Cleanliness is nothing next to the making of a perfect face

By Emily Cummings

Everybody’s been there: It’s fifth period and you’re almost late for class. You’ve just entered the building after lunch and you’ve got three minutes to get to the bathroom before the bell rings. You start out down the hall and you’re making good time.

And then ... you enter ... The Zone.

Your efficient walking pace is reduced to a slow crawl. Suddenly you’re trapped in a sea of teenagers who are pushing and shoving and standing in the middle of the hall talking. They’re all around you. You can’t move. You have five miles to walk to your next class, and you really need to get to the bathroom. You lower your head, determined to push through the crowd. It’s like blazing a trail through an overgrown rain forest. A large, scary guy stops to talk to his buddy and you slam right into his backpack.

As you inch along, checking for blood, you notice a sticky sound when you shuffle your feet. Someone has thoughtfully dumped a can of Dr. Pepper on the floor and you’ve walked right through it. What a creative and effective use for this beverage. Not only is it a great drink, but it offers tons of fun for the hundreds of people who get to walk through it on their way to class. Great job, guys — way to put that unique imagination to work.

As you continue on your journey, you remem-ber that you’ve been late to class four times this quarter and the next one means Saturday school. So you pick up the tempo and try to get past the mass of people in front of you. But nobody’s moving. Do these people go to school here? Don’t they have classes to get to? Are they exempt from the attendance policy?

Here at Flathead High, we have a mere five minutes for travel time between classes. If you happen to be going from one wing of the building to the other, five minutes will hardly get you to class in an empty hallway. Put about 1,600 kids between you and the bathroom and you’ll never make it.

You shove your way into the bathroom. There are about 20 people packed into the tight quarters, and you have to stand in line for a few moments. Soon you’re in, and you do your thing. But time is running short. You still have to go up two flights of stairs and down to the math wing. But don’t panic. All you have to do is wash your hands and you can continue on your journey up to class.

This is when the real fun starts.

There are people in your way, crowding the mirrors, pushing and elbowing you aside. And what are they doing there? What life-changing activity are they participating in? What incredibly difficult job could demand so much undivided attention? What global and economic issues are they concentrating so much on?

Their hair.

They are fixing their hair.

Applying new lipstick, and touching up makeup, and styling their eyebrows. Ah, yes. Forget about education. Forget about going to class. Forget about health standards. People don’t really need to wash their hands after using the bathroom. Cleanliness is not a necessity. We could be spreading the plague around this school and no one would be able to stop it because it’s impossible to get to a sink to wash your hands.

Didn’t we learn anything from medieval Europe?

As you stand there, waiting for the mob to open up near a sink, you look around at the crowd of upcoming makeup artists. The thought occurs to you that it’s possible that there’s more to be concerned about in the world than the plucking of eyebrows. World peace. Civil war. Drought. There are more important issues that deserve such heartfelt devotion. And how do these people manage to end up with 15 minutes between classes to fix their hair when the rest of us have to book it just to beat the bell? The world is baffled by this extraordinary phenomenon. 

Giving up in frustration, you look at your  watch, it’s now 12:37. The bell has rung. You’ve just won a fun-filled vacation to next week’s Saturday school. You are a good citizen. You don’t deserve such mistreatment. All you were trying to do was help out the National Health Organization by promoting cleanliness and washing your hands.

As you walk dejectedly up the stairs to class, you take a moment and reflect on the world’s injustices. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that there are about 20 other girls who are also late for class. Some of them will probably join you at Saturday school. But who knows — they might be excused. Their teachers could be more lenient, a bit more understanding.

Everyone knows that there are important issues that kids have to deal with in today’s world. Growing up in our society is tougher than it used to be. After all, we don’t just have global warming and starvation on our minds.

We have to worry about the shade of our lipstick and the condition of our eyebrow hairs.