If you've ever been in boarding school then you will understand that sleep is a basic need , more basic than food, shelter or clothing. You will struggle continuously to stay awake, balancing your head between your hands on your desk. There will be snoring intermissions between you and your desk-mate, heck you might even experience the elusive head pendulum swing as you attempt to stay awake. In Maseno school when you attained the highest level of sleep, you gained the title "Swachist" , I only had the pleasure of knowing two in my four years there.
My first dangerous encounter with the fore mentioned monster was in second term, form one. I had so far been able to keep sleep at bay but on that fateful afternoon as the CRE teacher gave a lecture with her heavily influenced accent I just seemed to drift away. I thought I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second and awoke to find half a page of scribbled wavy lines. But the purpose of why I write is not about that tale, for my story we have to move further into future (well... past now).
We were in form two and like every other day we were required to be in class for morning prep which started at 5. I can remember how I used to dread that morning bell, the continuous gong for a whole ten minutes. I occasionally wake up in a cold sweat in the fear that I hear the bell somewhere in the recess of my mind, talk about being scarred for life. During morning preps the principal would sometimes make rounds to make sure that his students were hard at work (talk about dedication to your job). If you had a good desk-mate they would wake you up before the principal saw you sleep but on this fateful day he caught us all off guard.
The principal would normally walk into a class to see who was sleeping and his 7 feet something height was definitely an advantage. Now on this occasion he decided to peep at us through the window, unfortunately for the guy next to the window his desk-mate saw the principal a second to late and all he could do was pretend to have not seen a thing and stare at his book with the might of Hercules in the hopes that he would not be asked why his desk-mate was dead asleep. The principal slipped his hand through the window and tapped the student awake, "It's me"
"Oh, its you", replied the student
I think in his dazed state my dear classmate didn't take the time to size his words, fury burned through the principal's gaze. He made a pimp slap attempt for the young man who missed it just in time, at this point all we could do was hold back our laughter (I think I was crying from the laughter). The student was told to go to the principal's office. Of course at this juncture all of us were awake, there was a lecture given about not letting your desk-mate sleep and the principal continued on his way. I'm yet to find out what kind of punishment our friend faced, I bet it was something severe. just sayinG
No comments:
Post a Comment