Throwing it All the Way Back

Recently I have been looking at old pictures from when I was younger. I'm going to say this in the most modest way possible, I was adorable. I honestly don't know what happened. Life was so simple and magical back then. I honestly believed in the mythical, spoiler alert, Santa, tooth fairy, and Easter bunny. Not only that, but it seems like I had no concept of embarrassment. Now I'm grown up, and am constantly feeling the reddening of my cheeks that occurs with an awkward moment. In this time of great stress and worry, I've decided to throw it back a little to some of my favorite memories of a simpler time. Besides, Thursday, as in throwback Thursday, is the fourth day of the week, and hey, it's fourth quarter!

Me running from a bear... probably

The first memory I'm going to share is of my family's so called "bear hunts." I have no idea how our parents thought of the idea, whether it was a tradition passed down from their childhoods, or we just had too much energy one night, but every once in a while all five of us would grab a flashlight, and head into our large yard at night to look for bears. We sing a stupid song that was both short and repetitive until we made it all the way around the house. Some nights we would even do multiple laps. Despite the lightness of it all, I was always certain that we were going to catch a bear. Even after an abundance of bear hunts where we came back empty handed, I felt there was no doubt that we would run into a bear in the middle of our yard. Looking back, a couple of questions come to mind. Specifically, Why did we want to catch a bear? When we were to encounter said bear, we would be empty handed, save for a flashlight. How were we going to capture/protect ourselves from this bear? Not once did we find a bear (thankfully), but I will always have fond memories my determination, and feeling of invincibility that came with hunting dangerous beasts with my family.

Second is another story from my backyard. After all,  backyards are places of infinite wonder and possibilities to younger kids. So in my backyard, we have a sand box. I'm almost debating putting that last statement into the past, because slowly it has become nothing more than a litter box for the neighborhood cats. Despite that, back in the glory days my siblings and I spent a lot of time there. And out favorite sand box activity? Flooding it. My brothers and I would build an elaborate kingdom, and then starting with just one small lake or river, we would start adding water features until it looked like the set from Water World. If you haven't purposely flooded, and in turn ruined, a small sandbox, I am tempted to say you haven't lived.

Lastly, I remember the nights I pretended to fall asleep at random locations in the house just so my mom or dad would carry me to my room. For example, one night I couldn't fall asleep and I heard my mom in the kitchen. I decided to get out of bed and lay on the kitchen floor with my eyes closed until someone carried me back to my room. All was going as planned, I was about to be picked up by my mom when Charlie (my twin brother with a most excellent blog) sleep walked his way to where we were standing. We asked him what he was doing, unaware that he was unconscious. He then turned around and walked right into our kitchen counter. Being young and short at the time, he hit his head pretty badly. I faintly remember him crying as my mom carried him back to bed, but by that time most of my surroundings were blacked out by my rage. I didn't care if my brother had hurt his head! I just wanted to be carried back to bed. Me being the ridiculous child I was, I stood there waiting for about another five minutes until I realized that my mom wasn't coming back for me. I still hold a grudge to this day. I'll never forget.

You think we are sleeping? Nope. Acting.

Sorry for the long post. I hope you make it through the large amount of stress these coming weeks. Just take deep breaths and try to remember a time when your biggest problem was getting the wrong flavor of popsicle.

Pecularily Passionate

I don't know about you guys, but there are things that I get weirdly passionate about. Things that, as my can mom tell you, I can rant about for hours. And because my family is tired of hearing about the same irritating topics all the time, I thought I would share it with you, the internet. Because that has never gone wrong before for anyone else. Not to mention, talking about what bothers me often gives people an idea of my weirdest parts, and hey, what's just a little bit more widespread embarrassment right?

Pretty much sums it all up. Image courtesy of Tumblr.

Well, one thing I never understood was why people would stop trying in school. I am not talking about one person specifically, but I'm always confused when people don't even try to complete an assignment. I completely understand if you got confused on how to do the assignment, if you forgot about it, or even if you were absent. I do both of those things regularly. What makes me rant is when people knowingly take the zero. Is it that hard to just try it? And keep in mind,  you're going to have to know this information for the test anyways. Getting that zero now is just asking for another one later on. Besides, any amount of points is better than a zero for your grade. Just suck it up, and do the assignment. Most of the time, it's not half as bad as you think it will be.

While the last paragraph may outline something irritates me beyond belief, it does no affect my behavior like competition does. No matter how small, or pointless the competition is, I aim to win. This wins me glares, stares, and laughs from other people at times, but I am usually oblivious to all of that. While competitiveness isn’t always considered a bad thing, it can lead to a lot of disappointment for me. Especially when we are playing against other people in P.E. There is a saying, “Calm down, it’s P.E, not the Olympics.” Hearing this only encourages my determined behavior. Why should I have to calm down? Is it a crime to try? I understand if you don’t care, but don’t go criticizing me for putting in effort.

I could continue on that topic for a whole blog post, but we have to move on. The last irksome thing that we are going to talk (I say we, but it's really just me talking to myself) in this post is when people take authority. I don't mean teachers, or public authorities like the police or government. I mean when students are asked to lead. A recent example, if you're confused, is in ballet class a couple of weeks ago. My teacher couldn't make it to class so she appointed to other students to be in charge. I have no problem with that. The problem is when someone who I consider to be on an equal standing with me decides that they get to tell me what to do.  So, probably because I was jealous, I started trying to annoy this new leader in as many little ways as I possibly could. Upon reflection of my actions, at the break in the middle of class, I realized how terrible I was being. I apologized, and improved my attitude for the rest of class, but I still proceeded to complain about it to my mom afterwards.

Me during the second half of ballet class. Image courtesy of Pinterest

Moral of the story, I'm insane, and get set off about small, pointless things. Now if your not done judging me, continue to my other posts for more embarrassment. I hope you all have a relatively rant free day!

All Aboard the Struggle Bus

Come join me in my struggle today as I talk about what I hope is a shared helplessness. Today I wanted to talk about that one class we all have where we feel like Miley Cyrus will become clean and wholesome again before we do one thing right. This is going to be general advice for literally any class because if Brian from "The Breakfast Club" taught us anything it's that there is no such thing as "easy A" class.

To get the ball rolling, I'll share my experiences that inspired this post. It could've been a subplot in a mediocre high school genre film, an intelligent girl who never had any real problems with her core classes (me) decides to take a Jewelry class just for fun. As the class begins working on projects, she slowly starts to realize that she is really bad at drilling, and then sawing, and later filing. She tries to correct her mistakes, but nothing is making a large difference. The hard truth of it is, she is struggling in this class. She feels incompetent, and embarrassed. The academic confidence she once had has dissolved into nothingness, leaving her feeling seemingly weak and alone.

Me in jewelry class. Image courtesy of Barkpost.

But seriously guys, I am terrible at jewelry making, and the drill press is the worst part. As my friend Natalie nicely put it "The drill press is the bane of Allison's existence." How should I put this, I would rather write a twenty page essay on my experiences with watching paint dry than use the drill press one more time. It doesn't help that when I'm using it people are usually forming a line behind me. Those people are not really interested in how big of a challenge it is for me, they just want to drill there holes and get on with their lives. I mean who cares if I'm completely paralyzed by fear of the power tool they entrust to 9th graders (because we are supposedly so mature now. I'm trying really hard, but I'm not even living up to my own, now severely lowered, standards.

What I imagine my conversations with my art teacher are going to be like. Image courtesy of EpicPinterestFail.

  So clearly I'm having problems, but how do I, or you for that matter, fix that? my suggestion, find one part of it that you can do even slightly well, and maybe something that you enjoy. If you can focus on that, your life int that class might be easier (no promises in cases like mine), and less miserable.

This beacon of hope for me in my jewelry class is refining our pieces. This means sanding by hand for literally over an hour, and then using the buffing machine, which, by the way has scalped people. All this, just to make it look shiny. Sounds terrible, but I love it, I might even go as far as saying that I'm good at it. On a more social note, I also have good friends in that class (shout out to Sam and Franzi). They keep me from going insane, or should I say more insane.

Well, this is the end for now, but kudos to those who actually made it to the end of this post. Special thanks to my mom for at least trying to understand why I continually embarrass myself on the internet. And finally, none of this would be possible without viewers like you, thank you (PBS reference). Talk you you dorks later (even sooner if you comment on this post)!