Notes

So, prom, huh? It's crazy that we're finally here, and all the hype has led up to this, for better or for worse. And all the buildup led to this. Let's look back, shall we?

So back in 9th grade, around May-ish, I'd walk out of my 2nd period class and see like 40 people in an arc in the atrium. I'd look closely and see one of them was a crappy pun, like "I know I'm not Harry Potter, but can I be your chosen one at prom?" And that was my surprise introduction to promposals; also known as the 2nd-fastest way to make a girl cry, other than the jock in the class throwing a ball straight at her face in phys ed class...

But the worst thing is just the flowers that people buy. I always found the idea of getting someone flowers confusing. You smell them once, and then they're abandoned and left to die. It's like a form of execution you'd see in a horror movie! If I had my way, I'd use them as a threat. "See those flowers there? You're not gonna give a shit about them, just like nobody in the world gives a shit about you. And these are gonna die very quickly without anyone noticing. Kinda like you will."... actually, I changed my mind. Maybe flowers should be given to other couples that are bickering all the time, because, just like those flowers, that relationship isn't gonna last long. It's the visual representation of all relationships, you know? It looks great at first sight, but it slowly gets worse and worse until you throw it out of your house.... which, funny enough, also describes my dad's opinion on how to raise kids.

But the hell with prom, because everyone just paid $90 to vote for someone to receive a crown or tiara. What's the point? It isn't even the first time we paid $90 for something absolutely ridiculous. The grad retreat? We paid $90 to have our shoes coated in mud and some burgers. Those burgers, by the way, if they were cooked for just 30 seconds less, they'd probably still be a live animal. Seriously, it's the kind of thing you see in a horror movie after someone gets killed off-screen. But teachers, they have this skill. They are decently good at manipulating us into believing ridiculous things for years. Remember in 1st grade when you'd all learn about how great it was to be an adult? Or how a certain class was super enjoyable, but ended up as the clinical definition of insanity? How about when your teacher always pretended how something never existed until it was suddenly relevant? Like, negative numbers, trigonometric identities, the students in the teacher's classes. All of them were things teachers didn't care about until they were suddenly relevant. So when we got older, we finally realized what was going on, and that's why teachers never have a great time. They're all just very disappointed that we caught them at their own game.

I used to have a friend, (no I didn't) and we'd always play Uno at lunch because it was something easy to kill time. Every time, he'd win and I'd lose. Then one day when I started thinking more strategically and started getting better, all of a sudden, he didn't want to be there anymore. That's basically teachers in a nutshell. Whenever they start losing the war of manipulating their students, they just sit at the front of the classroom and do absolutely nothing. Like those flowers on the front desk. At least the flowers look pretty for a bit.

Actually, on second thought, there was one time that the teachers were fooling us for a while and still keep it going. Apparently, people are still invested in the Toonie Tuesday scam? I don't know how many brain cells you guys are sharing, but the fact of the matter is that we were paying $2 for slices that I could hide in my hands. $2! And yet people still bought them! They were like a herd of infectious wasps, and we all got bit! Forget COVID, the real virus was this pizza rotting our brains and having us make terrible economic decisions! And I know, I know, proceeds went to making this night possible, but maybe if the price of casting a ballot for prom king or queen was raised to $129, people would actually be making smart decisions with their money. But no, everyone just buys a new phone every year, buys new jeans only to rip them, and wastes huge amounts of money just for social media points that don't mean anything. "Oh, wow, she looks hot!" "Yeah, all that tells me is *she's ugly in real life*"

Eventually, there's only so far you can push students before they start fighting back, right? I had this one calculus teacher, Ms. MacSween, and she had this bad habit of always asking us if we were having fun. My mom never told me to lie, so I'd always say "hell no!", or something like that. And then she made the crucial mistake of writing an incorrect digit when taking up a problem, ruining the entire process. And the entire class was just laughing, and she was losing it. So a few days later, I was chatting with a few others, and I got the idea to just laugh randomly during class. The teacher's up there just having a panic attack, and that makes the entire class lose it. You can't beat us any more, huh?

But hey, at the end of the day, school was *the greatest time of my life*. There's nothing for me to complain about, because the teachers already complained about all of it! Love you all, hope to see some of you again, hope to see some of you behind bars, thank you, good night!