“What do you wanna do right now?”

“I dunno.  How ‘bout you?  What do you wanna do right now?”

“I dunno.”

“I’m gonna go see what Allison’s doing.”

“Okay.”

…

“I thought you were gonna go see what Allison’s doing.”

“Nah.”

“Okay.”

“Lunch is almost over.”

“Okay.  I’m gonna go cry in the bathroom before I reapply my mascara.”

“Okay.  Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

Our English teacher paces the classroom, walking over to each desk and staring intently at the student’s work before continuing on around the room.  “Class, we need to have a discussion,” he announces suddenly, pacing his way up to the front of the classroom.  "I’ve noticed that the class’ grades have been falling rapidly since we began reading The Odyssey.  Care to tell me why?”

One of my classmates pipes up.  “It’s because we all hate the stupid Odyssey.  I mean, why do we all have to know about the suitors coming for Polyphemus?  I’ll bet Homer hates Polyphemus anyway, and she should really divorce him and start going out with Tiresias.  Now that would be a real story.”

“Yeah!  I don’t care that Tiresias dies and Homer inherits his fortune and we find out that she was just really greedy all along, and then the Locust-Eaters come and eat all her crops.”

“And then Elpenor has to come in and kill all the Locust-Eaters, so the locusts all eat the crops, and Homer nearly starves to death.”

“And then Helios comes and give Homer wisdom and tells her to go kill the goddess of cows to get the locusts to stop.”

“And Zeus comes home to Ithica and falls in love with Homer, so he decides to trap her on his island forever.  Really, we all couldn’t care less about the whole thing.”

“And this is why you all need to read The Odyssey,” our teacher says with a bemused expression on his face.

“Why?” my class groans in a chorus.

“Oh, no reason.  You forgot that Odysseus kills Homer for the hand of Polyphemus.”

“Oh yeahhh!”  One of my classmates, the first one to speak up, slaps her forehead.  “I forgot about that part!”

“Yeah!” all my classmates agree.  “Thanks, Mr. S.  We forgot that part, and that’s the most important part of the story!”

“Well, get back to reading, then,” Mr. S. says.  “You don’t want to miss anything else.”

“Nope,” all my classmates agree, smiling uneasily.  “We’ll just go back to reading again.”

As my classmates go back to staring down at the cell phones on their laps, one of my classmates whispers triumphantly, “Nailed it.”