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.
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.
i was extremely happy on 12/12/12. because i knew that it was special. Anyone born after 12/12/12, even just a second or minute past...will never experience a consecutive date. we, the people that survived 12/12/12...are special.
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