Life Of A Backbencher

Backbencher’s life is the coolest life. I have been one that’s why I can surely say that it adds up to your school memories. The freedom we enjoyed was something only we could understand. I enjoyed the most precious moments of my life as I sat on the last bench with my friends when everyone else was studying. We might have hardly paid attention to our lectures and did self-study all year. And guess what? Teachers never punished us for our mischief instead we were loved by them! Yes… We enjoyed our backbencher life and at the same time, we were our teachers’ favorites. Yeah, they adored us because we were good scorers in our class even after keeping ourselves busy in some random shit.

Here are the random things I did when I was a backbencher.

1) Occupying the last seat

Interestingly, I was the early bird of the class. I used to be the first person to enter the empty class. Yet I used to occupy the last bench of the middle row. And if I was late, I used to fight for the last bench or tried to butter my friends up to let me sit there.

2) Laughing out loud randomly

We used to sit in pairs in class. We were definitely a distraction for the first benchers and the teachers. We used to laugh out loud on random stuff and it took a lot of effort to stop us from laughing. I still remember the day when my bench partner and I talked about something which was terrifically hilarious and we couldn’t stop laughing even when the teacher got in the class. We were suppressing our laugh by burying our head into the tables and cried as our stomach ached. We got scolded by the teacher later though.

3) Distracted teachers by engaging in a conversation with them

When the whole class gave up on the lecture as it became dull and awful, we, the backbenchers, saved the lecture by engaging in conversation with the teachers. When the teacher used to throw out the question “Anybody has a doubt?” the backbencher boys didn’t let go of the opportunity and entertained the whole class by firing some irrelevant questions. Even though they were told off by the teachers but they never gave up the chance.

4) Left the imprints of our creativity everywhere

Our hands used to itch if we didn’t draw anything anywhere. I always had a pencil in my hand during lectures I never paid attention to. I and my bench partner drew doodles in every corner of the desk and if it didn’t satisfy us, we drew at the back of our books, notebooks and even on each other’s hands. On the last day of our school, we wrote our name with a black bold marker in every corner of our class: windows, near the blackboard, on the podium and near the switchboards.

5) Always felt sleepy

As soon as a lecture used to start, I yawned horribly every time which eventually made every backbencher sleepy then. I hardly paid attention in class because I was busy fighting with my sleepiness. My friend used to hit me on the back of my head to stop me from yawning. It didn’t matter if I wanted to pay attention in my class. I always failed and felt sleepy. I was hardly caught yawning but my other mates were.

6) Prepared assignments all the time

I was sincere towards my assignments and always gave them on time. But the other backbenchers procrastinated their assignments every time and ended up being punished. Also, we never took part in the class. We were using the lecture time to complete all our pending work. We did our accountancy homework in economics class, mathematics in accountancy and it goes on. Many of the times we were even punished for doing another subject’s work in different lectures.

7) We ate our lunch before lunchtime

While the whole class was busy in jotting down the notes, we used to open our Tiffin boxes. We ate our tiffins like almost an hour earlier. Our growling stomachs didn’t let us pay attention in classes. So we used to pass a tiffin full of snacks and pasta among the backbenchers and within 5 minutes it was all empty.

Life was really fun as a backbencher and I really miss all those moments. Throwing chalks at each other, running around the class and making paper planes. I wish I could live those moments again. I hope you laughed all the way and are reminded the days of your glory as a backbencher.

We might have lacked in discipline or notes but we never lacked in making memories.