Yellow (editing)

The Perks of Being Melodramatic

If St. Hemling taught me anything about public education, it was that late assignments make your life miserable. And unfinished assignments (aka: assignments that are months late) make your life a living hell. That's all I learned, really, even though every minute of everyday I was supposed to be learning about how to be a better Blind Citizen in a world of Non-Blind Citizens, and how to survive on my own with only a white cane plus a tiny shred of dignity, and on top of that, constantly reminded that I need to tap into my inner "Great Blind One". What's ironic is that in order to prepare for my amazing future, the work I needed to do would most likely kill me before I actually had time to do great things to fulfill my life changing purpose. Or, give me enough time to change who I am during highschool, because I spent approximately 75 percent of my lunch everyday being lectured by my teachers for never doing anything at all; which, I admit, is fair and very true.

I suddenly bumped into a strawberry scented fluff of hair.

"Marybeth?"

"Finn! I'm coming over for the project, right? It is due in two days."

"Um, yeah, of-of course," I said quickly, trying to cover up the fact that I had completely forgotten. We were standing next to the front doors of St. Hemling, which opened every minute or so, discharging chattering students. I moved closer to Marybeth to avoid getting trampled over.

"Get out of my hair, you idiot. Don't you know what personal space is? We learned it in kindergarten." Her tone switched within a millisecond, and I quickly backed up a few steps. Her curly hair stopped tickling my face.

"We're still friends, right?" I whispered to her, jokingly. She scoffed.

A car beeped and I heard my name being called, so we walked towards the sound.

"Hi Finny! How was school? Who's this?" My mom asked.

"Who's who?" I replied.

"The girl standing right next to you, honey."

"Oh, she's my number one fan! Biggest fan! She sent me some fan mail the other day and ever since-"

"Hi, Mrs. Annson," Marybeth cut me off as politely as one can and I opened the car door for her, stifling a laugh. "Finnegan and I are partners for our Future Preparations class project. I hope you're okay with me coming over to work on it; Finn and I have planned his for a while now."

"Oh! Of course! Finnegan didn't tell me that he had a project due," my mom accused, her voice diminishing by the end of her sentence.

We both hopped onto the car, and I could tell that my mom was extremely unamused with my behaviour so I didn't crack any jokes on the ride home. In fact, I hardly spoke. It was all Marybeth. Strangely, she was the type of person that chats endlessly whilst the car is moving (I typically am not). She had a full-blown conversation with my mom about racial privileges, which affected her grandmother tremendously and also affected her and her family on a daily basis. My mom told her that she had great potential to be the face of the Blind People of Colour, and that made Marybeth very happy - I could hear it in her voice. My mom then directed the topics of futures at me and by that time I had decided that humour was indeed needed as a defence mechanism. That made my mom even more irritated with me.

Our car rolled onto the driveway and my mom opened the door for us, after she searched for her keys for a long time. The moment we walked through the door, Marybeth made herself at home. My mom left us alone and Marybeth quickly but quietly set out all of the things we needed for our project on my kitchen table, for example: my braille machine, paper, and... well, that's all because we were unable to really use any other school supply (because of blindness, of course). I went to the fridge and got us both juice boxes so that we could tap into our inner motivated-school-loving child.