Mother Nature's Son

My literature class at Rock Valley hit me over the head like a ton of bricks, without warning. Most people at school, in the Academy, look down on Rock Valley, and it's kind of sad, because in my experience the professors are great. Of course I can't compare them at all to more prestigious schools, never having been anywhere else, but I've heard that Rock Valley is a king among community colleges. Maybe it's the students people look down on, assuming that they're not good enough for the schools that these people, the creme de la Academy, will be attending. I have bought into this conception, too, though; I assumed that a summer class at Rock Valley would be easy to pass, and that for me, a lit class would be especially easy. English is my thing, right?

I still think English is my thing; I aced the first writing assignment, which was gratifying. I just wasn't expecting this much work. This semester is three weeks long; classes meet for four hours a day, four days a week. We had two books to read, and the professor is cramming the first one into this first week, which has meant over a hundred pages of reading and note-taking a night. I haven't done anything else; tonight I'm taking a bit of a break, because the notes haven't been important to the class so far, and I need a rest.

I do like the book, The God of Small Things. It's extremely dense and ornate and full of description, and jumps around in time so that it can be pretty confusing, but it's interesting, and I love the writing style. I also really like my professor, Molly (as I think of her; she's pretty young, and just doesn't seem like a "Mrs." or "Professor Sides"). She reminds me immensely of Ms. Floming. Both are into creative writing as well as literature; both are young and kind of silly sometimes; both recently got married. Molly goes off on tangents sometimes; she was talking about inbreeding, because the family in the book is very wealthy and proud and there's some inbreeding going on (which has led to instances of madness...just like royal families in Europe), and she was like, "Yeah, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin. Winona Ryder played her in the made-for-TV movie. Great Balls of Fire."

There's something about myself that I hate, and I still keep doing it, and it's this: whenever I'm in a new situation, in a class or at a camp or something, I always pick out some guy to build up in my mind and to ogle at random times. Even if he's not that great, I make him seem like it in my mind, maybe out of boredom. There's this kid in my lit class that I've kind of noticed. He's pretty hedonistic but also intellectual-seeming; he's obviously read a lot and has interesting things to say during class discussions. But I know he's just completely wrong. Today at the break, I was standing outside and kind of accidentally fell into this little group of students that were using the ten minutes of free time to have a cigarette (two of the girls had been in my small group for an activity we'd done). The fact that he was smoking was bad enough; I hate when people smoke and all their clothes and everything smells bad, and their teeth and fingernails get all yellow, and it's just disgusting. But he also was talking about rolling joints, and how he went out and got drunk, and stuff like that. I'm probably way too prim and proper; I know guys my age, particularly the class of '05, go out and get drunk and smoke and stuff all the time; I know it goes on. It's probably really normal and common in college. I just can't stand that. Like, it's okay to have fun sometimes, but isn't it better to just hang out with friends than to have to manufacture artificial joy with drugs?

I really want someone to have a party, so I can see everyone from school. I can feel myself looking forward to August, mainly just so I can hang out with these people I haven't seen since the beginning of June. If I see them somewhere else, though, maybe that will satisfy me enough that I won't yearn too much for Auburn.

Drive My Car

Well, I finally got my license. This time, when I pulled into a parking space after my test, the examiner said, "Okay, you can go in and get your license," instead of, "You'll have to come back and retake the test." My picture looks okay, considering that everyone always says how bad driver's license photos turn out, but the signature is bad; you have to sign your name on a little screen with a kind of stylus, and so "Colleen" goes all over the place, with "Powers" squeezed in at the end.

I've kind of been thinking a lot lately about maturity and rites of passage, stuff like that. The other day when driving by myself to Chipotle to meet some friends, I thought, "This is what it means to grow up." Okay, so maybe that's a bit melodramatic, but getting my license is the first step in a succession of these events: being a senior in high school, applying to and then enrolling in college, going to prom, graduating, leaving home. I'm excited about college, but being a teenager is pretty easy, at least in my family. No taxes or anything to worry about, no kids to look after, everything handled for you by your parents. Having a car is the first step away from that; it means paying for gas and making sure everything's in working order and having insurance. On top of the license, I also am starting to babysit the neighbor's kids, a three-year-old boy and a girl who's less than a year old. It's a lot of responsibility all at once.

I'm starting a class at Rock Valley College this week: Introduction to Fiction. We're reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The God of Small Things. I haven't read either, although I have looked at the first one in the bookstore; it's about an autistic kid trying to solve a mystery, apparently. The other one is set in India; that's all I remember from reading the jacket. The class is three weeks long, four days a week, four hours a day, so it's pretty intensive. I did government like that last year and it was okay; I liked my professor. This one's just for fun (no dual credit, since I'm already taking a literature-type class at Auburn), but I still want to do well.

The class comes at a welcome time; with my mom at work, my sister and I have been doing a lot of lying around, reading, and watching movies. (I saw Annie Hall the other day, my first introduction to Woody Allen, and I foresee a new temporary obsession.) I'm just about getting to the point where I'm ready to go back to school, even though I keep telling myself that it's quickly going to become monotonous and dreary. The other part of me hopes this year will be different, though; I only have one class that will almost definitely be hard and boring (physics). I think this RVC class will stave off my longings for school a while longer, though, and make me really enjoy the last few weeks of August.

Cry Baby Cry

All right, so we all know that it has been far too long since I last posted. In accordance with summer, I'm just too lazy, I guess.

The last interesting thing that has happened to me has been my week at ACE quiz bowl camp, my third and last year there. As usual, I had a wonderful time. It's very refreshing to be able to hang out with people who not only love quiz bowl enough to sacrifice a week of their summers for it, but aren't afraid to admit it. Most of the guys on the Auburn team cherish their macho personas too much to admit to liking quiz bowl, though it's pretty obvious at tournaments sometimes. The way ACE camp works is that each person chooses one major (from literature, social studies, science, and math) and two minors (from art, music, Shakespeare, ancient history, and physics) to focus on. In addition to those classes, there are daily afternoon practice sessions and nightly tournaments; your performance each day determines what team you're on, what practice room you're in, and so on. When you're not at one of those activities (or eating or sleeping), you're supposed to be studying for the daily quizzes in the majors. It sounds like a lot of work, and it can be, but you quickly get to know a lot of people that you can hang out with, so it's not dull at all. Since this was my third year, I knew a lot of people from previous years, and I also had a lot of friends from a quiz bowl forum I've been frequenting. As always, I was somewhat depressed to leave camp, especially since, being a senior, I won't be returning. The nice thing about this year, though, was that most of my friends happened to be from Illinois, so I'll see them all again once the season starts in November.

Since getting home, I've mainly been moping around, watching movies, cleaning the house (my mom is still on a cleaning kick, although she's working again as of yesterday, so that should be lessening), and so on. I also attempted to get my driver's license the other day. It's kind of a sore subject, since most of my classmates have had their licenses for over a year; those with early birthdays are going on two years of driving. I've had my permit for over a year, but I've been slow to get my license, a combination of caution and laziness on my parents' part and mine. On Tuesday, my mom mandated that I had to get my license; with her working now, I need to be able to drive to take the class I'm signed up for starting next week.

The DMV is surrounded by rueful legends, and all of them are true. A small, grubby building dominated by the colors gray and beige, it's full of disgruntled people (customers and employees alike) who would rather be anywhere else. Upon entering, I took a number and my mom and I sat down in uncomfortable folding chairs. I frantically flipped through my Rules of the Road book as a last-minute measure while we waited for my number to be called. When it was, we approached the counter; I signed on several dotted lines and then was told to resume my seat to wait for my driving test. Now more calm, I occupied myself by watching the flickering television in the corner, which displayed a looping PowerPoint presentation about a certain "Toby the Tire," a program "designed to teach children bus safety utilizing animation, robotics, and coloring books." Finally, my name was called; however, upon leading the rather grumpy woman to our van and getting in, I was informed that my brake light was out, rendering the vehicle ineligible for use on a driving test.

My mom, not to be discouraged by this temporary setback, drove to the dealership where we had purchased the van not two months before. In a matter of minutes, the light was replaced, and we drove back to Belvidere to try again. Now, later in the day, the DMV was more crowded, and, having become bored with Toby the Tire, my mom and I watched the other people. We saw a teenaged girl scream curses at her mother, listened to one especially loud and nasal-voiced employee ask customers questions ("Has a doctor determined you to have a condition that causes you to lose consciousness? Has a court determined you to be mentally unstable?"), and agreed that the whole affair felt like being trapped in some alternate reality, like a TV sitcom. Finally, my name was again called, and I went out to take my driving test. I thought I was doing okay until she directed me to park downhill. I hadn't practiced this with my parents; it hadn't come up when I had driven before. I knew which way to turn my wheels; I thought that would be enough. Unfortunately, one of my wheels went over the curb as I parked. Panic-stricken, I righted myself, and we finished the drive. The examiner turned to me and told me that I would have to retake the test; the curb incident was a problem too great to be overlooked. I was, and am, pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. Even this kid who went before me, who could have been Joe Szeluga's twin (messy hair, vacant eyes, baggy clothes), passed his test.

My mom has a day off from work tomorrow, so we plan to return to the DMV for a second attempt (or third, if you count the whole brake light thing). I'm pretty worried now; I've practiced parking since the first try and have done okay, but it all comes down to that one time; what if I screw it up? Failing once is bad enough; failing twice would be unimaginable. I am going to practice some more tonight; hopefully I'll get the whole parking thing down. Maybe by the next time I post, I will have my driver's license. I can dream, right?

Let it Be

I wonder how fireworks became the tradition for the Fourth of July, Independence Day. They're used on some other holidays--New Year's, for one, and some places have fireworks on other national holidays, like Labor Day--but it's the thing to do on the Fourth. I guess they just needed something special to do on that day, besides parades and cooking out, and fireworks got to be it.

I've never been to see the fireworks in downtown Rockford; we've always been able to see the ones in Cherry Valley from the driveway. It's very nice that way: no crowds, no parking issues, an easy trip inside the house for bug spray or a glass of lemonade. In the past, we've had friends of my parents over; they have a son, Shawn, who is in my sister's grade at Auburn (and was at King and West as well). They usually bring good Swedish cookies and ice cream and sparklers, and we have our own little party. My sister and I were laughing this year, remembering how at just about everything shot off, Shawn would ask excitedly, "Grand finale?"

This year, though, my parents decided that for once we would actually go into Cherry Valley to see the fireworks. Driving wouldn't be worth it, they reasoned, so we walked the few miles from my house. That part wasn't bad, as it was still light out and we were all in pretty good moods. We reached the park and wandered around for a while, watching people and looking for a good place to sit. Cherry Valley's probably more toned down than Rockford, but we saw people making out on the grass, annoying middle-schoolers sauntering around, amateurs setting off their own pre-show fireworks, and so on.

We happened to meet up with a group from our church, mostly kids from the youth group, and shared their blankets. Four or five of the kids were chased off the hill (a huge one in the middle of the park that a lot of people use for sledding and snowboarding) by an angry old police officer. At first I thought he was joking, but he just went off on them, threatening to arrest them. We decided later that, with the growing darkness and the undoubtedly increased stress of the night, he had just used them as scapegoats for all the crazy people running around. Eventually he stormed off, and after a few moments of shocked silence, everyone shrugged the incident off and settled down to wait for the fireworks.

I hadn't really understood why it was so important for us to walk into town when we could see the display perfectly well from our driveway, but I never knew what I was missing. The fireworks seemed much bigger and louder, and some looked like they would fall right on top of us. It's also mildly fun to have the whole crowd around you going, "Ooh" and "Aahh" and clapping. Once the whole deal's over, though, the fun ends: everyone jumps up and immediately starts high-tailing it out of there. People were trying to get out of the parking lot, but it was a lost cause, as the road was mobbed with people walking. We made it out of the park and started towards home. Someone suggested that we walk along the railroad tracks as a shortcut; in the dark, with a shaky-feeling bridge and strange people all around, it was fairly scary. When the bridge ended, I stepped across to the actual tracks to walk the rest of the way to the street. Somehow, my foot slipped through the gap between the bridge and the ground, and my leg went through. My mom quickly pulled me out, no worse for the wear aside from a slightly scraped knee, and we walked hurriedly on. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to think about it, but my mom kept saying how scared she was.

The walk along the road in the dark, swatting at mosquitoes and squinting into the headlights of approaching cars, seemed to take forever. I told my parents that the fireworks were not worth it, although they both claimed they'd do it again next year. I guess we'll have to wait and see. It might be better if we could be sure of meeting friends, or maybe next year I can get some people from school to come along.

Today we're "back to the ol' routine," as my dad always says after a holiday during the school year. There's not really much of a routine in summer, but the days have started to become all the same. This might sound mean, but I'll be glad when my mom goes back to work in a couple of weeks. She's been on a cleaning frenzy, going through boxes of old school papers and saved newspaper clippings, demanding that my sister and I clean up our rooms. I guess it all has to be done sometime, but I'm hopelessly lazy. She also wants us to go for a long walk every day--she's always been adamant about daily exercise--and she keeps claiming that I purposely try to avoid taking walks, when all I'm doing is finding my glasses and putting my hair up before going outside. Yesterday I got out of the house to see Bewitched with my dad, which I did enjoy. (One of my favorite parts: "They called me a tool?" "Yeah..but you're a cool tool...like...a jacksaw!") It's just been too much time cooped up inside with my mom and sister.

As part of this new cleaning thing, I was going through my desk today, looking for old notebooks to put away in storage bins for the time being. I rediscovered my English and Language Arts notebooks from eighth grade. I was really angry then, partly because I hated Language Arts (which was really remedial English; we read horrible plays and learned about similes and metaphors) and also because some of the people I'd considered my friends, like Gloria, were always teasing me and taking my books, all in fun, but it really got annoying after a while.

Here's one of my favorite entries:
"We have to watch a stupid, stupid, stupid movie in Language Arts. I've seen it before. It's the dumbest movie ever and I despise it and I'm going to die.
"The movie is Cry in the Wild. It's based on the book Hatchet. I hated the book. I hate the author Gary Paulsen. All of his books have the same basic plot: Some stupid boy comes to terms with his parents' divorce or some such thing by going out in the wilderness, eating a few leaves and berries, killing a raccoon or two, and then going home and transforming into a wonderfully behaved person who loves everyone...
"Hey, I just realized something. I get to miss the stupid movie because we'll be watching it on Wednesday and I'll be gone on the science trip. Ha ha ha!"

I don't think I'm that angry anymore; I've mellowed a lot since coming to high school, and I'm glad. I still hate Gary Paulsen, though.

Sun King

Summer has officially begun: I have three mosquito bites on my face. I hadn't noticed any bugs except for the odd ant or box elder (there didn't seem to be any in Italy) until Friday night at Gloria's birthday party; usually I get attacked at Midway Village, but I've managed to stay far away from that place this year. But they seem to be out in full force now.

Gloria's annual party is kind of a mark of summer, too, come to think of it. I enjoyed seeing a lot of people that I hadn't really talked to since school let out, like Ellen and Sonya and Stephanie and Patrick and James Stout (this kid from my bio class), as well as all of Gloria's friends from Guilford that I've gotten to know, like Candace and Sarah and Kelsey. Gloria has a pool, but it was pretty cold that night, so most people didn't go swimming. I was glad for the excuse; I've never really liked "swimming" (or, more accurately, hanging out in the pool while people bash each other over the heads with foam noodles). A big group of kids, mostly from Auburn, played Ultimate Frisbee; I wandered aimlessly up and down the field, mainly trying to figure out who was on my team. My morale wasn't helped by Andrew Pipathsouk saying to Joe as we prepared to play after picking teams, "Looks like it's just you and me," or something to that effect. Thanks a lot (even if it's true)! Anyway, after that game broke up, I mainly wandered around talking to various groups of people, mostly Ellen and Sonya.

On Saturday we went over to my grandma's house for a pre-Fourth of July-slash-birthday party (my dad, cousin, and grandma all have birthdays in the same week or so). My dad had made a little slide show with our vacation pictures, so we had to look at that. I could tell most of my relatives were pretty bored. "Looking at slides" is kind of a family joke; apparently my grandparents have hundreds of slides from their various vacations through the years. My cousins, who are in their mid-twenties, were playing "Magic," that card game that all boys somehow seem to be familiar with and fond of. (Well, maybe not all boys, but all the ones I know, the same ones who foam at the mouth when they talk about Halo 2.) Another family tradition is this special birthday cake, German chocolate pound cake. I don't think anyone in my family really likes it; it's just what we have for every birthday, and everyone eats it dutifully, probably to make my grandma happy.

Yesterday after church I watched Little Women, the movie with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon. I used to love that movie when I was younger, and I still like it a lot, although it seems more contrived now, the dialogue stiff. There's also a fair number of references that I never understood before, like the fact that the March family lives in Concord; the girls go skating on Walden Pond (as in Thoreau's famous work), and Jo mentions that her parents are part of the Transcendentalist movement. It's kind of like the other day when I was looking through an old book of Far Side cartoons. There are so many things that I never understood before, pop culture, biology, and history references that before I either didn't even catch or kind of skimmed over, not really caring. Now that I do understand them, the cartoons are so much funnier and more interesting. I guess that's a good thing, although I kind of feel like I've lost my innocence, as with the time when I discovered that a favorite old Peter, Paul, and Mary song was about a gay couple dying from AIDS.

I hesitate to make any comments about the whole Tom Cruise thing, since I'm sure anyone reading this is already sick of hearing about the guy (the worst for me was when our paper had a little article entitled "Cruise-Holmes Update," like it's a daily thing now). The only thing I have to say is this: how could any supposedly reasonable, at least moderately educated person subscribe to Scientology? I have a measure of respect for Kabbalah (another big trend for celebrities), which at least as its roots in ancient Jewish mysticism, but Scientology was invented by a science fiction writer from the Fifties. Here's what they believe, as near as I can figure: people have alien past lives because of "Xenu, the galactic tyrant," and now must cleanse themselves. Examples of these past lives listed on Wikipedia include "being run over by a Martian bishop driving a steamroller" and "being transformed into an intergalactic walrus which perished after falling out of a flying saucer." And people like Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Kirstie Alley are running around solemnly professing their faith in this thing. I think that L. Ron Hubbard just made it up so he could get all these people to follow him blindly and then sit back and laugh at them.

I have a confession to make: I really want the new Backstreet Boys CD, Never Gone. All right, so no one over the age of eleven admits to actually liking the Backstreet Boys, or else they embarrassedly mention that they used to when they were young and didn't know any better; the boy bands were very "lite pop," but when I hear an old Backstreet Boys or N*Sync song, I realize that they are quite catchy. That's not a measure of fine music, but I'm still really interested to hear what this new CD sounds like. Who knows? Maybe it could become cool now to like the Backstreet Boys, in a kind of nostalgic, anti-poseur-ish way.