I spent a week crossing my fingers, hoping I wouldn’t catch the bug my sniffling and coughing classmates were spreading. Unfortunately, I woke up with a full-blown cold in no time, feeling the worst I’d ever felt for months.
From a young age we’ve been taught to compete and to come home victorious. At every AYSO soccer game, ballet recital and swim meet, we’ve been taught to have “friendly competition” with the next-door neighbor Johnny or with cousin Erin. But we all know, it won’t be friendly. It will be a fight even if it’s not easy to see. Getting to that soccer ball, landing that pirouette, reaching that wall is the difference between a celebratory ice cream at Coldstones and a quiet car ride home. That same spiteful sense of competition is what occurs between the most animalistic of humans, teenagers.
High school dances.
Students flock to them, administrators tolerate them and parents are appalled by them.
Personally, I love them. It’s always a lot more fun to rock out to “Low” by FloRida with friends than to bop around my room to “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne. But sometimes I wonder if they’re worth all the trouble, especially when girls have it so much harder than guys.
The DMV has always had a reputation for employing people who are a bit out of the ordinary. To begin with, what sane person would want to spend the day in a car with people who can barely drive? Nobody would choose to deal with people who’ve spent two hours in line waiting to just renew their license. A few months ago when I went to the local DMV office to take my permit test, I experienced the DMV in all its strange glory.
Spoiled? I don’t think so. My friends say that I’m lucky to be an only child, not having to fight with a brother or sister all the time. Others, however, say that it can get lonely.
It’s become an easy source of entertainment. You can access it any place where there are people. It’s guaranteed to bring laughter, shrieks and possibly make you cry.
What is it? The side-poke.
Being rather spastic, I often fall victim to this personal attack. People have found it entertaining to poke my side and see the resulting tsunami of flailing arms and legs. Even as I’m writing this story, I’m squished between two reporters who are constantly poking me. Thanks, Jordan and Nathan!
Yes, I’m a senior now. Yes, I’ve finally joined the ranks of the college application victims—those whom I have mocked from afar for three years. Yes, I too suffer from extreme procrastination.
But my one biggest problems is an unusually bad case of indecisiveness. I suppose that’s why my parents have initiated an intervention to prevent a looming teen-life crisis and have taken it upon themselves to determine my future.
People say to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Military leaders throughout history have used this tactic to control adversaries and make it harder for them to attack. I, however, completely disagree.
My enemies should be as far away from me as possible, preferably in Antarctica where they’ll freeze to death. After all, the only birds that can survive there are penguins. And they can’t make aerial dives at you.