Valamity!

No matter how hard you try, there’s no way you can completely avoid them. They’re everywhere, in your bosses and teachers and politicians and team captains and what-have-you. They’re the type of people who take a great deal of condescending joy in pointing out what you’ve done wrong and have the special talent of being able to — in an instant! — contrive fault in what you’ve done right, the type who don mental elevator shoes just so you have to crane your neck of higher to see them. The self-aggrandizing, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, stuck-up, high-handed son (or daughter) of a bitch whose arrogance levels are positively unquantifiable, as they skyrocket not only off the charts but into oblivion (or possibly the fourth or fifth dimension). That’s right — I’m talking about those power trippin’ control freaks.

So I have this teacher; I’ll call him Mr. Eff because it’s nice and generic but still manages to give a good sense of who this guy is, and I’m not one for subtlety anyway. Just for the record, I don’t hate Mr. Eff; I don’t even mind him that much, really, and if I knew him as a person rather than a teacher (an equal rather than a student), I’d probably find him far, far, far less irritating. Unfortunately, the nature of our relationship (doesn’t that sound gross?) will never progress beyond that, so for the rest of this post, I’ll turn a biased blind eye to his better qualities and hit what bugs me the most: his polygamous courtships of blame and control. To illustrate this in the most complete way possible, I would like to call your attention to the soon-to-be infamous “class notes” incident.

Now, I’m not really big on notes; I’m an “active learner,” or whatever those new-agey edjamacator people call it, meaning I learn best from doing and discussing rather than listening to lecture after droning lecture and taking pages upon pages of notes. This doesn’t mean that I don’t listen to lectures or take notes, only that I don’t place as great a priority on either than, uh, talking to myself about the course material since it’s not cool to talk about it with other people around here. But when I do take notes, I write them on looseleaf rather than in a notebook, because I find it far simpler to organize my notes in portfolio than lug around a notebook for every subject and discover that I still have 3/4 of it empty at the end of the year because of my excessively tiny handwriting. It’s practical and it’s what works for me — and frankly, I don’t see that any teacher has the right to infringe upon whatever strategy I happen to adopt, especially when that strategy serves me well enough to do fairly well on his quizzes and tests (meaning I frickin’ pwn them, because that’s the kind of girl I am).

However, Mr. Eff, also known as Sir Let-Me-Get-All-Up-In-Yo’-Biz, decided about seven weeks into school that my lack of a notebook was a severe detriment to my performance as a student. To his credit, he did not demand that I immediately hearken off to the nearest office supply store and raid their notebook aisle, but merely asked that I bring in the binder I lied about storing all my notes in — a white lie, to be sure, but futile nonetheless. I rolled my eyes and said fi-ine in my best obnoxious teenager voice, but submissively brought a binder in a few days later, complete with notes and vocabulary. Despite my predisposition against excessive adverbs, I make sure to say submissively because I’m generally not a submissive person and take as much pleasure in subverting authority as Mr. Eff does in brandishing it in my face.

Some of these are jokes, by the way.

Now we have reached the point where Rebel Leila™ has sacrificed her principles and followed up on Mr. Eff’s request for a “proper” “notebook,” which she presents to him with a flourish and a nod during a lull in class one day. But no, simply seeing the binder and the notes and the vocab all piled in there isn’t good enough; I need to prove that it’s properly organized and show it to him afterschool, to which I was all like “fuck that.”¹ Needless to say, I took the binder home, extracted the most recent two pages of notes out of it, and went on my merry way.

A few days passed and I had the good fortune to go for nearly a week without that class, but today he asked again about the notebook, and the end of the story is that if I don’t bring it in all put together and whatnot tomorrow morning, I’m not getting notebook credit in my grade. Notebook credit! What the fuck is that? He should be thrilled that I’m even taking notes rather than sleeping in his class. I mean, he sees me taking notes during his class. What am I going to do, throw them away when the bell rings?

And don’t even get me started on the brilliant yearbook adviser, who bitched at my comp class the other day because nobody was buying those $75 half-page ads that will make the yearbook price double if we don’t buy them — even if she wasn’t full of shit, I’d still be saving $25 if that happen.

Feel free to strike me down for my pettiness, but some people just piss me off.

ETA: I switched the theme to Cutline because the brown was bugging me. I will make a new layout soon. I swear.

¹ Since I have enough tact/not enough gall [not] to (over)disrespect a teacher to their face, I did another extravagant eye-roll and bitched loudly (to stifled guffaws) about how I was being penalized for my practicality. I forget what he said to that, but whatever it was, it made me groan, “Oh my god,” to which he replied that it was his god too so I’d better suck it up, and that was when I decided it would be a good moment to let loose that I’m an atheist anyway. OH!

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