I meant to post yesterday, but it was, so to speak, midnight, before I noticed the passage of any time, so...
(mutters something about instagib and the difficulties of boost-dodging in CTF-Chrome)
Anyway. The past few weeks or so have been basically lousy. It's as though everyone I know had had their brains replaced with hamster pelts or something similarly dysfunctional, with myself as no exception. School, homework, friends, and family have all seemed utterly banal, and I wonder how much of that is my fault. My mind hadn't exactly been fertile ground for thought lately, and I thrash even as I write this for a helpful object at which to hurl my blame. Lack of sleep and the waning of the school year probably both contributed, but I've been to both of those places often enough that I think some unnoticed factor was the first to rear its hand.
Spending a lot of time yesterday just sitting around and reading (Legacy by Greg Bear) seemed to help, and the weather these past few days has been... I suppose "peaceful" would be the best word for it. Most of yesterday was taken up by intermittent thunderstorms, but minutes before sunset the rain stopped and the clouds began to blow out. Everything was still glistening with rain; the sky was blue, orange, and pink, and those colors looked glorious set against the green of the new leaves. I leaned out the front door, snapped a few pictures on my dad's digital camera, and ten seconds later the moment had passed. Thank the fates I happened to glance out the window just then. This afternoon has been simple gold on green, and the return of conscious thought to my mind is almost tangible.
Last Thursday I was completely and utterly pissed off at my parents, and they've managed to keep my anger stoked thus far. They told me they wanted me to get some exercise. Normally, I would have said, yeah, okay and ridden my bike somewhere. Last Thursday, however, we'd played soccer in Health and I'd done a good amount of running then. So I told them that I'd played a good half hour of soccer earlier and that I therefore had already gotten some exercise that day. They said that, alright, that exercise counted, and I could just get tomorrow's exercise done today.
Let me say at this point that, while I'm not some tower of bulging muscles (Become Buff Like Trevor and Chris!), I am not fat, nor flabby, nor disgustingly pale, nor underweight, nor a weakling. I get plenty of exercise without my parents' prodding, especially in the summer when I have plenty of time, but they'll have no truck with that.
Back to the epic narrative. My eyes must have popped a bit, because they said, what, what's unreasonable about that?
Not making wiseass comments at this point was a near impossibility. I don't know how I managed it. And, of course, they hadn't actually mentioned that they wanted me to exercise on Friday prior to this point, and I doubt the thought had previously crossed their minds at all. In the face of established precedent (i.e., that no matter how straightforwardly disproved my parents are, their bludgeoning insistence will not falter), I made several simple, concise, and more or less respectful arguments (not worth reproduction here because you yourself, dear reader, could create them for yourself in a heartbeat) and was grounded from using the computer for the day, and then was sent on my way. So I rode my bike up to Shepherd's Vineyard, turned onto the Greenway, went to several nicely secluded places in the woods that I know of, held back a few tears of equal parts bitter almost-hatred and intense anger, and just watched the creek water flow. Later on, I asked my dad why he saw fit to force me to exercise, and he responded that I wouldn't get enough on my own. When I asked why he thought that I wasn't getting enough exercise, he simply refused to answer.
Breakfast is a similar issue. Although I get three solid meals a day, even if I don't eat breakfast (I eat a huge snack in the afternoon), my parents still ground me if I don't eat breakfast in the morning. My arguments against such idiotic statutes are analogous to those above, as are my parents' responses.
If this keeps up, my will to regard my parents as authorities to be voluntarily obeyed will fade entirely. They can carry truncheons if they like.
posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003
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