War on Cruel and Unusual Heat Torture (assignment 11) Hannah Freibert

Seeing that our class moved down a single seat mid semester upon the addition of a new classmate, my seat partner changed, making the guidelines of this blog prompt a little hazy (thanks Gloria). So I take it, then, that it is my choice to write about Tommy, the former, or Alexis, the latter. For this purpose, we'll begin with Tommy.

Freibert-Gardner. "Ga" following "Fr" fairly intimately in the alphabet, I've been shoulder-to-shoulder with Tommy in many of my classes since freshmen year. However, it wasn't until last year that I learned his hidden nature. A kind kid, sure, that was obvious, but only in my AP Psychology class did I discover the true savagery that is Thomas Gardner. One of the seniors in our class, Daniel Beard, had a bit of a narcolepsy problem. Not really narcolepsy, but anyone familiar with Daniel can likely identify his tendency to sleep just about anywhere. In an attempt to combat a slumbering Daniel, our teacher once instructed Tommy to poke him with his pencil- the eraser head side implied. After one poke down and only subtle stirring to show for it, Tommy took it upon himself to turn the pencil around lead-side-up and go in for another jab (this, of course, jumping the senior awake). This became somewhat of a regular occurrence, and each time, bearing another successful awakening via Tommy's pencil.

Next semester- same class, new portables. The degree of Tommy's savagery upped a level when he became an accomplice to Noah and myself's effort to combat the War on Cruel and Unusual Heat Torture, or WOCUHT for short. For God knows what reasons, our teacher set out to turn our little portable into a sub tropic climate zone. The unbearable heat, or in my teacher's words a "comfortable" environment, sometimes tipped over 80 degrees, leaving every student in the class sweating- which I tend to avoid at all costs. However, once the room thermostat was discovered, we quickly set out to cool down the room. As you can imagine, or maybe you can't, this didn't go over well with our teacher. Even so, we persevered in the name of over heated classrooms across the world. When the coast was clear, I would give Tommy the high sign to flip the thermostat knob from "heat" to "cool", which offered a brief period of relief when the fans came on, followed almost immediately by scolding. Needless to say, the latter half of AP Psychology would not have been survived with out this crucial WOCUHT alliance.