Flamboyant Serendipity

Serendipity, according to my Oxford Advanced Genie, is an uncountable noun means ‘the fact of something interesting or pleasant happening by chance : Meeting her like that, and there off all places, was true serendipity!’

What a word. It might seem like an ordinary word, but this particular word nearly made me punch someone on the face.

This is an old story, actually. It happened several months ago. It was morning, and after a short period of sleep, I went to school with my eyes swollen and heavy and my bad mood. The first class I had was Drama. We discussed the plot of Oedipus Rex according to Aristotle’s Poetics. We were splitted into five groups, each off which must find the parts of the drama called Peripety, Discovery, and Suffering. After that, each group should send one person to sit in the middle, along with other persons chosen from other groups, to present the result of the group discussion to the class and to conduct a class discussion session.

Unsurprisingly, I was chosen to represent my group. And this flamboyant boy, or rather, flamboyant wanna-be, was chosen to represent his group. Big mistake!

As soon as he got his chance to talk, instead of explaining which parts of the play were considered as Peripety and Discovery by his group, he started talking about serendipity. He explained serendipity as if it was a chain of several unfortunate events happening by chance. Totally different from the word’s definition, I know. He spent twice as much time as other speakers, telling us what serendipity was and how we didn’t get what he meant by serendipity – he even asked “You guys know what serendipity means, don’t you?”
As if he was the sharpest tool in the shed! Well, he wasn’t.

When my teacher asked him a question, he thought he was answering it while actually he was talking about something completely different. Then my teacher said, “There was a movie called Serendipity right?”
He said, “What, ma’am? I can’t hear you.” (He was the only one in the class who couldn’t hear the question.)
Then my teacher repeated the same question, only louder. And his answer totally irritated me. It was, “Oh yes. Murphy.”

The whole class laughed. But I was like… what the hell?! Who the heck was Murphy? And why on earth would he think my teacher asked him about a Murphy? I was on the verge of freaking out. And then I said, loudly, completely visibly irritated, “MOVIE, dude. M.O.V.I.E.”

I mean, he was that stupid but he acted all-so-smart and spoke like no one in the class understood his high-class terminology and way of thinking. I say he’s a poor bloke.

He used to be this weird, nervous guy. Not the type of guy I’d love to hang around with but I had no problems with him being around. Now, in order to be – I’m quoting here, okay? – a ‘womenlover’, whatever the hell it means, he turned into this trendy, dandy and almost flamboyant guy – too bad he’s too annoying to be one. At least, back then he wasn’t this annoying.

Not learning from his earlier mistake, he kept talking about serendipity, giving unmatched answers to every question given to him (because the answer was always about serendipity), and desperately trying to make the class understand what serendipity was (even though his own definition of serendipity was completely different of that written in dictionaries). Me, having reached the limit I could take before losing control of my emotion and kicking his ass, cut him off. And I said this, boldly, loudly, visibly irritated :
“Okay, stop talking about serendipity. In spite of your ability to use such high-class terminologies, you should understand that we are not as bright as you are. So I guess, instead of wasting too much time explaining to us what serendipity is, you should use lower-class terminologies that would be easier for us to understand and start answering the questions given to you.”

My teacher said, “It’s okay, Shiiqa, he is free to give his arguments.”

Being so annoyed, I answered boldly to my teacher, “I know Ma’am, but instead of answering questions, explaining reasons, and giving arguments, he keeps talking about serendipity. And that word is not what the question he’s supposed to answer is about.”

The class was, finally, paying attention to what was being discussed. Some people laughed at Mr. Flamboyant, some others talked about him – whispered is more like it. Mr. Flamboyant himself tried to look cool, an effort which failed even before it was started. And it put an end to Mr. Flamboyant’s Vocabulary Class.

P.S. And this Mr. Flamboyant is the same guy I talked about in this post.