At the Castle in the Air

     "You must never feel badly about making mistakes," explained Reason quietly, "as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."
     "But there's so much to learn," Milo said, with a thoughtful frown.
     "Yes, that's true," admitted Rhyme, "but it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters."

[The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster]

bleach + caramel

I was spending my Tuesday afternoon cleaning the sink in my dorm room, causing my hands to smell profusely of clorox. Naturally, after all my hard work, I sat down to enjoy a Dulce de Leche scratch cupcake. I took one bite and—

             BANG.

I'm eleven years old, sitting on a big, super-hot cement block next to the baby pool outside Ames High with Mary Schliesman. The sun is shining on my face, with the scent of pool water wafting through the humid air and a caramel apple pop stuck to my molars. 

____________________________________

Except it's -2 outside, I haven't seen Mary in 6 months, and I can't remember the last time I had a caramel apple pop. What is it about tastes and smells? I haven't thought about our summer escapades in years, yet the combination of bleach and caramel triggered the strongest flashback I've ever experienced. The human brain is such a mysterious, marvelous thing.

courtesy of xkcd.com

If it be true, I conclude something huge.

But in the end, God doesn't need a defense.

He is who He is.

Amen.

THAT kid.

I sat in the back row of an early-morning Humanities III class, trying to keep a low profile. Most of the 35 students looked as though this was the last place in the world they wanted to be.
     "Have any of you read Frankenstein?" our professor asked us expectantly. Myself and three others raised our hands.
     "Only four?" He blinked at us enthusiastically, allotting an awkward silence before gushing about modern day allusions to Mary Shelley's novel. He then held up a copy of the Communist Manifesto.
     "I bet even fewer have read this one... Anybody? Anybody?" I'm probably going to need more coffee to keep up with this guy, I thought to myself, raising my hand along with one other student. He grinned at us.
     "What high school did you go to?" he asked me. Thirty-five heads turned my way.
     "Ames," I replied quietly, trying to suppress any part of my personality that might resemble Hermione Granger.
     "Ah, yes. Well, a bigger high school would emphasize great literature..." Okay, he is putting unnecessary amounts of effort into making me sound like a pretentious snob. As he began to enlighten us on the cultural relevance and criticisms of Marxism, I hoped silently that the next book would be new to me. When he inquired about 1984, I may have grimaced before putting my hand in the air once again.
     "What did you think? Was it a happy book?" he asked, giving me uncomfortably extended eye contact.
     "Interesting, but not happy," I responded. He got a chuckle out of that, which annoyed me a little because I was trying my best to be humorless. A discussion with the rest of the class of utopian and dystopian societies followed and I thought I was out of the woods.
     "Now, I would guess that most of you have never even heard of this book. I'm the only Humanities professor that uses it... A Sand County Almanac!" He began to share with us the merits of this book, which Mr.Schuck, my 7th grade science teacher, read to us in its entirety. I gladly remained silent. As he didn't technically ask if we had read it— and I wouldn't technically say that I had— I was spared confirming everyone's suspicions that I am, in fact, THAT kid.