My fingers curl into fists and my blood heats to a temperature inhumanly safe. I close my eyes scrunching tighter… tighter… tighter. By now I’ve lost count of the number of deep breaths I’ve taken so far. I press my lips together until the noises that sound like jet engines in my ears are too much.

Heavy breathing beside me. I look over at the boy sitting next to me. He has his earbuds in but that’s not the problem. He isn’t aware that his breathing is Darth Vader’s. I look over in disbelief as he continues to jam out breathing like he's just run a couple hundred miles.

Music blasting in front of me. I debate tapping on his shoulder and politely asking him to turn it down. Even though he’s the one not using headphones–disrupting others might I add–and needs to have his rap music playing, I’d be the one who’d be punished for talking during a test in this class. The chemistry teacher is strict and wouldn’t listen to any of my excuses.

The worst sound of all behind me. I take another look at the girl behind me. She’s reading a book and in front of her is the noise that I despise: Chewing and Crunching. Just… Why? There is no reason you need to eat a bag of chips like that when everyone else is trying to be focused.  

She finally looks up and says, “What?”

I’m not sure if I can contain all the anger I have in my body.

Snoring at night is enough, but when you bring your now conscious snoring with you to school, it’s displeasing. It’s the same thing with chewing, too. When you’re alone, sure chew as loud as you want, but when you’re with someone in a dead quiet room, chew quietly… please. Just make the agony stop. When they do that obnoxiously loud it makes me want to throw them out of the room. Didn’t their mothers ever teach them how to chew and breath correctly? I mean come on! And playing music? You don’t need the volume turned up to the top!

There comes a point in everyone’s lives where you’ve let the pot of water boil for long enough and you just need to pour it all on someone because of something they did that one thing that personally annoyed you. There are a satisfying five seconds after you pour this water and the steam just simply rises off.

“Stop!” I shout.

I look around in embarrassment. It was supposed to be a sort of whisper shout. I quickly turn back to my test and start writing again. I’m sorry for being so irritable, but stop chewing, cranking your music, and breathing hard.