Last Saturday I went for my daily bike ride. Every day I ride a half a mile on my bicycle. Normally it doesn’t tire me too much, but on Saturday I started later than usual, so I was thrown off. Quite literally thrown off.

I had pulled over onto some gravel to let a car pass by, and when I tried to shift gears, the wheels got stuck in the gravel. I was thrown off my bike, and the bike fell over onto my legs. I sat there on the gravel for a few seconds before collapsing.

When I regained consciousness, I tried to stand up. But I couldn’t. My left foot and ankle couldn’t move. I could barely feel them, but what I could feel was nothing less than agony. I started to panic. My ankle couldn’t be broken. No. That couldn’t happen.

I sat there for a few more minutes, looking at my foot. The outer side of it had swollen to the size of a tennis ball, and the entire thing was blue. I couldn’t move my toes, and I was half a mile from home with no phone and barely any money. In short, I was screwed.

I couldn’t stand and I couldn’t call anybody to have them pick me up. After an hour or so, a car stopped and the driver offered me a ride. I took it, not caring about the “don’t trust strangers” rule. When I arrived back home, I crawled up the stairs and through the front door.

My parents just looked at me. I knew that I wasn’t going to get any cooperation out of them, so I was on my own. I tried to stand. I found that I could hop, but I couldn’t put any pressure on my left foot. I hopped to the bathroom to get an ice pack and a stretchy wrap, and then went to bed.

I stayed in bed for the rest of the weekend. By Tuesday I could walk somewhat, so I went to school with one tennis shoe-d foot and one stretchy-wrapped foot.

Now it is Thursday. I’ve been made fun of numerous times, and I still don’t know exactly what is wrong with my foot. It sucks.

Also, my hostess Renee got a new domain, so I’m there now. See? Hopefully everybody can find me again. I’m not sure how to go about telling everybody.

The other day I went for a walk through the town. I was sitting on a rock by the beach when a man came up to me and asked for the time.

He was in his forties and probably hadn’t shaved for a couple of weeks. He had a bike and a week-old newspaper. I gave him the time - 12:31 - and he sat down next to me.

Now, I don’t like strangers. I’m not good at sustaining conversation with those I don’t know. But this guy just wouldn’t stop talking, so I didn’t have to do much.

The man talked about how he had switched to Islam a few years ago and how he had been learning Arabic ever since. He then spent 20 minutes talking about some revelations he’d supposedly had. He said that his revelations inspired him to create a new religion.

He then brought up a supposedly common word from Islam: Alms. He asked me if I knew what it meant. I said “money”. He started talking about the phrase “alms for the poor” and how monks would walk around saying it a long time ago.

He asked the time again. I said it was 1, and it was. He said that he had to go, and then brought up “alms for the poor” again. It then hit me: This guy was just looking for cash. I said that I didn’t have any money (I did, but it was my emergency cash). He looked down and said that something was falling out of my pocket. I looked - it was my wallet. It definitely wasn’t that dislodged a few minutes prior. Had this guy robbed me?

He took off after I had taken my wallet out of my pocket. I looked, and I had five dollars less than what I thought I had. This guy had spent a half an hour talking to me just so that he could swipe a few dollars off me.

I had a few more hours to burn, so I continued my walk, albeit much more cautiously. I had just been robbed, and I wasn’t about to let anything else happen to me.

I guess the lesson I learned is this: Keep your wallet on you, but don’t let any part of it show, or else somebody might rob you. I’ve lived in a small town all my life, and so I hadn’t experienced something like that. I was just some naive country girl without a clue as to the lengths people go to for some change.

So last week I took a day trip to Honolulu. It took getting on the return flight and looking out the window at the shrinking city to make me remember how much I loved traveling and seeing the world.

When I returned, I went to sleep. But the day after that, I began thinking of places I wanted to see.

The list went from New York to Hungary, from Toronto to Milan, from Melbourne to Moscow, and most places in between. It was a very large list. So I began thinking of places I would be able to see in the near future.

The list was very short. Honolulu. Kona. North Carolina. Washington, DC. My chances of visiting those last two are based on luck - I would go there for school functions and I would have to apply. If I were to scrounge for money (or get a job - ha), I could go back to Honolulu for a day and see what I could. And I could catch the bus to Kona any old weekend, but there’s not too much over there.

It sucks, wanting to see the world but not being able to. I can’t move away until I’m 18 - not even for college. I can’t get a job at my age, so I can’t afford to travel very far. I can apply for school trips, but those are for school, so I wouldn’t really be able to see much of wherever I would go.

So for now I’m stuck in this tiny little town, out in the boonies with naught but a bike with a flat tire. You haven’t felt stuck until you’ve been me.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you want to go? Sure, you could confine yourself to Earth, but you could also go to the moon, to Mars, or to Uranus. No limitations.

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

If you have not read this book, go out and read it now.

If you have read it, then you know why I am telling everybody else to do so.

I borrowed it from the library yesterday and read it today at school. That probably wasn’t a good move in terms of location, for once I began reading it I could not put it down. I loved how it alternated seamlessly between third and first person perspectives. Rather than being upset about the lack of grammar, I loved it. It added so much to the text.

It wasn’t just the writing style that intrigued me. The concept of it blew me away. I thought I was having a crappy day, but after reading this book I doubt I’ll ever think that again. I could hardly breathe while reading it, even during the calmer parts. My heart stopped beating a few times. I finished each chapter feeling either overwhelmingly sad or completely disbelieving. When the book ended, my hands were shaking. I have never read anything so incredibly… powerful. Ever since I finished it, it hasn’t left my mind. The book seemed so human. There were moments of happiness, worry, sadness, helplessness, anger, serenity, curiosity, and every emotion imaginable. How all of these feelings plus deepness and power were fit into a few hundred pages I don’t know.

I do know, however, that this book is the most amazing thing I have ever read. Every person should read this book. If you are not moved to disbelief, you probably won’t be moved by anything.

Johnny Got His Gun at Wikipedia

It has been raining almost non-stop for the past 2 weeks.

And, frankly, I think it’s affecting my brain.

Normally I’m energetic and willing to do stuff. But ever since this rain started, I’ve tired easily. I haven’t wanted to do anything. I’ve fallen behind on schoolwork and I’ve slept for 14 hours a day. I’ve missed 4 days of school. and only 2 of those days were missed because of the weather. I’ve barely had the energy to get out of bed.

All I know is, if I miss any more school I’ll be in trouble. But I’m so behind on school that I’m already in trouble.

Is there a cure for weather-induced depression?

… whenever it rains really hard, you get a river in your backyard.
… whenever it rains really hard, you get a river running through the dirt road near your house.
… whenever it rains really hard, giant fucking lakes a quarter of a mile long form near your house, blocking any way out.
… whenever it rains really hard, you find hundreds of chickens on your porch, trying to get out of the rain.

For the past week, it has been raining. Not like the little wimpy sprinkles either, the huge raindrops that never end. The ones that cause floods that make you miss school, and the ones that pile into giant puddles five feet deep.

Now, I like the rain. But come on. This is Hawaii. It is not supposed to start raining one week and not stop all the way through the week. It is supposed to be paradise. Being stuck in my house for a week is not my idea of living in paradise. I want to go to the beach and not get drenched before even getting into the water. I want to walk outside and not be knee-deep in a puddle. More importantly, I want these chickens off my porch. It wouldn’t be so bad if they only stayed for a few minutes, or if they could control when they crap, but they don’t and they can’t.

Next week I’m going to Oahu for a day. I know, 1 day is more than enough to see everything worth seeing, but it’s for a school thing. I leave mid-morning and this thing starts at 3 PM, so at least I’ll have a little free time. This school thing (I’m hearing it in my head as “thang”) is basically getting up in front of a bunch of state legislators and talking to them about bills they’ve written. I will get to boss the suits around for once, and I’ll be able to write on my resume, “Told a bunch of authority figures that their legislature is crap”.

I hope it stops raining so that I can get on my plane.

Today I got a cell phone.

It’s not a fancy one - it’s got voice mail, a camera, internet access, and that’s about it - but it works. Living in the boonies, I don’t get very good reception, but it’ll do. This is my first cell phone, and it’s very confusing. Whenever I try to call someone, I can’t hear the ringing while I’m waiting, and it makes me wonder if it’s calling the number or not. It’s so confusing.

I stayed home from school today. I kind of wish I hadn’t. I was bored out of my mind. I WILL get out of the house tomorrow, though.

On a darker note, today I received some very upsetting news about my family. It’s probably not a good idea to state the news here, but when I first heard it I couldn’t stop crying. It’s been hidden from me for 12 years now, and I’m still having problems believing it. It doesn’t really pertain to me, but I’ve never been more shocked in my life.

I just need to sleep, I think.

I just walked into a sliding glass door. It’s not even clean. I feel so blind.

You know, I live in Hawaii. It’s supposed to be warm and breezy. It’s not.

Lately it’s been reaching the mid 50’s (Fahrenheit) in the morning. It’s even colder at night. It’s so cold that I can see my breath. Once I’m awake it’s not too bad, but when I first wake up it’s such a shock.

Yesterday I got my DSL connection back. In June my parents racked up a massive phone bill, and as a result our internet connection got shut down. In August we got internet back, but it was dial-up. It was ridiculously slow - when I tried to download some music, it went at 2 kb/s. Now it’s more like 600 kb/s - still not the fastest thing around, but it’s a huge improvement over dial-up.

The other day I cracked a Rush Limbaugh/Metallica joke. The punchline? “And Conservative Justice For All.” I forget how the actual thing went, which is unfortunate.

So what exactly is the purpose of this post? I am not sure. Lately my life has been extremely uneventful. Other peoples’ lives seem to be very interesting, though. I discovered my mom loves Hannah Montana. My little sister went on a field trip to a park - in the rain. I finally got around to ripping all my Guns N’ Roses CDs and put them on my mp3 player (it broke a few months ago, but I fixed it).

I hate having nothing to say.

Lately I have been remembering my very first field trip.

I was in kindergarten. One day, in late fall, the teacher gathered several parents and shuffled the students onto the bus for an educational field day. Destination: the mall.

The fact that the best place the school could afford to send us was the mall is disheartening now, but being 4 back then, I didn’t think much of it. I had five dollars in my pocket and I was going to be able to miss school for a day. I was the happiest kid on earth!

Once we arrived at the mall, we were split into several groups. Each parent chaperon had one group of seven screaming children to walk around the mall for hours. We went around to every store, from the Radio Shack to the Sears to the Cinnabon. I quickly spent my five dollars on some candy for my one-year-old sister. There was nothing she loved more than sucking on gummy bears.

It went smooth enough until we arrived at the candy store for the third time. I had already spent my money, but there was this Winnie The Pooh Pez dispenser that was eying me from the checkout counter. It was a dollar, and if you bought it you could get another Pez dispenser for free. What a deal!

I wanted that Pooh Pez dispenser so badly. I walked up to my chaperon, a heavyset lady in her thirties, tugged on her pants, and asked her in my very sweetest voice:

“Miss, can I have a dollar?”

Miss turned to face me. She looked down at me with an expression of utter disgust.

“No. Get away from me.”

I was confused. Maybe she had heard me wrong.

“Miss, can I please have a dollar so I can get the Pez?”

Her next words to me were ones that I would never forget.

“NO! GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!”

The store quieted and everybody stared at me and Miss. I started crying. I was a very big crybaby. If things didn’t go my way, I would cry. If somebody told me “no”, I would cry. If somebody’s tone was even a bit sour, I would cry. Now, all of those things had just happened at once, so I was extremely upset. I ran out the door of the candy store and into the atrium. I threw myself at a garbage can and clutched at it, screaming.

“I WANT MY PEZ! NO! NO! I WANT MY POOH PEZ!”

I eventually calmed down and continued on my tour of the mall. I avoided Miss as much as possible, though. When our stay at the mall ended and we went home, I had lots of candy, but I didn’t really want any of it. The Pooh Pez haunted my dreams - at least for one night. The next day, I saw a pair of shoes I really wanted, and all thought of the Pez ceased.

Looking back, I realize that both me and Miss were immature. I had an excuse, though - I was four and I wanted candy shaped like a cartoon character. I don’t blame Miss for my unhappiness, though. I blame the school.

What kind of school sends kindergarteners to the mall on a field trip? That’s like giving them permission to rot their brains with mass-produced crap and corn dogs. There was a perfectly good zoo, as well as several museums and a national park that we could’ve gone to. Why the mall?

Nowadays, you can’t go to the mall on weekends without seeing half your school there. I blame the early childhood field trips we were subjected to. I imagine the school claimed that it was teaching kids about money. But since when do five-year-olds care about money beyond how many toys it can buy? Really, now.

I wonder if that school still sends its students to the mall, or if they have stepped up their game. My sole memory from those days is that one school day spent watching people buy stuff. That upsets me.

Now, I am a model student. All of my teachers love me, and I get excellent grades. I enjoy most of my classes. Yet last semester, I would’ve been lying if I had said these things. The following is a tale of how an entire semester was ruined, all because of one lady.

We shall call this lady Mrs. D. It’s not because I’m afraid of her - after all, I’m going to spend a majority of this post pointing out her flaws - but more to protect her privacy. Even she has rights.

Now, Mrs. D. taught a poetry class that I was enrolled in. The course description stated that in the class, we would be reading, interpreting, and writing poetry. It was the writing aspect that appealed to me - I hate literary analysis and I always will. The class started off well enough - the lady seemed nice and the curriculum seemed promising enough. But things quickly turned around.

Two months into the class, and we hadn’t written a single poem, even though the course description said that we would be doing so. I had to write a mid-semester class reflection at this point. I chose to use the reflection to address this lack of living up to the course description. I wrote that I was disappointed about the lack of poetry writing, and also that I did not like literary analysis. I emailed this to the teacher, and received this back:

“Katie, perhaps you should have read the course description before joining this class.”

It was a definite “fuck you” moment for both me and the teacher. How dare she think me so stupid as to not read a fucking course description before joining a class? And how dare she completely ignore the fact that I WAS RIGHT. The course description was:

“Students will learn to read and interpret poetry from a variety of historical periods suing critical literary analysis techniques. Students will be expected to keep a daily response log, write weekly analysis papers, and to maintain a portfolio. Students are also expected to perform oral interpretation of poetry, teach classes on individual poems and literary techniques, and to write and present for class evaluation original poetry. The Semester course will finish with a self-selected project.”

The drama begins here. This was the beginning of a hate war. I hated her, she thought me an idiot for being correct. I’m not the kind of person to let things be if I don’t like them. I wrote this poem for her:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I know that you hate me
So, fuck you, too

I never gave it to her, but I have it stored away in an email draft should I need it.

Moving on. I began to wonder if Mrs. D. was jealous of me. Jealous because I was observant, a good writer, and, oh, correct on most things. After the email exchanges, she wouldn’t look me in the eye or talk to me. She was scared of me. I knew that people have trouble taking my comments, but this was a first. I was a scary person. It was strange.

The following week, we had a poetry test. It wasn’t even hard - define meter, define rhyme scheme, spell “poem”, that sort of thing. I aced it - I went so in-depth in my definitions that I scared myself. But I got the test back. 5 of the 20 points knocked off - with no explanation as to why. I understood. She couldn’t say she hated me to my face, so she entered a new low of giving me bad grades for no reason.

Our next test was just as simple: analyze the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. I hate Robert Frost almost as much as I hate literary analysis. This test should’ve been hell, but I trudged on. I was supposed to write what I thought the poem was about. I felt that it was about the dude being unable to choose between two women. It very well could’ve been - the poem could mean anything if you think about it. I did a college-level analysis of that thing, and what do I get?

A B. 80%. Why? The only comment about my analysis was that Mrs. D. disagreed with my opinion - she felt it was about the decision to become a poet, not choosing a girl. So I got knocked down a whole letter grade because some teacher disagrees with my opinion? I could’ve taken that to the school board, but I chose to let it be. For then.

At this point I hated Mrs. D. so much that I didn’t care what I wrote. For my end-of-semester reflections (no prompt given), I wrote about my dislike of the class and of literary analysis. I stated that I felt that both were a waste of time. I do not apologize for my opinions. I give them raw. I received my reflections back with some comments.

To sum them up, Mrs. D. felt that I had not met any course requirements, and she also felt that my comments about the class were uncalled for.

If you can’t take the heat, get the hell away from me. My opinions are so hot, they’re cold.

There was no prompt. I could write whatever I wanted. She had no right to put me down for doing what I was told to - whatever! I had met ALL course requirements - I had done all assignments with extreme proficiency.

I have not received my final grade for that class yet, although I have dropped it. If I get anything below an A, I will do something about it. I’ll have her fired. Giving me a low grade for no reason is not cool. I don’t care if people disagree with my opinions. I do care if they fail me for having ones that clash with theirs.

This lady has failed to comply with her course descriptions. She has put me down via email. She has given me low grades because she does not like my opinion. What kind of teacher does that?

To all those who say that teachers don’t hate their students: You haven’t met this lady.