I'm On Your Side

5 | How talking about your social life is like:

EVER SINCE VIRTUAL school started, I've barely been putting alarms on my Echo Dot, which explains why I wake up at seven-ten AM―five minutes before school starts―instead of six forty-five. It's not like it's even that big of a deal because I can always just go downstairs without brushing my teeth and no one would care. I mean, no one in the Zoom call can smell my breath (unless there's a feature for that that I'm unaware of), and my parents, Ayush, and I barely talk.

And plus―there's a five-minute break between classes that I can use to brush my teeth, so there's nothing that I can lose if I don't brush my teeth.

But if I had in-person school, then that's a whole other matter.

I mean, knowing who I am as a person―being insecure about myself and being vulnerable to other people's opinions about me―I would definitely not survive a day without brushing my teeth when doing school in person.

Okay, I'm exaggerating.

I would survive but in a striving way. Like, I would barely talk in class, which isn't surprising, and I would constantly be thinking about my breath the whole time while I'm in school instead of focusing on my school work (like I even should. I mean, there are way better things to do than focus on your schoolwork).

Like, no wonder I like virtual school so much. I can get a lot of things done without worrying about the way I look and avoiding getting anxious about asking the teacher a question (well, I mean, I still have anxiety, but since I'm on a video call, I can just privately message the teacher and not get anxious about unmuting my microphone and asking her/him).

I get out of bed, without bothering to make my bed―I can do it later (if you couldn't already tell, I'm a procrastinator)―, and head on downstairs to the office room.

As I wait for my laptop to start, I settle in my chair and review my schedule for today in my head: I really don't have anything to do for my first period, which is Elements of Human Behavior. I mean, the only thing we'll be doing is just watching a movie and then after, the teacher will be giving us a quiz on the movie, which I find less stressful because usually, we have to answer questions while watching the movie and that just takes away the point of actually watching the movie. But it can also be stressful since now you have to take notes on every little thing that happens in the movie because you don't know what will be quizzed on the movie, so, I guess it's both. I really don't―

My laptop chimes, indicating that it's ready to use, and I scramble for the Google Meet link in the Google Classroom tab since it's been past a minute since class started and I can't afford losing both my attendance record (hey, I need to graduate!) and class time because I'm most definitely not willing to spend time after school doing work in that class.

"Hi, guys," Mr. Zilch says as he starts sharing his screen in the Google Meet. "Today, we're just going to be finishing 'What Lies Beneath.'" He proceeds to pull up the tab where "What Lies Beneath" is playing and scrolls back a couple of scenes. He pauses for a minute, probably wondering if he should ask what timestamp we stopped at last class, but then he clicks play on the movie. "Did we watch this?" he asks over the movie sound. I touch my mouse and hover over the unmute button when a kid says, "No."

"Okay," Mr. Zilch says and he hovers over the pause button, about to play it, "don't forget to take notes, guys." We nod our heads simultaneously. So much for actually watching the movie, huh? I create a new Google Document in my Google Drive and start writing down some observations.

But it's hard.

I mean, every five seconds there's something in the movie that makes you get goosebumps. Like, I swear you can't watch this movie without getting scared (okay, well, maybe with the sound off or when you're watching it on your 2nd or 3rd time, but other than that, you're definitely getting scared).