A Peddlers' Paradise
Back in Form Two (9th/10th grade), a teacher we thought wasn't coming in for the mid-morning double lesson caught me and two other classmates scribbling & drawing some bizarre stuff on the class board while the rest of the class acted as harsh critiques. We were all good students but often fooled around in class & got away with all sorts of crazy things so long as it wasn’t too noisy to get the monitor in hot water.
Now, nothing wrong with the occasional "playing Mr or Miss X" and imitating the way they talked, after all, most teachers are often aware of this...they did it too back in the day when they were little, right?
This day was a little different in that Waleed, my homie on my right & Ibtisam ('sam), the honey on the left and I got too excited, lost our heads in the fun & we soon had lots of different colored chalk plastered all over us. We went nuts messing up the way our literature teacher talked…the different voices she used for the characters in the novels, her tone, pauses, the many rhetoric questions, how she praised & even chastised the class. The class lost their minds as everyone literally rolled on the floor laughing their arses off (rofltao!).
The 3 Musketeers that we were relished the moment so much we wanted it to last forever, but nope... in an instant we noticed all our drawing & monkey business wasn’t getting the same reaction as before. Turning to check on our audience, we realized that the lit teacher, monitor & the senior teacher were taking in all the madness while seated in our seats, ouch!!! All hell was surely about to break lose! Don't want parents coming to see the head only to get more madd at us!!
Fast >>>Forward:
The outcome wasn't as bad as we thought, no parents called (phew!) but we each had to buy a box of chalk and became the laughing stock of the class as we were denied any chance to go clean up all the chalk dust which made us look like clown-faced fools trying to pass for miners in S.Africa or the Ukraine,lol! I was humming Bob Marley's 'Pimper's Paradise' when we got caught. Our classmates turned that into "Peddler's Paradise" for the way we looked like some powder peddlers caught in the act:).
Now that I think about it, I was busy drafting logos & signing my nick name which later became my logo/brand name (wink!), Waleed, the artist was drawing an oil tanker in the high seas...now he's working for an oil company in the Qatari desert. Ibtisam was sketching scenes reminiscent of what we read in the school books...haven't made contact with her but I hope 'Sam is also putting her Peddlers' Paradise skills to good use:))
posted by akiey at 5/24/2005
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