This is my beastly personal narrative that I wrote in an hour. I think it's decent for the time invested. Nex and Earth might recognize a character in the story. :P [hide] Hiding Behind a Smile The first day of school is usually the most memorable day of the school year, especially at a new school. Countless stories have been told about meeting a wacky teacher, throwing up, or talking to a new friend. Some of these experiences are humorous and others are horribly traumatic. The first day can sometimes be misleading. The older students have not started school and the teachers ferry the new students around, trying to give a positive first impression. To get a real feel of the school, I knew I had to wait for a while until the teachers lost their façade and began to lose their hope that we would be less stressful to handle than the waves of children that came before us. It was a cold morning in October when my mom dropped me off at Boynton Middle School, almost one month after the school year began. I was bundled in several heavy layers and a winter coat. Halloween was only a month away, and I already made my plans to hide inside my bedroom on Halloween night to read. I heard the bell, signaling that I had to rush to my first class. I scurried along inside the building, tee-tottering my way through the overwhelming masses of bull-headed eighth graders. I didn’t have much time to go to my locker, so I hauled my clothes around until lunch, when I finally had time to stow them away. The day had already started badly; could the day get any worse? Since I moved to Cayuga Heights last year (Before then, I was supposed to go to Dewitt), I didn’t really know anyone at Boynton. That day, I had to undergo the humiliating experience of having a teacher try to seat me with the other children. I didn’t have the will to tell them that I was fine without eating while crammed in such a tiny space, so I snuck off once the teacher left to deal with a food fight at the other end of the cafeteria. After lunch and a terribly boring art class, I arrived in Ms. Mangino’s sixth grade accelerated math room. She liked to open the windows and augment her dimly lighted room with natural sunlight, but the clouds had rolled in and the room was dark. The room was still half-empty and the teacher was not around, so I sat down at my desk and began to take out my notebooks. Our desks were arranged with no spaces in between them, so I tried to move my notebooks onto the edges of the adjacent desks so they gave me space when the other students came. After I finished unpacking, I went to pick up a math textbook from the shelf at the corner of the room. As I was navigating my way through the narrow gap between the rows of desks, I realized that there was someone in front of me. I vaguely knew him as Geoffrey, the blond haired boy that loomed at least half a head over me. I made a gesture to ask him to momentarily back up and let me through, because he could had space to merely stand aside, while I would have to return all the way down the row of desks. He wouldn’t budge. The day had already gotten worse. He tried to move me aside with a gust of smelly breath, which was undoubtedly more effective because my nose was around the same height as his mouth. Only a month into middle school, I had already earned the reputation as mild-mannered, so he probably expected me to move aside. On an ordinary day, I would’ve moved aside, but today was not a very ordinary day. Instead, in a movement faster than the speed of sight, I brought my hand (which had been dangling at my side) up to eye-level, and poked him near both eyes simultaneously. He began to tumble backwards, almost comically, onto the tiled floor behind him, covering his eyes. I stepped deftly around him and quickly grabbed a math textbook. No one else had noticed the incident, so I ran back to my desk and began to nonchalantly push my notebooks around in a pathetic attempt to act innocent. Word of the event began to trickle around the room and many people began to chatter excitedly. I was definitely concerned that I would get in trouble for the first time in my life, even though I thought that a careful examination of the facts would show that I was entirely justified. The teacher came into the room and asked what was going on, because she had heard the noise from the hallways. The room went silent instantly. When no one spoke up, Geoffrey leapt out of his chair and began to explain the situation in a series of long-winded tirades against me. The teacher looked at me, and I smiled innocently. I had also acquired the reputation for smiling often, so a simple smile could not reveal my thoughts accurately. The teacher looked around the room at the rest of the children, but none of them would support Geoffrey’s story. She remarked to herself that it was impossible for me to do anything like that, laughed a little, and went to the front of the room to teach the class. Geoffrey was fuming, but I was beaming until the very end of the day. For another person, the incident could have resulted in a punishment or a trip down to the principal’s office, but when I needed it most, I could count on my reputation as a friendly and mild-mannered person. I learned that being good pays off in the end. Perhaps the only reason that I could not pull this stunt off today is because my teacher already knows this story and now, so do you. [/hide]