12:13 A.M.
Tonight Kitty and I got into another conversation about high school.
We were talking about our experiences in ABC.
ABC was in school suspension.
ABC was LOADS of fun!
ABC was a form of "punishment" in high school. You were sent to a room full of other bad kids to work on busy work for 7 straight hours. There was one room monitor, and usually 15 desks that were set 15 feet apart. The room monitor wasn�t really a teacher; he was more like a babysitter.
The room was small and stuffy and smelled like a mix of cat piss, mold, and moth balls. The air was stale and felt too cold to be comfortable in shorts, but way too hot to wear a sweater. There was bad flourescent lighting and brightly colored walls to stimulate harsh migraines.
You were usually sent to ABC when administrators felt that suspending you wouldn't scare you.
When you were sent to ABC you were told to show up with NOTHING.
There will be no eating before or after your 15 minute lunch break. You won�t eat lunch with your normal lunch crew and you will have a brown bag lunch consisting of a 2-week-old PB&J sandwich, sour, room temp. apple juice and nasty-ass, stale, animal crackers.
Forget potty breaks as a plural. You have ONE potty break so choose wisely.
You are to sit there. Don't talk. Ponder the error of your ways. You will not move from your seat, and there will be NO SLEEPING! You are to work on the busy work that your teachers have sent over for you to finish without question!
To keep you from sleeping they would sound an air horn every fifteen minutes.
The air horn also had the hidden advantage of keeping your bladder in check if you weren't paying attention when it went off.
It was never realistically possible to finish the busy work sent over for you to complete, so why waste your time. The one time I did try to finish my assignments I didn't even come close.
I spent a little too much time in ABC. I wrote letters, short stories, and poems, but refused to complete the class assignments sent over from my normally scheduled classes.
I never really agreed that anything I did wrong was worthy of in-school suspension. I saw no point in doing "busy work". I would have much rather gone home to sleep.
After you spend enough time in that room you learn to ignore the stimuli that used to keep you awake and the bullhorn isn't such a threat.
It's amazing when you can sleep through the sound of a bullhorn. It becomes your inspiration. The anger the bullhorn used to fuel becomes your motivation to rebel and sleep peacefully through the entire day.
I think that if you can sleep through the sound of a bullhorn, you can do anything....
