Poetry

I'm thankful for hoodies. I don't think that I would be able to get through winter without them. There are weeks in January and February where I just wear a different hoodie every day of the week because I don't want to be cold. I get cold very easily, so during the winter I like to wear warm clothes so I don't freeze to death. One of the biggest advantages of wearing a hoodie is that I can keep my head warm without having to wear a hat. Whenever I try wearing a hat, I end up getting the worlds worst hat head. My hair sticks up all over the place, lies completely flat, or some combination of the two. Hoodies solve this problem spectacularly. They fit over my head and keep it warm without pushing my hair flat or holding it at odd angles, so I when I enter a building and put my hood down I don't look like a clown (or look less like a clown ig). Hats are also a hassle to cary around all the time. I can't even keep track of my glasses for more than a few minutes w...

If I could go anywhere, I would go to Australia. I know a bunch of random facts about the country, and I'd like to go somewhere where I would be able to use them.  When I was 13, I started listening to an Australian podcast that reviewed blockbuster movies. I soon discovered that this podcast was part of a larger network of podcasts based in Melbourne, and I ended up spending hours listening to all the various offerings. None of these podcasts are about Australia specifically; I’ve just ended up picking up an array of facts through random digressions that the speakers go on. Most of the things I know are really trivial, like how the  St. Kilda Saints won the Australian Football League Premiership in 1966, to things with practical value, like how the ancient Aboriginals developed a form of regenerative agriculture that scientists a re currently trying to rediscover. In addition to knowing random facts, I also have a pretty extensive vocabulary of Australian sayings. Fun fact: ...

           One of my earliest memories of music is listening to "Ninja Rap" by Vanilla Ice, from the soundtrack of the 1991 movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze". I'm not entirely sure why this song stood out to me so distinctly, but if I had to guess, it's probably because it's the goofiest thing that's ever been committed to film. At the climax of the movie, the ninja turtles end up in a night club where rapper Vanilla Ice is performing. They end up fighting a bunch of evil ninjas on the dance floor while Vanilla Ice performs a song about the ninja turtles. Once all of the bad guys are defeated, the ninja turtles go up on stage and start dancing with Vanilla Ice and his posse, at which point The Shredder emerges from backstage and threatens to destroy them all. To verify that I didn't just imagine this, I looked up this clip on YouTube and it happened exactly like how I imagined it.            The only l...

You know those people that think that owning a dog is somehow a personality trait? Those people that think the mundane things that their dogs do are super unique? That's me. I'm those people. So, allow me to indulge myself and talk about the one thing in my life that brings me joy. My dog's name is Lucy. When we got her, we were told that she is a border collie, schnauzer mix, which ended up being very much not true. In reality, she ended up being 3/8 beagle, 1/4 labrador, 1/8 golden retriever, and 1/8 lhasa apso, and 1/8 unknown. When we got her, she was about 2 months old and 12 lbs . Her face was black, and the rest of her body was white with black spots. She had a tiny head with big floppy ears and long gangly legs. She's changed a lot since then. In the 3 years since we got her, she's grown considerably, now weighing just under 50 pounds. Her head is still a little small for her body size, but it's much closer to being in proportion than it used to be. She...

I would say that I'm a pretty good driver. I don't speed excessively, I don't aggressively swerve in and out of lanes, or do most of the other stuff people do in the name of getting somewhere marginally faster than they otherwise would have. Most members of my family are like this, so I haven't had that much exposure to people driving like maniacs. My comfort zone is being in a car that feels safe.          One night I was hanging out with three friends and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We decided the move was to go to Taco Bell to get some food. As the four of us were loading into my minivan, one of my friends had a suggestion. He said that it would be fun if instead of all going together, we went in two cars and made a competition out of who could get there first. Assuming he was joking, I agreed to it. He hopped out of my minivan and took another friend into his Mustang. I wasn’t really feeling driving, so I gave the keys to t...

I thought that the way coming of age is depicted in Sag Harbor is really interesting. There isn't some momentous difference between Benji from the beginning of the book and Benji by the end. I think that this is best seen in the way that Benji ends the summer in the same way that he begins it, by planning ahead. At the beginning of the summer, Benji makes plans about how he's going to reinvent himself over the course of the summer. He is going to go from being lame Benji to being cool Ben. At the end, we can see something similar. He makes plans about how he's going to become cool by going to parties, clubs, and concerts. Despite the similarities between end Benji and beginning Benji, it still is clear that they are different people. But this begs a larger question. At what point do we become someone completely different from who we used to be? Benji points this out by looking back on his 14 year old self and thinking that he was an idiot. He describes himself at the end as...