A Voice for All

High schools do not foster students’ talents. It has become nothing more than being forced to learn eight subjects a day that hopefully a student would care about one of them. They force subjects on you that don’t help you look at the world with discerning eyes. I think instead of making you read older books like Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Frankenstein they should make you do your own research paper. It would be on something a student liked but formatting, cohesiveness and grammar would be objectively graded. How can a student have any passion about reading something like a novel that he is assigned when they will just go and find the summary notes in a bookstore to write what the teacher wants to hear? Instead he should be allowed to write about something that is important to him. I don’t see how it is unique for teachers to assign you the same books that are being read nationwide. No one cares if you’ve read these throw away books but people do care if you can write well, have passion and can describe something new to readers who have little knowledge in what you are talking about. If reading a book is mandatory then it should be a book that a student chooses to read and not from a list by the teacher.

Instead of having eight classes a day they should have two. You should tell them what you plan on studying in college whether you are going into the arts, English, math or sciences or business. Then you would take general classes until you found what you liked. If you spent more time on your subjects then you would build a craft and sharpen some preexisting skills. They should also help you utilize your skills in real life. If you are in English they should make you make you write articles for small newspapers or at least school papers. If you give students the chance to write about things that are a concern in the schools they will write with more passion and conviction than forcing them to read old classics they have no interest in. Subjects should be practical. If a kid wants to read a classic work he can do so at the library or bookstore. Integrating subjects as well might add some excitement to the prison that is high school. If a writer was doing an article on a particular theme then he would ask a photography student to take a picture that evoked the feeling that he was looking for. It could work as well for the photographer if that writer was to write an essay on what he thought the photographer was trying to say in how he shot a picture. He could describe why he chose a certain angle, aperture, filter and so forth. This would make students appreciate other subjects without being forced to take them. If you give students freedom to choose their own path then they will excel in there interests and you most likely wouldn’t have to worry about disciplining a kid who was being disruptive in class. It is all about giving students a voice.

Crossing Over

Last week I was talking to a friend, reminiscing of our time in Iraq. I am a Soldier, he is a Marine. Our experiences were similar. Aside from nearly being killed several times in the same day, the other memory that sticks out in my mind is crossing over the border into Iraq at night.

We gathered our gear in the morning, receiving our briefing from Captain Mason. I was responsible for ensuring all communications functioned on the convoy from Camp Udairi, Kuwait, into Scania, Iraq. Having already prepared the night before, I could focus on my job, checking radios for each vehicle. The soldiers in the other platoons already checked in, so I could give them the “go-ahead” and I could focus on the headquarters element. I ran to each vehicle, my rifle slamming against my back as I dashed and jumped in I knew Captain Mason would want a status report as soon as I was done, and time wasn’t on my side.

30 minutes passed, and already it was 1800. I had only 30 more minutes until the second convoy (the headquarters vehicles) was leaving. I delegated one of my soldiers to help me finish up so we could be on time. Captain Mason called out from the vehicle and I ran, the gate of the Stryker closing. I took my position in the air guard hatch, rifle poised, thumb ready to switch from safety to semi in case I had to send an insurgent to Allah. My index finger ran parallel with the top of the rifle, able to move with my thumb just as easily in one fluid motion. My palms began to sweat profusely, my heart racing as every minute passed. This was the real deal, what my Battalion Commander had been telling us for almost 2 years. Here we were, on the brink, only a couple of hours from the Iraqi border.

Hearing the traffic over the radios made me smile. I had done my job effectively and I knew that communication was essential for any mission. The silent desert sun sat on its perch, just as an ancient sheikh would sit among his followers in the days of Muhammed. Flat earth, scrub, and desolation ran as far on the horizon as I could make out, my government-issued Oakleys protecting my squinting eyes. Yet, the discomfort was short-lived, sunset creeping in and the clear night engulfing the landscape in its wake. The rhythmic hum of the Stryker’s engines was almost like a lullaby, tempting us with sleep and the promise of peaceful dreams. Knowing where we were, that’s all it was – temptation.

Darkness finally descended, and by the sound of the radio traffic, I could tell we were in some no-name town. Power lines hung dangerously low, so we had to tie down our antennas on the vehicle. Being an air guard, along with our company sniper, Sergeant Davis, I felt uneasy, and on several levels, I was deathly afraid. Having a sniper there did almost nothing to dispel my angst and fear. Dim lights dotted the corners of the cheaply built slums. Garbage was in piles haphazardly along the street, making an obstacle course for us to weave through. I heard voices coming from the right, near the entrance of a burned out store. The hair on the back of my neck began to rise, my eyes opened wider and I switched out the dark lenses in my sunglasses to the clear protective lenses. The air was putrid; the smell of rotting garbage mixed with human feces was enough to make you vomit on yourself. The feeling of moving through the ghost-like town was surreal; I felt transported, like nothing was real. A harder reality came, though, when I saw an Iraqi down an alleyway point an AK-47 directly at me and almost had my eardrums blown out when Sergeant Davis let out one round from his sniper rifle.

Undisclosed

High up in the mountains, buried beneath the vast canopies of the country's forests, are the best freshwater fishing holes in the world. When the word gets out that there’s a new fishing spot, the lake, river, or stream becomes overcrowded and it can be devastating for many anglers. I had the privilege of exploring several different terrains when I was growing up. Whether I was climbing and clawing through the Catskill Mountains or gazing down the beaches of Long Island, I always kept my eyes open for a special fishing plot that I could claim as my own.

That place just happened to fall upon me one day during a bike ride. The land was state property, but no one ever kicked up a fuss at the occasional bike rider or hiker. Nestled deep in the abandoned woods and hidden by a canvas of autumn gold and summer green was a forgotten lake. A recent hurricane had ravaged the area. Fallen trees were everywhere. The thinned landscape allowed me to spot the lake for the first time. The place was more than I could have hoped for. It was home to me.

The land was old. Decrepit and aging roads weaved their way through a cornucopia of endless hills, waving fields, and aching forests. The area had once been home to many people. In the 1930s, houses and small factories were scattered throughout the area. The only access was across a single overpass. Huge steel gates kept out all traffic. Only bicyclers and a few hikers occasionally ventured past the gates and into the unknown.

On a patch of grass, beneath a grand weeping willow, I would sit and cast my line. The fishing was incredible. Nearly every day I would pull out record sized catches. Nobody believed my stories, but I wasn’t about to let just anyone in on my secret.

Upon arriving one afternoon, I found something quite wrong. The echoes hit me first. They were not native to any species that lived in the immediate area. I crept into my usual location and saw my worst fear… people. My secret was out. It was only a matter of time before the place became swarmed. And it did. I rarely had the lake to myself after that. Soon, I stopped going all together.

Within a year, the place was officially a state park. But it wasn’t just the lake; it was everything. Hundreds of acres were opened up to the public. The once abandoned roads became highways for four wheelers and dirt bikes. Fresh trails burned through the foundations of once existing houses and factories.

A year later I decided to go for a walk through my old sanctuary. I took in the memories with every fresh breath. My girlfriend and I would run through the abandoned apple orchards when we were younger. We’d lie beneath the trees until sundown and then we’d scare ourselves back home. But the orchards didn’t look the same anymore. The trees were now bare. The landscape was nothing short of raped. There were new clearings set up as camp sites. Trash littered the surrounding woods. After several hours of walking, I came upon my once admired lake.

As the leaves crackled at the swooping wind, I heard winter on the horizon. I sat on a bench and carved my initials into the back rest. I never went fishing at that lake again but I managed to find my way there on a regular basis. The fish were gone. The people were gone. New lakes had been discovered, and that lake quickly forgotten by many. I let the fresh air fill my lungs until my chest was about to explode. I spent the evening perched on that bench, admiring the pink sun as it drifted beneath the horizon, its beams grasping for air.

The last time I was visiting family in New York, I decided to take a walk through the park. I was amazed at how quickly the land consumed me. The orchards were beautiful again. Apples fell from the trees and rolled through my soul as I passed. The view from the ridge was just as gorgeous as it had ever been. I stared at an old familiar oak tree and the crooked heart and withering initials etched into it; a love from so long ago. When I had seen almost everything, I went home.

Underdogs

Oh my gosh, it’s 11:30 already. This would be the one and only day that I dreaded leaving Ms. McGee’s algebra class and heading to lunch at 12:10.

“Hey, so are you ready for tonight?” my neighbor John whispered as I was trying to look busy with my math problems, all the while trying my best to keep at bay the giant birds that had been growing from the small butterflies in my stomach all week.

“What? Uh yeah, sure,” I replied to him. I didn’t want to talk about it; I was implying it as blatantly as possible.

“It’s gonna really suck if you guys get killed.” He smirked.“We won’t,” I said trying to convince myself and the jackass next to me. “I’ll look to you for comfort if we are embarrassed; you guys have plenty experience with slaughters in state games. Oh wait, when was the last time you guys made it to post-season?” That should shut him up; also improved my mood a tad.

“All right class; make sure that you are prepared for the test next week. And good luck to the girls in your soccer game tonight!”

We were going to need it, and everyone knew it. For the week prior to this game tonight, there had been nothing but posts on message boards and articles in the paper about how lucky we were playing in the State Championship Finals this year. We were a good team, skilled and fast. We were ranked every season and did well in post-season. But they said this year was a fluke. We had a new coach and lost some of our best seniors the season before, our team was young and inexperienced.

We were going to be playing Immaculate Conception. This team was more than good, it was a dynasty. They hadn’t lost a state championship in five years and hadn’t lost a single game in three! They were ranked third in the nation. How were we, a little team of mostly juniors and sophomores even to compete with a team of all seniors? Players that had been groomed for these kind of games their whole high school career? They were the “Blue Wolves.” I imagined monsters, freaks of nature disguised as high-school girls. The more I thought of the pressure, the closer I came to releasing it all over my desk.

As I headed to lunch, I sat down with my friends, some of which were on the team with me. How are they so relaxed right now? I fervently wished that time would stop and we wouldn’t have to play, as if that were really a possibility at all.

Rain! Rain! Pour! Hurricane!

“Lenehan, are you ok? You look green” asked my friend Megan. “Don’t be nervous,” she replied while slapping me on my back. “They don’t expect much from us, so there really isn’t any way to go but up with this team.”

“Unless they beat us by ten and two of those goals were scored by me.” I said gloomily, “Is that a rain cloud?”

“Shut up! It’s the tint on the window,” said Jaime. “Stop thinking about mistakes you might make. If you keep thinking like that it’s gonna happen. And if it does, I’ll kill you!”

I guess she was right. I just wanted it to be over with. The bell rang for third block. Only two more classes to go.

We were able to leave class an hour early at the end of the day. Everyone looked sick with nervousness, except those girls that always seemed to be able to pump up a room no matter what. We all piled into the bus and headed to the Kaene University Stadium, where we going to be playing underneath the lights later that night.

We pulled up to the stadium and we started our ritual of banging on the ceilings and windows of the bus, screaming and pumping up. The opposing team just stared and smirked. I felt like a man released into a ring of starved lions, fully aware and excited about the one-sidedness of the battle.

As the sun went down, the wind chill followed. Our skin stung with each whip of frozen air. Our muscles were clenched and tight. The only increase in that moment was the visibility of each exhale and the tension in the stadium. Girls were scattered all over the large field jumping, stretching, jogging, and bundling up; all in preparation for that first whistle of the next ninety minutes of our lives. The lights flickered on as our coach announced the starting lineup.

My name was called over the loud speaker at the beginning of the game and I felt a surge of excitement and adrenaline. I stepped out onto the massive, freshly painted field. A whirlwind of nerves and thoughts whipped through my brain, I kept saying “I am here, this is amazing. You’ll do great.” The stadium was full, with friends and family. There were coaches and players from different high schools and some college coaches. I was finally ready. The pressure is on, time to win a championship!

The game was long, and we were being worked. They were huge, aggressive and played well together. But we were good too. We were quick, sharp and tough. We weren’t going down without a fight. As we set up for the last play of the game it was still 0-0. My chest felt as though someone were sitting on top of it. I was winded, exhausted, freezing, sweaty, and anxious. The anxiety continued to mount as my teammate ran to place the ball at the corner of the field for a corner kick. The ball was lofted into the air and across the field and landed directly on the foot of our wingman. The net shook as the ball rocketed to the back of the goal.

Goal! We just scored a goal!

We ran fast at the girls who accomplished our slight lead. We jogged to back to our positions. Words of encouragement from both sides rang throughout the field, “It’s not over yet, stay strong! We got this!”

The game restarted. Thirty seconds later, the sound of two short whistles, then a long drawn out whistle.

It’s over! That’s it! We did it! We won!I couldn’t think over the roar of the crowd. I couldn’t see as I went crashing into a cluster of my teammates and felt the slight sting of tears in my eyes. The opposing team hung their heads. Some were successful at fighting the tears; some could not keep their composure. It felt amazing. We were champions.

They said we couldn’t do it, it was a fluke, but we did. The last weeks of summer spent in double sessions in the blazing heat, the loss of our weekends and Friday nights, afternoons playing in the snow- all of it brought us here. We received the ultimate reward. An enormous trophy. A nice new black coat. A silver ring with champion engraved on it. A big banner in our gym for everyone to see. A place in history, the team of Davids that brought down the Goliaths. I can’t wait to rub all over John’s face.

Dollar Tacos

Everyone has a traditional hangout place. Back home, my friends and I had a local restaurant; it didn’t matter if you were actually eating or not. Every Friday we were there and stayed for hours. When I first moved to Wilmington, I wasn’t sure if I would ever find something like that again. One random night I was riding down Market Street and noticed a sign in front of a small restaurant called Carolina Cantina that read “Dollar Tacos Every Tues & Thurs." That Thursday night I was figuring out somewhere to eat dinner, and then I remembered the sign. So, I called three of my friends and we decided to try this place out.

The parking lot was full, so I expected a long wait. From the outside, it appeared to be a typical Mexican restaurant. To our surprise we only had to stand ten minutes before being seated. Inside, the building was decorated with colorful lights and amusing beer signs. There is a small bar right when you walk in, and combination of booths and tables throughout the restaurant. The lights were turned down low, and the sounds of exciting, festive music filled the air. I felt like I was having fun just sitting there. Although it is a Tex-Mex restaurant, the atmosphere would be enjoyable for anyone. I looked around and noticed a variety of customers: college students, adults, and a few families. It had a very relaxed and laid back feel. Our waitress quickly arrived and gave us menus. She was very nice, funny, and polite. All the waitresses casually tended to the tables, clothed in jeans, tennis shoes and tank tops. It was refreshing to see there was no strict dress code. We munched down on the chips and salsa, then ordered a few beers. Luckily, Corona and Dos Equis are on special during the dollar taco nights.

Conversation and laughter went on for twenty minutes before we even ordered, but the waitress didn’t seem to mind. She talked with us and told us more about the place. The building set up looked familiar, and come to find out it used to be a Pizza Hut. We finally ordered food; I got two chicken tacos and my friends got beef. They were at our table in a matter of minutes. I was a little skeptical about the tacos which were small and didn’t look delicious. The first bite proved me wrong. After engulfing both, I was stuffed. I am still not sure how such small tacos filled me up, but they did. We continued to hang out and talk over another beer. Before I knew it, two hours had passed since we had arrived. When she handed me the bill, my mouth dropped. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was, even with the drinks. It was such a relief not to spend over ten dollars on dinner.

Two years have passed, and every Tuesday night is set aside for dollar tacos. I look forward to it every week, and it never gets old. I always go with at least three friends, and we always stay at least one hour (even though it only takes up twenty minutes to order and eat). We know two of the waitresses personally, and they always take good care of us. I still order the same thing every time, and it is always great. Even if I have had the worst day possible, going there to eat and hang out lifts my whole mood. The atmosphere hasn’t changed, and neither has our traditional hang out place. I am so thankful that my friends and I have our own regular spot here that always guarantees a good time. Dollar taco night isn’t just a cheap meal, it’s a great time.

I just want to write...

I just want to write. I want to embrace the inner creative genius and write a masterpiece. I want to externalize the million and one thoughts that flow through my brain. I want create a perfect piece of writing. I just want to write.

"Go ahead and write it, then," you might say, or, "Do it, man!" That sounds like a good idea. I sit poolside with my pen and paper with the given task and begin the supposed creation of my personal masterpiece. The conditions are ideal for the creation, comfortable chair, relaxing music, no distractions. I am in the zone. But, nothing comes. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nothing.

I am what I have recently come to realize, a writing perfectionist. I become so consumed with the ideal of creating an amazing piece of writing that I rarely even begin. My thoughts wander. Massive amounts of thoughts concerning what to write about race through my mind. I pick a hundred topics to write on and with each new one, I think, "This is the one, This is it!" All is lost in the chaos of my racing mind. I struggle to take a topic and proverbially run with it. I lose the ability to literally, empty my mind and just let the thoughts pour out. I have so much to say but have no clarity. It becomes a jumbled mess.

The sun shines through the clouds but only for a second as the clouds cover it up for minutes at a time. The process repeats, nanoseconds of sunlight followed by minutes of cloud cover.

This is my brain. Short, impulsive thoughts of a creative genius are followed by long hiatuses of mental struggle. Every now and then, a brilliant light will shine through, but as quickly as it came, it becomes lost in the clouds.

I did not write the last three blogs that were assigned. I wasn't playing Halo. I wasn't watching sunday afternoon football. I wasn't sipping Busch Light on Wrightsville Beach. I was sitting at my computer having a veritable cerebral meltdown trying to find clarity. I was searching for the clarity to write. I was trying to clear away the clouds long enough for something to shine through. Nothing shone through. The clarity never came. Three times.

But, something different happens. I sit at the pool and take all the rubbish floating in my brain and get rid of it. I empty my mind of the junk and let the thoughts pour out, the gold . No confusion, no clouds, no jumbled messes. I start with a sentence that reads, "I just want to write." As if there was a tube connecting my thoughts to the pen, everything just flows out. It becomes clear. Hundred of topics fill the pages. Before, I couldn't take a thought anywhere. Now, each and every thought brings me to another thought that brings me to the next thought. It is a self-perpetuating cycle. I find an infinite amount of tangents

-with
-a
-million
-things
-to
-say
-about
-each.

The shine is beautiful.

Synapses fire. Everything clicks. The pen bleeds my blood, my soul. The sun peers through the clouds. The clouds try to block out the sun. But, when the sun shines, it really shines. My mind frees itself of the mental clouds. I find a way to defeat the mental confusion. Just let go and write. No more clouds.

Sarah

It was a beautiful warm day, with deep blue skies I have always believed can only be found in a state named Carolina. I sat outside the dorm I had moved into the day before, along with other freshmen who were anxious to make new friends. We discovered that Brandon, a sophomore, knew all the details of the murder of a girl on our floor the year before, and we listened with perked ears as he filled us in. We were all spooked by the room that we could see through a locked glass door; however, the girl was someone we didn’t know, and her friends, except for Brandon, were people who banded together and didn’t socialize. So we listened intently, but the story was just a story about a girl we didn’t know.

Three months later, we had all become accustomed to the glass door and were satisfied with the details we had gathered. One night I excitedly got ready for a keg party at Carolina Beach. Grateful that my roommate had gone to visit her boyfriend for the weekend, I threw clothes on and off till I finally decided what to wear, grabbed my bag and locked my room.

I piled into a car with my three new best friends and we made the twenty-minute drive down to Carolina Beach. The North End was packed with familiar faces, as almost my entire dorm had decided to make an appearance. Boys in jeeps and trucks ferried people a mile down the beach to the bonfire. A girl handed me a red plastic cup of warm beer, and I obediently drank while she chatted. “Oh, did you hear about that girl from Honor’s dorm that died? I think her name was Sarah,” she chirped. I knew only one girl in that dorm, and her name happened to be Sarah, but nonchalantly I asked, “Not Sarah Wing, right?” “Yeah, that was her name!” She said it almost like we had discovered a mutual friend.

My beer felt like cement in my stomach, but I still wasn’t sure she could be right. I had just seen Sarah the night before, remembering how she had yelled my name and waved vigorously with a big smile on her face when she spotted me walking to class. A pretty girl with waist length, curly hair, she treated me as a best friend even though we hadn’t been acquainted that long. She had been a refreshing change for me when I was discovering a cattiness among girls that I wasn’t used too.

People who didn’t know her already had the details: she had crossed lanes and driven head on into an eighteen wheeler going home an hour after I had seen her. A girl I knew spotted me crying and began crying herself, hysterically. She was comforted by a few cute boys after drawing their attention with her sobs. “So you were friends with her, too?” I asked. “Nooo, but it’s so sad…” she drunkenly replied. I was insulted for Sarah; I felt it was a degrading to her memory to have her death become a bit of cheap drama at a cheap party.

Blue lights appeared, and people scattered. I tossed my cup into the dark, feeling guilty for partying when Sarah had lost her life. The girl pulled me into the dunes, insisting she was doing me a favor. We walked around for half an hour, until we worked up the nerve to see if the police were issuing underage drinking tickets. Returning to what was left of the party, I ran around trying to find my friends. A girl eventually told me that a boy dubbed Tango, our current student body president, was already practicing his leadership skills and yelled that our dorm was officially leaving. No wonder he was elected, as everybody had followed him. Even my girlfriends.

Gloomily, I hitched a ride back off the beach and discovered that no one was willing to give a stranger a ride back to campus. I sat on a curb until a boy I knew walked up and asked me if I needed a ride. I jumped in his shiny SUV, only to discover that he had also offered rides back to nine other girls. One girl was piled on another, and legs were dangling out the back window. I was silent as we left the beach.

For the second time that night, blue lights appeared and my heart dropped, wondering how much trouble we were in. A cop shone his light around the car, but finally after giving a stern warning to our driver to get us home safe, he let us go, to a chorus of female voices yelling “Thank you so much, officer. You have a good night too!” Everyone was intoxicated and happy, and I was numb. The drunk girls around me were giggly after our “scary” brush with the law.

I trudged up to my dorm, and realized I had left my key and my cell phone in my friend's car. I began to cry, wishing I was in my bed and could really let the sobs take over. I banged on my friend's door; her roommate opened it to inform me that she had chewed the girls out for leaving me, and they were heading back to Carolina Beach to look for me.

Everyone was in bed, sleeping off the beer and liquor, and leaving me feeling helpless and alone. I sat outside the dorm on a cold, dewy bench and chain smoked until Brandon and the freshmen recruits for his band left their demo CD and came outside. “So how was the party?” Brandon asked, with a superior tone of voice. He was too good for our parties. “Sarah Wing died.” I replied. “Who’s that? At the party? What happened?” He asked, as if waiting expectantly for a juicy story. It reminded me of myself three months earlier, asking him about the murder.

It took an hour for my friends to show up with my dorm key, and they were full of stories about how some guy took them four wheeling around the beach and it was so sketchy and cold and blah blah blah. I mumbled my thanks, took my key and stumbled into bed. I slept, wanting to avoid the devastated mood Sarah’s death had left me with.

A week later, I was saddened again, this time after noticing a sign taped to the dorm’s front door. It was the only mark of Sarah’s death. Handwritten, it announced a meeting to talk about Sarah’s life in the living room of the Honor’s dorm. After spending the last three months of her life at UNCW, this was the best our school gave her. She was simply a story people gabbed about, saying how sad it was. She was 15 seconds on Channel 7.

Walking towards my dorm one afternoon, I stumbled on Sarah’s friend from her hometown, crying in a tiny white gazebo hidden among trees. She had just returned from the funeral, and was devastated. Nothing in my 18 years had qualified me to help her grieve, but I sat with her. We took drags on our cigarettes while she showed me pictures of Sarah in the hometown parade; pictures of a beaming Sarah at prom. Eventually, we had talked, smoked, and cried ourselves dry, and we both left. I was sad, but at the same time comforted. Sarah was more than a story to those who mattered; our little memorial service was more heartfelt than a hundred of her peers gathering in her memory.

The Protagonist Lifestyle

I started writing this paper on Thursday night. By “started”, I mean I sat down in front of a blank screen and thought about what I was going to write. It is now Sunday night and I’m to this point so far. Since Thursday night I have done four loads of laundry, watched two movies, and been to three bars and a house party. I have also rearranged my living room, watched about thirteen games of football, and even invented a new sport.

I did all these things while the cursor blinked on a blank page on my computer screen. I could have skipped any one of those activities and easily written five hundred words. I mean it was a free write. I could have written about any topic in the world. Now it’s eight o’clock on Sunday night. I have a four page argumentative writing paper and a Portuguese project due in the morning and I’m hurrying to finish a five hundred-word open topic blog that I started on Thursday. I wish I could blame my drinking problem or my friends but I can’t. I’m a protagonist.

This is a problem I know a lot of other college students can relate to. Recently, my roommate, a Cape Fear Sea Dragon, told me he was going to go work on his Biology paper for a while. Twenty minutes later he knocked on my door asking if I wanted to play catch. “What about your paper, isn’t it due tomorrow?” I asked pretending to care about how he did in school. He told me it was but that he was just taking a break. As we were heading out the front door I glanced at his computer and saw exactly what I expected. His computer screen had his name, the date and a title on it. That’s it. I assume he finished the paper at some point but who knows. I’m sure he didn’t worry too much about it and, even through I have three assignments due in the near future, I’m not going to either.

That’s the thing with college students though. For three years now I have been conditioned to function on no sleep, strung out on coffee and adderall. I have seen the sun rise many times while finishing a paper or studying for a final. My parents ask me how this affects my sleep schedule. Schedule? No college student has a sleep schedule. You sleep when you can. You sleep when you don’t have a blog due at midnight, a project due a ten and another paper at eleven. When there’s no good drink specials.

So if you see me on campus tomorrow my eyes will be puffy. I’ll be exhausted. I will look horrible. I’ll be pissed off because I crammed four days worth of work into seven hours. You would think I would have learned by now. As a senior in college, a year away from a job with consequences far greater than a bad grade, I should have some grasp on time management. I don’t. I would spend this last year of school trying to get better but I know I would just wait until the last minute.

Tall Girl Walking

My younger sister Whitney just started her junior year of high school and she has the same AP English teacher that I had when I was in school, Mrs Stro. While calling role, Stro read off the last name “Kerner” and proceeded to question my sister of my whereabouts. When Whitney told her that I go to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Stro replied, “Wilmington?! Oh, that town is way too small for Lia Kerner!”

Since kindergarten, I have always stood about a foot above everyone else, even most of the boys. Lia The Giant. My long fingers creep like spiders over the shoulders of my friends in all our pictures, my lanky legs and arms are always smacking into table edges, walls, chairs—I have the bruises to prove it. Though I am the third oldest child in my family, I am the tallest and am always being mistaken for the oldest. I can handle the clumsiness, the bruises just fine. What bothers me is the fact that my size transcends my physical appearance and projects onto other aspects of myself.

I can never seem to find shoes that fit, pants are never long enough and that seems to translate into my social life as well. I have always struggled to find that exact spot, that precise group of people with which I feel as If I truly belong.

Growing up, I had two older sisters that I was constantly trying to impress. I despised the concept of the annoying little sister, so I made a conscious decision to walk like them, talk like them, dress like them—be them, essentially. As a result, I’ve always felt and been told by others that I was mature for my age. Perhaps that is why I can never seem to find a nice, comfortable size in good friends.

There are several reasons why I feel I don’t belong. I don’t understand what all the college hype is about. I feel that because I am here to absorb as much knowledge as I can, earn the best grades and ultimately graduate with a competitive edge, I am the one that is here for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t come here for “…the night’s I’ll never remember with the friends I’ll never forget,” and for that, I have the hardest time finding my place on this campus. Am I “too old” for college? Did I outgrow that sense of exhilarating thoughtlessness long ago? Is it normal that I would rather talk to a senior citizen than one of my fellow college students at any given time? It is the members of my own generation that I feel I cannot relate to.

I think I lack the recklessness. At a young age, I became skilled in learning from others’ mistakes, so those that my older sisters made; I would observe and tell myself that that was exactly what I didn’t want to do. I think I was able to side-step a lot of the pit-falls of adolescence that way. I’ve never needed to try a cigarette to know they aren’t for me. Perhaps it’s that ache for adventure and experimentation that is essential in the formula for a normal college experience that I am missing. Regardless, yet again, I find myself sticking out, uncomfortably, amidst all the faces.

But I don’t find this seemingly eternal placelessness to be a bad thing. Sure, I am secretly anti-social but that doesn’t mean that I want to be alone forever. I am aware that college is just the beginning—there are so many people left for me to meet. I am not hopeless, I am determined to make the best of my life; use my height to help save the world, go on a cross-country tour teaching anti-social kids how to make friends. To be perfectly honest, things are looking up. You don’t have to feel bad for me, not only am I currently sporting a new pair of jeans that look really great, but these shoes aren’t pinching my feet and my both of my roommates this year stand two inches above the tip top of my head. Maybe I’m not as alone or as big as I had thought, maybe there is life out there, a bright future after all, for this lonely giant girl.

Your Own Happiness

“Does this dress make me look fat?” “Are my arms muscular enough?” Stop! Does it really matter what the world thinks? People center their happiness on what others think. I’m so tired of hearing about the worlds’ opinions. Do you like the dress? Good! - Then wear it. Do you like your arms? Yes? - Then you don’t need more muscle. What matters in this lifetime is your own opinion, not what others’ think.

The world is changing so fast. It is too hard to keep up with the new trends and fashions. The type of clothing or hairstyle that is in style today will be something completely different in a few months. Instead of people trying to fit in with the world, people should be living the way that makes them happy. I grew up with my two older twin sisters who were always worried about what people thought of them. They both thought they were too fat and needed to lose a few pounds. Their hair color changed at least once a month as did their style of clothing. They would never be caught dead in their pajamas or without make up under any circumstance. I remember one night that they both lectured me on going to Wal-Mart in pajamas and what people would think of me. It was 10:00 at night and my siblings wanted ice-cream. I wasn’t going to change my clothes when I was only going to be in a store for five minutes.

Changing your appearance or worrying about your weight is not a bad thing, as long as it is what you want. The problem with caring about others’ opinions and trying to please the world is that you never will. Someone is going to see you as overweight or scrawny, and then others will see you as skinny or muscular. You can’t please everyone so stop trying. More people are born into this world everyday. There will always be a person who is prettier, skinnier, friendlier, more athletic, muscular, and the list goes on. Be true to yourself and what makes you happy and you will have more satisfaction out of your life.

The world is cruel. It portrays people as flawless. It tells us that women need to be tall and skinny and wear a size two. It shows us that men need to be tan, built, and have a 6-pack. Those images are just another opinion. People can be however they choose to be. I have seen my sisters and best friends constantly try to change because of what other people think. That never made them happy. We have one life to live- so why waste it worrying about what other people think. For once, try living life based on your own thoughts and what makes you happy.

More than just chance

My dream was suddenly interrupted by John Mayer belting out the chorus of a song. When I cracked open my eyes to the orange glow of the room, I realized that it was the ringtone I had assigned my mom. As I rolled over to pick up the phone I glanced at the clock, noticing it was12:30 in the afternoon.

“Hey, what’s going on?” I said as I flipped open the phone. “Brant, you need to come home,” said the voice on the other end. Only, it wasn’t my mom – it was her best friend, Ve. “What? What’s wrong, where’s Dot?” I replied frantically. “Bob was in accident, it’s not good,” she said. She explained to me that my mom, Dot, couldn’t come to the phone at the moment and to leave as soon as possible.

I sprung up out of my bed, running to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth quickly and opened my overnight bag, shoveling in whatever clothes were nearby. I stood in front of my closet for a moment, thinking – hanging in front of me was my black suit. I couldn’t let myself grab the suit, I couldn’t resign myself to the fact that I would lose my dad that day.

I was in my car, headed towards Durham less than 15 minutes after getting the call. Soon after, my mom’s ringtone blared out again. This time, it was my mom. She sounded calm, telling me
to take my time and offering no more news on what had happened.

I drove with the music off, reflecting on the conversation my dad and I had the two days before while driving to pick up lunch. He and my mom had surprised me, coming by for a couple of hours just to hang out at my apartment. He told me how proud he was of how I was doing with school and work and that he rarely ever worried about how my life would end up. I told him that it never would have happened if he hadn’t believed in me, even when there were times he shouldn’t have put much faith in me.

All of the sounds of the highway were gone – no wind whipping over my car, no wheels turning over the uneven pavement. There was a complete silence in the car, in my head.
I couldn’t take the silence any longer; I had to flip on the radio. I turned on the Jim Rome
Show, which we had often listened to when we drove together in the afternoon. I was able to take my mind off what was going on for a few minutes at a time but then I’d suddenly remember him carrying me around on his shoulders a Disney World or helping me get out of being grounded.

Two hours of thinking about every imaginable scenario came to an end when I pulled up to my house. The driveway was mostly full and a few cars lined the street.

As I walked to the door, I pulled my green Tampa Bay cap down to my eyebrows and let out a deep sigh. I stepped in and looked up to the living room on the left. The conversation between my mom and her sisters suddenly went silent. The entire room was staring me down as my mom came over and grabbed my hand to lead me upstairs.

She was in front of me, calculating her words.

“What happened,” I said. “It’s not good…not good,” she said quietly with tears in the corners of her eyes. “Is he,” sputtered out as I pulled my cap down further “Is he… still here,” I relplied.
She shook her head and looked me in the eye, “He’s gone, he loved you so much, Brant,” she said as she reached to hug me.

My head rested over her left shoulder with my arms hanging down by my side and staring blankly at the white door. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t speak-- I was paralyzed. The man who taken me in as one of his own at the age of four was gone.

One of his work crew backed into him as he walked across a parking lot to get something for the job inside. When he got hit, he went flying backwards and hit his head in the wrong spot on the pavement. It was almost instant.

Never again would we get to watch a football game together or talk over a plate of fried squash. After all the work he put in to send me to college, he wouldn’t be at my graduation.

I’m not even sure when I realized that my mom was sobbing uncontrollably. When I heard her sobbing, mine began. She kept repeating to me, “he loved you so much, so much.” I said, “I know.”

While the shock of it was all too much at first, I was able to look back over the next few nights and find myself at peace with it.

I’m not into religion or anything of that nature – but I know there was more to our conversation that day than just a chance meeting. Something brought him to me that day, some force brought those words out.

He overcame unimaginable odds everyday and there’s no doubt in my mind that he could have overcome the accident had he wanted to. He was at peace though, his daughter was successful and he thought his little boy was going to be alright. He and Dot had grown much closer recently with me out of the house. He knew where his relationships stood with everyone that mattered and he was proud of everything he had accomplished.

His work here was done.

Ants in My Pants

On the day my next door neighbors moved out, several colonies of ants moved into my house. I had left a pizza crust on my dinner plate in the living room the night before and they had completely covered it with themselves. I ran into my bedroom, cringing and rubbing my forehead as if a genie might pop out and solve my problem. The only place I’d seen ants invade so vigorously was a summer picnic, but my house? Never! I frantically paced the room, trying to think of ways to diverge them. I had never had to deal with such a problem. I’d been one of the lucky few that had never been truly invaded with bugs. I thought maybe if I left them alone, they’d just go away. Then I started to think of them moving into my house as a permanent home, moving from my neighbor’s house to mine. Is that why they had left? Had these ants eaten all their food and moved in, leaving them with nothing but wire on the walls as Mr. Grinch had in How the Grinch Stole Christmas? I pictured these invaders sitting on their couch and arguing over which channels to watch and that being “the last straw!” I imagined my neighbors packing their bags and throwing evil looks the ants’ way as they packed up the moving truck. They did never say why they had left.

I’m not one to kill bugs. In fact, I pride myself in being able to count on one hand the amount of bugs I’ve killed in my lifetime. But a war had been declared and if I didn’t retaliate, I was sure they’d make me move out just like my poor next door neighbors. I loved my house way too much for that to happen, so I looked down at the dark mass and tried to think of how to kill so many little black ants.

I tried to think of what other household liquid might work on such creatures, and came up with Windex, the window and surface cleaner. I figured some ammonia might work and by god it did. I found a bottle of Windex in the back of the car my dad handed down to me and got to work. Once the cleaner was sprayed on an ant, it tried to half run, half swim away, only to find itself twitching several times, and then dying within the minute. It was fabulous. At first I tried targeting the ants one by one. But that wasn’t fast enough: the others were getting the message and running away before I could get to them. And the last thing I wanted was feeling guilty because they were trying to escape my wrath. I needed to catch them off-guard and eating my food. So I moved the bottle of Windex higher up and sprayed from a distance, in rapid succession, killing large masses of ants at a time. It wasn’t long until I felt like an alien-robot destroyer. Nothing could stop Robot #3847 from his planet’s duty.

I moved from the living room to the kitchen, to the garage. All the while bent over like a demented hunch-back taking revenge on his betraying city. I even started spraying areas where there were no ants, but that looked like a place they might march through as a shortcut. Blue streams flowed along the floors and carpets. Forty-five minutes and half a bottle of Windex later, all ants in sight were dead or still twitching. I stood, out of breath and energy, and surveyed my work. The blue splotches of Windex were everywhere, making my floors look like I had an untrained puppy with a taste for blueberry Kool-Aid. I stared over the carnage that was my house and nodded. “Yes,” I thought, “this is the beginning of the end.”

I slept well that night and dreamt of a tall, dark and handsome insect-exterminator taking me out to dinner and a movie, then getting lucky back at my place. I awoke with a sore back, but smiled at the fact that I wouldn’t have another run-in with the ants.

I groggily walked into my kitchen to make a cup of coffee when I felt something on my foot. I looked down after realizing it was an ant, brushed it onto the floor. But it was too late, I felt a small sting. At first I didn’t think much of it because they were just small black ants, not fire ants, which I had an allergic reaction to. However, I now know I am also allergic to small black ants. The stinging grew and grew, so I sprayed some Windex on my foot. Then I put red wine vinegar on it, followed by a piled on mound of baking soda that turned cakey and red from the vinegar, followed by wrapping it up with paper towels and prayed to God my foot would be saved. God not only didn’t save my foot, he put a big puss filled blister on it and made it swell like a balloon.

I cursed those colonies like a sailor in a bar, dragging a trail of paper towel behind me, still half clinging to my swollen foot. The ants were back and they were angry. They were avenging their angry queen and they suddenly seemed everywhere. I was the misunderstood Frankenstein and they were the angry villagers, carrying lit torches with a crazy glint their little eye. Any minute I expected to hear chants of “kill the beast!” in little high-pitched ant voices. I ran into my room and, making sure my door was shut and tightly locked, found my slipper boots. My slippers came halfway up my calf and were covered in pink fur. They were uncomfortably hot and made me walk like the un-dead stitched-together man himself, but perfect for keeping the ants at bay.

I found my Windex and charged into the kitchen, yelling war cries and blindly spraying in all directions. They started twitching all together among yesterday’s dead bodies. I felt barbaric, but I also felt such a rush of power. I sprayed all corners of the inside of my house. I turned on all the lights and slowly walked around searching for a stray that left the pack. But I knew no matter how much I made my carpet blue, they’d keep coming back.
At this point, when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t darkness that I saw, but millions of ants. Every time I walked into a room, I scanned the floor for ants. The worst part was that I always found at least one everywhere I looked. It was time to take real action and get professional help at Lowe’s Hardware.

I drove to Lowe’s feeling slightly defeated, but happy that the intruders would finally be out of my not-so-humble abode. I walked over to the insect killing isle and started to read labels. I had no idea there were so many ways to kill ants. I was in heaven.
Just then a young boy wearing a Lowe’s uniform and a nametag at just read “Ask Me,” popped his head around the corner and asked, “Need any help, Miss?”
I looked at him and raised one eyebrow, “Do ants have legs?” I replied. He shuffled his feet around a little and cocked his head to the side.

“I don’t know, Miss, I just work here,” he said.

I told him I was looking for something that would bring complete ant-Armageddon to my home. The Lowe’s worker didn’t seem phased by my taste for death as I’m sure he had encountered ones like me that had come before. I didn’t know where to begin. All of the methods for extermination seemed appropriate and satisfactory. The young worker put his hands on his hips and looked at me, waiting for instructions.

I glared at him, “Get me a cart.”

I purchased 10 ant “hotels”, 4 tubes of ant gel to line the outside of my house, and 2 cans of spray that attracts them then kills them all off.

Upon returning home, I crashed through my garage door, feeling like Jack Nicolson in “The Shining.”

I ripped open the boxes of death traps and placed them strategically around and inside my house, making it a concentration camp for ants. It wouldn’t be long now before they marched in, but won’t march out. I felt like rejoicing and having a pizza delivered to my house so I could eat it in front of them and leave the crusts on the floor. I wanted to have a picnic on my kitchen floor and spill juice, watermelon, and hotdog buns all over it. I only wished that I knew the new number of my ex-neighbors’ new house so I could call to tell them I’m in the process of avenging them.

Before making myself dinner that night, I went to look out at the sprayed-on pieces of cardboard I had put on my back deck. It was black with ants. I couldn’t help but laugh in my reflection in the window. Am I still paranoid about ants being on floors in my house? Well, yes, I am. But I feel reassured knowing that the ant-concentration camp I built will prevent me ever seeing another ant again.

Conformity Sucks: The Difference Between The Rebel and the Fonz

Rebel is such a vague word, and on a college campus there are several variations. There is the pothead hippy rebel, the bohemian intellectual rebel, and the wild and crazy punk. Some of you probably resent how I just simplified everyone who acts differently into three broad categories. I could have done that to invoke anger, or to make you think about the way you judge. But that would be a stinking lie. The fact is that these 9 second interactions are all we have, and everyone judges. It is human; a basic thought process known as generalization that allows our minds to multitask and excel in more advanced functions. However, generalizations can hold us back.

Avante garde stuff is interesting to me, as well as surreal movies, anything apocalypse related and less specifically, science fiction. I enjoy riding my skateboard. Not because its “cool,” but because it makes me happy. As Willie Nelson said in Half Baked, “Its not the thing to do, because it’s the thing to do…it’s the thing to do, because it gets ya high, ya dig?” Except that I don’t even drink, much less use marijuana, and while I like intricate and sometimes bizarre art, I’m really tired of the word “trippy.” I love metal, not because I want to let the world know how much it sucks – I just like the power and speed. The disjointed yet technical musicianship is like energy-drunk Bach in a torture chamber.

Sometimes people talk to me like they think I’m going to criticize them. Just because I have particular tastes does not mean I think mine are better than yours. Maybe I should work on my facial expressions, because I do not want to convey this message. I may joke around, but as long as I think you have good intentions, I’m incredibly accepting, laid back, and friendly. I don’t like being pidgeon holed as the hotheaded petty-rule-breaker, or the cold atheist or the bleeding liberal, and I don’t adhere to vague statements such as fuck the system. I think I’m opposite of what most people assume I am: even though I don’t have much of these qualities, I value patience, discipline, and humility.

Someone who likes loud music, and looks a certain way, or will get in your face is not a rebel. A rebel doesn’t have a self-glorifying smile that screams they are cooler than everyone else. Rebellion is an internal thought process, and a true rebel does not necessarily act rebelliously. I think that rebellious actions are more often the result of angsty teenagers and repressed adults who are angry at the world. They are trying to prove something, so they conform to society’s definition of what it is to be a rebel. A rebel is someone who goes against social norms, and that can be me sometimes, but that is not normally how I act because I don’t like drawing too much attention to myself and I don’t like making waves. I try to be mellow, and while I am trying to establish myself as an individual, I am experiencing some difficulties. I have a hard time being myself in large groups of people because they make me anxious, and I do care about what people say and think about me, and I’m horrified of being humiliated in public. Other than that, I’m just trying to be the death metal loving nerd I am without isolating others for not being the exact same. I try to keep my attitude in check, and hang out with honest and friendly people.

When people stereotype me, I understand where they are coming from, for assuming that I hate their music or their beliefs, but I have found through experience that most judgmental people just don't understand you and/or they are projecting qualities of themselves. They are either insecure about their beliefs and interests or they really dislike my beliefs and interests, and so they treat me the way they're afraid of being treated. Or more often, they have the same Bob Marley tshirt I do and they smoke pot, so they think I do as well. When you make general statements about how metal takes no talent, or that so and so doesn’t look like a skateboarder, it just shows to me how uncultured and naïve you are.

Ye Olde Trailer Park by Candlelight Tour

As I stepped over the huge boxes and half-assembled displays this past week in one of the local retail giants, I grumbled that the holiday season is upon us. No, I am not Scrooge when it comes to the festive time of year. I just can’t believe that it is not even Halloween and already the stores are covered in plastic snow and red felt. I was still mulling over Christmas-in-September commercialism when I noticed an information flyer for an annual event in our area. It gave me an idea and set me on a mission.

Our city has a great annual holiday fundraiser. The "Olde Wilmington by Candlelight Tour" is an event where the homeowners in the downtown district decorate their homes in beautiful Christmas style. Pricey tickets are sold to the "common folk" which provide access to these stately manors to see all the things that anyone with less than a six figure income could never afford. One owner interviewed said his wife spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars decorating for this "worthy" event. The money raised is then donated to some needy charity. In truth it probably goes to building a park in the historic district for the rich and wealthy doggies to relieve themselves.

This flyer got me thinking, why don't they ever do something like this in the real neighborhoods in town? I know plenty of the middle class that put on a beautiful spread for the holidays. In fact, as I was thinking, I came across the perfect idea for this Christmas. Someone should organize the "Ye Olde Trailer Park by Candlelight Tour." Think about it, the idea has real potential! It could be a combined effort; open to both single and doublewides! No use getting snobby and excluding anyone on width size.

It would be a real boom for the economically challenged community. The holiday cheer would be abundant. I am not sure there are enough gaudy lighted plastic yard Santas in Wal-Mart to cover this project. This venture would give home to any number of lighted sleighs, elves, candy canes and stockings. Multi-colored blinking Christmas lights are suited for this task as they would wrap nicely around the cinderblocks that hold up the singlewides. They could be put to equally good use on the redwood decks of the doublewides. The blow up pools that still standing from summer should have the perfect amount of green slime water to freeze and make for a nice "neighborhood ice skating scene" complemented nicely with some guy ice fishing with his trusty six pack of Bud Light next to him. Every window (that isn't covered with cardboard) can have one of those plastic electric candles in them. (*Note: remind people to make sure they aren't too close to the synthetic curtains, they get fairly hot, don't want anyone's trailer going up in flames due to this fundraiser). Of course, every yard would have to have one of those blue metal imitation Christmas trees. I always get a chuckle out of the boxes they are packed in. They say "imitation" tree on them No! I thought there was a metal forest out there facing extinction, what a relief to not have to worry about that!

Of course, the important thing would be the money raised and putting it to good use. Each year a different individual or family would be selected to receive the funds raised. It would go to help with a need they have. Bubba down the street could use his money to finally buy tires for the old Ford that has been up on blocks for the last three years (nicely decorated this Christmas in keeping with the tour, in coordinating colored lights). Erma Jane could use it to finish the addition that has been half built and covered with plastic since the tornado come through five years ago (everyone knows she spent the FEMA money on Tupperware but no one faults her for that, considering all she lost). Dudley and MaryElizabeth could finally buy the kids a stroller instead of hauling all six of them around in a grocery cart they stole from the Piggly Wiggly a couple years ago.

I took the flyer down and tucked in my purse. Forget the "Olde Historic District Tour,” I am off to work on this project, I am sure it will be much more fulfilling. I will have to work on some of the details though. Most of the Christmas decorations usually don’t get taken down in the trailer park until Easter – perhaps I should figure a way to just make it a year-long project. Anyone interested in a ticket?

Miss Marlow and Milo

Word count: zero. Now five. Six. The blank page. I prefer the full page. But only after I fill it – my way. If I can imagine the specifics, if I can see the page in my head and the story pieced together perfectly like some bestselling Grisham or Sparks I don’t find much use in transcribing it. Because that’s all it would be – a transcription, a copy, a clone of something that already exists in my mind. I would be old Miss Marlow, the bee-hived court reporter from Gray County, Texas, sitting in her cushioned chair, just taking it all in and typing it out: a morning of opening statements and witnesses, then lunch eating powdered donuts in the smoky break room on the stained beige phone with the twisted cord, talking with her miserable daughter who hates the bureaucracy of Medicare but doesn’t know the word bureaucracy, babies crying in the distance. Back from lunch, more witnesses, then cross examination – day after day, all the dried up and crackling legal proceedings taken down, unedited, faithfully, word for word for word, blah, blah, blah.

The unexplored strings of words and phrases are worth waiting for. They brush off bold and italics. They impassion. They shimmy down my arm in a picket line, demanding their chance on the page. Maybe together they’ll form something new, something that would have been long since aborted in my mind – like the retrospection of Joseph Guillotin, decapitating words like these with the official blade of the French revolution.

The predetermined ending will sprain a story’s soul. I don’t want to be little Milo in the hedge maze, working his way towards the center. He moves from one passage to the next. There is a right way and a wrong way, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he is free to choose, with his pockets full of little green army men, but the design is set. The shrubbery is stubborn and thick. There is only one way. He wanders in circle after circle, meeting each dead end with increasing frustration, swinging at the shrubs with fury. Little Milo begins to hate the maze. He no longer cares about reaching the center. He throws himself on the ground, pounding his fists in the dirt, his inner animal growling, tears streaking mud down his cheeks. I don’t want to be little Milo in the hedge maze, working my way toward the center, the ending, the reward. I’d rather burn it all down. I’d rather the center of the maze boil blue with heat. I’d shovel away all the ashes and cover the ground with mounds of salt – nothing will ever grow again. No center, no maze, no story, no ending.

Marriage 2.0

I'm sitting here looking at the tossed around remnants of a tuxedo. Last night I was standing at the front of a church watching my best friend get married. For the past two weeks I have watched the pressure and drama build up as we tried to get everything set up. As I have watched all of this true reality build around me, I have learned a lot of things. I have learned from this experience that I don't want to put that much pressure on myself, or any other person for that matter. I watched my best friend cry Friday afternoon because they couldn't find enough chairs to put out at the reception. It's a definite social commentary when you have to put that much effort into something that is so simple.

When you think about the 'exactness' of what a wedding is, and how beautiful the act of getting married is, we almost make the act of getting married quite jaded. I think that we as a society have taken the ceremony away from what it actually means. Marriage (if you believe in the Judeo-Christian God and the book in which he is described in) is the oldest institution in our history. God joined Adam and Eve after their creation. It is described as a holy and pure thing that we have tainted by making it into something that it isn't.

Marriage has delved away from the Godly institution that it originally was, and has gone nose deep into the hierarchical realm of "showing off." We look at it as a status symbol. A woman looks down at her left ring finger only to find that her diamond did not cost as much as her best friend's thus causing frustration in a happy relationship. I know that this does not happen all of the time, but I'm sure that it happens every now and then. Women watch videos of other people's weddings to find out what aspects that they loved, and what aspects that they want to improve on.

Nick's new wife had to have a violinist play at her wedding because she heard someone talk about it and knew how fantastic everyone would think it was. I know that most little girls sit around dreaming about their wedding days and when it comes to fruition they cannot stand something going a little bit wrong. But I just think that we as a society are putting too much pressure upon ourselves to do something that is a simple yet beautiful act of love between two people.

I know that I couldn't imagine having a wedding at a justice of the peace's office even though I would be just as married as anyone else. When you think of a marriage in this day and age, you think of the giant ceremony. You don't think of a quiet ceremony where everything comes together perfectly because we put too much pressure on what really is an American tradition of showing off.

How Hollywood can do Penance

American cinema has become victim of its own power. It has not yet learned to exercise power over itself especially in self discipline. Hollywood has stopped taking risks and is now at a point where it is slowly dying. The market has been oversaturated with films reliant on adaptations from television shows, comic books and other films from decades before. The problem is having too much investment in the bottom line which is money.

I am here to give Hollywood some suggestions to do penance and save itself from downfall. First the budgets are too large for films. There is really no justification for a film to cost $100 million when you don’t see it on screen. Instead of making films that average $80-100 million in budget they should cap the cost at $20 million a film. In this strategy they can make more artistic risks giving the director more control of his vision. Just in case the film flops it won’t tank a studio like the film Heaven’s Gate did.

Films should be longer as well. Why make a film that is 90-120 minutes when you only scratch the surface of a subject that needs more depth? A good range for a film would be three to six hours. This includes back-story, character development and watching those characters adapt to their environment, and more inward probing of the character’s soul and their place in the world. If you watch the films Heat, La Dolce Vita, and The Thin Red Line they all accomplish this and they all have remarkable cinematography. The cinematography advances the narrative because it is a character in itself.

Another thing about Hollywood with the exception to independent film is its aversion to more sexual energy on screen. When you watch a movie by Wong Kar-Wai such as In the Mood for Love there is more sexual intimacy going on between the glances of his two leads than what a 30 second shot of foreplay on screen can do in other films. The reason is because it is not rushed and not perverse. In the Mood for Love captures this intimacy between the characters with the slow motion shots, down tempo music and longing both characters have for one another. It is believable.

There should be no more World War II films or political films dealing with the Iraq War. When over 60% of people oppose the Iraq War, an anti-war film isn’t that controversial, brave or relevant. Everyone dislikes something about it and it doesn’t hit hard like it did three years ago. World War II films have been overplayed as well. Hollywood pretends to honor veterans with a slew of World War II films but instead they are actually making an action film with Germany in the background. They should instead have more war films about World War I or the American Revolutionary War. We either need more real wars or fewer films about war. Pick one.

Lastly salaries should be capped. No actor should be making $20 million a movie. A film itself should have a budget of $20 million. There should also be more location shooting and less shooting inside a studio which produces a stale, cold and artificial look. Computer Generated Imagery must be reduced to the point of it not being used or only used to create an impossible shot. Special effects used to special when they weren’t used every five minutes. Whole films have been shot in front of green screen and backgrounds have been generated off of a laptop. It is distracting and takes away from the realism of a film. I don’t go see films to escape; I go to probe deeper in the world.

Mr. Cuervo, I Presume?

I met my newest friend at the beginning of the summer. I had seen him around at the bars before, but always declined an introduction. His name was Jose' and upon our first meeting, I felt an instant connection that has grown into a beautiful relationship that has picked me up, let me down, and filled my heart and head with songs that only I know the words to.

It all started on a balmy June evening. It was my half-way graduation party and the crew was headed to my favorite rodeo bar to wrangle some cowboys and tackle the bull. That night, I nervously accepted the introduction to Jose'. His soothing warmness filled me with happiness and love, and he convinced me to get on that bar and shake it. That night, we really connected. Between the bull rides and the line dancing, Jose' and I met four or five more times, and each time I fell more and more in love with him.

Jose' and I continued our relationship well past that first introduction. He often brought his friends to the party to make things easier on those rough nights. We called them our "training wheels", and they really supported our relationship and helped us make the most of the strong bond that was forming. Our weekend nights became regular date nights and when my friends and I got together we all knew that the party didn't start until Jose' got there. He was a regular fixture at my house, sitting on my kitchen table as we laughed and told stories of our past adventures with him.

Throughout the summer, we hung out on a weekly basis, and I really got to know Jose' on a very personal level. We always had such a fun, unpredictable time together. I could always count on a laugh when he was with me. One of my fondest memories this summer was the time he convinced me to take a leisurely swim in the fountain on 5th Street, cowboy boots and all.

While Jose' was always up for a good time, he also taught me a lot about myself. I learned my strengths and mostly weaknesses as a karaoke singer. I learned that I can do a mean Elaine dance from Seinfeld. I learned that cracks in the sidewalk frequently come out of nowhere. And most importantly, I learned when to throw in the towel. He saw me at my strongest and also my most vulnerable. But, like any relationship, we've had our ups and downs. Our last time hanging out left me with a bitter taste in my mouth and a sprained hand and ankle. It was a rough night and Jose' filled me up with artificial strength, and in the end, he really let me down. Most often, when he disagreed with me, I found it hard to look at him the next day. But, our love has been strong, and we've always manage to make amends before the week is over.

Now, with school and work taking up the majority of my time, Jose' and I do not meet as much as we'd like. I miss him those lonely nights and whisper empty promises of the weekend to come. With my busy schedule these days, I hope Jose' and I will tough it out and remain lifelong friends and continue our steady relationship full of warmth and love.

Learning from Mistakes

I believe in learning from mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you respond and change that really matters.

There is no doubt in my mind that karma exists. I can’t explain how I know; it’s really just a gut feeling. I know it exists because it kicked my ass. I used to brag about my abilities as a drunk driver. I would claim that it was not as big a deal as everyone made it out to be. You just had to know your limits. Then karma showed me just how big it was.

At my friend’s high school graduation party (she’s a year younger than I am) I got blackout drunk. I was making an ass out of myself as usual. The crowd cheered me on as I shotgunned beers. I hopped on the karaoke mic and made a speech. People loved the show. When her mom saw the spectacle she made me give her my keys. I told her that I didn’t drive to the party and that I was getting a ride home with someone else.

An hour later I told everyone I was leaving. I stood up and everyone tried to talk me out of it. I said I was fine and that I could drive. When they still wouldn’t let me drive I bolted out of the basement and ran to my car. With everyone chasing after me I hopped in the driver’s seat and started the car. Before my friends could reach the car it sped off into the night.

I never made it home that night. My memory of the drive is hazy but, I do remember a few details. I remember taking my cell phone out of my pocket. I remember looking for a cd. I remember cutting the wheel hard and I remember being upside down at one point. The seatbelt caught the weight of my body as gravity pulled me down. The windshield cracked and the crack spread in all directions. The scar on my neck just recently healed.

The next thing I remember is waking up the following afternoon. Except for a few bruises, I was fine. My car wasn’t. My friends filled me in on the missing details. Before I got out of the neighborhood I flipped my car. The hill I rolled down was steep. The roll must have taken a good amount of time. My friends found me passed out behind the wheel. When they got me out I was speaking gibberish and stumbling. I tried to walk up the hill but fell flat on my face. My friends were so disgusted with me that they let me lay there for a while. When they finally picked me up I had grass stuck to my face. I looked pathetic.

I made a mistake. I admit it. I paid for it. I lost a car, my parents’ trust, and the rest of my summer, but a gained a valuable lesson. Since that night I haven’t driven drunk once. I wish I never had to begin with. I’m just thankful that my irresponsibility didn’t cost someone else their life.

Unexpected Knowledge

I believe in picking yourself back up again. I grew up being shy and feeling out of place. I always only had one or two friends at a time and didn’t like change. I can remember trying to make new friends in high school or the beginning of college and never got anything out of it. People wouldn’t try to get together or call just to chat. This past year, I studied abroad in London, England. It was different, exiting, and new. I knew that I had to do something different or I’d never change from the person I was. I wanted to be someone better, someone that could walk up to strangers, introduce myself and make friends for life. It took me a lot longer during my year abroad to step outside my bubble than most people. I was placed in on-campus housing with only international students. There wasn’t a lounge, a cafeteria, or places to hangout on campus, so I felt cut off from people around me.

I made friends with a small group of international students, but my goal was to befriend English students. No matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t seem to happen. The only social interaction around was the nightlife and I wasn’t good at branching outside my group. One night in late November when I had recently come to terms that I might not come back to England after my Christmas break, I met an English boy. For once, I exchanged numbers and he kept in touch. He ended up being my boyfriend we’re still together.

Though him, I was able to open up to other people in a different country, which made making friends back home much more easy. Within days, I had met four of his friends. By the end of the next week, I had made over 15 new friends. Just by meeting them, I earned the privilege of being invited to events on the weekend and lunches after class. I couldn’t believe that it was so simple, all I had to do was introduce myself and people paid attention. Meeting a friend of a friend wasn’t something that became a forgotten trend; it was something more personal than that. I started to understand the English culture more and through that, used my new knowledge to gain relationships that will last a lifetime. The most important aspect that has developed from my experience is being back home after my yearlong absence.

I thought it would be very hard to get back with friends I hadn’t spoken to but once a month, make new friends, and get involved with my community again. But because I developed a new belief, it had helped me in ways I could not ever see myself doing. I’ve never made an effort to befriend neighbors, talks to people at bars, or be more open minded. Now I know many of my neighbors since I’ve returned from England, which I never thought I would be able to do. I ask people around me when going out to play pool with me when I don’t know them. By opening up to people and letting them feel at ease, it’s become so easy just laugh and have fun. This is what is necessary to keep good company that lasts. It just comes to me so easily now. Being in a country where I didn’t know anyone was the wakeup call I needed to get myself out of my shell and out into the world.

Good, Bad, but never Indifferent

From the moment we open our eyes every morning we start making choices. Most of these choices are quite simple. What will I have for breakfast? What will I wear today? The choices we make are often second nature, habit even. Decisions are life's steering wheel. With every decision we make we customize our life's path, much like those choose your own adventure books I loved so much in grade school. Fortunately we really can choose our own adventure, our fate isn’t predetermined. Not in the United States anyway.

With such power over our lives why should we ever feel indifferent? That question may sound trivial when applied to life’s more simple dilemmas but the same logic applies across the board. I believe in believing in something; having an opinion, a preference, a passion for choice A or B. For me, deciding what to eat everyday is a passionate decision. So is what kind of gas I put in my car, what kind of toothpaste I use, where I buy my groceries, what kind of sheets I put on my bed, who I want to call my president. Perhaps I take it too far at times and over thinking everything can lead to indecision. But I truly believe in believing in something, insignificant or critical.

Somewhere along the way indifference has become commonplace and even fashionable, especially in my generation. "I don’t care" is thrown around more than ever. After all, it's cool not to care. I believe that we all really do care. Believing in something is revealing, but exposing yourself to ridicule comes with the territory. Its all worth it no doubt. Crash Davis knew what he believed. "The soul. The small of a woman's back. The hanging curveball. High fiber. Good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. Opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve..." Me? I believe in the full windsor, the 65 Mustang, tube amps, the 30-minute sitcom, the golden rule. I believe in brevity, dark socks, natural selection, the 89' orioles, the traditional Irish wake, minimalism, Picassos bull, two buck chuck, the beauty of slow motion, transcendental meditation, Hemingway’s 5 rules, the Wizard of Oz, Andy Kaufman, and most shades of blue. I believe in everything I do. These choices wont necessarily change the world but they can certainly change yours.

What a gift it is to be able to believe in something, anything. Its fitting that that very gift was given by those whom so strongly believed in something. I plan to exploit my power to choose to the fullest. At least then I can say that my life is what I made it, I held the steering wheel.