Perhaps A Valiant Return Is In Order

Hello, my compatriots! Yes, I know it has been quite a long time since I posted anything at all, but understand that beneath my calm exterior, I am a frantic disorganized loon. That being said, I feel a recap of the past few months is in order. School and various other hurdles have really done a number on my ability  to do anything other than sleep and eat.

If I recall correctly, that's all you ever did.

So! Starting off! School. Oh sweet bane of of my existence, school. In the beginning, I was admittedly a mess. I was not sleeping at all because my English class was so early, sleeping actually lost out to staying awake all night. I was in a continuous cycle of drowsy nausea, which is (and get this) an enormous bitch. I would shamble in to class, heft my dead weight into a chair and then have to dissect the finer points of story structure. I like English. I like analyzing stories. I hate 7 AM. I hate it with the same passion Charlie Sheen has for winning... And porn stars... And tigers... And warlocks... And F-18s...

Honestly, am I the only person who wants to vacation in his head?

Philosophy is a slightly different story. I have it later in the day, so the class isn't drowned in grogginess and the compulsion to vomit and pass out. Instead, people don't seem to like me. Like at all. I'm not sure what I did to them, but they make it a point to not sit near me and ignore everything I say. It is the strangest thing I've come across in a long time. They look at me like I have a second head attached to my shoulder. And it does nothing but quote the Brady Bunch in an endless loop.

EPIC!

If I had to guess why, I would say it is because the only thing people know about me is that I really like some weird guy named Django and I have a man-crush on Carl Sagan. The Django thing was part of a class interview, but the Sagan thing was partly due to a lack of control on my part. It was one of the first classes and to demonstrate a point, we watched a clip of Carl Sagan. When she said we would be doing this, I squealed, "Gah! I love Carl Sagan!" like a fourteen year old girl. Regardless of their uncomfortable stares, I ended up being the student with the fifth highest grade out of thirty. They shut their yammer-traps.

Note: When people already think you're weird, confirming it with a loving outburst about a scientist in the middle of philosophy class is a bad idea.

Not everything recently has been funny, at least in the way I can make my bad situations enjoyable. My grandmother died on Super Bowl Sunday. After two years in and out of the hospital, several surgeries, endless infection and more close calls than anyone would want to have, she passed away. I was sad, sure, but more than anything else, I was happy it was over. The funeral was somber and the burial was rough, but we all managed to stick it out. We sat Shiva for the three following days and everyone everybody ever knew showed up. I was exhausted by the end, but it was nice to see so many people come out for Mongo. She was a real firecracker.

Good-bye.

I'll pull away from the sad stuff now. Once I returned to school, I had about a weeks worth of work to make up, followed by mid-terms. Needless to say, I was yelling for a solid eight days. At anything, really. My parents, my car, my homework, walls, metaphysics (Yelling at philosophy assignments got weird). I was able to finish, but I hit a... snag with my English mid-term.

Let's hear the excuse, ding-bat.

I am allowed to take any exams in a testing center with extended time. This gives me not only more time to complete my essays, but it gives me a week in which to do them. Through bad timing and general laziness, I waited until the very last day to do the mid-term, which was an essay on the Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken." Let me establish one thing first. I am not a Robert Frost fan. At all. So doing an entire essay on his poem made me rather displeased.

Displeased = "F@#K!"

Well I got to the testing center, grabbed my instruction sheet, sat down and, with sigh, realized I had no damn idea what I was doing. I sat at the desk for well over an hour without a single word written. "Diggity-damn," I thought to myself. This was clearly a bad thing to have happen, but there was one more factor that made my time in the testing center significantly worse. In the testing center, a proctor is required to be in the testing room to make sure nobody is cheating. This has never bothered me before. This time, however, the proctor watched me the entire time I was there. I was across the room, and this woman stared at me for over an hour straight. Every single time I looked up, there she was. And to make things worse, several times throughout my exam she got up, circled my desk, sat back down and continued to stare.

FOR AN HOUR! DO YOU KNOW JUST HOW LONG THAT IS?

If you want to understand what it felt like, do the following:

1) Get a friend.

2) Set a timer for an hour, turn on the Sopranos, or use anything else that marks an entire hour.

3) Do something that takes concentration and effort. Clean the house, write a story, have a phone conversation, anything you need to focus to do.

4) Have whoever is with you STARE DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EYES FOR THE ENTIRE HOUR.

5) Try your hardest to ignore the person and do whatever your activity of choice is without interruption.

Try. I dare you.

I didn't write my essay. Instead, I wrote a letter to my teacher explaining what happened and how I didn't have "the fainest clue as to what I was doing" and how "the proctor has been watching me since I got here like she saw my face on the CIA most wanted list and was frankly very uncomfortable." I left fully prepared for a zero. We just recently got our grades back and I'll say I really didn't want to know mine. As it turned out, my teacher thought my essay was hysterical. She was so impressed by the sheer balls it took to do what I did that she was willing to let me retake it with no penalty. Knowing I could only get away with that once, I managed to pump something out to bring my grade up. I think I did better this time around.

Let it be known.

Sometimes, telling the rules to screw off works out great.

So, here we are. We are pretty much up to date. School has evened out and I'm going to apply for a tutoring job at the academic help center. Here's hoping I get it. I've been writing some short stories and have been thinking about posting them here so you guys have something from me every now and then. They aren't funny, though. So far, people that have read them have liked them, so it's up to you guys. Let me know if you would be interested in reading them.

I won't be offended if you don't.

That much.

Please... Please read them.

Oh God... READ THEM.