At Arash’s school, life was a testosterone-fueled symphony of chaos. Every day began with a thundering stampede as boys flooded the hallways, racing each other to class as if punctuality were a sport. Backpacks swung like pendulums, shoes screeched against the tiled floors, and someone, somewhere, was always yelling, “Last one to the classroom is a chicken!”
Arash usually wasn’t in the front of the pack—running wasn’t his thing—but he also refused to be the metaphorical chicken, so he always managed to come in somewhere in the middle. His classroom, Room 14, was a microcosm of every stereotype about boys you could imagine. There was Hamid, the self-proclaimed athlete, who carried a soccer ball everywhere like it was his firstborn child. Majid, the class clown, could turn even the dullest math lecture into a comedy sketch. And then there was Kian, Arash’s best friend, whose life goal seemed to be proving that everything—everything—could be turned into a competition.
One Monday morning, as the teacher droned on about fractions, Majid leaned over to Arash and whispered, “Do you think girls even know what fractions are?”
Arash blinked. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Well,” Majid said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I heard they only learn girl stuff, like cooking and sewing. My cousin told me they don’t even have real math books, just recipe books with math problems in them. Like, ‘If you have three apples and you eat one, how many pies can you bake?’”
Kian, overhearing this, jumped into the conversation. “That’s nonsense. My sister has math books, and they look exactly like ours. Except, you know… pink.”
“Pink?” Majid wrinkled his nose. “That’s disgusting. How do they concentrate with all that pink?”
Arash didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have a sister to confirm or deny the existence of pink math books, but he found the idea strangely plausible. After all, girls were mysterious creatures who lived in a world of pastel colors and floral designs. Who was to say their books weren’t pink?
The bell rang, signaling recess, and the boys poured out of the classroom like a flood. Recess at an all-boys school was its own form of organized chaos. The soccer field was always the epicenter, with Hamid leading his team like a general in battle, barking orders and yelling at anyone who dared to miss a pass. Nearby, a group of younger boys was playing tag, their shrieks of laughter mingling with the occasional cry of, “No tag-backs!”
Arash, Kian, and Majid sat on the edge of the field, their backs against the chain-link fence, munching on their snacks. The topic of conversation inevitably returned to girls.
“Do you think they can run as fast as us?” Kian asked, peeling an orange with the intensity of someone solving a Rubik’s Cube.
“No way,” Majid said, shaking his head. “Their shoes are too fancy. My mom’s shoes have heels on them! How are you supposed to run in heels?”
Arash frowned. “But they don’t wear heels at school, do they?”
Majid shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve never seen a girl at school. For all we know, they could be walking on stilts.”
The boys burst into laughter, the mental image of a classroom full of stilt-walking girls too ridiculous to ignore. It wasn’t the first time they had indulged in such wild speculation, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Later that day, during their science class, the teacher brought up the topic of anatomy. As soon as the words “male” and “female” left his mouth, the entire classroom erupted into chaos. Hamid made exaggerated gagging noises, Majid pretended to faint, and Kian dramatically covered his ears, yelling, “I don’t need to know this! I’m too young to die!”
The teacher, clearly used to this reaction, rolled his eyes and continued his lecture. “Now, boys, it’s important to understand the differences between the male and female body—”
“Why?” Majid interrupted, raising his hand. “We’re never going to see a female body, right? Not unless we’re, like, doctors or something.”
The teacher sighed deeply, the kind of sigh that suggested he regretted every career decision that had led him to this moment. “It’s not just about seeing, Majid. It’s about understanding how the human body works.”
“But we already know how our bodies work,” Hamid said, flexing his biceps for emphasis. “We don’t need to know about theirs.”
Arash couldn’t help but laugh, though he tried to stifle it. The absurdity of his classmates’ reactions was too much. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this kind of ignorance wasn’t entirely their fault. After all, how could they understand something they had never experienced? Girls were like a foreign country—fascinating, mysterious, and completely out of reach.
As the day wound to a close, Arash found himself staring out the window, his mind wandering. He imagined what life might be like if things were different—if boys and girls went to the same schools, played on the same playgrounds, and learned about each other as naturally as they learned about fractions and geography.
Would it be less confusing? Less funny? Less… interesting?
He didn’t know the answer, but one thing was certain: life in an all-boys school was never boring. And as ridiculous as some of their assumptions about girls were, they gave him and his friends plenty to laugh about. For now, that was enough.