Sunday, February 22, 2009

My Fear

My fear has always been rather difficult to explain. Besides my most recent diagnosis of claustrophobia, my greatest fear as a child was the fear of people in mascot-type suits. To futher explain myself, so you have at least some clue of what I'm talking about, I'll give you an example. When I was about eight or so, my mom and I took a trip to Disney World in Florida. We stayed in a suit that came with the whole 'Disney Package', which included an autograph book that all of the characters I happened to run into at the parks could sign. On our first day out to Magic Kingdom, I was so excited I could barely control myself from running out of my mom's sight and around the next corner, just to plunge myself in the adventure and magic of Disney. My mom was holding on to my little booklet and looking out for all of the Disney charaters she could see while I ran around the park mesmerized by everything in sight. As we arrived at the teacups, my mom called my name and said that Tigger wanted to take a picture with me. While trying to grasp the realization that Tigger wanted my picture, I flew back to where my mom and him were both kneeling with their arms wide open for a hug. In the blink of an eye, Tigger, the bouncy lovable tiger, morphed into a giant, ravenous beast with fierce teeth and razor-sharp claws. Standing at ten feet tall, he reached out to grab me for his dinner. Tears flooded my terrified eyes and while screaming as loud as I possibly could, I attemted to flee to the other side of the park and away from his grasp. Thankfully, my mom caught up with me and calmed me down. She took me back and showed me that Tigger was just a man in a mask. Even though this did calm me down, I realized that all of my beloved Disney friends were just strangers wearing masks.
If Ralph, Jack and the littluns had their parents to show them that the Beast was a non-life threating part of their imagination, they wouldn't be going insane over the whole ordeal and could focus more on getting rescued than killing the Beast.

*Does anyone have ANY suggestions for wording that sentence (mostly the part highlighted in red)? I'm stumped...

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Final Blogg

I love the new technologies we have been using in this English class. My first favorite is actually Blogger. Responding to articles and writing paragraphs on here and just posting them for anyone to see is much easier, faster and convenient than hand writing. Another program on the internet I like are the wiki spaces. I had a lot of fun making a wiki space with my Literature Circle groups. I think all four of us loved being able to have discussions and share ideas outside of class. To contrast, one program I am not very fond of is GoogleDocs. I understad that it's a great resource to have if your stuck at home needing someone to edit an essay, but I just prefer seeing what the person is looking at and listening to them say what needs to be fixed. Overall, the new computer technologies I've learned about have really helped me in this class and I'm sure will help in the future.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Daggers in mens' smiles?

Of course people have daggers in their smiles! Everyone on one occasion or another has flashed this deadly smile at either a total stranger or even someone they love. I feel it's apart of human nature; we are definitely not perfect. In my life, I have seen plenty of daggers among my friends (or at least people who I thought were my friends) smiles. At my old school in MN, I had a friend named Brianna. She was very popular, pretty, and outgoing. I didn't mind being her shadow- I'm no good at being the center of attention- and I always knew that I was her number one best friend. One day we got a new girl in our class, Kaitie. Although I wasn't worried about her, Bri seemed quite fond of her, and asked her to hang out with us. Kaitie started hanging out with us more and we were like the Three Muskateers! So I thought... I eventually got pushed back to the third wheel in Bri's eyes. Kaitie and I were still close so she always told me what Bri really thought about me: how I'm mean, annoying, and she was only my friend because I followed her everywhere (which isn't true because she didn't like it when I wasn't around). Of course, at school, I had to pretend around Bri that I had never heard these things otherwise she would know what Kaitie was telling me. Bri still smiled at me, laughed at my jokes and complimented on my clothes. All I could ever think about was what she was really thinking. Was she telling the truth, or just lying to me? I eventually found new friends but every once in a while, Bri would come up to me and complain about Kaitie, then just pretend like she never said it. This is how I personally know there are daggers in men's, and more so in women's, smiles.