Middle Schoolers Are Monsters

For the longest time when I was a kid, I had a desire to fit in and be just like everyone else. I noticed that people did have individual quarks that made them interesting in their own way, but every strange quark that I had [the Star Wars, Harry Potter, the finding a new word in the dictionary to learn everyday, spending my evenings watching Star Trek and Anime] turned my classmates off.

I wish I could wrap my brain around how the mind of a middle school student works. Even while I was there, I couldn't figure out why people couldn't just be different and why I felt so miserable being different.

I went to a school that was pretty much all African-American. My best friend was half Mexican/Puerto Rican and there was one boy in my class who was biracial but overall, mostly black. It was a Catholic school so these were all the same children I'd been sitting in class with since fourth grade everyday all day.

Often, when we got into 7th and 8h grade, we'd start to read books about slavery, the civil rights movement, and all that stuff and how the world would be a better place if we all learned to accept people for their differences.

Even as a 12 year old I thought to myself "why not apply that logic to everything?". Of course, it was brilliant, so I set off to be different and be accepted for being different by my classmates.

Sadly things didn't go as planned.

To be truthful, some of the boys in my class took a friendly liking to me for collecting Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards. We discussed WWE and the latest episode of Dragon Ball Z or Yu-Yu Hakusho that had aired. The girls in my class were totally put off by it though.

Despite my desire to be different, I didn't want to end up being rejected by my classmates so I did something drastic - I joined the cheerleading team.

I thought all the movies lied. I thought that being a cheerleader would only help me look a bit more normal, but no, even my classmates were starting to look past my weirdness and put up with me and talk to me.

Of course, cheerleading didn't last very long. Going to practice soon became a decision about whether I should go there and stretch and jump around for 2 hours, or whether or not I wanted to watch Vegeta get his ass kicked by Android 18 and see Yusuke blast Elder Tuguro into next week.

The choice was obvious.

So I quit. After that I was a weirdo, quitter in my class. But I had my best friend and she turned me onto something cool - Rock music.

Before I listened to it, I didn't listen to much at all. Pretty much whatever nonsense came on the local rap station on the radio or whatever my mom listened to - neither of which really tickled my fancy.

The first time I listened to Linkin Park I was like "where have you been all my life?". After that I gained an obsession with Green Day [after my year long Orlando Bloom and Lord of the Rings obsession which is a really scary place to be in] and after that, I didn't care.

I didn't care that I was weird and different and a nerd, you know? There were worse things I could be - addicted to crack, a prostitute, a politician, a Sith lord, a deatheater, Nick Cage, etc.

But I was just nerd. I was just proud to be different and in middle school, different is a frightening concept to the people who are trying so hard to fit in.

In seventh grade, I was friends with a girl named Tiara. She was sweet and funny most of the time and was one of a few people who liked me being different. One day during recess [yes, we had recess in 7th grade. We also still had spelling tests.] I spent the whole day hanging out with her and her friends and I did this for an entire week. Then one day while sitting by myself content to being a weirdo, Tiara pulled off from the sidelines and said "Don't just sit there, April. You're popular now."

I was hit with the horrifying thought that if this was middle school, if I weren't popular when I got to high school, I would spend lunch sitting by myself at a cafeteria table for four years.

That was just enough shock to actually prepare me for high school which was nothing like I thought it would be. Sure there were kids who you would probably consider to be the popular kids and the nerd and jocks but, at the end of the day, everyone in my high school had come from such weird and varied background thats the fact that I loved Harry Potter and Star Wars was more fascinating than it was weird, and a lot of people were closet fans of them.

I still don't know what makes a middle school kid want to be popular and the same and just like everyone else and what changes in our brains when we get older that makes us say "it's cool to be different - it's cool to be yourself", but, to be honest, I'd never repeat middle school.

I wouldn't even visit a middle school to observe how they treat each other.

Hey, it's not like you'd want to relive the most scarring event you've ever lived through either.

Fair Thee Well,
April

Music

Stole this from a girl called Loralei (Check her out if you know what's good for you)

1. One song that always takes me back to my youth is Reflection by Christina Aguilera. I know it's from a Disney movie, but I every time I listen to it, I remember Mulan and think about how when I was a kid I always told myself "I want to be just as kick ass as she is." I still strive to be so awesome.

2. My first concert ever was Green Day's American Idiot tour in 2005. I was 14. I was the hysterical and excited. I went with my best friend. She wore tripp pants and a cut up and sowed together beater and I wore a dyed beater and green cargo pants. I also had on pink chucks that didn't match but, what can you do.

3. If I could create my dream music festival I'd want these bands to be there: Hall and Oates, Green Day, Elton John, Phil Collins/Genesis, Paramore, and probably every Wizard Rock band I know.

4. The best make-out/"boot knocking" song ever is "Red Light Special" by TLC or "I Wanna Know What Love Is" by Foreigner.

5. The best concert I've ever been to was Wrockstock 2 in 2008. Potosi, Missouri. About 12 Wizard Rock bands spanning 2 days. Not only was the music fantastic, but all the love and friendship and kindness I felt there was what really made that concert awesome.

6. A memorable musical moment for me was my first Wizard Rock concert - The Whomping Willows, Draco and the Malfoys, and Harry and the Potters. I'd only ever listened to Wizard Rock on the internet but seeing these three bands that I loved so much live and in person totally solidified that the music was real for me. It brought all the magic and the music to life.

7. The song on my iPod that's getting the most play these days is "In Too Deep" by Genesis. I have a very odd, very dated taste in music.

Piece of advice to take with you forever: Deers like chocolate cake. Once they get a whiff of it they'll come a runnin'.

Real advice to take with you: Never be content with mediocrity and failure. Ever.

Fair thee Well,
April

Stuff My Brain Thought About Today

Sometimes when I'm watching TV or reading articles on the internet I think of very weirdo and debatable things. I don't like to debate [I'm terrible with confrontation] so everyone is always welcome to disagree and politely prove me wrong. This is just my opinion...

1. Smart Balance just released a commercial about how 2% milk is bad for you because it has saturated fat. Smart Balance's milk, apparently, has none. Now, I know depending on where your milk is coming from cows have different diets. Some cows get hormones and some don't. All the same, organic cow, hormone cow, smart balance cow - wouldn't all milk have saturated fat? And, that being the case, wouldn't you have to do something to the milk to take that way and if so what? I'm not a big fan of dairy [cause my belly doesn't like it] but at least I know what's been done to my hormonally enhanced, saturated fatty 2% milk. Besides - I have all those cow hormones and milk fat to thank for my above average sized boobs [Thanks fat, chemcial cow!]

2. I watch a lot of stuff about the paranormal - A Haunting, Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth, etc. and I crazily believe that some of that stuff is true. After watching an episode of Destination Truth, it made me think, they're constantly going around the world investigating cases of paranormal activity. Up north they believe in elves and fairies, if you go to the middle east they genuinely believe in ghost and demons, and in [I believe it's Egypt - but could be somewhere in the middle east] they have belief in a spirit called a Djinn. Here in America, we constantly laugh and make fun of people who believe in ghosts. And because we're American we have to be right don't we? Well, if everyone is saying one thing and everyone else is saying another are we really right?

3. Aliens are real. Even if they don't have the capability of space travel doesn't mean they aren't. The universe is simply to large for there not to be another planet out there with the capability of producing life. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there [kind of like air and gravity - but more tangible].

4. I don't like Twilight very much. When it first came out I was addicted to it. It wasn't very well written. It reminded me of fan fiction, which I love. My problem with Twilight are the people on both sides of it - they psych fans out there who create things like THIS and things like *THIS. Genuinely creepy and weird. But then you have the people who don't like Twilight who go as far as to trying to ban it. I don't approve of book banning - even if it does create fans who become that psycho. No one should be denied the opportunity to read something that could bring them job [just be wary of the craziness that could follow when reading Twilight]

*Seriously, Google "Crazy Harry Potter" and you find things like how these crazy Harry Potter fans created a charity organization or about how excited they are for a new movie. Google "crazy Twilight fans" and you find headlines for things like "Twilight Fans Turn Into A Violent Mob". Still, book banning is bad... But so are Twilight Flesh Lights and Dildos [or maybe that's just creepy]

Fair Thee Well,
April

Shallow?

I am a writer.

Not an author, but a writer.

One day I'd like to be an author, but first I'd like to master the art of being a writer.

I wish it were as simple as being able to sit down and write. If that were all that it took, then I'd be set. But it's not.

Everyday, I learn brand new ways to improve my writing and ways that I can make it better. I learn about things that I'm doing wrong in my writing. I even personally see things that are unsatisfactory in what I write.

But today I discovered something that terrified me and I had to think very, very hard about whether or not my discovery could possibly be debunked but I had no such luck.

My stories have no theme, at least none that I can detect. Of course they all tell a story, but at the end of the day my writing really has no deeper meaning.

It doesn't frighten me because I'm afraid that I'll never be publish. It frightens me because I feel like it's something that's intrinsic to writing. Doesn't all literature have a theme? Do you notice while you're writing? Or does this special value sneak up and surprise you, woven in throughout out the entire story by the time you get to the end of it?

Certainly, J.K. Rowling didn't sit down to write all seven Harry Potter novels with the idea in mind that the entire series was going to be based on the power of love and friendship. But you look at someone like Lois Lowry and read The Giver and just know she had a bigger picture in mind when she wrote it.

At some points when I'm writing, I don't know where the story is going to take me, I just have faith that it's going to pull me in the right direction and it always does. However, I shutter at the thought that I only write meaningless, shallow words.

Anyone can tell a story, but I suppose it takes a lot of work to give meaning to it.

Perhaps, I have to dig a little deeper into myself and into my writing to find that meaning and then find a way to pull it out.

Fair Thee Well,
April