Scribble Hands

Scribble Hands and Doodle Hands are best friends. They sit together in English, at the back of the Loser section, doodling, napping, checking Facebook and MLIA on their cell phones... and getting straight A's without batting an eyelash.

Most people see the two of them as one and the same. Scribble Hands and Doodle Hands. Always together, similar in appearance, similar in personality, similar in actions.

The most apparent difference between the two of them is Doodle Hands has doodles on her hands, while Scribble Hands typically has scribbled words. Reminders, homework assignments, song lyrics, notes to friends, thoughts on life--The amount of ink on her palms, fingers, and wrists varies from day to day, depending on how bored she is in class.

The words don't stop at her hands, either. She's got scribbles in different-colored Sharpie all over her backpack. There are some doodles there, too--there's a pirate with a parrot on his shoulder, and a heart with fluffy wings--but mostly words. Inside jokes, song lyrics, acronyms like BAMF and ROFL, and some mentions of her favorite manga. There are some of those written around the bottoms of her shoes, as well. Her shoes are black Converse, with black laces--and a shiny red ribbon strung in with them, just to be a little different.

Being different is important to Scribble Hands and Doodle Hands. Sometimes I think it's a daily struggle for them, maintaining their individuality--no matter how alike they are, they always have to be different from everybody else, seemingly without any effort. Scribble Hands wears crazy socks, sometimes even mismatched flip-flops. She'll occasionally paint both of her pinky nails black or neon green, but leaves the rest of them unpainted.

There's probably a lot of work that goes into her image, but it's hard to tell, because she doesn't have the classic "girl" look. Very little makeup, and streaming blond hair, unstraightened and a little tangled, her bangs hanging down in her eyes. She focuses on other things.

Today, Scribble Hands had proclaimed, was Superhero Day. She came to school wearing a Batman cape over her backpack. Because nobody really knows her, nobody really questioned it. She and Doodle Hands just whispered and laughed, the way they usually do.

Like most people in the Loser section, she doesn't really interact with people who aren't in her safe circle of nerdy friends. She's quiet if you don't know her; sort of hides behind all that streaming blond hair and the dusty too-long bangs, her eyes looking down at her phone, or her notebook, or the words on her hands.

But on the rare occasion when she does look up to say something, her eyes are such a clear blue. Blue like the ocean on a bright sunny day. They just pop out at you from her face, so shiny and so blue and so alive that it's a little bit startling.

An Update From Your (not so) Faithful Observer

Gooood LORD it has been awhile. What happened to me last month?
Some bloggers take part in BEDA, Blog Every Day in April--but it appears that I decided to do SBIA: Stop Blogging In April.

I'm sorry, guys! As I'm sure all of you know--and I don't say this kind of thing often--high school is absolutely fucking nuts.

I really appreciate those of you who commented or emailed telling me you missed the frequent updates. It made me feel warm and fuzzy. <3
Also, I'd like to give a shout-out to one awesome reader who has figured out my secret identity. You know who you are, and you have serious skills. =D

So hi! Just thought I'd give a quick little update to let you know I'm not dead. Very busy, yes, but not quite dead. Still living, still breathing, still observing. Just... haven't been writing. Sorry about that.

At this point, I would like to tentatively say that... I'm returning to the blog...?
Question mark?

I don't know, this may be a very very bad decision at this point in time, seeing as I have an AP test on Friday--the more stressful one of the two I will be taking. We'll just see, I guess.
I've gotten really tired of the AP tests already. I just want them to be done.

...I feel kind of weird going on about my own stuff in this blog. This is the blog where I talk about other people, not myself! Get with the program, self!

Anyway, I think from now on I'll only be updating three times a week. Probably Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or some variation thereupon, depending on the day or the week.

I love you all so very very much! <3 Thank you for sticking around during this hiatus, and for being so awesome!

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

Spring fever in the computer lab

Coming to you once again from the computer lab. The Internet at my house is broken; therefore, I couldn't post a blog yesterday and I'm very sorry.

Today is the last day of school before we go on spring break, and you can really tell. Everyone's been getting restless, and not just the students. A lot of the teachers have just decided they don't really care anymore, at this point--The quiz in APUSH was cancelled, because the teacher didn't want to write one, and now our English teacher is just setting us loose in the computer lab, because nobody wants to do anything.
He's even letting people go on Facebook. This is crazy.

I can't pretend I'm not as excited as everyone else for spring break. I can't wait. Therefore, this post is going to be short, kinda crappy, and not very deep, because I don't have the capacity of thinking deep thoughts right now. I try, for the purposes of making these ramblings sound interesting, to not just record random disconnected observations about a person, but that's probably what this is going to be.

Anyway, next week, since there's no school, I probably won't be posting at all. If I find a stranger to observe, I may stalk them for a few minutes and then whip up a blog about them.
In the meantime... I'm still stuck in the computer lab with my English class.

Let's see what everyone's doing.

Doodle Hands and her best friend are sitting to my right. They've been browsing DeviantArt, reading online comics, and now they're playing Addicting Games.

The Paper Passer was watching YouTube videos of people playing mandolins and harps, but now she seems to have disappeared. Her stuff is still here, though. Her cute brown flowery bag, and her battered Calculus book.

A boy and a girl who are both wearing Letterman jackets are sitting at the same computer, sharing a pair of earphones. The air is thick with sexual tension. They're both attractive, and they're both aware of it. Letterman Girl's knee is just barely brushing against Letterman Boy's. I can't see what site they're on, but they're trying not to look at each other--only at the screen. Letterman Boy is typing. Letterman Girl checks her phone.
The guy next to them, who is one of those Late-Bloomer types whom everyone is friends with but nobody really likes, keeps bothering them, and Letterman Girl jokes with him while Letterman Boy keeps typing, trying to ignore him.

The Only Asian Kid In Class was playing a maze game, probably on Addicting Games or a similar site. Now he and the kid next to him are spamming each other with gibberish in Facebook chat. ...And now he's leaving. Might have to leave early for a sport, might've gotten bored.

Some girls are online shopping for prom dresses.

Brown Bag is looking at pictures on Facebook, next to another popular misfit. I can't see her face from here.

Remus isn't at a computer. He's sitting in a swivelly chair, behind two of his friends, watching their screens. He's just turning back and forth, occasionally voicing a thought about whatever they're doing. Eventually, he gets bored, scoots backwards across the classroom, and props his feet up on an empty chair next to another group of boys.

Somebody in this class just said, "I don't think you're a pickle." It's fun to listen to conversations out of context.

I don't know what the Loner's doing. Maybe I should go find him. I'm willing to bet that he's getting a head start on the spring break history homework.

Well, this has been fun, readers, but frankly I'm getting bored, and you probably are, too. Hopefully I'll get the chance/inspiration to blog again soon, but in the meantime, I can't say it enough: Thank you so much for reading. I hope those of you who are on spring break have a great vacation, I hope those of you who celebrate it have a great Easter, and I hope that everyone in general has a great week! This is Your Faithful Observer, signing off for the week. <3

The Loner

This is your faithful observer, coming to you live from the computer lab at my school. This is where the Loner spends most of his lunchtimes.

He's actually sitting two computers down from me right now. In an unrelated story, I feel like a total creep, though that should be nothing new.

I was a little hesitant to call him the Loner, because the word "loner" tends to have certain connotations that don't apply to him. Change one letter, and "loner" becomes "loser." While the two words are not entirely mutually exclusive, "loner" and "loser" are very different things.
And I don't think anyone would make the mistake of calling the Loner a loser.

Sure, he spends his lunchtimes in the computer lab, sitting among underclassmen boys who play computer games and show each other viral videos and online manga every day during lunch hour. Some people might call those boys "losers," but it's evident that the Loner isn't one of them. He's not really one of anybody.

He's got very neatly trimmed hair, with a little product on the top that guides his hair into a teeny little mohawk (more of a faux-hawk, I guess). His skin is very oily. His nose is pink and shiny, and around his mouth are a couple of those painful-looking zits, the kind that sit just under the skin so you can't pop them.

(I'm so going to need to edit this later. Urgh, my thoughts are really scattered today and it’s hard to concentrate. Especially with all the World of Warcraft geeks around. You've gotta love 'em.)

Part of me is completely paranoid that he'll glance over and notice what I'm writing. However, he seems to be completely absorbed in his work. He's doing his AP US History homework, like always. He carries his APUSH textbook with him everywhere. Like an accessory. Always tucked under his arm, always with him. When he's got a spare moment in class, he takes it out and reads it, as though it's a novel.

I heard a rumor that he has a hundred and eleven percent in APUSH. (Of course, I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, wow. I was stunned at the Paper Passer's hundred and three.)

He's got his textbook open now, and two Internet tabs open on his computer screen. The Google homepage, and a new email message. He mostly just sits and reads, his elbows on the desktop and his arms crossed, his shoulders leaning over the book. He looks up only occasionally, to type some notes into the message box or to look something up on Google search.

I wonder why he does all his APUSH at school. (He comes here after school, too. He probably stays until he finishes up the chapter notes.) Does he not have a computer at home? Or maybe just no Internet? Then why does he type his notes into an email, if not to send the file to himself so he can print it later? Is he sending his notes to someone else, maybe? If so, who? He’s the Loner. He lunches alone. Not a soul comes near him. He does nothing but his history homework. Who would he share that with?

It’s entirely possible that he has friends somewhere. He didn’t go to the same elementary and middle schools as most of us; he didn’t even come to this high school until sophomore year. Maybe all his friends are at his old school, and he just didn’t find it worth it to make any friends here. So he’s a little anti-social. Not really in an awkward way, though-- He doesn't initiate conversation, but he doesn't turn bright red if anyone says a word to him, either. He just smiles and answers in that deep, sort of monotone voice. Maybe makes a joke, if the situation allows it, and then returns to his work. He's okay with talking, but he just chooses not to. Somehow, people seem to understand that about him.

People don't make fun of the Loner. That's the thing. That’s why he’s not a loser. Nobody makes fun of him, nobody feels sorry for him. They just let him be.

The way he reads the history textbook, the way he studies constantly, doesn't seem like he's desperately trying to prove anything. It’s more like... It's just a part of who he is. And he's chill with that. He's not self-conscious about it. He doesn't seem to really care about anyone around him. Therefore, they don’t really care about him, either. Since he seems to be okay with being alone, most people are okay with letting him alone. He's just sort of there. Constant, strong, and silent.