Awkward

Just a couple of short (aw, who am I kidding. Since when have any of these been short ey?) and sweet stories. Decided I would try and throw down a new entry on all my days off. Let's hope I can keep up with that.

So I was remembering a time in high school when I was in Japanese class. I was taking a test, whether it was particularly hard or easy is not what this story is about. That little detail is just to give you the setting. Just a really tense, on edge test where everyone is quiet and in deep heavy concentration.

The only noise that was to be heard in the classroom was the slight tapping by fidgety feet, the occasional page flip of the test, the scrawling of notes from a separate 'class' (I'll explain that in a moment), and the pattering of fingers against the keyboard made by the teacher. The teacher is kinda strict, so things had to be kept silent. While she is quite cool most of the time, when it came to academics, she was very straight edged. Not saying there's anything wrong, but again, all of this is for set up.

I know they always say to show not tell, but oh well.

So as for that other 'class', that is an independent study group. It was made up of two people who excelled at Japanese. My friends Eric and Chris. Both were extremely intelligent and skipped a few years of Japanese class they would have had to otherwise take, but since they were the only two to do so, they were put into a 'class' of their own. They spent most of their days reading from a text book, talking to each other in Japanese, or otherwise just dickin' around. And this is where we find the current story.

Take it back to when we are all taking that test and everything is silent. Everyone in deep concentration on the work they had in front of them. Until a sweet, female voice broke the silence.

"Masturbation"

Time stopped. Everything grew really thick. The pencils stopped scratching along the papers. The typing stopped on the keyboard. Everyone looked at one another; seeking confirmation in each other's eyes wondering if they had heard the same thing.

Everyone then looked in two directions though in what order they looked may have been different. They either looked up towards the front of the class to see how our Sensei was going to react or ended up looking towards the back of the class where the source of the sound came from.

Sensei slowly, ominously swiveled around with an expression that had a mixture of shock and anger. It was a look that combined two expressions we had seen countless times. Looking back, we all saw Eric sitting up completely straight, hand over his electronic dictionary, looking blankly ahead, The look on his face was an instant give away, we all knew that he did it. Also, the fact that Chris was just staring at him with a look of awe on his face kinda hinted it wasn't him.

Everyone tried so hard not to laugh. She wasn't concentrated on us, but when I looked at everyone else, I could tell they wanted to let out one huge gasp of laughter. Sensei stared him down, static electricity filling the air. He tried hard not to look back, but he didn't need to. We all knew.

"Eric. Out in the hallway. Now"

Eric's eyes went dead, and he acquired that one hundred yard stare death row inmates get when they realize they're about to meet their doom. As he stepped out into the hallway with his executioner, he took one deep breath and exited, never to be seen again....

Then we collectively as a class had a good laugh.