T.G.I. Friday

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

Brock Hall, room 333. If I lay my head on my wrist, I can hear my watch measuring out the few remaining seconds of the week.

Tick, tick.

The professor slides a printed transparency onto the old-fashioned overhead projector and begins gesturing at the screen with an old-fashioned pointing stick that, judging from the look of it, he might have obtained by yanking the antenna off a boom box. He's droning on in his quiet, comforting, mister rodgers-ish voice about money supply and the banking process.

Gesture, gesture. Drone, drone. Pause.

Sometimes, I like to imagine my mental focus as a person doing some sort of task. Right now, I'm imagining my concentration as a rock climber. He's hanging by his fingertips from a tiny ledge with nothing below him for hundreds of feet.

Tick, tick.

I look over at the clock and picture it in an old-fashioned western. When there's a gunbattle at high noon, the clock conveniently makes an enormous tocking sound at the moment when it strikes noon. Of course, I'm counting down the seconds 'til 11:50, not noon... but still.

Tick, tick, TOCK.

11:50.

Drone, drone.

Apparently, class isn't stopping at 11:50 today. I, however, am. I've worked hard and paid attention all week, and I'm spent. The mountain trembles ever so slightly, and the rock climber loses his grip, beginning freefall.

Drone, drone. Gesture, drone.

The climber continues his freefall, when suddenly his rope snaps taut and his descent is stopped by the sound of...

Silence.

Hallelujah, the weekend has arrived.