Opinions

Every year at my elementary school, just before summer, there was a volleyball game between the sixth graders and the teachers. The whole school stopped for the game and everyone came out to watch. Every year, the sixth graders thought they had the best team and that they were gonna win, but they never won once. The teachers were adults and kids just can’t beat adults at sports. Like sixth graders before us, we were sure we were gonna beat them. It didn’t occur to us that the sixth graders thought this every year and were always wrong. The morning of the game, Mrs. Jones, the head of the sixth grade program, called all of us into a room and told us that our graduation ceremony wasn’t tight enough, that we had to practice it instead of playing volleyball. Our graduation ceremony was actually pretty complicated. We had to play songs on recorders and xylophones and walk in complex formations. My fellow students and I believed the teachers were canceling the game because they knew they were going to lose. So, this kid Alec who was really charismatic and good at sports, raised his hand and started yelling at the teachers saying, "You can’t do this! No! No way! You can’t just do this!" The teachers were condescending in response. Then I raised my hand, kind of wanting to be tough and rebellious like Alec, and said, "Who is this graduation ceremony for? US or you?"

Mrs. Jones said, "Of course it’s for you."

"Well then why can’t we have it however we want?" I asked. I’ve always preferred questions to statements as weapons of intimidation.

"Because you’re representing the school," she said.

"Well then why don’t you just admit that our graduation is for the school and not for us?" I was about half way through this statement when I started crying. My least favorite thing about crying is that you can’t talk and cry at the same time. So, the argument ended this way, the game was canceled, and it was really frustrating.

I remember once having a conversation with a friend of my parents named Mason when I was about eight years old. I talked with him about dreams we’d had and stories we’d written and things like that. I don’t remember ever seeing him again. At one point, my parents told me he’d died. They then told me things about him and this is what I remember. Mason wanted to move to Los Angeles to become a writer, but his wife didn’t want to come with him. He needed to try it, to see if he could succeed as a writer so he left, planning to return when he felt he’d tried his best. He stayed for years and his wife kept asking him to come home. Heat told her every time that he wasn’t ready yet, he wasn’t done trying. Eventually, his wife met another man and told Mason she wanted a divorce. The divorce was finalized and, just months later, Mason died of a heart attack in his kitchen. I have no idea if this story is accurate. This is just how I remember it. Two summers ago, I was trying to write a novel. I eventually gave up on it, though I may try again someday, and I generally think about it as an example of how arrogant I was back then, how I thought I could just do anything. Anyway, I was going to put Mason in the book because I found his story so moving. I still think about this novel sometimes even though I kind of find it silly now. Last Summer, my parents threw a party and I mingled and hobnobbed with their friends. At one point, a woman came up to me and started speaking to me really intensely. She seemed kind of like she was hitting on me but at the same time like she was really close to tears. She told me I reminded her of her husband who was dead. I immediately realized she was Mason’s wife. She just kept telling me how much I was like Mason. She told me all the things I’d done that night that Mason used to do. "I know Mason still watches you from somewhere," she told me, pointing up.

Sabrina, this girl I know, was telling me the other day that, once, in fourth grade, she and a bunch of her friends attached a rope somehow to the handball wall (you know the kind that stands looking really thin, unsupported from either side) and tried to pull it over. It didn’t work and they all got benched. I feel like if I had tried that once with my friends in elementary school and we’d somehow succeeded in pulling the giant thing over, I would still consider that the best day of my life.

I was in love at the point in high school were I was supposed to start applying to colleges. The girl I was in love with was named Noa and she went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington at the time. So, being right at the most intense part of being in love for the first time, I wanted to go to school with her. I visited her at Whitman and, of course, loved it, so I decided I wanted to apply early admission. It was one of those binding early admission deals where I couldn’t apply anywhere else If I got in. My parents, of course, tried to convince me to just apply regular decision so that I could have other options. Love had left me in such a frazzled state that I took this request as some kind of evil scheme to keep me away from Noa. I can only remember a handful of times I’ve furiously yelled at people, I rarely yell, but this was one of those times. This story is my example of what love can do to you. I have this image of myself shouting and crying, a complete wreck, sprawled out on the couch , all over this bad bad idea. This whole idea was based on the fact that I couldn’t imagine someday not feeling the same way I felt right then. These days, I try not to count on my feelings lasting too long. I certainly don’t plan on any of my feelings being permanent. And you know, I remember that the whole time I was fighting with my parents I was thinking about what it would be like to have kids with Noa. I imagined telling these kids, "If I hadn’t yelled so much at my parents, you wouldn’t exist today." The argument went on for a couple hours. Then I gave in, applied regular admission, fell out of love, and ended up here.