How Does a Daffodil Survive in Winter?

i | The Queen Snake From Hell

It's funny how things work in this mortal world of ours.

For example, there's always some 40-year-old guy with a crippling mid-life crisis sitting at home on a Saturday evening watching Football games when he should be doing anything but. His wife is probably always scolding him like his mother and wondering how did he go from the 'handsome hunk' of their youth to this balding man with a beer belly. You could practically smell the impending divorce in the air.

Or the lonely cat lady who adopts an entire population of cats and names them after her toenails in hopes to fill the empty void of her life. But of course, as much as we think cats can solve all our existential problems, they're only furry little creatures who get amused by lasers.

And then there was the friendly school gardener who has a beard similar to the hedges he tends to. And the weirdest thing was, he was planting daffodil bulbs in the dead of winter. Sure, they are strong flowers that can withstand a certain harsh climate but it's not like they're made of titanium. Though the gardener seems to think that. Seriously, has this guy even gone to gardening school or wherever you go to learn the skills necessary to tend a high school garden?

And of course, the most quizzical of them all: teachers. They go on teaching when clearly, no one is listening but they just pretend like we are. They're the most unaffected people you'd ever meet. If one day a meteor was going to hit Earth or something and I was in algebra class, the last thing I'd hear before I die would be the incessant droning of the teacher as she continues to teach us about functions. It's like they go out of their ways to make the classes as boring as possible yet they wonder why so many kids just quit.

That was how life worked, you spend your life doing meaningless things in order to maintain your life so you can do more meaningless things. That's was the conclusion I came to while I was sitting at the back of the aforementioned class of algebraic hell on an empty stomach and was watching the again aforementioned gardener with the bushy beard plant daffodils.

Even after my insight into the ever-revolving cogs of life that seriously need some oiling, the class was still not over. That's when I decided to catch up on some wo- no, sleep. Well, that's what I wanted to do but a little cockroach decided to frighten my friend Julie.

"Marnie! Psst! Help!" Julie whisper-shouted at me.

My eyes were on the verge of closing as I mildly registered her frantic tone. "Hm?"

"Cockroach. AHH!"

"I'll get it." I rolled my eyes as I shuffled forward to squish the cockroach, slumping back into my seat once it was nothing but cockroach guts left on the floor.

Julie, being the drama queen she is, covered her eyes and silently shrieked. She then sighed with relief when she saw that the little bug was no longer a threat to actually, I don't know what and continued to stare at her beloved crush Zayn.

I looked down at my messy notes strewn across my desk and attempted to organise them. When that was proven to be useless, my eyes began to wander around the classroom looking at all the students and wondering what secrets they're hiding...

That's right. I am just your average high school stalker who likes to dig up people's dark pasts. Note the sarcasm. Ever since the teacher started keeping an eye on Julie and I, we were forced to limit our talking. Hence, why I was extremely un-entertained and resorted to creepily looking at the gardening guy and members of the class.

Like every other classroom filled with hormonal 16-year-olds, it was a bizarre circus featuring the teacher's pet who wouldn't shut up and jocks with smelly armpits. I wouldn't spend too long on it, after all, pretty much everyone who's ever gone to school or watched one of those high school movies knows about all the different cliques.