Assignment 11 - Victor Allison

David Sedaris piece

In a school made to accommodate 1800 students that is populated by 2600 pubescent teenagers, the average Henry Clay hallway is often analogous to a small fish tank filled with a large school of fish. Except rather than swimming around the crowded tank in unison, the fish are unable to even swim the same established direction much of the time, and no kind of uniformity is demonstrated. It's more like a multitude of schools of fish from different parts of the ocean were divided up and crammed into one sweaty fishbowl. And half of the fish don't swim half as fast as they should. Or bathe. Consequently, many students, including myself, have evolved an almost unconscious reflexive habit in order to make mobility through the constipated digestive tract of Henry Clay possible. This defensive reflex is more acute than a push and more aggressive than a nudge, but also appears significantly less hostile than what could be describes as "ramming," although I've witnessed my share of rams as well. This act can be only described as a shove. There is rarely space to extend your arms out to push someone in Henry Clay's congested sinuses, so shoves are almost always administered via sharp forward motion of the shoulder, as if your mean cousin threw you into a pool with your hands tied and the only thing between vengeance and a watery grave is by violently gyrating your entire torso. Although never meant as an act of aggression, the shoves I have given and received have ranged from hard, firm taps to slow, merciful steamrolls. A particularly masculine girl once pursued me after receiving a misplaced but nevertheless relatively stiff shoulderbang and proceeded to storm into first hour debate, seize my backpack, and hurl it down the hallway. At times, one shove can lead to an outward spread of students shoving on the next student, ending up in a terrifying whirlwind of testosterone and B.O. The staircases at times begin to resemble that one scene from World War Z when the infected masses scramble over each other to climb a wall. The shove can be a source of great distress in the halls of our humble school, yet without this gift we may be doomed to wander the schools halls far past the apocalyptic tardy bell.