From Youtube:
Waking Up With Sam Harris #73 - Forbidden Knowledge (with Charles Murray)
Strange to think that after all these years Charles Murray is still around and still getting people upset.
I actually went to hear Charles Murray speak way back when I was 16.
He was one of the speakers of the Calvin College January series back in 1995. I was still in high school, but our 11th grade religion teacher offered us extra credit if we would go and listen to several of the January series speakers. Charles Murray was on the list.
I was largely ignorant of politics at that time, but our teacher gave us some background on Charles Murray. A few weeks before the talk, our teacher said that Charles Murray had simply collected the data, and was simply reporting what the data showed. Then, as Charles Murray got more and more in the news, our teacher later corrected himself. "I may have been too nice to Charles Murray," he said. "It's looking like some of his data collection sources may be come from questionable groups linked with white supremacy."
Going to the talk was my first exposure to a controversial political speaker.
Of course, this being Calvin College, the protests were muted. (I remember people passing out leaflets, but that's about it.)
Once the talk began, Charles Murray completely charmed the audience. (He joked about his reputation, and how he was just going to go as himself for Halloween.)
To this day, I haven't read his books, so I can't comment on anything in his books. But everything he said at his talk was very moderate, and by the end of the talk the audience was largely on board with him.
That evening at swim team practice, some of the swim team members were quizzing Jeremy about what he thought about it. (Jeremy had the reputation for being the flaming liberal on the swim team--I was still largely conservative at that age.) But even Jeremy found very little he could object to in the actual talk.
None of which is to say that Charles Murray's book is or is not racist. I haven't read the book so I can't say. This is just to comment on the speech he gave at Calvin in 1995.
Anyway, point being that people protesting Charles Murray really takes me back to high school again. Ah, what a trip down memory lane!
As for the above podcast:
I agreed with some things and disagreed with some things. But what struck me most was Charles Murray's thoughts on universal basic income. Surprisingly, he's for it, and makes some very good cases why we should have it. And this coming from a small government conservative no less! If Charles Murray can be behind a universal basic income, then may this is an idea that deservess closer consideration.
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood. Show all posts
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Oh, by the way, did I ever tell you the story about the time I got my name printed in the letter's column of the Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book?
Well sit down kids, and I'll tell you a tale.
The year was 1992. I was 14 years old. I had a subscription to Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation comic books.
I was a huge Trekkie back in those days. Not only did I watch the show religiously, I also read the paper back books, and subscribed to the comics.
Being a reader of the books and comics, however, was a bit thankless, because nothing that happened in the comics and books ever impacted the show in any way. It was purely non-canonical, which means it never really happened. The reset button would be set at the end of every story.
During this time, I would look enviously over to mainstream comic books, in which continuity actually mattered, and the events of one story would be real and meaningful to the characters. During the summer of 1993, I would give up Star Trek comics to make the jump over to mainstream comics.
But I digress. Back in 1992, I was still an avid read of the Star Trek comics. I had subscriptions to both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. And everyone was waiting for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to come out in January. But would there be a tie in comic book to Deep Space Nine as well? I decided to write to the Comic Book Publishers and ask them.
At this time, Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book was doing its best to acknowledge all of its fans by printing the names of everyone who wrote in a letter, even if they didn't have the room to print the actual letter. So I got my name printed in the back of the comic book, even though they didn't publish the actual text of the letter asking about the Deep Space Nine Comic. In parenthesis, after my name, the editor wrote "sorry, not by DC"-- meaning DC Comics would not have the license to publish Deep Space Nine comics. (The Deep Space Nine comic ended up being published by Dark Horse Comics.)
Because there was a time delay, it was several months later until the actual comic got published, and it didn't show up until the following Spring in the May 1993 issue.
And that's my story.
Obviously I can't entertain too many cocktail parties with this particular yarn, and yet I've always thought it was kind of...something. These comics become collectibles, and my name is now part of a collectible somewhere.
I don't actually still have my copy of this comic book. (I got rid of it a long time ago when I was cleaning out junk.)
But with the Internet these days, there are so many websites that host digital copies of comic books, I thought I'd see if I could find it. And sure enough, here I found it.
(Website here--I should warn you that this is probably in violation of the copy right holders, but I paid good money for this comic back in 1993, so I figure I've paid my dues.)
The comic cover is below.
Letter page is below.
And my name is here:
So there it is folks. If I get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow, let it not be said that I didn't lead an exciting life.
Well sit down kids, and I'll tell you a tale.
The year was 1992. I was 14 years old. I had a subscription to Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation comic books.
I was a huge Trekkie back in those days. Not only did I watch the show religiously, I also read the paper back books, and subscribed to the comics.
Being a reader of the books and comics, however, was a bit thankless, because nothing that happened in the comics and books ever impacted the show in any way. It was purely non-canonical, which means it never really happened. The reset button would be set at the end of every story.
During this time, I would look enviously over to mainstream comic books, in which continuity actually mattered, and the events of one story would be real and meaningful to the characters. During the summer of 1993, I would give up Star Trek comics to make the jump over to mainstream comics.
But I digress. Back in 1992, I was still an avid read of the Star Trek comics. I had subscriptions to both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. And everyone was waiting for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to come out in January. But would there be a tie in comic book to Deep Space Nine as well? I decided to write to the Comic Book Publishers and ask them.
At this time, Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book was doing its best to acknowledge all of its fans by printing the names of everyone who wrote in a letter, even if they didn't have the room to print the actual letter. So I got my name printed in the back of the comic book, even though they didn't publish the actual text of the letter asking about the Deep Space Nine Comic. In parenthesis, after my name, the editor wrote "sorry, not by DC"-- meaning DC Comics would not have the license to publish Deep Space Nine comics. (The Deep Space Nine comic ended up being published by Dark Horse Comics.)
Because there was a time delay, it was several months later until the actual comic got published, and it didn't show up until the following Spring in the May 1993 issue.
And that's my story.
Obviously I can't entertain too many cocktail parties with this particular yarn, and yet I've always thought it was kind of...something. These comics become collectibles, and my name is now part of a collectible somewhere.
I don't actually still have my copy of this comic book. (I got rid of it a long time ago when I was cleaning out junk.)
But with the Internet these days, there are so many websites that host digital copies of comic books, I thought I'd see if I could find it. And sure enough, here I found it.
(Website here--I should warn you that this is probably in violation of the copy right holders, but I paid good money for this comic back in 1993, so I figure I've paid my dues.)
The comic cover is below.
Letter page is below.
And my name is here:
So there it is folks. If I get hit by a bus crossing the street tomorrow, let it not be said that I didn't lead an exciting life.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Second Grade Journal: 1985-1986
(Retrospection)
When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher gave us a journal in which we could write whatever we wanted to.
It was my first journal, and I thought it was a really cool idea. I spent a most of our free study periods writing away in the thing.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I had written something of value in it. Instead of being filled with my thoughts on the world, or childhood memories, the whole thing is just me writing about the movies I saw. And what's worse, instead of reviewing these movies, I just try to to retell everything that happened. (I don't know why I thought this was a good use of time.) So, as you can imagine, instead of containing a lot of valuable memories, this journal is just mostly crap.
However in a strange way, long before the age of blogging this journal ended up being an eerily accurate prediction of what I would write on this blog 20 years later: lots of time spent writing, very little of much value, and most of it just recounting what movies I had seen.
You'll notice that every single one of the movies I wrote about in this journal were Disney movies, and there's a very simple reason for that. When I was in 2nd grade, the only TV I was allowed to watch was PBS and The Disney Channel.
(We weren't technically allowed to watch He-man, Voltran, Transformers, or the other popular 80s cartoons, although in reality we saw them from time to time at friends' houses and when my mom wasn't home and our dad or the babysitter was watching us).
Although I thought it was the height of injustice not to be allowed to watch those cartoons like most of my school-mates could, I also really got into the Disney channel at the time. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to supplement my Disney viewing with regular TV, but as you can see from this journal I really fell in love with Disney. I was still at a young enough age to enjoy the old Disney cartoons, and shows like "Zorro" (W) and "Davy Crockett" (W) satisfied my 7 year old desire for action and swashbuckling.
(In fact, come to think of it a lot of those old Disney adventure movies and TV shows were probably just as violent as those afternoon cartoons we weren't allowed to watch. I never questioned the incongruity of it at the time though. I guess it must have been just easier for my parents to say everything Disney was okay than to fight battles over every single TV show.)
...So anyway, long story short, if this journal seems rather "Disney Centric", that's why. [Oh, and one final note: Back in 1985 the Disney Channel was a lot different than it is now. Although it has since remodeled itself as the new hip pre-teen channel, back in mid-80s, the Disney Channel existed almost exclusively just to air out the Disney vault and re-run old Disney movies and TV shows from the 1950s,60s and 70s].
In transferring this old pencil written journal into blog form, I've taken liberties here and there. I've corrected spelling in places, and even changed syntax when I thought the meaning wasn't clear. But where ever possible I tried to leave the original idiomatic grammar of a second grader in tact. Hopefully this doesn't result in too much of a bi-polar feel.
You'll also notice I never get too far on any one topic before I switch into another topic. Sometimes I'll go for as long as a paragraph. Sometimes I'll just write one sentence.
To understand this journal, you need to imagine it through the eyes of a 7 year old who had just barely learned how to read and write, awkwardly gripping his pencil in his hand and laboriously writing each letter. It would take me several free study periods spread out across many days to write one of the larger paragraphs, and you can imagine I didn't have the patience back then to stick with anything that long.
Anyway, I'm going to be interspersing this whole thing with commentary throughout, but without any further ado here's the beginning of the journal.
I am a journal. If your name is not Joel, please close this book.
Our first story: on my birthday I got a transformer. His name is Optimus Prime. I like him. I got other transformers at home. One of them is named Jetfire. My Dad gave him to me. I like him too. Do you know who gave me Optimus Prime? My Grandma Swagman. A nice story.
---I must have written this in the beginning of the school year recounting my 7th birthday from the previous year, April 1985.
I was allowed to have "Transformers" toys, but not to watch the cartoon. (The same held true for He-man and Voltron toys). This actually seems like more of a contradiction now than it did then. At the time, it seemed like it was every boy's right to have "Transformers" action figures, whether or not they could watch the show.
Our second story is me telling you a story: the Black Cauldron. It began with a boy who was an assistant pig keeper for an old man. A horned king had once destroyed their country. The boy's name is Tarn. Tarn's pig was a magical pig. It can look into the future. Tarn wanted to be a knight. Everyday Tarn said, "I want to be a knight in shining armour. One day it happened that Tarn woke up. He was the one who made breakfast. He made breakfast and went to the window. It was not a real window, just a square carved out of the wall. He went to the window to dream about being a knight. The old man made fun of the horned king. The old man had a cat. Breakfast began to over boil and no one noticed except the cat and the cat was the only one who was hungry, and he made such funny actions that the old man noticed. But Tarn, who's job it was, did not notice. The old man got mad. But the old man talked kind because he was kind.
"Tarn," he said, "What are you doing by the window."
Tarn did not answer but said the same as always, "I want to be a knight in shining armour.
"Oh," said the old man. That--
Ah, "The Black Cauldron" (W). Remember that? Even now thinking about it brings me back to the 80s and tie in children's marketing. I can almost still taste the cheese poofs that had the special Black Cauldron sticker inside.
Now I am sorry but that story is too long. Our third story is me and my sister are going to build a fort. I built it. It got wrecked.
I am going to stop numbering our stories, but I will say "next story". Our next story: a little bit from Condorman. The ending part of Condorman. "Quick, into the boat," was the word and in went Condorman, Harry, and Laser Lady. The enemy was after Laser Lady. The boat had lasers in it. The enemy chased them in another boat. The enemy chased them in several boats. Harry grabbed the laser gun, but he couldn't hit anyone.
"Shoot better," Condorman yelled.
--Anyone else remember "Condorman" (W) ? I've never heard of it since, but I loved it as a kid.
It was a Disney movie, and it was run on the Disney Channel, which meant I was allowed to watch it.
That is the end of that story. Now I am tell you about Halloween. I was a knight, my sister was a Ewok, and my brother was a cowboy. Something strange happened. After we finished trick or treating, my dad picked up my brother's cowboy hat. There was a piece of candy on the brim of the hat, but no one knew how it got there.
Now my class is studying Indians. We have Indian names. My Indian name is "Spotted Tail." My friend David's name is "White Chief."
--If you've got a long memory, you might remember the above paragraph. I used it as a retrospection entry before back in 2007. At the time I was thinking I would do this journal in installments, but now I think it makes sense just to put it all in one long entry.
You all know this is a journal and me and my sister are making another journal just for kids.
Now, you've all read about a lot of adventures in this journal, but I would like to write about some more action. I think mountain stories are the best. Like "Third Man on the Mountain". You all probably think that the name of this story means that only two men ever went up on the mountain, and then after a long time a 3rd man climbed up the mountain. But no, that is not how it got its name. Its name is "3rd Man on the Mountain" because in this story a man looked through his telescope and saw 3 men climbing and said, "There's a 3rd man on the mountain."
--"Third Man on the Mountain" (W) was another Disney movie being run on the Disney channel. And another movie I loved as a kid. Haven't seen it since, but there's a thorough online review of it here for anyone interested.
I am going finish telling you that story later.
Now we have a baby sister. Her name is Jessica. Now we have me--Joel, Kyle, my sister Kirstin, and my second sister Jessica. I am in 2nd grade. Kirstin is in Kindergarten. Kyle is 2 years old and Jessica is a baby.
Now I've told you that Kirstin is in Kindergarten and I am in 2nd grade, but I did not tell you what are ages are. Well, mine is 8 and Kirstin is 6.
Now I'm going to make up an adventure for all 4 of us.
One day we were driving in China. When we stopped the car, 2 men with guns started shooting them at us. They were hiding in the bushes, but we could see them. Then they ran forward to attack us. I unbuckled my seatbelt. My Kindergarten sister unbuckled hers. Kyle unbuckled his and I got Jessica out of the car seat. That is how our adventure began.
--I was in second grade when my youngest sister Jessica was added to the family. I still remember picking her up at the airport, and making her laugh by hopping around on one leg. (This worked for a while, and then she started crying again).
If you're well versed in the Disney archives (as I was back then) you know that there have been tons of Disney movies about a group of kids who are separated from their parents and have to make their own way through a series of adventures and defeat the bad guys all on their own. No doubt I was heavily influenced by all of this. Although even if I hadn't been, I suspect the idea of saving the day all by themselves is probably a pretty standard fantasy for children anyway.
As usual, I got one paragraph into this adventure story, and then I lost interested and wandered into another topic.
Now I want to write about "One hundred and one Dalmatians". But first I would like to tell you what happened yesterday.
Yesterday a space shuttle exploded and seven people died.
Now I want to tell you what I got for Christmas. I got Lion Voltron. I got the Transformer's Racing track. I got Webstor. He's a He-Man action figure. He came with a rope, that he can go up. I got a book from my dad. I got a mobile car. I got a photo album, a clock a bookmark. I got clothes. The book my dad gave me is "The Black Stallion." My Dad was also the one who gave me the Lion Voltron and the transformers racing track. My sister gave me a Go-bot. My mom gave me the mobile car. My Grandma Swagman gave me a transformer and a nice sweater and a game called "connect four". It's fun. I got a squirt gun from a boy in my class. I got a Garfield eraser from my teacher. I got Webstor from my Aunt Mary. I gave my sister "Crystal Castle" and my Dad gave her She-Ra.
--This is another section that I've used before in my retrospections. At the time I claimed it was a writing assignment, which was perhaps a bit misleading. It was a writing assignment in the sense that our teacher encouraged us to write about it in our journal. It was never something that was collected and graded. Which is why I only gave the Challenger explosion one sentence before my usual short attention moved me onto other topics.
When I claim to give my sister the "Crystal Castle" (W) playset, that just means I selected it. My dad paid the money for it.
I think "The Black Stallion" book referred to here wasn't the genuine article, but a kids book based on the movie--lots of pictures from the movie and text that had the barebones story on each page. I loved this picture book, and read it over and over again.
I never did read the real book. I started it a couple times, but it never grabbed my interest, probably because I already knew the story.
Lion Voltron (W), with the 5 different robot lions that transformed and then connected to make one big robot, was the popular toy that year, as you may remember. And it was a really cool concept. It was like 5 different transformers in one. Every kid had to have it.
You probably also remember, if you had one, that it was one of the most fragile pieces of crap ever. Parts started breaking off of it left and right almost from the moment you opened the box.
I had somewhat of a fair warning on this, as my friends at school had been complaining about how easily their Voltron figures broke before I even got mine. So I wasn't very shocked when mine started doing the same thing. I tried to be careful with it, but pieces will snap off just from moving the thing around.
My dad declared at one point, "I will not tolerate a toy that breaks so much." He brought it back to the toy store and demanded a new one in exchange.
The new one faired slightly better, but inevitably some pieces eventually snapped off of that one as well.
February 26, 1986: Good, now I like a man who died. His name is Walt Disney. He is very famous. He made many movies, like "The Black Cauldron". You may think "The Black Cauldron" is dumb, but it is not. It is an adventure story. Remember the horned king? He came back and Tarn has to fight an evil power that is held inside a living Black Cauldron. The black Cauldron is living and evil can only come out if the Black Cauldron makes it. When the horned King gets the Black Cauldron, then the fighting becomes twice as hard. But thanks to a little guy named Georgi, they saved the world and Tarn learned a lesson.
February 27: Walt Disney was a movie maker and he made the Black Cauldron. Walt Disney could make a movie about any kind of animal, including the ones that are extinct. He made "The Black Hole." I will tell you that story.
March 5: The USS Palmino was in space when they saw the USS Signus. Now the Signus had disappeared many years ago, so the crew was curious .
Then Kate said, "I saw something move. There are people on board."
"Let's take a look," said the Captain.
They came just a little bit too close, and the black hole started to suck them up Vincent, the ship's robot, went on to the top of the ship to help.
After a second, the captain said to Kate, "Make contact with Vincent." You see, Kate and Vincent could make contact with each other. Kate tried.
After another second, the captain asked, "Anything?"
"No," said Kate. Then she said, "Oh, here comes something now."
That's all I remember about "The Black Hole."
Remember "The Black Hole" (W)? Another bad science fiction movie from the 80s. Despite the black overtones of this movie, I was allowed to see it because it was Disney.
Actually it was a bit of fight to be able to see this. My parents bought the story book and tape for us to keep us occupied on car trips, so I was familiar with the movie. And it was aired that year on the Disney Channel. My mom watched it first to make sure it was alright for us, and only after a lot of pleading were me and my sister allowed to watch it.
I absolutely loved this movie when I was in second grade. But like a lot of things I liked back then, watching it now the movie has not aged well.
April 9: Well, here we go on another adventure.
Actually, no, let's forget about that.
Well, Walt Disney sure is great, as you can see. OK.
April 16: I will tell you something. My birthday is coming up soon and I hope to get a Bambi record. Do you know who Bambi is? Well, I will tell you. He once was a prince, now he's a king. I will tell you his story:
April 30: A prince was born. All the animals came. All the rabbits and bunnies, including one bunny named "Thumper", who said, "What are you going to name him?"
And the mother said, "I think I will name him 'Bambi'."
Then Bambi tried to walk. Now that is part of his story.
Bambi always had a special place in my nostalgic heart, because it was the first movie I saw. My mom and aunt took me to see it when it was being re-shown in theaters sometime in the earlier 80s.
I'm not sure what I mean when I say I wanted a "Bambi Record". I already had a Bambi story book and record that went along with it. Maybe I meant I wanted it recorded on VHS. I don't remember exactly when our family got our first VCR, but it was around about this time, maybe 3rd grade.
(For a long time, Disney animated movies like Bambi weren't available on video because they were still re-releasing them into the theaters every 5 years. I didn't always understand these marketing issues as a kid though, and kept asking for videos that hadn't been released yet.)
May 8: Walt Disney also made "Return to Treasure Island." I want to tell that story, but to tell that story I will first have to tell the story of "Treasure Island". Here we go.
May 14: There was a boy whose father owned an Inn. And the boys name was Jim Hawkins. One day a visitor came. The visitor asked the father if he had some rooms, and the father said yes.
The father asked the visitor what his name was, and the stranger did not tell his name. But he said, "Call me captain. Yes, call me captain."
Then he said, "I'm a plain man. Bacon and eggs are all I need. And rum. And a place where I can warm my boots."
Jim's father said, "You can stay."
The Captain was a very silent man. All day long he sat in the parlor drinking rum, but at night he haunted Jim's nightmares.
Actually, let's let Jim tell the rest of the story.
OK. One day, said Jim, the Captain called me into his room and said, "Do you see this here penny piece boy?"
I said, "Yes sir I do."
Then he said, "I'll give you one of these every month if you keep your eyes open for a man with one leg."
The Captain seemed terrified of the one legged man, but no matter how long I looked for him, I saw the one legged man only in my nightmares.
Soon, my father became very ill. Our doctor, Doctor Livesly, came often to help him. Sometimes Doctor Livesly stayed for dinner. "Delicious meal, Mrs Hawkins," he would say.
One day Doctor Livesly asked me, "Doesn't that man frighten you?"
I said, "Yes sir."
Sunday, the captain came over to our table and said, "Silence there between decks!"
Doctor Livesly asked, "Were you speaking to me sir?"
The Captain said, "Aye, That I were San Pale--."
Doctor Livesly interupted and said, "Now you listen to me sir. If you keep on drinking rum, you will soon die. And perhaps that would not be a bad thing."
At that, the Captian drew his knife and said, "You take those words back!"
But the Doctor answered in a calm and steady voice and said, "Put that knife away, or I promise you that you will go to the gallows. I'm a judge sir, as well as a doctor, and if I hear even one complaint against you, I'll have you thrown into the gallows for many nights."
After that, the Captain was very good, but he stayed with us that long night as my poor father's heart grew worse and worse.
Then one January morning, another stranger came. The stranger asked, "Have you seen my mate Bill?"
I said, "I don't know your mate bill sir. We do have one guest that asked if we'd call him captain."
The stranger was pale and evil looking. Two fingers on his left hand were missing, but he wasn't the one legged man. In fact he didn't even seem like a sailor at all. Then he said, "I think your guest is Bill. I'll wait for him I will."
Then he made me hide behind the door with him.
When the Captian came back, the stranger reached out and grabbed the Captain. "Hello Bill," he said. "Remember your old shipmate? Have the boy fetch some rum, Bill, while you and I have a good honest talk."
I tried to listen from the next room. I could hear nothing for a long time, and then they began to shout and yell at eachother. I heard the Captain yell, "No, I'll never give it to you. I'd rather die." Then there was more shouting, followed by the sounds of swords.
Then Black Dog, the name of the stranger, ran out the door. I ran to the captian and asked, "Sir, are you okay?"
The captain did not answer but said, "Rum, Jim, fetch me Rum." Then he fell to the floor face first.
The Captain was dead.
Now Jim, stop. Tell us all the details.
Ok, ok, well the captain was killed. I went on a ship with some other men and a crew. The crew and the cook attacked us. But in the end we won. And the crook turned out to be my friend. The end
Ok, so that story was not by Walt Disney. But Walt Disney made the movie of it. And Walt Disney not only made the movie, but he made "Return to Treasure Island". And I'll bet he made "The Third Man on the Mountain".
Did anyone else see "Return to Treasure Island" (W)? It was a mini-series that was rerun occasionally on the Disney Channel back then. I was absolutely obsessed with it. I thought it was the greatest show ever. After watching it I would be pumped up for hours, pretending I was sword fighting in the backyard and singing the theme song to myself.
I was also obsessed with Treasure Island, a story I knew via the Fisher-Price delux comic book and tape set. I listened to it over and over again until I had it memorized, as you can see from the passage above. (I wrote that whole thing at school from memory). In fact even now as I re-read it, I can still hear the voice actors and the narration from the tape in my head. There's a bit of awkwardness in the retelling, since the version I had memorized in my head was all in the first person, and I attempted to re-write it in the 3rd person. Eventually I gave up and just and said, "let's let Jim tell the rest of the story." There were 5 other comic books and audio tapes in the series, and eventually our family collected them all (Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood). And all of them I pretty much listened to until I had them memorized.
(I guess there must not have been too much else to do back then. We were probably the last generation before kids just got overwhelmed with media and video games . We didn't get a nintendo until a few years later.
Plus I had parents who very closely limited my TV intake.)
These books (and similar "classics for children" series) both caused me to fall in love with the classics, and also kind of ruined them for me. Several times I tried to read the real "Treasure Island" book by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I could never get through it. When you have the whole story memorized, what's the point?
The same is true for all those other books. (Other than "Robinson Crusoe", which I read in a class at Calvin because I had to. And I found out that the real book is a lot more dry and boring than the comic book version would lead you to believe.)
I never did finish "The Third Man on the Mountain" story. Well, I will not tell that story now.
And remember the story about my family in China. Well, once all the children got out of the car, we killed the two men. The end.
Part 3 of this journal is all about my family. Kyle and Jessica are adopted from Korea. Kyle has a hole in his mouth, and he can not talk good. Jessica has only one arm and a half of an arm.
The whole family has a pen-pal from Korea. And I also have a penpal of my own.
I have sandy colored hair, and so does Kirstin. Jessica, Kyle and Dad have black hair. Mom has brown hair.
We have a dog. His name is Brandy. He acts like a watch dog. But really he is a Lhasa Apso. His fur is gray. It is my job to give him his food and water. He s a strange dog.
He is a strange Dog. He doesn't like mats or baskets. The only bones that he likes are milk bones doggy treats.
And he sits at the window barking at everybody for most of the day. If someone comes in, and it's someone he knows, he doesn't bark at them.
When he gets outside, he runs away a lot, but he always comes back. When he gets outside, he will chase joggers and bikers. Once he got away one the same day that Grandma Swagman was coming over. Grandma Swagman found him tied up to a lamp post. Some jogger or biker must have tied him up. I remember Kirstin was being a real brat at the time. Well, anyway, some jogger or biker had tied him up. When Grandma Swagman saw him, she untied him. Brandy did not bark because he knows Grandma Swagman.
You know, I never minded Brandy's barking all that much. Maybe because the dog was around before I was, I just grew up with it. Or maybe I was young enough that I could still tune it out. But it used to drive my parents crazy. Although a bit of internet research (W) reveals that the Lhasa Apso was specifically bred to for the purpose of barking at everything in sight.
You know, Brandy being a watch dog makes me remember a joke. Here it is:
Bob: Why is your dog running around like that?
Judy: He's a watch dog. He's winding himself up.
That's all the news about Brandy I know of. You all know about Grandma Swagman. She is the mother of my dad, by the way. But who was the mother of my mom? My other Grandma. Grandma Dik.
You know something about me? I am very good at creative writing. Here is one of my stories. It is called "The 3 Giraffes" by Joel Swagman.
Once upon a time there were three little giraffes.
The first giraffe built a home in a haystack.
The second giraffe built a home in a leaf pile.
The third giraffe built a home in a wood pile.
But little did they know a bunch of pirates were looking for giraffe soup....
My second grade teacher gave me an "O" for outstanding on creative writing. It was the only "O" I recieved on my report card. (Everything else was marked "S" for satisfactory.)
She also gave me a lot of praise for my stories, and even went through the trouble of signing me up for "Young Author's Festival at Calvin" the following year, even though I was no longer in her class.
I had never thought of myself as a writer before, but this put the idea into my mind. And in fact it was a notion that stayed with me for a long time, even when I got into high school and my English teachers there were a lot less enthusiastic about my writing abilities.
As a result of this, I developed the hobby of writing stories (mostly for my own amusement) all through my childhood, high school, and even my time at Calvin . (And although I'm somewhat embarrased to admit it, I still fool around with writing fiction from time to time even today.)
Like most amateur writers, I never worked constantly on anything as a child, but wrote in the usual fits and starts. I spent more time walking around day dreaming and thinking of ideas than I ever got around to writing on paper.
The "Three Giraffe Story" was originally a school assignment. But my teacher praised my story so highly that I became very proud of it. She asked me for permission to photocopy it so she could keep it in her files, and I was unbelievable proud of myself. For reasons I don't really remember, I decided I wanted to rewrite the whole thing down into my journal. I guess I just wanted to keep all my writing in the same place.
By the time I started re-copying my "Giraffe Story", the year was over and I was in 3rd grade. I worked on the table in the basement slowly rewriting everything, still in the phase were writing down anything was a laborious project.
The papers were left on the downstairs table for several nights, and eventually my mom just went through and threw everything out except the journal itself.
I was devestated and in tears. My mom agreed to call up my old second grade teacher, and she still had a copy of my story in her files which she recopied and gave back to me.
A few years ago I posted this story on one of my other blogs, so it seems unnecessary to re-post it here. Just click on the link if you're interested.
When I was in 2nd grade, our teacher gave us a journal in which we could write whatever we wanted to.
It was my first journal, and I thought it was a really cool idea. I spent a most of our free study periods writing away in the thing.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I had written something of value in it. Instead of being filled with my thoughts on the world, or childhood memories, the whole thing is just me writing about the movies I saw. And what's worse, instead of reviewing these movies, I just try to to retell everything that happened. (I don't know why I thought this was a good use of time.) So, as you can imagine, instead of containing a lot of valuable memories, this journal is just mostly crap.
However in a strange way, long before the age of blogging this journal ended up being an eerily accurate prediction of what I would write on this blog 20 years later: lots of time spent writing, very little of much value, and most of it just recounting what movies I had seen.
You'll notice that every single one of the movies I wrote about in this journal were Disney movies, and there's a very simple reason for that. When I was in 2nd grade, the only TV I was allowed to watch was PBS and The Disney Channel.
(We weren't technically allowed to watch He-man, Voltran, Transformers, or the other popular 80s cartoons, although in reality we saw them from time to time at friends' houses and when my mom wasn't home and our dad or the babysitter was watching us).
Although I thought it was the height of injustice not to be allowed to watch those cartoons like most of my school-mates could, I also really got into the Disney channel at the time. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to supplement my Disney viewing with regular TV, but as you can see from this journal I really fell in love with Disney. I was still at a young enough age to enjoy the old Disney cartoons, and shows like "Zorro" (W) and "Davy Crockett" (W) satisfied my 7 year old desire for action and swashbuckling.
(In fact, come to think of it a lot of those old Disney adventure movies and TV shows were probably just as violent as those afternoon cartoons we weren't allowed to watch. I never questioned the incongruity of it at the time though. I guess it must have been just easier for my parents to say everything Disney was okay than to fight battles over every single TV show.)
...So anyway, long story short, if this journal seems rather "Disney Centric", that's why. [Oh, and one final note: Back in 1985 the Disney Channel was a lot different than it is now. Although it has since remodeled itself as the new hip pre-teen channel, back in mid-80s, the Disney Channel existed almost exclusively just to air out the Disney vault and re-run old Disney movies and TV shows from the 1950s,60s and 70s].
In transferring this old pencil written journal into blog form, I've taken liberties here and there. I've corrected spelling in places, and even changed syntax when I thought the meaning wasn't clear. But where ever possible I tried to leave the original idiomatic grammar of a second grader in tact. Hopefully this doesn't result in too much of a bi-polar feel.
You'll also notice I never get too far on any one topic before I switch into another topic. Sometimes I'll go for as long as a paragraph. Sometimes I'll just write one sentence.
To understand this journal, you need to imagine it through the eyes of a 7 year old who had just barely learned how to read and write, awkwardly gripping his pencil in his hand and laboriously writing each letter. It would take me several free study periods spread out across many days to write one of the larger paragraphs, and you can imagine I didn't have the patience back then to stick with anything that long.
Anyway, I'm going to be interspersing this whole thing with commentary throughout, but without any further ado here's the beginning of the journal.
I am a journal. If your name is not Joel, please close this book.
Our first story: on my birthday I got a transformer. His name is Optimus Prime. I like him. I got other transformers at home. One of them is named Jetfire. My Dad gave him to me. I like him too. Do you know who gave me Optimus Prime? My Grandma Swagman. A nice story.
---I must have written this in the beginning of the school year recounting my 7th birthday from the previous year, April 1985.
I was allowed to have "Transformers" toys, but not to watch the cartoon. (The same held true for He-man and Voltron toys). This actually seems like more of a contradiction now than it did then. At the time, it seemed like it was every boy's right to have "Transformers" action figures, whether or not they could watch the show.
Our second story is me telling you a story: the Black Cauldron. It began with a boy who was an assistant pig keeper for an old man. A horned king had once destroyed their country. The boy's name is Tarn. Tarn's pig was a magical pig. It can look into the future. Tarn wanted to be a knight. Everyday Tarn said, "I want to be a knight in shining armour. One day it happened that Tarn woke up. He was the one who made breakfast. He made breakfast and went to the window. It was not a real window, just a square carved out of the wall. He went to the window to dream about being a knight. The old man made fun of the horned king. The old man had a cat. Breakfast began to over boil and no one noticed except the cat and the cat was the only one who was hungry, and he made such funny actions that the old man noticed. But Tarn, who's job it was, did not notice. The old man got mad. But the old man talked kind because he was kind.
"Tarn," he said, "What are you doing by the window."
Tarn did not answer but said the same as always, "I want to be a knight in shining armour.
"Oh," said the old man. That--
Ah, "The Black Cauldron" (W). Remember that? Even now thinking about it brings me back to the 80s and tie in children's marketing. I can almost still taste the cheese poofs that had the special Black Cauldron sticker inside.
Now I am sorry but that story is too long. Our third story is me and my sister are going to build a fort. I built it. It got wrecked.
I am going to stop numbering our stories, but I will say "next story". Our next story: a little bit from Condorman. The ending part of Condorman. "Quick, into the boat," was the word and in went Condorman, Harry, and Laser Lady. The enemy was after Laser Lady. The boat had lasers in it. The enemy chased them in another boat. The enemy chased them in several boats. Harry grabbed the laser gun, but he couldn't hit anyone.
"Shoot better," Condorman yelled.
--Anyone else remember "Condorman" (W) ? I've never heard of it since, but I loved it as a kid.
It was a Disney movie, and it was run on the Disney Channel, which meant I was allowed to watch it.
That is the end of that story. Now I am tell you about Halloween. I was a knight, my sister was a Ewok, and my brother was a cowboy. Something strange happened. After we finished trick or treating, my dad picked up my brother's cowboy hat. There was a piece of candy on the brim of the hat, but no one knew how it got there.
Now my class is studying Indians. We have Indian names. My Indian name is "Spotted Tail." My friend David's name is "White Chief."
--If you've got a long memory, you might remember the above paragraph. I used it as a retrospection entry before back in 2007. At the time I was thinking I would do this journal in installments, but now I think it makes sense just to put it all in one long entry.
You all know this is a journal and me and my sister are making another journal just for kids.
Now, you've all read about a lot of adventures in this journal, but I would like to write about some more action. I think mountain stories are the best. Like "Third Man on the Mountain". You all probably think that the name of this story means that only two men ever went up on the mountain, and then after a long time a 3rd man climbed up the mountain. But no, that is not how it got its name. Its name is "3rd Man on the Mountain" because in this story a man looked through his telescope and saw 3 men climbing and said, "There's a 3rd man on the mountain."
--"Third Man on the Mountain" (W) was another Disney movie being run on the Disney channel. And another movie I loved as a kid. Haven't seen it since, but there's a thorough online review of it here for anyone interested.
I am going finish telling you that story later.
Now we have a baby sister. Her name is Jessica. Now we have me--Joel, Kyle, my sister Kirstin, and my second sister Jessica. I am in 2nd grade. Kirstin is in Kindergarten. Kyle is 2 years old and Jessica is a baby.
Now I've told you that Kirstin is in Kindergarten and I am in 2nd grade, but I did not tell you what are ages are. Well, mine is 8 and Kirstin is 6.
Now I'm going to make up an adventure for all 4 of us.
One day we were driving in China. When we stopped the car, 2 men with guns started shooting them at us. They were hiding in the bushes, but we could see them. Then they ran forward to attack us. I unbuckled my seatbelt. My Kindergarten sister unbuckled hers. Kyle unbuckled his and I got Jessica out of the car seat. That is how our adventure began.
--I was in second grade when my youngest sister Jessica was added to the family. I still remember picking her up at the airport, and making her laugh by hopping around on one leg. (This worked for a while, and then she started crying again).
If you're well versed in the Disney archives (as I was back then) you know that there have been tons of Disney movies about a group of kids who are separated from their parents and have to make their own way through a series of adventures and defeat the bad guys all on their own. No doubt I was heavily influenced by all of this. Although even if I hadn't been, I suspect the idea of saving the day all by themselves is probably a pretty standard fantasy for children anyway.
As usual, I got one paragraph into this adventure story, and then I lost interested and wandered into another topic.
Now I want to write about "One hundred and one Dalmatians". But first I would like to tell you what happened yesterday.
Yesterday a space shuttle exploded and seven people died.
Now I want to tell you what I got for Christmas. I got Lion Voltron. I got the Transformer's Racing track. I got Webstor. He's a He-Man action figure. He came with a rope, that he can go up. I got a book from my dad. I got a mobile car. I got a photo album, a clock a bookmark. I got clothes. The book my dad gave me is "The Black Stallion." My Dad was also the one who gave me the Lion Voltron and the transformers racing track. My sister gave me a Go-bot. My mom gave me the mobile car. My Grandma Swagman gave me a transformer and a nice sweater and a game called "connect four". It's fun. I got a squirt gun from a boy in my class. I got a Garfield eraser from my teacher. I got Webstor from my Aunt Mary. I gave my sister "Crystal Castle" and my Dad gave her She-Ra.
--This is another section that I've used before in my retrospections. At the time I claimed it was a writing assignment, which was perhaps a bit misleading. It was a writing assignment in the sense that our teacher encouraged us to write about it in our journal. It was never something that was collected and graded. Which is why I only gave the Challenger explosion one sentence before my usual short attention moved me onto other topics.
When I claim to give my sister the "Crystal Castle" (W) playset, that just means I selected it. My dad paid the money for it.
I think "The Black Stallion" book referred to here wasn't the genuine article, but a kids book based on the movie--lots of pictures from the movie and text that had the barebones story on each page. I loved this picture book, and read it over and over again.
I never did read the real book. I started it a couple times, but it never grabbed my interest, probably because I already knew the story.
Lion Voltron (W), with the 5 different robot lions that transformed and then connected to make one big robot, was the popular toy that year, as you may remember. And it was a really cool concept. It was like 5 different transformers in one. Every kid had to have it.
You probably also remember, if you had one, that it was one of the most fragile pieces of crap ever. Parts started breaking off of it left and right almost from the moment you opened the box.
I had somewhat of a fair warning on this, as my friends at school had been complaining about how easily their Voltron figures broke before I even got mine. So I wasn't very shocked when mine started doing the same thing. I tried to be careful with it, but pieces will snap off just from moving the thing around.
My dad declared at one point, "I will not tolerate a toy that breaks so much." He brought it back to the toy store and demanded a new one in exchange.
The new one faired slightly better, but inevitably some pieces eventually snapped off of that one as well.
February 26, 1986: Good, now I like a man who died. His name is Walt Disney. He is very famous. He made many movies, like "The Black Cauldron". You may think "The Black Cauldron" is dumb, but it is not. It is an adventure story. Remember the horned king? He came back and Tarn has to fight an evil power that is held inside a living Black Cauldron. The black Cauldron is living and evil can only come out if the Black Cauldron makes it. When the horned King gets the Black Cauldron, then the fighting becomes twice as hard. But thanks to a little guy named Georgi, they saved the world and Tarn learned a lesson.
February 27: Walt Disney was a movie maker and he made the Black Cauldron. Walt Disney could make a movie about any kind of animal, including the ones that are extinct. He made "The Black Hole." I will tell you that story.
March 5: The USS Palmino was in space when they saw the USS Signus. Now the Signus had disappeared many years ago, so the crew was curious .
Then Kate said, "I saw something move. There are people on board."
"Let's take a look," said the Captain.
They came just a little bit too close, and the black hole started to suck them up Vincent, the ship's robot, went on to the top of the ship to help.
After a second, the captain said to Kate, "Make contact with Vincent." You see, Kate and Vincent could make contact with each other. Kate tried.
After another second, the captain asked, "Anything?"
"No," said Kate. Then she said, "Oh, here comes something now."
That's all I remember about "The Black Hole."
Remember "The Black Hole" (W)? Another bad science fiction movie from the 80s. Despite the black overtones of this movie, I was allowed to see it because it was Disney.
Actually it was a bit of fight to be able to see this. My parents bought the story book and tape for us to keep us occupied on car trips, so I was familiar with the movie. And it was aired that year on the Disney Channel. My mom watched it first to make sure it was alright for us, and only after a lot of pleading were me and my sister allowed to watch it.
I absolutely loved this movie when I was in second grade. But like a lot of things I liked back then, watching it now the movie has not aged well.
April 9: Well, here we go on another adventure.
Actually, no, let's forget about that.
Well, Walt Disney sure is great, as you can see. OK.
April 16: I will tell you something. My birthday is coming up soon and I hope to get a Bambi record. Do you know who Bambi is? Well, I will tell you. He once was a prince, now he's a king. I will tell you his story:
April 30: A prince was born. All the animals came. All the rabbits and bunnies, including one bunny named "Thumper", who said, "What are you going to name him?"
And the mother said, "I think I will name him 'Bambi'."
Then Bambi tried to walk. Now that is part of his story.
Bambi always had a special place in my nostalgic heart, because it was the first movie I saw. My mom and aunt took me to see it when it was being re-shown in theaters sometime in the earlier 80s.
I'm not sure what I mean when I say I wanted a "Bambi Record". I already had a Bambi story book and record that went along with it. Maybe I meant I wanted it recorded on VHS. I don't remember exactly when our family got our first VCR, but it was around about this time, maybe 3rd grade.
(For a long time, Disney animated movies like Bambi weren't available on video because they were still re-releasing them into the theaters every 5 years. I didn't always understand these marketing issues as a kid though, and kept asking for videos that hadn't been released yet.)
May 8: Walt Disney also made "Return to Treasure Island." I want to tell that story, but to tell that story I will first have to tell the story of "Treasure Island". Here we go.
May 14: There was a boy whose father owned an Inn. And the boys name was Jim Hawkins. One day a visitor came. The visitor asked the father if he had some rooms, and the father said yes.
The father asked the visitor what his name was, and the stranger did not tell his name. But he said, "Call me captain. Yes, call me captain."
Then he said, "I'm a plain man. Bacon and eggs are all I need. And rum. And a place where I can warm my boots."
Jim's father said, "You can stay."
The Captain was a very silent man. All day long he sat in the parlor drinking rum, but at night he haunted Jim's nightmares.
Actually, let's let Jim tell the rest of the story.
OK. One day, said Jim, the Captain called me into his room and said, "Do you see this here penny piece boy?"
I said, "Yes sir I do."
Then he said, "I'll give you one of these every month if you keep your eyes open for a man with one leg."
The Captain seemed terrified of the one legged man, but no matter how long I looked for him, I saw the one legged man only in my nightmares.
Soon, my father became very ill. Our doctor, Doctor Livesly, came often to help him. Sometimes Doctor Livesly stayed for dinner. "Delicious meal, Mrs Hawkins," he would say.
One day Doctor Livesly asked me, "Doesn't that man frighten you?"
I said, "Yes sir."
Sunday, the captain came over to our table and said, "Silence there between decks!"
Doctor Livesly asked, "Were you speaking to me sir?"
The Captain said, "Aye, That I were San Pale--."
Doctor Livesly interupted and said, "Now you listen to me sir. If you keep on drinking rum, you will soon die. And perhaps that would not be a bad thing."
At that, the Captian drew his knife and said, "You take those words back!"
But the Doctor answered in a calm and steady voice and said, "Put that knife away, or I promise you that you will go to the gallows. I'm a judge sir, as well as a doctor, and if I hear even one complaint against you, I'll have you thrown into the gallows for many nights."
After that, the Captain was very good, but he stayed with us that long night as my poor father's heart grew worse and worse.
Then one January morning, another stranger came. The stranger asked, "Have you seen my mate Bill?"
I said, "I don't know your mate bill sir. We do have one guest that asked if we'd call him captain."
The stranger was pale and evil looking. Two fingers on his left hand were missing, but he wasn't the one legged man. In fact he didn't even seem like a sailor at all. Then he said, "I think your guest is Bill. I'll wait for him I will."
Then he made me hide behind the door with him.
When the Captian came back, the stranger reached out and grabbed the Captain. "Hello Bill," he said. "Remember your old shipmate? Have the boy fetch some rum, Bill, while you and I have a good honest talk."
I tried to listen from the next room. I could hear nothing for a long time, and then they began to shout and yell at eachother. I heard the Captain yell, "No, I'll never give it to you. I'd rather die." Then there was more shouting, followed by the sounds of swords.
Then Black Dog, the name of the stranger, ran out the door. I ran to the captian and asked, "Sir, are you okay?"
The captain did not answer but said, "Rum, Jim, fetch me Rum." Then he fell to the floor face first.
The Captain was dead.
Now Jim, stop. Tell us all the details.
Ok, ok, well the captain was killed. I went on a ship with some other men and a crew. The crew and the cook attacked us. But in the end we won. And the crook turned out to be my friend. The end
Ok, so that story was not by Walt Disney. But Walt Disney made the movie of it. And Walt Disney not only made the movie, but he made "Return to Treasure Island". And I'll bet he made "The Third Man on the Mountain".
Did anyone else see "Return to Treasure Island" (W)? It was a mini-series that was rerun occasionally on the Disney Channel back then. I was absolutely obsessed with it. I thought it was the greatest show ever. After watching it I would be pumped up for hours, pretending I was sword fighting in the backyard and singing the theme song to myself.
I was also obsessed with Treasure Island, a story I knew via the Fisher-Price delux comic book and tape set. I listened to it over and over again until I had it memorized, as you can see from the passage above. (I wrote that whole thing at school from memory). In fact even now as I re-read it, I can still hear the voice actors and the narration from the tape in my head. There's a bit of awkwardness in the retelling, since the version I had memorized in my head was all in the first person, and I attempted to re-write it in the 3rd person. Eventually I gave up and just and said, "let's let Jim tell the rest of the story." There were 5 other comic books and audio tapes in the series, and eventually our family collected them all (Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, and Robin Hood). And all of them I pretty much listened to until I had them memorized.
(I guess there must not have been too much else to do back then. We were probably the last generation before kids just got overwhelmed with media and video games . We didn't get a nintendo until a few years later.
Plus I had parents who very closely limited my TV intake.)
These books (and similar "classics for children" series) both caused me to fall in love with the classics, and also kind of ruined them for me. Several times I tried to read the real "Treasure Island" book by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I could never get through it. When you have the whole story memorized, what's the point?
The same is true for all those other books. (Other than "Robinson Crusoe", which I read in a class at Calvin because I had to. And I found out that the real book is a lot more dry and boring than the comic book version would lead you to believe.)
I never did finish "The Third Man on the Mountain" story. Well, I will not tell that story now.
And remember the story about my family in China. Well, once all the children got out of the car, we killed the two men. The end.
Part 3 of this journal is all about my family. Kyle and Jessica are adopted from Korea. Kyle has a hole in his mouth, and he can not talk good. Jessica has only one arm and a half of an arm.
The whole family has a pen-pal from Korea. And I also have a penpal of my own.
I have sandy colored hair, and so does Kirstin. Jessica, Kyle and Dad have black hair. Mom has brown hair.
We have a dog. His name is Brandy. He acts like a watch dog. But really he is a Lhasa Apso. His fur is gray. It is my job to give him his food and water. He s a strange dog.
He is a strange Dog. He doesn't like mats or baskets. The only bones that he likes are milk bones doggy treats.
And he sits at the window barking at everybody for most of the day. If someone comes in, and it's someone he knows, he doesn't bark at them.
When he gets outside, he runs away a lot, but he always comes back. When he gets outside, he will chase joggers and bikers. Once he got away one the same day that Grandma Swagman was coming over. Grandma Swagman found him tied up to a lamp post. Some jogger or biker must have tied him up. I remember Kirstin was being a real brat at the time. Well, anyway, some jogger or biker had tied him up. When Grandma Swagman saw him, she untied him. Brandy did not bark because he knows Grandma Swagman.
You know, I never minded Brandy's barking all that much. Maybe because the dog was around before I was, I just grew up with it. Or maybe I was young enough that I could still tune it out. But it used to drive my parents crazy. Although a bit of internet research (W) reveals that the Lhasa Apso was specifically bred to for the purpose of barking at everything in sight.
You know, Brandy being a watch dog makes me remember a joke. Here it is:
Bob: Why is your dog running around like that?
Judy: He's a watch dog. He's winding himself up.
That's all the news about Brandy I know of. You all know about Grandma Swagman. She is the mother of my dad, by the way. But who was the mother of my mom? My other Grandma. Grandma Dik.
You know something about me? I am very good at creative writing. Here is one of my stories. It is called "The 3 Giraffes" by Joel Swagman.
Once upon a time there were three little giraffes.
The first giraffe built a home in a haystack.
The second giraffe built a home in a leaf pile.
The third giraffe built a home in a wood pile.
But little did they know a bunch of pirates were looking for giraffe soup....
My second grade teacher gave me an "O" for outstanding on creative writing. It was the only "O" I recieved on my report card. (Everything else was marked "S" for satisfactory.)
She also gave me a lot of praise for my stories, and even went through the trouble of signing me up for "Young Author's Festival at Calvin" the following year, even though I was no longer in her class.
I had never thought of myself as a writer before, but this put the idea into my mind. And in fact it was a notion that stayed with me for a long time, even when I got into high school and my English teachers there were a lot less enthusiastic about my writing abilities.
As a result of this, I developed the hobby of writing stories (mostly for my own amusement) all through my childhood, high school, and even my time at Calvin . (And although I'm somewhat embarrased to admit it, I still fool around with writing fiction from time to time even today.)
Like most amateur writers, I never worked constantly on anything as a child, but wrote in the usual fits and starts. I spent more time walking around day dreaming and thinking of ideas than I ever got around to writing on paper.
The "Three Giraffe Story" was originally a school assignment. But my teacher praised my story so highly that I became very proud of it. She asked me for permission to photocopy it so she could keep it in her files, and I was unbelievable proud of myself. For reasons I don't really remember, I decided I wanted to rewrite the whole thing down into my journal. I guess I just wanted to keep all my writing in the same place.
By the time I started re-copying my "Giraffe Story", the year was over and I was in 3rd grade. I worked on the table in the basement slowly rewriting everything, still in the phase were writing down anything was a laborious project.
The papers were left on the downstairs table for several nights, and eventually my mom just went through and threw everything out except the journal itself.
I was devestated and in tears. My mom agreed to call up my old second grade teacher, and she still had a copy of my story in her files which she recopied and gave back to me.
A few years ago I posted this story on one of my other blogs, so it seems unnecessary to re-post it here. Just click on the link if you're interested.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Youth Group Bike Trip
(Retrospection)
This isn't a true story. It's a mostly true story. My Freshman year of English at Calvin, we were assigned to write a story about an event in our life which taught us something.
Like my previous high school assignment to write about divine intervention, this was something I had difficulty doing. Unlike TV sitcoms, real life seldom lends itself to nice neat little events with a clear beginning, a clear end, and a lesson learned in the middle. Especially not my sheltered, suburban, uneventful life.
So I fudged it a little bit. (Oh, sure, like you've never done anything like this!). Everything in this story is true, but I messed around with the chronology to make it look like I learned a lesson out of it.
I chose to write about our annual high school youth group bike summer bike trips on which I had 5 years worth of memories to draw on (counting both the summer before Freshman year and the summer after senior year) and re-arrange a few events into a linear story.
Breaking Down While Going Up
I could hear about it before I even saw it. Andrew gave a cry of exclamation as he turned the corner. Justin swore upon seeing it, confident he was out of the hearing of our group leader. Jon, characteristically, saw the sight and then started shouting about it. I don't think I've ever heard Jon say anything in a quiet voice. Cory and I were the last two to turn the corner, and we saw it at the same time. Jon was still shouting about it, as he seldom expressed himself in few words.
The summer before I started high school I was on a week-long youth group bike trip. I had known everyone in my riding group since elementary school, if not before. The adult leader, Mr. Henrion, I could not say the same for. Before the beginning of the week I had never seen him. He was almost fifty, and an avid biker. He could almost keep up with us and was pretty fast for an old man.
We all got off our bikes and guzzled down water, listening to Jon complain, while we waited for Mr. Henrion. Mr. Henrion turned the corner so that he too could see the hill. It was still far off in the distance, but we could see it was enormous. I can still picture it in my mind. It shot up incredibly fast, with snow near the top and clouds obscuring the peak from view. I seem to be the only one in the group that remembers it like this, as the rest of them have many times assured me that the hill wasn't longer than half a mile, and not as steep as I make it out to be. At any rate, it was a big hill, and we could tell right away.
"I'm not riding up that thing," Jon said to Mr. Henrion. "I'm going to walk up it."
"You know Jon," Mr. Henrion responded, "It takes more energy to walk up the hill then it does to ride up it." With that statement all talk of walking up the hill ceased. We got back on our bikes and rode up the hill. We were the fastest riding group on the whole expedition. Being the fastest group in the Church youth group didn't say much, but it did give us a sense of pride and the idea that we could handle things some of the other groups could not. We began the hill with this confidence. Mr. Henrion was given a head start, and the rest of us struggled up behind.
My thoughts drifted back to the previous night, when we had been warned of the coming rain. Knowing that the tents were far from water proof, it became essential to select a spot that was naturally shielded from the rain. While everyone else was helping to prepare dinner, I was given the job of setting up the tent. I thought I had found the perfect spot, a flat area with trees above to give shelter. My comrades were less than pleased, and I did not receive the praise I thought I deserved. As usual, Jon was the most vocal. "You idiot! You put us in a dry river bed! We're going to get soaked!" Unfortunately he proved to be right when the rain came that night, making everyone more than a little annoyed at me.
It had started to rain that night at 8 o'clock and we were all still outside. Andrew was sent to shut all the windows. Throughout the week, I had always insisted that the window beside me be left open, as I tended to be a little claustrophobic. I stuck to this rigidly even when someone wanted to use the tent to change clothes or it got cold outside. Andrew now thought it would now be funny to leave my window open during the rain. Unfortunately the rain did not limit itself to my side of the tent, and through the one open window spread out to the whole of the tent, getting everyone's stuff wet. I thought Andrew should have gotten the blame for this, but they were already mad at me for the tent location, so it was easier for them to blame this on me as well. Needless to say, we didn't have the best sleeping conditions, and I was still not quite forgiven as we began riding up the hill.
I was near the end of the pack as we labored on our way up. I could see Justin ahead of me. Justin had not been having the best of luck this week. His bike, only half a year old, broke down down probably an average of twice a day. It was a great frustration to the rest of us, as we were constantly waiting for his bike to be repaired. It was even more frustrating for Justin. When Cory started a pool on which part of the bike would break next, Justin broke into tears. I was somewhat disturbed by the whole thing, as my four month old bike was not only the exact same year and model, but also bought from the same place. I told Cory I was worried that in 2 months my bike would be just like Justin's. "I wouldn't worry about it," Cory responded. "You don't shift up on hills." He had a good point. Justin did put his bike through a lot of abuse.
Ahead of me, I heard Justin shifting on his bike, and then heard him swear. His chain started clicking as he pulled over to the side of the road. Andrew followed suit. Andrew was one of my best friends, and on this trip he was a useful friend to have. He knew more about bikes than any normal person should. He was always taking his bike apart and putting it back together for no good reason, and his ingenuity never ceased to amaze me. This was the same year he had made an odometer for his bike out of a broken calculator. Earlier in the week I had a flat tire and Andrew barely waited for me to get off my bike before he started changing it, without even asking me if I wanted any help. Never had Andrew turned a blind eye to someone with bike trouble, and so he pulled over to help Justin.
As I continued biking, I marveled at Andrew's sacrifice. I was in my last gear, and still feeling plenty of resistance. To start cold turkey in the middle of this hill would be next to impossible. I thought to myself how glad I was not to be in their position.
Maybe by thinking that I jinxed myself. "Hey Joel, come over a second. I need a hand," Andrew called out. The last thing in the world I wanted to do at that moment. I started to bike by, pretending that I hadn't heard him. Andrew repeated himself, and I knew there was no way to avoid him. I pulled over, helped Justin hold up his bike while Andrew performed all sorts of adjustments with his ever present tool set. When all was repaired, the three of us got ready to tackle the hill again. We couldn't get started, the hill was just too steep. We decided to walk up the rest of the way.
Jon, Cory and Mr. Henrion were well ahead of us, but Jon and Cory actually turned around and rode down to where we were in order to walk the rest of the way with us. We were supposed to be the fastest group, yet we were the only group that walked the hill. We walked it together though, we couldn't have made it up individually. By the time we reached the top, I felt like I had been forgiven for what happened to the tent. I learned a lot about teamwork that day.
And that's the paper I handed in. At one point I considered footnoting this retrospection to spell out exactly what was true, and exactly what was changed around, but I decided against it. No one is going to lose any sleep wondering about it.
The crux of the story hinges around a very simple moment. We were biking up a hill. Someone had trouble with their bike. Andrew stopped to help. I continued biking up. And that's all that happened. (Andrew never called out for my help, nor did he really need it). But it stuck in my mind because I realized that my natural inclination was just to continue on up, and Andrew's natural inclination was to stop and help. This was one of those moments when you realize that at heart your true nature might not be the nice loving wonderful Christian person you think you are.
I didn't really learn a lesson from it per se (or not one I could have made an essay out of anyway), but I thought maybe I could have if I built events around it to give it more emphasis. I had 5 years worth of bike trip memories from which to draw upon, although I intentionally selected some of the more mundane ones. I was worried that if I made it too exciting, the English teacher would suspect some creative licensing was going on.
(Although thinking about it now, I'm not sure she would really even have cared if she knew. And perhaps maybe she even expected it. But I was a nervous Freshman in my first month of college, so I played it safe).
Andrew, Jon, Justin, Cory and Mr. Henrion are all real people, although we were never all in the same riding group at the same time. Justin did have a bike that broke down on him about twice a day on the first bike trip, but I was in another riding group and only heard about his frustrations second hand. (And I did have the exact same bike he did, only two months newer. And although I was worried about it, fortunately mine never developed the problems his did. It served me well for a few more years until it got stolen out of our garage.)
We all discovered very quickly the first year that the donated Church tents we used on these biking trips were far from waterproof, and every year became a struggle against the rain, with at least one sleepless night each year spent shivering in a pool of water. Thus selecting a good spot on rainy nights became increasingly important.
There was on day when I arrived back to camp ahead of my tentmates, and generously erected the whole tent by myself, only to be yelled at because it was in a water drainoff area. It wasn't a big deal though, we just moved the tent. (Although by this time most of the other good spots had been taken).
The window incident is true as well, although that was another year.
There was a huge hill we went up our Freshman year, which always got remembered and exaggerated on all the previous years.
The last part about everyone riding down the hill again so we could walk up together is pure fantasy (and now that I read it again, probably a bit over the top as well). Everything else is at least based on truth.
As a bonus, below are the written comments I got back from the professor.
You have written of your experience with clarity and precision (you must have a good memory). I would only like to see a bit more conclusion. You say you felt like you had been forgiven--what in their treatment of you made you feel that way? And what specifically did you learn about teamwork? Your story only becomes more interesting when you add application.I like hearing the voices of your friends. An introduction should tell us what the paper will be about. You might begin with your ending. That would focus your paper on teamwork.
Link of the Day
Three Were Waterboarded, CIA Chief Confirms
This isn't a true story. It's a mostly true story. My Freshman year of English at Calvin, we were assigned to write a story about an event in our life which taught us something.
Like my previous high school assignment to write about divine intervention, this was something I had difficulty doing. Unlike TV sitcoms, real life seldom lends itself to nice neat little events with a clear beginning, a clear end, and a lesson learned in the middle. Especially not my sheltered, suburban, uneventful life.
So I fudged it a little bit. (Oh, sure, like you've never done anything like this!). Everything in this story is true, but I messed around with the chronology to make it look like I learned a lesson out of it.
I chose to write about our annual high school youth group bike summer bike trips on which I had 5 years worth of memories to draw on (counting both the summer before Freshman year and the summer after senior year) and re-arrange a few events into a linear story.
Breaking Down While Going Up
I could hear about it before I even saw it. Andrew gave a cry of exclamation as he turned the corner. Justin swore upon seeing it, confident he was out of the hearing of our group leader. Jon, characteristically, saw the sight and then started shouting about it. I don't think I've ever heard Jon say anything in a quiet voice. Cory and I were the last two to turn the corner, and we saw it at the same time. Jon was still shouting about it, as he seldom expressed himself in few words.
The summer before I started high school I was on a week-long youth group bike trip. I had known everyone in my riding group since elementary school, if not before. The adult leader, Mr. Henrion, I could not say the same for. Before the beginning of the week I had never seen him. He was almost fifty, and an avid biker. He could almost keep up with us and was pretty fast for an old man.
We all got off our bikes and guzzled down water, listening to Jon complain, while we waited for Mr. Henrion. Mr. Henrion turned the corner so that he too could see the hill. It was still far off in the distance, but we could see it was enormous. I can still picture it in my mind. It shot up incredibly fast, with snow near the top and clouds obscuring the peak from view. I seem to be the only one in the group that remembers it like this, as the rest of them have many times assured me that the hill wasn't longer than half a mile, and not as steep as I make it out to be. At any rate, it was a big hill, and we could tell right away.
"I'm not riding up that thing," Jon said to Mr. Henrion. "I'm going to walk up it."
"You know Jon," Mr. Henrion responded, "It takes more energy to walk up the hill then it does to ride up it." With that statement all talk of walking up the hill ceased. We got back on our bikes and rode up the hill. We were the fastest riding group on the whole expedition. Being the fastest group in the Church youth group didn't say much, but it did give us a sense of pride and the idea that we could handle things some of the other groups could not. We began the hill with this confidence. Mr. Henrion was given a head start, and the rest of us struggled up behind.
My thoughts drifted back to the previous night, when we had been warned of the coming rain. Knowing that the tents were far from water proof, it became essential to select a spot that was naturally shielded from the rain. While everyone else was helping to prepare dinner, I was given the job of setting up the tent. I thought I had found the perfect spot, a flat area with trees above to give shelter. My comrades were less than pleased, and I did not receive the praise I thought I deserved. As usual, Jon was the most vocal. "You idiot! You put us in a dry river bed! We're going to get soaked!" Unfortunately he proved to be right when the rain came that night, making everyone more than a little annoyed at me.
It had started to rain that night at 8 o'clock and we were all still outside. Andrew was sent to shut all the windows. Throughout the week, I had always insisted that the window beside me be left open, as I tended to be a little claustrophobic. I stuck to this rigidly even when someone wanted to use the tent to change clothes or it got cold outside. Andrew now thought it would now be funny to leave my window open during the rain. Unfortunately the rain did not limit itself to my side of the tent, and through the one open window spread out to the whole of the tent, getting everyone's stuff wet. I thought Andrew should have gotten the blame for this, but they were already mad at me for the tent location, so it was easier for them to blame this on me as well. Needless to say, we didn't have the best sleeping conditions, and I was still not quite forgiven as we began riding up the hill.
I was near the end of the pack as we labored on our way up. I could see Justin ahead of me. Justin had not been having the best of luck this week. His bike, only half a year old, broke down down probably an average of twice a day. It was a great frustration to the rest of us, as we were constantly waiting for his bike to be repaired. It was even more frustrating for Justin. When Cory started a pool on which part of the bike would break next, Justin broke into tears. I was somewhat disturbed by the whole thing, as my four month old bike was not only the exact same year and model, but also bought from the same place. I told Cory I was worried that in 2 months my bike would be just like Justin's. "I wouldn't worry about it," Cory responded. "You don't shift up on hills." He had a good point. Justin did put his bike through a lot of abuse.
Ahead of me, I heard Justin shifting on his bike, and then heard him swear. His chain started clicking as he pulled over to the side of the road. Andrew followed suit. Andrew was one of my best friends, and on this trip he was a useful friend to have. He knew more about bikes than any normal person should. He was always taking his bike apart and putting it back together for no good reason, and his ingenuity never ceased to amaze me. This was the same year he had made an odometer for his bike out of a broken calculator. Earlier in the week I had a flat tire and Andrew barely waited for me to get off my bike before he started changing it, without even asking me if I wanted any help. Never had Andrew turned a blind eye to someone with bike trouble, and so he pulled over to help Justin.
As I continued biking, I marveled at Andrew's sacrifice. I was in my last gear, and still feeling plenty of resistance. To start cold turkey in the middle of this hill would be next to impossible. I thought to myself how glad I was not to be in their position.
Maybe by thinking that I jinxed myself. "Hey Joel, come over a second. I need a hand," Andrew called out. The last thing in the world I wanted to do at that moment. I started to bike by, pretending that I hadn't heard him. Andrew repeated himself, and I knew there was no way to avoid him. I pulled over, helped Justin hold up his bike while Andrew performed all sorts of adjustments with his ever present tool set. When all was repaired, the three of us got ready to tackle the hill again. We couldn't get started, the hill was just too steep. We decided to walk up the rest of the way.
Jon, Cory and Mr. Henrion were well ahead of us, but Jon and Cory actually turned around and rode down to where we were in order to walk the rest of the way with us. We were supposed to be the fastest group, yet we were the only group that walked the hill. We walked it together though, we couldn't have made it up individually. By the time we reached the top, I felt like I had been forgiven for what happened to the tent. I learned a lot about teamwork that day.
And that's the paper I handed in. At one point I considered footnoting this retrospection to spell out exactly what was true, and exactly what was changed around, but I decided against it. No one is going to lose any sleep wondering about it.
The crux of the story hinges around a very simple moment. We were biking up a hill. Someone had trouble with their bike. Andrew stopped to help. I continued biking up. And that's all that happened. (Andrew never called out for my help, nor did he really need it). But it stuck in my mind because I realized that my natural inclination was just to continue on up, and Andrew's natural inclination was to stop and help. This was one of those moments when you realize that at heart your true nature might not be the nice loving wonderful Christian person you think you are.
I didn't really learn a lesson from it per se (or not one I could have made an essay out of anyway), but I thought maybe I could have if I built events around it to give it more emphasis. I had 5 years worth of bike trip memories from which to draw upon, although I intentionally selected some of the more mundane ones. I was worried that if I made it too exciting, the English teacher would suspect some creative licensing was going on.
(Although thinking about it now, I'm not sure she would really even have cared if she knew. And perhaps maybe she even expected it. But I was a nervous Freshman in my first month of college, so I played it safe).
Andrew, Jon, Justin, Cory and Mr. Henrion are all real people, although we were never all in the same riding group at the same time. Justin did have a bike that broke down on him about twice a day on the first bike trip, but I was in another riding group and only heard about his frustrations second hand. (And I did have the exact same bike he did, only two months newer. And although I was worried about it, fortunately mine never developed the problems his did. It served me well for a few more years until it got stolen out of our garage.)
We all discovered very quickly the first year that the donated Church tents we used on these biking trips were far from waterproof, and every year became a struggle against the rain, with at least one sleepless night each year spent shivering in a pool of water. Thus selecting a good spot on rainy nights became increasingly important.
There was on day when I arrived back to camp ahead of my tentmates, and generously erected the whole tent by myself, only to be yelled at because it was in a water drainoff area. It wasn't a big deal though, we just moved the tent. (Although by this time most of the other good spots had been taken).
The window incident is true as well, although that was another year.
There was a huge hill we went up our Freshman year, which always got remembered and exaggerated on all the previous years.
The last part about everyone riding down the hill again so we could walk up together is pure fantasy (and now that I read it again, probably a bit over the top as well). Everything else is at least based on truth.
As a bonus, below are the written comments I got back from the professor.
You have written of your experience with clarity and precision (you must have a good memory). I would only like to see a bit more conclusion. You say you felt like you had been forgiven--what in their treatment of you made you feel that way? And what specifically did you learn about teamwork? Your story only becomes more interesting when you add application.I like hearing the voices of your friends. An introduction should tell us what the paper will be about. You might begin with your ending. That would focus your paper on teamwork.
Link of the Day
Three Were Waterboarded, CIA Chief Confirms
Sunday, July 15, 2007
12th Grade Senior Chapel Speech
(Retrospection)
I put off writing this speech as long as I could, and then the weekend before I finally locked myself in my room for a while to stress over it. I had various half starts and crumbled up notes before I had eventually worked myself up into a state where I really couldn't think straight. (I guess in these situations they say best thing to do is to tell yourself to relax and not worry, but I didn't know that at the time).When I eventually wrote the speech below I was so stressed out I felt like I had lost all critical faculty and couldn't tell if my own writing was any good or not.
Getting up to speak that Tuesday was perhaps the most nervous I had ever been in my entire life. My sister (who was in the audience at the time) says my hands were visibly shaking, and I don't doubt it.
Fortunately the audience was very generous. Everyone in first chapel laughed at the jokes. By second second chapel the audience was more awake and warmed up and I was getting really rich long laughter at all the jokes. (For four years I had listened to chapel speakers say things like "Wow, you guys at second chapel are a lot more awake than the first bunch." But it really was true).
Introduction
I've mentioned this once before, but at the end of my Senior year, I was asked by the Chapel committee to be one of the speakers at the end of the year Senior Chapel.
I put off writing this speech as long as I could, and then the weekend before I finally locked myself in my room for a while to stress over it. I had various half starts and crumbled up notes before I had eventually worked myself up into a state where I really couldn't think straight. (I guess in these situations they say best thing to do is to tell yourself to relax and not worry, but I didn't know that at the time).When I eventually wrote the speech below I was so stressed out I felt like I had lost all critical faculty and couldn't tell if my own writing was any good or not.
Getting up to speak that Tuesday was perhaps the most nervous I had ever been in my entire life. My sister (who was in the audience at the time) says my hands were visibly shaking, and I don't doubt it.
Fortunately the audience was very generous. Everyone in first chapel laughed at the jokes. By second second chapel the audience was more awake and warmed up and I was getting really rich long laughter at all the jokes. (For four years I had listened to chapel speakers say things like "Wow, you guys at second chapel are a lot more awake than the first bunch." But it really was true).
I got plenty of compliments on this speech. In fact sometimes even two or three years later I would meet a Christian High alum at Calvin who was a year or two behind me, and the first thing they would say was: "You were the guy who did that chapel speech, right? That was the funniest thing I ever heard." (In fact Bosch, who had been a year behind me at Christian High, said this to me when we met for the first time in the Boer-Bennick Dorms).
Re-reading this speech now though, 10 + years later, is a rather painful experience. The whole thing just makes me want to cringe. Not only the corny jokes, but also the corny sentimentality, and perhaps worst of all the style. (And I used to wonder why I got such bad grades on English papers). Also some of the opinions and content seem incredibly naive to me now.
When I first thought of posting this, I wrote up a huge introduction which was just one long apology for the content of this. But in the end I decided to delete that. Hopefully it goes without saying that this represents me at 18, and if I had to re-write it today it would be completely different. Other than that, I'm just going to let it stand on it's own.
The Speech
When I was asked to speak here today, I had a hard time coming up with something to say. I decided to look in my Freshman yearbook, at what people had wrote in it, to see if I could try to find some inspiration, or some sense of unity for these four years. Well, I couldn't read most of the signatures. I had given all my friends a pencil to sign the yearbook with. So my advice to Freshman is when you get your yearbook this Friday, give your friends a pen to sign it with.
That failing, I thought about other senior chapels I had attended in the past, and what was said there. A popular thing to do was to give advice to the underclassman, so I made a list of all the things I had learned over the four years I've been here, so that underclassman could benefit from my vast wisdom and experience. I put down things like: get involved in a lot of activities, be as nice as you can to everyone, don't wait till the last minute on those English papers because they always take twice as long as you think they will, work hard in whatever you do, follow your interests, think for yourself, and so on.
I looked at the list, and it was all commonsense. It was stuff everybody knew, and when I thought about it, I knew most of these things back in Middle school. Yet I sure didn't do a lot of these things as a Freshman. I guess during my time in high school I didn't learn very many new things, as much as I learned how to apply what I already knew. All those things I knew I was supposed to do, but I didn't do them. Then, as time passed, I began doing them, and practiced on them. Right now I still don't do most of these things all the time, but I'm a lot better than I was.
I remember one of the first times I entered this school. I didn't have any older brothers or sisters, so one of the first times I set foot in the building was to buy my books Freshman year. The whole place seemed unbelievably huge to me. my mom was with me. I was a little embarrassed to be seen with her, but I really didn't have another ride, and I needed someone to pay for the books. After I got my schedule, my mom suggested to me that I find out where all my class rooms were in order to make the first day a little easier. I thought the idea was pointless. Even if I did locate all my classrooms, the building was so big I'd never remember where they were.
The first day of school came, and I was greatly relieved to find out that all the rooms were numbered in order, so I could find everything easily. Gradually, the building didn't seem so large anymore. I remember I was always late to my fifth hour classroom. No matter how fast I went, I just could not get from my fourth hour, to my locker, to fifth hour. Then, about halfway through the semester, I discovered a hallway I didn't even know about. Using it, I was able to cut my trip by a quarter, and was never late since.
The time I've been here has really gone quickly. Looking back, it seems like I've spent a lot of the time confused. I was confused about what was expected of me, I was confused about math assignments, I was confused about what other people thought of me, I was confused about where to go to college, I was confused about school policies. I was confused about a lot of things, and about a lot of things I still am, but as I moved through the years, it seemed like a lot of things got clearer.
This year, I've heard a lot of things said about Christian High students from fellow students. I've heard that most people at Christian High only want to be your friend if there is something they can gain from it. If they aren't your friend, they don't really care about you, and wouldn't help you out unless there was something in it for them. I've heard that most of them don't really care about what's right or wrong, but only care about themselves. I don't know everything these people have been through, but it certainly hasn't been my experience.
There are a lot of things I'm thankful for here. I'm thankful for people who gave me rides in their cars when I needed one. I'm thankful for people who shared their lunch with me when I forgot mine. I'm thankful for people who took time to explain my homework to me when I didn't get it. I'm thankful for people who loaned me money when I needed it. I'm thankful for people who took the time to talk to me when I was feeling down. I'm thankful for people who gave me advice when I needed it, and I'm thankful for people who were just good friends. I'm going to miss a lot of you next year.
Link of the Day
This Modern World has a blog posting on the Michael Moore/ CNN debates. I don't like to spend a lot of time on these pundit debates because I believe they're the equivalent of counter productive energy for politicos, but I thought this made a good point
This other bit from Gupta, attempting to trash France’s heathcare system, is laughably bad :
GUPTA: I also think the whole idea, Michael, of just calling it a free system I think is a little bit nebulous to people who don’t fully understand what you mean by that. Yes, you’ve got to raise taxes significantly. I mean France is drowning in taxes. They’re running a $15.6 billion debt.
$15.6 billion! That would be scary if we weren’t spending that much money every month in Iraq. In France, they’re willing to go into debt to keep their citizens from dying of preventable diseases and injuries. Here in America, we save our debt for wars and tax cuts.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Childhood
Childhood
Fabulae Story: I worked on this story, somewhat on and off, from 9th grade all the way through 12th grade
Literary Endeavors: All my other Stories from childhood
Youth Group Bike Trip (composite of 5 years of High school)
12th Grade Senior Chapel Speech,
Year Book Pictures ,
High School Forensics Team Reflections ,
Etruscan War: 12th Grade Forensics Speech 1996
A Tale of Two Cities 1996
The Black Panthers 1996
High School Play: West Side Story ,
The Real Catiline 1995
Mutiny in Pannonia: 11th Grade Forensics Speech 1995
Japanese Exchange Student 11th Grade ,
Foundation by Isaac Asimov Book Report 1994
Eagle Eye Articles: Language Department Not Diverse Enough December 1994
Caligula March 25, 1994
Robert E. Lee: Anything but the South's Savior: Unfinished November 1993
Free Writing 10/26/93 ,
Letter to the School Board: 10th Grade English October 8, 1993
10th Grade High School English Assignment: Letter to a Friend ,
10th Grade Essay: Divine Intervention ,
Star Trek Comic Books ,
Trojan War (9th Grade Essay)
Confimation Sunday: Spring 1992 ,
What Do We Believe About the Bible? 1992
Science Olympiad Photos: 8th Grade ,
8th Grade Essay: Trip to the Beach ,
7th Grade: What I did this weekend,
7th Grade Free Writing: Family stories ,
Sept. 5, 1990 "What I did this summer"
5th Grade Essay: Middle School
Star Trek 4th Grade Report ,
Fabulae Story: I worked on this story, somewhat on and off, from 9th grade all the way through 12th grade
Literary Endeavors: All my other Stories from childhood
Youth Group Bike Trip (composite of 5 years of High school)
12th Grade Senior Chapel Speech,
Year Book Pictures ,
High School Forensics Team Reflections ,
Etruscan War: 12th Grade Forensics Speech 1996
A Tale of Two Cities 1996
The Black Panthers 1996
High School Play: West Side Story ,
The Real Catiline 1995
Mutiny in Pannonia: 11th Grade Forensics Speech 1995
Japanese Exchange Student 11th Grade ,
Foundation by Isaac Asimov Book Report 1994
Eagle Eye Articles: Language Department Not Diverse Enough December 1994
Caligula March 25, 1994
Robert E. Lee: Anything but the South's Savior: Unfinished November 1993
Free Writing 10/26/93 ,
Letter to the School Board: 10th Grade English October 8, 1993
10th Grade High School English Assignment: Letter to a Friend ,
10th Grade Essay: Divine Intervention ,
Star Trek Comic Books ,
Trojan War (9th Grade Essay)
Confimation Sunday: Spring 1992 ,
What Do We Believe About the Bible? 1992
Science Olympiad Photos: 8th Grade ,
8th Grade Essay: Trip to the Beach ,
7th Grade: What I did this weekend,
7th Grade Free Writing: Family stories ,
Sept. 5, 1990 "What I did this summer"
5th Grade Essay: Middle School
Star Trek 4th Grade Report ,
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