*I actually wrote this entry 10 hours ago. Fucking diaryland refused to let me post the entry until now*
I wonder if anyone noticed that I haven’t been to diarlyand in over a week. Ha. Didn’t think so either.
Well, I had just cause for my absence. That’s right – my mother signed my excuse form and everything.
I have spent 3 hours per day for the last two days – Thursday and Friday – doing the first 2 papers of my ACCA exams. I have just one exam (in Level 1) to go now – that one is scheduled for Monday.
But I am not here to talk about the exam – fuck no. I think I did pretty damn well in the first two, so I am not here to wade in the self pity of my extrapolated failure. Instead, it was the day before the exam that was quite interesting.
Quite a few entries ago, I penned something about befriending mostly those of the opposite sex since my departure from secondary school almost a year ago. Two of the guys I hang out with quite a bit are Raj and K – a duo. Raj is about 5’ 8/9”, 140/145 pounds, extremely well spoken, obviously intelligent, and a humongous dork. So of course, we bonded immediately. K is about 6’5”, 215 pounds of football-playing, track-and-field-running muscle. With an afro. When I first saw K, I was hugely intimidated. But when I got to know him, I realised that he was also extremely intelligent, mild mannered, and very down to earth – both of them are actually.
The day before my first exam, Raj sent me a text, begging me to study with him, K, and a couple others from class – the last cramming session before the commencement of exams. It took some convincing, but eventually I did agree.
Wednesday afternoon met me at Room 5 in school, studying with Raj, K and two other girls.
The last crash cram course of exams turned out to be, as I expected it would, a lot of talking nonsense, horseplay, and games, with intermittent periods of work related conversation.
We told each other jokes.
We drew caricatures of each other on the white-board.
We talked general nonsense.
We played football with a sheet of crumpled up paper.
We chased each other around the room trying to hit and kick at the nearest person.
The last was really the interesting part. I kicked Raj on the shins, and he thought that I was hitting too hard, so he did the classic move – kicked me at the back of my knees so that I half crumpled to the floor. I tried to retaliate, key word there being “tried”. My foot lashed out, aiming for the back of his knees as well, but he ended up catching my sneakered foot, and had me hopping around on one leg for a good few minutes.
He eventually let me go, but this gave him an idea.
Raj: “Hey, >K’s name<. You hold her legs, and I’ll hold her arms. Let’s carry her outside and throw her in the dustbin.”
I did not believe they would do it. And that was the last time I underestimated the wildness of Raj and K.
They picked me up and had me swinging like a dead body they’re about to throw into a ravine. They began to make for the door, and I was there, screaming and tossing my body around (not too much, lest they lose their grip and drop me). When I realised that they were going to carry me outside, I took extreme measures.
Raj was holding my arms, so I grabbed on to his wrists, to give myself sufficient leverage to pull myself as close to his legs as I could, and started biting at his shins.
Raj: “Aye! She’s biting me! Put her down!”
And so they did. Victory is sweet.
But it did not end there, folks.
About half an hour later, I invited the guys to try to do a… geez… I am not exactly sure what you call it, or if there is a name for such a thing. I have to draw upon my explanatory abilities at half past one in the morning to describe this. It is sort of the prelude to a hand stand – you put your palms flat on the ground, bend your elbows a bit, and then put your knees on your elbows to lift the lower part of your body off the ground, with all of your weight on your elbows (which are resting on your knees). You understand, right?
Of course, K could do it. Apparently that was something they practised in track and field all the time. Raj was just about as good as I was – managing to maintain the position for 3 or 4 seconds at a time.
By this time, we had chased one of the girls out of the room with our antics. She actually came to class to study. What the hell was she thinking?
K eventually stopped doing the pose – he could hold that damned position for a god damned long time – but Raj and I continued. Raj even tried to take it step further by going into a full hand stand from that position. But at the time, I did not know this – I was busy just trying to go past my 4 second record. (Do you see what I’m setting you guys up for, here?)
Suddenly, I hear K shouting out my name and telling me to watch out. I did not move though, I maintained my position, wondering what the hell had gotten into K, and whether or not I should look up or something, when I felt this weight land on the back of my head, effectively driving my face forcefully into the carpet.
Apparently, Raj, in a failed attempt to achieve a hand stand, had lost his balance and had fallen. He had broken his fall with my head.
Raj got off of me, and I collapsed fully on the ground. I heard him asking me if I was alright, but I just lay there silently, with my eyes closed trying to collect my thoughts. It took some time to gather them – they were all scattered around my skull, some finding their way into my nostrils and others into my oesophagus. My forehead hurt like a motherfucker, but otherwise I felt okay.
I remember thinking:
“It’s just my head. I don’t think I hurt it enough to burst it open. At least I didn’t cut anything.”
When I did not answer him the first time, Raj asked me again if I was okay.
It was then that I got that salty tang on my tongue.
Me: “I taste blood.”
I had split my lip.
I got up, surprised that I was seeing single. Raj told me to open my mouth, and I did.
“It’s not so bad,” he said. But he looked as though he felt really bad.
Me: “Let me just go to the bathroom and wash out my mouth. Make sure that I’m not going to die.”
Apparently, Raj’s definition of “not so bad” was blood all over my teeth – they looked orange/red – and not because of bad oral hygiene. I washed out my mouth and saw the water turn red the first couple of rinses. A couple more rinses, and the water that I spat out of my mouth was almost as pellucid as the water that came out of the tap.
It was not so bad though after I washed off the blood. (Ha! That sounds bad enough.) Raj felt terrible, but I told him it was okay. I am not completely unaccustomed to getting cuts and bruises – playing netball for 5 years does that for you.
Me: “It’s okay! It’s okay! Once it doesn’t swell up, it’s okay.”
And I might have said something about sending a team of transvestites to beat him up if it did.
The good thing about this episode is that I might have gotten a bloody lip, but I did also get some respect. After showing Raj and K my freshly tap-water washed split lip, laughing and smiling the entire time, K said:
“You’d never think that she’s tough because she’s so small, but she is, eh?”
I laughed.
“That’s right! Don’t let my 106 pound frame fool ya! This is all muscle, baby! And maybe a bit of tits and arse, too.” (NO! I’m just kidding. I did not quite say that. I was thinking it, though.)
What I *really* said was:
“That’s right. That was my initiation. I’m one of the boys now. You guys can be rough with me now… just not so rough that you make me bleed again, though.”
Later on though, I realised that there was a reason that my forehead was the first thing I thought about when Raj fell on my head. While talking to me in the hall outside the classroom, Jared leaned closer and asked me what had happened to my forehead. Of course, I rushed to the mirror to see what he was talking about – a perfect imprint of a square inch of carpet on my forehead.
I returned to the classroom and raised hell with Raj again.
Me: “Look at what you did to my head! Look at it! I swear, one of these days I’m going to kick your arse!”
Raj: “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
And we both started laughing.
So the very next day, I walked into the exam room with a split lip, and a scar that looks like a replica of Aladin’s get-around vehicle on my forehead.
And I did pretty damned good in those exams too. People should fall on my head more often. It was absolutely fun and very worth it though. Now, I’m just one of the boys!