Kapitel 4: Chapter 4

I walked down senior's hall and tried not to listen to the whispers.

"Who does she think she is?"

"She as much as said that she was smarter than everyone else."

Every morning I told myself that I didn't care. Every morning I knew it was a lie.

It turned out that bodyguards weren't necessary. They would have been useless in any case. No bodyguard could stop lips from flapping. John Wayne leaned against the wall with his arm around his latest conquest.

"She's against the Constitution," he said into her blond curls. I was pretty sure that she had no idea what the Constitution really said. John Wayne only cared about the part that meant he could carry a gun. Blondie looked like she was ready to the check out the weapon that he was allowed to bring to school.

Civics was the first class of the day. Mr. Sheldon had retreated behind his desk and thrown me to the wolves. John Wayne and his buddies tried to convince me that guns were the solution to all the problems of society. If everyone had guns no one would be poor, or scared, or hungry. He made a passionate argument; it was mostly wrong of course, but passionate.

"If everyone carried a gun, no one would dare to commit a crime. All the illegals would have to go home and we'd all have jobs. The world would be perfect."

The Chastity and the rest of the football team's ex-girlfriends were vegetarians. They wept over the fate of animals everywhere. They argued that guns were the root of all the evil in society, especially the eating of meat. All violence was caused by guns. Murder, robbery, fast food, all were the result of the proliferation of guns. They were wrong too, but they too were passionate.

"Guns make people kill things. If we didn't have any guns, no one would die. The world would be perfect."

I felt like a football. Nobody ever has any sympathy for the football.

The game was to win me over to their side. They argued long, loudly and badly. There was no curriculum being taught. We were supposed to be learning about democracy and government; instead the class was an exercise in mob rule. If anything, it was proof that people were too stupid to rule themselves. Maybe Plato was right.

I escaped another civics class without opening my mouth, but I was beginning to wonder if staying silent was going to work. The less I said, the harder the rest of the class tried to force me to say something. I was going to have to come up with another strategy.

My second class was Phys Ed. If civics was mental torture, then gym class was physical torture. Everyone seems to think that only boys are physically aggressive. It is true that girls prefer to disembowel you with their words, but give them half a chance and they'd be glad to give you an elbow in the ear. Let me tell you that an elbow from a cheerleader is no laughing matter.

It was basketball season; that gave lots of opportunity for those elbows, and knees and heads to make contact. It didn't help that I am not athletic. Actually I'm not being fair. I am so far from being athletic that I would have to be dead to be less athletic.

The only advantage to gym class is that there isn't much talking. Conversation was limited to "I'm open!" or the occasional curse if Miss Philps wasn't close enough to hear.

After running all over the gym for the remainder of the morning, Miss Philps sent us to the showers.

The showers reeked of girl sweat, which isn't much different than boy sweat, I'd guess. Some intelligent soul decided that a girl's shower room in a high school needed a full length mirror. The girls dropped their clothes on the floor and walked naked past that damned mirror. The hot water rinsed sweat from them. Shampoo turned lank hair back into blond curls. There was the inevitable discussion of whose were bigger.

I waited for the steam to gather on the mirror before I undressed. I wasn't going to admire my body in the glass. I walked past it with my face averted. I knew what I would see there, even through the misted glass, that doughy little body without an ounce of sex appeal. There was a good reason my mother bought me clothes that would look good on a twelve year old.

Sometimes one of the girls would give 'helpful' suggestions about what I could do to improve my figure. Sometimes they would speculate on what kind of boy would be interested in my figure. I washed and dried as quickly as possible. I had to get back into the flimsy armor of my clothing before I could escape for lunch.

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