Writer's Block: Five-Finger Discount
One occasion absolutely springs to the front of my mind. God, I loved year seven...
Year Seven was the second and last year I spent at King's, and it was the better of the two. I definitely consider it one of the best years of my schooling so far. One of the things that led to the year's awesomeness was 'Sapville', a life-simulation game that we played in term 4 of year 7.
In Sapville, each person gets a job (the quality of the job depending on the behavior of the student throughout the year) and is paid weekly wages. They then have to use the money they are paid to pay bills, buy a car, and for other life expenses such as insurance. Students could 'marry' each other, sue each other and go to 'court', and people could auction off -anything- they wanted for the coveted Sapville money. In Sapville, those with a good, high-paying job such as the insurance broker, car salesmen, lawyer and doctor, were very well off and could afford to buy the most expensive cars and throw their money around at auctions. Those like myself who were less well-behaved during the year and thus got the last choice out of jobs avaliable were much less affluent.
I ended up a librarian, which was one of the worst, lowest-paying jobs possible.
I was, to put it simply, broke. Unfortunately, the world of Sapville did not treat me kindly. In the game, everybody had to buy a car, no exceptions. (This is how the damn car salesman- Birch- got so rich.) I was broke. I had to take out a loan to buy the car. And, naturally, I could not afford to pay back the loan.
I was not the only person in this position, as many of my fellow badly-behaved students were also in dire need of money. Our trickster of a teacher dangled threats before us- we were all under the impression that we would be kicked out of the game if we did not pay our debts. Every week, we would be stricken with fear that we would be kicked out of Sapville, forced to watch the rest of the class enjoying themselves while our poor souls sat bored in the corner.
Eventually, we decided we could not put up with being booted out of Sapville. We had tried our hardest to come up with the funds, and couldn't pay our debts. A group of us pov kids were straggling behind the rest of the class before PE, and found ourselves alone in the classroom.
I remember myself, Katina, Big V, Lauren and Matt being there, and others were probably present as well. We were all poor and desperate for Sapville money. We had previously tried to break into our teacher's vault of Sapville money, the place were he kept all the money used in the game. It was, however, locked firmly away, and try as we might we couldn't find the key anywhere. Standing in the classroom, we spotter Amber's Sapville wallet lying under her desk. It was open. A bundle of $500 notes were poking out of the wallet.
Now, remember, the poor people were the ones without good jobs, and the ones without good jobs were the badly behaved children who didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with taking some of Amber's money. Matt was rich already- he was the insurance broker- so he didn't need to steal, but the rest of us took around $2000-3000 dollars each to pay off our debts and secure our future position in Sapville. We all vowed we would never snitch on each other. We never did.
Our teacher asked me where I got all the money to pay off the debt from, incredulous that an impoverished person such as myself could afford to pay my debts so easily and quickly. I don't remember what I said to that. But we never got caught (unfortunately for Sammy the lawyer and Michael the cop; they would have made a killing from the case).
Did I feel guilty? Never. =]
Year Seven was the second and last year I spent at King's, and it was the better of the two. I definitely consider it one of the best years of my schooling so far. One of the things that led to the year's awesomeness was 'Sapville', a life-simulation game that we played in term 4 of year 7.
In Sapville, each person gets a job (the quality of the job depending on the behavior of the student throughout the year) and is paid weekly wages. They then have to use the money they are paid to pay bills, buy a car, and for other life expenses such as insurance. Students could 'marry' each other, sue each other and go to 'court', and people could auction off -anything- they wanted for the coveted Sapville money. In Sapville, those with a good, high-paying job such as the insurance broker, car salesmen, lawyer and doctor, were very well off and could afford to buy the most expensive cars and throw their money around at auctions. Those like myself who were less well-behaved during the year and thus got the last choice out of jobs avaliable were much less affluent.
I ended up a librarian, which was one of the worst, lowest-paying jobs possible.
I was, to put it simply, broke. Unfortunately, the world of Sapville did not treat me kindly. In the game, everybody had to buy a car, no exceptions. (This is how the damn car salesman- Birch- got so rich.) I was broke. I had to take out a loan to buy the car. And, naturally, I could not afford to pay back the loan.
I was not the only person in this position, as many of my fellow badly-behaved students were also in dire need of money. Our trickster of a teacher dangled threats before us- we were all under the impression that we would be kicked out of the game if we did not pay our debts. Every week, we would be stricken with fear that we would be kicked out of Sapville, forced to watch the rest of the class enjoying themselves while our poor souls sat bored in the corner.
Eventually, we decided we could not put up with being booted out of Sapville. We had tried our hardest to come up with the funds, and couldn't pay our debts. A group of us pov kids were straggling behind the rest of the class before PE, and found ourselves alone in the classroom.
I remember myself, Katina, Big V, Lauren and Matt being there, and others were probably present as well. We were all poor and desperate for Sapville money. We had previously tried to break into our teacher's vault of Sapville money, the place were he kept all the money used in the game. It was, however, locked firmly away, and try as we might we couldn't find the key anywhere. Standing in the classroom, we spotter Amber's Sapville wallet lying under her desk. It was open. A bundle of $500 notes were poking out of the wallet.
Now, remember, the poor people were the ones without good jobs, and the ones without good jobs were the badly behaved children who didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with taking some of Amber's money. Matt was rich already- he was the insurance broker- so he didn't need to steal, but the rest of us took around $2000-3000 dollars each to pay off our debts and secure our future position in Sapville. We all vowed we would never snitch on each other. We never did.
Our teacher asked me where I got all the money to pay off the debt from, incredulous that an impoverished person such as myself could afford to pay my debts so easily and quickly. I don't remember what I said to that. But we never got caught (unfortunately for Sammy the lawyer and Michael the cop; they would have made a killing from the case).
Did I feel guilty? Never. =]