I walked into my house in a state that could only be described as melancholic. Why? Hell if I knew, though it may have had something to do with the fact that I had expected this outcome, or perhaps because I lost 15 marks. Either way, I decided to look back over the events of that Arabic exam to see why I might be feeling like this. I mean, my father was bound to ask me a thousand questions about why I was in such a mood and what results I got. I let out a sigh and tried to recollect the events that had occurred until now. It all began on a hot summer Friday... I was at the Arabic class with my older brother like usual and everything went on as normal until the end of the lesson. However, just as everyone was about to leave, the organizer of the Arabic classes walked into the room and declared that we were to prepare ourselves for an exam that was to take place next month. Well that came out of nowhere, I thought to myself. Just to note; everyone in the class was above the age of 25, save me and my brother, who were 11 and 13. Anyway, everyone in the class began to ask him about the way the exam was going to be, what day it was going to be on and what it was going to be like. The man, self-proclaimed organizer, answered each of the above questions in turn and in answer to the final one, produced a stack of papers from the bag he was carrying and handed out some of the papers to each student.
“Here are the exams from last year that were given to the students before you. The exam you’ll have will be a lot like that so you should go over it and try and answer the questions.”
Great, I thought, something else to get in the way of my holiday. Yes, our preparation for the exams quite coincidentally crossed with my summer holidays. Well, I don’t really believe in coincidences but if I did, then this could be seen to be one.
So, me and my brother spent much of our holidays revising for the exam, driven only by the promise that if we were the top two students, we would get the latest games console. Now normally that would just drive someone into despair, I mean seriously? Get higher marks than all of the adults in the class? Hopes couldn’t seriously get vainer than that, but like the persistent weirdoes we were, we continued to revise, hoping that we could impress our parents enough that they might just let us buy the console.
Time passed all too quickly and the exam had come before I had even had a chance to enjoy the holidays. Dammit, why did they have to end so quickly? I walked into the classroom to find the teacher, who would today be the examiner as well, sitting on a chair waiting for the rest of the class to arrive. There were some of the other guys in the classroom too, helping to set out the tables. Me and my brother joined them and helped set out the rest of the tables. Naturally the caretaker, whose job it was to be doing this, sat comfortably in a chair drinking tea, watching us as we scurried around with a smug smile on his face. After we had set all the tables out and the rest of the class arrived. As we sat down everyone unanimously decided that the tables were far too dirty to be working on, so we went back into the room with the caretaker and found him reading a newspaper. We asked him where the stuff, which he clearly didn’t use to clean the tables, was. He looked up from his newspaper, smiled, and pointed to a shelf upon which we found a bottle of Mr Muscle and a cloth. I glanced back at the caretaker as we left the room. I swear I’ll wipe that stupid smile off your face once all this is over.
Everybody seated themselves at the tables after cleaning them and sat in anticipation for the exam to begin. The teacher, who had overnight become an examiner due to the lack of available staff, looked up from the book he had begun to read as we had cleaned the tables and, as tension rose in the people around me, rather anti-climatically said in a quiet voice “You can start now”. Everyone quickly turned over to the first page and began reading the first question. I looked down at my paper, sighed, then muttered to myself the following words of motivation: “I am so screwed.”
Soon the exam was over and I left the room feeling confident and proud of myself. I was jittering with energy and grinning like a lunatic. “I’ve got this”, I thought. I was so happy just then I felt like I could jump straight through the ceiling and scream out “BOOYAH!” at the top of my lungs without caring about anyone else. I walked home and ran upstairs to find my mother, my brother close at my heels with that same, crazy energy as me. I found my mother and when she saw me she asked me “How did it go?” I instantly replied “It was awesome!” at exactly the same time as my brother, which looking back at now was kinda creepy. We were about to have a group hug when I saw the wet stains underneath my brother’s armpits, either formed by the heat of the classroom or by his nervousness. Either way, I thought, I think I’ll pass.
The following week passed quickly and I found myself sitting in the Arabic class again. At the end of it the teacher announced that I had scored the highest in the class and my brother had scored the second highest. At that point I should have been happy. After all, I had achieved the impossible; I had destroyed everything that could be seen logical and scored higher than a full class of about 10 or so adults. This should have been an amazing moment, I had earned the console and proved to me and my parents how smart I was. And yet... In this big moment of triumph I still felt sad somehow.
As I came home and stepped through the door in this state of melancholy after this astonishing event, which again defied all kinds of logic and reason, I thought of those events and said to myself “meh, I guess it was just too easy”.
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