Juxtapose

I'm not dead!

History test Status: Handed In.

Rawk.

Hopefully I didn't flunk the final, because then I would get a bad grade for the class. Hopefully I didn't flunk anything else, either, because ain't know way no how theys-um gonna git me back in another history class. I mean, they probably could, but they'd have to drug me and drag me and all that stuff. And I don't think they want me back that badly. I really don't.

Next up - A+P II and Sociology. The Fun Finals.

So, last night I was freaking out. I rarely actually have mental breakdowns over finals. I study and whine and drink a lot more coffee than I usually do and all that, but, like I said, it's rare that I completely go insane. History has never been a strong subject for me. My big problem is that I have a terrible time putting stuff on a timeline. I'm cool with explaining the Vietnam War and the significance of the Truman Doctrine as applied to foreign policy today and all that, but if you ask me to re-cap the events in 1958, I'm going to balk. And, of course, this is exactly what Menke threatens to do - ask us, on the final, about one significant year, and explain its significance and relationship to all this other stuff, and yadda yadda yadda. So I was terrified. I made up a stack of index cards in five-year spans of time from 1940 to the present, and I studied and studied and nothing was going through for whatever reason. Now, a week before the test, it's cool to be all, "Oh, well, I don't really have that down pat (even if you don't have it down at all yet), but I have a week to study, so whatever." That's great, that's good, time is bountiful and free. But when it's the day before said exam, that's when the panic sets in. So I come home from work after being zinged by Mrs A. for the second consecutive week (the accusation concerns a bottle of hand cream I supposedly "moved." I vehemently deny, but she still insists..), and I'm exhausted. I have just gotten done sweeping up and mopping up a million dried baby arugala and parsely and celery and bok choy and radish leaves that have been wettened and then dropped on the floor so they literally have meshed to become one with the floor in a marvel of accidental science. I mean, the melding of the dark greens to the linoleum was astounding - a proverbial nuclear fusion of two seemingly infusible objects. A marriage between vegetable and poly-resin composite, if I may. So anyways, I was mopping and scrubbing this little blind old lady?s floors and try to pick off the millions of leaves fused into them, and I finally get home and I?m tired. So I eat supper, all the while thinking of the dreaded stack of five-year-increment index cards that are in the right back pocket of my jeans, branding my bum with the ?This Loser Is Not Going To Get A Scholarship If She Never Studies? brand, and I just can?t bear the thought of studying again. I had a moment of insight at that point ? what if I were to take a nap, rejuvenate, and then study into the wee hours of the morning without fear that I?d be comatose in the morning? Ah! So I announce to the world that I?m going to take a nap. Everyone clears out of the upstairs in an extremely generous move, I shut the shades in my room, stick my shooting plugs into my ear canals, and flop onto my bed to take a nap. I flop left. I flop right. My back hurts.

At this point, I?ve flopped a good five times in a good five minutes, and I give up. I fish madly around on my dresser for my glasses and my brain spits out another idea ? aha! I throw on a pair of windpants, shove my feet into my Reeboks, stuff my keys and my wallet into my pockets, and stomp down the stairs with a deranged energy. I announce to my mother ? ?I CAN?T SLEEP! I?M GOING TO THE TRACK AND I?M GOING TO STUDY!!!? Only I didn?t yell. I just kind of SAID it with some force behind my words and zipped out the door. Well. I did walk around the track. I walked around it for an hour, shuffling flashcards one behind another while soccer parents made faces at me and I heard the same joke about multitasking about seventeen times from seventeen different people. For the first five minutes, my calves were really hurting me, probably because I haven?t walked briskly for five minutes for about five years. College just sucked the life right outta me for all these years, and I became one of those thin-and-trim-yet-lumpy-nonetheless people that look like they could be possibly good in some physical athletic activity but who, when put to the test, puke their guts up after running for a minute. Anyways, after five minutes of walking, I got used to it. My legs started warming up, and for the rest of the hour I walked laps and laps and laps, studying my cards, and I was feeling pretty good. So, then I thought, hey, ya know, maybe I?m warmed up enough to jog/run, which is exactly the kind of obscene thought that occurs to me at times of severe mental fatigue. But I did jog/run. I actually jogged/ran for a good forty more minutes, then took the last five to walk and cool down. Biz-zarre.

So now I have a pleasant aching in my legs that tells me that maybe being ?in shape? is mostly only a mental construct anyways (uhh.. yeah, right), my history final went off without a hitch, and I feel like going to bed, finally.