Half of Monday and a Quarter of Tuesday
Author’s Note: This piece was inspired by “The Things I’ve Lost” by Brian Arundel and follows opposite “The Things I’ve Found” structure.
Half of Monday
8:00 am A Block
A laptop charger, a gum wrapper, a few half-peeled cough drops stuck to the gum wrapper, a pencil – the Papermate Sharpwriter™, my mother’s personal favorite – at the bottom of the third pocket in my backpack, the creased reading from last night that I barely remember because fatigue had intoxicated my entire body at precisely 10:33 pm, a sudden jerk upwards because some substance I chugged at 7:55 am started to block my adenosine receptors, and then an urge to participate in the conversation two of sixteen students seem to be deeply engrossed in because grades, well, because college.
9:00 am B Block
The same Sharpwriter™ that I kept in my hand because I knew I needed it for creative writing next, my vegan-leather (plastic) notebook that looks writer-esque, and a love for the art of writing that probably stems from the sense of validation my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Nazli, instilled in me after using a poem I wrote about my security blanket as an example and a desire to prove to Allen, in that same fourth-grade class, that I was better than him after he called me a “teacher’s pet” because Ms. Nazli complimented my work and not his.
11:20 am C Block
Hate for all of humanity. And a confirmation that I will never, ever be a woman in STEM.
12:55 pm D Block
My bed and a yearning to go to the library and study for the three tests I have coming up in the week and perhaps write my college essays, essay essays, and creative writing assignment and finish my homework for the next class but mostly my bed.
2:10 pm E Block
x
And sometimes y. And sometimes y’ (which I just learned how to do and can seldom do successfully!)
A Quarter of Tuesday
8:00 am F Block
Hankering for caffeine because it’s Tuesday and I do not wake up earlier to make coffee on Tuesdays. A need to rest my eyes as I learn about the different flavors of the same religion fighting themselves over and over again over centuries. A daydream of what it would be like to be me, a non-Christian and semi-buddhist-agnostic person, in the context of that time in that place. A realization that I would most likely be dead. A sense of gratitude because I was not alive at that time and in that place.
9:00 am G Block
A contemplation of “why am I here?” and remembering that I fell in love with Greco/Roman mythology when I found Percy Jackson in 2016 and finished the entire The Lightning Thief within two hours while on the toilet (my mother will tell you that I love greek mythology because she read me D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Mythology as bedtime stories but Percy Jackson was my first crush. Fictional crush > Mother. Math.) A contemplation of “why am I taking a dead language?” and remembering that I actually enjoy being a part of the weird cult that I have been indoctrinated into since freshman year and I think I enjoy learning, at least most of the time.
