Bouncy

Before today's entry, I want to say thank you to Addy F, for leaving such a long and wonderful comment on one of my earlier blog posts. It was so much fun to read. If you started a blog just about the kids in your choir, I would totally read it. -Your Faithful O

As soon as the teacher announces that today is a free work period, all the phones come out. Everybody texting and talking and listening to their music. The teacher doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything. I wonder when he's going to retire. It's got to be soon, because he's completely stopped trying.

There are a lot of girls--especially in the AP classes--who never ever get sad. They're always busy, they always have someone to talk to, they always have something to laugh about. Bouncy is definitely one of them. Even once she gets quiet and settles down in class to get some work done, the smile never really leaves her face.

Everybody loves Bouncy. She does everything--everything worth doing, anyway. Sports, leadership, AP classes, foreign exchange programs. Wherever there's lots of people, there's Bouncy.


She's popular in a way that's both honest and intimidating--She's not popular because people are afraid of her, she's popular because so many people like her, and that's a little intimidating.
Her confidence can outshine anyone, and that's a little intimidating, too.

But at the same time it's hard to feel threatened by her. Her voice has this unwavering friendliness to it, and she always sounds just a little bit congested, which gives her voice an almost endearing quality. People like listening to her talk.

Bouncy has masses of curly blond-and-brown hair. It must be really hard to manage, but she doesn't straighten it, or even dye it. She rocks it. It's her hair, and she doesn't make any apologies for it. Besides that, it's gorgeous.

But if you really look hard into her face, she's not actually very pretty. Not the way you'd expect a popular girl to be. Her clothes are cute, her hair is adorably crazy, her voice is appealing, her nails are neatly done, but her face is just sort of average. A few freckles. Small eyes with lazy, half-closed lids, with a hint of bagginess underneath them. Covered up with a little makeup. It's no wonder--With everything she does, it must leave little time for sleep.

Her face is nothing special, but the thing is, it doesn't matter, because her bubbly personality makes her pretty. Her confidence. There is one thing about her face that everyone loves, and that's the smile. The smile that never leaves.

It actually gets creepy if you look at it for long enough. That smile. It looks like it knows something you don't know. And it's a little smug about it.

She's a flirt. She makes the boys feel liked, the girls feel smart, and the teachers feel challenged. She loves arguing with teachers, the English teacher especially. Every day, she and a few of the other Always Happy girls playfully try to convince him to give less homework. Bouncy always argues the most vehemently of them all, and he never hesitates to argue right back. He loves girls like her.
He likes to tease her. A lot of people do. And she loves that.

Fishy Mouth

He's one of the few kids at this school that I have literally known since preschool.

In the first grade I used to call him Fishy Mouth, because his mouth always hung open just a little bit, and it reminded me of a dead fish.

It's funny; we haven't spoken since then, but to this day, sometimes his mouth hangs open just a little bit.
Some things never change.

In English class, as the teacher does a powerpoint and every pair of eyes in the room slowly glazes over, Fishy Mouth rests his elbows on his desk, his fingers laced together with his pencil entwined in the middle, his hands up by his mouth. Covering up the mouth as it droops slightly open. Every once in awhile, he seems to realize that his attention is wandering, and he jolts back to life, glancing around with cautious eyes--especially over to the Girls section of the classroom, making sure none of them were watching him.

Fishy Mouth and I both went to a smaller elementary school, and while we're both aware that we've been in the same place at the same time for years and years, we don't know each other.

He does sports. He's well-known at this school, but maybe not incredibly well liked. He's one of those people that everyone sort of knows, but nobody's really that aware of him. Most people just feel indifferent about him--sort of disregard him.

He's not one of those people who commands a strong feeling of like or dislike. He's just kinda there.
He has a few close friends, but other than that, he's just one of the masses.

His friends, who are more attractive, more athletically successful, could easily be labelled "popular." Fishy Mouth isn't popular, though. He's in the group, he's got the "I'm-an-athlete" swagger when he walks, but he's not popular.

He's not that attractive, not as attractive as most of his friends. Though, he's certainly not unattractive, either-- The girls on track and swim team like to flirt with him, but they never date him. They like his friends more.

Fishy Mouth is just their way of working up the food chain.
He's hardly worth their time.

He taps his eraser against the page of the textbook, very fast as though he's trying to wake himself up. Looking back up at the Girls section with cautious eyes, he strokes at both his cheeks with the backs of his fingers, surreptitiously checking for stubble. He's probably got his eye on one of the girls, over on that side of the classroom. But I can't tell which one.

Boys, Girls, and Losers

Oh, hi!
It feels good to be doing this again. This whole blogging thing. While I'm not looking forward to going back to school on Monday, I'm certainly looking forward to being Your Faithful Observer once more. :)

Ahhh. Spring break is coming to a close, so, of course, I'm procrastinating on my homework.
Long story short, I just re-read all of the blog posts here. And I've noticed a certain correlation between... almost all the people I've written about so far.

To give you some sort of idea of what this correlation is, I'm going to describe my English class for just a moment.
Our teacher did not assign us our seats, so everyone picked their own places, and the class naturally divided itself into three sections: Boys, Girls, and Losers.

This way it has remained.

And readers, Your Faithful Observer sits in the "Loser" section, with Brown Bag, the Paper Passer, Doodle Hands, the Loner, and Remus Lupin.

In this blog, I've written about five people in my English class: Brown Bag, the Paper Passer, Doodle Hands, the Loner, and Remus Lupin.

It's a bit funny that I wrote about everyone in the Loser section, and didn't even notice. There are forty kids in my English class, and I selected those five first. And it's not just them--The Frenchman and Glass and Ha-Ha and Fedora, while not in the Loser section, mostly stay to themselves. They don't talk.

So, maybe thus far the Unlimited Observer has been a bit limited.
I sort of naturally went for the people that I relate to the most--the people that I understand the most. And for whatever reason, it's easier for me to understand someone when they don't talk a whole lot.

I'd like to think that I'm a meanderer, that I can strike up a conversation with anybody at school, that nobody really considers me a loser.
But the truth of the matter is, I'm a chubby junior with thick glasses and hair full of split ends.
I'm a loser, and most of the time, I'm okay with that.

(I mean, I write anonymous blogs about my peers in the dead of night. I spend the majority of my Saturdays staying in and watching YouTube videos and writing poems all day. It's a good life.)

But as far as this blog, I'm going to try to branch out a little more. Write about more of the popular kids, and not just the misfit popular kids like Brown Bag and Glass and Ha-Ha. It may be a little harder to delve into their characters, but who cares, as long as I'm still observing.

Besides, I like to think everyone's got a little bit of misfit in them, so maybe it won't be as hard as I think. =D