But Seriously, Use the Deodorant

Dear Victoria,
        First of all, you need to relax.  Calm down.  No need to panic.  Yes, in your futile but nonetheless valiant quest to organize your locker (which, by the way, smells like a dead rat, so please, for the sake of your locker buddy, do something about that), you have indeed stumbled upon a letter from your eighteen-year and fifteen-day-old counterpart.  And I have some information that you may find interesting.  So you better go sit down--I recommend going to the library, because Anna and Catherine are in the cafeteria right now, and they will inevitably steal this from you if they catch as much as a glimpse of it.  So go.  Alright, where shall we begin? Ah, yes. Hygiene. Seriously, Victoria, you do not smell much better than your locker.  I know how much fun you have rebelling against Mom and refusing to wear that nasty blueberry-hibiscus-scented Teen Spirit deodorant (and you will develop an allergic reaction to it anyway, so prepare yourself) but now would be a perfect time to start getting in the habit of using it.  I recommend Dove. It smells good, and in eighth grade that one cute guy you will meet at 4-H camp may or may not tell you smell nice. Anyway.  If I recall correctly, Ms. Heartz is your homeroom teacher, and you have no friends in your class.  Now, if we were anyone else, I would undoubtedly advise you to stop acting like such a little recluse and go make friends.  Fortunately, though, I know that you do make it through your fifth-grade year utterly unscathed despite this lack of friends.  So, if you can tolerate the awkward fifteen minutes of homeroom before Mr. Dole's class, no need to worry about acting like the social butterfly that you aren't. On that topic, let's have a discussion about the friends that you do have.  Fortunately or unfortunately, however you would like to look at it, those are the friends you're stuck with for the rest of your time here at Chagrin.  So you better learn to deal with them.  Luckily for you, Anna will eventually stop calling you Schmacums, although, for reasons that I absolutely cannot fathom, you will succumb to the urge to make both your email and your clubpenguin username "schmacums13." And it will come back to bite you.  So please do not do it.  Also, Catherine will stop stealing your lunch box every day, but please, for the love of God, go get a new one.  There's mold growing on the inside pocket and you know it. Your attachment to trivial material objects disgusts me.  Sadly, though, you will not outgrow that by the time you have reached eighteen.  So learn to live with it.  And, since, by the age of eighteen, we have not yet learned how to make our writing concise, I have rambled and am thus running out of room. So, a few parting words of wisdom: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

Sincerely,
Your better half

P.S. One more thing.  In eighth grade, on your way out of school, you will pass by the art room and see Ana Moran sitting in it, working on a project.  She will appear to be alone.  She isn't.  Mrs. Ford is standing at the sink, the one you can not see from the door.  So please resist the urge to barge in and start singing her a song.  Mrs. Ford will think you're a psychopathic loon.

P.P.S. I do not remember if you have read the Harry Potter books yet, but if you have not, I advise you to do so as soon as physically possible--partially because they will become your second-favorite series, and partially so you can understand the reference in the last line of my letter.

P.P.P.S.  Joke's on you! No one will ever compliment you on how you smell in eighth grade, especially not that one guy from camp.  He moves away anyway, and you will never hear from him again after your freshman year.  So do not get your hopes up.  But seriously, use the deodorant.

Time After Time

I admit it.  I have a problem.  A problem that undoubtedly stems from my inexplicable and somewhat frustrating tendency to get attached to inanimate objects.  A problem that manifested itself in the form of me sinking so low as to root through a garbage can in search of what I deem as the most precious, invaluable object to have ever graced my house.  Yes, I spent a good twenty minutes scrounging around in a mess of moldy food, dirty tissues, and coffee grounds in search of a clock.  Not just an ordinary clock, though.  Despite the fact that this clock has lived to see 23 years in our house (24 this April, actually) and the resultant scratches spattered across its face, this clock holds more value than gold.  It had dutifully rested on the mantle above our fireplace for as long as I can remember, not moving an inch until an unfortunate Christmas-related incident this year in which my inept and careless mother knocked it down while hanging up our stockings.  Upon inspection, the clock did not seem terribly damaged, so I carefully put it back in its proper place.  Later that evening, though, as I glanced habitually at my beloved clock, I noticed with horror that the clock still read 3:30 despite the fact that the sun had set two hours ago.  In a rush of panic, I grabbed the clock back off the mantle and examined it more closely.  The second hand.  It had fallen off.   The abrupt realization that the clock would never tick again like it had year after year, day after day, minute after minute, time after time prompted a flood of utter devastation to pulse through my veins. My mom, seeing the broken clock, indifferently jerked the clock from my desperate grasp and plopped it in the trash without a second thought.   As she left, I rushed over to the garbage and, in a fit of rage, retrieved my precious clock and stealthily snuck it up to my room, where it sits today between a broken radio and a dysfunctional lava lamp.

From the Water Pail to the Hay Bale

Every morning, I wake up to the metallic shrieking of System of a Down blasting out of my phone. My sister, whose room lies adjacent to mine, often complains when she, too, wakes up at 4:45 in the morning to the rather unpleasant sound of the heavy metal band singing (yelling, actually) nonsensical lyrics about undercover cops and Peter Piper. Unfortunately for her, I have yet to find any other motivating force to propel me from the confines of my cozy nest of warm blankets so early in the morning. Why, you may ask, do I wake up at this ungodly hour? To perform the rather extreme (and time-consuming) task of feeding and watering 53 pigeons and 3 ducks.  As I drag myself out of bed into the comparatively frigid air of my room, I wince at the thought of bracing myself against the harsh Ohio wind chill, which seems a billion times more unbearable before the sun makes its first hint of an appearance from behind the row of pine trees that encloses my yard. I make my way down two sets of stairs, shivering once again at the prospect of the extreme temperatures that await me beyond the sliding doors of my basement. As I approach the stationary tub in my basement, I grudgingly grab the first two water buckets and place them in the tub, filling them up one by one.  I have long since lost hope for the hose outside--the cold has rendered it frozen solid.  Naturally.  As I fill the seventh and final bucket full of water (that will surely freeze over within just a few hours of sitting outside) I tug on my barn hat, adorned with pieces of hay and probably pigeon poop, grab the two nearest full buckets, and, ignoring the little voice in my head that constantly reminds me of my insanity, begin the long and tedious trek to the pigeon loft.  In all of my eighteen years, I have experienced nothing more extreme than that walk.  That slow, somber, dreary, dark walk.  In the cold.  Carrying a full bucket of water in each hand.  Of course, my innate clumsiness magnifies by about 500 at five in the morning, and more often than not I spill more than half of the water out of each bucket onto myself before reaching my destination.  Then, upon reaching the barn, I turn back to make three more trips to lug the rest of the water buckets from the basement to the barn.  After about 15 minutes of walking back and forth through the snow, I allow myself to fall into a mindless routine.  Deliver each water bucket to its respective animal pen or loft. Stare into the water and ponder the meaning of life. Check Twitter to see if anyone has anything interesting to say at 5:30 in the morning (or, if by some miracle, the superintendent has called a snow day).  Attempt to start a conversation with my ducks.  Contemplate my sanity (or lack thereof).  Feed each animal.  Check to see if any baby pigeons hatched.  Consider walking back to the house.  Hear the howling wind outside and decide to perch myself on my favorite bale of hay in the duck pen for a while longer.  Remember the calculus homework that I forgot to do.  Panic.  Run inside.  Marvel at the extreme absurdity of my morning adventure.

The Lingering Impact of Erratic Syntax

         Back in October, when we first received our blogging assignment, I have to admit that I felt an unparalleled sense of excitement. Finally, I thought, a creative writing assignment! Little did I know, however, that blogging would change my perspective on life. Well, sort of.  My lack of common sense and affinity for awkward situations places me in a unique position in life--I almost daily find myself getting into strange, awkward, uncomfortable, or just plain weird situations that most people would tend to innately avoid.  Last week, for example, I took out two Amish teenagers and my sister while sledding.  The week before, I accidentally walked in on a pre-wedding ceremony while looking for a blood drive.  Instead of turning bright red and backing out of these situations as I would have previously done, I realized that the first thought that runs through my head is hey, I should blog about this! My new mind-set fascinates me, and, as I look back at all of my blog posts, I see my frame of mind and attitude slowly evolving and improving.  In my opinion, my most interesting and my favorite post is my first one, "Masked Melodies." I like this one because of the poetic liberties I took in writing it--I think the erratic syntax and the imagery combine to create a realistic scene, one that I hope readers could easily visualize.  The particular memories that I wrote about remain very vivid in my memory, and I think I reflected the intensity of those memories in a unique and equally as vivid way throughout the post.  I did, however, stubbornly sneak passive voice in where I felt that it sounded right, and for this reason (and its overwhelming length) I do not see it as my best post.  I believe that my best writing appears in "Like Clockwork." In this paragraph, I kept the length reasonable while incorporating somewhat relevant anecdotes and connecting them  back to English class.  As I re-read all of my posts, I noticed that the general flow of this one stood out to me--I saw very few awkward sentences and transitions, and I even caught myself fighting the urge to laugh at one of the anecdotes about my dad (who I currently see outside in his "bee suit" trying to chase a few runaway bees away from his pigeon loft).  Consequently, my favorite comment (courtesy of Kate Girouard) appears on this post.  She offers a brief version of her own entertaining Christmas-tree-decorating story as well as a profound comment about materialism: "Memories and past experiences shape who we become, while such a focus on popularity and wealth makes us greedy and withdrawn from true personal connections." I cannot agree with this statement more.  I have found that too much of a focus on money or other trivial things can divert our attention away from what truly matters in life--personal relationships.  And, of course, blogging.

Boats Against The Current

      Last week, my grandmother asked me what normal high schoolers do on Friday nights.  As a person of very little social intelligence (what I lack in knowledge, I make up in awkwardness), I soon realized that I had no response.  This worried me.  How could I, a senior in high school, not have any idea what people do on Friday nights? Desperate to prove my social stability to my grandmother, though, I pathetically replied with "football."  High school kids go to football games, right? I paused to consider my friends' typical Friday nights, which consist primarily of debate, band, or taking six-hour naps.  Then I paused to consider my last Friday night, which consisted of a six-hour long trip with a rather interesting group of kids to a very sketchy Wal-Mart near the Pennsylvania border with $1,300 (in cash) to spend for a community service project.  After our rather eventful trip, we ended up back in Middlefield, sitting on top of a nearly three-story-high silo, surrounded only by stars and buggies full of rebellious Amish teenagers somehow blasting classical music as their buggies inched past us on the dirt road.  As the stars grew brighter and the night grew later, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped drastically.  Instead of going inside, though, we continued to talk.  And, as the socially competent teenagers that we are, we naturally touched on the subject of great American literature, and of course I brought up The Great Gatsby. Surprisingly, as soon as I mentioned it, my friend's eyes lit up as she excitedly announced that her class had just finished the book on the same day that we had.  And, standing outside in the cold, we began an hour-long discussion and thorough analyzation of the book, particularly of the book's last sentence, which apparently had left its mark on us as we had both memorized it.  As we discussed Gatsby and his mysterious and entrancing state of being, we each reached our own realizations.  I came to terms with the fact that, no, I had no idea what a normal teenager would be doing that Friday night, but I felt fairly certain that it would not be sitting on top of a silo discussing The Great Gatsby at midnight in the middle of what we had not-so-affectionately dubbed Amish Land.  I felt just as certain that it would not come in the form of carrying a borderline-dangerous amount of cash to a Wal-Mart so far from home.  I realized that we acted as manifestations of these boats against the current, going against the flow, ignoring the flow, and overpowering the flow. Instead of floating back to the past, though, we push ourselves toward the future, forcing ourselves beyond those who let the flow carry them backward.  We bring nothing with us but memories of the past, an awareness of the present, and a vision for the future.

Like Clockwork

       Just as I sat down to write my poetry paper on Sunday night, my dad had the brilliant idea to begin to decorate our Christmas tree. For normal people, this would perhaps entail a box of ornaments, lights, a Christmas song or two playing softly in the background, and a few people gathered peacefully around the tree.  Unfortunately, though, as I sat in the corner trying to find some trace of meaning in the supposedly complex ideas of love and blindness and clocks, I realized that making any progress on the paper would not come easily.  As my dad entered the room, he promptly turned on his country Christmas music station up to full blast on his Pandora account and, ever so considerately, placed his laptop right next to me.  Ignoring my death glare, he proceeded to turn on the TV to some warped Hallmark Channel Christmas love story and then, for maybe the fiftieth time this week, complain about my poor choice in trees (he had delegated the task of picking out a tree to me this year, and apparently trees that are wider than they are tall do not live up to his standards. Who knew?), and then began wildly unpacking every ornament he could get his hands on. As he uncovered ornaments that belonged to me (this happened about every three minutes) he ordered me to come  over and put it on the tree.  I grudgingly complied with the first few, but after the tenth ornament and the tenth interruption to my paper I threatened to lock myself in my room.  Completely undaunted by what I considered a fairly menacing statement, he excitedly handed me another one of my ornaments.  I opened my mouth to object, but then shut it just as quickly when I saw the ornament--a miniature china doll adorned in a pale yellow floral dress with a lacy off-white apron.  As I stroked the soft tassels lining the hems of her dress, I closed my eyes and time flew backward, back to third grade, when I had just finished reading The Doll People and had subsequently entered my china doll phase.  I had asked for nothing but china dolls for Christmas and my birthday and little else ever crossed my mind.  As time went on, though, my obsession slowly faded into oblivion and, like clockwork, another phase began: my snowman phase.  And then the Eiffel Tower phase.  And, after that, the rock collecting phase.  And, as I sit right now looking at my Christmas tree, I noticed that I have at least one ornament to complement each stage of my life.  As I continued my paper, listening to my dad and sister loudly and obnoxiously making some kind of cookies in the kitchen, I realized that my dad has gone through some much more dramatic and entertaining phases, including pigeon racing, beekeeping, and flying remote control airplanes.  And, by phases, I mean obsessions. Inevitably, though, with time, each passing phase faded, leaving us only with memories, ornaments, and the rather conspicuous beehive in the backyard.

Trail of Tears

     It's that time of year again. The colorful reminders of fall gradually fade into the dark, depressing labyrinths of winter as the long, bright days of summer turn to the dreary and seemingly endless winter nights.  The days blur together, each one feeling more like the next.  As I searched for a cause of my looming depression, I recently came to the conclusion that it may be a direct result of the fact that I barely see the sun anymore. I spend all morning and afternoon in school, and then I work immediately after, often until seven or eight.  Upon my departure, of course, the sun has long since set, leaving me with just the meager light of the moon, stars, and my headlights to guide me home.  As the night drags on, the vague depression fades to fatigue as I often find myself staying up well past midnight to finish my homework and do other dull, routine tasks. Then, the next day, it starts all over again.  In the middle of today's monotonous routine, though, I found myself pausing to reflect and reminisce to the days of Gurney and sunshine and flowers and happiness and when nothing mattered except avoiding the lunch ladies and the only drama involved who got "benched" at recess.  At first thought, those days seemed so much brighter; we seemed so much more lighthearted and carefree.  As I focused to more closely recall my Gurney experience, though, I realized that there existed a certain darkness, much like the one I feel today, that marred my first- and second-grade years.  It existed as an impending doom that crept into my life, twisting and turning itself about in my head before nestling permanently in my young, innocent mind.  In my mind, it manifested into a looming dread that stalked me around Gurney's comparatively bright and happy hallways. Now what, you ask, could cause such distress in a first grader? For me, it appeared as that one single demanding and infinitely stressful task.  The line leader.  The one to whom the teachers delegated the massive responsibility of trekking around the school with twenty of your classmates trailing along behind you.  The one who teachers entrusted to lead the class from homeroom to art to gym and back again.  The one who teachers yelled at if he or she made any sort of mistake.  While many waited with bated breath for their teacher to read off their name as line leader for the day, I cowered down in my seat, close to tears, careful to avoid eye contact with the teacher. I could not handle the pressure.  What if I accidentally led the class to the music room when we needed to go to the computer lab? What if one of my classmates strayed from the line under my watch? The pressure scared me into a certain state of insanity that even now I do not feel entirely convinced that I have escaped.  Luckily, as the years went on and I grew older, my fear of the treacherous task has waned.  Still, though, I never fail to cower under pressure.  When my friends and peers constantly talk about how they work so productively under pressure, I realize some things never change: I still cringe at the mere memory of the pressure, and, until last year, I never again had to experience it to that same extent.  Upon entering in AP English, the pressure inevitably returned—not quite to the caliber of that of the line leader, but still enough to make me break into a cold sweat whenever I sit, paralyzed, in the middle of a class discussion or in-class writing.  I would like to say that this anxiety has decreased since the beginning of last year, and, to a certain extent, I think it has.  I also realize, however, that I have a lot of work to do before I will be able to successfully work through the stress and the pressure and perform to the best of my ability.