They put on a brave face

Michael patrols the hallways before homeroom starts on Friday morning, making sure all the girls' handcuffs are firmly secured. They all seem surprisingly positive about the day ahead of them -- at least, they claim to be whenever the Female Uniform Inspector is within earshot. However, it's abundantly clear as soon as they reach their lockers just how difficult this is going to be.

Some girls have boyfriends or boy friends who can open their lockers for them, but the rest have to figure out a way to lift the waist-high latch on their own.

The cheerleaders are the first to manage it: most of them are wearing their uniform skirts or spandex shorts, and a few are flexible enough that they can actually raise their feet up, squeeze their toes around the cold metal latch, and hop backward to open the door.

Other girls, seeing how they did it, try and fail to copy them. Most of them can't get their legs up that high and just end up falling on their asses. Once they're down there, though, they realize they can just lie back on the floor and reach it fine.

That technique isn't quite as helpful for any girls who actually locked their lockers. They have to find a position where they can spin the tiny dials with their toes while actually being able to read the numbers.

Eventually, one especially clever girl ducks into a classroom -- the doors are all propped open for the sake of convenience -- and comes back kicking a chair along in front of her. Sitting in that slightly raised position, she can reach the lock with her feet and see what she's doing at the same time. It still isn't easy, but she finally manages to get into her locker.

While that chair gets passed around the hallway, the girls who got into their lockers realize they have another problem:

How the hell do they carry their books to class?