When Ladders Traumatize

Part 1

Bret was not very happy with the trip he had to endure. The school thought it would be awesome to send him on this trip to understand how other schools do what they do. Well, Bret was not feeling this form of punishment. Having had the best scores on the exam should have allowed him a chance to network with the mayor and other power brokers. But no, his reward was going out to play with others in a big mud pit.

Sulking was not his strong suit. Worse, Zoe was not going to be very impressed if he acted all child like. Zoe was the lady he was trying to impress and convince to go on a date with him. She was the best looking gal in town and also one of the smartest peoples there. Many a guy had destroyed their ego in the process of catching her eye.

Bret was playing the careful and long game. He was waiting for the competition to totally destroy itself and he would then make a move. This was going to be very surgical and tactical. Zoe would see him and fall for him and life would be perfect.

Or so he spent hours dreaming so.

That was the original plan anyway. Now, things had gotten a bit more complex. He was the first male to have beaten Zoe on any test. The district had instituted these silly performance metrics that didn’t add much value to the education protocols only to have bragging rights against other better funded schools. However way the politics played out, the exams had to be taken. He had taken and done the best.

He had upset the order of things. He had created waves. He had disrupted the establishment. He had created attention for himself that would make it all the more difficult to get a date with Zoe. He had essentially shot his hopes dead.

Now, Zoe, the second highest performer, was going to network with the mayor and other power brokers while he was being shipped out to some mud pit to network with students from other less successful programs. The hopes was that he would learn something valuable to bring back to his school. What a waste of time. What a way to encourage hard work and stellar performance.

For sure, having dislodge Zoe from her perfect record of performance was going to add a bit of extra work to his efforts in winning her over. These modern era feminists didn’t look to kindly to any traditional forms of gloating and ego showcasing.

Nevertheless, it was time to turn his attention to this trip to hell. Best case scenario, the weather played nice, everyone played fair, and he’d return with enough to please the school board. Worse case, things turned ugly and his reputation as a cool negotiator gets tarnished.

Bret sighed. This so called reward had a very bad feeling about it. There would be no happy ending. There would be no kissing the girl. No Hollywood perfect ending. No taking his feelings to the next level either. To further depress his mood, he got a memo informing him that he could not bring any electronic devices on the trip to distract him from the top priorities he needed to focus on.

The day of the dreaded trip arrived much to quickly for Bret’s liking. Furthermore, the school had opted not to provide an early breakfast for all those taking the old cheese buses on this long drive. Hungry, miserable, tired, and in a fowl mood, Bret braced himself for the long ride by sitting in the back of the bus. Mercifully, no one else needed to sit that far back.

Unfortunately for Bret, Zoe, who happened to be in the area to network with a few power brokers organizing this trip, was tasked with asking Bret to disembark from the new bus and find his seating in the other older cheese bus. This older bus was affectionately known as the Bucking Betty.