The Fool on the Hill

This afternoon I went to LIFE Teen, the youth group at my church, which has a special Mass with a meeting afterwards. During the summer, the "meetings" are usually games like volleyball, softball, or mini-golf, which is great for some people, but not me (as I like to say, I don't have an athletic bone in my body). This week, aptly titled "Back to School," was the year's first more serious session; usually we play an icebreaker game, have a speaker, discuss the issue (like "trust" or "social justice" or something), and then close with a quiet prayer time. This is the third "Back to School" I've been to, and they're always pretty much the same. They always end with a time to write down our goals and plans for the school year, and it gives me a chance to think.

My goals are usually the same: don't slack off, try my hardest to get good grades, work to be friendly with people and try to reach out to people at school. This year there's more urgency to it, though, as it's my last chance, not counting college, which is a different experience entirely. My good intentions to be organized, focused, and positive always fall by the wayside, particularly in the third-quarter slump, when unpleasant weather, boredom with all my usual activities, and the returning to the dreary routine after the break and finals conspire to make me sick of school. This year it will even worse, as third quarter will bring the end to college applications and the beginning of acceptance and rejection letters; sometime during that quarter, I should know or have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be doing fall 2006. In other words, senioritis is sure to set in. I have to try to stay focused, even though the temptation to slack off will be great.

I'm also desperate to preserve friendships this year, the ones I've had forever and the ones that are just forming. With all the parties I've been going to this summer, I've started to become better friends with certain people, and this year is my last chance to enjoy those friendships. And then there are all the people that I'm peripherally friendly with, some of whom I've known for years but have never become close enough to for anything besides a few words if we're in class together. Michelle Power, for example: I've never had a class with her, and the only link we have is the similarity of our last names, which always serves as a conversation-starter whenever we meet, usually during standardized testing at school, when we're invariably seated next to each other. The other day at school, she was in front of me in the line to see the counselor, and we chatted. I don't know Michelle well enough to even exchange e-mails with her, but does that mean I'm just supposed to forget about her come graduation? How about Anne Spoden or Chris Vanmanivong? I've known them since first grade; I still remember Chris helping me up from the ground when I slipped and knocked out a tooth on the ice in elementary school, and Anne attending my seventh birthday party and spending the night. Sometimes we chat, and we'll greet each other if we see each other outside of school. But I don't really know either all that well. Still, they're a part of my life, one I don't want to lose after high school. In short, my life is full of and defined by this close-knit group, the Academy (plus a few people outside it), and even though I don't know everyone very well, I can't imagine not seeing them every day.

And even as I make these goals and plans, part of me knows that they, like all the others, will probably be forgotten by mid-September. Maybe that's just the way it goes; maybe my Apollonian rules won't fit over the Dionysian reality of Auburn (oh yeah, applying English to the real world...). Ultimately, I just want to have a great year, and not lose myself in grades and test scores and class rank and colleges.

At Jenny's on Friday night, we watched a movie called Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, which makes fun of old martial arts movies. It uses actual scenes from an old movie, dubbing in lines and inserting the main character, played by a modern actor, in place of different original chracters. It's extremely stupid, utilizing a lot of what I like to call bathroom humor (perfect for guys, like Joe and Adam), but there are a lot of hilarious little parts. A lot of times, when someone's just walking or something, they'll have the person singing to himself or something. One of my favorite parts, which has been running through my head all day, is when this old guy is walking along, singing, "Bah-na-na-na-na-na! Neo! Bah-na-na-na-na-na-na-na! Sporin!"