Actual conversation I overheard between my niece & nephew (13 & 9 respectively, & yes, they're siblings):
Aiden: Oooow!! What'd you bite me for?!
Bailey: What are you talking about?
Aiden: YOU BIT ME!! Why'd you bite me?!
Bailey: 'Cause you sat on my face!
Aiden: You didn't have to bite me!
Sorry Aiden, I kinda have to side with Bailey on this one, sitting on a face is asking to get bit. :)
Also, I was going through some of the stuff I kept from playwrighting class, and stumbled upon a sort of "autobiography" we were asked to write. It was never graded, & it's a first draft, but it does save time on trying to fill in details later... :) Unfortunately it's a first draft, & I don't really care enough to edit something like this, so here it is in its roughest form. Have fun! :)
I was born on March 9, 1988 on a rather small military base in Stuttgart, West Germany. This birth began a life full of irony in multiple ways. From the first snow to revenging my mother on an irritating doctor, my earliest infancy was filled with entertaining stories.
“What, are you teething?” I asked my friend, Matt, as he sat nursing his jaw against a cold bottle of water.
His girlfriend spoke for him, “Yes, poor guy!”
I asked if it was his wisdom teeth and—true to the dynamic of my group of friends—this innocent phrase had the three of us in a completely different topic before I could blink.
“You should write this bit about the wisdom teeth down!” Amanda said, returning to the topic that started the conversation.
“Yeah, that would make a good bridge between past and present.”
My time in Germany was very short. My family moved to Virginia when I was six months old, then spent another two years in Germany beginning when I was three. So I am afraid that I really cannot share anything from personal experience about German culture, all of my stories being from my interaction with the other military kids.
“Are you okay?” Amanda laughed as I made a disgusted face.
“Yeah,” I set my coffee cup down. “It was just the dregs.”
The conversation drifted to coffee, then to chocolate, then off onto another seemingly random topic that was somehow connected to everything we had discussed. Finally, being typical college students, we found ourselves talking about classes.
“There are two people in this class that aren’t in the other class, and two people in that class that aren’t in the first class,” Amanda explained.
I laughed and said, “That sounds like all of my theatre classes!”
Amanda told us about another of her English classes. “I meant to write ‘Spring Break’, but he was talking about ducks and I ended up writing ‘Spring Duck’!”
Matt turned to me. “You should write about the ducks,” he directed.
“Write about the ducks that jump twenty feet out of the trees and bounce!”
I laughed and bent over my notebook once more.
When I was five years old, my father received orders for us to move stateside once more. So off my parents, sisters, and I went to Minnesota. We only stayed in Minnesota for a short time though, to say hello to my mother’s family. From there we progressed to New York State.
I remember that I loved New York as a child, but my parents told me later that it was one of the less pleasant duty stations we lived at. Yet, for me, West Point, New York is where most of my early childhood memories formed.
Matt and Amanda have gone now. Such is life for college students: socializing squeezed into the midst of classes, homework, and (for some) rehearsals—or vice versa, for some. I look around me at the other students in the coffee-shop and see that they, like me, all have a book, laptop, notebook, or all three held in front of them while they break their fast.
I waved as my RA entered Sufficient Grounds, and she walked over to say hello. She’s a very easy person to talk to, especially because she makes a point to befriend the girls in her hall. Our conversation wandered from my finger and its recovery to Christmas Break. Then she said goodbye as she went to find her own table at which to study.
We lived in two different houses in New York. Then my family bid farewell to the state entirely when we made the four-day move to New Mexico. I was eight when we began living in the desert, and ten when my father retired and we moved to Minnesota for another short layover. From there we went to Texas, a state I learned to call home. I made many friends there, and grew into a maturity that marks the passing of childhood for some, and the beginning of new knowledge for others. Yet, we could not stay, and in my freshman year of high school my family moved to Illinois.
I never loved Illinois, and the feeling was mutual in most cases. So I was only too glad to come to Bethel College and begin life anew as a college student.
Sitting by myself in this coffee-shop, I listen to the ambient sounds and reflect. My life has been short thus far, but full, and I have many stories I love to tell. This love for storytelling, combined with my love of writing and theatre has led me to enroll in a playwriting class this semester. Thinking of this class and others, I wonder what new stories the upcoming months will bring. This thought makes me smile as I don my coat and walk into the snow.
Anyways, yep. That's the post for today. Have a grand Thanksgiving all! :)
"And they lived happily ever after.".......................................114
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