"cleaners" and allergic rhinitis

eversince this 4-day work period started, janitors and janitress in our building stopped sweeping and cleaning the marbled floor in our office. now, everything is dusty and you can see footprints on the floor. they still mop it but only leaves dirty watermarks because as i've said earlier, nobody sweeps it anymore.

i remember when i was in high school we used to clean our room. i studied in a public school so we don't have janitors and janitress. our class was divided into five groups. the grouping was called "cleaners" and each group was called by the day of the week that we are scheduled to do the cleaning, like "friday group" for example.

i think that this "cleaners" thing is okay because students are trained to handle responsibilities, like maintaining the classroom clean for the whole day. students will feel what it is like to clean so they will try as much as possible not to make some mess in the classroom. but in high school, this thing does not apply to every student. most students in fact, try to make more mess when it's not their turn to clean. they do this for the mere fact of making the lives of the "cleaners" miserable. it's kinda funny how kids think.

eniweis, back to the friday group. this friday group has the hardest work and the most responsibilities of all the groups. Aside from dusting, sweeping and mopping, the Friday group (since it is the last day of the week) does the floor waxing and polishing. these two are definitely the hardest work to do in cleaning the classroom. unfortunately, i always ended up in this group.

since i have allergic rhinitis, every cleaning time on fridays i had unstoppable running nose, watery and tired eyes, and a headache. this haedache was my perpetual excuse not to do this and that. but of course my ever beloved groupmates wouldn't allow me to rest while they are cleaning. so i still got to do all the dirty work.

i didn't know then that dust and the smell of floorwax are my allergens. and i didn't realized that my allergy was causing my headache. and excuse letter for my case was not acceptable then. (people in my town were not open to ideas of deviations. today, this is still true to some people.)

so everytime my friends and i reminisce those memories, they always tease me with my forever favorite dialogue during cleaning time, "ka ethel, masakit ang ulo ko..."