I’m the kind of person that reads far too much into things. Not into what people do or say, necessarily, but more the involuntary afflictions of the world around me. Today I was walking back from class at Thompson, trying to call Joelle to tell her that Brian might be coming to visit me tonight. My phone wouldn’t work. I tried calling her three times, and each time it gave the same response: network busy. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t meant to be on the phone at that time, that something would happen for which I needed to be alert, and that something would happen that was going to change my life. At this point I started listening to the people walking ahead of me. There were two girls with their backs to me, enthralled in what a young man was saying to him. He was reasonably attractive; nothing that would take my breath away. He wore jeans and a jean jacket that didn’t match. At first I thought he was obnoxious for talking so loudly, but then I saw something in him that reminded him of myself when I spoke about something I was passionate about. Then I started listening.
“The only way to get an A in that class is to read the book and come up with an original thought about politics, which is impossible. You can’t come up with an original thought, everyone has had them already?”
I realized he was right. The girls he was talking to batted their eyelashes and asked him to help them study. I wanted to say something to him, a greeting of some sort that would welcome this boy into my destiny. But how do you say, “Hello, I think you’re meant to change my life”, without coming across as completely and entirely insane. You can’t. so I decided to facebook him.
Facebook is an outlet for all personal encounters you’re too scared to have in person. It also allows for awkward meetings with people you’ve friended but never met.
But why am I relying on someone else to change my life? As I walked through the echoey tunnel between southwest and the outside world, it dawned on me that perhaps this boy was not what was meant to change my life. Perhaps I was simply meant to have these thoughts and then go back to my room, shut the door, and write this before it all left my mind and mixed with the blaring rap music that echoed from the third floor. The truth is, at this point I am utterly relying on someone else to change my life, and in that, change me.

The famous Seth Parker told me to write a part from my paper as a screenplay, so here it is.




EXT. POOL AREA - NIGHT

A tired-looking, middle-aged woman sits on the edge of a pool, dangling her feet in the water. This is DIANA. Moonlight reflects off the water, illuminated by lights at various points throughout the yard. A teenage girl comes and sits beside her. This is JENN.

DIANA
(absently)
The fireflies are out tonight.

JENN
(glancing around)
They're pretty.

Diana takes a drag of her cigarette and the smoke swirls overhead.

DIANA
(staring straight ahead)
When we were little we used to try to catch them in Mason jars.
You know what Mason jars are, right?

Jenn nods.

DIANA
We would catch them in these jars and cut air holes in the top,
so we could keep them. But they always ended up dying. Even
when we cut them airholes . . . the fireflies still died . . .

Diana takes another drag from her cigarette, staring out at the water sadly. Jenn watches the smoke circle in the air and sighs.

I just finished my first official college paper. Yes, it's due tomorrow. Yes, I'm a procrastinator. I think I've always been this way. I'm liking college more and more as the days go by. I went home last weekend, and it definitely wasn't what I thought it would be like. First of all, I had to take a bus to Boston. That should've been a 2 hour trip, tops, but it took 4 hours. I had to change busses in Springfield, and then wait for 15 minutes at the Worcester terminal. It was a mess. When I finally got to Boston, I had to wait to be picked up at the bus station. It got weirder when I got into my home town. I felt like a kid who faked sick. The town seemed empty, like I was supposed to be somewhere else, and everyone knew it. When I was little and I stayed home sick, my mother used to always take me out to lunch to cheer me up, unless I was deliriously ill or something. Whenever we saw people we knew I would get embarassed because they knew I should've been in school. I ended up going to a concert with some old friends, one who commutes, one who goes to community college, one who works, and another who goes to Tulane, but was relocated and now commutes to BU. It was weird, but I wanted to be back at UMass while I was there. It was a good concert, though. So I guess going home has cured most of my homsickness. Who'd have thought?

Mr. Seth Parker has just graciously let us out of College Writing early, so I figured the least I could do was to actually write one of these things. Since nothing interesting has happened yet today, I'll write about something that's been floating around my brain for the past couple of days.
Everyone upholds icons from the past with nostalgia. For example The Brady Bunch. Whenever someone criticizes modern entertainment, this show seems to come up. True, the show was successful at being both wholesome and popular, but it's hardly something to which to base the entire decline of culture against. I mean, behind the scenes Greg and Marcia were banging each other all the time. Nostalgia is bullshit. Now we see Peter Brady eating whipped cream off the winner of America's Next Top Model on VH1 and I can't help but wonder if this is symbolic. Are our icons of the past conforming to the oversexed and commercialized media of today? Or have they always been oversexed and commercialized, and now just have an appropriate forum in which to be themselves? I have no answer for these questions, but I will state again, nostalgia is bullshit. Earlier this week, I found myself missing high school and reminiscing about last year. This is bullshit. I hated most of high school. I spent at least half of it wishing I was in college. But somehow I have become able to convince myself that it was the greatest years of my life. Dear God, I hope this is not the case. If so, my life will be an utter sham. The truth is, you always need something to miss, you always need someone to be away from, you always need something to be nostalgic about. I remember being in the car with my friend and his father a couple months ago, and we were talking about memories that we both had from the past. After we had gone through sharing our recollections of middle school, his father turned around. "Nostalgia," he said, "it's just not what it used to be."