Geography Class

Geography class was probably the best class I ever had in middle school.

It wasn’t because it was super fun and interesting; on the contrary, it was the most boring class I ever had.

Our teacher, Mrs. Stu I’ll call her, was around 60. She tended to wear extremely heavy makeup, and overly fancy dresses. It made little 7th grade me, and all my friends laugh. However this wasn’t the actual fun of Geography Class.

The teacher didn’t exactly give a damn about what we did. I mean sure, if you were to scream in the middle of the class, or be as stupid as to talk with your friends loudly, she’d demand answers.

“Is this a COFFEE SHOP? Do you want tea or coffee??”

“Am I deaf?”

“This isn’t a fish market is it?”

We were obliged to reply, “No Mrs. Stu, it isn’t.”

Then we cackled under cover of our books and drew another line on our tally charts. At the end of the year, the coffee shop tally was the largest. I suppose I don’t need to tell you that she absolutely loved tea and coffee.

The geography class, besides being a source of laughter and easy fun, was a black market.

Don’t you stare at me like that! Not that sort of black market. We were 12.

A few of us, including me, had cellphones. Of course, we knew nothing of the fancy touch screen smartphones we take for granted today, no. I had an old Nokia, and one of my best friends had this old Samsung, with a solid keypad.

She marketed YouTube videos and I marketed stories.

How? Obviously 3G wasn’t accessible to wee 7th graders back then.

You see, I’m the daughter of the IT teacher. I knew his computer password. With a few clicks here and there, I found out the Wi-Fi password easily, and then distributed it to my friends.

Ugh. I still wish I charged them for it.

Anyways, yes, the markets.

People slipped notes to my friend asking for specific YouTube videos. She’d watch them first. If she liked it, she’d send the phone free of charge. If she didn’t, she’d ask for payment.Pretty simple system, but not very effective.

As for me, I sold stories, reading material.

I’d just discovered a website; it was called “scary for kids”. It was a riot, with spooky stories and legends and games. Now, 7th grade is that transitional time where spooky things that are dangerous and not supposed to happen are, well, extremely appealing. Business thrived. For meagre costs I let my friends read things other than boring Geography texts about tides and different types of climate.

During exam time, our markets took a different form.

Now, the market was that of answers.

I was the classroom nerd, and obviously, I had the most clients.

When the teacher opened the door and asked us to sit down, there was always a riot near my seat.

I solved the problem by, well, putting the seat next to me up for auction. The highest bidder got the seat and a good mark from the exam. The second highest bidder got the seat behind me, and the third, the seat in front of me. I and a bunch of other friends applied this to a bunch of other classes, but I’ll explain those in other memoirs.

The teacher, like I said, still didn’t give a damn, so it was easy to just swap papers really quickly and copy out the answers.I would hold the paper up for the bidders surrounding me.

As for me, answering the paper was really easy. Why?

Well, every day the teacher would give me her books so I’d carry them downstairs into the teachers’ lounge. She usually kept exam questions in her books. Now I know this sounds all awful and mean, but like I said, I was 12. I didn’t know much better.

I’d note them down into the notes part of my phone and give them away to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd bidders I mentioned before. I myself didn’t need much help as I already did quite well in Geography but the questions made my job easier. I needed all the time I could get to play my Facebook games.

Of course, I had a bit of trouble keeping all that money, I mean, my parents were teachers at my school and they certainly didn’t give me that much money.

How did I get past that? Why, the money is the reason I’m the best person you’ll find to hide things away.

I hid the money in the lining of my bed. It was made of cloth and very easy to rip from underneath the bed with scissors. Stuff the money in there and no one would find it, or see it even.

And so I thrived until high school, where I grew out of these businesses but grew into new ones.