The Power

Being the class monitor meant being in a position of power; lower than the teachers but certainly higher than the students. Bossing around the classmates always provided a great deal of satisfaction. But it had its downsides as well.

Doing every other menial labour at the order of the teachers, less chances of making a racket in the class, having a peaceful break during the recess period all were pretty troublesome.

I remember one particular incident of one of my fellow class monitors when he had to smell the entire class to find out the culprit who had unceremoniously took a dump.

I remember the time when I, the class monitor at that time, was punished because I was too lenient in my duties. But despite all these downside, once you start to enjoy this job, you find out that this is perhaps the best duty for a school student.

By Jawad

Cooties

“Eww! You touched him! He has cooties.” Closely followed by a quick scurry to the bathroom to wash the offending hand that had dared to get so close to the cootie-infested boy. Yuck. The opposite sex was uncharted territory: if you went there you might catch a life-threatening disease. Boys had boogies and dirty hands and ate weird things. To guys, girls were prissy and icky and played with *shudders* barbies. And, of course, they had cooties. The horrible, invisible, tiny cooties that could turn you into a girl/boy and then... *collective shuddering and screaming*. Ah, those were the days; before we grew up and looked in the dictionary and realised that cooties were lice...

By Sifana Sohail

Katti-Bhab

Bhab-friends. A twist of the thumbs and the bond would be sealed. Only to be broken at tiffin-time when Zerin realised that Mehnaz was, in fact, bhab with Sara. She was the one that broke Zerin's favourite Barbie scale last week - the one that her auntie brought from Singapore. Zerin was katti with Sara since then. She had been un-invited from her birthday party next week. Lamisa, as Zerin's best friend, was also obliged to take katti. But they were still friends at art school, where Zerin wasn't there.

*one week later*

It was actually that fat boy from Class Three that had broken Zerin's scale. Zerin said sorry to Sara. Sara was re-invited to Zerin's birthday. Zerin and Lamisa were bhab with Sara again. At least, it wasn't as if they had taken jiboner katti…

By TheAlien4mEarth

Shifting Classrooms

One of the most endearing things about going to a school which hasn't shifted to a shiny new permanent address yet, is the classrooms. The state of utter ruin (in some cases) and unique topography of each classroom lent a definite sense of excitement whenever we were promoted to a higher class.

Way back in class seven, I was placed in a classroom that was right beside the makeshift chemistry lab and had a huge pillar right smack in the middle of the room. The pungent smell of ammonia and other chemicals hung in the air at all times - we actually missed it after we got promoted to a bigger and better room in class eight.

Then there was the humongous classroom in class nine, where two sections had combined classes. Imagine a teacher trying to control the class wielding a microphone. Safe to say we missed those days when new shifted to the new building with its disinfectant smell and generic classrooms.

By Shaer Reaz

Punishments

Disturb the class, and you had to go sit in The Chair. The Chair was a throne, and in it, you were the King. It sat apart from the rest of the class, it was a different color from the rest of the chairs, and it was a lonely place. But it guaranteed a temporary kingdom. Having to stand on your desk holding your ears was more humiliating. The worse your crime, the higher you had to stand, starting from on the ground, to the chair, and finally, the desk. But the cruelest form of punishment one could suffer for their misdemeanors in school was being held back from recess. Oh, the pain of having to stay in the classroom as your friends played football and raced around in the playground is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't suffered it.

By Professor Spork

Writing stuff on the desk

Back in those summer days, boredom from arid lectures and the searing heat waves would merge together and thus would throw us in a state of torpor. Unless we bunked classes, every one had their own ways to kill time. Some would open and re-re-reassemble their pens, but most showed their aesthetic sides by scribbling chaotic sketches and writings that made no sense. Writings ranged from naming the bully in the senior class, to scribing chemical equations on the desk in order to beat the nerd at a test. Some had special carpenter epiphanies; they would gently flake off the thin wooden chips with a steel ruler until their favourite anime face bloomed on the mutilated desk. But the next day it would be defaced slightly as someone else would give the anime a moustache!

By Fahim Rezwan

Tiffin Break

We miss junior school; most of us do. We miss the friendships, we miss the enmities, we miss being the teachers pet…or not, depending on the individual. Yes, midgethood (as this writer likes to call it), was an interesting and important phase in our lives where we learnt everything that is worth knowing and maintained sanity due to the lack of absurdities like quantum physics.

We especially miss the 'mingling' during recess; we learnt so much about the character of humans in those 30 minutes; there were those stuck up pigs who never shared their grub, and those who finished theirs in a secluded corner so that no one could claim it. There were yet others, who wolfed down their own tiffin in 10 seconds and spent the remaining 29 minutes 50 seconds preying on others' lunch boxes.

There were the fights over who got to play basketball, who got the swings, and who was to be 'it'. There was the multitude of broken windows resulting from the frenzied cricket matches. And of course, there was that group of besties who preferred staying by themselves, always sharing their lunch and laughing their heads off at God-knows-what.

When you look back, you realise that school was pretty awesome (unless you were the loser). Now, it's just a major PIP (Pain In the Posterior).

By Lady Orochimaru

Those Teachers

We have no doubt that the teachers want the best for us. They are the torchbearers to guide us through the tunnel of darkness to reach the light at the end of it. But there are some great ones who perform the job of guiding us in such a fashion that the light at the end of the tunnel looks like the light of the afterlife. We had teachers that taught us the art of picking the nose, shouting scarily weird threats, ripping through answer sheets because of some incredulously minor mistakes, strange pronunciations and the distribution of unwanted (too much) information. But at the end of the day, they are the ones making the deepest impressions on our tender minds. Whether it's in a good way or not is the question.

By Jawad