We get there every morning, same time, or the smallest member of our posse will start yelling at us. I’m not sure why she’s in such a hurry to get there, because the classroom is almost as bad as hell itself. And then the Devil himself enters. White hair, hooked nose-- he doesn’t seem like he’d be that bad, but then he starts to talk. Just like clockwork.

“That’s a desk, not a chair,” he says, barely glancing at the tallest posse member, who rolls his eyes and slides into his chair. We chat, we pretend to work, but really we’re more interested in getting out of this hellish room. And then the bell rings, and chaos breaks loose.

“So, I was watching those Red Sox last night,” begins our very own white-haired Satan. I roll my eyes and scrawl down a few definitions, but that holds very little interest for me. There’s a good picture somewhere of a Buddhist monastery in Nepal…

“I don’t think the Red Sox have staying power…” Yes, he’s still going. I scratch at the place on my wrist where some greedy mosquito has been trolling for blood. Our ‘teacher’ is still airing his views on sports. Or maybe it’s the way we dress, or the way we talk. Objecting to every bit of slang, as though that wasn’t exactly how our language developed from a quasi-German sort of tongue.

Crazy me, I thought we were here to learn. But I’m not learning. Because he has chosen to use his power and authority as a podium for airing his opinions. To be frank, I could have learned as much if the school system had stuck a monkey in a diaper at his desk and let me alone with my textbook. The kids who listen to him aren’t learning anything, anyway.

What is it about this room that makes time crawl by so dismally slow? I check the clock again. Still a minute, or two, or three, or a million, but it’s too long to stand. I’ve already finished the vocabulary for the chapter. And the book. I wait with bated breath for the bell-- come on, just a little longer-- and it rings. Freedom. I slam my book shut.

“Thank heavens!” I declare, though our academic Beelzebub doesn’t hear me. The second we’re out of the room, he’s fair mocking game, and we’ll laugh and groan about his horrendous class. And next is a good class. So I guess I can make it through today, until the cycle begins again.