Obstacle Course

For students, the passing time between classes is a time to get in some quality time with friends, catching up on old times because it has been 3 periods since they've seen each other. Or it's squeezing in a quick make-out session with a boyfriend or girlfriend because Lord knows this is the only place (the crowded second floor hallway) where the two of them can get any privacy and be alone. Or, if it's the Napoleon Dynamite of the school, it's a mad dash to the cafeteria to be the first to get some tots, scarf them down, and then continue to stare at the wall while his hand unconsciously doodles drawings of Castle Grayskull (update to Pokimon).

It is different for teachers.

When that bell rings and a teacher is actually afforded another class in the same classroom, all is right with the world.

When that bell rings and said teacher needs to vacate the classroom in order to go to another classroom, or even worse, go to the cafeteria for duty (high school students still laugh at this word, duty) it's like the American Gladiator Gauntlet Challenge. And there is a time limit.

Students do not move out of the way for teachers anymore. It is unheard of to get out of a teacher's way. Crowds of students congregate in hordes as if their sole purpose in their adolescent lives is to serve as an obstacle in the gauntlet. Students have the innate ability to sense a teacher on their tail and make a point to hit the brakes abruptly to suck some face in the middle of the hallway. And, if a teacher points out to a few star crossed students that the middle of the senior staircase isn't really the appropriate place to become intimate, how dare that teacher invade their privacy and get all up in their bid-niss.

The backpack gangs are always looking to pull off teacher hit and runs. These are the good students moving faster than they ever do in phys ed, whose backpacks are twice their sizes, and who, I swear, load them with bricks. They are professional hallway Froggers, flying by teachers at breakneck paces, dodging, weaving, and ducking in the smallest gaps possible, but somehow manage to whack at least two educators with each pass. They blindside adults without missing a step. It is an amazing feat to witness.

That's it. Just some observational awareness.

Heed the Dub