The Joys of Attending to a Blackboard

Every Monday, it's my turn to clean the blackboard. I've been cleaning blackboards ever since the primary school days all the way up to Form 5 now, all because of my height.

The frigging chalk dust lands on my head, glasses, arms, shoulders and face each and everyime the teacher says "please clean the board!!!" I hate it when it gets into my eyes and stings it. I hate the rough feeling of it in my fingers. I hate having dusting my hands off my trousers and leaving behind these white streaks. There's also this lingering suspicion that my life span might be shorter from inhaling all of these chalk dust.

But anyways, there are good sides to having this duty too I guess. It's the only duty that decreases my chance of getting yelled at by the teachers, since it's usually clean at the end of every period. If the blackboard was a pet, I was scraping up its poop every Monday morning.

Hello??? The year is currently 2005, whiteboards should be in widespread use by now. Though if it were cleaning whiteboards, I might be complaining of the toxic fumes from those markers. Ahhh, nothing's ever perfect.


So, I'm down again with a cold (or flu, I dunno either), and I'm supposed to clean the blackboard again today. I blame it again on my classmate who's usually sick but he seems healthy today. My nose is leaking and dripping frequently and I've watery eyes.

And stumbling upon this article doesn't help the situation at all.