Life Ain't Fair

I was having quite a good day actually, that Monday morning. History
had been a skive---I had ended up entertaining myself by flicking tiny
paper balls at the ceiling, as Mr Freeman had left nothing for the
supply teacher to get us to do. Maths was, admittedly, boring, though
this was made up for by the fight at break, for which practically half
the school turned up to as spectators. Chemistry was unusually
interesting, the concentration of bangs and nasty smells during the
period being significantly higher than normal. After an enjoyable
physics class, I was delighted to discover that I had tuna sandwiched
for lunch, a thing that has been known to turn the dullest of days into
something pertaining to bearable. You can hardly blame me then, with my
favourite subject, computing, as the first of the afternoon, for having
an abnormal degree of perkiness about me as I entered the
classroom.

Sitting myself at my PC, and settling myself in with a spin or two on
my comfy office chair, I logged myself in and attempted to open all the
folders in which I keep my current project, only to discover that a
'disk malfunction' had, with sickening accuracy, deleted all the files
most vital for the project I was required to hand in only two days
hence.

I was, to say the least, flabbergasted. I am sure you can forgive me
for being, to some extent, upset by the destruction of my work of the
last couple of months. In fact, the term 'flabbergasted' does very
little justice to my state of well being at that moment. All the
frivolities the day had so far possessed disappeared in a manner that
bore similarities to the behaviour of my tuna sandwiches. For a second
or two the shock reduced me to a state of total jelloid incapability;
but then I marshalled my thoughts, realising that I had to do something
if I didn't want the punishment exercise Mr Greig had promised to any
pupil who had not the organisation, the computing ability or the luck
to hand their project in on time.
I was dismayed to find that even after a good minute or two of rubbing
the old brain cells together, no brilliant solution to my predicament
was forthcoming. Head scratching, and even the last resort of typing
random letters in MS Word did nothing more to shed light on the
problems facing my now altogether terrified self. I could not possibly
re-write the reports and re-make the spreadsheets in the two periods I
had left, so I broadened my brainstorming strategy by including numbers
and symbols in my random letter chain. Before I had even the chance to
make use of the '@' sign, the bell had rung, and I was dodging through
the crowded stairwell on my way to the weekly grind of religious
education. My disappointment was deepened still further when I
discovered that there was nothing in the Bible about dealing with angry
teachers, and that Mohammed was clearly not enlightened to the extent
of knowing how to restore disappeared computing projects.

It was during dinner, half way through my chicken casserole, that I got
it. It was like the moment in between the guy snoring in the bath, and
him being half way through the air, the syllables '-re-ka' having just
escaped his lips. I would have jumped up myself, were it not for my
awareness that more than just a Greek expletive would have escaped
mine. Mums chicken casseroles are chewy, but I finished this one in
record speed, and immediately afterwards headed straight for the
phone.

With as much verbal dexterity as I could muster, I informed Robert, my
best friend, of my master plan. Once the lengthy description was
complete, I paused for dramatic effect, before asking his opinion, and
waiting for an amazed exclamation at the brilliance of my scheme, which
would, I am sure, have caused Julius Caesar to bat more than half an
eyelid. However, It seemed the phone had stopped functioning, for I was
greeted with an empty silence from the other end.

The phone, it turned out, had not in any way failed to do its job; the
failure was instead the fault of my friend's vocal chords. It appeared
that he was so shocked at the genius of my device that he had for a
brief period, of, say, ten seconds, been rendered mute.

When he finally found words to say it, his answer did strike me as a
little unusual in one struck dumb with awe. His precise words, as I
remember, were, "No, I'm not doing it!"

"You what!?!" I exclaimed, trying not to sound surprised---it doesn't
suit the military genius. "You mean to say that you are not prepared to
partake in this plan to save me from the dire threat I face? What sort
of friend are you?" (I managed to refrain from a possibly inappropriate
'art thou?')

"No." He replied, his word making up in solidarity what it lacked in
eloquence. "It's too much to ask. It's not my fault you lost your
files. Life ain't fair."

I am still attempting, with Archimedean determination, to get my head
around this idea as I lie in bed that night. Why can't he delete his
own files? After all, I wasn't given a choice.