Slice of Life #12

 "You know, it's funny what a young man recollects," Forrest Gump said that and it's undeniably true. Like Forrest, I don't remember being born, or recall what I got for my first Christmas nor do I remember when I went on my first outdoor picnic. I do remember the little things, like when my uncle Shawn pushed me face first into cow manure and I had to sit in the cows' drinking trough. I also remember these little Hello Panda cookies I would eat when I lived in Japan. It's the small things that don't really place a dramatic impact on your life that you can remember, like having a pretend cooking show with your best friend or trying to get the attention of the boys who lived across the street from her by singing and dancing obnoxiously outside. I wonder, thirty years from now, what I'll be remembering from my days as a high school student, or if I'll remember any of it at all.

Slice of Life #11

Amanda Todd = The New Kony 2012?

  
   Although this is out of date now, over break I decided that as soon as we got back to school this was going to be my first slice topic. Only 7 months ago, the invisiblechildreninc came out with a video encouraging people to stand up for the children in Africa being taken into an army led by Joseph Kony and forced to murder their parents. This video told the world that it was their job to get involved and make a difference, however, when the date came when everyone was expected to cover their town in flyers announcing that Mr. Kony would soon be found and put to an end, everyone had already forgotten about it. That was the first thing I thought of when I logged onto Facebook to see a picture of a 15 year old, Amanda Todd.
   I would like to state that, while yes it's a sad story, I don't pity her. Amanda was a girl with very low self esteem. She was willing to show a multitude of men on the Internet herself nude. She was bullied because she had no respect for herself whatsoever and then she was only beaten up because of her promiscuous behavior with another girl's boyfriend. She later went on to drink bleach and claim she was subjected to cyberbullying when other children on Facebook would tag her in pictures of bleach. I would love to know why she simply didn't delete her account if it was getting to be that bad. And where were her parents? Don't you think you'd be watching her like a hawk if she was your daughter and attempted suicide and was being bullied at school? Her parents did nothing but feed the problem by moving her to a new school rather than addressing the the situation and seeking out the authorities.
   Everyone is saying how anyone who was thinking with their brain rather than their heart is nothing more than a bully and I have seen multiple instances where people standing up for Amanda were in fact bullying those who simply stated that if she would've had a little more respect for herself and not have shown multiple men her body then none of this would have ever happened. I was one of those instances. But now, only one week later, you rarely see anything showing up on social networking sites about the young Canadian girl. She faded away, just like Kony 2012.

Slice of Life #10

 I've never been one to cry because of a movie but there are just some that have the ability to make me burst into tears with little effort. For example, the movie Harold and Maude. It was a movie made in 1971 about a young man named Harold who has this obsession with death and always put himself in these fake suicide setups. Then one day he goes to a funeral of a man he doesn't know and ends up meeting a 79 year old woman by the name of Maude who's high on life. At first, Harold doesn't know what to think of the strange woman but begins seeing her on a regular basis after that day. Harold's mother knows that he's "special" and starts setting him up with various women on a dating base. After she sees that he shows no interest in any of them she begins to give up and ship him out with his uncle in the military. Neither Harold nor Maude want to see him go, so they work up a plan to keep him from being able to join. The movie follows them as they go through many adventures and find true love and how it knows no boundaries. Also, this movie showed me the amazing music artist Cat Stevens. The soundtrack actually is only made up of his songs which may seem strange, but I truly believe that only an artist such as he would've been able to pull off such a thing considering all the diverse stylings he does. And even though this is a movie talk and not a book talk, I would still give it a 10/10 on my scale.

                                                                      
                                                            Trouble by Cat Stevens

Slice of Life #9

  So my birthday was yesterday and for the most part it wasn't too shabby! My friend Danielle from Illinois was even sweet enough to send me balloons and a card saying, "I flooping love you. You've been my best friend forever and I'm so glad that you were born on this day 16 years ago. Gawsh I miss you. Love Smashhedo." I actually teared up when I read that! I am so excited that I get to go paint balling with her and some other friends this weekend! This will be my first BIG birthday party, I've only had one "party" before and that was last year with my friend Heather and we had a conjoined party because our birthdays are only a week apart and it was only us and her cousin and his friend and we went laser tagging. Anyhow, overall I'd have to say that this was a very pleasant 16th birthday!

Slice of Life #8

 This week is going to be amazing. First, The Perks of Being a Wallflower comes out in theaters this weekend and I can hardly contain myself! I've been waiting for the movie to come out for TWO years!! Then, next Tuesday is my 16th birthday, and while I'm not quite getting a car I will be applying to just about everywhere. And for my "party", I'm going back to Illinois for the weekend and paintballing with my friends which I'm also super syked for considering I've never gone.  Ugh, I'm just so excited for the next couple of weeks! Then homecoming obviously. This Friday will be a super hectic one for many people I think but it'll still hopefully be a blast!

Slice of Life #7

I love music more than most things in the world. It makes me so extremely happy to know that I've been able to show people new bands. This feeling has been brought on by my recent activity on Yahoo Answers. This one girl was looking for new music to play at the graduation party she was already planning. She also added some bands that she was a fan of (Phoenix, MGMT, Sublime, and Of Monsters and Men), I love these bands too so I thought it'd be fun to help her out and share my knowlege with her. I showed her a ton of new music and she LOVED them! It was a feeling of satisfation that I haven't had in quite a while. When she thanked me, she didn't say what she liked best other than," I am officially in love with Passion Pit now." Here's a few of the songs I showed her so you can get a feel for what I assume will be at her party!

Changes

 I hate knowing that people are always changing. Yes, I understand that sometimes they do change for the better which is great, however that's not always the case and they turn into monsters on a path to self-destruction. There's one girl I've known for over 5 years now and She'll remain anonymous. When we first met in the fifth grade, She was the chunky girl with no friends. She suffered severely from Rosacea, had a blackhead mustache and the frizziest hair I'd ever seen. Maybe Her appearance is what made it so that many people didn't want to befriend Her but I can't say for sure because I don't know. What I do know though is that from the moment we started talking we became best friends. We loved all the same movies and music and thought all the same boys in our class were cute. She was my first friend there because I had just moved from Wichita Falls, Texas to Denton, Texas. The best part of Her being my best friend was that we only lived two streets away from eachother. We spent the next year hanging out constantly until I moved half an hour away to Justin. Even though we didn't go to the same school anymore, we still spent every single weekend together. I began noticing Her changing but never thought much of it because it was so subtle, first She began straightening her hair and putting on makeup every now and again. Then Her wardrobe changed, She had gone from the bright yellow shirt with a green butterfly and loose fitting jeans to Underoath and Alesana shirts and multicolored skinny jeans. Once again, I never thought anything of it...until my only friends in my neighborhood (all of which were boys) began wanting Her to come to my house more and more often and they would tell me how gorgeous they thought She was. She would come over and spend time with me and my other friends and flirt constantly. I always felt uncomfortable and as though I was a third wheel. Later on, my feelings were only crushed a little more when I recieved the news that I would be moving once again, back to Illinois. When I told Her, She was upset of course, but Her friend, Shaylie, couldn't have been happier. Shaylie would post all over Her Myspace and Facebook things like, "Shaylie replaces Caily," and other stupid comments about how I would "Steal Her from Shaylie,". It was all ignorant so I ignored it even though secretly it killed me inside knowing that I would soon be replaced. After I moved once more, we began talking less and less, only speaking when we knew we were going to see each other again soon. This went on until two summers ago when I was staying with my mom for a month and she agreed to let Her stay with us for a few weeks. In the car ride back from picking Her up, She told me about all the guys She'd been with. It was so bizarre to me to hear this come out of Her considering not only the fact that She was only 13 years old at the time and how She'd meet them one day and three days later She'd already slept with them but how much She had truly changed since the moment I had met Her. The two weeks She spent with me that summer were great and saying Goodbye was hard for both of us. Since then we still don't speak much but we follow each other on Tumblr and whatnot and I still continue to see changes in Her like the promiscuous things She posts and drug related things on Her page. I don't know, I guess I should've seen all of this coming, but I just couldn't see Her, the one person that has literally/physically been there with me through every up and down in my life, to be the one that had to go and change.... Now I sit here on my couch listening to The Shins, sipping coffee and reminiscing on the memories we've shared and wishing nothing more than to be able to go back and try everything in my power to keep Her from becoming what She is today.