WAM! Writing, Art & Music Forum

The bell rings. You’ve got 5 minutes. A straight line is not the shortest distance between two doors. Forget on time. How do you arrive alive?

The Paper Dolls

Perhaps you have learned to create these in grade school, in three steps:

(1) Fold a normal sheet of paper accordion-style
(2) Cut the figure of a person such that the arms extend beyond the edges of the paper
(3) Unfold

It is worth noting that this noun occurs always in the plural—never in the singular. Just so with Paper Doll Pedestrians, in which “Paper Doll” assumes adjectival form, appearing to be singular in form, but then immediately attaching to Pedestrians, always in the plural.

Paper Doll Pedestrians, despite initial outward appearances, never march singly but in battalions. You round a corner, and there: they march two paces ahead of you. You cannot pass, despite the fact that Paper Doll Pedestrians do not even hold hands. In fact, they swing their arms freely. Yet, how is it that they cast but one shadow? Studies are underway to determine whether the Paper Doll Pedestrians have ever held hands, and whether the singular shadow they invariably cast is a vestige from the times before they ended the practice.

Your only hope is to recognize the Paper Dolls before their unfolding. But how can you, when at this stage they are folded up single file into all outward appearances of passability? Unless you make a mad dash at more than human speed, you’ll pass by in exactly the moment of their unfolding and be forced through the wall or bang into a reef of Barnacle Bystanders or, worse, an oncoming Turtleback.

The Barnacle Bystander

As fauna go, the Barnacle Bystander is the most benign of the bestiary. It rarely moves, but like other sedentary organisms mistaken for plant life (corals, the humble sea cucumber, et al), they cannot make their own food and so, despite their relative immobility between bells, do indeed constitute a form of animal life.

Barnacle Bystanders most commonly accrete around the locked doors of late-arriving and/or absent faculty. The monopedal variety lean on walls and lockers and can remain upright for extended periods, though “extended” is relative. The life-cycle tends toward the brief and the tidal: flowing in with the first bell, ebbing out with the second.

“Benign” is also a relative term. In great enough numbers, they constrict passageways like calculus in arteries, and constitute a passive threat to passers-by. Not all are created equal: there are several subspecies. The most lethal varieties favor stairwells, where they occupy whichever step is just below a descending onrusher’s line of vision.

The Turtleback

Freed of its backpack, the average Turtleback weighs less than seven stone—about 90 pounds. After “strapping on,” its weight more than trebles. These prehistoric pedestrians have never heard of eBooks, and each textbook they carry is comparable in density to the largest Stegosaurus plate. You’ve probably heard more Turtlebacks than seen them. Those periodic low-frequency, seismic rumbles are not the building settling on its foundations. Say you are perusing the glass-cabinet displays near the English office or ILC, or perhaps studying the faces of your predecessors in the Hall of Alumni—and, almost imperceptibly, your reflection shimmers. You’d best flatten yourself against the wall, and let the Turtleback pass. It might be slower than you, but it’s coming; should you get caught behind some Paper Dolls, you’ll be ground into paste. But round a corner and see one of these in front of you? Sorry, there is no defense: the Turtleback has zero control over its wide-turn, and with a pack as solid as Renaissance marble (and possibly an even heavier roller-case tailing an arm’s length or more behind), it will slap you like a hockey puck across the academy’s polished floors. Even through the thickest Mushroom Crowd.

The Mushroom Crowd

The naive pedestrian glides past one of these as blithely as though they were passing a colony of Barnacle Bystanders. But this huddle of hallway pedestrians expands into your path with the force of a roadside IED. If you are one of those who laments the lost art of manners in contemporary society, consider that the only working solution to the Mushroom Crowd is a rude one.

The Mushroom Crowd begins as a relatively tight circle of pedestrians, held together by a common thread of conversation and an indeterminate countdown. If only the number of seconds til detonation were known, passers-by could judge whether to skirt around the Mushroom Crowd or drive straight through the “eye” at precisely the moment it bursts apart. Unfortunately for all, the countdown is unknowable to any—including the Crowd itself—and so the only reasonable thing to do is drive straight through it.

This brings us to the two types of people who confront Mushroom Crowds. Those willing to disrupt the conversations of their peers by driving straight through the middle of things; and those whose highly-evolved sense of etiquette and instinct not to interrupt leads them to walk around the crowd. This formerly advantageous social adaptation lures them into the Mushroom Crowd’s deadly periphery—and ends with them plastered against a wall in the all-consuming blast radius.

If you happen to be friends with any of these naive & considerate pedestrians, treat them well and communicate your affections now. We are living in an age of mass extinctions.

The Faith Walker

This hallway passer has commitment issues. It’s hard to spot the Faith Walker until they happen. But imagine you are standing with your colony of Barnacle Bystanders near the door of your next period class. As you wait for your key-carrying teacher (correction: any key-carrying teacher) to unlock the door, you discuss the lunch menu with a friend whose class is three or more doors farther down the hall. Without warning, your friend breaks off from the colony like a chunk of iceberg, and proceeds to drift backwards—and there you have it. Your friend is a Faith Walker.

Neither willing to table your chat until such time as you can bring your conversation to a civilized close, nor yet willing to turn face and body wholly toward their appointed room, the Faith Walker proceeds to drift backwards toward their scheduled class against the current of traffic. It’s not enough for the Faith Walker to put themselves and other pedestrians in deadly peril of collision. By continuing to chat and refusing to break eye contact, they have tacitly put their fate into your hands—as an expression of their faith in your commitment to their physical welfare, and in your personal ability—between lines of casual banter—to shout warnings and verbally steer them backwards—through the onslaught—into safe harbor.

The Stalemate

So, your teacher let you out several minutes early and you find yourself breezing along en route to the cafeteria or bookstore. Down the hall you recognize a friendly face, which bears zero resemblance to yours. What a strange thing to say, you say. I say, if this “other” is neither twin nor doppelganger, how is it they can mirror every move you make? How can they even ape—to the smallest facial detail— every amused, frustrated and irritated look you feel spreading on your own mug, unable as you are to pass, despite the kingdom of infinite space around you both? Well, perhaps no longer infinite. The bell sounds, the doors open and spill their Paper Dolls, Turtlebacks, Faith Walkers and Mushroom Crowds into the hallways.

Desperate, you gesture like a traffic cop with arm and/or tilt your head in exaggerated fashion, to show you’ve got the wall—yes!—you’ll hug the wall, so they can pass; except that your twin mistakes your gesture for giving them the wall. And you realize that a moment ago, your mirror was also gesturing, not acknowledging your gesture.

After five minutes, the hallway is yours to rule again. And your mate’s. Who says (in perfect lip synch with you), “This is getting stale…mate.”

Good luck. I hope you like each other.

It is a known fact that The Stalemate constitutes an equal drain on both time and space. NA’s Mathematics Department still hotly debates whether or not The Stalemate constitutes an unsolvable problem. Meanwhile, the school continues to build physical spaces around these instances as they occur. Such as the new wing, new middle school, and new auditorium.

Call for Sightings

Space limitations prohibit coverage of other hallway denizens (Salmon Leaper, Crowd Surfer, Boomeranger, et al). Our hallowed halls provide habitat to a wide range of species rivaling the Amazon rain forest, with new ones and others long thought extinct being discovered and rediscovered every day.

Have you seen any? Have you made it to your next period class? Please report the sighting(s) to the WAM! Blog for proper curation.