Grad students flopped down in their seats at the round table in the classroom. It was already dark outside and many brought some food to munch on since the class started at suppertime and would end near bedtime. It was an advanced Anthropology course and their professor was known for unconventional ways of teaching. It helped keep people engaged with the material. Tonight’s topic was human cooperation. After discussing the reading, they broke up into pairs to put a small but complex puzzle together.
“Please continue working,” their professor said. “I need to check on something. I want those puzzles complete before I return.” She hurried away, rubbing her hands together as she left.
Some students remained seated some students stood up. Ann-Marie was the first to scratch her back. She kept her hand at the small of her back, fingers constantly moving side to side. She smoothed out her sweater and then after putting a metal pipe in the right place, returned her hand to her back casually, this time a little higher, fingers discreetly rubbing. Beau was next. He reached across his collarbone and under his shirt collar to scratch his upper shoulder. Keesha leaned back in her desk chair, pressing her back firmly against it and suggested to Rick that they could make their puzzle a sphere if they put it together and then pulled the ends of it outward. Rick was barely listening. He had one arm over his shoulder and the other arm around his side, both of his hands trying to reach the center of his back. He squirmed and then changed the positions of his arms, trying to reach the growing itch.
Mallory rolled her shoulders and then she whispered to her partner, “Do you think it’s kind of stuffy in here?”
Nikki scratched her lower back with both hands and then tried to fasten a hook into an eyelet of their puzzle. “No, but I’m regretting not wearing a shirt under my sweater.”
Beau sat back in his seat and began to rub his back against it. “Can’t even think straight,” he grumbled.
“I never think straight,” Ann-Marie said, “but this is not a joke.” She scratched her shoulders, leaning on the table to help get her arms into the right angles.
Keesha pulled her sweatshirt off and took both sleeves in her hands, using it to saw against her shoulderblades. It was cold with only a tanktop on but she didn’t care. Anything to stop the itching.
Rick walked away from the table and began rubbing his back against a storage closet. “What the hell is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Mallory said. She reached under her shirt and undid the clasp of her bra so she could scratch the skin underneath. “But I think we’re being filmed.”
Everyone stopped scratching and followed Mallory’s gaze. Their professor’s lapstop sat in front of the whiteboard with a small webcam sitting on top. The little blue light on the side of the webcam seemed to wink at them.
Beau growled and leaned forward so he could reach as far up his back as possible to get the itches he couldn’t seem to reach. “What kind of sick twisted –”
“Guys, it’s not porn, it’s a test,” Nikki said. She grabbed a long hold punch and began scratching between her shoulderblades with it. “Think about it. Human cooperation.”
“We’ve got to work together as whole group to solve these things,” Keesha agreed. “Then we can all work together to scratch our backs.”
“Or we could scratch our backs and skip the puzzles,” Rick said. He scratched his sides. His entire back felt like it was on fire.
“I need an A in this class. We all do,” Ann-Marie said. She scratched Beau between his shoulderblades, digging her long nails as deep as she could. “We’re in a circle for a reason. Gather ‘round. We’re going to scratch and work together.
Everyone pulled the chairs away from the table and put their arms around each other, using one or two hands to scratch the backs of the people closest to them. Slowly they focused on one puzzle at a time. Once all the puzzles were completed, they stepped away from the table and made a tight circle, scratching each other’s backs with both hands, making sure to scratch between the shoulder blades where it itches the most and all points around it. People squirmed and wiggled, groaned and squealed. The itching only intensified.
“We need water and it’s almost break time anyway,” Rick said. He broke away, grabbing the triple hole punch to use as a backscratcher. “I’m out of here.”
The rest reluctantly pulled away from each other and headed off to the restrooms to wash up.
In her office, their professor scratched residual itches on her hands as she watched people file past the three webcams she hid around the room. It was a good experiment in human cooperation, but oh boy did that itching powder linger even after washing more than once.
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