Don’t Understand the Future
My parents pulled me out of school to do e-school as they weren’t pleased with how things were run at school.
Our class schedule changes every single day. We used to have a set six-day cycle, but now we’re stuck with this awful app that randomly generates our schedule. You have to check your phone constantly just to know where you’re supposed to be. It also provides information on new assignments such as due dates and test or exam details.
Or, at least it’s supposed to. The thing barely works. It lags, crashes, and sometimes even bricks your phone. Sure, you can factory reset to fix it, but there’s a solid chance reinstalling the app kills your phone permanently. Some kids have already had to buy new phones because of it.
It did no favors whatsoever. Students routinely missed deadlines, walked into the wrong classrooms, and turned in garbage assignments because they had no freaking idea what to do. Field trips and guest speakers got canceled because no one knew the plan.
The school staff could not care less if they tried. They trot out the excuse that legally, they’re on the hook if anything on the syllabus changes. Come on? Colleges put the words subject to change right on their syllabi, why can’t high schools do the same?
Thankfully, I am out of that school. But my parents have to bring me to work with them.
If a regular school day is 7 hours long, e-school compresses it into between 1.5 and 2 hours. Deadlines are far more lenient, which is good. The only drawback is that there are no extracurriculars, but I’ve still got something that I can put on my resume.
And that's the Enya video.
Just before I started e-school, our AV teacher said that someone representing a female singer hired the AV club to do a video for the song “Marble Halls”. I'm still responsible for the project even though I'm not going to that school anymore.
I made it using Autodesk Maya on one of the desktops at Mom’s workplace. I have no idea why they had Maya on there. What was the business purpose for a law firm to have Maya on its computers?
The video was a sight to behold. I took the term “marble halls” to mean a hallway filled with small marbles. These marbles feature a variety of designs, including an orange one that resembles a peach, a solid white marble, a purple one with wavy stripes, a red one with translucent polka dots, a green one with spirals, and a glittery blue one. These marbles cascade down the hall, down stairs, and bounce into the wall. The second half of the video features an artist mannequin running away from a giant marble swirly rainbow colors before ultimately slipping on the scattered smaller marbles.
Pretty cool, right? It almost never happened. I literally finished the video just before the graphics card on the computer gave out. Desktop 21 gave its life so I could make a silly music video for one of the greatest musicians of all time.
I thought because I got the video made and out the door, that was the end of it. The desktop box could be replaced; corporate boxes burn out all the time because people use them far more intensely than the units in their homes. Then came this engagement dinner that’s been co-opted into a networking event.
Mom couldn’t go because she’s tied up with work. She asked me to wait for either her or Jacqui, one of her coworkers.
Waiting is hard. People left messes behind in the already loud and busy venue. Someone with a name tag that read Sheila plunked down and took up as much space as possible.
Mom called me. “Have you gotten yourself something to eat?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I responded, “they're taking their time with the food.” By this point, everyone had an hour to get seriously drunk, and on empty stomachs to boot. My blood sugar got too low. I already can't cope with being hungry and being surrounded by drunk adults is hard for any teenager.
I could hear Mom grumbling on the other end of the phone. I wasn't sure if it's because she has to put together the annual reports in IPA phonetic alphabet or if she's not pleased with the food arriving late. All I could tell her was, “It's a freaking zoo”
After what was more likely than not an unjustifiably long wait, Sheila got up and left. “Um, can you maybe, please, clean this up?” I gestured toward the island of overturned wine glasses.
“Who died and made you lunch monitor?” she snipped.
“Nobody,” I said. “But I’ve been waiting very patiently and am not pleased by this mess.”
“Who’s that?” Mom asked. I forgot I was still on the phone.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Someone named Sheila.”
“Fuck,” Mom grunted, “I didn’t know she’d be here.” I think this was the person Mom described her as the human embodiment of a passive-aggressive group email. She’s had so many nicknames for her coworkers that I lose track.
“Neither did I,” I added aloud.
Sheila pointed to my phone and then her cleavage. “Put your phone away, it’s rude.”
“You want rude?” My mouth said before my brain could veto it. “Look at this.” I pointed at the messy table.
“You left a mess. You should clean it up.”
Here comes a fake smile. “I know what happened with that computer,” she hissed quietly, “If I see you talking on your phone again, I’m ratting you out.”
My stomach dropped like a secret agent whose parachute didn’t open. I couldn’t say anything because panicking looks like guilt and guilt looks like confession.
“I should have known,” she shook her head, “You took something that wasn’t yours and didn’t care about who gets hurt when you run away from the scene of the crime. Of course you’re going to subjugate someone based on the colour of their skin,” she spoke loudly and authoritatively in the room of hovering colleagues and clinking utensils, despite saying literally nothing at all. “You as a white person exist to dominate.”
Whenever a white person accuses another white person of being racist, there’s a 90% chance the argument holds about as much water as your average spaghetti strainer. Based on the floor inverted wine glasses, I think alcohol may be a factor here. “I’m guessing that what you said only makes sense when you are drunk,” I said too quickly. “How did you not die from alcohol poisoning?”
For a second she looked offended, then affronted, then dangerous. “I’m warning you,” she says, and the words ceased to be a joke.
“This isn’t your business!” I snapped back, “You’re only doing this because of a stupid feud with my mom.”
“The feud is not stupid!” Sheila fired back. Her voice wobbled with the kind of righteous heat that scares me more than her words do. “I have a legitimate grievance with your mother and…”
“And what grievance?” I cut in.
Everybody else stared at us. Some of them even had their phones out. “You’re just upset because Mom knows what you did and there will be consequences.”
Sheila’s jaw tightens. She panicked and shoved me. I shoved back. She fell and hit the ice sculpture. That caused a fight to break out. And an alarming number of people caught it on video.
