Youngest of One

Future Behind Me:

I miss the days when my parents used to ask me, "What did you learn in school today?"  I was much younger (youngest-er?) then, and in those days I was attending a grade school that did not challenge me much.  And so, I always had the same answer: "Nothing."  Occasionally I would alter this response just to seem like something was changing from day to day.  "I don't remember much," I might say.  Or perhaps even, "Nothing new.  Just same old stuff."  In all honesty, I did learn plenty of things during those years.  However, very few of those things actually interested me, and therefore I could never think of any lessons to bring up in dinner conversation.  Now that I am in high school, especially in this senior year, I would certainly have a unique answer to that same question each day.  Unfortunately, that question is simply not one that it typically posed to someone of my age.  To anyone who has already entered high school, this question seems condescending and patronizing.  It's like asking someone at my age, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  Anyone may be curious about that, but the question must be modified for someone who is not very young and small.  The question usually becomes, "What career are you interested in pursuing?" or something to that effect.  So perhaps the question of "What did you learn in school today?" must undergo some slight changes as well for a more mature audience.  I might suggest, "What new knowledge have you attained in your studies today?"  Yeah, I'd be more than happy to answer that question.

Having now experienced my first week as a senior, I can certainly say that I have little to no certainly about how much or how little I will enjoy this year.  Okay, I admit that that's not entirely true, but I do have a point to make.  You see, this week has mostly spoiled me, and so this week is not a clear indication of how challenging the whole year will be.  For instance, my theology teacher told me and my peers several days ago that he would be absent throughout this whole week, which cleared up at least two hours in my schedule within the last five days.  Additionally, on Tuesday morning, my English teacher's wife went into labor, and so I have not had any English classes since Monday.  (Which is not to say that his wife went into coal mining or any such form of labor.  Instead, she started to deliver a baby.)  Lastly, for mysterious reasons beyond the bounds of my knowledge, my teacher for Classical Political Thought has been absent for the last two days as well.  The result was a number of days like this one, during which I had only three classes and one of them was Physical Education.  This week, I have had far more free time than my schedule will ever allow me to have again.  Don't get me wrong; I am totally grateful for all of the unstructured time with which I was blessed this week.  However, the past five days have definitely given me a false impression of what senior year as a whole will be, and that makes me fear for the worst, since that is in my nature.

So far, the class that I have enjoyed the most is Biblical Hebrew.  Including myself, there are only six students in this course, and we have all been asked the same question countless times by various people: "Why the heck would you learn Hebrew?"  I have heard a lot of answers to this question, and I have many reasons of my own.  For example, I have already taken three years of Latin and now I am sick of it, but I am still interested in studying classical languages.  Since Greek is not offered as a class at my high school, it was only natural to take Biblical Hebrew when the opportunity arose.  This brings me to my next reason, which is that I may never get another chance to learn Hebrew.  Sometimes I just have to take particular chances because I know that if I don't then I will always wonder what might have happened whenever I let my mind wander to those events.  My third (and possibly my most important) reason is that I really enjoy the company of all of that people involved in this course.  The instructor is a theology teacher from whom I learned in sophomore year, and I always enjoyed his class for his interesting insights, his miscellaneous information, and his unmatched sense of humor.  Plus, my peers in Biblical Hebrew are some of my closest friends, including my best buddy Brian.  (Do you remember Brian?  Well I'm sure he remembers you.  He says hi, and he wants you to know he's doing well.)  Despite all that, it was my good pal Eduardo who had by far the best answer to the haunting question, "Why the heck would you learn Hebrew?"  He simply replied, "Because it's awesome, dude."  I could not have said it better myself.

Biblical Hebrew has pretty much everything that I look for in an ideal class.  First of all, it is both fun and laid back.  Just yesterday, we were beginning to learn about chapter seven.  When we came to the vocabulary section, the teacher pointed out that the Hebrew word for camel is included, which struck all of us as rather odd and amusing.  Brian stated, "You know, I don't think we've even learned the word for 'girl' yet, but now we've already learned the word for 'camel.'"  Laughing and nodding his head, the teacher responded, "Well, it can get very lonely out in the desert."  Spontaneous, clever, and absurd moments like these send me into hysterical laughter on a regular basis during Biblical Hebrew class.  As if that weren't enough, the class is also very intriguing for me.  There is one particular piece of information that I found so interesting that I explained to several of my friends just after learning about it from the Hebrew teacher.  He began his explanation by mentioning that there is an idiom in Hebrew that seems very strange to English speakers who study the language.  Of course it is common knowledge to us that the future is ahead of us and the past is behind us.  Well, the early peoples who wrote in ancient Hebrew would disagree with that statement which we hold true.  They commonly said that their pasts were ahead of them and their futures were behind them.  These idioms are contradictory because of the differences in how each one considers the time line.  We usually think of time in terms of motion.  We are moving towards the future ahead of us, and we are also leaving the past behind us.  In Hebrew, however, the time line is considered in a visual sense.  Your past is ahead of you because you can see you past, and your future is behind you because you can not see you future.  You can see what is right in front of you, but you can not see that which is behind you.  "So, they're walking backwards," Brian replied.  Personally, while the teacher was explaining this idea, I got chills in my spine because it fascinated me so much.  I hadn't realized this before, but apparently I get chills when I am hearing something really interesting.

I could say more about this first week of classes, but I would like to save that material for my next post.  And I hope that I will be able to follow that one up with several more about the remarkable events that this year is sure to include.  Indeed, as a senior, I've got a lot of fun and excitement ahead of me.  Or behind me, depending on how you look at it.

End Post.

Tell Me What's My Lesson:

I intended to write a blog entry as soon as my classes as a senior started.  Unfortunately, my life was swiftly thrown into disarray, mostly by the cancellation of a single class.  All the way back in the spring, I was told that in my senior year I would take all of the classes which I listed as my first choices: Introduction to Psychology, Calculus, Computer Graphic Arts, and Hebrew.  Can you guess which one was canceled before this new academic year started?  I'll give you a hint.  Even though no one has given me a completely strait answers (instead answers have ranged from small parabolas to huge ellipses), I am fairly certain that the plug was pulled on this class due to lack of student interest and some scheduling complications.  Did you catch the hint?  The "plug was pulled"?  Wink, wink.  Yes, Computer Graphic Arts got the ax.  And, because my luck commanded it to be so, the administration removed this class just as fantastic, brand new computers were installed throughout the school.  Needless to say, I was upset, especially because I was not warned about this decision.  I only found out when I looked at my schedule online and I saw "Classical Political Thought" rather than "Computer Graphic Arts."  I have only a vague memory of expressing any interest in taking Classical Political Thought as my backup class.  As interesting as the subject may seem, there is more reading involved than I can handle with this schedule.  My workload was once so carefully and perfectly crafted when I was supposed to take Computer Graphic Arts.  Now, with loads of additional work to do concerning the college application process, my workload will probably become unmanageable soon enough.  I am currently in talks with the school's governing bodies about how I might alleviate this problem, and I hope that soon I will write to you again to explain what I brilliant solution I will have invented.

I must get some sleep very soon, or else I may never be able to recover from the addiction to energy drinks that I have already begun accidentally.  I will talk about this upsetting development in my life and more when I return in the near future to explain more about the beginning of my senior year.

End Post.

Requiem:

Some things have changed since I last wrote a blog entry on August 17th.  There are people who have asked me why I haven't been blogging.  I always have some poor excuse.  I've told some folks that I have been too tired.  I have told others that I have been too busy.  Earlier today, I even chose to ignore my parents as they asked that same question, pretending I did not hear them as I played with our dog Speedy.  The truth is that I don't exactly know why I took that hiatus from blogging, but I do know one thing for sure: I haven't written a word since my grandfather died on August 18th, aside from a single poem that I do not intend to share with you.  As my friend G.I. Joe told me, "There's always some poetry after somebody dies."  Until he said that, I did not think that the two were related, but perhaps he was right.  The impact of my grandfather's death was not sudden.  Nonetheless, it was jarring because he used to be my last living grandparent.  Some of you may remember that I lost my grandmother just last year.

Already I'm at a loss for words.  This ought to explain why I haven't been writing posts.  I've been dreading this moment when I don't know what to say and every new sentence I come up with seems disgusting and ridden with angst that no one in their right mind would want to read.  Take that sentence, for instance.  I hate it.  I loathe it.  In my mind, it just screams, "troubled teens who writes about his woes on a LiveJournal through tears and smeared black makeup."  I don't wear makeup.  I wore black eyeliner once, but that was only because I allowed my girlfriend to put it on me and it got a laugh from someone else later.  But I don't want to talk about that.  I would like to state a few facts about my grandfather, just to let you understand why he is dearly missed by so many people.  He was a member of the United States Coast Guard during World War II.  He is survived by seventeen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.  He greatly enjoyed reading the newspaper and watching television, especially sports.  As a matter of fact, he was buried with both a newspaper and a miniature television, among other things.  He was without a doubt the kindest, most generous person I have ever met, and I will be very happy if I live to be even half as loved as he is by his friends and family.

I am glad that I have gotten that off my chest.  Now I ought to go to bed.  Summer is over.  There's no looking back.  Tomorrow is my first day of senior year.

End Post.