Education and FanNation: Vol. 3 (Note Passing)
3) Note Passing- FanMail
Your heart pounds a hole through your chest and leaps up your throat, temporarily chocking your restless nerves. Your palms begin to sweat profusely and you feel like everyone is watching every move you make. Your eyes shift from side to side, making sure that no one catches you at your dirty business. Your stomach curls into a dozen knots, a gnarled mess that nothing could possibly unravel. Nothing, that is, until your mission is accomplished. Until that messed up wad of paper gets across the room to its recipient. Until you get the "signal" (usually a cough, nervous laughter, incessant foot tapping, a raspberry, etc.) that all is clear and there is no need to worry; the note has been deployed safely. Only then can you alleviate your lungs of the terrible task of holding your breath for 15 extremely uncomfortable seconds.
All this occurs because of the intensely dangerous task of passing a note during class without any mishap. These startling types of behaviors are the reasons why I still have a job to keep (an anthropologist by trade, if you had no clue). I mean, why risk losing several hours from your life just to chat with a friend during class when you can talk to them all you want before the class or after school? Then again, that's why I'm here; I'm supposed to analyze human behavior and attempt to make sense of them. And believe me... it's hard enough to decipher the regular human mind; how much more the teenage, hormone charged perverted mind?
One of the things that I've gathered from persistent observation of habitual note passers is that they pass notes just for the thrill of the action. The odds of the note containing anything remotely crucial are little to none; the note usually contains witty little jokes that demean the teacher or someone the note passers deem socially inept. I guess these little adrenaline seekers get a little high off of the danger that the teacher may actually confiscate their note or the subject of their note intercepting it. But throughout the years, kids have actually gotten sneakier- the art of note passing has actually evolved. Just recently, my friend passed a note to me by placing the alleged note inside an Orbit gum package. Another trick is to simply walk to the desk of the said classmate and giving it to them; teachers hardly notice anything these days.
How does note passing relate to FanNation, you may ask. Well, it's simply through FanMail! FanMail (aka FM) is where the citizens of FN can chat with each other individually and privately. When an FNer isn't comfortable talking about a particular matter with another FNer under the public eye, FanMailing is the panacea for all their problems. In fact, FM is a lot more sophisticated than regular note passing. One can actually FanMail an entire group of people the same message, thus stimulating a conversation with the members of the group that you sent the FM to. Examples of these types of FMs are mostly Spam mail (like begging for votes on TDs) but some may actually have value. But don't let the privacy of FM fool you; people can still "intercept" your message. That only happens if you're talking to two or more people at once and those people are talking to each other as well. Here's a crystal example:
Conversation with Loser:
Re: Howdy Anonymous 05/19/08 21:11:52
Replied at: 05/19/08 21:12:33
Anonymous said:
Eh. I'm just telling him parts of what you're saying. This is funny. He's all bragging that he told on me, when I told you that I told him.
Cheyenne Frontier Rodeo Days
