September 10, 2009, 8:00 pm.
My pen was making scratchy noises on the paper as I wrote one line after another. The movement of my fingers was rapid, almost fluid like swaying dandelions in the middle of an open field. And to think that the aircon was turned way up high and the room was so cold I half expected to see a polar bear sit beside me and rip my desk to pieces. That would have been convenient, though...to push away my desk and say "Ma'am, I can't take this test anymore. The polar bear just ate my paper."
Every so often the stream of ideas would stop like water gathering behind a dam then would slowly push itself forward, regaining momentum but with a noticeable reduction in speed. With every tick of the clock, my internal river was slowing down, grasping on its brakes like one would grasp helplessly at straws.
Then like a person ramming himself into a brick wall, I crashed into my own cul-de-sac and heard my brain give way with a tiny creak. Uh-oh, the end has come. The horde of stress-inducing nanomites had merged forces with the growing army of Weariness and Nervousness and they had now succeeded in breaking into head and scorching my synapses to dust as they blazed their way into the innermost recesses of my brain.
I re-read the question. "X grabs an iron bar and hits A's medulla oblongata. A dies." The cul-de-sac naturally refused to budge and my brain was now emitting fumes like a pressure cooker. I manage to laugh though. Some guy in a night club named X who probably can't even differentiate his veins from his arteries could grab an iron bar and aim for a guy's medulla oblongata instead of simply going for his head. "Relevant?" goes the question. I still can't get over the medulla oblongata. Maybe X was a Doogie Howser who dropped out of Harvard and could do the human genome project with both eyes closed. Was it relevant that X aimed for A's medulla oblongata? He could have hit A's cranium and A would still land six feet under in a wooden box lined with lace.
My head hurts as if X's iron bar leapt past the test paper. I know I badly need food and sleep.
When I get home, I sit in front of the sofa and watch MTV, staring with a half-empty head at pop stars singing and dancing underneath disco lights in their psychedelic dresses. My brain is still simmering as I drown in my mug of misery called ice cream.
Wow, it's one thing to go through a long and difficult examination. It's a totally different issue when your brain throws in the towel and simply gives up on you.
