Paranormal activity: APUSH comes a-knockin’

‘Twas a Tuesday night in early October, and all was quiet and  dark, save for one flickering light. A bitter wind howled through the streets, debris slapped against my window pane and an ominous shadow loomed over me. I heard an eerie scratching and then a door creak, and I jumped in fright.

My heart rate slowed once I saw that it was only my mother who had opened the door, checking to see when I would finish my homework, which, I thought, consisted of AP Biology, trigonometry, and of course, studying for anything and everything.

OK, I’ll admit that the howling was caused by a filter my dad had put in my room, and the spooky sounds were just my dog’s nails at the door, but I remained unhinged, for the sinister shadow cast by the mountain of homework on my desk was nothing short of a nightmare. And this pile of homework I had to conquer before class the next morning only seemed to be growing while the clock ticked away.

Let’s flashback to 9:30 that evening, when I had just gotten home to start my homework. At that point, homework was the furthest thing from my mind. I was starving, and so I slashed open a pack of beef-flavored ramen (desperate times call for desperate measures).

Little did I know that my inhaling its MSG and trans fat marked the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of the endless horror that became my night. At around 10:30 p.m., satiated with a mediocre meal and the latest gossip I could glean from Facebook, I was ready to get to that trigonometry and AP Bio homework. For the time being, all was under control.

Then, at 1:53 a.m., I got a text. My friend frantically asked, “Did you do APUSH homework yet?” I felt a terror blaze through my body. Due once a week, APUSH homework was the spectre that had been quietly gliding about in my mind, present, but not yet a threat … until now. I had, it seemed, wrongly assumed that the homework was due next week and so naturally, this simple question from my friend catapulted my brain into a numbing paralysis.

APUSH homework. Due. Tomorrow.

The clock flashed 1:57 a.m. No, it was due today, in approximately nine hours.

The feeling of dread crept up my spine more rapidly now, and it was not long until I was elbow deep in amendments, taxes and battles, and I could sense the cold clasp of the Constitutional Convention at the nape of my neck.

At 4:03 a.m., fed up with conflicts of a budding democracy, I slammed my textbook shut, resolving to get at least three hours of sleep before waking up to wrap up my last theme paragraph. And I did.

At 8:40 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I trudged to school, homework done, ready to start the day. Upon my arrival, the friend who had sent me that night-ruining text bounded up to me, peering curiously at my drawn face and ringed eyes. “Did you really do the homework?” she wondered.

In that horrific moment, I realized the implications of her question: The homework wasn’t due until next week.