school daze

In an avoidance of my homework, I decided to color this Garfield picture. My mom read my blog a while ago where I wrote about coloring and how much of a release it is. The next day, I got home, and hanging on my door in a plastic Walgreen’s bag were two coloring books and a brand new box of crayons! I have a million crayons, but this was a brand new box. SCORE! Well, I decided to take advantage of this new acquisition. Due to no cable/internet at our house for the time being, I decided that coloring would be a good distraction from my homework. But I also decided that I would color something to express how I felt – and this was the picture I chose. School Daze. It not only reminded me of how I feel while sitting through all of my classes (this semester is a tough one to bear) but this picture also reminded me of one of my earliest video ventures. Granted, I have mentioned before my attempt, along with my creative sidekick Leah, to create a television station. (If you don’t know the story, ask me about it sometime… It’s kind of amusing.) However, this picture reminded me of my first real video – that would be shown to an actual audience, and that was supposed to serve an actual purpose.

When I was a senior, I was on The Student Body Council – referred to as ASB (All Student Body). I was a facilitator – basically, the doer of grunt work. My friend and I were given a project – to video tape all the events and craziness that ensue during the week of homecoming, and put a compilation video together. At the end of the week, it would be shown at the Homecoming banquet (hey, I went to a private school – we didn’t have dances!)

So my friend and I set out to tape everything we could. However, a few problems existed.
A.) Neither she nor I had ever made a compilation tape before.
B.) We found that people (especially girls) hated to be video taped.
C.) No one would humor us, and do fun things for the camera… completely stoic.

We ended up with barely any entertaining footage… Therefore, we decided to try to compensate when it came to editing. We started out the video with footage we shot at my house. We taped up a sign on the wall that said “School Daze” written all crazy-like. While that was on the screen, we edited in an audio clip from Space Ghost that we thought was hilarious. If you’ve ever listened to Space Ghost, it was a Brak sketch where he talks about hiring a monkey to take notes for him in class. We thought the clip was suiting, and thought ourselves geniuses to put this clip at the beginning of our video. Little did we know that no one else in our high school was even aware of what Space Ghost was, nor did they catch the jokes in the sketch. We then proceeded to show clips from the week, set to the song “Crazy Times” by Jars of Clay, and this song by Plumb (the name as escaped me, sorry). I remember at the time thinking how cool our video turned out. Now, I cringe to think about the fact that I was that impressed with my lack of ability.

It’s so funny that as we age, we look back on the things we did in our younger years and laugh. My journals from high school are a riot, and yet really immensely embarrassing. As I write this, I’m wondering about this blog. Will ten years from now, I look back at it and think, “What in the world was I thinking?” In ten years, will I look back and think, “Wow, what immature things to think about and write about?” Will I say to myself, “Who ever thought of the blog anyway? What a silly notion!”