Boarding School Tales: Furniture Dramas

JS2 was a fun year. Not only did my BFF become a boarder and get posted to my dorm, her older sister who was in SS3, was also in our dorm. I tell you, yea though we walked through the valley of the shadow of death, we feared no evil! There was no trouble we found ourselves in that she didn’t rescue us from…and the troubles were many.

One Saturday evening after dinner, the furniture prefect summoned all JS2 girls to the assembly hall to arrange the chairs for the church services the following day. While the task wasn’t that bad, it was the timing that sucked. What lover of life and good things wants to spend Saturday evenings unstacking chairs and sweeping a large dusty hall?! It was also inter-house sports season so marchers were marching day and night on the stretch of road that connected the school gates. It was dark and no one was interested in going to arrange chairs.

There was no night prep on Saturday nights so unless there was a social or you were avoiding seniors, people tended to hang out in the boarding house area.  As a mass of us grudgingly headed to the assembly hall, some of us got side tracked by the marchers marching. For those of you that know, QC marching was so cool…or at least we thought it was. Instead of carrying on to the assembly hall like we had been instructed to, we stood by the road watching Obasa (blue house) marchers practice. The senior in charge of the marchers was not pleased to see us.

“Junior girls, leave this place.”

We shuffled a few centimetres and stayed put.

“Junior girls, I said leave this place!”

Again we shuffled a few centimetres and stayed put.

“All of you standing there, kneel down.”

Not good. Not only had we gotten into trouble with this senior, if the furniture prefect found us there, we’d be toast. For those of us with the courage, there was only one thing to do…run! As we made to kneel, I whispered to my BFF, “run!” As if on cue, a number of us took to our heels and sprinted all the way to assembly hall, swiftly blending in with those already there.

It didn’t take long for the senior to come looking for us. Thankfully, it was dark so she couldn’t identify us.

“If you were just watching the Obasa marchers, come here.”

Beans!

A few people fessed up but I had no desire to be punished that night so I stayed put. My darling BFF, who I had to lend my spine several times in our teenage years, began to tremble next to me.

“Should we just go out? What if she catches us?”

I eyed her in response.

Satisfied that she had enough scapegoats, the senior left with the fallen soldiers.

The furniture prefect, apparently fed up with having to chase us around every Saturday night, decided she wanted to punish the entire year group. After arranging the furniture, we were all summoned to quadrangle to kneel. The hustle for the concrete was real! Quadrangle was a large square divided into quarters by stretches of concrete. If you weren’t kneeling on the concrete, you were kneeling on wet sand/grass and whatever crap people had chucked over the balconies that day.

My BFF and I swung by our dorm to drop off our stuff before heading for quadrangle. As we were about to head back out, her sister asked us where we were going.

“We are going to quadrangle. Senior Safia punished all JS2 girls.”

“Go and sit down. If she asks you why you weren’t there, tell her you were with me.”

And that ladies and gentlemen, was how we escaped that punishment.

Thanks be to God.