Memoir of a Tapper

On Friday, April 27, I did what no other Megan had done before: I tapped in the Broadway Concert. Yes, you heard me right. I tapped. When Savannah Harwood first asked me to tap with her, I was reluctant, but then I gave in. I thought that it would be a good experience, and maybe a little fun, if I didn't kill myself in the process. We had many practices the weeks before and I was getting there, but I felt really lost standing next to pro-tappers like Savannah, Mrs. Warth, and Katie.  But it made me feel better that I wasn't the only new tapper tapping. Mrs. Caruk hadn't tapped in a while and neither had Mrs. Schuch.
I got really nervous during the week before the concert. I was even tapping in the outfield during one of our softball games that week. Elizabeth and Bailey Beasley then proceeded to laugh at me, of course. But the night of the concert, I was going crazy. I just remembered what Mrs. Caruk said: "After 5 minutes and 33 seconds it will all be over." When it was time, I went out there and tried my best and that's what counts. The only time I noticed myself mess up was when I almost whacked Mrs. Schuch in the face at the end. But that's okay; the audience probably got a good laugh. Although most people in my grade don't think of my dance moves as fly and awesome like I do, they actually liked my tapping and told me I did well. I was really proud of myself, for doing something outside of my comfort zone: getting out on stage and performing instead of watching from the audience. It was a ton of fun and I am 75% sure I would do it again.

Tap shoes for those of you who don't know what they look like

A Good Day and a Stupid Thing I Did

I had a good day today, a GOOD day. So I decided to blog about it. :) There was nothing special that happened today- it was just an overall good day. It started off when I got to school. I went to study hall in the library and started my bibliography for the World Cultures paper. I then got my outline for the research paper re-approved, which I wasn't sure was going to happen. But it did. And it made me happy. :). Then, I went back to the library, B period ended, and I went to Geometry, where we were doing the Vector Project. Our group finished today, adding to my happiness. :) Then, I had to run back home (secretly. Don't tell anybody Kirky! Shhh...) and get my medicine for my mouth (I got my wisdom teeth out last week) during break. Then I went to World Cultures where I made really good time typing my paper (and I think it is pretty good so far if I do say so myself), adding to my happiness. :) Then I went to Spanish where we went over commands, and I got most of them right, adding to my happiness. :) (Sometimes I get frustrated if I don't get a lot of the practice problems right in Spanish, and that frustration stays with me throughout the day, irritating me. But not today. :) ).
Then we went to the special assembly where a black civil war reenactor talked to us about how the white soldiers originally looked down upon the former slaves fighting with the union during the Civil War, but then the blacks proved themselves. I think that this is really important and interesting. I tried to listen while he talked, but sometimes I glazed over and went into LaLa land like I do sometimes. I thought it was funny, as Isabelle pointed out to me, when he was on his phone even though he was dressed up like a union soldier from the 1860s. Irony. :) This made me laugh and added to my happiness. Then, we went biology and talked about evolution. It was interesting. During lunch, I had to go to Mr. Cecere's room and fix the tape measure that I messed up the other day. Matthew originally got blamed (my bad. Sorry Matthew.) but then I fessed up. So that's how I spent my lunch. I wasn't so bad though. It was kinda like a puzzle. I just had to unscrew it, ravel the tape measure back up, and then screw the screws back in. So I didn't eat lunch during "Lunch," so I ate during Band and listened to everybody play. (I can't play for another week since I got my wisdom teeth out.) Our songs are starting to really good! I'm excited! After that, I went to English and we talked about the Gospel of Mark and Kirky explained the Gospel of Thomas to us, although she already had. :)
Then, we went and had softball pictures made. I hope they turn out well. I think they will. Softball is really exciting this season! We have a pretty good team, and we won our first game, creaming the other team 6 to 14! It was awesome! At softball, I figured out what I had been doing wrong with my batting, adding to my happiness. This may just sound like a normal day, but I was just a GREAT day. Nothing bad when wrong; nobody irritated me or made me mad. It was just great. :)
Oh yeah- the stupid thing I did. During Band I had my phone out and on the back I had a sticker that had my name and phone number, in case I lost my phone and someone found it. Emma saw this and asked if the number was my home phone number, and I said, "No, it's this (meaning my cell phone) number." Then she started laughing and I understood. If someone had found my phone, they wouldn't be able to contact me because I had been stupid and put the number of my cell phone on the back of my CELL phone. So if someone tried to call that number with my phone, they would be calling the phone in their hand. I am laughing writing about it. That was so stupid. I wasn't thinking. I'm keeping that sticker on there too. So I can have a laugh if I need it. We told Mrs. Graham, and she laughed too. :) I just thought that y'all would get a kick out of that. Thanks for reading my (super long) blog! :)

Model UN

So today the Hammond Model UN delegation got back from the Duke Model UN Conference. I am so tired. I had a pretty good time. We were debating issues and junk until like eleven every night. We had movie night during which Emma dragged me into the room showing the Mary-Kate and Ashley movie "Winning London."  It was cheesy of course but kind of exciting because the cute British guy from "House" was in it. He is very attractive. There was also a delegate dance. Yeah... people got crazy (not me), but it was fun, I guess. Emma and I talked some in our committee, the EU, but most of the time we didn't. I probably have five pages filled with awesome doodles. There was this one guy in our committee that Emma and I were in that was representing Lithuania that kept taking his shirt off... That was perfectly fine with me. I thought he was cute, but Emma did not. There was also another guy who represented Ireland in the EU who was very attractive (but not as attractive as the dude from "House"). In our committee, we had this thing called a "snap cup" where people would write funny things and then they would be read aloud. This was one of the best parts of the whole trip. On the last day in committee,  our committee had a runway show (during which both Lithuania and Ireland tried to take their shirts off), we abducted another committee's chair and we invaded and took over two other committees. I had a pretty good time. The only award that Hammond got was that Jonathan Friedman got recognized verbally for doing a good job at the awards ceremony. I have no idea why Hammond didn't win the "best school" award... It's crazy. Overall, I had a good time.  I will probably be doing Model UN next year, but then I will have done most of my homework before we leave rather than after, seeing as how I have a lot of homework to do now. Bye! :)

"Get with the Program"

Something happened today at school that really peeved me. It wasn't a big thing, but it hit me. As I was sitting outside at the lunch table with some of my friends, the seventh graders (I think) walked by on their way to class. As one of them passed, one of the girls at my table made a comment about one of her seventh grade teammates' skirt length. She said something like, "[so and so], your skirt is too long. You need to get with the program," to our table, pretending to be talking to the girl. Seeing as how we weren't sitting near where the seventh graders were walking by, the girl couldn't hear the person sitting at my table. That comment was really... I don't know if "mean" is the right word for it but it wasn't nice. That really made me want to call my friend out and say, "That wasn't nice. Just because you and most of the rest of the girls in the school get your skirts hemmed doesn't mean everybody else has to." Now, I wish that I had said something. I just don't understand how someone could be so insensitive, even if they claim that it was "just a joke." (Not that this person did, but they would have if I had confronted them.) It's like this person thinks that all that matters at school is how short your skirt is, and if it even touches your knee then it is "too long." What world does this person live in? We go to Hammond to learn, not to have a contest on who skirt is the shortest. In the long run, your education will get you farther than your appearance. I think that this person needs to "get with the program" and figure this out.

Gone Baby Gone

Okay, my mind was just blown. BLOWN. Even more blown than when I first read the poster outside of Mr. Cecere's room that says that the mirror image of 3.14 is Pie. I just watched "Gone Baby Gone" with my mom during "Friday Night Movie Night With Mom" and... whoa. I have been wanting to see this movie for a while, and I just watched it and... whoa. SPOILER ALERT: If you have not seen this movie and want to, then DO NOT continue reading this blog. If you don't care about seeing the movie (which I advise that you do), then proceed. That is the most screwed up situation, crime, whatever you want to call it. SCREWED UP. I thought that the movie would have some kind of ending with closure for the family, like most movies do: them finding the girl's body or finding her alive somewhere. But I did not expect the Police Chief to be in on it! Are you kidding me?!?! But that makes sense, seeing as how his daughter was murdered... He wanted a child so badly, to fill the empty whole in his heart from the loss of his daughter, and when the perfect situation arose, (him wanting a daughter, a little girl needing a good home) he took it.

Also, I felt that there were pros and cons to what Patrick did in the end, and I understand why he did what he did. I understand that Amanda should be returned to her mother, where she belongs and I understood his whole speech to Morgan Freeman about the girl coming to him years later and saying, "why did you leave me with my kidnappers?" but I think that I would have left Amanda with Morgan Freeman. She would have had a better life with people who really loved her. Now, I know that her mother did love her, but Morgan Freeman would have REALLY loved her and ensured that she had a good future, whereas, living with her mother, that wasn't a promise.

Apart from the f-bombs being dropped every five seconds, this movie was pretty good. Using Kirky's elements of great films, I would say that this is a 3 out of 4: it hits 3 out of the 4 elements on the list. It failed to be unique. Yes, it was unique in its really twisted plot, but there are a ton of twisted crime movies out nowadays. This movie was incredibly layered and highly crafted, it definitely transported me (unlike the recent Twilight movie), and this movie has a weighty theme that most people can probably relate to. That is that people do what they think is right in the moment, not thinking about the consequences. Lionel, Remy and Doyle (Morgan Freeman) did what they thought was right for Amanda, not thinking about the effects it would have on those around them. I do admit though, I understand why they did what they did. This movie and its theme made me realize to always think about the consequences of something wrong that you do, even if you do it for a moral reason.

Coca-Cola

Because I have nothing else to blog about and the fact that I am drinking one right now, I will be blogging about Coca-Cola. For people out there who don't know what Coca-Cola (Coke) is, it is a "carbonated soft drink," to quote Wikipedia. It is brown, and is typically found in a red aluminum can (unless it is diet coke or the holiday polar bear one). Coke was originally intended to be a medicine to treat... something. Coke actually, at one time, had trace levels of cocaine in it because Coca-Cola began to use the leaves leftover after cocaine extraction to make Coke. This is not the case anymore. It is not possible to get high off of Coke. (Darn! Just kidding, Mrs. Kirk. Just kidding.) The can I have sitting next to me is a 7.5 fluid ounces (222 milliliters for those of you who use the metric system who are reading this). It has 0 grams of fat, 30 milligrams of sodium (1% of the daily value), 25 grams of carbohydrates (8% of the daily value), 25 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein. While I know that all of you reading this would love to know what  the ingredients of my highly engaging and mesmerizing Coke can are, I need to go study, work on my Psycho essay, and wash some clothes, none of which I feel like doing right now. Maybe I'll take a nap...

Exams

For lack of anything else good to blog about, I will be blogging about exams. Ah exams, the dreadful things that come twice a year, are worth twenty percent of your semester average and encompass everything you have learned thus far. I hate exams. We are being tested on material that we have already learned (and probably forgotten), so what is the point of having a HUGE test on stuff if we have already learned it? Most teachers would probably respond to this by saying, "The point of exams is to make sure that you remember what you have learned." You go to school to learn and be prepared for "the real world," but I don't think that I will need to know half of the things that I learn in school. I don't want to be an architect, so that rules out geometry. I won't need to know off of the top of my head what glycolysis is or who the greatest ruler of the Mughal Empire was. I either want to be a psychologist or an attorney (prosecutor that is, not defense- no way am I going to try to prevent someone who has committed a crime from going to jail when they should be punished for breaking the law. Just sayin'.). I will need to know English for both of those, so I'm fine with taking English. But anyway, I am not looking forward to exams or studying for them. I am very glad that I do not have an exam on Friday! (My H period is band.)