Lessons
- Share: |sher| v.
1. The irreplaceable red block has you crazed. It’s just after nap time and before
playtime, and that block is taunting you from across the brightly yellow room. You
want nothing but to hold this block. You can feel the block stare deeply at you and
taunt you, just daring you to pick it up and clutch it between your chubby little
fingers. You are possessed enough by this object to speed across the rainbow-
colored tiles as soon as the lady in the plaid skirt says you may. Once the utterly
fascinating block of Maple Wood rests in your sticky hands, another kid walks up
with the same ambition and attempts to take away your pride and joy, but you
are not having it. The block, now an ultimate traitor, had invited an unwanted guest to
its abode. The faint whining and soon vociferous screaming over this block is
recognized by the teacher and that’s when you both learn lesson #1: Share your
things!
- Nice: |nīs| adj.
1. In nothing but a diaper, a shirt, and a Woody hat, the screaming boy’s little
chubby feet stomp around the house. In the playroom, you are incredibly irritated
by this noise because it’s hard to focus on what Barbie was going to say to
Ken. Walking your hot-pink polished toe nails over to the destructive and disruptive
path of the wild child, you decide it'd be a good idea to trip him. The sounds of your
brother’s cry as he plummets to the ground alert your mom, and lesson #2 soon
followed: Be nice!
- Strangers: |strān-jərz| n.
1. These people are more feared in your 8-year-old mind than Ursula the Sea
Witch or Captain Hook.
2. The people that would never actually dare drive the normal speed limit but
rather creep along at a slow and sinister pace.
3. The scary owners of the white van of doom with some words you've never
seen before splattered across it.
4. You don’t know what’s louder, the sound of the Toy Story reruns playing or
the squeaky breaks of a car outside. You are now more entranced by this mystery
car than even the red block from back in preschool. Of course you ditch Buzz
Lightyear and Jessie and run to the window by the front door, intensely searching
for the source of the noise. Just before you open the door, the car parks in front of
your house! A fat old man who resembles Santa--a very, very un-jolly, neglected,
nobody-believed-in Santa--exits the mysterious vehicle along with his accomplice,
or head elf, who, come to think of it, reminds you an awful lot of the stretched-out
boy from Willy Wonka. He’s tall, lanky, and incredibly menacing. Then you notice a
box in their hands. Who are these people? What’s in the box? Is it something bad?
Maybe it’s a puppy! But it could also be an evil weapon sent from outer space, of
course! As different scenarios quickly traumatize your overimaginative little brain,
Mom sees you and shuts the opened door and announces lesson #3: Don’t talk to
strangers. She then opens the door again for the Verizon cable installers who
apparently had trouble finding your house.
- Boys: |bȯiz| n.
1. These dangerous creatures are the world’s greatest underestimated villains.
2. The only things that may even possibly surpass the evilness of Ursula,
Captain Hook, and strangers.
3. It’s the first day in middle school, and you feel so old and mature. Day by day,
you are more exposed to different and older people. You actually begin to start
speaking in class and in the halls to other people aside from your teachers. Before
you know it, you start making friends, girls and boys. After your first encounter with
this other unknown and unchartered species, you begin to have some sort of weird
feelings when they are around. One boy in particular seems to stick in your mind--
forget about being able to silence the butterflies you get just after a simple glance
from him in the hallway. Time goes by, but you are too shy to say anything, and you
think and hope he is too. Unfortunately, he seems perfectly willing and capable of
talking to other girls. In your mother’s arms, tears pouring from your face, and the
painful aching of your 11-year-old heart, the wise words of lesson #4 are whispered
in your ear: Boys will hurt your feelings!
- School: |skül| n.
1. A place where many hours of monotonous work and many hours that should
have been spent doing fundamental human activities like sleeping or eating are
represented by a simple letter or percentage.
2. The place where that letter holds a high position on your list of priorities.
3. Where you blindly strive and work interminably for something or some place
or some occupation of which you do not yet know.
4. A place where your long list of many obligations and high expectations are
not only welcomed, but expected. (Everyone else has them too.)
5. Freshman year: you step into a new school, a new building with new students
and new teachers, but little do you know, you’ve stepped into a new way of living as
well. Your priorities and passions are no longer restricted to the high-school football
field every Friday night, but rather expand as you explore all the new opportunities
your school offers.
6. Sophomore year: you have now not only adapted to your surroundings but
have adjusted well. Now, your goal is to maintain the energy and effort you had last
year.
7. Junior year: by now, your life is flying by. Not only are you fighting the futile
battle of balancing a social life, a sport life, a family life, and an academic life, but a
new life is being introduced to you: the college life. This idea frightens you
profoundly as you are the first to pursue a real college education in your family. As
you struggle with the idea of where even to begin, you realize the battle has only just
started.
8. Senior year: as the smoke clears from your exhausted head from all of the
studying and preparation done in the previous year, you focus on yourself--what
you want to do and how you will do it. This is where you see if your work has paid
off. This is where you get to see if the endless cups of coffee and late-night runs for
creamer were worth it. Or the countless hours of sleep you didn't get. This is your
year.
9. As long as you do well here, you should have no worries. Good grades in high
school equals good college, good job, and a good life, right? It’s causation not
correlation, right? Lesson #5: Do well in school!
- Grounded: |'ground did| v.
1. Your current state.
2. The anomalous brew consisting of a few teaspoons of anger, a tablespoon of
guilt, a half-cup of frustration, a pinch of sadness, and actually (if I’m being honest) a
couple more heaping cups of anger.
3. What results in the feeling you get in dreams in which you are running away
from someone, but you are not moving. When you are screaming something, but
nobody hears a sound. Absolute and utter frustration that is so concealed you might
be at risk of going mad.
4. The cause of the extra five pounds on the scale after watching two whole
seasons of Teen Wolf. (Now, two and a half).
5. The punishment that leads to your unhappy withdrawal from friends, social
media, and anything else that could potentially lead to eternal happiness--
because, of course, at this time, not hanging out with your friends is the end of
the world. Your parents are obviously ruining your life!
- Mature: | muh-choo r| n.
1. When you give Barbie and Ken a new dream house in your storage closet.
2. The indefinite relocation of your red blocks and Woody hats into a box that
will accomplish nothing but collect dust in your attic for the next couple of decades.
3. The realization you get once you see the meaning behind every lecture, every
sleepover you couldn’t attend, and every birthday party you weren’t allowed to go
to. Your parents’ decisions were all made in the service of a better cause, and that
cause was you.
4. When you realize how oblivious you were as a teen to the truth in the last
sentence you wrote. (Read it again.)
5. Lesson #6: Maturity comes once you realize that in order to depart from
your adolescence, you must look at the things you learned while growing through
that adolescence. You will always use lessons #1-5, no matter how old you are. They
serve as your foundation, and without them, would you be here now, writing these
words down and sharing them with others?
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