The world’s most oblivious robbery

Past

Remember the time when we all could go outside without masks on and without the six feet restrictions? Yeah! Those were the days. I liked going to Teens in Print, personally. Now we only meet through Discord. I’ve made some good memories with them last year. We even celebrated at the Boston Globe! It was a nice experience. But now that we have covid..I feel like it made my anxiety worse. I feel more comfortable online now rather than in person. It’s going to take me some getting used to once we get back to hybrid. You know, it was nice, not having my glasses constantly fog up. Everytime I put on a mask I would have to adjust it multiple times just to get that right angle so that I can see better without all that fog.  I liked not having to face such warm air against my skin in a claustrophobic situation. Masks make me feel stuffy. I liked not living in fear whenever I was in areas with more than three people at a time, sun basking without a mask and complaining about how I don’t want to go to Brasil. Now I just know how boring my summer is whenever I don’t go. There’s still so many reasons why I dislike that place, though. Anyways, last year was really important to me. I was entering highschool for the first time in my life. I was starting new, and meeting new people. Too bad in-person learning was cut short for me right as things were about to take off.

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Present

Setting: Discord chat & call. 

3:44 “Are you feeling photo essays or TikTok?”

I clicked on the discord poll over and over again but it wouldn’t let me.

3:45 “I can’t do tiktok…”

3:46 “Ooh, that’s good to know, Michaelle.” I’m guessing Jasmine only thinks that because they must assume I deleted the app and can no longer install it. Little did they know, my comment was more of a, “There’s no way in hell I’d do a TikTok — I can’t dance, when I try to be funny it’s forced and NOT funny. I’m a cringy mess, and extremely awkward. There’s no way, NO WAY I’d expose myself like that.”

3:46 “It won’t let me vote,” A wrote. 

3:47 “Same,” I texted.

3:47 “I still can’t,” L wrote .

3:47 “Same” I texted again, faster than a person could ever copy and paste. Off chat and on call, J was giving all of us access. 

3:48 The discord poll pops up again. “Photo essay or tiktok?”

3:48 “Uhh —” J tells everybody through the call to type it in the chat instead, the old fashion way.

3:48 “Photo essay.” 

3:49– 2 other people picked photo essay (A and L).  Hmm..I see we have the same taste. 

3:54 “I have not done a diary entry before,” yet now I try to do it after I saying that. 

3:59 I wonder what I’ll eat when I’m done with this. J laughed and reacted to my comments so I typed “4:01-4:02 appreciating J’s feedback and compliment.” I lowkey felt like I pushed it right there, there were no more laughs T_T (my cringy self has to stop).

4:43 I’m doubting that this topic even sounds interesting.

4:46 Oh yeah… my editors will definitely make me cut some parts out.

4:50 Me doubting this topic even more… Would anyone read this?

4:58 I scratched my head as I continued to type this. Ah yes. Such boring content.

5:02 “It is 5:00 and I want to check how you’re going…” J interrupted my thoughts through a call. 

It is now 5:30, I have successfully put some pão de queijo in the oven to leave for about 40 minutes. Then I played with my mom’s arms in the living room, I know that kind of sounds weird, but I was just messing around with her. To be more descriptive, I was all jumpy and wanted to dance so I stood right in front of singing rain on me by lady gaga ft. Ariana. My mom was sitting down and I grabbed her arms and started waving them like a lunatic. Now it’s 5: 35 and I shall momentarily take my leave. I have to finish writing a narrative that’s due today. Although, I shall pause for a break tonce my cheese ball breads are out of the oven. Bye!~

6:09 I’m grabbing that pão de queijo of mine.

6:11 I’m sad. Pão de queijo is not done yet, apparently they’re still not fully cooked. Usually 40 minutes would be enough time but that probably only works with the last oven I had previously used — the one before I moved houses. 

6:20 My mom freaked me out as I was about to reply to my teacher’s comment.

6:32 I have succeeded in the grab and go of the pao de q; I shall now feast! Also, I made sure to reply to my teacher’s comment. 

7:03 I got a call from my teacher right when I was about to call my dad. My teacher had asked me if I was joining the meeting. I had completely forgotten that I had scheduled a parent teacher conference meeting with him on Tuesday (today) at 7:00. I now finished the conference zoom call at 7:29. So far, my report card has one pass, two A’s and the rest are all A+’s. 

10:08 I don’t know what happened. I was doing some school work and then watching some videos as background noise for doing work while listening to Japanese music, and now I just finished drawing my characters. 

12:03 I turned in my narrative at EXACTLY 11:59. I’m hurt because it says it was turned in late. I’m gonna go take care of myself and sleep. Peace! 

10:31 on a Thursday. I was supposed to continue writing this yesterday, oops, my bad. Now I can’t even finish writing down our Discord conversation because I don’t have permission to view past messages — not that it was anything interesting, but I wanted to get to the part where J shared a link to one of my pieces as an example. I wanted to use that as a shameless plug, lol. Anyways I’m going to edit my short story now. Peace! 

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11:43 on a Saturday. I’ve been prolonging this for so long. I’m the BEST, aren’t I?

Basically I woke up at 11:30 and got up at 11:44. I ended up leaving my house today at 1:00 after my father brought me breakfast. We went to the mall, he was supposed to get me my Christmas present but it was out of stock. It’s not like it’s the end of the world, though.

We also went to American Eagle and Bath and Body Works to get my mom presents for both her birthday and Christmas. It was raining the whole entire day. We were in Macy’s, right? My dad went to the men’s section to get himself some stuff. While I was looking around, I noticed the waterproof sneaker boots that my mom and I wanted to get him. We couldn’t get it in the last store because they were also out of stock, so while my father wasn’t looking I would secretly take a picture of it behind his back, and everytime he would look my way I would swiftly move like a ninja and act like nothing was going on. Then I noticed people next to me and thought “Man I probably looked mad sus on cameras, the people next to me probably thought the same.”

Even funnier story —.my dad and I were leaving Macy’s, and as we simultaneously crossed with a couple entering the store, the store made one of those beep sounds. We paused and thought “that’s weird, it must be them.” 

So, we almost walked around the entire mall. When we reached a store called “SuperDry” we split up. Once I walked to my dad’s side, he sounded so serious — he was like “Michaelle! Lets go!” I was like, “Did i do something wrong?” 

He said, “I forgot to pay for these two shirts…” 

I was like, “::no mouth, only eyes emoji face right here::” you know..the one that’s shocked and has nothing to say.  

If you’re still confused — previously, in Macy’s, before the whole sneaky ninja photos thing, my father had chosen two shirts to buy. But we must have gotten distracted and forgot that we had to pay. This WHOLE time, we’ve been walking around with two unpaid shirts. I was like, ”How come I didn’t notice before? I was right next to you the whole entire time!” 

Guys, I SWEAR I had no idea. My father literally walked around with two shirts on his right shoulder. His RIGHT SHOULDER! No wonder that couple was looking at us as we crossed paths — and you know the stupidest part? The fact that we walked out of Macys without anyone stopping us. We passed security, but no one did anything. Were the people on cameras not paying attention? We were so chill, we could have won a best actor award for not making things obvious if we intended to steal, but we were completely oblivious! It was weird. Actual robbers get caught slippin’ every time they try to run, but we, non-robbers, walked out with UNPAID MERCHANDISE completely unaware and were NOT stopped. Even the perfume counter ladies noticed. 

My father told me that when we were in SuperDry, he only noticed the shirts once he looked in the mirror. That’s when it dawned on him that he forgot to pay. I’m dead. Imagine if he never checked the mirror at that store?  We probably would have gone home with two free shirts. I’m guessing the shirts on his shoulder were too light, so he ended up forgetting they were actually there. Anyways, we were not stopped by the police and we quickly rushed back to pay. Then we grabbed some grub and went home. What an eventful day.

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Future

So.. that was basically the gist of my life now. Everything through either chat or call.

I’m kind of worried I’ll have to stay like this for at least two more years. Even though we can still talk to each other online, these tech issues are not it. Now I’m procrastinating. I still have some work left to do, but this weather is so cold and it makes me want to stay under the covers and be lazy. I just hope I can go back to hybrid learning so that I can get my act together and hopefully stop procrastinating again.