Help! Please save us from the LBE...

I’m not scared of the dark, I’m no woos with the supernatural and I’d happily spend the night in a haunted house. In fact, you can hurl me chained to Jeremy Kyle off a 2000ft cliff into a tank of ravenous sharks but I still wouldn’t quake like I do from the LBE.

 
Darker than your worst nightmare and more chilling than the shower scene in Physco –the LBE makes the most dreaded of horrors seem like Nickelodeon.  

Worst yet; the LBE is coming. 
Heart thumping and insides churning I, like every other 16 year old in the country, await in helpless anxiety for the LBE’s arrival. 



We can’t escape it, we can’t ignore it and on the 25^th August we’ll all be victims of that Little Brown Envelope.

What makes the LBE so menacing?, I hear you say. Well to put it succinctly, the LBE is inescapable. No matter where we are or what we’re doing- it lurks at the back of our minds ready to massacre any slight signs of complete contentment. To put it in a way all teenagers can relate to, it’s like a spot. It throbs and torments us with its relentless pulse and just won’t go away, no matter how much we try to cover it up. However, no amount of Freederm or Clearasil will affect the LBE.

That pure, focused fear of receiving an envelope which holds the accumulation of all you have worked for (or not) is quite simply overwhelming. All those stuffy lessons, mocks, homeworks and timetables. Years of working the 8.30 to 3.30 and it all boils down to the LBE.  Shudders.

As the fear of failure wafts thick and pungently everywhere you turn, post-mortems bubble to the surface and your mind kindly reminds you, with unnerving clarity, of all those mistakes you made. Oh-the-bliss.

Worst yet, the LBE creeps up at the most irritating point possible. If it came at the beginning-at least it’d be out of the way. If it came at the end- We’d be heading back into school mode anyway. But no, oh no, the LBE deviously seeps into our Summer ¾ of the way through, shrouding the first ¾ with thoughts of it’s arrival and ruining the last ¼ with it’s aftermath. Then, before we know it- it’s back to school.

On that ‘Back to School’ note, I’d like to say to all supermarkets and shops with those vulgar ‘Back To School’ signs up, that on behalf of every kid in the country…Shut-up and stop rubbing it in!

So, the LBE will come and go, but in the meantime we must sit and quiver in the darkness of foggy anxiety. We can’t run, we can’t hide, so instead- we must wait...