The Joys of Last Moments

Oh memories, why must you fade away? 

Oh special moments why must you not stay?

               

For some of us, the past couple of weeks have been stressful and with graduation around the corner we are full of anticipation. What better way could we have spent the last weekend of our senior year? We were all together and we made some special bonds with people. We wouldn’t have thought the trip to be any better than it was. So in this blog, I would like to give you a flash of some of my favorite moments with everybody who went on the senior trip.

               1.  When Drew made funny faces at Ricky Bobby and I couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes.

             2.  When we all played laser tag together and I screamed every time I turned a corner.

                    3.  When Erin picked up a frog and I screamed very loud into Brooke’s ear. Then, laughed hysterically when the frog urinated all over her hand. 

               4.  At Olive Garden when Elizabeth told Ricky Bobby that he could keep the change because he was so cute.

                   5. When Erin was so tired not even she couldn’t even comprehend a word she was saying.

                   6.  When Ashley caught Drew making funny faces at Ricky Bobby and laughed so hard she was on the ground. 

                 7.When Drew took and hid the wine bottle from Ricky Bobby at Olive Garden.

          8. When Payton rammed into Elizabeth and gave her whiplash with her go kart even when she was supposed to stop.

          9. When Robert yelled, “My crabs are having a fiesta!” at the top of his lungs at Joe’s Crab Shack. 

         10.   When Maria cheated at golf by pushing her ball into the hole, instead           11. When James told Ricky Bobby that he was CUTE!

         12.   When Javier crashed into the wall at the go kart race and almost got kicked out.

         13.   When Mr. Buckwalter kept saying funny things that Mrs. Buckwalter did not think were funny at all. I laughed anyway and she told me that his jokes were not funny!

         14.   When Nece jumped off the tube and I fell off backwards!

         15.   When Me, Brooke, Nece, and Maria rode the blue and yellow slide!

         16.   Every time Earl laughed!

         17.   When we were heading home and James turned and said to me, “There’s this space right here between my bicep and my tricep that is a perfect spot to lean on.” -_- Haha, great line to use by the way! He was pretty comfy!

I’m pretty sure that isn’t even half of the best moments that I had. The time spent with my fellow classmates was time well spent and worth the trip. It was one of the best weekends that I’ve ever had and I’m sad to say that our time is short and I also promise to be in school for the next three days! If I could’ve chosen a best memory that memory would have been this weekend. As Nicki Minaj would say, “I wish that I could have this moment for life,” and I always will; in my heart.

Tips for Freshmen

            Until recently I’ve been really terrified to leave for college, but as high school is nearing its end for me, I’m ready to explore college life. I’m not a stone hearted person to be excited to leave some really great friends and my family behind; I just think it’s about time to be on my own. I recently received my classes, and let me tell you, they aren’t that bad. I got the classes I wanted, at the times that are most ideal for me. I looked up a couple of tips for college freshmen, and these tips might help a little.

1. Get to know you roommate and others in your hall. I’ve had a roommate before and not getting to know them until the third week makes the first two weeks very awkward. Get to know each other’s music taste, style, and habits. Many people are surprised at how alike you could be, even if they look so different.
2. Get Organized. Most of us girls are very organized, but guys, you’re going to have to start knowing where your stuff is! Nobody wants to live a messy person.
3. Find a place that’s ideal for you to study. Studying is important in college. It’s a time to start your academic career all over. P.S. if any of you find a quiet place to study in Flagstaff, I would like to know.
4. Go to class. I know some of us will have that early 8 a.m. class and you will want to skip it at times, but from experience, I know how bad it sucks to make up three days of homework. If it’s bad in high school, imagine how bad it’ll be in college. Lectures and labs are critical to your grade, so avoid the temptation to skip class.
5. Get involved on campus. It’s like high school; if you get involved, you meet new people. Develop a team, like our coed volleyball team. You don’t always have to join a fraternity/sorority to have fun in college.
6. Strive for good grades. After all, all that stuff from high school doesn’t necessarily follow you into college. We all have to start over academically.
7. DON’T PROCRASTINATE! This is important, and even though we all do it, we have to get in the habit to stop doing it.
8. Stay healthy. That “Freshman 15” is not something you want to gain. The campus may have some really good food, but be careful. You don’t want that following you for the rest of your life.
9. Stay on campus as much as possible. This applies to those of us going to a nearby university/college, we all have to learn to cope with homesickness, and even though it won’t be easy I love Tamika! We all have to adjust to our new atmosphere. After all we’re there for four years.

Well, those are my tips. College will be a fun experience for all of us, if you make the most of it.

Our Precious Gift

       There will always be one person in our lives who alter our personalities and character. On July 7, 2007, my family was blessed with one of the most wonderful gifts we could’ve been given, and I was introduced to a person who changed my life forever.

    The picture above is a picture of my cousin, Kayden. He’s an amazing kid with a fiery personality, and we love him to death. Kayden was born with respiratory problems, and was hospitalized for about a month. It was hard for his parents to get through that first month. They only had the chance to visit him for a maximum of four hours, and most of the time, they weren’t able to hold him. I was one of the only kids in our family who went with them to visit him every day. It was saddening to see all of these babies in huge machines without their parents.

        Every day that I went to the hospital, I fell in love with him even more. The first time that I ever got to hold him was scary, but I never wanted to put him down after that. He was a normal child after that. He developed normally and learned to crawl, walk, and talk. Everything was perfect about him.

        When he turned two, we started to notice funny things about Kayden’s speech. He wasn’t saying as many words as he did, and he started losing the knowledge he had before. When we took him to Phoenix to get checked, they diagnosed him with autism. We didn’t know how different it would be to have Kayden around the house, and he wasn’t only diagnosed with autism, but with regressive autism. We had to adjust to the tantrums he had and how to communicate with him. It was hard on his parents at first, but later on it got really easy to talk to him. He never really looked into our eyes, but after regularly meeting with an occupational and speech therapist, he was better at communicating with us.

        Even after being diagnosed with autism, I taught him how to give me “kisses” when I had asked him to. It’s even better when I don’t even have to ask him. The first time I had ever cried over his “condition,” was when he had actually looked into my eyes, for the first time since he was about a year and a half, and mumbled what sounded like, “I love you.”

        I’ve learned many things from Kayden, including my toleration for children. I thought it would be so hard to handle someone I couldn’t talk to, but it was actually a challenge I was willing to take on. It taught me a lot about myself, and I enjoy having him around very much. He’s the light in my life, and he’s encouraged me to follow my dream and become a pediatrician.

        Kayden is four, and he can’t talk. He isn’t potty trained either; but with my uncle having two other girls to watch over, I’m always willing to jump at the chance to learn more from Kayden. He’s the person I’m not willing to leave when I go off for college.

        I wish everybody had the chance to meet special kids like Kayden; to have the chance to experience how wonderful it is to have a four year old change your life. Words can’t explain how amazing this little boy is, and if people just had the chance to be around such an amazing individual, they would know how strongly I feel about children like Kayden.  

The Train

             We've all waited at the railroad tracks for the train to go by, and it seems like it takes forever! Especially if we’re in a hurry to get somewhere! The other day, we sat at the railroad tracks for what seemed like almost 20 minutes.

            As I sat there waiting, I thought, this is what school feels like. It starts out fun in the beginning when you count how many engines are pulling the train cars, but towards the middle it’s like a repeated pattern of the same train cars, just in different order. Then, when the train is almost at the end, we get excited and most of the time we say, “Finally!”

            The train of our education is almost at the end, and I’m at the excitement point and ready to say finally. In kindergarten, we met our first teacher and we were excited to be in school. I don’t think I missed one day of school until I was in sixth grade, now look at me! But as we approached the middle of the train (Jr. High), school started to bore us. In Jr. High I did get the chance to meet all of you wonderful people, but it wasn’t the friend part that bored me, it was learning about the same history, a little more difficult math, and writing an essay to similar prompts every year. Sports were fun, they were the highlight of my day anyway, but the train still took forever to pass through those train cars.

            Then, we started nearing the end of the train when we started high school. It’s always fun to look back on high school though. I remember who I sat by on the first day of Mr. Nielson’s Pre-AP English 9 class (Elizabeth Perry), I remember who I used to play freshman volleyball with (Maria, Erin, Charmayne, Tamika, and Bethany), and although there were only six of us, we knew we were bad! Then, sophomore and junior year rolled around, and we couldn’t help but think two more years, then one more year. Now that we’re seniors, most of us caught that terrible “senioritis” disease early on in the year. But the train is on it’s second to last train car, and pretty soon we’re all going to be able to take a deep, long sigh and say, “Finally!”

Dreams: A Figment of Our Imagination?

“You may say I'm a dreamer,

But I'm not the only one,

I hope some day you'll join us,

And the world will be as one.”  

                        ~John Lennon, Imagine

            Dreams; a simple word that can cause many thoughts to swim through your mind. Many of us have big dreams; dreams that involve us stepping out of our comfort zones. We all have the dream of going to college, we have the dream to get married one day, or having children and hoping they don’t look like monkeys. We all have big dreams, but they’re always put off by many insignificant little things.

           

            I see many people going on to do bigger and better things. I won’t list names, but I’ll list initials. I see A going on to be a big time news anchor, I see B making wonders with her camera, and I see E mesmerizing people with her lyrics at a concert. As determined and inspired as we all seem to be, our dreams are always going to be something we will never get to do.

            I see many of us going to on to do bigger and better things in the world. Many of us aren’t going to give up on our dreams. I hope that one day, we fulfill all of our dreams and live a life full of happiness. So, my fellow peers, I encourage you to write down all of your dreams as goals and attempt to follow your dreams or they will only be dust in the wind and figments of our imagination!

Bans for Bullies

“Life’s too short to even care at all.”

        ~Young the Giant

        At times I find myself being hurt by the words that people say about me or about other people. Although it may seem like bullying is not a problem in our school, but really it’s the physical bullying that is uncommon in our school. Words can dig at a person just as much as a knife could. When we say things that may seem funny to us, we don’t really know how another person is feeling about the comment you made. I am a perfect candidate for both the bully and the victim.

        I know that I have hurt people with my words and actions. Sometimes I don’t really realize how bad I feel, because in that moment rage consumes you. You start to feel good about having the power to have someone cower at your very words. I know that I have hurt lots of people with my consuming rage; rage that arises from something as simple as a snide comment that hasn’t been directly aimed at me.

        On average, there are at least 31,000 attempted teen suicides per year in the United States. My little brother recently showed me a video about a guy who was being bullied at school because of his changed sexual orientation. I don’t understand how badly a person could be hurt to want to harm themselves and their family. I’ve recently been reading about suicides, and it really scares me. A LOT! I thought about all of the people I’ve ever put down with my words. Though I didn’t physically bully anybody, the number of people I’ve hurt couldn’t fit the number of fingers I have on my hands. Many, many people and I have been hurt by my words.

        I was recently eavesdropping on a conversation between some very immature boys in math lab. My brother and I had the same class that hour. He sat in the corner and I sat on the opposite side of the classroom. These boys happened to be discussing “gay people,” but they used more synonymous vulgar terms that I deem extremely inappropriate. Of course, my little brother has a girlfriend. I sat behind them and listened as the conversation rolled on and on about the people who they thought were gay in our school. Really? Who does this kind of stuff in math lab? They looked around the class and the guy in front of me pointed right at my little brother. You know that rage I was talking about, well that immediately kicked in! I felt my ears and my face turning red, and tears welling up in my eyes. The words I said were extremely vulgar and inappropriate for anybody to say. I did cry when I was yelling in his face. After class, I went right up to my little brother and told him that I loved him no matter what he wants to be or what he wants to do in his life. I was crying and telling him that I loved him over and over again. He was giving me this really weird look, because he had no idea of what I was talking about. I didn’t want him to do anything that would hurt him or my family. I care very much about my little brothers and I’ll do anything and everything for them. They’re practically my life; I don’t even know how I could cope with the loss of either of them.

        I had told him about the incident that had happened in class, and the whole time I was crying. He was the one who showed me this video and I figured that maybe he was considering suicide, because of all of the people who always called him gay or weird. Personally, I think my little brother is a pimp. He’s surrounded by girls all the time, and I think they’re all in love with him. Anyway, my little brother looked at me and said something like, “Sharon, I hope to be as loving and as smart as you. I know what people say about me, but life’s too short to even care at all. They can talk about me all they want, but that won’t change who I hang out with or who I am. I’m not what they think I am and I know you know that. I don’t want you to cry about what they say about me, because they can’t break me down with their words. I love you for you and I know you love me for me.” I don’t know what you feel about any of your little brothers, but I know that I LOVE mine. I cried through that whole conversation. One time, he even told me that he looked up to me.

        I know that some people are just really insecure about their own feelings, so they have to hurt others to feel some sense of security. I learned that hurting someone else will always make you hurt more. Trust me, I know! So, if you find yourself in the mood to bully someone, look to yourself and think about how you’ll feel later. And please watch what you say, because you never know who it’ll hurt.                            

The Lady in the Wheelchair

A couple of weeks ago, I had a special encounter with a lady in a wheelchair. Although I had only talked with her for a minute or two, and within that time she taught me a very valuable lesson.

            On a late Monday morning, I had an encounter with a person who I didn’t know. My mom was late to an appointment, so she made me walk (of course)! After, I was ready to go, I started to walk. The dentist’s office was near my parent’s house, thank goodness. But what I didn’t know about was the hill I had to climb just to get there. It wasn’t very steep, but it was a long, long, long sloping hill.

        As a started to ascend the hill, I saw a lady in a wheelchair in front of me. She pushed a couple of times and then she rested. I looked up at the hill and then back at her. I walked behind her for a few more minutes and then saw that she was near the middle of the hill, where it got very hard to climb. I walked beside her, and kindly asked her if she would like any help up the hill. She turned and said to me with a smile, “No, thank you.” I was kind of surprised at her answer. I thought that most people would find that hill a very difficult task to overcome. I think she recognized my facial expression because at that moment she turned and said to me, “There will always be big hills to overcome, and even as it gets harder, you have to continue to push. If you don’t you get accustomed to quitting and you will never be able to overcome those big hills. Besides, there’s always something good waiting on the other side.”

        Her words kind of hit me like a bunch of boulders. I turned to her and said, “Well, thank you for that.” I thought about what she said, and I knew she was exactly right. Many times have I had those big hills to overcome and I realized that more than often, I give up on the big hills. Lately, that big hill has become a mountain. I’m still working up that mountain and waiting to get on the other side, because I know that something good will come out of the work I’ve been doing. Everybody has at least one big hill to overcome and at times, we all find ourselves giving up or putting off climbing those hills. What we don’t realize is the descent is easy and there’s always something good on the other side. I know now that whenever I find a task too difficult, I will think about the lady in the wheelchair and continue to push myself.

A Moment of Grieving. A Lifetime of Sadness.

        What I’m about to write is a little closer to my heart, and I would like to share this to honor the time I’ve had with this person. I would like that this isn’t mentioned to me when I walk through the hallways at school, because I know that it’ll only sadden me more. Thank You.

What started out as a great morning had all changed by this afternoon. Now, I won’t go into full detail of what happened, because quite frankly I don’t think I can keep reliving that horrid moment.

        This morning, I performed my normal daily routine. My mom suggested that we ride the bikes to Wal-Mart so I could get my knee stretched a little. I have lots of family in Winslow, so we decided to stop at my great aunt’s house. We usually don’t stop at her house, but today we had the feeling that we needed to. My mom walked in and I stood outside waiting. The door was wide open and my great uncle was on the floor; sleeping, we assumed.

        Now a little background on my great uncle. We all have that rebellious family member, you know the one who drinks and does everything bad. Well, my great uncle was that family member. Despite his drinking, he was a very holy person. He loved singing gospel music and always preached to us. He was a funny guy and everybody loved him.

        On with my story…I sat down in the chair next to where he was lying. My mom told me to try and wake him up so he could move out of the living room. (We were having a birthday party for my cousin when all of this happened.) So, I started picking on him, trying to move him and no movement at all. So, I left him alone.

        My great aunt and her daughter had just come from the store after being gone for over an hour, when we arrived. After my mom had teased about my great uncle, she had noticed that she could see his chest rising and falling. She had asked me to check him again, so I nudged him with my foot; still no response. My mom got up and rolled him over and saw that he was completely blue. Of course, he had been intoxicated, but despite that fact we were terrified. He was completely cold and was unresponsive through all of the distractions we gave. Immediately after that we contacted the police. The ambulance showed up and they thought that we were joking around with them. My great uncle lived out on the reservation and he was a regular patient in the E.R. Then, the EMT felt for a pulse and there was nothing, then he called out, “We’ve got a full code.” By this time, I was completely in shock. I couldn’t move; they were doing chest compressions and he still wasn’t reviving. All I was thinking was, he’s lived across from us for years and although I felt the tears coming, they did not roll because I’d still had hope for him.

        We followed the ambulance to the hospital, trying to get more information on whether he was doing okay or not. A lady showed up and escorted us into a room where she gave us the bad news. I was crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. My grandmother showed up to my great aunt’s house and we broke her news. We were all crying and as I hugged my grandmother, I knew that a hug wouldn’t heal her heart for the brother she had lost.

        Now, I know that we all lose someone in our lives who mean a lot to us, but after experiencing what I had experienced today, I’m even more frightened to lose any more of my family. My great uncle had probably known this was coming because he had sent Christmas gifts to every single person in our family. He had made a comment to all of us that we didn’t take seriously. He had said to all of us, “I bought everybody a gift for a reason; I won’t be around next Christmas to give anymore gifts. Take what I gave to you, and keep them as a memory of me.”

        After hearing the news in the hospital, I thought more and more about the person my great uncle he’d been; so happy and spirited. The more I thought about how I was feeling, I was thinking about how he would have wanted me to react to his death. I figured that he didn’t want me to cry for him; instead he wanted me to smile for him, because he was with God singing his lungs out like he’d always liked to do. We have our moments of grievance and we have the lifetime of silence, but all we have to do is think about the good times we’ve had with them.

The Value of Appreciation: The People Who Change Our Lives

*Appreciation: gratitude; thankful recognition.

"Appreciation and gratitude are a must if you choose to become the architect of increased happiness and your own fulfillment."

                                                                                                                                             -Doc Childre

                Appreciation…what does it mean? There’s the dictionary definition, but simple reading the definition of appreciation isn’t going to change how we show appreciation.

                We had a great discussion in English class this week; it was about the values we value. One of my values was appreciation. Appreciation is important and in this blog I’m going to take my chance to appreciate the many people who have come into my life.

We meet new people in our life almost every day and we also have the people who stick with us for years, but never do we say, “I appreciate you for being in my life.” It seems to me that we don’t exactly show our “token of appreciation” to the people who matter. To admit, I have not told my parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, or coaches that I appreciate them being there for me. I have a best friend, although I won’t mention her name, who has been with me through thick and thin. She has done so much for me that it amounts to so much more than what I give to her. Lately, I have been acting kind of rude and unappreciative to her. I know that a best friend shouldn’t act like that, but I haven’t really thought about how much friends mean to you until they’re gone. So, if she’s reading this (and I hope she is), I’m sorry and I appreciate you for being in my life.

                I have this teacher, she’s kind of crazy but she’s hilarious! Her class is the climax of my day and honestly, I wish our class could just sit and chat with her all day. She teaches us life lessons and always has the BEST stories to go with them. She pushes us to use our creative minds to create something AMAZING! But overall, I have to say that she is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. I’m also pretty sure that my classmates would agree with me also. But I never noticed how much someone can make a difference in our lives by spending 55 minutes in class with her. I never realized how much she shows her care and her appreciation for her students being there. With that being said, I would just like to tell Mrs. Caffey and my classmates, I appreciate you all for being in my life. As a senior, I also have the best class sponsor in the world. She does so much for the senior class and I appreciate her for being in my life as well.

                Among the many values that we should have, I can whole-heartedly say that appreciation is one that we should all have at the top of our list. We should all remember that no matter how big or small of a change that someone can make in our life, we should all appreciate that they were there to spend time on us. So the life lesson for this week: show those you care about how much you appreciate them for being in your life.

The Moment of Change...

Although this story may be a little outdated and many people may already know, I would like to tell it from my side. The summer of 2011 brought many amazing friends and memories. It might have been the best summer that I’ve ever had. Returning to Holbrook from Tucson was sort of climatic, I had spent all summer away from my family and seeing everybody again was very exciting. Despite seeing my family for the first time, I couldn’t wait to see my friends. I was very excited for the first day of volleyball camp, it was the first time I was going to see all of my friends again. A little confession, I knew my legs were going to ache very much after the first day of volleyball camp…I mean volleyball is not a very easy sport at all! The University of Arizona’s food court had taken its toll on me and I was not prepared to work very hard. I was very determined to try as hard as I could and to my surprise, I had made it through the first day, but I was more tired than I had ever been before. The second morning of volleyball camp rolled around and I was not looking forward to it all. Surprisingly, it wasn’t bad at all, towards the end of the second morning session, I had seen the injury of a fellow teammate. I wished her well and we were off to lunch.
After coming back from lunch, we did a little conditioning and a lot more playing. We had gone into a hitting drill for a short time after conditioning. Endurance hitting was not at all my favorite; it made you so tired that it was a little hard to breathe afterward. A couple of groups had gone before it was me and my partner’s turn. Although I was never a good volleyball player, I had tried very hard to do my best. I ran to the baseline and back to the net, hit the ball and ran back to the baseline. I repeated this for another two or three times, I ran back up to the net and jumped to hit the ball. When I landed, my knee jerked back and POP! It was so loud, I think the people on the opposite court heard it. I tried to stand and walk it off like any other injury that I had ever had. When I tried to stand it didn’t want to bend or straighten, the pain was so unbearable and the swelling had started immediately. I wasn’t thinking about what could have possibly happened to my knee, I was thinking more about not crying or screaming from the pain. Walking was not an option, so a teammate and my coach were kind enough to help me off the court. All I was thinking was, how in the heck did that happen?  Sitting in the emergency room for a couple of hours had not been my plan at all. The doctor had seen me, took x-rays and put me in a brace and on crutches. All I had to do now was wait and wait for the following week when I was scheduled for an MRI. The MRI was a first time experience and it was loud. Then more waiting, the results of my MRI came in and the doctor told me,” Your anterior cruciate ligament is torn.” I know it may seem a little childish to cry at this point, but I did! As the tears ran down my face and as I tried choking back my sobs, all I was thinking was why? Why did it have to happen to me in my senior year? As I limped out of the doctor’s office, I was still crying thinking about how the surgery would go. After waiting a few more weeks, it was surgery day. I was scared out of my shorts; I am not a person who tolerates pain very well. The operating room was cold and the nurses were nice, but all of that wasn’t going to change how much pain I was in after surgery. The doctors woke me up after the 2 hour surgery and I was in recovery for an hour. After waking me up, I had excruciating pain in my left knee and I was crying harder than I had ever cried before. I was wishing that it would just go away. The worst part about this whole injury was it took just one split second for my body shift its whole functioning. I am currently still rehabilitating; I shouldn’t be but unfortunately I had missed a whole month of physical therapy and that has altered the functioning of my knee greatly.
The best thing about this injury was knowing that I have to work even harder at everything I do to avoid this injury from happening ever again, and despite this injury I know I still have amazing friends and family who support me in my athletics.