Have you ever come upon a time when it's midnight, late Sunday night, your eyes propped open just enough for you to faintly see the words you are writing, noticing that your handwriting is getting sloppier and sloppier by the minute? What are you doing? You are trying to finish up a decent project for a class in school, not even looking ahead to the pole of white index cards which await your answer to what 'Odio la tarea!' means in English. You softly curse to yourself, taking a short glance to the clock, knowing you have a better chance in trying to convince your mother that you're not feeling well the next morning.
I don't know about anyone else, but I have stayed up the whole night, trying to finish a project I held back too long. Luckily for me, I got a grade I truthfully didn't deserve, but that's all in the past. The point I was trying to get at is that time keeps on going, even if you are standing still.
It was only a month ago when I began ninth grade, feeling anxious to see what this year had to bring. Closer yet, I remember assignments being assigned. Day after day, I would look behind me at the green chalk-board in English class and see the same words stating that my class has to have the first draft of out writing pieces by October seventh, still two and a half weeks away. But as days passed, in and out of the classroom I go, I still see the same words reminding me that I only have one week to go.
"Something must have happened to me recently that's worth writing about," I asked myself. I was trying to find some time to write in my notebook before my mom tells me to go to sleep. My ring finger was bright red, the color of a red M&M, due to the mounds of homework I had just gone through, and the E flat minor scale I yet had to master. I lay in the middle of my bedroom floor, my pillow under my arm, looking at me wide-ruled composition book which was opened to a blank page. The blue lines covering the page, each parallel from the one above it, telling me to start writing. It was hard to think. Not because the radio was softly humming a song I'd heard at least ten times today, or because of the bunk bed my sister was on, reading a Babysitters Club book, made an eerie sound. Time slipped past me like sand inside an hourglass. I shut the notebook close as I hear my mom open my bedroom door to tell me to go to sleep. I remember saying oyasumi, good night, but I found myself saying Ohayo, which means good morning.
"Not another one of these maps," I thought to myself as I turned my desk facing Laurel, completing a group of four.
"Come on!" Matt urged as Lillia, I think, received a paper with an outline of Mexico and the neighboring countries. We were racing to see which group could fill in the country names and capitals first. "Hurry up, Lillia!" He had a high pitched voice for a boy.
"I am, gosh!" She handed the paper to Laurel, who then filled one out, and so did I.
"What's the capital of Panama?" Lillia asked once she got back the paper.
"Panama City, duh!" Matt replied, snatching the paper off her desk. "What goes there?" he asked, pointing to an odd shaped country bordering the Gulf of mexico.
I shrugged, knowing I hadn't gotten all the capitals and countries into my brain yet. I was never good at memorizing things. "Isn't the capital of Costa Rica, San Juan?"
"I though it was San Jose?" Laurel said.
"Just put one down," said Lillia. "Two groups have finished already!"
"We would have been first if you didn't mess up!" Lillia commented, handing the paper to Mrs. Enos, my spanish teacher
"We'd been done sooner if you didn't mess up so much!" Matt snickered.
I didn't think they would care about a dumb paper which probably would be lost in the jungle of papers on Mrs. Enos' desk. I certainly didn't, and Laurel seemed to be more occupied with packing her books into her backpack before the long hand on the clock was on the nine than the paper with a map. "Adios! Hasta luego!"
"Adios," everyone would reply, eager to get out of the classroom. Times flies when you are competing to do something.