‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog…’ I tapped the pencil on the table

‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog…’ I tapped the pencil on the table. “GAH!!” I exclaimed.

“Is something wrong Liz?” asked ms. Byrd.

“Nope! No… everything’s just peachy!” I tell her with as little sarcasm as I can. She glances down at my paper and reads it.

“Having trouble with the prompt?” I look up at her through my hair. ‘No you think I just yell GAH randomly?’ I think.

“No, I’m good.” Traitorous mouth. She looks at me disapprovingly and goes to back to be completely ignorant of everything that goes on in the classroom. I look around me, trying to see what my friends are doing. ‘Marie looks pretty in to what she’s doing…’ I try to glance over at her paper. She glares at me and covers the paper. ‘Ahhh love note.’ I really don’t want to know what’s on that paper. I look up at the clock, twenty minutes left of this boring mind numbing hell. I groan silently and try to think about the quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog.

What seemed like five minutes later, I hadn’t added anything more than, was lying on a moldy log. I stare at the paper, hoping that maybe just maybe if I stare long enough that words will magically appear. I was more than a little disappointed when nothing happened.

“Alright class! Time to turn your stories in!” everyone starts passing the papers up to the front, just like the mindless drones that school forces us all to become. I look around at everyone else’s papers. All of them have at least a page and a half done. Shit, I am so screwed over. What the hell did they write about? How cute the dog was? I quickly scribble a note to Lynn

What did you write about?

She looks at me quickly and writes something. Then she passes it back when the byrd-monster isn’t looking.

How cute the dog was. You?

Umm… a moldy log.

A moldy log? Lizzie darling what is wrong with your brain?

At least I didn’t write about how cute the fucking lazy dog was!

Did someone forget to take their happy pills this morning?

I glare at her, then crumple the note. When she smiles and sticks her tongue out at me I quickly flick her off. HAH! No ones sticks their tongue out at Elizabeth Ann Doyle and gets away with it! I look at the clock again, five more minutes then study hall. Where no one bothers me and I can think evil murderous thoughts in quiet. In a nice dark corner… wow that sounds really nice right now, I mused to my self. ‘Focus must focus’ I need to think of something to help survive the next five minutes. ‘this is the song that never ends it just goes on and on my friend…’ No, that song is NOT going to help, it just makes me even more pissed. Fucking PMS.

BRING!!

Saved by the bell from potential mass murder. Wow that would make an exciting headline, ‘Disgruntled Teenager kills class because of a writing prompt!’ I can see it now…

“Liz Doyle, can you come here please?” uh oh… here it comes. “You have a study hall next bell, am I correct?” I nod knowing its hopeless to lie, she’s a teacher, she knows anyway why is she even asking? “Well, I know that you can do better than this mediocre effort. I want you to re-write this in your study hall.” So I nodded to tell her sure, I would re-do it. Knowing that I just gave up my free hour to do absolutely nothing.

In my study hall bell, most people sit and talk. It’s basically gossip hour. Sometimes I participate depending on who is doing drugs or just had an abortion. But most days I just take a nap. Unfortunately for me this was not one of those days. I sat there, staring at the piece of paper. Again. But this time, the only thing on the paper is my name and the date. ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’ I repeat it over in my head a couple of times, but no thoughts came into my head. I really hate goddamn writing prompts. :BING!: light bulb just went off in my fried by hair dye brain. Why not write about how much I hate writing prompts? And the pain that ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ put me through? The evil bitch monster can’t yell at me for no creativity then! I bet no ones ever done that before. So I start writing.

By the end of the bell, I felt pretty proud about my 2 pages of hard work. I was pretty sure I would get at least a C. maybe an A if she wasn’t still pissed about the time I cussed her out. When the bell rang, I quickly walked over to her room and handed her the paper.

“Acceptable.” At my surprised look she says “You had a whole class period, I expected four pages. I told you that remember?” ‘NO! NO you didn’t!’ I wanted to scream at her.

“Yeah sorry, I forgot.” I told her instead, never call a teacher a liar. Just accept the shitty grade.

“You forgot. Right. You probably spent most of the class catching up on who’s dating who.” I really hate teachers. Really I do. “I really expected more out of you, Liz. You showed such promise in the beginning of the year.” Before she could get anymore Oprah I turned and walked out of the room to head for my next class. Where at least that teacher sort of liked me.