Shelby Stidham

In Class

The room was uncomfortably cold, so much so that all the hairs on my arms stood up. The carpet was a dingy blue color and reminded me of the jeans my dad wore when he did yard work on the weekends when I was young. Those jeans were dark with stains in some places and light with wear and tear in others. The walls were covered in a cheap, plastic wallpaper that had an 80’s design on it. The color was one you’d find in a nursing home; a pale, sickly blue with streaks of khaki and cream. I was sitting right next to the wall, on the left hand side of the main aisle of stadium seats. The classroom was divided by three sections: the far right stadium-seats, the middle stadium-seats, and the left side where I sat. All the seats rose up about ten feet over the course of ten rows and you could see the podium from virtually anywhere in the room because it was so big. Students before me had decided to write on the crappy wallpaper, out of boredom I suppose. There was a large K.S. + J.W. scribbled in black ink, with pink highlighter hearts drawn all around it. I let my mind wander. Katie Scanton and Jerry Walsh. Kristina Salas and Jose Weron. Were they together when it was written on the wall or did just Katie write it? Were they still together? I doubted it. Couples who constantly needed to proclaim their “luv” for one another never made it. I pictured Katie Scranton as a skinny blonde girl with coke bottle glasses, sobbing madly into her pink cell phone, “he said he wasn’t ready for a serious girlfriend!” Maybe Katie had been the one who wrote their initials on the wall and scribbled the hearts around it. Then maybe Jerry saw it and freaked out and just broke up with her, right then and there, in this very seat I was sitting in. Yeah, maybe. My eyes left the wall and began to slowly crawl around the lecture room. On the right side of the class, directly across from my seat, a girl sat slumped over in her chair. Her head slowly bobbed up and down as she fought to stay awake. I watched her for a couple of minutes until she finally gave in, leaned forward, and fell asleep in her own lap. I had been in her should many times before and totally understood how she felt. I used to work at this grocery store from 3pm until midnight and had class early in the morning. It would’ve been a big bummer had I not liked the job so much. The fun managers worked in the evenings and, when the store slowed down, we’d all go in the back room and talk about all the half-wit customers we’d seen that day. We’d drink out-of-date soda, sitting on overturned milk crates, laughing so hard that we’d all be in tears. The grouchy old lady who worked in the express lane would page me over the intercom to go back up front, knowing I was in the back goofing around. I looked forward and watched the two freshmen girls ahead of me share a laptop and play solitaire. They quietly giggled at their own slyness as they jointly clicked the built-in mouse buttons. The majority of the class was made up of uninterested 18-year-old females. I watched as they text messaged, played with their hair, studied their fingernails, and tugged at their two-sizes-too-small sweaters. I couldn’t be irritated by them–3 years ago I was them. Now, of course, I realized having the importance of paying attention and passing a class. Just then the professor walked in…