It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 7

It's the eve of New Year's Eve. The New Year is supposed to be all about awakening, resolutions and positive changes. So, I've written a story bearing that in mind. This is one about a not-so-positive change, but hey, this series hasn't been positive in the least thus far. Maybe, and just maybe, to ring in the new year, I'll post something positive to get off to a good start!

8. Viva Italia!

On a school-sanctioned trip to Italy one year, a girl got bored of following the guided tours around the historical landmarks, of little to no significance. So, naturally, she did what any other bored teenager would do - ask Siri to list the best clubs in her vicinity in Rome. Siri, obedient as always, spewed out her favorites. Now, going to a club by herself (or rather, with only Siri by her side), would be un-cool, so the girl was first going to have to befriend some locals.

She arrived at a fountain. It was one of those typically Roman ones with baby angels spitting out water through conchs. Nearby, just lazily enjoying the sun, were a few hot Italian ladies, who seemed to be about the same age as our dear protagonist. She walked up and said "Ciao!". Through Siri, she expressed the desire to get wasted at a Roman club because, well, "when in Rome". Keenly, the girls accepted the offer, and asked for the location of the girl's hotel. She gave it. They agreed on a time. The blueprint had been laid.

There was one small issue. This being a school-sanctioned trip, there was supervision. Unlike our darling alcoholic-on-vacation from story #7, this girl did have some elders to report to. Upon arrival to the hotel, the girl began drafting plans for how she would escape the hotel past curfew. She painstakingly did this, failing to realize that the supervisors here were on vacation themselves. Sure, the adults in the hotel were supposed to make sure that the students were safe and sound, but they weren't going to make their own lives more difficult by standing over each student like a hawk. They trusted that the students present on this excursion were A) Too fearful of the system to try anything. (By "fearful of the system", I mean phased by the simple notion that adults were "watching" them). and B) Old enough to safely and securely manage to survive the 10-day trip, without too much assistance. After all, why would you destroy your own vacation by making yourself a surveillance device, just to make your students lives miserable?

So, all this girl's planning was irrelevant. She walked by her supervisor's room to hear if she was asleep, and instead heard laughter and clinking glass. The teachers were having just as much fun. The girl walked down to the lobby at around 10pm and found her new friends waiting for her in skimpy clothing. She wasn't dressed like a nun herself. They headed out into the Roman night. It was beautiful. They arrived at some nearby club, where the girls knew the bouncer (lucky for the girl. How did she manage to make such suiting friends?). They went in, and it was everything our sweet girl could've hoped for. She was content. First thing was first - sex. No, no, not sex per se - sex on the beach: the cocktail. They ordered a few. Down the hatch they went. Then a few more. Then a few more. Eventually, the girl lost count.

Regardless, she kept dancing! After a night well-spent, she had to get back to the hotel. 9am was the time of the next guided tour that everybody had to be present for. By this point in the cocktail-count, the girl didn't care for going back to the lame hotel, but her adoring new friends did. They, being more stable, decided to take her back and drop her off. They lugged her through the beautiful, moonlit streets, where she broke both her heels. The entire time, she gushed over how exhilarating the night had been.

They made it to the hotel. The Roman girls brought their Asian-American friend to the reception and asked for her room number. The fine Italian gentleman at the desk looked at the situation in front of him quite normally. He asked if the girl was part of the Canadian excursion. That she was, and the Roman girls knew it, so they answered the man. The receptionist thought that his task of finding the exact room of the girl would be easy. He told the Roman girls that he would just look for a Chinese name on the list - a "Ching or a Chang or a Wang". (Living in Vancouver, I have a lot of exposure to Chinese culture, so this man sounds like an idiot to me, but perhaps Rome is lacking in Oriental flavors.) The task was much more difficult than he had imagined since everybody on the list had a Chinese last name. The school that had arrived on the trip was from my city of Vancouver. It was from my school. At my school, the population is predominantly Asian. He asked if the part-conscious girl had a first name. They weren't sure, but they tried to recall what she had said. After a few failed guesses, one Roman bambina, remembered that, on one of the texts she had received, the girl had written her name. She scrambled through her phone and found it. They now had the name, and resultantly, the room number.

The receptionist, highly understanding, handed one of the girls a set of keys to the room and requested she return them later. They got in the elevator, dropped the girl on her bed, and left after scribbling a quick little note to her about what happened.They gave the key back to the receptionist and left.

In the morning, the girl was awoken by a banging on her door. Another classmate had been sent by the teacher to awake her. She got up, scrubbed her face with a wet towel, threw up once, slipped on some less-tattered clothes and exited. No one noticed anything. One teacher called her "sleepyhead" and blamed the inability to wake up on jetlag. And it was just that easy.

With this night, our dear protagonist discovered that, as she would later confide in me, she was a "heavyweight". She explained how grateful she was to the Roman ladies for helping her and being so caring and attentive, and how grateful she was to the fine, Italian gentleman-receptionist for not saying a peep to a teacher.

She referred to that night as her "alcoholic-awakening". (Get it? There is a "sexual-awakening", but this is with alcohol. Ha-ha!)

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 6

I'd like to make this day sound special, but it isn't, so I won't try anything. No fancy introduction today since I'm actually going to hang out with some friends, and I'd like to get to them ASAP. I'll stay true to my word and continue with the series today though, so here's the post:

7. Planes, Trains, and Hallucinations

During one fun summer, a few (5 or 6, this is an old story, so I can't recall exactly) friends decided to getaway and hopped on a plane to get to a nice, little resort town somewhere in America. Here, they shared a hotel room and a lot of laughs. Everyone was nice and gentle, except for one of the travelers. She was close to an alcoholic. During a dinner one night, as the story goes, the friends found themselves a bottle of wine. With parents in a completely different country, the kids saw it as the perfect opportunity to sample this magical drink that they had never had the chance to sample before. They left the drink at the hotel, and all vowed to each other to not open it until dinner time. Not knowing what to eat, or how to cook, they walked down the city streets in search of food. Somewhere amidst the bright lights, they found a pizza shop and ordered two pizzas. They got back to the crammed little space and opened their bottle.

One girl advocated for drinking abstinence, and refused to try the forbidden fruit, blindly trusting her parent-ally-imposed initial denial of alcohol. The rest of the group decided that they would only drink if everyone else drank too, so the bottle got re-capped, or, re-corked, I should say, without a missing drop.

After dinner, the lot decided to take a walk around the city. After all, they wanted to see this new American city and all it had to offer. But the alcoholic friend just couldn't bear the sight of wasted wine. She insisted that the wine be brought along. One of the friends concurred, and the rest seemed impartial. So, into a backpack it went, and off the gang went. They walked around until they arrived at some pond, or lake, or river (I can't remember exactly what body of water it was). They decided to settle here. How romantic would it be to look on the body of water while the sun set, and watch the city go from dusk, to twilight, to dark? They sat down and the girl pulled out the bottle of wine and two previously-purchased chocolate bars. They opened the chocolate first and separated it equally.

The alcoholic wrestled with her desire to open the wine. She thought about leaving it in her bag and not succumbing to the temptation in front of her, but, with one small command from the other friend, the alcoholic had it out. Around the same time, three of the members decided to go for a midnight swim in the secluded body of water. Everyone was quite familiar with everyone so that fact that nobody had a swimsuit on hand was fine. The three went for a swim, and despite it being summer, the body of water was already cooling down. When they got out, it was a little chilly. However, by now, the two alcoholics were already a little warmer, so they offered up what extra garments they had on hand to the swimmers to keep them warm.

No one was in the mood to leave yet, so they all hung around the lake a little longer. The two drinkers offered wine to everyone, but the rest of the group felt too much of a loyalty to the abstinent-drinker to drink. Nonetheless, they didn't judge the two drinkers for choosing to drink themselves. One of the group members actually took a few swigs, but then got hit with guilt and decided to remain loyal to the abstinent-drinker.

As they sat there, a lot was apparently revealed about everyone. They consoled each other's grievances, and they cried. The abstinent-drinker complained and the alcoholic consoled.

Note that, of the two drinkers, one was normal and the other was border-line alcoholic. As the two of them passed the bottle between themselves, they were supposed to take a sip each. Naturally, it didn't work that way because of the circumstances. The normal girl would take a sip and pass it to the alcoholic, who would take a good 4 sips. So, the split wasn't equal, to say the least. Mind you, the alcoholic was also quite a bit shorter than her normal counterpart, so that probably affected the outcomes. Everything seemed fine while the group was sitting at the lake, but then it came time to go back to the hotel. A few of the people actually thought they would and planned on sleeping at the lake, but the abstinent-drinker declared a fear of being attacked by wildlife, and requested to go back. The two drinkers were in quite a happy state and so they agreed.

That's when things got more ugly. The two drinkers stood up, and the alcoholic almost fell back down. The normal drinker, being in still a normal state, realized what was happening and helped the alcoholic to her feet. That was the easy part, for now they had to all walk through the city back to the hotel. The stubborn and proud alcoholic insisted that she was fine to walk alone and that she didn't need the help of her less-inebriated friend. Her friend let her go, and as soon as she did, the alcoholic began stumbling on a tangent off to the side of the road.

The problem was that, to get back to the hotel, one had to follow a road which was right beside the body of water. If you veered too far on a tangent, you would fall right into the water, if you veered too far the other direction, you would end up on the road and get hit by a car. The better friend recognized this and immediately grabbed the drunk. The drunk kept insisting she could walk, and kept telling her friend to let go of her. At this point, the friend kept nodding along, but was certain that the alcoholic would not be able to walk unaided, and refused to take the risk of allowing the alcoholic to fall into the water. They made it back to the hotel, which is where the alcoholic's euphoric mood plummeted into one of depression.

The friends first line of action was to lay the alcoholic down on the bed, which was supposed to be shared by 3 people. They brought her to the bed, and like the girl from story #6, the girl flopped herself onto the bed in a starfish position (limbs extended to all sides). Here, she began a drunken rambling about the state of things at home and began crying intensely. All the friends gathered around and consoled their alcoholic friend, who was usually the one consoling them. They waited for her to go to sleep.

One of the guys took it upon himself to hide all the knives in the house, due to fears that the alcoholic may decide to kill herself sometime in the night. Once the alcoholic declared her desire to go to pee, the same boy felt inclined to follow her to the bathroom to make sure that she wouldn't try to kill herself there. She didn't and instead went back to the bed to pass out. Once she did, the two people who were supposed to share the bed, went to sleep on the floor. The alcoholic was left with a glass of water and a lot of hugs.

In the morning, everything was normal. The alcoholic woke up before everybody else, and went to buy everyone breakfast to make up for the debacle the night prior. She served it, when they all woke up, and no one mentioned the night prior. No one wanted to make the alcoholic feel bad. The exception was the other drinker who explained the whole fiasco to the alcoholic. Later that day, the alcoholic went to throw up a few times. The whole group arrived at a restaurant for lunch, where the waiter, not noticing their being underage, offered to start the whole group with drinks. With this, a burst of laughter and a quick "no". They ate, and that was the last of the mentions of the night prior.

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 5

Happy 28th December! This is my personal favorite: A girl who is generally a good student - hard-working, diligent and more, went to a get-together one fine Thanksgiving. Innocent enough. At this Thanksgiving get-together the alcohol was flowing. Not just flowing, it was water-falling. It was a bunch of kids, one of whom was the girl from story #5. I think that there was approximately 5 kids present and drinking.

6. To Walk, or to Vodka?

This particular girl is a short, very skinny one. That means that her body probably has a low-tolerance to alcohol. No, definitely has a low-tolerance. See, my suggestion is to always take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror before you go off into a hazed night of alcohol. This girl obviously didn't heed my advice. At this house party, she found herself with a bottle of something in her hands. After a little encouragement from her buddies to "chug, chug, chug!" She did. A solid 750mL of some vodka-like substance flooded her throat. It seemed fine at first, that is, until her bladder called. She announced "I need to pee!" This would be more OK if they were all still in the house, but they weren't. They had all decided to go on a nice stroll around campus. Now that she needed to pee, they had a challenge ahead of themselves. So they assured her that they would find a bathroom as soon as possible, but that wasn't sufficient in her drunken mind. To their consoling remark, she exclaimed "No! Fuck that! Fuck social norms! I'm gonna do it right here!" You can imagine the despair faced by her friends at this moment. How would they deal with a girl peeing in public, in the middle of the campus field? So they tried their utmost to assure her that she would be much happier in a bathroom. She told them to "Fuck off", but, with a little tugging from her friend, she got up and beyond avoided what could've been a highly awkward moment.

They dragged her along until they found a port-a-potty. Here, the girl from story #5, her best friend, told the group that she would go in with the currently drunk girl to make sure nothing goes too bad. Everyone agreed that that was a good idea. Then, as soon as the two girls went in, all that could be heard from the outside was a thump. Somebody had dropped. Inside, the girl peed after plopping herself down on the public toilet, and then began vomiting violently. As she vomited, her inhibitions were completely non-existent. As a result, she did what everyone has always wanted to do, but has been too bound by 'social norms' to actually follow through with - stick their head into the port-a-potty! She began burying her head into the literal shit in the toilet. Her friend tried to pull her head out, but she didn't want to leave. Miraculously, her friend seemed to manage to pull her head out of the toilet before too much of her head got enrobed in, well, in poop. She wrestled her out to where the others were waiting and explained the kerfuffle. The girl couldn't stand upright, so one of the boys had to pick her up.

Someone suggested they lay her down on one of the nearby benches, and so they did. One boy, who had been trained in first aid, did some tests to, I guess, assess the damage. He thus ordered another boy to go to the nearest store and buy water and straws. Once the materials were there, the first aid boy stuck a straw into the water bottle and insisted that the drunk girl drink. She refused. When the boy persisted, she still refused. Eventually, the group decided to resort to the seemingly more simple task of getting her to sit up straight.

After the strongest boy had lifted her to carry her to the bench, he had made out clear to the group that it was unviable to expect that he could carry her completely limp body all the way to get house. Everyone now knew that it was pertinent she be able to at least sit up straight so that it could be possible to get her home.

As soon as they got her to sit up, she flopped right over. The second time, they sat her up and got one boy to hold her from behind. Now, instead of flopping over, she was upright. The boy told her just how important it was for her to be able to stand up. To his remarks, she said "fuck off." The pain of no avail showed it's face.

Somehow, she managed to sit up herself after a lengthy time.

The group decided to port her to her best friend's house. The best friend called her mother and asked if it would be cool for her best friend to crash for the night at her house. Her mom was fine with it.

On the journey to the friend's house, the drunk girl was partially carried, partially walked and partially passed out. One Asian man, walking with his girlfriend happened to see the scene. He stopped and asked the group "It would be irresponsible of me to not ask if she's alright."

"Oh she's fine." Everyone replied.

"So, what is this? Molly or --" He inquired.

"It's just alcohol." They replied.

The guy seemed shocked by the response, but nonetheless felt his duty to help and offered to aid in carrying her. He did somewhat, but he wasn't Hercules himself, so his efforts were fairly futile. After some time, he gave up and went home, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

With a stroke of luck, they managed to get her to the best friend's house. There, she dropped herself onto the bed without restraint. In one straight, matchstick-like position, she dropped, and the lights in her mind went out too. The group called her sister to pick her up, and left before they could see the final product of the whole event. The girl was fine afterwards: this is a fact.

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 4

I get it. You're coming off of your Boxing Day high. Yesterday, you were likely attacked by a mob that didn't like you taking the last Super-Ultra-Mega-Tronic Game Master 6000. Now, you're lying on the hospital bed with nothing to do. I know you've probably scrolled through your Instagram feed over and over, hoping that someone will post something new to no avail. It's boring, isn't it? That's why I'm here to help! Today, instead of posting just one thing, I'll post two stories of Drugs and Alcohol mishaps. This way, you'll have a little something to busy yourself with for the rest of the day. Ok, scratch that, for the next 5 minutes. Enjoy. And, don't worry, unlike part #3, these two are short. 

4. A Hundred Messages

I was on my way to bed one night, and as I was setting my alarm for the next morning, I got 6 rapid-fire messages in quick succession. All said the same thing: "Nat!" It was midnight. Getting such messages was terrifying. Terrible thoughts flooded my mind. Why would this boy, who I had met only a few months ago, send me these messages so late at night? Was he getting kidnapped? Oh gosh. What could be going on? I would quickly find out.

The next messages were things asking why we weren't married yet, telling me how beautiful I was, and explaining to me that I was a goddess who should be dating him. Fun. He had no recollection of such messages in the morning. None. At school, he seemed completely normal and then, when I jokingly mentioned the night, he was terrified. Poor boy. He explained to me how much he had drunk, and I understood. All of a sudden, things were very awkward between us.

5. Age is Just a Number

Once upon a time there was a girl who really wanted to go to a rave. It was the goal of her life. She found me and, naturally, since I seem to be the biggest drugaholic (drug addict, plus alcoholic), asked me where she could go to one. She had been begging me for a while to take her along to any party I get invited to. Wow, that's desperate.

Eventually, she decided to go to a rave by herself. There she took God knows what. (Likely ecstasy, though - that's the rave drug of choice.). She took a few shots, or rather, a few 10s of shots. And her night ended really well. That's sarcasm. Because she ended up making out with a 22-year-old (she's 17). Again, wow.

Merry Macarons!

Well, the festive season is one famous for bringing about change. People make new year's resolutions; they try to fix the supposed ills in either their characters or their bodies or their lives. Now, you probably think that this post is going to be one that explains why I'm so irked by new year's resolutions, but you're wrong. No, I am irked by new year's resolutions, but I'm not going to write about that particular subject right now.

In light of the holiday season, I'm going to do something out of the ordinary myself! I'm going to share something more than grievances with you! I'm going to share the sweeter, more-human side with you, and I hope you don't mind it.

It may be hard to believe that even I have a soul, but it's true. Sometimes, and only sometimes, I like to put criticizing aside and do something cute, like bake! Actually, at one point during this summer, I strongly considered going to Paris after high school to become a chef. That is a true fact. And, well, after I look at how these turned-out, it might just be a good idea!

Often, I actually cook huge (like, 10-course) meals for my family or friends. You can see proof of that on my mom's blog. But, last night, my mom informed me that she had bought almond meal. Being that it's the prime ingredient in Macarons, I decided to try my luck by making them! And, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. Macarons are difficult to make, but these turned out surprisingly well. I found the recipe on the French cooking site "Marmiton". That's where my knowledge of French came in handy. I was able to correctly read and interpret the recipe to make the beautiful macarons I did!

So, to break the saturation of whining posts here, here's a glimpse of what I made! Note that I put great effort into both the making of the macarons, and the photographing of the macarons. I tried to make them look very magazine-esque.

Now the recipe said to use red food coloring, but being the radical rebel I am, I used blue! Blue has zero to do with the filling flavors I chose. Oh yeah, here's a note: macaron shells are all the same, what differs them is the filling.

Now, I tried to make an Earl grey filling because that happens to be my favorite. Unfortunately, I failed at doing so, so I resorted to safer options. I made three different fills and they all turned out pretty good. The fills were: Lemon Curd, Chocolate and Blackberry.

I've made lemon curd before, so doing it again was no fuss. Making the chocolate filing was super easy because I just tempered some chocolate. And, the blackberry filling was actually making use o the blackberry jam I made over the summer. Right! You probably don't know this! Every summer, I go to Stanley Park and I pick blackberries. I make a jam out of them, and I preserve it in Mason jars. My father loves the jam because there's no nothing added. Literally, it's just blackberries. I made a lot of jam in the summer, so I still have jars left in the fridge. Yes, it's almost January, but my jam is a well-made preserve, so it is still good. Yesterday, when I took it out of the fridge, it was perfectly tasty. The macarons were delicious with it.

There was only one problem with the entire thing, and that was baking time. I made three batches of macarons, and one batch ended up a little over-done. Nonetheless, it was a quite a good little bake, and it was highly therapeutic to me to busy myself with such whimsical sweetness!

Thanks for reading! Maybe I'll post some more stuff like this here later.

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 3

Now, today is Boxing Day, so you're probably very interested in the sales and the deals, but, these stories are my gifts to you, so please, read up. Going to the store to buy an X-Box almost guarantees you will end up in the hospital because you got trampled. Oppositely, reading my blog from the safety and comfort of your own home almost guarantees you will end up still at home, unmoved, because you didn't get trampled. 

3. Drunk and In the Trunk

It was a dark and stormy night. It was summer, and those beautiful summer rains were falling. It was the night of a school dance. Everyone was having fun and enjoying the loud pop music and intense strobe lights. How wonderful! I was expected to stand in the bag-check line with my friend for about half an hour. Uh, no thanks. So, I found a friend at the front of the line and budged in with him. Behind him in line was the stoner group of guys. One said "hey! no budging" in a joking sort of way. That was the extent of the comments and we waited to be let through. After passing the most halfhearted inspection ever, I was let in and able to begin dancing. The stoners got in shortly after us. They all had weed in their shoes or boxers, but no one could ever catch them because, well, the searches were there just for show.

The stoners never showed up to the school dances but they did show up to this one for some reason. Needless to say, they weren't amused by the top 40 music and lack of smoke-clouds, so they decided to leave half-way through to -yes, obviously- get higher than the empire state. I didn't notice that they were gone until I went to sit on the couch that they had been sitting on. Quickly, I got back up to dance. About an hour passed, and one of them came back. He texted me to tell me to come outside. I got my friend to dance with someone else for a while and I went outside. I didn't have my things because they had to stay inside if you wanted to come back in later. So, I was in a tanktop and shorts. Luckily, it was summer, but unluckily, it was raining.

Outside, a very intoxicated stoner was waiting for me. He started mumbling some stuff about how much he loved me. I helped him get to a bench nearby and lie down. That's where he suggested we go back to the dance and dance together. Gladly, except that it isn't the best idea for me to be carrying in a half-conscious body through the bag-check area. Instead, I countered his offer by saying that we should dance right there together. Happily for both of us, he accepted. He said that we should play some music, and promptly handed me his phone. I scrolled through the playlist, and announced all the options I could, "Sublime? Tupac? Biggie? Mac Demarco?"

"No! No! Fuck, man, I thought you had taste in music!" He exclaimed, upset the same way a 2-year-old is after getting the cookie jar taken away.

"No? So what music then?"

"The song by the Pomegranates."

I was briefly confused. I had a hard time believing I had heard him correctly in his drunken stupor. But, nonetheless, I looked for the Pomegranates in his list and found it. There was only one song. So, I pressed play on "Anywhere you go" and he kneeled down as to offer me this dance. We danced through it and as we did, I realized that his phone could be more useful to me. I could find the contact information of his buddies, call them and help both of us.

After the dance, we went to sit on the bench. He had some trouble sitting, so he decided to lay his head down. As he did, his neck touched my legs. As he put his head down, he made a disgusted face and said "Ewww! You're so slimy!" I smiled and said "Yeah, probably because I was dancing and now I'm sitting in the rain!" At this, he laughed and uttered "I'm singing in the rain!" I said "Yup!" Then, his face quickly changed into one of deep concern, and, like a man possessed, he shot upright and sat on the bench. "You're gonna catch a cold!" Quickly, he took off his t-shirt and held his arm out to offer it to me. I laughed and told him to keep it, and put it back on. He looked at me almost angrily and told me to put it on. So I covered my legs with it like a blanket. His face changed to one of approval. Then, he put his head down and stated just a few grievances about his mom. Then he made the statement that he was being a "pussy" and that that wasn't why he called me out. Instead, he kept on telling me about my fantastic-ness, and about some other girls and how annoying he found them! Well, thanks.

I took the opportunity to ask him for his phone again. He gave it to me without question and quickly found the song "My Friend" by Paper Lions and played it. I pretended to be searching for the next song, even though I likely didn't need to make excuses to a inebriated guy, and instead found the contact of his friend. I sent him a text explaining the situation. The stoner kept blabbering. He talked about how he planned on walking across the ocean to leave Vancouver in favor of his mother-country. He invited me to walk across with him. Oh, I was flattered. I promised him that I'd go with him in the morning, since we couldn't leave immediately because we needed at least a few granola bars for the trek. Furthermore, he said "Nat, I know you think I'm a fuckboy, and I am. But, check it out: I'm not gonna do anything stupid tonight. I'm gonna keep this encounter so PG, you're gonna be shocked." Oh, that's excellent news!

His friend replied to me at this point and said that he would be there in 10 minutes to pick him up.

I told my unwell friend that he should go to sleep, so that in the morning we would be well-rested for our journey across the Atlantic. He almost did, until he remembered that he hadn't yet completed the task for which he had called me out. Then, he stood up, and fell over. I thought that he had hurt himself, but he assured me that he would be fine as long as I was there. Then, he instructed me to play a certain song on his phone, explained that he had learnt it for me, and that he was going to sing it from the asphalt because he couldn't quite stand at the moment. He pretended that there was a big crowd around him and said "I'd like to dedicate this one to Nat!" and began singing!

This is, to this day, likely one of the best moments of my life. It was like someone took the best parts from Adventureland, The Spectacular Now, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and every other great teen movie, and mixed them together to create the scene that I was not only beholding, but participating in too.

After finishing the song, I helped him go lie on the bench again, and he asked me if I liked his song. I told him that it was the best song I had heard in my life. To that, he proclaimed that he was a happy man and that he could now sleep! He almost did pass out, as I helped him from the asphalt to the bench, but he had just enough breath left to request that I lie down beside him. I brought it to his attention that there wasn't enough space on the bench for the both of us. Upset with his un-chivalrous action, he rolled off the bench and offered it to me. I accepted it with a "thank you". Even in his delirium, he recognized that, if I was on the bench, I couldn't be next to him because he was on the ground. Coyly, he asked if I'd be willing to lay beside him on the ground. So I myself rolled off and laid down on the wet ground. I folded his shirt and put it under our heads, he touched my hand and everything remained very "PG". I kept his music playing and checked the messages. "Sorry, traffic... Be there soon." Well, there was no traffic in my line of sight, but I wasn't going to make a fuss. This boy was after all saving me from a night that could escalate.

My unwell friend passed out into what to me seemed like a coma, while MGMT music played. It was a very deep sleep. I saw his friend's car on the horizon and got up to flag it down. When his friend got out of the car, he said "You know, there was no need to flag me down. It's not like there are two people laying in the rain at every corner, you know?" I ignored his remark and said "Cool, you're late." He smiled and said "I know, I'm sorry. And I'm also sorry for whatever stupid shit he did. I'll keep a tighter leash on him next time he's off." I said "It's fine, not your problem. What's the plan?" He said "We'll pop him in the trunk and take him to my place. He'll sleep it off and have no idea what happened - the usual." I said "OK fine. Are you OK to drive, though?" His friend rolled his eyes and said "Bro, I made it here, didn't I? Don't worry bout it. Go back to your stupid dance and chill out. Your friends are probably worried." I agreed.

One more guy walked out of the car. I looked in the back seat and there were a few other people who looked similarly messed up, so I understood why my dear Atlantic-Ocean-Voyage-Buddy was required to be placed in the trunk. The two boys looked at me and stated "You're gonna have to help here unless you want him to stay here." I asked what they needed. "Grab his legs!" So I did. We carried him to the trunk and they calmly dropped him in. He didn't budge. His eyes didn't flutter. He was completely out of it. I asked for reaffirmation of his well-being and they assured me. They drove away and I went back to my dance. I went to the bathroom to come to my senses. Rapidly, I got back to dancing and it was as if no one had even noticed my absence. Awesome.

I feel like it was as a result of my friendship and association with this guy that everybody thought that I was also a stoner, and thus confided all of their own drug-a-riffic secrets to me.

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Part 2

Today, after all, is Christmas, so I won't bombard you with a long one...

2. Petrifying Pot

One day, in grade nine, when I was brand new to my school, a group of stoners asked me if I wanted to go "blaze" with them. (What is it about my face that just screams drug-abuser and alcoholic?) I said no, and they were very accepting of my answer. In fact, even with my rejection of their drugs, they still stayed very close to me and were always very nice to me. Anyways, after some time, they came to talk to me about a friend of mine and his terrible reaction to smoking marijuana for the first time. He had supposedly begun screaming and panting. I found it hilarious, and so did these fabulous stoners. Now, this story isn't all that interesting until I point out that the screaming subject in question was a 13-year-old. 13 is pretty young. I didn't think that pot was something that started so soon.

It's All Over-Rated Except Drugs and Alcohol - Preamble and Tale #1

First, let me give credit to the duo Cherub for the excellent lyric, from the song Doses and Mimosas, which has come to be my title!

No, it's not my opinion, but it is the opinion of many of my peers. And it's so sad.

To wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, I will be posting a series of Drunken Tales. Each day, until the end of my break, I will be releasing a Tale of Intoxication to tickle your fancy this festive time of year. Surely, a few will induce laughs, a few will induce shock and a few will induce a delectable mixture of both. So, the next time you are stumbling on your walk of shame in the new year, think back to one of the stories you read here - it might just make you feel a little better about yourself!

Before Tale #1, I've written a preamble, so read this first, then enjoy tale #1.

About a week ago, Winter Break started here in Vancouver. I'm in grade 12. This is the last Christmas Break I will ever get to have as a high-schooler. One would expect for this to be the best Christmas Break ever! I should be out there partying, enjoying various activities and spending dear times with dear friends, who I may not get to see around the same time next year. Except I'm at home, rotting away. Actually, I'm blogging, but it's not like that is so much better. 

I have successfully managed to alter my sleeping schedule to the point that I am basically nocturnal. I go to sleep around 3am and I wake up around 1pm. It's not hard to do that here in Vancouver: the sun hasn't showed it's bright face in this city in a while. It is fair, at this point, to say that the sun does not rise in Vancouver. All 24 hours of our day here are dark and grey. The sky is grey, and all it does is cry. You need to have the lights on all the time because you can't see in the light. I feel like I'm living on the set of some murder mystery, like True Detective. It's ugly. Naturally, it impacts mood greatly. Lack of sun has been scientifically proven to lead to terrible things - more car crashes, more suicides, more tears which mimic the ones falling from the clouds above. People become sadder. What escalates the sadness? The fact that there isn't much to do; you can't break free from your misery by busying yourself with some activities because there isn't much to do.

From what I've heard, the situation is different in other places. Some cities really come alive in the winter; in this festive time. New York is famous for having a great set of things to do lined up in the cold months. Shops stay open for a while, people go and pass the time in an almost mesmerizing way. The beautiful lights, the beautiful trees, and so on.

Vancouver shuts down in the winter. Store hours get shorter, so there isn't an ability to hang out in places past 7pm. It's too cold to sit outside, so that's not an option. No new activities pop-up during the season, so there is nothing to break oneself out of the mundane-ness of life.

Does this make sense?

The gloomy weather, paired with the fact that there aren't options to make your life brighter, makes everything all the more dull. You're stuck in a rut. Nothing new to do for fun. Weather that seems almost denouncing of fun. And, one very sad atmosphere. This is Vancouver in the winter. It is a city in hibernation. So, unless you yourself can dream up some incredible things to do, you are a forced to join the hibernation of the season. It's so depressing.

During school, the situation is a little better because, frankly, there is something to do. You must go to school, and therefore use approximately 6 hours of your day. Sometimes, you use even more because of after-school activities, such as clubs and sports. Once school lets out, you're on your own, though. There is no body to dictate what you must allocate your time to. It's completely up to you. And therein lies the problem.

When you're young, you don't ask for freedom and you don't care what it is you do. Everything seems brand-spanking-new and shiny. Winter break rolls around, and it excites you. Your parents give you a sort of schedule. Mom offers to take you skating, you set up a play-date with your friend, you sign up for some camp, or something else along those lines. You have something to do. As you get older, those things lose their luster. You no longer want to go skating with your mom because that's so lame. You have had so many play-dates with your friends by now that another one is just so routine. There aren't really any camps available to you, and even if there were, it would be so un-cool of you to take part in one. So, what is one to do? You have to find some way to break free from the cycle. You have to discover something brand-spanking-new and exciting that can transport you to the wonderful world you used to live in constantly as a young kid.

I know first-hand how boring it is to be on break.

A few days ago, my mom, after seeing me surf the web with the blankest of stares on my face, asked me why I wasn't maximizing the time I have on break. I told her I was maximizing it by relaxing. I was catching up on the sleep I had missed during school, and I was catching up with what my friends had posted on Facebook. Both my mom and I knew that this was just me living in denial. I was denial of the fact that I was brain-dead, and of the fact that I was allowing my precious and much-awaited 2 weeks of break to rot away. I was allowing the time to pass by, but what else was I to do? I explained that to my mom. I told her that my options were very limited. She told me that, when she was my age, she used to hang out at the discotek and dance. How enticing. My mom unfortunately seemed to omit one small detail - we're not in Europe anymore. I am a child and places like discoteks are strictly off limits to my age group. Mom found that notion stupid. I agreed with her. Why not let us teenagers let off some steam in clubs? Better we get out the desires now, than when we're older, right? Well, too bad.

In that case, she asked what I do when I go out with friends. I told her the truth - I have coffee. Seriously, that is what my friends and I do. My girlfriend calls me, and asks to hang out over a latte. I agree. My mom thought that this was for old women. Apparently, calmly sipping on a cappuccino, was an action reserved for senior citizens. I asked her to, in that case, offer me some legal suggestions (i.e. no dancing). That's when she started to think and arrived at a loss for words. She herself realized how narrow the scope of things to do for teenagers was. I told her that, to celebrate the last day of school, my friends and I had gone for a lunch at a nice restaurant in town. This was also apparently extremely unbefitting of my age category. "Since when to 17-year-olds dine out fancily?" she inquired. In all honesty, that dining out had been the best thing I had done in a while, simply because it was something a little out of the ordinary.

Regardless, yesterday, I went to my friend's house and I made banana muffins. We sat on her couch for a few hours and talked about random things. She asked me to read some stuff aloud to her and she fell asleep. She woke up and we ate some more muffins, watched some YouTube videos, listened to some of my music, discussed premonitions and our breaks thus far, and then parted ways. It was very relaxing. The day before, we had met up and sipped on lattes. I love my friend; we're very close. But, since we see each other so often, we run out of things to talk about occasionally. I know all about her, and she knows all about me, so there's not much to say that would be new. I see her everyday at school, so she can't surprise me with a story about a teacher, since I probably witnessed it firsthand. Our conversations now revolve around other people: Who said what, who did what, and so on. Luckily, we've known each other for quite long, so we can always mention past memories and laugh. Still, it would be better to make new ones instead. That's why we so eagerly hope to do things like go on 3 day vacations with friends to places like Pemberton. Pemberton, at least, is something that isn't so plain.

When my friend Nima had moved to Victoria a few years ago, people were sad. Nima wasn't the sexiest of guys; he was no jock. Nonetheless, every long weekend, when Nima was due to visit, people got thrilled. Just a week ago, Nima had announced his looming arrival to Vancouver for the break. I was giddy. I told my mom and sister how delighted I was with the news. My mom thought I was over-dramatizing, but the fact is that Nima is something different. The reason that people wait so anxiously for Nima's arrival is because it is something different. When Nima arrives, he has fresh stories; stories that we haven't heard before, stories that aren't being recycled for the 17th time. That's why everyone loves him (OK. charm and likability are also part of it).

So, finally, I'll write something here that will make my title, make more sense.

After hearing my mom's words, and thinking about all this, I began to wonder if everyone else was in the same predicament as me. Was everyone else stuck in a rut, and if so, what was the remedy? It's as simple as the title: drugs and alcohol.

Now wait: before you run off to call 911 and report underage drinking, hear me out: I'm not going to click the publish button on this post and then run off to chug down a liter of vodka, nor am I going to go and smoke a pound of weed. I'm probably going to go and have another London Fog Latte. I'm just writing about this to express the current situation in an average teenager's life through a series of examples:

1. Who Knew?

As school was winding down, one of our teachers gave us all a study block. He said that we had finished the stuff we were supposed to learn in the term, and that we were free for the next two classes to do as we pleased. This particular class happened to be one in which I didn't have many friends. In fact, I'm not sure of the names of the kids in the class yet. Being that the class is one I have a knack for, at the start of the year, a lot of kids wanted to sit next to me. One boy successfully elbowed his way to being next to me, and throughout the term, we have gotten to know each other. So, on this free day, we decided to go to the library and just sit. He wanted to introduce me to some music he enjoyed, so he gave me one of his headphones and played me some songs. I gave my opinion about each after he played it, and our time passed by nicely. So far, so good. Then he asked me the perfectly normal question of what I had in mind for break. I explained that I would like to go to Pemberton again, as I had done in the summer, and that I'd like to hang out with friends and catch up on sleep. He looked at me almost inquisitive. I ignored the look because I knew what it meant (I'll explain later), and proceeded to ask him about his plans for the break. This is where I was shocked.

This boy was not the "bad apple" kind. He was a good kid, who did his homework, cared about getting into university and payed attention in class. He was a little different in the sense that he was a little more chilled out than the rest of my super-intensely-academically-oriented school. I just hadn't expected such a strong response from him to my question: "I'm just gonna get completely fucked up. Smoke some weed, maybe do some molly, LSD, a little cocaine, you know..."

Well, shit. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, eh? Who knew? I didn't think that even good kids did this kind of thing. But hey, I guess I was wrong. School is so dull; why not brighten it up a little with a selection of uppers, downers and hallucinogens?! I didn't realize that even these types of drugs were used by youth. I thought weed was the only thing.

From Me to We; From Crazy to Cult

Today I got to miss a day of school. Generally, this is a prospect which would make me happy. Actually, I cannot recall the last time I missed school and felt bad about it. Even when I'm sick, I'm happy to miss school. So yes, I am not the biggest fan of school. But today was an exception. Today, I would've gladly attended school. I would've happily sat through my French class. I would've gratefully sat through my confusing physics class, and hell, I even would've smilingly written my math test. I would've done all these things to avoid We Day. 

Crazy, cult, prozac, psychotic, unwell, worship and cocaine - all peculiar words which I will now officially associate with We Day and the Me to We organization in general.

Today is a life changing moment for me. I have experienced enlightenment. I feel wiser. It's incredible.

Here's the story:

So, a few weeks ago my wonderful French teacher (probably my favorite) explained the concept of Me to We to my class. She followed this explanation by asking how many of us would be interested in attending "We Day", the event associated with those who take part in the Me to We club. I raised my hand. First, the concept of giving back in your own way sounded appealing. Second, the concept of legitimately skipping school on the day of Math and Physics sounded fabulous, frankly.

Our teacher explained that being part of Me to We usually entails selling some products they tell you too. However, my teacher being very cool, made it very clear to us that we didn't need to do that; she told us that we could give back in our own ways. Particularly, she suggested that we maybe educate ourselves about clean water, or education, or something, and then share our knowledge with some other people at our school. This seemed good enough to me. So, a friend and I agreed to go and our teacher readily accepted us.

Being that the event is one which comes with a lot of hype, many people in our school were eager to go. Many people signed up to go, but there were only 20 tickets. In the end, 20 of us got to go. Naturally, we were very excited. Like I said, We Day comes with a whirlwind of hype, so going is something that is almost revered. If anything, We Day seems like a concert. There are a bunch of big name performers, so it's some sort of incentive to go. For me, most arena events are fun. I enjoy being in a huge crowd of screaming people. Sure, smaller, more intimate concerts are better, but arena events are a-okay by me. Finally, my friends were going.

If you were pathetic at math and physics. If you didn't speak the respective, numerical languages, wouldn't you be happy to disappear for a day? Sure you would. Now, what if you were not just disappearing to wallow in your own pity? What if you were disappearing to go to a concert with your friends?

Needless to say, I went to We Day today. 

As you may have probably figured by now, I hated it.

Scratch that.

I didn't hate it. It scared me. Actually, it scared me to the point that I was regretful of not sitting in my amazingly brain-draining physics class. More than that, it scared me to the point where I was begging the universe to melt me into the Earth and use me as fertilizer for the crops in Mozambique. No, even more than that, I was hoping to be sitting in my grey math class and staring blankly, as per usual, at my test paper. Yes, yes, it was actually bad.

What could be so bad about an event as innocent as We Day? So much. For starters, it's not all that innocent.

First, for those of you who may not know what We Day is, I'll give you a run down:

A Me to We club at your high school may exist. It's purpose is to help others, whether locally or globally, in any way. This can be done in many ways. Some raise awareness, others raise money, but the basic goal is the same: help. Not a bad premise, right?

Anyways, We Day is supposed to act as an incentive for people to join the club. If you work hard to help people, your school gets tickets to We Day! There you get things and listen to your favorite musicians and speakers. All of these things inspire you to be wonderful and continue helping. Fair enough. And this is what I thought We Day would be.

Honestly, I am not the biggest fan of speeches, when the subject matter is, to me, uninteresting. As much as I love delivering them, I hate listening to them. When a person tells me about their life-changing trip to Thailand, I say "fine." Realistically, white people usually go to places like Thailand and Africa for one purpose. Need I say it? Sex. But they aren't all bad. For argument's sake, let's assume that the story we are being told is solely for inspirational purposes, and no sex exploitation of underage Thai kids has taken place. I'm still not interested. It bores me. But that's just me. I'm more there to listen to the music and be with my friends. But I digress.

My class made it to We Day. We took our seats and got excited. We took some pictures, and excitedly waited for the show to begin. And soon thereafter, it did.

One of the first speakers was the founder of the organization. The man was inebriated, at least I think he was. My conclusion comes based on the fact that I have never seen a man act that way without having a solid concentration of cocaine in hiss body. The guy jumped with each syllable he said. He flailed his hands. He grinned so broadly that his cheekbones nearly disintegrated. And most noticeably, his eyes were wide. They were the eyes of a cult-leading, cocaine-intoxicated man. Actually, if I had to draw a comparison, it would be to Joel Osteen. You know the televangelist? Yeah, him. Except that even Joel Osteen seems less jacked up than this guy. Joel Osteen doesn't prance around the stage; he doesn't gallop from one side to the other of a stage. That was this We Day guy. He was crazy. Seriously crazy. And the worst part was that he kept getting back on stage. It wasn't like he said his piece and then rushed back to the pharmacy for more Prozac. No. He would say his piece, get off the stage for a period of time (supposedly to snort a row of coke), and then return to say more stuff.

But you know what was worse? The fact that the man was worshiped like an absolutely almighty god. As soon as he was announced, the crowd of mostly tweens would scream as if Justin Bieber was about to come on stage. This leads perfectly into what irked me, or rather, shocked me the most during this event. The Heil Hitler signs. Any person has, at some point in their life, seen this picture, or one like it, from Nazi Germany.

All these Nazis holding up their salute to the Furher. This is what was happening at We Day. No, this is not figurative language. This is not a metaphor. This is actually was all the children at We Day were doing to their Furher. They held up their arms, and they put up three fingers in the shape of a "W" and saluted the Hitler of We Day. It was mind-boggling. The fact is that I had never previously experienced anything like that. Perhaps that is why it was so shocked. But honestly, it was probably shocking mostly because of the resemblance to Nazi Germany. I am kind of at a loss for words. To describe the feeling you get when you see 18000 people all take part in the same greeting is awing. It's indescribable, but it is shiver-inducing - it scares you.

I was scared. Then they started chanting after him. He said "we are powerful, we can change the world" and they repeated after him. I didn't know what to do. What's more, you couldn't escape the terror. There were people standing at each door and you were informed prior to the event that you could not leave your seat during speeches. Having taken psychology, it sounded a lot like a cult to me. In a cult, the leader is enthusiastic. You repeat mantras, so that your brain doesn't have the ability to consider the things happening around you. You establish unity through a common salute or gesture. Your connections to the outside world are cut off. This is what was happening at We Day.

After a solid hour of speeches, a performer would come on and sing something. The crowd would applaud them. But no band got nearly as loud of a welcome as any speaker. Each speaker gave basically the same speech. It was mind-numbing, yet they were cheered for immensely. That is insane. Since when do regular children like speakers more than singers?

I won't drag this on too much longer. I just needed to express my disbelief with the event.

We Day is not a bad idea. To get kids excited for helping the needy is wonderful! It does, however, stop being so wonderful once you consider the means for hyping the children. Cult mentality is not right, no matter the cause, and especially when children are the victims. I am still confused about how one person manages to brainwash such a vast amount of people. Perhaps it isn't just one person, though. Maybe it's just peer pressure. When you look around and see your friend holding their arm up in a Nazi -I mean, We Day- salute, you naturally feel inclined to follow along with it. But it is still so wrong. It is upsetting that people are so much like sheep.

I would love to help out as much as I can. My teacher gave my Me to We club an array of possibilities for helping. I hope to take part.

What I never ever want to take part in again is We Day. I will never go into such a perverted environment again; at least I will avoid it at all costs. Because it is sickening and disgusting and so many more down-putting words. I cannot muster the skills needed to express how nauseating We Day was for me.

If I have the choice of taking a math test or going to We Day, I'm going to go with the math test. Frankly, I don't know if I would I have survived an hour longer. Maybe I would have started slitting my wrists. Being surrounded by my friends was not actually helpful. I felt hypnotized and fearful. I was ecstatic when it ended and when the guards removed their ugly figures from the doors to free me from the purgatory of We Day. I was happy to get the chance to walk through the city with my friend and grab some food. It wasn't special, but it wasn't We Day.

What I found was that greed is no good. I wanted to go to We Day so that I would avoid school, and maybe karma was payed me back for it. I wanted to go to We Day for the fun, the friends, the concerts, and instead I got the scary speeches, the crazy people and the Nazi-reminiscent salute. I yearned to go to We Day, and was willing to do anything to avoid math and physics, and this was the universe's way of telling me to not be so wanting.

So, learn from my mistakes. Don't be so blinded by the apparent shininess of an opportunity that you don't even consider the negative sides of it. Take part in the helping, but don't take part in the cult. Don't do that to yourself.

Is This Bad?

I am the debate club president at my school. It's a good role. I love debating, and I love sharing my knowledge of debating with my peers. I'm so happy with it.

Part of my role as the debate club president is to recruit people into the club. This is especially important at the start of the year. Naturally, you want a big club at the start. You want to get your club as exposed as possible. This bigger group of participants translates directly to a larger pool of selection for things like tournaments. Moreover, since every club dwindles down throughout the course of the year, starting with a bigger group leaves you ample space for the inevitable dwindling. The final perk of a big club is of course the funding. As a club, you can request funding. Now, the principal isn't going to fund a club that consists of you and your 3 best friends. He will, however, fund a club of 20 or 30 students. So, when you are president of a club you want to get as many people as you possibly can into your club. Not only for the reasons already listed, but also because it makes you look good as a president. People, and universities, are impressed if you manage to get a substantial group interested in your initiative.

Hopefully you now understand the reasoning behind working up a mega-club. 

Now let's talk about my dilemma:

I have about 5 friends at school, but I have an abundance of acquaintances. Thanks in part to the fact that I am very audible in the halls, and in part to the fact that I am Caucasian in a sea of Asians, a lot of people know me. Thanks to debate, I have become very talented in marketing. I can, almost literally, make the floorboards sound interesting. So, I am good at this recruitment thing. But here's the thing; It sucks to see people sitting in your club with bored faces. I hate looking out onto the people in the club and seeing them on the verge of slitting their wrists. That is part of why recruitment is slightly bad. A lot of people join the club because I tell them to. Once the recognize that it is surely not their cup of tea, they feel too obliged to me to quit. It's not fun for anyone. So, I have let recruitment be more organic. I bring up debate in conversation, but I don't so blatantly advertise my love for it anymore.

Anyways, I little while ago, I was telling my friend something about debate. I had just completed an uproarious speech in my history class. I was posing to be Clemenceau at the Paris Peace Conference. I gave a speech explaining why Germany should virtually be eradicated as a nation, but I spoke with my usual conviction and passion, and I used my excellent vocabulary. During my speech I was heckled by the boy who was posing the German government. I got the highest mark in the class on this assignment. After this achievement, As I did this, it caught the ear of the boy representing Germany, and sitting close to us. He's a nice guy. He inquired about debate and I explained it to him as best as I could. Somewhere in between I mentioned that I was president. He then boldly proclaimed that he would be attending our next meeting. His tone appeared sarcastic to me, so I didn't expect anything from him. 

Furthermore, and this would make more sense to you if you knew him, he is not the type for debate. He isn't interested in politics. He likes, and this is in his own words "babes and planes". So, I didn't expect him to show up. But then, on Wednesday, he came up to me and said "so, are you going to debate?" I said "yes." And he said "which room is it in?"

I told him. 

I still wasn't certain that he would be coming, though I was pleasantly surprised that he had remembered that Wednesday was debate day. I went to my locker to leave my school things and grab my debate things, and started making my way to debate. As I approached I was having a betting match with myself; guessing whether or not he was there. Much to my dismay, he wasn't there when I got into the room. But I was just blind. He was nestled on the couch on the corner, and stood up quickly when I walked in. I was again pleasantly surprised, even more so. It was nice of him to come, but I was well aware of what would go on for the duration of the club meeting. He would play on his phone for the entirety of the meeting and then walk me home, and politely explain that he loved the club, but that, for some strange reason, he will never be able to attend it ever again. Yes, a sad reality I face.

But I couldn't have been more wrong.

When I provided the topic for debate, I asked who wanted to debate today. A few regulars raised their hands. Kids never volunteer to debate in front of the rest of the club unless they are very experienced and very well-acquainted with debate. Then, out of the blue, he pulled one of his headphones out of his ear and gave me a look which seemed to request a repetition of the question. So, I did. Almost instinctively, he raised his hand. He wanted to debate. This had never happened before. The boy had zero debate experience, and he was aware that the people he was looking to compete against were quite a bit more versed in debate than he was. It didn't deter him. He wanted to debate.

After the preparation period of 15 minutes, he spoke. It was such a valiant effort. More importantly, he made everyone laugh more than is possible in debate. His funky, wonky style won everyone over. This led to the vice president referring to him as a "God". It was quite incredible, actually.

Afterwards, we walked home and I congratulated him on his great speech. He took it modestly. That was that. I didn't expect to see him back in debate club. He had come, he had done his part, and he had made me happy by attending the club. I expressed to him that he shouldn't feel obliged to continue, and that I would take no offense to him to showing up again. It was all fine.

The next week rolled around. I had to leave early on Tuesday, so I didn't walk with him or my best friend, Violetta. Almost ideally though, Violetta, the boy, and his best friend walked home together, instead. Violetta's younger brother and the boy's best friend are on the soccer team. So, Violetta asked the boy if he was going to come and watch the game the following day. According to Violetta, he began to say yes, but then stopped himself and said "I can't. Tomorrow's Wednesday. I have debate with Nat." This statement made Violetta laugh, and I don't blame her because it must have sounded completely absurd coming from him. After she realized that he was indeed serious, she asked "So, do you just follow Nat around? Like, do you just go wherever she does?" And to this, he replied "She makes everything fun!"

Let's be real. I'm a riot, but I'm not so incredibly cool that guys are willing to abandon things like sports to hang out with me and the nerds in the politically engaging debate club. I'm just not. I know my limitations, as much as I wish that I could say I had none. So, he was probably going, you know, because he thinks that, well, I got me a darn purdy face.

Yeah.

(He will eventually go on to describe me as "smoking hot", so this isn't just my delusional fantasy.)

That Wednesday, as we were sitting in class, Violetta asked if he was going to debate. He said that there was no point in going if I wasn't going. Well, that confirmed my suspicions. And that is what makes me upset and causes me some sort of dilemma.

Should I be happy that he is coming to debate, regardless of his motives for doing so?

This situation has happened a few times now. It happened last year and the year before that and before that. One year, a particularly brave boy came up to me during his first debate club practice and said "I''m only here for you." 

I am rarely upset by it. The way I look at it, it's just an extra member on paper and an extra hope for funding. But I feel like looking at it that way is terribly calculated. I believe that I should feel insulted or upset with the knowing that these boys are only participating in debate to have a chance with me, or something like that. Sure, one part of me wishes that their desires in debate club consisted of more than just getting closer to me, but then the other recognizes that them getting close to me is a my decision alone. They will only get as close as I let them get, so who cares what their motives are?

This guy speaks in an engaging way; he should be in debate club to exercise his skills, not to wink at me. 

Look, I'm not trying to sound pretentious. This post is not meant to be my version of "gosh, being, like, pretty is, like, so, like, difficult." Being pretty is not difficult. I get a lot of perks from it. I'm actually super stoked that my situation is the way it is. It's dank. I wrote this post simply to see if I should feel like that. I basically want to use this to see how unmoral and unethical my view is. Is it really as bad as I think it is?

A Response to Facebook

Well, the time has come. I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but it's just been one post too many for me to handle. So please, feminists, over-sensitive people, and others who have taken the liberty of polluting my feed with anti-this, anti-that articles, listen to me for once:

Everyday, I get on Facebook to complete a variety of activities. From the stupid things, like watching cat videos, to the more serious, like preparing presentations, Facebook has it all. But hold your horses, Mark Zuckerburg. Before you proclaim me your favorite Facebook user of the year, hear me out: I can no longer complete these tasks uninterrupted. In order to get to an article of interest, I am forced to scroll past, and therefore skim through, all of the terribly annoying posts from the -frankly- hyper-sensitive folks. I'm talking about the people who make it their life goal to scour the vast space, known as the "Internet", for any crumbs of potential scandal. These are the people who seem to have nothing better to do than busy themselves with sharing "their" opinions with the world.

Why is "their" in quotations? Well, because the posts they share are rarely their own thoughts. They are, for the most part, pieces of ideology that have been drilled into them from an early age. This ideology is one that makes them practically impossible to communicate with. Why? Because their views are so stubborn, that they refuse to accept any critique on them. Don't get me wrong, I hate being critiqued. I despise it. I cannot bear criticism. And so you know what? I don't dish out anything on social media. I don't force people to read anything by placing it in front of them. If asked, I will gladly contribute and talk and provide my stance, but I won't distastefully put it in front of your eyes so that it is near impossible to avoid it.  I won't shove my agenda down your throat. Until you shove it down mine, that is.

There are a lot of lazy people out there who aren't fond of actually taking action. They rather prefer to have the ability to claim that they have taken action by posting and sharing articles on facebook. You haven't. Sorry, I hate to break it to you, but unless you're famous, your sharing of an article explaining the offensiveness of wearing another culture's dress as a Halloween costume is pointless. Now to clarify, yes, that is the article that sent me over the edge. Or rather, it was the storm of articles posted by that same person all having to do with skewed moral principles.

This person posted an article about some obviously dumb girl wearing a Native American tribe leader's head gear as a Halloween costume. How offensive! Really? I don't think so. Honestly, I can't tell why it's such a touchy subject for people. I think it's because of the over-sensitivity of the North American people. If someone wore some traditional Serbian dress for Halloween, not only would I not be insulted, I'd be flattered. Relax. The fact is that that philosophy only drives cultures further apart. If we look at people as "us" and "them", and don't let them artfully (reminder that art is in the eye of the beholder) express what is "ours", then how can we ever truly come together?

Further, the costume was sexualized. Oh my gosh. Sex? How could she? Here's two things: It's that woman's body. If she chooses to sexualize it, who are we to judge her? The same people that support the woman's right to choose what to do with the fetus in her body, do not support the woman's right to choose what amount of clothing she should wear. How's that make sense? We don't know her, we don't know what kind of person she is, and thereby, we should not give ourselves the right to judge her. Second, we seem to have little problem when men sexualize themselves. Feminists and non-feminists alike see no problem when someone like, say, Drake takes a half-naked photo and posts it. No one complains. They don't tell Drake that he is so stupidly sexualizing himself. Why? Why don't we help Drake? Or Justin Bieber? Or some other male?

I mean, if you're going to be liberal and whatnot, then be truly liberal. Don't just be a media regurgitating machine, because, well, the media already does that.

Now, during this rampage of posts, the girl also posted a meme which said "How to get out of the friendzone: Pull out your dick, tell her 'you're gonna learn today'", along with the caption "what happened to consent?" Do we need to say that this meme is disgusting? You don't need to be Einstein to figure that one out.

So, since she needs an answer, let me help her with that one: Nothing happened. Consent is still a thing. Chill out. Asking that is like asking "what happened to consent?" after one depraved psycho rapes a woman. Nothing has happened to consent in general. There are always going to be rapists and creeps and losers and idiots. And they will post this stuff. Does that now mean that every man feels the same way? Gosh, I sure hope not. If so, it means that I have been very lucky to survive everyday at my co-ed high school unscathed by ultra-aggressive maniac-males. It's stupid to post that, for lack of a better word. Why? Because the purpose is non-existent. No really, you tell me what the purpose of posting that is? Is it to reflect the general male mentality? If it is, that gives a purpose, but certainly not an accurate one. 

The final post was one about the importance of sex-ed. Ok, fine. I have nothing against that. Sure, give us that video. I'll take it. It's propaganda, nonetheless. However, I will be slightly more accepting of that on the basis that sex-ed is not as ludicrous a notion as all men being crazy rapists or as being a super insensitive douche when wearing a different culture's outfit as a Halloween costume. 

Because, in the end, is it really the other party that is insensitive, or is it possibly you that is over-sensitive?

The Way of the Words

A History of My Personal Literacy. This is my Историја Писмености. Una Historia de la Alfabetización. 識字的歷史. Une Histoire de l'Alphabétisation. eine Geschichte der Alphabetisierung. Istorija Pismenosti. ਸਾਖਰਤਾ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਇਤਿਹਾਸ. История Грамотности.  Una Storia di Alfabetizzazione. تاريخ من محو الأمية.

Before I begin any sort of autobiography, I would like express my discontent with the assignment. I am not one, nor have I ever been one for succinctness. Shakespeare may have said that “Brevity is the soul of wit”, but who cares about Shakespeare anyways? Just because he did some good things, doesn't mean that every little thing he has ever said needs to be taken as true. It is ironic and strange to put a limit on an assignment about literacy! I refuse to be bound by such oppression! I have a lot of say, and I think that I am extremely interesting. I feel like editing anything out would be equivalent to committing an injustice against myself. So, I, for one, have no intention of keeping this short and sweet. Now, sit down, pour yourself some tea, and get ready to pay attention to me!

The founder of Moscow State University, Mikhail Lomonosov, said that “...the Hispanic tongue was seemly for converse with God, the French with friends, the German with enemies, the Italian with the feminine sex, and the Slavic with all.”

It could just be my patriotism, but in my mind, truer words were never spoken. My parents were refugees from the Yugoslav Civil War. As a result, the first language I learned was Serbian. Serbian is a completely phonetic, Slavic language that uses Cyrillic script. Today, being someone who is fluent and proficient at Serbian, French and English, I can truly say that Serbian is a language which is impossible to fully master, unless spoken from birth. It features 8 different conjugations, for each tense, for each gender. In layman's terms, it's very difficult. That being said, Serbian is, in my opinion, a far more beautiful language than English. But, let's be real: English simply isn't a nice language.

By the time I was four years old, I knew all the letters in Serbian, according to my mom. Very soon, I started reading in Serbian. It was not perfect, but it was a start. Around five, just before I was supposed to start my first year of school, the Serbian Church in Vancouver hosted a cultural event. They required artists, singers, folk-dancers, and cooks; all to create things that would be reminiscent of the motherland. My father asked me if I would like to participate. My desire to fit in with the adults, and the fact that I was very confident in my abilities, led me to agree. My dad then produced the Aleksa Šantić poem “Moja Otadžbina”, told me to read it and informed me that I would be reciting it.

Being that my days were fairly free, I spent every day, for three weeks, perfecting the poem recitation with my mom. She drilled me hard, until my cadence and memory were perfect. When I got up on the stage at the church, I remember lowering the microphone to my level, and looking through the audience in attempts to find my mom. I saw her, cradling my new born sister in her arms, and already crying hard. I smiled at her, as if to reassure that I was going to be great. I was very confident and my recitation did go off without a hitch. To this day, I can still recite that poem on command. Reading in Serbian was confidence-building and great, but then school came along, and with it came English.

When I started Kindergarten, I barely spoke English. My secluded, Serbian-speaking world was all I knew, and all I loved. The ugly, Germanic-sounding English language was not just hard to accept, but hard to learn. I, however, was lucky. Being that Vancouver is such a diverse city, a lot of my school peers were in the same predicament. With two years of Rosetta Stone and ESL, I learned English, and began excelling at it. In grade one, I completed all the phonics workbooks in my class before my classmates; I was exceeding everyone's expectations.

My school suggested me for cognitive testing. I scored very highly, and this got me put into a special program, at a different school, for gifted children. Even in this special school, my peers writing was not stunning, nor was their reading. Our teachers took no time to give us concrete grammar lessons, or concrete reading; they simply went with the motions. When a mistake was made by the majority of the class, the teacher would discuss it. If no mistake was made by the majority, too bad for you – you would have to figure it out on your own. It was strange schooling system for my mom to comprehend. She was appalled at the fact that our schooling here in Canada was far less rigid than that of hers in Socialist Yugoslavia. She believed, and still does, that repetition is the way to learning. Due to her dislike of the system, she pulled me out of school to home-school me for a year.

Mom recognized my lack of talent in the writing sector. She, despite her limited English, was more than displeased with my writing after seeing a few samples. She explained that my conventions and grammar, Serbian or English, were terrible. It was time to kick it into overdrive.

She went back to my school and raided the book room, taking any workbook she saw as potentially helpful. First, she studied them. Then, she explained them to me and got me to complete a truly gigantic amount examples. I hated it all, but especially subject and predicate. I still remember her shrill, disgusting and fear-inducing voice yelling at me. She would ask me in Serbian “Where is the subject and where is the predicate?” I would guess. She would look at me with a stone-cold seriousness. At some point, she took it to another level. “Natasa, you're bright. I know that with a little focus you will be able to figure this out. So, I need you to get off your ass, turn on your brain and try. If you don't, I will make you chicken liver for dinner, and take away your toys.” To Anglo-Saxon folks, this sounds inhumane. How could someone speak to their young child like that? But, as a victim, I will say one thing in defense of her tactics: they work. There was a reason that Socialist Yugoslavia and Soviet Russia were prosperous in their times – the intense methods of study. I learned more, and just about everything I know, from my ESL mom's English courses.

I remember reading George Orwell's classic, dystopian novel 1984 in grade 5or 6. At one point in my life, my parents had arrived at the conclusion that the only cure for my intense hatred of reading was force. They pulled out an assortment of classic, English novels. Their theory was that, if they force these well-written novels on me, I would absorb the literary construction of the novels and improve my own writing – they were, again, right. My writing improved leaps and bounds. A small child is very impressionable, and exposing them to excellent writing early makes it stick with them. Even if only subconscious, the effect is evident. I didn't read anything new. My parents knew what was good. I mean, think about it; I hated reading in general – nothing interested me. In that case, why not thrust only the good ones on the reader? They could have, for example, made me read Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story, but that wouldn't have done me any good. That book is as severely riddled with the filler-form of the word “like”, as Kim Kardashian is with fat cells on her overly-plump lips. That wouldn't do me any good.

Rather, they made me read things like The Jungle Book, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, and, my personal favorite, Around the World in 80 Days. The Jungle Book was the first book that ever evoked tears from me. Treasure Island was a thriller, which got me interested in black dots and pirates, and even inspired my Halloween costume. And Around the World in 80 Days was just ineffably good. I felt like I had traveled with the character, and I felt so transported. His journey was just so mesmerizing.

These books were all solid, and my writing was consistently getting better because my mom had devised a way to ensure that I was reading while simultaneously helping my writing – keeping a journal. I had to read a chapter a day, and then write a summary of it in my journal. At the end, I had to write a review of the book I had just finished. Maybe that's where I get it from. All these critiques, which rest lazily on my blog, have only my mom to thank for being born through the ink in my pen. Later, I progressed to reviews about cheeses and cereals. It made me feel important – the fact that someone cared for what I said.

When I grew up a little, and started staying awake until 11:30pm just to see the nightly news. When I started discussing political ideas with my dad. And, when I just generally became more interested into the happenings around me, my dad introduced me to the next book I would be forced to read.

He explained that 1984 was a novel which was prevalent in themes even today. He explained how Orwell predicted that such a society would be in existence in 1984, and that we were, indeed, slowly inching our way to Orwell's dystopia. With my new-found fascination with politics and government, I was, even as a book-hater, a little excited to read it.

After flipping through every page, I was disappointed. 1984 was a slow book, with themes too complex for me to understand and appreciate.

When I went back to school, I was light-years ahead of my pathetically weak-reading peers. I read aloud better, I wrote better and I wasn't even a native speaker. Ha, take that!

Going back to school meant that I was free from the forcible confinement of reading. I didn't have to do anything with books anymore, and I exploited the opportunity.

Book trends would pass through my school. I would notice kids reading certain books, and feel inclined to read them myself to fit in. I would read the first page, and spend the rest of the silent reading time staring at the word-filled page, glassy-eyed. Nothing seemed to interest me. Until the trend turned to frat-boy books (at least that's what we called them). Bringing Down the House was incredible. I read it and then reread it. It was that good. My parents were naturally happy at the fact that I was reading; they didn't care about the subject matter. Afterwards I read London Calling, by Edward Bloor, which was also an excellent and compelling novel. I finally reached the pinnacle of my reading career when my grade 8 crush lent me The Book Thief. The Book Thief changed my outlook on books completely. I no longer judged books based on their thickness, but rather on their content. It was poignant, and sad, and painful and, a whole spectrum of other emotion.

When I started high school, I joined the debate team because they were offering cake to anyone who did. It ended up being, to this day the wisest decision I ever made. Debate changed my life; it gave me some sort of direction. Additionally, it guided my literary career into unexplored territory. For debate, I began reading articles. The New Yorker emerged to be my favorite because of its provocative and intellectual content. Good stuff. So good, in fact, that it still remains my favorite thing to read. Books simply never appealed to me.

My grade eight crush was intellectual and artistic; he read through books faster than he skated down the school halls on his skateboard. When we parted ways due to his moving out of the country, he gave me one token to “remember” him by – a book. Actually, it was an anthology of poetry. On the first page was a messy note:

“For Natasa,

Poetry isn't bad, or lame.

Read up, as I go to wander lonely as a cloud/ That floats on high o'er vales and hills,...

If you ever feel bad about me leaving, or something cliche like that, flip to page 122.

Love, and lots of it to you, my pleasing but short-lived flower!!!”

This just made things a whole lot more interesting. The note was like an assignment almost. I knew that he had used poetry in it, and to find out which poems exactly, I would have to read through the book.

So, I began. Quickly, I finished. I highlighted the poems used in the note. On page 105 was William Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. On page 97 was Mary Leapor's “An Essay on Woman”, which described “[a] woman” as “... a pleasing but a short-lived flower,...” And on the fabled page 122 was Lord Byron's “When We Two Parted”.

I had hated the poetry that they had made us read in school. I had come to believe that no good poets existed in the English language. Every poem I had ever read in Serbian was beautiful, but no English one thus far could compare. This anthology changed my view.

I realized that it wasn't English literature that was terrible, but just the teachers' selections. In the anthology, I specifically came to love the three poems mentioned, along with “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks and a few of Shakespeare's sonnets. I felt like I was getting acquainted with each poet as I read. It was as if each stanza was a glimpse into their soul.

But that time passed. I lost touch with my wandering, lonely cloud. My romantic era was over.

In grade 10, my English teacher forced me, along with the rest of the class, to open a blog. Here we could post whatever we wanted. I stopped ranting at my friends, and started ranting at my keyboard. It faithfully obeyed and listened to every complaint of mine. With a touch of my mouse pad, my words were boundless. Any human being with Internet access could get a taste of me. One complaint, in particular, galloped beyond all expectations and ended up published, alongside Maclean's magazine. Even whining can get you somewhere.

Today, I read articles in Serbian and English. I enjoy being in-sync with society; with the events in the world. I skim through the novels I am assigned at school, as to manage a basic level of understanding, so that I can effectively write an essay. The issue is my reading: I read very slowly. I need to reread one small paragraph at least 3 times before I can understand it. I do not know if this is thanks to a lack of interest or focus, but either way, it's difficult to deal with. In fact, it discourages me from reading altogether, in a way. The only writing I can effectively synthesize in my mind is non-fiction prose, like newspaper articles.

As a young child my writing was pathetic. I had terrible grammar; one sentence of mine was equivalent to a regular person's paragraph. My English vocabulary was very limited, and as a result of this, my writing suffered tremendously. My mom buckled down, and broke through her ESL barrier to teach me how to write properly. My grade ten English teacher gave me a platform – a blog. For some peculiar reason, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot seem to take pleasure in reading. Oh, how I would like to. I take such great enjoyment in writing, so how is it then that I take such depression in reading, especially in English. The Serbian language, like Lomonosov said, has soul and grace, the English does not – it is for business and debate, not art. For the record, I love learning new languages, especially when they sound poetic.

My entire life, I have had people ramble and throw words into my ears about how important and wonderful reading novels is. My entire life, I have doubted such a notion, but now, I guess I'm just not sure what to think.

Thanks a lot for confusing me, Ms. Thomson. But hey, at least you're making progress in this fight against reading-phobia.