A student, Ben Burner, made his biggest mistake this week, accidentally putting his real phone in the phone box instead of his burner.
Students in his class know him as someone who always arrives 45 minutes late to class, turns his burner into the box, and scrolls on his real phone until class ends.
But yesterday something didn’t go as planned.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Burner recalled. “I just grabbed the phone out of my back pocket without thinking and grabbed the first phone I felt and put it in the box.”
It was easy for the student to realize he didn’t have his real phone on him.
“I sat down and reached for my phone like I always do when I come to class,” he said. “But the second I felt the phone, that’s when I realized something was odd. It felt wrong… smaller and lighter. ”
A classmate said he sat frozen for 10 minutes.
“He wasn’t scrolling at all,” one student said. “His hands were just in his pockets.”
One classmate said it was too quiet to be true.
“Usually I would be able to hear the tapping or his laughing,” they said. “But this time nothing. He was just zoned out like he lost everything.
“He checked his pockets five times,” one student said. “He looked back at the phone box staring at it like his life was over.”
At one point, Burner raised his hand wanting to lie to the teacher, but put his hand down because he couldn’t explain that his real phone was in the box.
Instead, he stood up mid-lecture and walked to the box to try and retrieve his precious phone. When he realized the phone box was locked, he started hallucinating fake notifications and reached for a phone that wasn’t there.
“He turned around slowly and went back to his seat with a couple tears in his eyes,” a classmate said.
For the rest of the period, Burner had no choice but to scroll the air, pretending it was his phone.
His peers reported that he was acting unusually: staring at the ceiling, tapping his desk with a long fingernail, and actually listening to the lesson–something classmates thought he was allergic to.
“At one point in class he examined the room, and his eyes widened,” one student said.
The teacher thought his life was going to turn around.
“I thought he was into the lesson,” the teacher said. “I was proud.”
When the bell finally rang, the whole class watched as he stood up, sprinted for his phone like it was a meal for which he’d been salivating for decades, and stood in front of it as though he was a culture keeper.
After the box was unlocked, Burner grabbed his phone, checked his messages instantly, and finally took a deep breath.
As of today, students who have the same classes with him say that he now brings two burners just in case–so it doesn’t happen again.