Users and Losers

 The first day of the first semester of your bachelors degree, you enter your brand new accounts class and get a burst of cool freshening air onto your face blasting off from the nearby air conditioner, your body temperature struggles to adjust itself from the heat outside to the cooling inside the classroom, you look around along the dimensions of the room and on spotting no familiar faces resolve to sit in the front row carefully choosing the chair that is placed right in front of the rostrum. Placing your notebook and pen on the desk in front, you obediently switch your cell phone to the silent mode as per the rules dictated to you earlier. There’s a girl in the row behind you watching intently the face of every pupil, her eyes lingering on each face for the span of several seconds as if searching for something that is of value to her which she might find stuck up their noses. As the bell finally seizes to ring, a tall figure rises from the far end of the classroom taking long steady steps, reminding you of a rabbit that is just released from its cage, he travels the entire length of the classroom finally reaching the rostrum, turning his face towards everyone now, he raises his eyes to take a look at the whole class, the noise dies out as the students stop talking directing their attention to the stern looking man standing ahead.

 The session commences after a series of brief introductions from the teacher and then in turn from each student, you are too busy taking in every word uttered by the instructor and noting it down on the first page of your freshly bought notebook fearing that you might miss out some crucial information, your writing seems to be gaining significant speed with the passage of every second. The girl behind you observing your nerdy behavior now has her eyes fixed on the back of your head wanting to weigh the brain that you have hidden in there. After a while you hear the rustling of papers as she collects her things and scurrying off to her feet briskly makes her way to the front row, of which you were the lonesome occupant moments earlier, she then noisily places herself in the chair beside you making her presence even more obvious just in case you had earlier missed the noises she had made while leaving her chair at the back. You throw an awkward glance in her direction and see someone who has obviously made much more effort in dressing herself up than you ever could have done had it been even your wedding day, you see her smiling at you as if you were one of those good looking guys who have that kind of effect on girls, you jerk those glasses up your nose and return your attention to the instructor.

 The session eventually comes to an end and so does your vigorous scribbling on the notebook which if prolonged could easily have burnt your paper down to ashes, avoiding the stampede comprising of the students rushing out of the classroom door, you stay back for a little longer than what would have been deemed normal only to find your fellow occupier of the first row standing beside you looking for something in her oversized and most probably also overpriced bag. A triumphant look sweeps her face as she gets her cell phone out of the bag, your amazement reaches its peak as you find her asking for your number. Not quite believing your ears you still try to make use of all your senses hanging on to every word of her, trying to save this moment in your memory in the same way as you would have done to one of your favorite movie scenes, only to later recall every second of it to narrate to your friends who think of you as one who is too dull to encounter any such situation.

 Two days go by with nothing special happening to you, the night before your second class you doze off while revising whatever you had noted down during the class in your notebook.

You see numbers jumping on your head and talking to you in their own language, you are transported to a country where there are calculators for cars with the big numbers driving them rushing past you on a highway where you seem to be driving your own calculator car, you can hear a whirring sound coming from far away, you think it’s the police trying to track the over speeding calculator that just rushed past your slow moving vehicle, the whirring gets louder and louder and you are too scared to look back. With a slow movement of your head and fluttering of your eye lids you wake up and realize it’s your cell phone dancing on the bedside table and vibrating as there is an incoming call from an unknown number. You pick up and answer the call only to find that familiar feminine voice responding to your “hello”, seemingly apologetic for troubling you at this hour, after you accept her apologies she adopts a lets- get-down- to-business tone asking you for some help in the assignment that is due on the next day. You end up giving more than what would be termed as ‘help’ and no more feel sleepy after tutoring the girl who wasn’t really willing to learn anything but merely wanted you to dictate to her the assignment, with the whole conversation leaving a bad taste in your mouth, you spend the rest of your night sleepless twisting and turning around in bed.

 The next day again you find the same girl in class, this time you find her already seated in the front row and notice that she even took the pains of reserving the chair beside her for you. The whole semester goes by with you helplessly trying to explain things and the girl looking even less interested to understand. You also end up getting yourself invited for a whole day to her place just before the final exams to put into her head all those concepts that were covered during the course of the entire term, a task that the instructor had failed to accomplish and now the responsibility of completing the unaccomplished task rested on your shoulders.

With you failing at it too, you are reduced to letting her copy the answers that you had provided in your answer sheet that were originally meant only for the eyes of the examiner to see.

 She deletes your number from her cell phone after the final exam and you hope never to hear from her again too or God forbid end up in the same class as she.