in my ears
artist: john mayer
song: break away
I just really, really feel like blogging, though I really don't have anything specific to say. I don't know what might follow. I'm just going to write some stuff that I'm thinking about. But, hey, isn't that supposed to be what this is anyway?
Well, it's a little more than two weeks of classes left and then finals. I was talking to Val at lunch today about all the stuff I've got to do in those weeks, and I realized that it's a heck of a lot. But no, I'm not all that stressed. What's so stressful about four papers, two Spanish written tests and an oral interview, two grammar tests, various quizzes, and a book to read? In 'round about three weeks? Nothing at all.
The reason I am ex-so-cited is because next semester, Murray State is doing a trial run of some kind of campus readership program. Basically, for four weeks, we will have the opportunity to pick up a USA Today and another periodical of the university's choice on campus for free. I think this is a wonderful investment. Maybe I'll finally know what's going on in the world.
I don't know what made me think of this or what is possessing me to write about this right now: Last weekend, Mom and I went to Eastland Mall to do a little shopping. We were walking through Cafe Court, and there was this adolescent girl in one of those cheerleading competition squad things doing some sort of recruitment or fundraiser. You know what I'm talking about? These are the little girls who can't be more than thirteen years old running around in little chearleading uniforms with curled-ribboned-and-hairsprayed ponytails and three-inch-thick glitter-and-make-up faces. They look like they haven't eaten in weeks, maybe so that their painted smiles will look monstrous on their tiny, gaunt faces. You know these girls. Anyway, there were some of those parading around the mall doing their thing, and at first, I just wanted to slap them all. How annoying and fake and disgusting these girls are. But if you look hard enough, you can see little girls under all that grotesque glitz. And then I felt sorry for them. I don't like to make generalizations, but isn't it almost obvious that these girls have been pushed into this kind of situation by their mothers who want to live vicariously through them? It's just sad to me. "Well, the girls like it. They just live for this stuff." Yeah, because someone has forced it upon them. It's just not natural. Where are their childhoods? Anyway, this isn't just these cheerleaders. It's anything of this extreme. The girls in the beauty pageants. I think of Jon Benet Ramsey. But it's also stuff like sports or even academics. It just seems to me that these children are nearly killing themselves to please their parents. It's a tragedy. I don't know why I just went into all of that incoherent babble, but it's what I was thinking of as I was walking through the mall last Saturday afternoon.
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