I am a woman of many vices. Popeyes, Good Mythical Morning, the Hairspray movie. All of my coping mechanisms own me. But the coping mechanisms that have their claws, their TALONS lodged in my arms that hold me over the abyss are those that I turn to at school.
Our school computers are violently censored with almost any website conceivable being blocked, including several necessary for school that have had to be manually unblocked by complaining to the IT people. What we have unblocked, we cherish deeply. And those few websites that have slipped through the cracks are my scholastic vices. (If you work at my school in any capacity and see this article and think it would be a smart idea to get these few moments of relief blocked, know that I will send you a bill when my Prozac prescription goes up. That’s blood on your hands. Do you want to risk your moral equilibrium for a few moments of authority? I hope not, for both of our sakes.)
I cannot emphasize the scale of the filtering system on the school laptops. Everything is blocked. Everything. I had to email the administration to get this blog manually unblocked on the school computers because the algorithm classified it as “general.”
These vices belong to the internet, to the Microsoft store, to my own ability to code. These vices are online traditional pastimes. They are board games, they are mind puzzles, they are free to download with in-app purchases. These are: my school vices.
In the morning, I open my flask of USA Today daily crossword and add some ice. If you don’t pay a $5 fee for a subscription, you don’t get to access past puzzles so you have to do them the day they come out. Once they’re done, you have to wait until the next day to get a new fabulous puzzle. It leaves me buzzed after those blissful 8-15 minutes are up and I know there’s not going to be a fix like it until tomorrow. Whoever writes those things has around 300 confirmed addicts at their beck and call within my school alone.
It’s the only thing that rivals Wordle (another newer vice of mine) and 2048 cupcakes, which is saying something. If I finish the USA Today puzzle and still have a crossword fix that needs satisfying, I head over to seemingly the only other crossword website that is unblocked on our laptops, which is Best Crossword Puzzles, which has an archive of less good but still free puzzles.
Getting through the morning is the hardest part. I might wash it down with some sudoku. Sudoku never fails me. It doesn’t have to be written like a crossword or word search. Refresh the page and there’s a new, equally easy or hard puzzle ready to die just as quickly as it was born. I have become a master of sudoku. I peruse those broken columns with the pure determination of a man on a suicide mission. I can’t breathe until I finish an easy sudoku.
My fastest time is 2:29 on sudoku.com, so you can tell I’m pretty serious about it. I went through a phase of doing sudokus exclusively on the expert level, and it got to the point where I almost snuck away during Thanksgiving dinner so I could finish the puzzle I’d started right before they’d asked me to set the table 40 minutes ago. My fastest expert time is 12 minutes. I don’t know if that’s impressive or not, but it’s what I have. God, I love sudoku. They’ve got a new one now, Killer Sudoku. I recommend it, it’s fun.
By noon, it’s hazy. The room spins and it’s time to focus on something, ANYTHING to get me to lunch. A gentle hand cups mine as my eyes threaten to shut for the entirety of class, and I know it has found me. That gentle friend, that scheming pal ‘o mine. Chess at chess.com. It’s my world, has been my world, for about a year now.
My rating has been in a bit of a rough stretch for a while, but nevertheless, chess will always have an ally in me. Did I buy the premium membership so I could get unlimited puzzles and analysis? Yes. And it’s money that I’d rather spit on than regret paying. Chess tides me over until lunch and I let it take me by the hand until I forget what’s around me. It’s a trip like no other with the senses numbed by the previous sudokus and crosswords, I’m telling you. But remember– it’s not even lunch. (If you’re wondering about my background, it’s Chris Evans.)
Once I’ve eaten and I’ve done whatever I need to do (there’s always something), it’s time for the home stretch. Last period. By now, I’ve entered a fugue state. The world around me is peripheral and I’m depending on the most colorful, the most exciting, the most adrenaline-inducing vice of all: Cooking Fever.
With the aforementioned restrictions, we can’t buy games that cost money, which means that a lot of the available Microsoft games are terrible and are probably viruses. But Cooking Fever isn’t a virus. It’s not quite a Papa’s Restaurant type of game because you can update equipment and the levels are much faster, but this game has me by the neck. It’s capitalism training but colorful, and I am its loyal subject. I disappear for hours at a time and my family frantically searches for me. I reappear, my eyes bloodshot and the bags under my eyes swollen. “Where were you?” cries my mother, “We’ve been looking for you everywhere! You disappear so much these days, we don’t even know who you are anymore!”
I look her dead in the eyes and I say, “Mother, I was playing Cooking Fever.”
It’s harder to get away with during class, but I find a way. I always find a way. Cooking Fever is a necessity, it’s my purpose during the last hours of the school day. It’s ugly and garish, but it’s mine. It’s mine.
I return home and my vices don’t seem as appealing. I’ll play a chess game here and there. Maybe do a sudoku after I finish my homework. A crossword if I’m watching a movie. Cooking fever if I need to kill time. But school hours. It’s like a casino. The clocks don’t mean a damn thing because once I step foot on campus, it’s time for me to bet on black and win big. I win big every day. So what if my vices control me? My brain pilot could use a break. If you ever talk to me at school, you’re not talking to me. You’re talking to sudoku.