Steckland Russ (II.ii) -- The Table and The Gift

    (vi) --



    As a week of classes have passed and I am yet mostly sane, I feel the need to mull over my initial impressions of classes.
    To start Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings is Philosophy, to ignite the minds of sleepyheads like me. I feel like I'll enjoy the class, despite that I've yet to arrive on time. Last class the teacher, Mr. Hayney, remarked that a young Kierkegaard was always late as well, whoever that is. He seems nice, in that he cannot go three minutes without releasing a loud boisterous laugh, which suits his round, bald balloon figure. I imagine if he was filled with any more helium he would make a fine explosion of chuckles.
    Period B begins my Tuesday and Thursday mornings: Drama with Mrs. Seddington. This is my third year taking Drama with Seddington, the only one who teaches it. As such, she has complete control over the course and material, and shows a shortage of patience with anyone who lacks her droll enthusiasm. She is a slender, tall, dark haired woman, bony but not unhealthy. Her skin has grown flabby with the progress of her middle age, yet she still dresses as he might have twenty years earlier.
    As I didn't take Drama until second year, I'm in the Grade Eleven class. Sure, there are a couple of Grade Twelve stragglers here like myself, but mostly it's a group of wide-eyed Eighty-Eight Born go-getters, eager to inquire upon my wisdom of future tests and their answers. Some of them get along with me quite fabulously: Len Baxter, a raunchy, sweaty sort of jokester who grows a better beard than I can: Bellamy Wondumas, the best student in the class, and while her acting talents are modest her stage smarts are prodigious. Perhaps her best bit of performance is acting like Len's clothes-off jokes don't disgust her in any way. Sam Peavy is another upstanding kid, and then there's Harold Cho, Sunnie Woom, Deka Navinara and Alex Coretetez. We're a core that's been together since the beginning, and I regret I cannot be there for the end.
    Period C is World History with Caruthers, which as I mentioned earlier was the only class I made on my first day. The class is okay: Caruthers is a bit of a sentimentalist which is a good quality in a History teacher, while that strange Soraunen girl hasn't caused any more scenes. In our second class together she sat next to me, but in our third class she took a seat way on the other side of the room. I must've weirded her out somehow without doing anything. Big surprise, that.
    Period D is scattered throughout the week, and I can never recall where it is until I look it up, usually when there's a homework assignment I haven't done. This year it's Film Studies with Ms. Weiss, a course I picked because at best it seemed like a possible career and at worst just moderately interesting. So far it has been neither. The work is burdened down by technicality, a great curtain of mechanical knowledge that lost my interest twenty minutes into the first lesson. We've spent a week looking at camera lenses and zoom mechanisms and now are supposed to write a test or essay on which camcorder model can offer the best effectiveness for a low budget production. It is information useful for people hungrily seeking this kind of knowledge, but not for me and my search for inspiration.
    Period E is English (quite a coincidence) with Calsuco, famous for his peculiar teaching methods and personality. I've heard, from many people who've had him before, that he tries his best to relate to students by coming down to our level, thinking along as we would think. I have not yet seen anything like this, aside from his occasional humming of Reggae and snappy PG-13 jokes. That Soraunen is also in this class, as is Tom Northcliffe and Pretty Lindsay Chambly, who has caught my eye and tied my tounge since Grade Nine.
    Period F is Gym with Mr. Kregheit, my Gym teacher three of my four years at Highview Collegiate. I only took Gym this year at all on the hope we would finally play Softball or Baseball for a few weeks. Every year it's been promised, but something more popular like Basketball or Rope Climbing Class takes over. They always put the Softball unit at the beginning of June, right before exams when most people stop showing up to class anyway. My loss, everyone else's indifference. Just once I'd like to jack a ball off the big brick wall of the West Building.
    Period G, the period before lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays and after lunch on Thursdays, is World Politics with Foxwell. As I've mentioned some experiences with her before I won't say anything more, except I predict the grade average for the first report card will be a lower number than her year of birth, and I'm certain she was alive when JFK was killed.
    Period H, finally, is Finance and Functions, my punishment for failing Grade Nine Math. One of the few certainties I have in my young life is that I will not be a Mathematician. To me, Math is bone-tighteningly boring. Useful certainly, but the lack of imagination that comes from studying Math puts vibrations under my skin. Maybe I never had the right teachers, maybe I was born to miss at long division, either way it's a course I have to pass and complete or I don't graduate. The classroom itself is also too old and hot, and the teacher Mr. Bhavla smells like curried chicken.
    So yes, that is the timetable for the Twelfth Grade of Steckland Russ. I make record of it now so that I or you, Mr. Future Steckland Bigshot, can make reference to it as my story continues. Surely many of my early impressions here will be proved wrong by time, and shall be those ones I do not expect.

    ***

    There is also a conversation with Principal Boller I suppose should be taken into account. It concerns the shenanigans of my first day, and I recall her marching up to me in a huff as I was leaving English class:

    'Steckland, like, what's going on Steckland? What's going on?'
    I don't understand.' said I simply.
    'The police were here asking for you, looking for you!'
    'The police?'
    'That's what I said!' said she, shaking her head.
    'Where are they?' I asked, feeling nervous in my innocence.
    'They're gone now but they left this note.'
   
    Ms. Boller handed me a folded piece of paper and I was relieved to see it was handwritten, without any kind of official stamps or lettering. It read:

    Hey Steck, some of the boys round the station left bad bout your rough break that day, so we all pitched in and got ya some new wheels. It's locked outside your school, you can find the keys under the back tire. It aint much, but we wanted to do something. Keep safe and don't do drugs!
                                    Sgt. Patrick Lawrence, 13 Division

    'So? What is it? What do they want? Why were they here?'
    'Er, well nothing bad, I...'
    'Nothing?' she interrupted.
    'No. Well, they just came to drop something off for me.'
    'Oh.'

    Ms. Boller gave me a quick exasperated look and stormed off down the hallway towards other frustrations. I hopped down the rotunda stairs and through the front doors of Highview and there outside, shining against a stop sign on this sunny autumn afternoon, was a bicycle with a blue bow atop. The brand was generic, the frame lopsided, the colour an eyesore yellow, but they were wheels and they were my wheels. I got home twice as fast as the bus would've taken me, and spent the two-fifty for fare on a jug of root beer.


    (vi) -- The Table and The Gift