I wish that I was more witty
That I had more to say to the world
That I felt was worth saying to the world
I wish I had a cause to follow
Something to dig my heels into
where I could say
YES!!!
This is my opinion,
And nobody is taking it away from me.
I wish that I knew my direction
Whether I’ve actually found my calling
Or has it all been push-shove-bang
A simple north or south would be nice
I wish that I was a bird, that I could fly
Just because it would be totally awesome
I wish for all the typical good-will causes
the wish for peace
the wish for stopping world hunger
the wish for the cure to cancer
and I wish I wasn’t compelled to wish for them
I wish it didn’t seem like a duty
I wish I was exciting
Spontaneity, adventure
Stepping out to the edge of the plank
And staring the crocodiles straight in the eye
I wish I was proud of my work
that I could write past the classroom
that I could entertain and inspire
that I would have no hesitancy
Tagging my name on this…whatever it is
I wish that I was a dancer, a musician, a painter
Because every time I see art
I feel that my heart is on stage
I wish I knew what I am trying to say with this
Just ’cause it would be nice.
So I could explain myself
When the questions come flooding
I wish I had a purpose
Something worth doing
worth worrying about
Something beyond just getting me into college
And I wish that I wasn’t still wishing
Because what good is wishing
when there are things to be done
This post is not about me. It is about PG&E. For those outside of California, it is the utilities company with a monopoly on the California energy market. Thanks go to Sam for the debate that spawned this post.
Friday was a pretty good day. Nice weather, no tests, an agreeable lunch. That was until I came home and found a PG&E flier on my doorknob. Then it was a great day.
On the program, they were advertising a program for saving money on my utilities bill. That’s nice, they’re looking out for me. They know they charge me too much, and they feel guilty, so they’re giving me an opportunity to save money. Awesome!
The problem is, they don’t actually want to save me money. Why would they? They’re a corporation. They’re in the business of making money, not giving it to customers! Seriously, they have the word “gas” in their name. Of course they’re trying to make money. This simple fact led to skepticism about the original offer.
So I read it all through, front and back. It was offering to save me a bunch of money on my utilities bill, if I just filled out the included form. But the most noticeable thing was that I had to be in quite a low income bracket to even qualify for the program ($25,000 for two people in household). Right away, that disqualifies 90% of the people in my neighborhood.
Surely PG&E knows this. They’ve got the resources to figure out that the fairly affluent town in which I live is not going to have many eligible people. Of those few that do qualify, even fewer would actually sign up. Yet still, my entire block was lined with fliers.
Now, this begs the question: “Why would they send the entire town fliers if they know no one will actually use their program?” And the answer is quite obvious: they don’t actually want to save us money!
They’ve sent out these fliers as PR propaganda. As a typical Californian citizen, I’m supposed to pick up this flier, get excited about saving money, get angry that I don’t qualify, realize that PG&E is just looking out for those less fortunate than I, and then come away with a new found respect for the well-meaning company that powers my television.
How else could you explain it? That they actually want to save their customers money? If that’s the case, someone at PG&E has got to get fired. That business plan is going NOWHERE! Or, perhaps, the government is making ‘em do it. If so, go Arnold! go Public Utilities Comission!
Flying back home after a week in Washington D.C., the United flight attendants announced that the in-flight movie would be The Chronicles of Narnia. Having had a vague desire to see it when it came out, I put down my French poem to plug in the earphones and watch it. I had good expectations, hearing it was well done from friends and recalling the story I read in…third grade? But I far from enjoyed it. The thing that got me the total flatness of the whole production.
Good vs. evil dominated the movie. That’s cool, nothing new, you know the same old theme. But what amazed me was the almost-comical distinction between the two. You could tell who was going to be in the scene based on the color of the sky (Quick guide: gray→evil; blue→good). Everyone was on one side or the other. No one was ever tempted to switch sides. When Peter Edmund happened upon them by mistake, it was just a mistake. The reason he fraternized with the bad guys was ignorance; he didn’t know any better! As soon as he was enlightened as to the proper path, he was with the good guys.
Race was also scarily well-defined. The wolves were with, you guessed it, the bad guys. The beautiful centaurs: good. All of the pretty beasts were good, all of the ugly were evil. You’ve got one eye? Hmmm, that makes you…evil! There weren’t any cross-overs, mixed allegiances, nothing. Your beliefs are defined right along with the sleekness of your fur. Disgusting.
At least in works like The Lord of the Rings, evil can be tempting. The most important characters are constantly on the edge between good and evil. Their actions are unpredictable. But here, not so. Even when any of the good guys die or get injured, they’re back again in the next scene. Lame.
Now, to address the question you’re all asking (indeed, one that I asked myself after I saw it). Why can’t I just sit back and enjoy a simple children’s movie? Simply put, I can’t stand the messages it’s sending. The whole Us vs. Them thing. The way you look dictating your allegiances. The absolute purity of the good side. This kind of message develops uncooperative, uncompromising attitudes in children. You’re always right and good, so the other guys can go to hell. These scary attitudes are what have this nation on constant edge with our neighbors.
Meh, what should I have expected from Disney anyway?
6:19 am, Monday morning and you are sound asleep. Then all of a sudden those LED numbers change and your newly acquired Spring Break cruise vacation to the Bahamas is now over. You reach over to hit the snooze button, but then think twice about it as you want to get a quick check at ESPN before heading off to school or work.
This is your alarm clock, and the reality is that is the worst sound in the world. Many would rather hear nails on a chalkboard than that “ringing” sound in the morning. So why do we continue to have our lives run by alarm clocks? Or if your in school - bells? If you visit any high school you will find that the students’ lives are run by bells, what? How can a small little bell run somebody’s life? Well, it is simple! When the bell goes off you sit down, when it goes off again you get up and go to the next class where the bell then rings. Then you repeat the process all over again. Surely, many of you have been through the drill.
The Snooze Button
This little bar is probably the worst item ever created because with the touch of the button one can completely eliminate the purpose of the alarm clock. However, if you ask ten people at least eight of them will say they hit the snooze button that morning. Why do we do it? Do we honestly think that those seven minutes of freedom will improve our day tremendously? No, most people really don’t think that, but what they do think about is hitting that snooze button 3 or 4 times. That is between 21 and 28 minutes (for those math challenged folks), that’s quite a bit of time. If you could sleep for 21 to 28 minutes more everyday it is an absolute certainty that a majority of people would take advantage of the opportunity.
Dependence
So why do alarm clocks run our lives? Our dependence on the alarm clock relies mainly on our staying up later. Experts say that you should not need an alarm clock to wake up the in morning. When you wake up you should just plain be ready to get up and start the day. The problem is you cannot do that! This is the drill – Wake up at the crack of dawn to get ready for school. Go to school all day long – then get home between 3pm and 4pm. Next you suffer through your homework – well at least some of it. Finally, you are done and you either go to the television or the computer. Then all of a sudden it is 10:30 and you have to get up at 6:20am. You quickly hustle off, take your shower and get to bed around 10:50 – but it take you 30 minutes to settle down and get to sleep. You have no gotten only 7 hours of sleep – but knowing most teenagers, you are probably one of the better ones.
Our society is sleep deprived and we rely on these alarm clocks because we attempt to cram to much into our lives. We take on new projects when we are already to busy to begin with and we are constantly on our cellphones, pagers, PDA’s and other electronic items. So how do electronic items promote less sleep? Hah, you have got to be kidding me. Innovation always comes with a price and this time technology is causing the world to get less and less sleep as instant communication is now available. A letter that used to take a day now can be beamed through cyberspace in seconds. Now you have that new project at 8:30 pm at night and you are up until 12:30 am working on it. Then you get up the next morning at 6:20 am and you got less than 6 hours of sleep.
Now one night is not going to be a problem, but the when it does start is day after day after day. Remember when you were in first grade – Did you use an alarm clock? Thought so, I sure didn’t, and quite frankly it was simply because I did not need it. I went to bed early enough that I could get up the next morning at 6:30 – no problems.
Deal with it? Or Change it?
Now, as much as we hate getting up with an alarm clock the world has come to accept the fact that we must use them. But do we really need alarm clock? No, not at all. We just have to start a sleep pattern that will help us get up at the time we need to each morning. Even on the weekends! However, one problem, how many activities go past 9pm? Yeah, tons! That is the problem. The world has become so busy that events must start so late because people work to long, which just pulls us into a vicious cycle to use our alarm clock. So I guess its time to suck it up and listen to that horrible sound.
This past Thursday, a good friend left my school. It came as a sad shock to me, knowing that I could have made things different.
This friend, whom I’ll keep nameless, has a lot of things going against him. When he came from Africa to America a few years ago, he had no idea he was about to be swept into the volatile young African-American male culture. Living with his dad in a “ghetto” neighborhood, he was easily consumed by the “ghetto” culture.
I knew him last year; but being in many of my classes this year made him a good friend. Early on I could tell he was different from a lot of the “ghetto” kids. I could see two sides of him, one of which his teachers failed to see. There is his “gangsta” side, buying a grill, sagging his pants, and talking about the ‘hood. But the side I see in him, the side that made me want him to succeed so bad, is his hard-working side. Beneath the bling, he tries so hard to do well in school and generally stay on the good side of things.
In my classes with him, I saw him struggle with the teacher’s stereotyping him. The work he did do was hardly ever recognized or appreciated. After awhile, he understandably stopped trying. A 0% is just as good as a 50%, and they’re both Fs. In the beginning, he would often call me on my cell, asking for help on homework. I would willingly help him, and it developed a special compassion in me to help him out whenever I could. I knew, if no one else did, that he did care about his future.
At the beginning of the current semester, the fresh start gave him a new leaf in school. I saw his Fs turn into Cs. This brought me renewed hope that he would turn out and go to college and be a great guy.
That happened for a couple weeks. Then things collapsed. He ran away from home, living at his aunt’s house. He didn’t come to school for a week. Then, when things were starting to get on track again, he got in a fight, and I didn’t see him for another week. The day I saw him again, it was with his schoolbooks in his hands, returning each one to their respective teachers. He was leaving. I wouldn’t see him at school anymore. Gone.
This entire story breaks my heart. There had been a battle, and his “ghetto” side had won. The saddest part is his story is not unique — this happens all the time. Innocence turns sour all over the place. When a different African kid came to one of my classes last year, he was honest and studious. Now he’s traded in his khakis and polo for baggy pants and a doo-rag. It’s a vicious cycle, and I feel helpless to stop it.
The saddest thing for me is the fact that I could have helped more. I know I could have helped my friend stay afloat and help him with his schoolwork - even tutor him. And now he’s gone. I know this is not the end - he’s going to another school, and that may be just what he needs. But that doesn’t stop my worrying.
I spend too much time doing the same damn thing. Every day after school, you’ll find me in one place. That’s right where I am now, right in front of my computer. I honestly don’t have any of the big commitments that all my friends have.
When I was younger, I was into everything. I was into acting, into running, into baseball, into coin collecting, into pottery, into reading, into everything. And now it’s one dominant thing - the computer. I’m good at it, better than I ever was at all of my other things combined. I certainly enjoy it too. I love coding, I love writing here, I love making five times the money my friends make. But it’s just one thing, the same thing, every time.
I’ve recently dropped into envy of my two best friends. They are complete opposites from me (and comically similar to each other). I mean, they do everything. Science bowl, track and field, otter bowl, mathletes, cross country, and countless other things I’ve missed. I often wish that I had all these things to do as well.
Everyone thinks I’ve got my hands full. The track coach thinks I got too busy with theater ensemble. The thespians think I’m too busy with other extra-curriculars. But my big cowardly secret is that I don’t have that much happening.
I’ve always got more than enough to do – I’ve got a queue of people waiting to pay me to do their websites. But that stuff doesn’t have to happen. Shit, I’m only sixteen. Why do I need to be confining myself to office work when I should be exploring the boundaries of teenagerdom. I’m sure looking back, sitting in my cubicle ten years from now, I’ll be wishing I had lived it up a lit more. With this huge future in front of me, the only path I’m looking at is straight into web development. Seriously, when anyone asks me what I’ll be doing as an adult, I can give them a straight, confident answer. Sometimes that feels good, sometimes it feels terrible.
I think the reason I ended up on the computer is, strangely, cowardice. On the web, you can’t lose at anything. There’s no competition. I don’t have to train for a race, I don’t have to perform on game day. When I was really little, I remember walking alone down the streets of Albany, thinking of how if I just poured my soul into something, I could beat everyone, everyone, at anything. It was a beautifully pure, inspiring feeling, that I’ve unfortunately misplaced in the past few years. I have since realized, or just surrendered, that there’ll always be someone to beat me. The saddest thing is, that one idea has shooed me away from getting into anything new. I’ll never be at the top, so why even try? I hate, hate, hate that idea. But somehow it has constricted me. It’s always that ugly conscious: what do people think of how bad I am? My safe place has become the internet, and its incalculably vast opportunity to be the king of anything you like.
So now I’m here, wondering what to do next. I want something new, I really do. People keep telling me to rejoin track, and I’d like that. But then I dismiss myself, I’m just not fast. Moan! I’ve recently discovered new things to love, like French. But they aren’t things I can train for, things I can work on afterschool.
I think what I really need is something to suck at. Some team sport I’ve never tried before, where I can just go in proud and not worry about making a fool of myself. What might that be? I’ve yet to place it. Of course, if there’s something I could be good at too, that would might be fun.