Even I Have Them (Prompt #52 Variation)

When I was little, everyone had them, especially the adults.  My mom had them, my grandma had them, my teachers had lots of them.  My dad didn't have them, but that's because he liked his computer better.  But everyone else seemed to have them, and when you are a kid, they all want you to love them as much as they apparently did.  People were practically shoving them down my throat at every turn, but I didn't mind at all.  If they were a candy, they would be chocolate, and I began to crave them.

My favorite place became the library.  This place had lots of them.  Shelves of them.  I could go there and dive into them like a swimming pool, only this sensation was much more satisfying.  It wasn't long before it felt like my soul consisted of pages, just like the pages in my favorite things in the world.

Are you kidding me?  I can just open one and start reading and live in a completely different world?  This is too good to be true.  And if this wasn't good enough, my little imaginative brain could allow me to actually be my favorite characters.  This was a dream come true.  My family practically forgot I existed, because I was always in my room buried in my latest adventure.  Only a few years passed before I began to be jealous of those who got to participate in the production of such wonderful things.  I wanted in.  The reading continued, but suddenly I was producing my own little works of art and passing my ideas by the eyes of anyone I could drag into reading them.

Even now, as I have ventured into the world of college, I haven't yet been able to separate myself from the world I have joined, and this separation is nowhere in the foreseeable future.  My major in college is Secondary Education with an emphasis on English, so me and my trusty inanimate friends will be great companions throughout my education and future career as I share them with my future students.  They may not feel as strong a draw to them as I have, in fact they may reject them, skim through them, or even throw them at a wall a time or two.  But at least I can say that I tried!  And my opinions of these wonderful word-filled creations will never change.

All Conquers Love (Prompt #50)

Twelve months had passed.  This had been a year of harmony for him, an eternity of emotional turbulence for me.  I had, since before the twelve months of our relationship began, had the weight of a huge decision on my shoulders, although it weighed heavier on my mind than anywhere else.  Borderline insanity was creeping in slowly as I tried to pick between my love and my religion.

"I love you."
"And I love you."

He always said it first.  I always said it second.  Behind his words were truth, while behind mine were lies. I didn't know it at the time, but I couldn't love him completely while I was still struggling with the fact that we were so different in our core beliefs.  I thought I meant it when I said I loved him, so I continued to say it.  But dissonance was setting in harder every time.

"I love you."
"And I love you."

See?  It sounds a little different now.  A little more shallow.  I started to tell him how I felt.  How I doubted that we could pull this relationship off, no matter how much we loved each other.  But he was persistent.  We could do it.

"We'll be together always."
"Forever and a half."

I wanted so bad to be convinced.  Could this be more than temporary?  But what is more temporary than a marriage that ends in the tragedy of divorce.  What is it that they say?  Something along the lines of 65% of marriages between two people of different religions ended in divorce.  He was Catholic, and I was not.  But we also weren't 65% of people.  We were us.

"You two are so cute!"
"When's the wedding date?"

Everybody else believed it.  He believed it.

"We'll have a huge backyard, with a miniature train that our kids can play with."
"We'll decorate their little rooms together."

He believed it.  Now I believed it.  We could do this.  He was more important than my religion.  Love was about sacrifice.  But as believing as I would be by Saturday, Sunday came afterward and reality hit again.

"Will you come to church with me?"
"Church just isn't my thing, babe."

The wedge was being driven slowly between us, until one day I finally snapped.

"Why are you crying?"
"I can't do this."

And so our love came to this.  Hateful words ensued as both of our broken hearts tried to heal themselves.  Walls were being built at the speed of light, and I walked away from his house and back into my faith.  Love isn't always as strong in the long run as it seems to be in the here and now, and is apparently easily conquered.

"Please delete my number."
"Don't ever talk to me again."

The Graphic Novel and Memoirs (Prompt #49)

Memoirs, being an expression of a personal story or adventure, could probably be told in any format at least to some degree of success.  It is simply a matter of opinion on whether or not the graphic novel style works for your story and the personality of your writing.  I think they are particularly useful because you can rely on pictures to supplement the writing.  Pictures have a great way of showing emotion that would otherwise take a lot of explaining through words to get across.  They can also easily establish setting.  I think the addition of pictures is better able to describe some things that simply can't be put into words, at least not without a tiresome effort.  For example, I particularly enjoyed the part in "Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person" where she is laying in bed watching the word "cancer" jump over a fence over and over like sheep.  This conveys a message that she is being tormented by thoughts of cancer even in her efforts to sleep, but it does so in a way that would not be done justice through words.  The use of broken up segments in a graphic novel also allows for flawless transitions without even having to transition at all with words.  It is expected to be a bit choppy in this way.

However, I think there are a few downfalls to the graphic novel approach.  When you rely too much on pictures, it can result in a loss of linguistic creativity.  Drawings can overrun a story, and you lose credibility as an author to some degree because the eloquent use of metaphors, alliteration, hyperboles, and even simple sentence fluency are replaced by short, choppy, use-only-when-needed phrases and statements.  Also, the tendency to use pictures to show emotions that are not conveyed in words can come across as lazy if not done carefully.  Another criticism I see is that breaking the story up into frames  can disrupt the flow of the story and make it harder to follow.

What it boils down to is that the use of the graphic novel effectively really depends on the type of story you want to tell.  In "Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person" it almost seems to have a negative effect by adding a comedic effect to a story that deserves a serious approach.  However, this may be how the author intended it.  The chunky, casual tone that is typically adopted through this medium may be exactly what a story needs to be brought to the reader in its perfect form.  Even better, one might show their genius by presenting a fantastically flowing, very serious story in the form of a graphic novel.  Overall, I feel as though it is a good approach because it allows for many different views of the story to be seen at once through dialogue, narrative, and pictures.

Orange Baseball (Prompt #45)

How do you pick oranges off of a tree that is at least three times as tall as you and twenty times as wide?  Very slowly, painfully, and monotonously.  And when there are two trees you are in for a long, sun-kissed day.  All the oranges have to come off so the blossoms can have room to grow.  If the blossoms don't grow, we won't get oranges next year.  At this point, early in the picking day with no end in sight, that isn't looking like such a bad thing.

Cue the action.  Orange picking day has become a family event, and my family does not tolerate boredom. Dad has his baseball glove on and Taylor, my brother, is standing on the roof of the house on one side of the tree.  I'm standing on the roof of a lower shed behind the tree.  Everybody is in position; let the games begin.

I'm picking oranges off the back of the tree and Taylor has a long wire picker so he can reach the ones on the top from the roof.  We are haphazardly throwing oranges as fast as we can down to my dad, who is managing to catch every one and neatly bag them.  But he could only keep up his master baseball skills for so long.  Soon, with oranges raining down on him from every direction he became overwhelmed.  "Calling in backup!"  Next thing I knew Taylor had hurled himself off the roof and was tag-teaming with my dad.

"Hey, Kayla!" he yelled.  "What's the hold up?"  Snotty 15-year-old.  I'll show him.  I began chucking oranges at him as fast as I could until he begged for mercy, at which point I climbed down from the shed and walked around to find a front yard littered with oranges.

"While you guys get caught up on bagging those, I'll check on the juicing inside," I said half mocking, and I grabbed two bags of oranges to make the delivery to the next station: the kitchen.  Inside I found my sister Tori hacking oranges in half with a giant butcher knife at a hazardous speed and my mom juicing the oranges like the world was ending.  They had an incredibly efficient assembly line going to the rhythm of Tori's upbeat playlist that was blasting over the speakers.  I tried yelling over the loud juicer but it was no use so I added my two bags of oranges to the other ominous twelve bags sitting on the ground and headed outside to another riveting round of sticky orange baseball.

Invisible Gag (Prompt #43)

Burger King.  Who knew?  Apparently this is the place to spill secrets.  This was, at least, our place to spill secrets.  But my childhood friend Kenny was having such a hard time today.

"You can't tell anyone if I tell you.  And I mean anybody."  He was whispering, even though nobody was around.

"Of course not.  I promise.  You can tell me anything," I said, looking him straight in the eyes.  "You know that."

"Yeah, I know, but this is different.  This is . . . harder."

"Well then don't tell me!  Don't feel pressured."

"No.  I need to."  Silence.  "I have to tell someone."  Silence.  I could see the internal struggle in the way he was squirming in his chair.  He looked as though he was in physical pain.  Whatever the secret was had filled him to the brim and was about to overflow, but it seemed his speech was being impaired by an invisible gag.  Silence.  I kept smiling my comforting smile at him.

"My dad is . . . not a good dad.  He hurts my mom."  The gag was gone, but the release was just as painful as the withholding had been.

I hadn't been expecting this kind of secret.  I was expecting some teenage problem, not a detrimental problem like this.  My fallback smile fell from my face as I took his hand.  "Does he hurt you too?"

Kenny cringed.  "Yeah.  And my brother."

"No!  Aw Kenny."  What is the correct response to that?

"He's only four!  It would be okay if he just hit me.  But a four year old.  And my mom!"

"No, Kenny.  It's not okay to hit you either.  None of it is okay.  Have you told anyone?"

"Absolutely not!  And you can't tell anyone either!  You promised!"  He was standing now, a crazed look in his eye driven by fear.

"I know I promised, but--"

"But nothing.  You, you can't, can't tell.  If he ever found out, if he ever, ever found out . . ."  He sat back down and got quiet.

"I won't tell, but only because I promised."  Clearly the wrong decision.

"Thanks."  He looked up and smiled a half smile of relief.  "I'm so happy you know.  I just needed someone to talk to.  I'll be fine."

* * *

I had just talked to him yesterday, and everything was fine.  Now I was listening to silence on the other end of the line, a silence I had become too familiar with.

"Kenny, are you okay?  Do you want to tell me what's wrong?"  I was terrified at what he might say.

"I don't know what to do."

I could hear the tears running off his tone.  "Did something happen?"

"I jinxed it!  Yesterday I told you he hadn't done anything for a while.  But today he hit my mom again.  So I hit him!  I've had it!  But I shouldn't have hit him--"

"You were defending yourself."

"That doesn't matter.  I shouldn't have done it.  It's all my fault.  I hate this.  I hate it.  I hate him."

I paused.  "There has to be someone who can help you.  Someone out there can stop him."

"But what will we do without him?"

"Kenny, you can't let this keep happening.  Let me tell someone."

"No."

"Kenny . . ."

"Kayla.  Don't.  We'll be fine, I just needed to talk to someone.  I almost didn't call you.  I'm sure you don't want to deal with this.  I'm sorry."

"Don't be!  Don't ever hesitate to call me.  I'm glad you called."

"I'm okay now.  Thanks!  I'll talk to you later."

"Wait, Kenny."  Nothing had been solved.  We had to fix this.  I couldn't watch him hurt anymore.

"Sorry I have to go.  I'll call you back.  Remember: just, just don't tell."  And then he hung up on me.

I stared helplessly at the phone, willing it to give me a solution.  Kenny's determined nature was going to get him in trouble.  A person can only decide they are fine for so long.  Both of us held a secret, but only he had the right to share it.  Overwhelmed at my helplessness in this friendship, I started to cry and curse my invisible gag.

Pure Intelligence (Prompt #42)

Cognitive dissonance, the topic for today's lecture in Social Psychology is, according to our professor, "the hardest concept to grasp in this class."  I totally understand the ideas behind the cognitive dissonance theory (which I learned already in Psychology 101) so it wasn't hard for me to follow this lecture at all.  I sat tight and watched as the class attempted to reach the same level of comprehension on this "insanely complex" topic.

Cognitive dissonance is the idea that when your actions and your beliefs are not in line with each other, you feel uncomfortable.  For example: if you are giving a speech on pro choice ideas but you are really pro life, you will feel uncomfortable.  Under the idea of cognitive dissonance is what is called the Balance Theory.  In short, this theory says that if this imbalance is present, you will try to do something to fix it.  In the above example, if you preach pro-choice, you may start acting on that belief, to convince yourself in a way that you were not just being a hypocrite.  If you don't understand the theory, you aren't alone.  You just need to understand that it claims that people take action to make sure their actions and beliefs line up.

This theory, to put it lightly, did not go over with my . . . analytical classmates.  While the class is conducted in a way that is conducive to discussion, this particular argument took an unreasonable amount of time and seemed to go in circles.  My professor believes the theory is truthful, while there were two particularly obnoxious girls in the class who completely opposed it and were determined to disprove it.

The professor stepped up to the plate.  "For example.  Let's say for argument's purpose that I am against abortion and my buddy Ben is pro-choice.  We have been friends since we were born, but this disagreement makes me uncomfortable.  My instinct is to change his mind, so we won't have this wedge in our friendship.  It makes me uncomfortable to be friends with him when he has such a strong opposing view from me."

Opponent #1:  "My best friend is in favor of the war and I am against it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop being her friend.  Does friendship mean nothing to you?"

Professor:  "Friendship is very important.  What do you do when you guys talk about that conflict?"

Opponent #1:  "We don't talk about it.  We try to avoid it."

Professor:  "Why?"

Opponent #1:  "Because it makes us mad when we fight, duh."

Professor:  "Exactly.  It strains your friendship because somewhere inside of your brain you know it makes you uncomfortable that your friend has such an opposing view to yours.  So your avoidance of the subject proves that you are doing what you can to balance this by pretending that the difference doesn't exist."

Opponent #2:  "I'd just like to say that I agree with that girl.  She's totally right to say that you wouldn't just ditch your friend because you have a differing opinion on one thing."

The professor came up with several more solid arguments to counter attack these girls, even when the girls' arguments were weak enough to fall apart on their own.  The girls rallied more support from the class while the professor just stood there and offered smug answers to their protests.  Finally, after forty five minutes of grueling banter, the professor asked a powerful question.

"Why are you trying so hard to convince me that you are correct?"

Silence.

"Anyone?"

Silence.

"Might I suggest that you are feeling a sense of dissonance between your beliefs and my ideas I am providing, and are therefore trying to convince me to bring my ideas to your level of belief?"

Silence.  The argument itself that the Balance Theory was flawed had in fact proved its accuracy.  And the smug grin on the professor's face remained as he dismissed the class.

Borrowed Passion (Prompt #37-Variation)

I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but at the base of almost every passion I have is a person who first introduced me to that subject.  In the case of my passion for writing, there is an author who particularly inspired me.  "Writing allows me to feel deeper than I'd ever imagined was possible before I chose this career."  Great right?  For the sake of anonymity, I'll give her the pseudonym of Jane Doe.  Jane was my idol, and before I started writing every new idea that came to me, I would visit her website and hear what she had to say to her readers.

May 12, 2009: "So stoked to finally publish the third book in my series!  You guys will love it.  Every character was carefully designed after those that are closest to me, with a little revision of course.  :)  I find that this makes it so I can be more invested in my story."  This sparked my creativity.  Evolving characters from strong characteristics in people I know was brilliant!  With this solid foundation I began work on my first novel.

August 31, 2009:  "Just started work on the fourth book in the series.  You just can't have a slow paced life when you are a writer!  Love what you do.  Put everything you are into your work.  It will lead to excellent success!"  Advice taken!  Summer had slowed me down but there would be no more slacking!  I revisited my document and continued my work where I left off: chapter 3.

April 2, 2010:  "Sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while; life's been crazy.  I haven't really been motivated to blog...or write for that matter.  Have any of you lost motivation in the middle of a story?  It's not much fun.  I hope I can beat this."  Um...no.  Jane doesn't say things like this.  Why would she publicly announce such a bummer attitude toward writing?  Not cool, even if it was temporary.

It wasn't.  June 5, 2010:  "Still unable to get past chapter 2!  I wonder if writing is the career choice I should have picked.  Maybe something like accounting would have been more appropriate.  Once you run out of ideas, then what do you do?"  Run out of ideas?  Really Jane?  That's not something that happens.  Ever.

July 1, 2010:  "Yep, still nothin'.  Sorry to disappoint," was all she wrote.  No, Jane, no.  It's called writer's block.  You get over it.  Doesn't every writer know that?  We all go through it, but we don't go complaining to our readers.

Months went by without a word from Jane.  The blog was as silent as the grave, appropriate for the grave descriptions we had been left with after the recent posts.  I, while disappointed, had still trudged along in my writing, and had managed to fill a few hundred pages with what I thought were creatively told tales of betrayal, adventure, and romance.  I found myself a less frequent visitor of janedoe.blogspot.com, finding in myself reservoirs of inspiration and strength that I had previously relied on Jane for.  As I successfully concluded the last page of my first draft with the beautiful words, "The End" my thoughts returned to that long forgotten blog, and I hesitantly typed in the web address.

February 14, 2011:  "I hope all your guys' Valentine's Days are going great!  I'm not sure I'm loving it, like I'm not sure I'm loving the book I just finished drafting.  Oh well, I guess it'll do."  I stopped reading and vowed not to ever compromise the integrity of anything I wrote like that.  If I'm not satisfied, I'll rewrite, not cry about it on a blog that fans look to for advice.  Idol's teach you lots of things about what you are passionate about, including the fact that the passion comes from inside you, not from borrowed inspiration.