Pass Runner

An affinity for it

So. Say you're sitting in class. It's not your favorite class. In fact, it's your least favorite class. The words "least favorite," obviously, are the words you use when you're talking to your grandma about school and she asks you which classes you like and don't like. If you were talking to anyone but grandma, you'd say this class sucks. It sucks because you're not good at it. It's not just that you don't get it, you don't even get why you don't get it. Or why it even matters that you get it or not.

Some kids don't get algebra. Some kids don't get history. It varies. But whatever class it is for you, you're sitting there wondering why factoring polynomials, or sentence diagramming the past-perfect-continuous tense, or world war negative five has anything to do with anything.

During parent-teacher conferences, your teacher diplomatically told your parents that you don't have an affinity for the subject. Your parents miss his point. They think that a "lack of affinity" for a subject just means you have to work a tad bit harder to get that A+. They don't realize that a "lack of affinity" for something means that their darling child, the product of their combined genomes, is doomed to fail.

Everyone else in class, of course, is pretty-much ripping their friggin' arms out of their sockets as they stretch their hands as high in the air as possible hoping that this time the teacher will call on them to diagram a sentence or graph a function. Normally, you'd be slouching in your chair to the point where your head was basically where your butt should be, just to minimize the chance that, despite the tropical rain forest of raised and wiggling hands around you, the teacher would call on you. But not today. Today you are getting out of school early. Maybe you have to go to the dentist. Or attend your sister's ballet thing. Whatever it is, any minute now, the pass runner is going to waltz into the classroom with your own personalized dismissal pass and you are getting the hell out of that classroom.

At that moment, and only at that moment, do you realize how important the role of a pass runner is. Most people don't think about pass runners at all. They just assume that the early dismissal pass is just going to magically show up and, for once, they can flee the chamber of madness where everyone is just so goddamn enthusiastic about polynomials. But what if the pass runner is late? What if they don't show up at all? Failure to deliver your early dismissal pass will leave you sitting in the class that you hate, vulnerable to public questioning and humiliation. How many more minutes before you're called on to factor a polynomial, or list the forty-nine causes of world war negative five? What if the pass runner doesn't come before the teacher decides that public humiliation is the best way to address your lack of affinity for his subject? It gets worse from there.

If the pass runner is late, the living hell your life has become doesn't end when you escape the school. "Why didn't you come out on time," your mom asks when you climb into the car. "You need to start being more responsible," she'll say. "We are going to be late."

What. The. Effing. Ef. does she think you were going to do? Just get up and leave class without the mandatory pink rectangle of freedom signed by the attendance office? Does she want you to sprint out of the school like you just robbed a bank, with the school resource officer tearing along behind you with his taser? If your life was a war movie, your mother's idea of responsible behavior would be the scene where you're running in slow motion from the tree line to the landing zone, getting gunned down by the enemy just before you reach safety.

Anyway, my point is that the pass runner is an important person in your life.

I was like you once - I didn't think about pass running at all. Until I dropped oceanography. Without a suitable replacement science course in the oceanography time slot, they assigned me to the attendance office. After dropping the class, my new schedule said "Period 6: Attndc Ofc. Pass Rnr."