White Walls

The classroom in Hugh Hall was my favorite. I think the painting on the walls was called Bone. Not white. Never white.

The seats bent backwards with your body when you felt like leaning back, so you would never tip over, and the desks swung outwards from the little side compartment next to your seat.

There was a blackboard at the front. Not a whiteboard like all the other classrooms, where you wrote on it with those erasable markers and erased it with a wet paper towel.

There was a projector on the ceiling and a little screen that you had to pull down. Our professor would never get it on the first try. The screen always got stuck, and the kid in the front always had to help. I sat in the back. 

I had Calculus in there. 

The classroom in The Stone Building is where I had my Physics class. The painting on the walls was called Eggshell. Not white. Never white.

It was one of those classrooms with stadium seating, so sitting in the back meant I was about 10 feet above my professor.

He didn't have a desk or a podium. Instead he did his work on this little black table, with spouts for methane coming out of the side, and a double sink, and a bunch of goggles all over the front. 

Behind him was two of those whiteboards, one on either side. There were words spread out all over the boards from the class before. Words that were never erased, so you spent the whole class wondering what in the hell that last class was learning about, because out of context it seemed so foreign.

There was a poster of the periodic table above him, lest we ever forget that Vanadium's atomic number was 23.

Again, we had those little desks that flipped out from the side compartment, then flipped back in when we were done.

This classroom was always full, so you never got to sit alone. There was always a student to your right, and one to your left. One always smelt bad.

Professor Navarro taught that class.

The classroom in the basement of the Jade Memorial Library was my English classroom. Here they called it Expository Writing.  The painting on the walls was called Coconut.

Our desks were not movable and the seats were freezing cold. The blackboard in the front spanned the whole room.

It was a small classroom, so we were all squeezed together.

There was no projector. The professor had a small podium that he kept some papers on, and a desk that he sat behind and read passages of our reading from.

He told us each of our papers had to be 5 pages. No more, no less. Each paragraph, 5 sentences. There had to be an opening argument. There had to be a closing argument. There had to be supporting statements. We needed a thesis. 1500 words maximum.

He told us about a student he had last semester. She was one of the worst writers he had ever seen.  For their final paper, they were to connect one of the readings with a socially constructed ideal that they came into contact with every day. She talked about feminism in the book Lolita. Our professor didn't believe that Lolita had anything to do with feminism. Plus, she wrote 6 paragraphs, and none of them were exactly 5 sentences. So, he had to fail her.

He told us, in essence, that the content of our writing was inconsequential.

The textbook for that class was $76.84.

After all these classes I went back to my dorm at Liza Square. The painting on the walls in the hallway was Cotton. They were lined with reminders to get our vaccines for Meningitis and HPV. 

I'm all caught up on my shots.

My room was painted Pearl. I sat in my room and I read one of those passages I was assigned. It had something to do with success, and reaching success, and the pathway to success, and how to deal with success.

I lied in my bed that night, and I wondered if I was the only one. Was I the only one who noticed?

Lying in my bed, I stared at the ceiling. The painting on the ceiling was called snow. To me, it just looked white. Like the lining of the inside of a box.

I thought, was I the only one who noticed?

This school felt peculiar. I've seen movies like this. They were trying to trick me. 

I was no student. I have a disease. I'm in a mental institution. I'm going to forget about all of this tomorrow. They set this up for me every single day. I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and they're going to give me pills and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. I'm a psychotic patient. It all makes sense.

Yet, the next morning, I woke up to nothing. No orange juice. Except at the dining hall down the road. That makeshift dining hall they made for me. Where were my pills?

I took a knife and put it to my wrist. Trust me, I wasn't looking to do any harm. But I knew this would get everybody ready to break the spell. They won't let me kill myself. Yet, nothing happened.

I gave my brother a call. I asked him what he knew. I know he wouldn't lie to me.

"How long have I been in here?" I asked. He said I moved out two weeks ago. The whole family came to move me in, and then we went out to dinner. Remember?
"No, no. I mean seriously." 

He said I was being weird.

I said, aren't all mental patients weird.

He said to call him back when I was sober, he wouldn't tell mom.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm normal.

But why would they try to shape me like this?

Why would they put me in all these lab-test classrooms, like I'm some sort of experiment?

My writing class, they're asking to see how normal I am. My aptitude to be average.

Everything is done to see if I'm normal.

I have to be crazy. If I'm not, then why are they trying so hard to make me normal?

Are they crazy? And maybe I'm normal.

They want me to be like everyone else.

This can't be school. This has to be an institution. An asylum. I have to be insane.

Am I the only one who notices?

Author's Note

Reviews appreciated!!!!

Reviews

[matrixmark]

Brings back so many memories of being back at school. You wording projected the imagery of class school rooms perfectly. The periodic table OMG...completely forgot abut that one and the glasses spread everywhere in the physics lessons - oh so true.

I liked the painting on the wall which you called white.

And then came the ending - OH WOW OH WOW OH WOW. Speachless

Mark.