face. But he was fairly young: probably in his mid 20's. I suddenly wondered what array of psychological problems could have caused him to grow so obese.

Then he started to hand out the green slates of cardboard. Mine was the first card he gave out. Miraculously, he already knew all of our names. As he passed out the rest I look down at what was written on the card. In black sharpie, my name was on the top, and under it were 4 sections. I read the first one: "Homework Evasion Attack". And under that section was a jumble of black marker where he had blacked out a huge mistake, then under that, a series of arrows and buttons, much like one would expect to find when playing Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. 'Wow, how weird,' I thought to myself.

I put the card down and looked at the teacher. He began to lecture us on some sort of kickball game we were going to play. I wasn't exactly listening, but the rules sounded absurd. I turned to Tara, who was sitting next to/across from me, facing me. "Do you get what that point of this is?" I asked her.

"Yeah, it's not that hard," she replied. "Don't worry, I'll play with you." At the same moment, our makeshift coach said something about running in circles after hitting the ball to a certain spot. It all made less and less sense as he went on and on. But I got to cr.ack my jokes and Tara got her shots in too. I don't think we really heard a thing that fat man was saying.

---Goei---