Four Ways to Walk In Late to Class

Let me guess—being late to class is the one thing you thought you could pretty much do on autopilot. There’s no trick to it. There’s no handbook. You simply stumble into class tardy, and suddenly all heads swivel in your direction, the teacher stops talking long enough to grab the attendance list and put a big asterisk next to your name, and you become that kid. But there’s more than one way to embody the heart and soul of That Kid Who’s Late to Class. In fact, there are four distinct characters you can be when the time inevitably comes:

1. The kid who bursts into the classroom at full sprint. This is that guy who's booking it down the hallway like a hero in an action movie trying to outrun a fireball. He's throwing people out of his way, face contorted with the look of the hunted. His life—nay, his very existence—has narrowed down to this one objective of timeliness. When he finally bangs the door open and inadvertently causes the whole lesson to screech to a halt, he’s not just sweating but somehow raining sweat, and also possibly crying.

2. The kid who slouches in with swag. This guy is late to class and doesn’t give a damn about it. His demeanor is dripping with the swagger of a guy who does not just eat his Fruit Loops for breakfast but defeats them handily. He also probably backflips out the door every morning into a stolen ice cream truck, then parks it in the teacher’s parking lot like a badass. Being late to class for him is not so much a mild inconvenience as it is a rite of passage into the glory of juvenile delinquency.

3. The kid who slides in inconspicuously. Ostensibly, this is the kid you want to be. He slips through the door as silent as a ninja in the nighttime. He causes no disturbance. His presence is barely remarked upon. The teacher does not spare him so much as a glance as the lesson continues uninterrupted. The students register vaguely that there’s a new addition to the amoebic blob that constitutes their classroom setting, but they simply welcome him indifferently to the blob and life goes on.

4. The kid who tries to slide in inconspicuously and fails. This guy aspires to be the inconspicuous blob-joiner, but he ruins it by doing all the wrong things. He tries to quietly close to the door behind him and instead slams it shut. He drops his backpack and the contents immediately scatter across the globe. He tries to grab a seat but his sights are set on one in the middle of a row, so he must climb over at least fifty people while also stepping on their things and smacking them in the face with his bag on the backswing. He craves the anonymity of being inconspicuous, but alas, he will always be the door-slamming, backpack-dropping entity of misfortune and tardiness.

What's your late-arrival style? Alas, I always end up as Numero 4.