Words of Play (Open)

[Deleted]

When she had first started learning Russian, Pauline thought that she’d never get the hang of it. Russian was just so different from English, so difficult. But a whole year of being immersed in the language had shown her that learning it wasn’t impossible, just challenging. A great deal of repetition was needed, and no small degree of determination. There had been countless mistakes both funny and frustrating, and her accent was still pretty terrible, but she could now maintain a conversation! Granted it would be a fairly limited in content, but conversation none the less. But it didn’t matter how good or how bad you were, the teachers still gave out homework indiscriminately. The worksheet she had been given was kinda boring, full of grammar and sentence structures. Grammar is boring no matter what the language. After only ten minutes the margins on the side were full of (carefully not quite completed) doddles and scribbles that meant nothing more than an expression of her boredom. Why couldn’t they give them something fun to learn? Like a song? They didn’t learn as many songs as she would’ve liked. Maybe songs were only something they taught little kids at school, yes that would be it. Why would adults need to know songs about wheels on the busses or if they were happy and they knew it? With a resigned sort of sigh Pauline tried to focus on her worksheet. For perhaps two minutes she worked diligently until she looked out the window of her dorm, and had what was probably the bestest idea she'd ever had. Until her next idea. Leaving her worksheet and grabbing an exercise book she ran out of the dorm and clattered down the stairs. Normally she’d walk around the corridors a bit more gracefully but this was too good of an idea to be concerned about appearances. The schoolyard was separated from the outside world by a wall as big as several adults. Any person with half a brain could see that climbing it was impossible. But occasionally the schoolkids did loose things over it, footballs mostly, the odd pencil case. Pauline knew herself to be as good as any of the boys in football and probably better than a lot of them. So there was no reason why she couldn’t send something over the wall. Now what to send? Hmm, a football? Too big. A shoe? No she needed those. A tennis ball? Perfect! There were always several lying around and it wasn’t hard to find one. Next she tore a piece of paper from the back of her exercise book and wrote down the words “Hello! I’m Pauline. I live in the School. What’s your name?” After a moment’s thought she repeated the sentance Russian (she was in Russia after all) and wrapped the paper carefully around the tennis ball. Her message was then sent off and over the wall with a well-aimed kick. Pauline hugged herself in excitement and jumped up and down. This was just like sending a message in a bottle! Maybe pirates would reply to her, or ninjas, that would be so cool! Hopping impatiently from one foot to the other Pauline waited for a reply, surely someone would find it.

Word count: 564 Tags: I'm slightly bored and playing a game.