Friday, my boyfriend, Darius, coerced me into attending a high school basketball game at his school. He knew that school sporting events weren’t exactly my scene but assured me that we would only be there for all of thirty minutes. You see, he had to play saxophone in the school’s “pep band” and as it turns out, this was to be his last opportunity to ever play in the pep band. I suppose I couldn’t quite label it coercion as I did have another option. Had I completely objected to the game, my other option was to stay at home with his six younger siblings and two sick parents. The lesser of the two evils was evident.
I chose a seat on the bleachers, which I believed to be innocuous and out of the way. Ready for the game to start, a man on the microphone announced that we were in for “a real treat” at half time. Just then, a giggly party of dancers clad in tight purple and black jumpers filed into the gym. They were none other than the dance team from my rival school. They sauntered onto the bleachers and I found myself now drowning in a sea of them. I couldn’t help but scrutinize them. They all looked the same. Little skinny robots with high, ribboned pony-tails. Faces encrusted with rouge and mascara. They were girls, just the same as me, just like the girls at my school, but irrefutably different. They had an air of superficiality to them. They sat and breathed as if the worst plague God could bestow upon them was to be fat or, in this instance, to have someone like me sitting amongst them. One of the robots sitting in front of me turned around and looked me up and down. She didn’t seem to care that I could see her turning up her nose at my grungy jeans, five year-old jacket and matted hair. She exhaled imperiously. I had half a mind to take off my tattered shoe and introduce my feet to her face.
“Today, my friend and I walked around barefoot outside for a few hours,” I would say yielding half-polished toes. Oh how I would have loved to have seen them all squeal in horror as the pungent odor of my moldy shoes polluted their breathing space.
“Cannot compute! Error 404! Dimwitted malfunction!”
The band began playing “Play that Funky Music” but I could barely play out the lyrics in my head at the fault of the chatty bots. I tried to make out what they were actually saying.
“Perhaps they only looked superficial and were really speaking on something of great consequence,” the cautiously optimistic side of me pondered.
“Look at him!” One android pointed. “He’s really hot!”
“Heather! OMG, you have a boyfriend,” another retorted.
Obviously not. Just when I thought I could stand it no longer, the buzzer chimed and the band was preparing to play the national anthem. Everyone stood and faced the American flag pulled taught at one end of the gymnasium and raised their hands to their hearts. Everyone, that is, save the bots. For the most part, the only sounds that could be heard were the horns bellowing the anthem, a handful of people attempting to sing along, and shuffling of feet. Sadly, the shrill sniggers the bots didn’t bother to conceal could be heard above it all.
After the anthem was sung, I watched Darius casually stroll along the sideline right past me and the bot army. He said we would leave after he played. Where was he going? Had he forgotten me? Did he think I was enjoying myself sitting next to those insufferable dancers? Surely not. Moments later I received a phone call from Darius.
His “ready to go?” was barely discernible.
I could not quite express how eager I was to leave and escaped with much haste without another word.
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