The Nerve of Some People

I caught myself thinking this more than once today as I was surprised at the audacity of my peers to say, do, or say and do, stupid things. Stupid being rude, ignorant, idiotic, offensive, or a lovely combination of the four.

One thing I have to commend those people on though, is their courage. It takes some cahones to blurt out in class something you believe to be true with the chance of being shot down, or to make a joke and nobody laughs. These people I've noticed don't even think twice before they state said comments. Now I can attribute that to a very possible and unfortunate break in the line that connects one's conscience to one's mouth; a vasectomy one's morals if you will, that makes speech sterile to intelligent thought. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and go with courage.

So then why is courage given to the wrong people? With great power (or courage) comes great responsibility, so then maybe a better question would be: why isn't courage given to people that will "use responsibly"?

I'm naturally more of an introverted person. I usually would prefer spending time in my own little cave where I can play music, write, and read to my heart's desire than to go out and socialize. But when I do muster up the energy to venture out into deeper waters, I generally hangout with other introverts (if I'm being honest, most extroverts kind of scare me). So we introverts gather and have our periodic little social outings where we generally just talk about everything that we've been able to contemplate to ourselves since we last talked. And a lot of my introverted friends have a lot of really intelligent, wise, and creative thoughts. If any of them had half of the courage of the previously mentioned sterile-minded persons, and shared their wisdom half as much as the dumb kids in my classes, this world would be a heck of a lot better place.

So why instead of being deemed the red badge of courage are we branded with the red face of embarrassment? I guess only God knows.

But I know that the next time someone interrupts a moment of silence in memory of the recent Boston bombings with "Bang bang bang!" I'm going to say something. Because the only way my brain can comprehend the reasoning of why on Earth anyone would think that would be okay, is because they just simply don't understand the reality of anything that goes on. So it's our duty to tell the kid. The poor dear doesn't even know.

Maybe if enough of us speak up just once when we know something was wrong, we can reverse their possible (probable)thought-vasectomies and give them the much needed procedure of an add-a-brain-to-me. Because remember, these kids already have the courage to speak out, so why don't we give them something to say, and more importantly, something enlightening for the next generation to listen to.

~Kat

P.S. These people will be able to vote someday... 'nuff said.

Real Beauty

I am not an effortless beauty. My hair's too thin to do anything with, even if I did know how. My eyebrows are too thick and dark, my skin is too white, and I have too many pimples. And freckles. My skin gets red too easily, especially on my chest. My legs are too short. I have boy hips. The hair on my arms bugs me, my stomach is too squishy, and my hands are too small to play Vince Guaraldi effortlessly. I can't write poetry on a whim, and most of the time it sounds forced; the same with writing lyrics for songs. I'm terrible at formulating thoughts while speaking to anyone that isn't my keyboard.

We are all our own worst critiques; we never see ourselves as the beautiful creatures that we are. Maybe it's part of our human nature, or maybe it's something we learn. Maybe it was something originally intended to keep us humble, because if we saw ourselves for who we really are, we would enjoy and bask in our beauty so much that we wouldn't be beautiful at all anymore. Just big-headed egotistical turds.

But what happens when we are constantly rating ourselves as sub-par or below average? When we truly believe it, that's what we will portray to people. We aren't beautiful, I'm not worthy, you don't owe me any respect, because I'm not anyone special. We lower our standards. We accept the love we think we deserve.

That's why it's so crucial that we have good friends. Their eyes aren't clouded with self-image. That's why for all you men out there, it is so important to tell the women in your life how beautiful they are. Because even though you know it, and it may seem so obvious to you that you don't need to say it, we often don't see ourselves like that. We look in the mirror and see all the flaws. And even when you do tell us, we won't believe it. Not the first time, maybe not even the tenth time. But if you tell us enough I guarantee you it will sink in.

So guys, don't keep it to yourselves. Or anyone for that matter. When did we stop acknowledging beauty when we see it? It seems the only time we say anything positive or complimentary about someone is once they're gone, and then they never get to hear it. And for some people, that could change a lot in their lives, maybe even save their lives. You never know.

So here comes the sappy, but hey, I love it:

Ms.Beltran, I really appreciate how you never wear makeup. You're being real with us, and it makes me feel like I can be real with you. It's not an act, no strings attached pure Beltran, and you own it. It's an inspiration.

Alex, you're one of the nicest people I know, and I love that we've become so comfortable with each other. You have a really unique vocal talent, and I know I tell you that all the time, but really. It's bomb.

Cameron, I love our Starbucks runs and how you make everyone feel like they're your best friend. It's really a gift.

Sydney, I always knew there was something about you. You got spunk, you're confident, and I've always looked up to that. And not to mention you always look stunning, keep it real girlie. Thanks for the video, which inspired this post.

There are a lot more people I could call out, and from now on I'm going to try to. But one big huge thank you to all the people who read this blog, and especially to Beltran (again, I will forever be in your debt) who shared it, despite the ensuing embarrassment and awkwardness. Every page view I see is a lollipop moment in itself.

So thank you all.
~Kat

P.S. In remembrance of Jonathon Vargas, let's all try to tell at least one person tomorrow how beautiful they are. It could never hurt.

Book Worm

Or at least I used to be.

I used to consume books like runners consume a 100 meter dash, at full speed. I started my run of books when I was four, wrote my first book report at five, and delved into my first book series at six. It was the Little House in the Prairie books, and I would read them to my mom every night before bed until we finally finished. I must have proved myself sufficient, because those were the last of the bedtime stories. From then on I self-administered Junie B. Jones, Magic Tree House, Judy Bloom, and my favorite: Where the Red Fern Grows. I've probably read that one at least four times. In eighth grade I finished my first classics: Wuthering Heights, Midsummer Night's Dream, and As You Like It.

Lately, I haven't had the time. The last book I read took me two months. I have a stack of bedtime stories--Stephen King, Anne Lammott, Kurt Vonnegut--beckoning to me from my nightstand. They are being side-stepped by Brinkley's "American History", Campbell and Reece's "Biology", and Princeton Reviews.

The highest offender by far: Zuckerburg's "Facebook." I, and many teens alike, get sucked in for hours. Time flies by when your Facebook-stalking--our generation's version of fun. It's not only cut into my reading time, but my prayer time, homework time, and ironically enough, time with my friends! Facebook, the site to keep friends "connected", has made me lose connection with most of them. I go through their photos and their walls, and I feel caught up in their lives. I have nothing against Facebook, I think it's a great thing, but only in moderation.

So today I admit: I am a Facebook-worm, and I am going to try to eat my way out of this one cold turkey. I deactivated my account until June, and I'm sure I'll be feeling the withdrawals. But for my grade's, my friend's, and my faith's sake I am going to stay connected by disconnecting, maybe even for good.

I'm Kat,and beginning 35 minutes ago, I'm Freckled, Faulty, and Facebook-free!

P.S. I might even be posting more often too!

I Am Danny Herrera

We all remember the class clown. The excitement as the period begins, because we can't wait to see what he'll do today. We are all putty in his hands, and a simple raise of his eyebrows will have us squirming in our seats and soar sides from the heartiest laughter we've had all day. "I can't believe he just said that" is escaping our lips so often it should have frequent flyer miles. Sometimes the class clown seems like the sole reason that we stay sane. My class clown is Danny Herrera, but really, this is for all of them:

I am Danny Herrera.
I am the one who says "no" to detention.
I am the kid your friends are talking about.
Yes, I am that kid with the hipster glasses.
I am the butt of the jokes, but I'm also the one dishing them out.
I am the curator of laughter.
I am the king's finest court jester.
I am the onion ring that slipped into your carton of fries.
I am the one who walks away from almost certain demise
Without looking back.
I am the flamingo in a flock of pigeons, and the tuna slip-streaming against the current.
I am as cool as my loafers, cuffed jeans, collared shirt and bobbing head suggests.

You all know me.
You all know what I let you see.

But outside of this classroom
Where everything goes
And Danny Herrera knows just how to pinch all of our rosy round cheeks into smiles
He's really just a mystery.

No one knows where The Wild Thing goes.
And no one bothers to ask
Because we know he would tell us if we did
And we can't risk knocking our two-in-one class clown and class fool
Off of the pedestal where we placed him
With a strong hit of reality.

So we contain him in our own little Neverland
Where he will always be our Peter Pan
To supply us with all the shenanigans and make-believes we desperately need
Because it's the last period of the day
And after all our honors and APs
Nothing's better than a little taste of joy
No one's going to look behind the curtain with the chance to discover
That our Peter Pan is really just a Lost Boy.

No, he is Danny Herrera.
He is the guy with the head-back, booming, ridiculous laugh
He is the wind in our sail, the pep in our step, the cat-nip behind the crazy
He is the guy everyone is looking for, but will never find
He is the last masterpiece left uncovered by da Vinci

He has charm so contagious, they had to create a vaccine for it
He has been asked by alien abductors to probe them
His legend precedes him the way lightening precedes thunder
If he forgets to put postage on a letter, it will still get there
If it is raining, it's because he is thinking of something sad
His blood smells like cologne
His hands feel like rich brown suede

He is the most interesting man in the world.
And we will stay thirsty.

~Kat

Gears Turning

Did you know that I wrote a book? I did the whole deal: first draft, second draft...tenth draft. I had a published author, a creative writing professor from an Ivy League college, and my beloved English teachers as mentors. It evolved for three years, and I happily watched it grow and transform into something I was very proud of. I self-published it, then looked into "real" publishing. I wrote a quarry letter to an agent, drafted it and drafted it, and sent it off. I expectantly got shot down; who gets an agent on their first manuscript, on their first quarry, when they are in high school? I wasn't that pretentious.

But by that time I had read this story maybe a million times, been working on it for three years, I was done with my shallow immature story I wrote as an 8/9th grader. So I stopped, and haven't revisited it, or even tried to write another novel since.

I've been brought back to this from a classmate of mine, who now two years later, brought to my attention that our freshman English teacher gave her my book, she went home and read the whole thing in one sitting. I don't know what I did to deserve to that, I look back at my book now and see a sophomoric and cliche story of a teen girl trying to save her friend from ruining his own life.

I've grown so much as a writer since, I've had so many new experiences, I'm more well read, and I'm pretty sure I can do a better job now. I've been inspired to write again. With a strong female lead, who doesn't need saving, and isn't worrying about boys. She will be a role-model and will the kind of character I would want my daughter to read about.

A smart lady told me that if you don't like today's movies, make a better one. If you can't find a good book, write it. If modern music isn't doing it for you anymore, compose it.

Thank you for these gifts of inspiration, I'm enjoying my lollipops ;)

And lastly a word from Kurt Vonnegut: 8 short story tips

"1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet or innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them, in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much informations as possible, as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understand of what is going on where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages."

~Kat

Family time

One of the things I value the most is family, this is not unique nor unusual, but I'm discovering it's not universal. Some people have given up on family. Some families are broken, scattered from sea to sea. Others meet at the dinner table every night, but are divided by invisible fault lines. A silent, silverware-scraping dinner table is a sad one.

I've been graced with a wonderful family: two loving parents, a wacky older sister who gives me hell sometimes, but I can always find heaven in the countless smiles that she has painted onto my face. We always sit down together for dinner, even through the worst of times. I've sat through those silverware-scraping meals, but somehow someone always breaks the ice. My family talks, a lot, and we don't detour around the uncomfortable. We face it head on and work through it. But all these things can't be true all the time, we are far from a perfect family, but at least we try.

But what about those families that have lost hope? That don't talk to each other, feel like they can't? What about the families that have been accepted as broken, to have an "Out of Order" sign taped on its front door for the rest of their lives? Even if that's how its been for two years or two decades, could they still be fixed? Should they? Is family still a prominent enough figure in every human heart that it is worth the effort?

I can't imagine that anyone would be able to honestly answer no to the last one. No matter what your family's been through, I think everyone still has that longing to have "the perfect family" or at the very least a family that could stand to be in the same room as one another. Nobody wants to stay broken.

So why do we stop trying?

Do we assume the rest of our family wants to stay apart?

Do we think our family doesn't want us? Are we so scared to ask to be taken back, that we just stay quiet. Shrink into our separate rooms. Don't say how much I desperately miss the way things used to be, and I hope your doing well, because I don't even know you anymore.

Why should we be afraid to say this, when our brother or sister, mother or father, is probably going to bed after those silent dinners thinking the same thing.

Thinking about you.

~Kat

Dejected, Maddened, and Vexed

Put the first letters of that title together and what do you get? The DMV.

I show up at 3:15 with my mother to get my permit, which is two years too late. It's Friday afternoon, right when everyone is getting off of work and school. It had a striking resemblance to a can of sardines. Let's see if we squeeze in two more moaning motorists. We are ushered into the slough to stand single file between black ropes.

Line #1: Approximately 30 people long and at a stand still. Ten minutes later, we moved up two spots, "Shoot, my registration information is in the car." Bye, Mom, sure I'll wait here. And as soon as she walks out of the building the line starts moving like the well-lubricated machine the DMV should be a century after its introduction. I reach the front of the line in 5 minutes, and she's not back. I start waving people to go ahead of me, 3 people pass me by. One man jokes, "So your just the pretty greeter?" At that point I was really hoping my mom would be back soon, although I was flattered. She returns, we are called up, "Oh no you don't need that [the registration]," the man says and gives us a number.

Line#2: Who knows how many people were ahead of us. We find blue plastic chairs to sit in around the perimeter of the room. 20 more minutes and it's our turn. Sign a few forms, staple staple, "Good luck, wait over there for your picture."

Line#3: About 30 people long again, another 20 minutes, thumbprint, stand over there, 3, 2, 1, click. Printing receipt, staple staple. "Now you'll take your written exam over there." By this time I had forgotten about the test, and couldn't believe they made you do all of this stuff first, and you don't even know if you passed yet. Boy it would suck if I didn't and wasted all this time.

Line #4: Now I'm getting anxoius. The line is 20 people long, I'm waiting 5 minutes, "Do you need a test?" Me: "Um, yes." DMV lady: "Oh, you don't need to be waiting there, here." Hands me a test, sends me over to stand in a stall and squirm, marking little Xs next to the choice I think is the least idiotic. I go to the desk when I finish, "What do you want?"..."I'm done?" "Wait over there."

Line#5: I follow a winding line that goes all the way back to where the picture guy is, maybe 40-50 people wrong. This was the same line I thought I had to wait in to get my test, but it seemed to have multiplied. 20 minutes go by, I'm toward the front, and I realize they are scoring the tests by hand and there are only two ladies doing it. You have got to be kidding me. Even my malfunctioning public school has Scan-trons. Half an hour and I'm at the front, the scrawny boy next to me fist pumps, he passed his permit test with 3 wrong, you can get 8 wrong at most. My lady is still grading, I'm getting nervous.

She finishes.

"You got 10 wrong, you have to wait another week to retake it."

After a frustrating car ride home, my mom knocking me in the head, mumbling about waiting 2 hours and I didn't pass, you should have studied more, I have to pay another $32. As if the train of insults in my head weren't enough.

I am now listening to Blink-182 Pandora Radio. Loud. Electric guitars drowning out the "shoulda-coulda-wouldas."

Dejected, Maddened, and Vexed, so glad the DMV and I started off on the right foot.
~Kat.