The N's in Neans.

Finally the exams, the ones that haunt you all year that you in fact pay for and parents don't tell you until the last minute that you in fact did not have to do them if they didn't pay, ("Wait..you paid for these?" "yes." "YOU PAID FOR THIS TORTURE??!!! FACIST! FACIST!") are finally completed. After two days of stress, cramming, Satie and Vivaldi, my exams and practically year, is over. Well not entirely, theres still the computing exam but thats basically a joke, for example:

Susan is looking at her inbox, how many emails has she received?
a) 4
b) 0
c) 8
d) dubfkshbdhvdfakhakshbc

Hint: its not d

Whenever I do an exam I always have this little tune playing in the back on my head, as I said before my life always has a soundtrack yet when you are trying to answer the equation of half pie multiplied by 4.5 without a calculator,"Remember You're a Womble" is not quite fitting, despite it being a truly fantastic song. Other soundtracks include "Rollercoaster" by that Irish Spice Girl rip off band, B*witched and "Excitable Boy" by Warren Zevon, the man that can make homicide and building cages out of prom dates bones, sound good plus groovy, lastly the "aaaaWOOOOOO" part of "Werewolves of London" because thats the only part I know. I ended up tapping my way through most of the maths exam and howling for the last ten minutes of History/ Geography, not generally helpful in answering land management questions as I often end up writing what I'm humming. "With non-government organisations like dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones".

The problem with History is that when I write about feminist rights I become rather, in a word, angry or perhaps more, defencive, due to my grandmothers influence of "be a feminist! Getting married sucks!" (taking advice from someone who told you that "Puff the Magic Dragon was part of our heritage", if so, this may explain a few things). I am also an avid Whitlam supporter, for reasons beyond me ("Whitlam, you had me at "Its Time"") and often feel its necessary to mention my commitment to the former and sacked Prime Minister no matter the question. Thus, my extended answer read like a campaign for feminism and bringing back Whitlam. Good stuff. I then attempted to sleep but became to self conscious, this was after I ripped my answer sheet nearly in half, pursuing the instruction to separate the pages. If this is any indicator, as it is meant to be, of my Year 12 exams then I am stuffed.

The Monkey on your Back is the Latest Trend

Today I ironed my shirt.

This is amazing. I never iron my shirt and never has that bothered me, not in the slightest, but everyone else seems to be seriously harmed about it. My parents, par example, go into a fit when they see the state of me in the morning, my mother reaches for the hairbrush and iron and my father reaches for shoe polish and a old pair of socks (or disgustingly underwear) to use with the polish (why would I want to rub dirty underwear into my shoes to make them look better? Why would i even want to touch dirty underwear? Thankfully i was able to snag an old tea towel and rub some mink oil into my shoes. That was before my brother told me that mink oil was made from mink fat, he says i redefine the word gullible.).

After a while they gave up, my mother now gives the feeble excuse to my father thats it's my form of rebellion, namely "nerd rebellion". He then nods his head as if he totally understands, like some kind of mutual understanding they have in their daughters lacking of "cool".

So, basically, me ironing my shirt is like doing the world a favor.

Uniform is a pretty big thing at school, its a way of supposedly showing "school pride", but what is school pride apparently it can be summed up by two things, uniform and sport. Neither of which really work for me (besides my recent participation in the floorball activity, it is so awesome, seriously. They insult each other with World of Warcraft terms or else use their floorball sticks as Jedi light sabers. I was so pleased with my chosen activity I went and gushed about it to my mother. After a slight awkward silence, she tutted, pretended to scan down a list before choosing a supposed line and saying"Oh..I'll chose that one", with forced joy, she then looked at me raised her eyebrows and said "how do you always choose the nerdy activities?". Upset with my mothers dislike to my natural path which she should be blamed for, i went and slumped on my bed and planned ways in which to become famous and be the ultimate in cool so i can laugh at all the people below me, just like Bill Gates. Ah....Bill Gates)

I don't do sports and obviously I do not do this "uniform thing". (I come to school in an unironed shirt, odd socks, usually one being significantly shorter than the other or with no elastic and scuffed, scrathed, Doc Martens missing a buckle which i can't be bothered to nail on despite the actual need to.)

Nor can i do sports. You know how P.E teachers always say don't be afraid of the ball, just grab it! As it comes hurtling towards you at 100 miles per a second, well i've never quite grasped that concept, I put my hands up, close my eyes or in a glorious effort to hit it wave my arms around like a man on fire, so I'm basically shit at anything to do with balls (which includes just about every team sport, again, i nearly always fail PDHPE because i don't have any team spirit, why should i have team spirit? I know everyone there is regretting the day i was put in their team), i run like a blinded bewilderbeast, I can never jump over the bar so i should stop kidding myself that i can (and save much pain between my legs) and i have realised that perhaps the only thing i can do well is improvised Kung-fu and even then I still end up on the ground, even against myself.

So, how then can I show school pride?

I decided that I would just keep ironing my shirts.