Third Period English

The routine is always the same, but always different in that crazy, "Daria"-like way.

I heard the bell ring, or rather "ding". Either way, it signaled the start of third period English class. I poked around in my backpack for my pouch of pens and pencils. It was all so familiar, the repeated steps that I took everyday. I looked up for the SOD, as I did every day. I heard my teacher call on Allison to correct the sentence on the overhead, as she did every day.

The class went on, same as always. We did the SOD, and copied down the corrections. We copied down some vocabulary words. We discussed the current novel we were reading. We heard my teacher announce an essay. Wait. . . an essay? That's not routine.

"This is our last essay of the semester," she told us as she passed out some sort of paper. Essay? Oh no, not an essay. "It's a narrative, so it should be fairly easy. The last narrative you all did were very good."

Good? The last narrative essay took me forever! I went through at least five drafts, and three different plot lines, then not liking what I ended up turning in anyway. I did get a pretty good grade, but I don't know if I want to go through all that again.

". . . due Thrusday," I heard my teacher finish saying as the bell started to ding. Thursday? But today's Tuesday! I can't write an essay in two days!

"Next Thursday," Nancy said. I guess I was thinking out loud. What a burden off my shoulders.

That night at hom, I pondered the possibilities of what to write. I could write about an asteroid about to hit earth, than taken off its course at the last minute by a crew of rough-necks. Wait, no, that sounds a lot like the plot of "Armaggeddon". What if I wrote a story about a rich girl who hates being rich, and falls in love with someone who's really poor she met on this huge airplane that later crashes down to the earth as an annoying song is playing? No, no, no, that's just like "Titanic". What if I wrote about a talent show where a girl and a bunch of her friends dressed up like idiots, and did a funny skit? No, no, no, that sounds too much like me.

The possibilities went on, and all of them had already been taken by either Hollywood or Disney. Finally, after going as far as to pondering the possibility of re-writing "The Little Mermaid" into "The Little Merman", I gave up, and went downstairs for dinner.

Later on that evening, as I was doing pages upon pages of math homework. . . LIGHTBULB! I knew exactly what I was going to write about. It was perfect, wonderful, brilliant. It was going to be the best story ever.

Excited and dumbly pleased with myself, I left my math homework the way it was, laying on the floor and turned on the computer. My hands typed as fast as they could, but still could barely kept up with the ideas that kept on coming.

"The routine is always the same, but always different in that crazy. . . " I mummured to myself as I typed my story. The story took off from there.