Teenagers feel like they know everything. It's genetical or something. Each and every kid above twelve and still not in that phase of life where they realise they know nothing, believes they are omniscient and own the world. Strangely enough, all teenagers disagree on how that world looks like and what are the veritable facts about it. Really quite amusing if you think about it.
When adults get involved, however, adolescent boys and girls seem to form an uninted front: us against the big bad world that doesn't understand us at all. The fact that grownups tend to either come half a decade late with teenage slang, new hypes and what music should be in right now don't exactly inspire confidence when you're trying to convince all these angry teens that they're wrong and the people paying taxes are right. Yes, parents, your children either are, have been or will be laughing behind your back, flushing from acute embarrasment or looking at you in utter disgust. Ninety percent of the time, your actions will have been completely unintentional.
It's apparenlty always been this way, and probably always will. Today's teenagers will grow up and lose sight of new words, hypes and music somewhere inbetween kids, a job, paying off mortages and credit cards and trying to keep some money left to take previously mentioned kids on a holiday during the summer. Said kids prove their thanks by mocking their parents. A popular teenage phrase that has reached the adult front goes pretty much like this: 'Life Sucks, and Then You Die'. Some countries have the phrase that children speak the truest, speak the utter truth, completely ignoring the fact that children learn how to lie almost right after they learn how to form a cohorent sentence and learn that not everyone knows everything. Though, with this one, the kids got it right, or so it would seem.
Parents do notice that their puberty-stricken children disagree with their peers. Differences in interest, hobbies, style and behavior baffle the heebie-jeebies out of everyone old enough to have fathered (or birthed) a thirtheen year old. For example, someone is in love with true, pure contact juggling, someone else takes on something that's closely akin to it, like poi or diabolo or devilsticks or even just staff or double staff. When children express their desire to light up their toys after dousing them in kerosene, the difference between circus tricks becomes more apparent than before. Rugby and soccer, tennis and golf, ice skating and nordic blading, all could do for examples. The concept is roughly the same, but small differences make them either more or less dangerous and thus appealing to both children and parents. Parents of children who are asking for fire-diabolos for Christmas wonder why they didn't get the nice girl next door, who merely wants a set of balls made out of acrylic, or perhaps pvc with LEDs in it.
Children love to astound their parents with their complexity. Psychologists call this 'developing an own personality'. Saan would refer to it as 'that bit of closet sadism that we all cherish and nurture deep inside us'. Basically, a teenager believes that the world runs like they think it does because they know the square root of twenty-five and that their parents, who know how to handle income tax, are ignorant barbarians. They believe this because they are starting to develop a need for an own life (which is legally possible, but hard and would severely limit their chances further in life) and their parents 'won't let them'. The fact that most of these kids don't have a driver's license that is applicable to a motorised vehincle on four or more wheels (A.K.A an automobile) seems a minor detail. The fact that these kids have been living their enitre life on the money that their parents have earned and saved and invested also seems to be unimportant.
But, parents who are reading this, if it's any consolation: as soon as your kid hits eighteen and it's that time of the year where Mr. Government demands payment for its own crimes, you'll have your own chance to be horribly and incohorently complex and confusing towards your children, and receive some graditude for it.
There's an electric grill standing there, I better go do some homework.
Saan is tired. Partly because today was a school day and Saan doesn't like school days because they require more energy than they're worth, partly because Saan's done a lot of homework she shouldn't have done and partly because Saan spent half an hour playing with her rainbow colored poi (there was a picture of Saan finally getting the butterfly2 on Doddles' cell phone but she erased it before Saan could ask her to mail to Saan) trying to get the butterfly1 (-><-) to work after the butterfly2 (<-->) worked). She didn't start sooner because her dad was cleaning up the grill and she needed help dragging the table to the side. One of the downsides of outside eating is that you have to clean up before you can do anything else. Then she remembered she'd screw up on her translation for Latin if she let it lie until tomorrow night. By the time Saan had finished that, the temperatures had dropped and Saan's mom had nicked Saan's thumb hole jacket. When Saan found out about it, it was too dark to go spin her poi. ('Dear St. Nicholas. This year, I'd like the nifty rainbow LED sock poi I saw on HOP, please. Yes, I've been a good girl. No, I do not need sleep.') So now Saan is tired and feeling very abused after having a chunk of ingrown toenail yanked out and being hit by her poi. Strangely enough, poi seems to be a kind of self-abuse that relieves stress and brings you into a very zen-like state. Really. You spend thirty to ninety minutes fighting a set of balls that try to yank your arms from the socket once they go to fast and getting hit in about every part of your body. Mainly those that hurt most. Saan nearly broke her glasses and nearly hit her kneecap wrongly today. But you come out of it feeling refreshed and relaxed. Bruised and sweaty, but relaxed. If you spend another ten minutes staring at the 3 fish in the thirty litre tank, you're practically brain dead. Go on, try it!
This is the Chibi Trick or Treating Fribbin-Dude that Saan drew a few months back. Around last Halloween. Anyone noticed Saan's posts get less and less inspired as the week progresses?
Anyway, Saan'll probably make a new Halloween Chibi around Halloween. Maybe there'll be another doodle like this in here next week. Maybe Saan'll come up with another lame excuse. Maybe it'll rain popsicles tomorrow. Just keep an eye out for it.
Saan's room has very little wall decoration. The main reason is that she's not allowed. Another is that she doesn't want to spend another two weeks chipping off wall paper, only to sleep in the fumes of green paint for another few weeks after. So, Saan's room's undecorated when it comes to walls. Saan's attempts at personalisation are mainly placed in book cases, on the shelves and books, on her nightstand and on her desk. Small jars and cups and miniature buckets, old candles, self-sewn miniature pillow, small toys, keychains, snow globes and long toothpicks with sparkles on the ends. Things she can't put down, she hangs up. Mainly on her desk lamp. A pink dream catcher with a golden ribbon swirled around, a plush Tigger her brother found in a McDonalds, a keychain with a fake jewel heart on it.
She copied these techniques from her mom, sort of. Saan's mom only uses room-oriented stuff. The wall in the hallway has an overwoven frame hanging on it, in which Saan's mother puts christmas lights, flowers, dried or not, easter eggs, balls, etc. Ceramic pots in strange holders (or being a strange holder), dried flowers, white candles, strange plants and, at the moment, a small jack-o-latern candle jar in the living room, and an oil-and-vinegar-holder that never gets used, a chrome soap dispenser that spews black oil into your hand together with the soap, a blue-cow-print kleenex box in the kitchen. The kitchen's newest addition is an empty fish... bulb. It's large, spherical and the only thing missing is some kind of miniature something at the bottom and, perhaps, fish. Those should be arriving tomorrow. After the filter's been spewing bubbles for an entire night and both added products will have dissolved properly into the water.
Today's post is short because Saan's been hit repeatedly in the head, shin, knee and arms by her poi.
After five days (Should've been seven, but Saan's is not complaining) Saan's package arrived home. With a small purple bag, filled to the brim with poi-y goodness that makes strange purring noises when you spin it with the tails attatched and that still smells like new(*SNIIIIIFFFF*). Saan is in love with the two rainbow colored snakes on string. Her sister is in love with her five-minute-made nylon sock poi. For those that want to try it themselves: find your two softest, thickest socks, stuff them into nylon tigh-highs (or, for the smaller people; knee-highs) and tie a knot at the end. You can smack people on the butt without feeling a thing. Saan's poi are more colorful, noisier, bigger and have nifty nylon double loop handles, but they hurt more. That, and Saan's aim is impressive: she practically only hits herself in the head, when she's not standing on the tails. The DVD got watched up to 'intermediate level' and then both Saan and Eve were off to spin. After about an hour of trying, she had worked the backwards and forwards spin into her fingers, both at the same time and irrelgular spin, the stretched-arm irregular spin and the large butterfly. And a lot of safe shapes that have little to do with actual, named poi moves. The small butterfly tends to cause either tangled tails or bangs to the head. Saan still likes the sound too much to spin without the tails. The fact that the bugs (and cats) flee from the noise is another sadistic but convincing factor to keep the tails on. And they make pretty round shapes in the air. And Saan loves them. And she doesn't have to, so there!
(Two people that are not me are on this blog at the moment. o.O;;;; People read this stuff. Creepy.)
Puppies. Okay, everyone but Yif likes them. They're cute, fuzzy and have the sweetest faces. Yif likes cats. Elly prefers cats, or so Saan thinks. Saan likes dogs. How they ended up best friends is still a mystery after nine full years. But, as was written before, Saan likes dogs. Has since she got taller than most medium-sized dogs. Wanted a puppy since then. By now, she realises she can't have one due to severe lack of time and attention to give to the little furball. But that does not stop her from asking for one or wanting one. She asks, she gets told no. It's how things have always been, always will be. She freaks people out by being able to name the less known species of dog, such as the weimaraner or being able to say 'nova scotia duck tolling retriever' three times fast. She's able to explain what duck tolling is. She can tell you that the NSDT retriever is the smallest of all retrievers, meant for hunting in and around water. For ducks, even. She can tell you Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are parts of (eastern?) Canada, near the ocean or at least big lakes.
She's had goldfish. They died. Her sister had guppies and neon-fish. Her sister had rabbits. All of the previously mentioned pets died. Her sister has two wild cats who got sterlised too early and are half the size they should be. One of them terrorises the neighborhood's feline population, not to mention the neighbours. 'Tiger' she's called, for her stripes. At first, anyway. Now she has acquired the nickname 'A Venomous Ball of Nails'. Most people don't know the poor thing's scared of loud noises or quick movement. The other cat is an affectionate, sweet-faced ball of luvins. Saan's new neighbours have little children. They call her 'here, kitty, kitty'. Saan should probably mention pieces of leftover chicken or ham work best for luring her in, if the objective is petting. Sadly enough, Tiger's grey sister has the unsightly habit of acquiring ticks as soon as the season hits. And watching people eat. Watching barbecues. She has developed her sense of smell to the point that she knows even upwind that Saan's sister Eve is having unmarinated, greasy chicken fingers that night. The cat also knows that Eve has the tendency to overestimate her stomach capacity. The cat has developed a sense of time. After ten pm, you can't open a door without risking the near-trademarked 'Piteous Mew' that is Mary's demand for feeding. Kitten training has learned Tiger that cutting up the vet earns her instant freedom as soon as we're back home and that coming inside means getting yelled at and chased until she's half-mad with confusion. The same training learned Mary that the vet means she'll be stuck dominating the basement with a litter box and less food (since she hasn't got Tiger's share to steal from) and no mice or birds to kill for two days and that, being the outside cat she is, coming inside further than one meter will earn her a 'Noooooooo' in the same fashion she gets before trying to pounce on the raw barbecue meat. Nearly slamming face-first into the black metal contraption learned her this word means 'danger, do not proceed, food does not outweigh the danger'. However, she does know that sitting at the terrace window, looking piteous, means warm cuddles while Saan sits in the doorway freezing her butt off after a relatively long wait. Eve mainly ignores her cats, really. And Saan wants a puppy.
Saan knows about puppy mills and lisenced breeders and good references and how a (Belgian) St. Hubertus pedigree is a must, even if it costs about 50 euros more and you're not planning on breeding or showing the dog or doing anything else but having a pet. She knows about bloodlines, and species-specific diseases and handicaps such as deafness, hip and knee problems, epilepsia with death as a consequence. She knows dogs can track drugs, explosives, fake money, some believe even cancer. That dogs can help the blind, deaf, handicapped, epileptic patients, victims of a natural disaster such as avalanches or victims hidden beneath the rubble. She knows there are dogs that are too unique for words, that greyhounds can run at its highest speed for one minute before becoming overheated, that English bulldogs don't just look like lazy, fat hunks of meat, but that they actually are what they appear, albeit with some serious muscle to defend its reputation with, if excercised properly. She knows that hunting dogs are very different, though most need a lot of moving to keep happy, knows that there's a difference between hunting on sight or on scent. She knows she can't have a dog to leave in a kennel day and night, alone for at least seven hours most days. She knows a dog needs the responsibility and long-term attention she has never proven herself to have. She knows she won't have a dog for at least another five years, if ever. She knows her choices of beagle, english and american cocker spaniel, English springer spaniel, cavalier king Charles spaniel, sheltie, mini-aussie, labrador, NSDT retriever and Newfoundland dog are probably the worst ones out there for her. And she knows she loves dogs, and that things like yorkshire terrier puppies were made for melting one's heart.
The reason the previous post hasn't a topic name or any text is because it all belongs in this post! Today, Saan got wrestled down by her classmates and photographed. These pictures are the result. The JPEG-specks aren't Saan's fault. It's JPEG's and msn-spaces' fault. Saan's the one getting near gangbanged in the middle.
Saan does not like sports, same like the majority of kids in most western countries, or so the media would project it. For Saan, this is logical.
When you're below six, you don't have all that much options for sports: dancing, soccer, tennis, martial arts and the odd initiation in things like rola bola, juggling, diabolo or ball-walking. That's about it. Not all girls like dancing, but soccer is 'for boys'. Not all boys like soccer, but you get laughed at for dancing. Tennis is a stiff-backed sport without laughter or literally running into your friends. Circus initiations take place during the holidays and mothers do not appreciate their children throwing things. Martial arts are cool up until the point where your mom takes you off for A) getting a bruise B) your overly violent behavior lately. Which leaves you stranded in a playground, with buttocks-burning hot slides, swings and similar contraptions that require very little of you, since mom, dad or older sibling will push for you. Things to hang on and climb are either too low or too high. The whole world is just screaming at you to just 'sit still, be quiet and behave'. Preschool PE usually is, basically, running around like mad or picking on the class' underdog. Swimming lessons get repeated over and over and over until you get it or give up on ever getting it. Then you never want to swim another length again. You want to take the nearest inflatable animal and hit someone over the head. Preferably someone smaller than you, which are in short supply when you're two feet tall. Last but not least: sport and movement are 'healthy'. Just the same way that, say vegetables or vaccines are. Or that TV, chips, candy, soda pop and unmade beds aren't. Motivation is everything, and this is where our society fails firstly.
Then you're six and come into the age of more sports. Oh, and the option to join the scouts. However, this is also the age of your first veritable PE lesson. Either your teacher acts like though you have the IQ of a gnat or you have a military butch female something with a bad back (so she can't show anything to the class) and dyed blond hair. Either way, you are convinced that sport is synonymous to slave labor or is in fact something for the intelectually lacking. All sports from the flyers you get everywhere are either, suddenly: A) for kids younger than you, B) for kids older than you, C) full, D) too hard, E) unknown, F) stupid. Options E and D do not deter your average six-year old. No, it deters the mothers. "Honey, that's much to hard for you." "Sweetie, how do you want to do it if you don't know what it is?" Or, for the emancipated males, there are the familiar lines of: "You can't." (why not?) "Because I said so!" "You can start when you can tell me what it says on that paper." "Whatever you're about to ask, the answer's 'no'." "You'll quit after two lessons, so you're not going." That, and your school organises swimming classes during PE. Everyone hates those. Government makes them obligatory, kids hate them, take them, finish them, never swim again until they have kids themselves. Scouts is fun, up until the point where your sleepingbag is filled with bugs during camp, your tent collapses, you fall face-first into mud, you get made fun, you discover your leader is Mr./Miss Jerk-Of-The-Year. Woohoo! Sport is fun!
Next: Junior High through High School: A yearly day of sports. At first, you get choices. Then, you don't. If you get choices, it's like 'Pick The LEsser Evil' for advanced students. If you don't, your day sucks, and someone you hate gets off with a note among the lines of 'My son can't participate in this event due to asthma' 'My daughter has an infection of the cartilage around the knee joint and shan't be taking part in any of the PE-like events for the next fifty lessons' or they show up with their arm or leg in a brace, plaster or bandage. Either way, someone gets off, and it's not you. Your PE teachers mostly are okay, but six years of the exact same program get boring. Two-mile run/Coopertest-Badminton-Basketball-Gymnastics-Athletics-Baseball-Tennis/choice of activities previously seen in the school year. Occasionally, they like to dangle the hope for improvement before your eyes by relaxation and yoga excercises or fun and games with sponges, balloons and water. Those hopes get crushed the next lesson. Some teachers like to import gymnastics for astronauts, meant for zero gravity. Nine point eighty-one gravity makes them unbearable. Others put in old PE lessons, à la five decades back. You don't feel anything, until the next morning, when every unknown muscle screams out its protest through your nerve-endings. Also, all physically and minorly impaired teachers get put on PE and graduate as PE teachers, somehow. They have bad ankles, backs, knees, necks or stress fractures, you name it they have it and can't show any excercise properly. Their students have to get by on words. Sports are good for you! Move!
Dress code is another interesting topic. Children who wear glasses have to remove them oftenly for PE. When your eyesight is a Belgian -4, expecting top performance is the same as expecting a mouse to tap dance out of own volition. Apparently, teachers/insurance companies do not understand this. You have to put your glasses off in case of being hit in the face by a ball, but you don't see the ball coming at your face. A vicious circle at its best.You have PE uniforms. White T-shirt and black pants, usually in Belgium. Long pants, short pants, it doesn't matter. Preferably scratchy spandex, right up until above the ankle, where the sweat glues everything to your skin. Often, your T-shirt has to have a school's logo on it. Or the school provides. Murphy's law has dictated that these, apparently, must be a one-size-fits-all-but-YOU model, divided in suffocate-the-student-small, doesn't-fit-anyone-nyah-nyah-medium or I-am-a-lovely-white-sack-of-potatoes-large. Shoewear, let's talk about that. You either have ballet-slipper-like contraptions or UNK! running shoes. Why? Because your others are too expensive to waste on PE. What's left are muddy/overly large/uncomfortable/cheap/embarrasing/second-hand/painful (please strike out what does not fit, though usually all apply) runners. You cannot wear any jewelry. Fine, Saan sees the point in that one. You cannot wear a watch, either. Not even one specifically designed for sports. ...Uh? Another fun bit is that all jewelry, watches and glasses are collected at the start of class. After, you can go and untangle your possessions from the pile.
Sport is healthy, sure. Sport is good for you, probably. But when the government plots against the youthful citizens of its own country in this fashion, it's hard to sympathise when it's surprised about the fact that kids hate sports. ... Yes, Saan has her first PE lesson of the year tomorrow. That's the reason for this rant on sport (took one hour to type) that doesn't fit with the post nordic walking a few days ago. Oh, well, changing your mind every other minute is part of teenagehood.
Saan is baffled about international mailing services for web sites. See, if you live in New Zealand, you can apparenlty send a pound's worth of mail, containing semi-fragiles (which are not even vaguely box-shaped) to a city, which will arrive within seven to nine working days, for less than 5 euros, which will be shipped and underway within 24 hours.
If you do the same in Britain for half the weight, a book-shaped package, for the same price, you apparently have to wait two months before the web site can even start considering sending it, and even then it's unlikely. Strangely enough, the first five or so ordered books will arive on time and within five working days after becoming available, if you don't mind that they get sent to you in pairs or ones. So, yeah, Saan's a bit miffy that her book hasn't been shipped yet, but her poi have. What's got her even more irritated is that she knows the book is available, published and ordered, but that the book store is too lazy to just order and send it.
So miffed in fact (Okay, so the real reason is that she spent the last twenty minutes she should've spent typing watching an amazing preview of someone spinning firepoi. Yes, Saan gets distracted by bright lights sparkling on the screen, even though she's too scared to ever try things like that herself), that she didn't make this post any longer.
(PRENOTE-READ!-FROM SAAN: This post cannot be used as instructions to practice or teach nordic walking. It are Saan's personal experiences and opinions. You wanna learn, pay a *certified* teacher. Faulty use of nordic walking equipment or not listening closely to/not following the instructions of a certified instructor can end in RSI everywhere on the body, muscle ache or worse. Also, you can't accuse Saan if you end up hurt, 'cause she TOLD YOU SO!)
Saan's sporadic sport (which will probably wheedle its way back into her life during the school year through her Friday-night urge to get out and not come back with a headache) is the increasingly popular nordic walking. She learned before her mother became instructor and loved the fact that she had the basics down in roughly half an hour. But now, two months later, there's still the last few wrinkles to smooth out. Why? Saan didn't do anything like nordic walking during her summer holiday. Reasons: not being home, not finding her poles because someone else had nicked them, bug-o-rama outside or too hot to move. People using her poles without asking had the handle-straps hanging much too low.
So today, her first walk after a brief warm-up session on a football field the night before, she had to wriggle them back up with a pocket knife's screwdriver, and work them back to her level. Cheap poles like Saan's have their downsides, like being impossible to adjust without something that you first think is overkill. Also, you can't adjust them precisely. The straps absorb water and get wet. The tops can give you blisters on the thumb when the straps are too high. The poles being partly green with stars are faults in beuaty, using poles meant for people who usually drop a sport after two lessons (like Saan) for more than an hour, on anything else but flat, grassy areas. Up-down-straight-up-down forests with changing underground is not recommendable. Neither are unscaled maps.
Saan's got truble multitasking during sports. 'Roll foot-back straight-arms stretched-bigger steps-use upper arm-support self on poles' is a whole lot to think of when you're basically just walking with sticks. Working on it one by one until you adapt the correct walk as soon as you strap your poles on is better than panicking and causing an anatomic overload where one tries to roll one's back. Once you got that down, problem two arises: you haven't anything else to focus on, so you focus on what you did wrong *before*. Not productive; you forget to do other things or the thing you're focusing on. Try taking your walkman/discman/MP3-player/portable radio with you. Let the music set the rythm of your step and focus on the beat hidden somewhere in the back of it. Focus also on poles that can get between your (or your walking buddy's) legs, tree roots that pop up just to trip you up or stray rocks attempting to rip up your feet/pad/rubber thingies that give grip on stone surfaces. If that doesn't work, work out a walk with lots of plants and mushrooms to name. Figure out why that plant is growing in that spot. Calendula next to a busy road, mushrooms eight inches in width and a pound in weight on a tree, you figure out where and why. If you've got it in your fingers (and the rest of your body), you don't poke and pull at it. You enjoy the slow burn of muscles working, you enjoy the scenery and the scents and you just have fun. Because that's what's having your favorite sport is all about.
Okay, after a while, Saan rediscovered poi. With the help of her dad's visa card, whoohoo! So she's spent her Saturday night figuring out how to order a set of poi with a tutorial DVD, which colors she wanted (in the end, she let her far grass-stain-wiser mom decide on those) and nearly ordered the wrong set. Somehow, she did manage to get the right order in, filling in all the spaces she thought was neccesary (only forgot her phone number and had to redo the whole thing) and figuring out which number went where on the visa card form. So, if all goes well, Saan will be learning how to poi properly in this and two weeks. Well, Monday and two weeks. With a set of rainbow-colored, length-adjustable, softer-than-tennis-balls, removable-tail-possessing poi!
Why did Saan go back to her poi-sites? Because she's got parental permission to leave the school during lunch. Seeing she's an asocial new kid whose friends are in a school where you don't get to go out until next year, she needs a portable thing to do, preferably doable in the city park, if she's alone. Poi seemed just the right speed for that. Unless the mailman eats her delivery, she shouldn't get bored too quickly.
She'll make sure to keep you updated!
PS: If there's some poi-spinners out there near Aarschot, all help pulling this off will be appreciated.
After a rather sleepless night, Saan woke up about half an hour earlier than she probably will on Monday, got ready for school in an hour and had about an hour and half to kill before she had to be in school. She woke her brother up, chased him into his clothes and through breakfast and started on her way to school. Half an hour later, her brother saw someone he knew at the school gate and Saan slipped in already.
After a quick look around, Saan went to ask where she had to be, seeing there was no class list hung out. She learned she'd be called to the gym hall and there hear which class she was in. Getting out her binder, she spent the next ten minutes doodling until the bell went. She also noticed a pair of twins she knew from primary school had noticed her, acknowledged them, but neither made a move to talk. Long story short, she didn't wanna. She ended up in a double class (Two classes, one class teacher, two helping class teachers) and got referred to (and watched as) the new student for the rest of the day. Twenty-three names to put a face to. So far, she knows three students by name. Their main class teacher explained the basics, and since she didn't need the time table of Mathemathics-Science, Saan spent some time finishing her doodle, inking it with her fountain pen.
At about eleven AM she got pulled out of the classroom for a tour of the school and the two assistent class teachers took over. Two familiar faces popped up, and she learned a way to orient herself in the school (Block-Floor-Room). When she returned, a few boys (mus ask their names sometimes) asked if she wanted to play cards with them. Asocial nutcase that she is, she didn't knew the game and asking if they could explain didn't occur to her until someone else had helped them form a group of four. She also forgot to ask anyone for their email. She fled from the classroom and school as soon as it was noon, partly because she was hungry and part because no one likes to be the new kid on the first day of school.
After a rather hurried day, on which I had planned a post (honest!) I get tricked into watching TV with the little sis. Still no red paper, brother's walking me to my new school in the morning, butterflies are starting to go crazy in my belly, schoolyear's not even there and already my mom's drowning herself in schoolwork and wee li'll Saan gets told that if she isn't in bed by half past ten, there'll be grave consequences (read: restrictions) concerning things like reading (she's probably one of the few children alive for who a threat consists of 'no literature for one week'), television, computer and other hobbies. So, planning on writing a full report about her first schoolday tomorrow afternoon, Saan signs off for the day with the hopeful promise of two posts the next day. PS: Someone remind me to chuck the brother out of bed at a quarter past eight.
Saan has been spending her day collecting all writing utensils she'll be needing the day after tomorrow, wresting her pen case's zippers closed, decorating the books she's already covered in red paper, running out of red paper, retrieving her orange folder that her mom gave her a few days ago, finding the last block of checkered paper in her book case, finding an unbutchered, plastic, thin binder for the block of checkered paper and trying to remember where she put her graphical calculator. She found it in her school bag, together with her fleece gloves which she's been looking for for the past three months. Now all that's left to do is put everything in her schoolbag, not to forget she doesn't need lunch on her first school day and be jittery about her first day in a new school. Oh, and find some inspiration by tomorrow evening.
Saan's last school year sucked and it was mainly her Maths teacher's fault. When he explained something in class, it was in the same undecipherable slang as the textbook was. If you asked if he'd explain further, he'd repeat everything he said in the same ununderstandable way, louder every time, until he at last made off with either 'if you don't get it now, you never will' or 'just do it'. If you made a rather stupid mistake, you got a hateful comment and the entire class laughed at you. Kids who disturbed class got yelled at up to the point that everyone felt threatened. Every new term got started with a speech on how practically no one in Saan's lesson pack would go on to the 'next' level, the harder pack with an hour more of mathemathics, and he made sure you felt as though failing for his subject would ruin your entire school career and you'd end up post man or cashier in a supermarket. He handed out his corrected tests in class, openly saying it so all could hear if you had failed it, had done a bad job or something equally negative. People who'd gotten good grades got a faint, mumbled 'good'. Next, he'd make everyone say clearly what their grades were, and he filled them in in his book only after he'd handed them out. About three quarters of the twenty-five students had bad grades for his tests and Saan knew that every other teacher, including her mother who taught Maths also, could perfectly fill those grades in at home. By the end of the first term, Saan was near tears every time she left the Maths classroom and she'd be hysterical if she'd have a test the next day. She barely passed on her Christmas exam. The next term, she had failed horribly on her all her class tests and her exam was exactly 50 percent.
Of course, when she got her report card for the Easter holidays, she read she had sixty-nine percent. Turns out someone hadn't gotten his or her points because they'd been put one place lower. That's what Saan heard the day after her Easter holidays, a bit more than ten weeks away from the final exam. The official correction didn't come until mid-May. The principal of Saan's grade (in Belgium; two years of school; first grade is first and second year, second grade is third and fourth year, third grade is fifth and sixth year) wasn't informed by him. Neither was the school's head principal. Saan's class teacher had gone to complain the day of handing out the report cards, but the principal (of the grade) told Saan's mom when she came to ask for more information that he hadn't heard a thing about it. The Maths teacher himself had been unavailable on the day of handing out the report cards because he had gone to Rome with the sixth-years. The exams could not be looked into. Saan's mom got promised there'd be help for the students with less good grades. Up until this day, two days before the next school year, neither Saan or her mother have heard anything from the school. Saan's mom had to find an off-school teacher for help for the exams that were four weeks away and everything went well with that teacher. Her only mistakes were mistakes in actually calculating out the whole thing, but she had the actual theory down and at the end of the lesson felt confident. The day before the exam, a day after Saan had gotten her last help-lesson, Saan had Maths, with a last speech on how probably no one would pass. Saan failed the exam with three percent below fifty. The only thing keeping her year-round average on fifty were the three and half percent she'd been over it with Christmas. Saan got an attest A, meaning she could do whatever she liked the next year. This school year, Saan is in another school, away from all her friends because the idea that her last Maths teacher may or may not be her next one is enough to render her depressed.
Yesterday, Saan went to pick up her books for the new school year. She is going to follow the next pack up when it comes to Mathemathics. The only difference with her old school is that she now will receive it in a class of six students from her own class, instead of twenty-five from all other classes. When she saw she had three books for Mathemathics alone, her self-confidence took a nose dive. She had nightmares last night and she does not want to start this new school year at all.
Should her old Maths teacher read this, she hopes he goes right back to Rome during the next school year and stays there (or gets left behind), so his next students can at least have one last term with a better teacher. Worse is hardly possible.
Today there is no reasonably long post due to problems with Saan electricity that cause the rooter/modem to drop out at the most inconvenient times. This note was posted after the rooter dropped away for the umpteenth time and she's hoping the internet will hold until it's safely stored on the world wide web. She'll confiscate her brother's screwdrivers and tell him to keep away from the electricty cupboard.
According to dictionary.com, puberty is: 1) a noun 2) the period of age at which a person is first cabable of sexual reproduction of offspring, in common law presumed to be 14 years in the male and 12 years in the female.
Nature, however, tends to change things as soon as we find a definition. Puberty is, most commonly, the period of age where kids realise that they'll get hair in the oddest places, don't fit in anywhere and will someday crave sex. Optional with that last bit is that they realise which sex they want to have sex with, which isn't neccesarily the sex their parents want them to have sex with. Should that last bit occur, then there is the mind-numbing period of fear of becoming an outcast in their own family.
Puberty is basically Nature's way of preparing you for life as an adult through scaring the living daylights out of your unprepared soul. The most effective way to achieve this seems to be a total rebuild of your body as you know it. It's not about sex, or being fourteen or twelve or having the biggest penis or breasts or even about realising how bad your armpits can really smell. It's about learning that life can't have it your way and figuring out how to cope with that. It's about screaming that you hate your parents when they're mad that you made a bad test and then, a few hours later, crawl to them with your tail between your legs when there's a spider hogging the toilet. It's about perfecting the art of bribing and blackmailing siblings into seeing what you want them to see, things like you coming home on time or you not having eaten the last pack of chips meant for the visitors later on.
Puberty is Nature's way of showing you every humiliating bodily function you possess. The ones you didn't understand or know about, anyway. Nowadays, school tries to prepare you through sexual education and they usually fail miserably. Things like PMS do not get described in sentences such as 'You might experience some mild discomfort and a few emotional ups and downs'. Words cannot describe the mind-bending agony that menstruating is to some girls, it cannot describe the bouts of blind fury that borders on DPMS the first few years. Sexual education does tell kids to use a condom. They do not tell kids where to get them, apart from the fact that the gossipy lady at the pharmancy or the supermarket where the person you have a crush on (or any vaguely blood-related person, such as your aunt) works at is a definite option. Sexual education does not teach kids that if you forget about buying condoms, and still want to use them, you might have to go ask your younger sister, who got two from her sex ed. class, for some.
During sexual orientation, things get polished up and compared to other things until you just know all adults are squeamish little prudes who never were sixteen and in the dire need of a boy- or girlfriend. 'Sex is like a runner's race; you can't start until your competitor has arrived next to you'. The problem is that, when you're sixteen, everyone's already five miles off, running their sneakers off, and you're lying flat on your face in the dirt because your shoe lace got caught on the starter's block.
The dictionary makes puberty sound like five minutes taken from your birthday. Pop into the city hall, get this little card saying you can reproduce and presto!, over, let's get on with life. Puberty starts around ten for a girl (and only a girl's time will be described here, because the writer of these little vignettes of complete irrelevance is in fact female), when she first notices she's got fluff on her legs and it's dark and pricky and she doesn't like it. Next comes the fluff 'down there' and that swell that everyone insists will one day be a shapely bosom. At that time, it looks to you as though your chest is infected: it's swollen and it itches and that's about all you can tell. And as all that body hair grows in that your least favorite places, and your very own natural scent invents itself, those two oversized insect bites grow to the point where it's something. You're just not sure what it is. Right about then, when your face is a moon landscape of zits that go down to that wee little hollow between two nipples that try so valiantly to keep upright and you don't like anything at all about your looks because your mom won't allow you a razor and some magical anti-pustules cream, you get taken shopping for a very first bra. Shapeless, cloth contraptions to be strapped around your chest that aren't comfortable unless they're too big. (By the time you're starting to fool yourself into believing you've got breasts, your choices will itch their way off your body until you drag your mother down to a lingerie store and fit half the possible bras to come out with the most comfortable and expensive piece of underwear they had in the store. It being a bland towards disgusting color is a definite possibility.)
A few months after that first bra, in most girls' cases, you'll experience either nothing or the most spine-bowing pain you have ever felt in your life, a constant beat like a monstertruck riding around in your body, somewhere between the groin and the navel, for one or two solid weeks. Then you notice that the yellow-whitish sludge in your panties has turned a most distressing brown (probably five minutes before an important test or thirty seconds before lunch break ends). Around that time you will either feel as though you've got too little social skills or your friends don't know you at all. You'll then promptly, in the adrenaline rush of getting in class on time or filling out the test reasonably well, forget all about what you have sort of recognised to be your first menstruation until the shops are about to close. That's about the time you hesistatingly tell your mom and she rushes to the store (with or without you) to get a pack of tampons. Murphy's law dictates that all things 'mini' and 'light' have mysteriously disappeared and you'll get stuck with something you're sure is too high for you. By the morning, you're pretty sure you need something higher. Should you have opted for regular, off-the-rack, no-frill tampons, you'll discover the joys of trying to get the damn things in. Half-dried blood does not make for a comfortable or suitable lubricant. Also, the commercials lie: full or badly inserted tampons press or even hurt. There is no such thing as the best way to begin or end puberty. The best part of it all is that it's not over just yet.
Just when you think the worst part is past, you get proven wrong. Your spots will rise and fall on the natural rythm of your menstrual cycle and, for about the first two years, that thing is about as stable as nytroglycerin in a roller coaster. Prepare for visions of absurd impregnation or even sterilisation when you skip one month of bleeding and for visions of internal bleeding and emergency rooms when you're bleeding to bleedin' early. Like Saan wrote here before, it's Nature's way of making you wet yourself in fear. Some other possible discomforts may be realising how exactly you experience sexual arousal and its very unique scent halfway through your science exam, being caught wearing a less than fashionable bra to all the hip Snoopies and flower prints in the girls' locker room, not having your breasts even out in size for quite some time, cutting yourself in the leg while shaving on the hottest day of the year, when long trousers are not an option, waxing and going to the doctor's to get your first strip of girl-pills. If you're having too much pain during that time of the month, it's even more fun; The Risk of Endometrosis dictates that you should get a stronger shot of hormones to try and keep possible wandering endometrium where it should stay. If your doctor is starting to get older, she probably won't check for the needed compounds in other medicine of the same productor, even if it's possible that you can get all you need for half the price.
Why, you may ask? Because puberty is Nature's way of showing you what adult life will be like, when making you pay taxes is not yet an option.
Hell is best described as wet, pounding rain in the middle of summer, with only short breaks between downpours, as though the air itself has to catch its breath. When it's unleashing the violence of Belgian summers upon the earth, it's understandable. Only tourists and idiots go outside and don't bring rain coats when they're surrounded by the beer-drinking, chocolate-eating people that is more commonly known as the Belgians.
Cesar, some old dead Roman guy, thought they were very brave for surviving many months travelling away from the center of civilization. Then again, that was in the beginning of his series of books. By the end, people who lived like them were ignorant, stupid and insane. You can check if you like. Centers of civilizations move. Rome, Bruges, New York, Tokyo, China. Whatever the place, the Belgians stuck to their habits and kept far away from it. When it moved to their own country, the ordinary, house-garden-kitchen Belgian didn't have to learn French starting their tenth September, so they didn't understand shit about civilization either back then. The up side of it all is that they don't care about this civilization that seems to have taken a disliking to the meteorological bout of PMS that is summer in Belgium. People come for the pretty buildings, the candy, the booze, sometimes even the pretty trees and squirrels and caves that go drip-drip down south, but they rarely come for the weather. Belgium is one of those few countries where stores can sell light-weight rain coats with removable fleece lining in mid-July as their main article without risking bankruptcy.
Most Belgian kids don't mind the weather. If it's sunny, they grab their three-hundred euro K-way (usually a beaten-up, mud-smeared, ratty thing that's been more than worth its money. Or was new the day before) and go outside to play. Climb a tree, ride a bike, rollerblade down a hill with a 15% sign next to it, go to the pool. If it rains, they either come inside, go home or enter the nearest pub. As soon as you leave the sixth grade, no one looks at you funny when you order a beer.
When it pours, Belgian kids stay inside. Unlike most tourists or kids below five, they don't buy the 'it'll pass in a minute' line any longer. As soon as they enter the age where school becomes and obligation, they learn to judge rain. If you get called indoors during school hours, then there's the tiny problem of a threatening flood, usually on either a Thursday or Friday afternoon, hereby ruining the entire weekend by having all the cool parties being called off. If your hand gets bruised when you hold it under the spray, you should wish you hadn't pulled on those jeans this morning and will walk home with the front of it wet to your skin and the back dry as can be. If you're not sure your hand is getting wet, it'll pass in a minute, unless you say so, and you don't even bother to go stand in a dry spot.
When it pours, they don't get anything from the store, they don't go check the mail, they don't put out the garbage, if any going outside is concerned, they pretend it was never asked of them. No one likes pneumonia during their summer holiday, not even the Belgians. So Belgian kids, when it rains, stay indoors. Play computer games, watch dvds and cable, make cookies and forget to clean up the kitchen, some (like Saan) are desperate enough to learn how to do embroidery. They don't honestly resent the weather. They only resent that most Belgian mothers see it as a chance to make their children do indoor chores.
Saan's mission of the day: vacuum the house and deflate the gigantic inflatable matress that had been lying in the middle of the living room for the past week. Hopeful when she found the vacuum cleaner already upstairs, Saan went to look for the head piece, only to find that her brother had effectively put a stop to Saan's planned activity it by dismantling the steel tube. You can only play computer games for so long before you go looking for more interesting things to do. Saan's brother likes to see things in as many bits as they go without breaking, often with the result of something getting wrecked beyond belief. Released from hoovering duty, Storm decided to go deflate the mattress. Opening the valve wasn't enough. The air pump then decided to be difficult, unless you switched it on. Saan's first attempt for greeted with an order to put a stop to the racket so people could watch the news. Doing it without electricity was doable, with a little help from a little sister. Saan held the pump sort of in place, so the pin at the end would keep the inside part of the vavle open for the air to come out and her little sister, Eve, had fun rolling around, stomping, kicking and jumping on the blue monstrosity until it was about halfway empty. Then both girls got chased off with the accusation that they were destroying the high-quality, vinyl behemoth and that their father would do the rest before anyone got hurt. With that happy note, Saan returned to her pc-puttering, on the beat of the drumming rain outside.
After rereading one of her favorite webcomics for an entire day, Saan stumbled across one she'd forgotten about. When a girl doing a nifty trick with flags described what she was doing as 'poi', Saan got curious. So, turning to her good friend Mr. Internet, she started her search. After thirty minutes of filtering and trying different search terms, Saan finally found a link to a few web sites with instructions. The Home of Poi came with the most basic of courses, so Saan decided to try these. After a brief shower, she set to work. Put on clothes. Down to the basement, search, don't find. Up to her parents bedroom, search, no results. Answer the phone, ask where the tennis balls should be, go back down. Find them where she was sure to have looked once already. Take two upstairs, take a pair of siccors, look for the string, find none. Go back downstairs, find the string, take it upstairs. Figure out how to tie it around the balls. Success! Covering them with deceptively soft-looking material, Saan went outside and tried to spin them in two equal circles. They tangled. Saan tried again. *Woosh, woosh, woosh, OW!* Saan got hit in the shin. Third try. One circle, two circle, three circle,... Saan soon found out why most pictures had either fabric poi or poi with wide leather handles. String was never meant to be used in high friction contact sport, or so Saan discovered the hard way. Experimenting a bit with the several grip, Saan hit herself on the mound of towel keeping her wet hair from her neck, the shin, the hip, the other shin, respectively. After nearly amputating a few fingers, Saan went back inside. Doing a bit more research on the movement, she decided to try and make a different kind of poi.
(Shall be hopefully continued someday)
To give an idea what a Saan DIY-with string! looks like, the picture's an example. Meet the Gaara-puppet draft. Another infamous Saan-project that will hopefully be finished someday. ...Yeah, the gun's a toy.
This is the Chibi Trick or Treating Fribbin-Dude that Saan drew a few months back. Around last Halloween. Anyone noticed Saan's posts get less and less inspired as the week progresses?
The reason the previous post hasn't a topic name or any text is because it all belongs in this post! Today, Saan got wrestled down by her classmates and photographed. These pictures are the result. The JPEG-specks aren't Saan's fault. It's JPEG's and msn-spaces' fault. Saan's the one getting near gangbanged in the middle.
