THE LABELS WE WEAR EVERY DAY

4 MARCH, FRIDAY, CONTINUED

As usual, our class was unable to follow instructions. This kind of failure was an everyday occurrence in our class so I supposed it should've been expected. To date, there had not been an incident where the entire class successfully follow through with any set of instructions.

From the day our class "voted" Liam for class chairman by a show of shouting instead of whatever nomination and voting process Mrs Henderson had explained, I knew this class wasn't much for remembering details. This, from the top class of our cohort! Till today, it was a mystery to me how it was that we could be possibly the top-scoring freshmen in our entrance exam.

Take, for example, Terrence. He kept asking stupid questions today. While writing labels, he would frown deeply and then loudly ask something like, "Do we have to write for the girls too?"

No, you had 20 labels and 22 guys in class. Do the math.

Terrence sighed loudly, "I guess I have no choice..."

And then he asked, "How do you spell gorgeous?"

"Who are you writing for?" Ivan gave up ignoring him and looked over.

"Nobody!" Terrence would bellow back, "Don't look!"

Geesh, it's not like he wrote the recipient's name on it... Right?

"Who's gorgeous?" Troy would ask too loudly and reply all on his own, "I bet it's Sam!"

"Shut up, Troy!" Terrence bellowed again.

In case anyone was wondering, it wasn't me. I didn't get any sticker that said gorgeous.

Terrence did give me a label that said, "Nice"

We were a very "nice" class if all the labels were taken into account. I had 5 labels with the word "nice" and I wasn't even one of the Nice Girls. Ivan wrote "Nice" on EVERY label.

"I'm only giving it to the nice people, so take it as a sincere compliment." Ivan qualified.

So when he gave me one of his labels, I said, "Thanks."

I happened to have written one for him too. His was easy. I wrote, "Smart."

Ivan looked pleased with it, "Oh, thanks."

I also had three "pretty" given to me, one of them said "prettiest" but I shall lump them together. I'm not sure why, maybe because Mrs Hen was our math teacher too, I had this urge to make a bar chart of all the different labels I got. But I controlled myself admirably.

It was really interesting how even though we were given completely blank labels, many of the labels said the same things. More than one person was giving out labels that read, "OK". I didn't get one (so maybe I wasn't ok?) but I noticed one of the boys had several OKs in different marker colors. He was a rainbow of OKs. I wonder why I never noticed such an OK guy till today.

So I got 5 "nice", 3 "pretty", 0 "OK". I also got a "POP" which I'm going to assume was short for "Popular" and not the substitute for the F-word.

Overall, I got a surprising number of labels - like 32!

"Wow, Zammi!" Zara helped me peel some off the back of my shoulder, "Look at all your stickers! You look like an item in the discount bin that couldn't sell out."

Urm... yeah. That would be the look I was going for.

"It can't be helped. Pops like us will always bear the brunt of being labeled." Krystal shrugged. She was also covered in stickers, but she had arranged them like stripes up both arms. 14 on each = 28 labels.

"Oh, cool." I said and held up my arms so Zara could re-paste my labels the same way.

The cool girls started counting.

"Looks like Zammi's the most popular." Leia said.

This wasn't a popularity contest! I mean, look at Liam, he had a whole bunch of labels that actually said, "Pop" or "Popular". I think the cool girls should only count specific labels.

Most of my labels weren't really anything meaningful. I had two labels that said, "blue."

I also had a few that said, "famous."

There was a bunch of "Alpha Princess." One of them said, "girl" At least no one pasted "warlock" on me.

Other weird labels I got were, "tall", "long"(?), "clean", "punctual", "rich".

Oh, yeah. There was a couple of "cute" too. But by now, I was starting to suspect that the labels that said, "pretty", "cute", "funny" (which I didn't get T.T. Nobody thought I was funny?), and "cool" weren't so much a compliment than a category label. Like the kind used for social media videos.

I think what most of the kids in class did was fill up labels for their friends, and then just to fill in the rest of the labels, they randomly filled in something for whoever caught their eye - like the girl with too much blue hair... ah, that would explain the label, "long". I think it was referring to my hair.

So naturally, the really meaningful labels came from actual friends you hung out with - unless your friends were Ivan or the guys giving generic "OK" labels like they were safety inspection seals.

Krystal wrote "kind" for me - which was unexpected, but made me happy because I felt like she was appreciating me for something deeper than what I was wearing.

Zara wrote "cool" which made me feel my efforts to get cooler was working somewhat.

Jasmine wrote "friendly"... which was what I wanted to write for her in the first place.

Generally, I think the girls did better at this exercise. Liam had given me a label too. It was one of those that said "pretty", but he gave all the cool girls and Jasmine the same label, so I think he was just being diplomatic.

Marcus wrote something nice though, I'm not sure if it was just a lucky guess or if he really thought through it, but the label he stuck on me said, "fun."

I admit I might have accidentally made a happy face like Ivan had when he got the "smart" label.

EJ gave me a label with an emoji - it was smiling widely across the whole label and had stars for eyes. I had no idea how to interpret that.

Fluffy was the culprit for the label that said, "prettiest." It earned me a few envious stares from some of the random girls, but I think Fluffy was probably just talking about himself. I don't think Fluffy quite understood the instructions because Fluffy wrote 1 label for me, and 19 labels for EJ ranging from "fun idiot" to "lovable idiot." EJ was just many kinds of idiots in Fluffy's eyes.

EJ took revenge by writing "big idiot" on all his blank labels and the two of them started a label fight - slapping each other with labels. This inspired the other boys who hadn't finished using up their labels to write insults and slap them on each others' backs.

Looks like I didn't have to spend 20 labels to mark the guys as idiots - they were doing it all on their own.

By now, it was clear that we had diverged from the original game.

"Class! Class!" Mrs Henderson flapped and cried out for us to return to our seats.

"Quiet!" Liam shouted suddenly. And then, "Sit."

Like we were dogs. And it worked.

"Yes. Th...thank you, Liam." Mrs Henderson straightened her blouse and managed to nod and force a smile at us, "Alright, now that we have exchanged our labels, I want you to take a look at yourself."

I looked down at both arms.

"What labels are you wearing now? What about the labels we wear every day?" Uh oh, Mrs Henderson was getting into counseling mode, "Now I want all of us to take off the labels that we don't like. You don't have to wear it. Just take it off and throw it away, and as you do, I hope you throw away the other labels you've collected in your life too."

"Nobody can label you unless you allow it." Mrs Henderson told us firmly.

Okay... I looked down to consider the labels lined on both my arms. It's not like any of them were actually bad or untrue. I plucked off the ones that said "rich" and "famous".

"Why are you taking those off?" Zara asked.

"If you don't want them, give them to me." Leia said, "It's not fair that I had so few."

"No!" Zara was protective immediately, "These belong to Zammi."

And then she stuck them back on my arm. Okay... Was NO ONE following Mrs Henderson's creative counseling activity?

"WHO WROTE KICK ME?" Ivan raged suddenly. Terrence had found a stray label on his back and had kindly helped him read it.

"Hahahahahahaha" Troy laughed too loudly.

"GET IT OFF!" Ivan was furious.

"Haha. Serves him right." Zara said.

"Was it YOU, Zara?" Ivan yelled from across the circle.

"I wish!" Zara crossed her arms.

"Alright, that's enough." Mrs Henderson said. Her mouth pressed down so I knew she was definitely displeased with us, "Please sit down, Ivan."

"What have I told you about using unkind words on your friends?" Mrs Henderson asked.

Abigail raised her hand, "That they can hurt our friends?"

Yes. Words like "kick me" stuck on your back could definitely hurt.

"Yes. That's right, Abigail." Mrs Henderson smiled, much consoled that our class wasn't a lost cause, "Thank you."

"Teacher's pet." Leia hissed, "I should've wrote that for her."

Krystal shrugged, "Whatever. B****es like her would only know how to kiss a***."

Whoa... I turned my head to look over at the two whispering girls.

"Shhh..." Jasmine hushed them.

"Now, lets look back at our labels. Everyone, please choose one or two labels you'd like to share with your friends." Mrs Henderson went back to her party game.

I looked back down at my arms. "Monster" was still my favorite. I also liked "fun" and "kind" and "friendly." I also liked"cool" - although I wasn't, I secretly liked the feeling that someone thought I was.

"I really can't stand her." Leia huffed, "You can tell all the girls who follow her just want to be invited to her parties. So what if your daddy is rich and throws you a big birthday party every year?"

"Leia, just let it go already." Krystal shrugged again, "If we say anything, they'd just accuse us of being jelly."

"Like they've got anything that we'd be jelly about." Leia said spitefully. "They're the ones who are jelly because the hot guys are only going to the party if we were."

"Shhh...." Jasmine worried, "You two are too loud."

"We're not!" Leia was indignant, "We're being very quiet!"

No, they weren't.

"Don't worry, Mrs Hen's not even looking over." Krystal tossed her head and returned to the conversation, "Tonight, we're going to show those stuck-up b****es up."

Wait, what?

"What are you planning?" I whispered. Fluffy was already planning the Titanic, I really didn't need anything else to go down with the ship.

"Samantha." Mrs Henderson called.

I shot up in my seat. WTH!

{She wants you to share your favorite label and why, pretty alpha.} Fluffy kindly cued me.

I pointed to "Monster."

"What? Monster?" Troy squinted to read the word from his seat, then he fell back laughing too loudly, "HAHAHAHAHA..."

"I mean this one." I pointed to Krystal's "kind" under it. I just didn't want to explain "Monster" to the whole class. Particularly when half of them were idiots. Even if you tore off the label, it didn't change the content.

"MOU! Pretty Alpha! What about my label?" EJ interrupted from next to Mrs Henderson, "Wasn't it THE BEST?"

"I don't even know what it meant." I showed the class EJ's label for me like a fightdog showing his new tattoo.

"That's the face my heart makes when I see you!" EJ declared.

Oh. I looked at the emoji again and then quite by instinct, I smiled up at EJ, "Thanks. Yeah. This is my favorite one now."

Because my wolves made my heart super happy too.

"OOOOOooooohhhhh...." The class said, totally misunderstanding.

"Sam is out of bounds!" Troy reminded everyone too loudly.

"Hey, wait!" Zara stood up, "Zammi! I thought EJ was supposed to be MY date!"

"What?" Ivan shouted.

"Yes! Hoi Hoi!" EJ bounced up too, "That's why I made you THAT sticker."

EJ's label for Zara was a smiling emoji with heart eyes. Zara looked at her label, and then at my label, "Oh, I see. Okay."

And then she sat back down again.

"WHAT?" Ivan was yelling a lot today. Usually that was Troy's job.

And why was he acting like this was the first time he heard about this? My friends had paired up quite publicly in class after lunch yesterday.

"Duh." Zara said, "But don't worry, you can go with your new girlfriend. I don't care."

"But... I mean..." Ivan sounded at a loss.

"Ivan!" Mrs Henderson called firmly, "Maybe you can share your favorite label with us."

Ivan chose the one that said, "Smart" but it wasn't the one I wrote. Ivan had been labeled "smart" by quite a number of kids.

"Because this one..." Ivan looked meaningfully at Zara, and then he mumbled, "Because this one was written by...someone special to me..."

"What?" Troy asked too loudly, "We can't hear you!"

"Yeah." Zara said, and then she squinted at the label, "Isn't that mine?"

"I said it was written in my favorite color." Ivan said more loudly.

"Oh." Mrs Henderson said. I think she was expecting a more intellectual answer from the "smartest" boy in her class.

Anyway, our game went on for a while more. It felt more like another homeroom lesson with Mrs Henderson than a party, but that's okay. We were in school anyway, and tbh, I didn't really mind Mrs Henderson's homeroom. I know I complained about it a lot, but I also learned a lot from them. I'm sure this game had a good lesson behind it, but we never got around to it.

After a few more students had shared, the bell rang.

"Oh my goodness! Is that the bell?" Mrs Henderson realized, "We haven't even eaten yet!"