Library Adventuring! :D

Yesterday I realized how stupid it was that I never read books.

The thing about books is that intellectuals read them to twirl their mustaches and say, "Oh ho ho, I have read many the book in my time," and because they have read 'many-the-book', they believe they have advanced knowledge into the world and stand a little taller and walk a little straighter and keep their noses up and their eyes down.

Then again, some people read books simply because they don't believe in themselves, they don't believe in the real world, and wish they could have more friends but instead escape their lives through page after page after page of the stuff until they can contentedly say that they have read more books than anyone else they know. This happens, of course, simply by chance, by nerdy kids who are forced out of the soccer games to sit under a tree and hide from the big guys, and the words simply give them something to do. But in the end, these too twirl their mustaches at the air because they are, in their minds, well-read, and deserve the Stache of Respect because of it.

And then there are some that read in secret, behind closed doors, the same book over and over until they have experienced exactly what they want to experience and they carry the book on their shoulders with a full heart and a half-empty mind, with very vivid memories of a place called Narnia.


I still don't know the reason I went to the library yesterday. I'm scared of books, scared of mustaches, and yet yesterday I carried home the most randomly selected works of literature I have ever seen. I was baffled with myself, walking in there, and you could see it on my face. There were all these regular library-goers there too, floating around like pixies, with this happy, sparkling glow about them, looking around this magical place for the books that take them wherever they want to go...

...And then they would look across a shelf and see this:

The books are arranged according to author, and since all the computers were booked and I had no clue what I was searching for, I could only really find books with EXTREMELY well-known authors. After wandering around for some time with no goal in sight, I remembered the name of a book I had heard of from someplace forgotten. When I found it, I looked at the cover, realizing it was a romance novel, and instead of getting scared and putting it back, I said, (I would like to think it wasn't out loud, but I really can't make any promises.)

"You know what? Screw this. I'm going to read a kissing book."

And then I wandered around a little bit happier.

Until I realized what I was holding.

 

I suddenly realized what I must have looked like to all those library-goers, walking around with a kissing book of all things! This wasn't who I was! I had to change things, I had to cover it up, but with what?

C'mon, Shady, I thought to myself. Get another book. Hurry. Otherwise they're going to think you're one of THOSE people!

I thought fast, and suddenly remembered Charles Dickens. Dickens is a respectable author, right? (My ignorance disgusts me too, don't worry.) So I hurried over to the D's section, mumbling "Dickens, Dickens, Dickens, Dickens...."  letter by letter until I found him. I was told to read A Tale of Two Cities, I remembered. Once I found a copy and slid it softly off the shelf, I saw this other book, and it caught me. It caught me good. It was red and hard-backed and sturdy and old, so old you couldn't even read the title off of the fabric - what books have fabric covers anymore anyways?! - and on the inside it still had that yellowed paper pocket where the real, actual paper library checkout card used to be on the inside of books, before they had card scanners and those magic scales that could weigh your books and know exactly what they were, even if you put like ten of them down. That thing still freaks me out.

But anyways, by this time I had finally figured out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes, and I had a giant collection of that, as well as the kissing book, and a two-in-one Charles Dickens book (when I had honestly just wanted the one), and I looked at the worn-out old red book I wanted so badly but decided there was only so much my little twig arms could carry.

With these three books, I walked courageously up to the counter - the question-asking counter. And I wasn't about to ask some normal question, such as, "Can I have a library card?" or, "Would you please direct me to the biography section?"

No, sadly not. I winced slightly for a moment, and then this happened:


Me: "Do you have any comic books?"

Librarian: "Um?"

Me: "Like, comic books."

Librarian: "Well we have graphic novels..."

Me: "I'm looking for the Peanuts."

Librarian: "Yeah, that's not exactly a graphic novel...here, I'll check."

Me: .___.

Librarian: *click-click-c-clickety-click* "Oh, well there is one. It's in the um... it's in the back."

Me: "The...the back?"

Librarian: "Back there," (gestures) "behind the magazines, by the biographies, very last shelf. That's where we put all the big books."


I was disappointed in this librarian. I'm sure if I was a librarian, the conversation would have gone more like this:


Random Book-Hugging Chick: "Do you have any comic books?"

Me: (leans forward dramatically) "...What did you just say?"

Chick: "Comic books...like, the Peanuts or something."

Me: "You're looking for the Peanuts, eh?" *clickety-click-click*

Chick: "Yeah, do you have it?"

Me: (eyes widen, staring at the screen) "There is one..."

Chick: "...Well where is it?"

Me: "I'm not sure you'd want...to go...there..."

Chick: (staring uncomfortably and impatiently)

Me: (slides glasses down my nose, looking up intently at Chick) "It's in...the back."

Chick: "Alright I'm leaving."

Me: :c ...Crap.



And that is why I should probably not be a librarian.

So anyways, I go to 'the back,' and the lady was right. There are all these huge books down there, organized almost entirely by size, definitely not what I needed with my arms already aching from stupid Sherlock. But I run my finger down the names until I find dear old Peanuts, and decide against checking it out when I see the biggest book of all time. It was incredibly hard to miss, three inches thick across the spine, with small cursive letters reading, "big questions".

I'm intrigued. Must be an awful lot of questions, I think to myself, but when I open it up what I find instead are... birds. Lots and lots of drawings of birds, and I then see that it's a comic - a MASSIVE graphic novel that must have taken eons to write. I open up the first few pages and start reading, but my arms are tired after a few seconds of holding the thing, so I carry my burden of wanted intelligence all the way up to the few lounge chairs facing the windows, where you can sit and look out at the fields beyond and sleep, which many of the people there are doing. I can tell, because I hear snoring.

I set down my books at a table in the corner, and open up Big Questions and start reading. I follow finches through what looks like World War Two, which to them is just an egg that turns out not to be an egg, because it blows up everyone who was pecking at it, and then there comes this giant metal thing that crushes the farm house, which is thought to be a bird, which is then thought to be an egg, which is then thought to be a pretend bird that humans made for themselves when it is discovered that voices come out of it that sound like people. Out of this bird comes the Hatchling, a pilot, who the birds take on as their responsibility, feeding it leftover doughnuts from the wreckage of the house, which the Hatchling does not appreciate.

I'm sitting there for hours, watching the intricacies of the philosophical birds go about their lives. I watch as Curtis the skeptic keeps on coming to feed Betty, the self-appointed bone collector of the birds that died from the 'egg' blast, and I watch them fall in love. I watch Algernon be saved and cared for by the Snake who ate his child, as he looks persistently for his beloved Thelma. I watch Bayle foolishly follow the mentally retarded survivor (from the wreckage of the house) with fierce loyalty, and I watch Philo foolishly staying loyal to his friend, despite Bayle's stupid decisions. I watch so many creatures die and love and fight and kill and rise and live again. I watch them learn and speculate and argue and take power and take over power, and scavenge doughnut after doughnut from the wreckage as the pilot battles his day-dreams of birds that haunt him.

Eventually I hear someone start to breathe, loud and rhythmic, with the obvious presence of sleep, and after a while I stumble back into reality and drag the book into my arms and wander home to finish it. I can't feel anything anymore, only a dazed reality of black-and-white sketches of the birds who are me and you and everyone I know and don't know and everything I've seen and haven't seen. Only after the door closes behind me do I finally realize that the look on my face is now, plainly, the same exact face of the library-goers.

I'm one of you now.

Do congratulate me; it did take a lot.

So if any of you have ever had any library adventures that you found interesting in some way or another, you should tell me about it. Or, if you have a blog, blog about it. Or you could email it to me. Or leave a comment. Or just keep it to yourself forever and ever, so that even after you die no one will ever know what happened. It's your choice. Goodbye now. :3

A Question

Even now, I don't know why I asked. It was probably out of boredom.



 

Fear, the Morning After

           The threat of mass shootings is starting to envelope the country. It used to be so rare, it never even happened. And then, after a decade, it is happening everywhere, all the time. It’s like a spreading disease with no means of control.

           And it’s weird. I don’t know why it’s happening. But it's making people scared again.

           I think in the seventies, the fear of nuclear annihilation was so great that it forced that generation to do all the things they wanted to do before the bomb dropped and destroyed everything. The thing that is so similar between nuclear blasts and public shootings is that it could happen to vast quantities of people, anywhere, anytime. And there's nothing you can do about it. Sure, you can duck and cover, and you can skip school, but the truth is that if it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

            And personally, if I were going to die, I would rather spend the rest of my time alive doing the things I wanted to do before death, than live longer hiding.

            I think that the fear of death is actually starting to push people to live. Honestly, if I were dead now, I would probably be okay with the fact that I didn’t get an A in Algebra, and not okay with the fact that I didn’t tell certain people that they saved my life. I would probably hate myself for spending so much time showering, putting socks on, and brushing my teeth, and not enough time staring out the window and playing with my dog.

The thought of death can sometimes make people uncomfortable, and they try not to think about it because it kinda makes them feel dead already. And me – I think I’m one of those people. Not that I’m particularly scared of death, but whenever the school has ceremonies about shootings,  and I imagine myself in that situation, I can probably assume my in-the-moment reflexes would be to save as many of the little guys as possible, and then just wait for my bullet. I know this because, whenever I have been in a situation of certain immediate fear, I end up in front of several other people, with my own hand on the doorknob. Not that this is proof of my great heart or something. I just don’t think that I’m particularly afraid of death.

I’m not sure that that’s a good thing.

Yesterday, even though 99% of people knew that the world was not really going to end, there was still a certain atmosphere of, “Oh crap, what if this really is the end?” You could feel that little hum of twitching fingers and darting eyes, and you could see certain girls watching certain boys, and certain boys watching certain girls, thinking whether or not this was a good enough excuse to tell them the truth.

I think that, the morning after the supposed end of the world, I still don’t feel all that great. I’m thirteen years old, and thinking about writing a will. Only, I’m pretty sure that my cello and my dog are already claimed, and nobody else would ever really appreciate my collection of thrown away kid’s sketchbooks, or dinosaur bed sheets. Living my young life in a world saturated in death is not the best viewpoint to grow up with, but the truth is, I think I would rather get up every morning and say, “Well Shady, this is it. You’re going to die today whether you like it or not, so you might as well hug everyone and tell them you love them,” than get up every morning and say, “Oh well, you have your whole life to do all that. Better get some math homework done.”

           When I was told this morning that there was a potential shooting at the school I go to yesterday, my thought process went something like this. 1) I could've died yesterday. 2) I could die ANY day. 3) If I was dead right now, what would I regret? The things that sprung to mind first were, surprisingly, calling Isaac fat, not hugging Ms. Comma goodbye, not feeding the dog that morning, and not telling Lafflin that I have his notebook on my bookshelf.

          Thoughts of death bring the truth to the surface very quickly.

          But even if I had done all that, and felt content with my dead self, I still wouldn't have felt ready for it. All it would have done is reminded me that even though I did everything in my power to do the things I wanted to do, there was still stuff I never lived long enough to be able to do. Like falling in love, or writing a book.
           Or playing the cello on the sidewalk for money.

Or yelling someone’s name in the middle of the street.

Or falling out of a tree.

See, this is why fear on the morning after the end of the world can actually be a good thing, because it shows you who you want to be. And it makes you feel Death’s boot on your butt, kicking you out of bed, saying, “You better get started TODAY.”

An Awkward Apology

I have a problem with calling people fat apparently.

Believe me, I am really not that mean of a person. It's just that instead of calling people faggot or motherBLEEPer, I just get mad and splutter for a second and shout "FATTIE!" I honestly do not believe that the people I call fat are actually overweight, and I don't feel any hatred towards fat people whatsoever.

My friend Isaac is this big mexican football geek who was a bit chubby last year, but then he hit puberty and he's grown up instead of out. But, since I was one of his few freinds last year, I know he used to be fat, and he still is to me. He's just a fattie.

But recently, for some reason or another, I have been accidentally calling him fat on a semi-regular basis.

Like, in book club, I was sitting on this table, and Ms. Comma told me to get off because it was already broken. When I asked her how it broke, she said a student sat on it, and I asked her who it was and she said, "A BIG guy." And, in all the noise and adrenaline of book club, I said, "Was it I-" And Isaac turned around and stared daggars at me, at which point I started laughing uncontrollably out of insuppressible guilt and said "No Isaac, I wasn't going to say your name!" To which he replied, "YEAH SURE YOU WEREN'T."

Yesterday, the school's orchestra and band went on tour to elementary schools and played some songs for them, so they'd grow up knowing the difference between a violin and a guitar. There would always be this one kid at every school, sitting in the audience, extremely easy to spot because he would be dancing so uncontrollably: head-banging, hand-flapping, wherever the music happened to take him. These were the ones who we clapped for while they were clapping for us.

So anyways, after we got back we had this pizza party, and watched a movie. Only, the movie never started, so we were pretty much all just sitting around having the time of our lives entertaining ourselves with Huong's plushy santa hat. She took it off and I put it on my hand and made it talk like a puppet, in my best Ice King voice. It would swing around its big white fluffy nose and yell at people about how stupid they are, and then I would reprimand the hat for being so rude, and everybody would either laugh their heads off or stare.

This hat really had some sort of problem with Isaac (it thought he was going to eat all the pizza or something). So it would look over at him and paranoidly say things like,

And Isaac would look at me and go "WOW, SHADY." (Isaac tends to speak in capital letters most of the time, it's not just me.) But anyways, this hat would just be so mean about Isaac's weight, and on the way home from school Isaac was telling everybody about it.

 

"It wasn't me," I told them. "It was the hat."

 

But then after a while I ended up almost calling him fat again, and then Isaac lost it. He threw his hands in the air with a "WOW, SHADY. We're not friends anymore!"

 

"Isaac, I was JOKING. You're not fat. I promise."

 

He narrowed his eyes.

 

"You have a muscular build is all."

 

He kept looking at me.

 

"You have a football player's body."

 

Still looking.

 

"You have a hot body. It makes all the girls go *SWOON*."

 

By that time, Isaac's friends just lost it, and started laughing and laughing while I sunk deeper into the compliment-to-overcome-insult pit. But Isaac was still offended, so he stormed off and left us alone.

 

"He'll get over it," Aaron told me.

"Teenage guys are like teenage girls," said Jake. "They're all emotional and insecure."

"Yeah," I said. "Isaac's a drama queen. But I still feel bad..."

 

Then we laughed for a while until I suddenly remembered that I left my cello at the school. I turned around and ran back. I saw Isaac sulking around the parking lot with this random skater kid.

 

I would love to explain myself before telling you what happened next, but I've done it to myself. I'd sunk too far into the I'm-sorry pit.

 

The I'm-sorry pit is where you go when you have to keep saying nicer and nicer things to the person you've offended until you are completely drowning in giving compliments that you don't even mean, it's just the nicest thing you can think of to say, and after a while you have crossed the boundary line in leaps and bounds and have no idea where you are anymore.

 

The bottom of the I'm-sorry pit, just in case you were wondering, is usually a proposal of some sort.

 

The only way you will ever understand the next part of the story is if you've seen the Fionna and Cake Adventure Time episode. Otherwise, then you will eternally think of me as the strangest person alive and hate me forever. Or not. But my close circle of friends quotes Adventure Time a lot, so it made sense at the time to say what I did.

 

I was running, and then I saw Isaac there all sad, and before anyone knew what was happening, I was on my knees on the asphalt with my hands clasped together, directly in front of him. These were my exact words:

 

"Isaac, you are the hottiest hottie in the whole land of Oo and I can't wait to marry you."

 

Then I continued running, and called a "Please forgive me!" over my shoulder.

 

That was yesterday. It turns out I had forgotten Isaac's desperate need for female companionship.

 

...He's been calling me Shades all day.

 

 

.__.

TWELVE TWELVE TWELVE

I am seriously disappointed with the lack of appreciation of this sacred date.

Even when I went to sleep last night, I knew that today HAD to be special. So I wrote out a nice little story about a boy who played a concert alone because he forgot where it was supposed to be, and I stapled it together on graph paper. Because that's at least a little special...

This morning I decided I had to record and memorize each and every thing that happened to me today, waiting for something magical to happen; to take into account all the things I wanted never to forget, and to hold it forever (or, until I die). Here's pretty much what happened:

At school, I went to orchestra, and we played together with the band and were so loud the office people came in the doors and clapped: the counselors, the secretaries, the principle - everybody. As I left I passed by Lafflin in the hallway, at the exact spot I always pass him, and instead of high-fiving him awkwardly as usual, I said "Happy 12-12-12!" but I'm not sure he heard me.

Then I had language arts, and researched indifference in China and accounts of murders not being brought to the attention of the police until the bodies are too rotten for the neighbors to deal with anymore, and it was depressing. After that I organized the book shelves in the classroom as Ms. Comma's student teacher taught in front of her professor, which was stressful for everybody, but I think she did a good job.

Every Wednesday during third period, Lafflin walks in COMPLETELY SILENT and sneaks up behind me (unintentionally) and all I see is a drawing and a hand and then he's gone. The only thing that made this Wednesday different was a slightly longer time period between the picture being in my hand and him leaving. He sort of just stood there looking down at me (I was on my knees, working on the book shelf) for a second or so, as if expecting me to say something after the initial spluttered "Thank you." Then, of course, he was gone.

In Algebra, the teacher was super excited about the date, and the kids who understood the f(x) = y concept just listened to her talk about it for a while and then tell us to stop talking about it because we were being distracting...

Then I was supposed to go outside for access, which I never do because I don't want to be cold, so I took out 1) Lafflin's Stick-Mania comic, 2) My Jokes with Oswald comic, 3) A random comic Sam gave me, and 4) my tsunami comic I had to finish before science. Then we (Me, Pen, Isaac, Huong, Sarah) stapled the comics to the board and went upstairs to check the Horgandy (technically, Jay-Horgandydi, but it gets confusing) board. There was nothing to report. So we went into Ms. Comma's room to do our last-minute science homework.

In the hallway, Pen said she hadn't straightened her hair, and said, "Do you want me to take it out of the ponytail?"
"No." I said.
She took it out and shook her head around. "Pen, you look ADORABLE!" I told her, which is something I don't usually say. I think my exact words after that were, "You're so adorable, if you were a year younger than me, I would adopt you as my daughter and follow you everywhere to make sure you don't fall down."

We all know one Lafflin is enough for anybody...

We went to Ms. Comma's room then. I asked if she had any band-aids, and she said no, she did not have any band-aids, but the teacher next door did. Then she asked why I needed one. I explained to her about my hangnail on the ring finger of my writing hand that chaffed against the paper whenever I wrote, and how I needed a band-aid to get through the day. Then I asked Sarah to go get the band-aid from next door, and she said why don't I get it, and I said because that teacher yells at me. We argued about it for a minute and then Ms. Comma just got up and got one from him for me.

She was sitting at her computer eating her lunch and drinking some kind of soft drink out of a can, and Huong said she thought she was drinking beer, and I said no Huong, Ms. Comma would never drink beer out of a can, and I thought about it some more and figured that she totally would if she needed to. Then we asked her if she was and she said yes and we said okay and then she said she was totally joking and we were extremely relieved.

In science we watched a Bill Nye video on light and color, and I suddenly realized how extremely outdated those movies are. I pretty much spent the entire time shaking my head at the ground. Don't even ask what happened when the punk rock band started singing about the light spectrum...

In history Jake walked in and had a sticky note taped to his back that said "I'm gay," which was funny, because Pen and I had just had a conversation at lunch about whether or not he's gay.

"I wish I had a gay friend," she said.
"Jake is my gay friend," I said. "He hasn't come out of the closet yet. But we all know."
Then Pen said, "I think him having the back of my head as his phone wallpaper is pretty solid proof against that..." and I said, "Ope. I forgot about that."

And so I took the note off of his back and gave it to him. He was quietly embarrassed. We took a test and colored a map. The teacher - an extremely large man, who we all refer to whenever discussing mosh pits - hit me in the head with papers sarcastically and said "Whoops, just trying to make it into the basket," or something. He likes to mess around with us, and I endure it light-heartedly and usually come up with a decent comeback, but the truth is that man like seriously scares me sometimes. I might have daddy issues...

After school I went outside with Sally and Miley and Sarah (it has just now occurred to me how white and suburban my friends sound by their names. Sally is Mexican and Anna is Vietnamese and Sarah was adopted from China as a baby.)

Then I went and walked off with Isaac and Jake, and we found Lafflin walking with his twin brother, and Isaac went up behind him and seriously stalked him two feet away for like a block. Lafflin was very scared. Isaac is like this huge frightening Mexican Care Bear. I would be too.

I was arguing with Isaac about his 'theory' that if you friend-zone a girl you like and then be a jerk to her, she'd like you, which was totally plops because nobody likes jerks. Then we argued about how Isaac needed to stop obsessing about Gregor the Overlander and just get over that relationship, and Lafflin was thoroughly amused, if not a bit scared. Then he showed us this drawing he did of this one stick man shooting another stick man in the head, and I ended up saying the words "This is going to sound really creepy, but I saw your file in Language Arts while I was putting the papers in them and yours had drawings of stick figures killing each other all over it."

And yet I managed to not be as creepy as Isaac was.

The whole day was really very average. I knew the date wouldn't change anything, but it did make me realize that I would never see another 12/12/12 in my whole lifetime. I'm going to die one day, and it's a very scary thing. But when you think about the events of this day, there's really not much I'll be missing, you know?

And then, when you really think about it, you realize that every single day is full of little special moments that you will never experience again, and that are usually disregarded and thrown away. So, I decided to make a very boring blog post about the very boring events of my day-to-day life - or, at least, one day of it - to prove that there's a lot we're missing. It takes a special date to realize it, too.

So, there goes 12/12/12. Just like every other day, passing away before we even realized it. It's sad, really- I wish it could last forever, this perfect day of twelves. I've been used to the expected 4/4/04, or 7/7/07, or 11/11/11, but there will be no 13/13/13. Ever. Twelve is the last one we'll ever see in this century.

Go do something special for it. Go out for ice cream, or give flowers to a stranger. Clap at a performance you didn't buy a ticket to see. Care about things you would normally be indifferent to; stay a moment longer, when you usually run away. Get excited about something no one else cares about. Come out of a closet - any closet - and actually tell someone about the kick-me sign on their back. Walk with your friends even if it's the opposite direction of where you're supposed to be going, and totally tell them that you've seen their file... and liked it.




Okay that is all.
You can go now.

Please Don't Read This :(

The problem with making things is that you don't want to make them for people because people make you want to stop making things.

Like if I made this into a comic and put it on the Board, somebody I know could say "Hey, Shady made that comic. That's a really lame comic. Shady is really lame." And then they could scribble all over it and crumble it up and put in in the Hate Mail box I made for the Board just in case.

Because I'm that kind of creative thinker.

Or, I could make that 'person' who hates me (who in reality doesn't exist) into some symbolic fantasaical creature who lives in my head and feeds off of my sadness that grows out of NOT creating things.

Because of this, I find myself hiding my work from public view. (A total of four six people know about this blog, two three of which found it against my will [don't worry dad, I told you about this one]). And then they get mad at me because they say I'm selfish for not showing them things like drawings of dead people and essays on Bieber Fever, and the sadness grows greater because people make things for other people.

For every Writer there is a Reader, and in every Reader there is a Writer, and so that is the great cycle of Making Things.

Because of this sadness, I find myself trying not to make things, which makes me sadder, and then I kind of self-harm in a subconscious kind of way. So like, instead of using razor blades, I drink coffee and don't eat food, and then eat too much food, and then forget to wear a coat outside and deal with the cold when I could very easily just accept the fact that I'm allergic to caffeine and go inside and get a coat and eat three meals a day instead of erratically consuming an enture box of peanut-butter-filled pretzel bites and then just totally forgetting food was supposed to go in your mouth the next day.

And then I procrastinate on the internet, which could be exactly what you're doing right now.

I have suddenly realized I am a kid, and I wish I was more of a kid than I can be sometimes, and I don't want to be responsible for my actions and have to make big decisions about life and the Holocaust and stuff, and that voice keeps getting louder about how my words don't make sense and nobody likes what I do and therefore nobody likes me.

ANd so I turned this thought into a blog post that I will publish without editting.

Now I feel like cussing myself out.

And over dosing on egg nog.


...Again.