Fri. Aug. 24
by
, 08-24-2012 at 07:13 PM (609 Views)
Summer School
On Monday, we have an orientation. Then I go to bed to get rested for classes tomorrow.
For the first day of classes, we have to get in line for some kind of check-in. The line moves slowly, and by the time it's 8:25 I'm still a few places back from the front. My first class is at 8:30, so I think I need to go. I pick up my bags and leave the line, but one of the check-in ladies intercepts me.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have an early appointment today?" she asks.
I'm confused, because I don't think class counts as an "appointment," and doesn't every student in this room have class at 8:30? But we go through check-in anyway, and when we're finished, suddenly I remember that I was supposed to set back my watch by forty-five minutes. So I'm actually not late at all. No wonder no one else was worried.
I head to my morning class, thinking I'll be early. But when I get to the room, there are already a lot of people there. What? It's not even 9:00, and this class doesn't start until 10:00! But then I remember that this class is usually MWF, and we couldn't have class yesterday because of orientation. So the professor is squeezing in an extra session on Tuesday morning to make up for it. Hmph. Maybe he ought just have planned to have one less day's worth of material in the course.
The morning class involves a running game where there are a lot of items strewn around a medium-sized room with a grid-patterned floor. Sometimes new items appear in the middle of the grid squares. There are certain items we're looking for, worth more points than the others. We're competing to see who can collect the most points.
The first time I play the game, I think I did pretty well. But it turns out another guy actually won, because he grabbed the items worth the most points. I hadn't even known what those were, but now that I do know, I want to play again. The second time, I notice that there are people stuffed into lockers along one wall of the room, and some of them are worth points. The animation for the game is pretty good, and rather charming.
Now it's time for the afternoon class. I'm skeptical about this one, because the subject seems like total hocus-pocus. I'm not even sure what it is, actually. The professor tells us to take out our textbooks, and the whole class groans. We remember this book from yesterday. The title is completely nonsensical, and by now I'm pretty sure this class will be full of New-Agey crap that doesn't have any business being taught in a university. Good thing I'm sitting in the back.
During class, I notice that the girl sitting on my left is resting her head on my leg and dozing. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, because it's almost like cuddling, and I'm glad she feels that comfortable around me. I'm also amused to confirm that she's just as bored as I am. She notices I've noticed, and she smiles. But it doesn't last too long, because the professor has the class break into groups for discussion and disperse to different rooms.
After discussion, there are still maybe twenty minutes left of class, but I don't feel like going back to the lecture hall. Everyone else leaves the discussion room, but I just spend a long time re-packing my backpack. I'm enjoying being lethargic, but I also hope that the professor doesn't take attendance at the end of class, so I don't get caught.
Later, I'm startled by a student coming into the room. But he's just there to move the front table back to where it was before discussion started. How responsible of him. Anyway, I guess that means class is over. Time to leave.
Seven Keys
A middle-aged man hands a young boy a pistol, warning him never, ever to speak a word of what has been done with that weapon. Presumably it was used to commit a murder of some kind.
In the very next scene, the boy brings the gun to another, older man, telling him mischievously that something terrible has been done with it. When the man asks what, the boy says, "We blue'd it," and takes out another of the same kind of pistol, except this one has been painted blue. Amusedly, the man pretends to be horrified by this action. The idea is that the color blue isn't very aggressive or serious or anything, so it has no business decorating something like a gun.
The boy pretends to aim the gun behind himself, but then coincidentally a spider the size of a small dog comes running into the hallway right where he's aiming. The man's face abruptly becomes very serious. Fighting these spiders is the main purpose of this community, and he says to the boy, "You may fire." But the boy, not having seen the spider, is just confused. Instead, the man lifts his own gun, takes careful aim, and shoots the spider.
Now, I'm in the final stages of a game involving these spiders. The building I'm in has seven levels, and in order to get a good score for the game, I have to collect one key from each level. The trick is that in order to reach the next level, you have to use the key from the previous level, and in the process of using it, you have to leave it behind. So there's got to be some kind of secret passage I can use to go backwards from the end and pick up all the keys. I'm running all over the building trying to find this passage, and I have to restart a few times from a save point near the top of it. There are about five or six other people helping me out with this.
This time, I try using a sort of wooden fire escape on the outside of the building. It's very reminiscent of a treehouse, spiraling around a tree and built entirely out of two-by-fours. There's one other person following me down. On one landing, there's a dead spider, lying in a pool of its own fluids. "Watch out!" I call over my shoulder. "Spider juice!" (It's very dangerous.)
Once on the ground level, I go inside to find a lot of people in a large room. They want something from me; they're expectant that I've gotten the keys; or something. In response, I start taking off my shirts. I'm wearing seven of them, one for each level in the building. But taking them off is actually very difficult. I can't quite seem to pull the first one over my head. A thirty-ish woman, someone I know, asks me what's wrong. I reply that I don't know. I tell her that apparently my arms just feel very tired and I can't muster the force necessary to take off a T-shirt.