I was in school deciding what path to choose, but before making the step I was told I had to wrote an essay on the tale of Cinderella. Some how I managed to get away with not doing it.
In High School I was bullied, I was mostly oblivious to this, but then one day arriving to a crowded classroom and noticing the usual loud chatter, I saw a couple looking into my eyes and one of them threw me a small stone. I confronted them and he confirmed that nobody liked me and that they just wanted me to go. I told him he must not throw things to me even if he did not like me. He looked at me with contempt, like of course it was ok to throw things at me. I confronted a couple more, with the same results, and then I noticed that on the rows, at the left, all the pupils were getting up and leaving. The rest of the class seemed orderly waiting. My things were on a table on the second row to the left, and to get to them, I had to walk against the human tide that was already forming. Then a boy with long hair grabbed my jumper from my table, seemingly with the intention of walking off with it, stealing it. I caught him just in time and grabbed him and the rest of my things before any one else would steal them. He wanted to run away and I had to shove him to face me. I demanded to know why he wanted to steal my jumper and he said things in line with the previous bullies, I wanted my jumper back, he said ‘I gave it away’. I grabbed his bag and looked for anything valuable, he seemed to be accepting this. I just kept his bag and hold him I’d return it when he got my jumper back. He seemed resigned to the idea that my jumper would not return and nor would his bag. We went out of the classroom, each in a different direction, and somehow, I saw him again at the exit of the building. A crew was filming and they were asking for extras. We both volunteered but we didn’t talk to each other. The crew just wanted footage of the entrance of the school with people walking, passing by about their business. I walked from left to right, he walked from right to left, so we walked in opposite directions. Some of the other extras walked in groups, or pairs, I just saw myself walking on my own. When it was finished they wanted another take. I thought they would want different extras but the second take but they said it was ok, we could just walk in a different direction, just returning to where we had started. Again I crossed my path with the jumper bully. I arranged my bag and his, and my hat, in a different way, so I almost looked like a different person, for the benefit of the shooting.
The next day we still had to go to class. I could work on my own but I could also work in pairs or groups. I joined a group that I thought would also want to do as little as possible of the requirements. We wrote down the requirements, each counted for so many points and we had to reach a minimum amount of points.
One of the lines ended with the word ‘essay’. That single line increased the amount of work required massively, it was more work than all the other lines put together; the rest were just little tasks. We tried to talk to the teacher to get away with not doing the essay. We could not. I thought, what an irony that I got away with not doing the essay last time round and now I have an even bigger one. The tittle of the essay required was: ‘The Myth of Cinderella and how it relates to recruitment of Christians by ISIS’