Press Backspace

Of Knee Jerks and Explosives


It was not a few weeks ago that I sat rather dismayed in the school canteen, and was bracing myself for the increasingly threatening AP Chemistry class looming on the horizon, its view denied to me by the school (compound). After a while I gave up trying to stare through opaque concrete and look like whatever organs in my body were responsible for generating hope had been extracted by way of liposuction, I attempted to proceed up the stairs when I was stopped by the principal in this particular course of action.

Well, I wasn't really stopped by the principal. Not directly at least, though he did hint that he would appreciate if I wasn't in my class by making an announcement calling for a gathering in the school hall, a gathering that was to be attended by a good amount of everyone.

So about five nerve wracking, nostril assaulting minutes later I found myself seated in the hall next to an entire row (or column, depending on whether you were viewing everything from a bird's eye view, which if you weren't, would mean that that particular group of students would be standing on seated one each other's shoulders) of people with bags of kimchi that were digging away at the side of their Ziploc bags with spoons they managed to sneak out of the compound's cafeteria.

This continued for a good twenty minutes or so, during which we were continuously reminded to contact anyone that wasn't here to make sure that they weren't in danger of being harmed by whatever was in the school compound (or not), not that there was necessarily any danger since that hadn't been announced yet, but it was absolutely vital that anyone missing was to be accounted for, lest they... not be here.

And after what seemed analogous to a nervous, tie-wearing, thick spectacled acountant finally getting down on his knees beside a gorgeous woman that he's known for about twenty minutes and popping the question, the administration finally called upon the superintendant from the nearby police station to give us a bit of an exposition as to why there was no reason to panic.
The reason why there was no reason to panic was that a "war relic" had been discovered in a construction site not far off from the school, and while there wasn't any danger to anyone in the school, our rather convenient distance from the war relic made us a candidate (and winner) for being a base of operations for the getting-rid-of-war-relic procedures.

And it was at that point that a good amount of atmospheric murmuring (rather loud murmuring, as the sound of over a thousand people speaking in hushed voices tends to be) was heard, though the superintendant did say that wasn't anything to be worried about and that the disposal and school hijacking procedures were completely safe to anyone that wasn't the kind of person that wanders into construction sites for no reason.

Dr Hang then concluded with the stirring instruction that we all bugger off for the rest of the day to ensure that we didn't annoy the nice policemen, save for those staying in the hostel, of course, who buggered off across the field to wander about the structural integrity of its foundations.
So that was a rather eventful episode, but what was particularly interesting was the reactions of the school population.

Before the news was broken, there was a ridiculous amount of frantic speculation, and a good number of people looking very grim and staring into the distant clouds, commenting that if the administration was doing its best to account for every single person in the school then there was sure to be a proper reason for such measures, and that reason was probably almost as grim as they were.

There was also an observable population that was rather prophetic, insisting that they had heard from credible sources that could not be named that it was most definitely a bomb that they had discovered nearby.

There was a good number of people annoyed at the twenty minute wait, and there was at least one individual that was annoyed by the nearby scent of kimchi.

The varying degree of responses to the single event of an assembly that not yet justified is interesting, and to a certain degree, amusing.

This amusement is further fed by the crowd's reactions after the reason for the assembly was revealed. Some immediately started looking for nearby exit signs while others evangelized the truth of the "war relic" being explosives. There seemed to be a recurring theme of either "the police aren't telling us the truth of what the relic is" or "the police aren't telling us that we're not actually safe". And to the latter response, you have to ask the question: Why?

Why wouldn't the authorities (a more faceless, authoritarian term for "police" here) reveal that we were in danger, and proceed to evacuate us if we were? While there existed the possiblity that they wanted to keep panicking to a minimum, there wouldn't have been much possiblity of it spontaneously detonating after it was discovered and the authorities were alerted, and there wouldn't have been any chance that they would have started working on sending it on its merry, explodey way till everyone was safely evacuated. The suspicion that the authorities or the government is hiding vital information from the people it is meant to protect/ the country's citizens is a knee jerk reaction that could potentially make someone walk funny if we aren't careful.

But maybe these suspicions are vital to maintaining the integrity of our national system. If we enquire, we open the possiblity of ignorance. But all that considered, surely we could have done that in a manner that didn't involve flailing our arms to make references to Hindu mythology.
And the twitch reaction aside, there was the rather paradoxical reaction of cheering after Dr Hang declared the rest of the day to be absolutely nothing. It was a rather impressive leap from people construction conspiracy theories and fearing for their lives to overall cheerfulness at the prospect of a break for the rest of the day.

That was nowhere near the leap of witnessing my entire cluster gather in a single room and cheering at the aftermath of the bomb actually being disposed off in a completely un-subtle fashion. And as I stood there trying to get a glimpse of the disappointingly, not-very-devastated construction site, I thought to myself, we sure have strange selection of responses to the prospect of adversity.