Something wicked this way comes... or someother nonesense like that.

Anticipation is a double edged sword. We can anticipate good things such as birthdays or visits or even the ending of a disastrous term in office. But even when anticipating good things the body still acts as if it were waiting to go to the block. I turned 18 yesterday, so you would think that driving would be second nature to me, especially since my state hands out driving licenses like lollypops but having parents from Pennsylvania they believe the proper age to get a learner’s permit is 16, so I didn't get my licenses until this past August. I also am not the most skilled driver, not that I have been in any serious accidents or anything just that I have a bad habit of running some red-lights and parking dangerously cattycornered. For my birthday I was allowed to visit a good friend of mine that should live about two and a half hours away. I was practically ... no literally, jumping up and down for pure giddy girlish joy when I found that I would be allowed to visit him. I think it had something to do with my Lucky Chucks. Before I finally got in the car for my longest car ride yet there was much work to be done. MapQuest directions had to be found, playlists made, and mace cans refilled.
While the sun was up optimism followed me like a shadow. What could possibly go wrong? I mean the directions seem pretty direct. East, South, then East again. I'm an intelligent well rounded girl; I'll be able to figure it out.
After the sun went down though the vicious grip of possibility closed its nasty hands around my grasping mind. What if I run out of gas? I mean the gage has been broken for months. What if I get lost in the boonies? I've seen Deliverance. What if my my playlist isn't long enough? I have no idea what radio stations are in Augusta!
The pessimistic ideas of hundreds of possible outcomes kept me up. The ceiling itself seemed to play out hundreds of outcomes.
I made it though... it took me three hours, and I did run out of songs but I made it.
My sleepless hours were for nothing because it’s not what I think might happen that matter but what actually does happen that truly matter.
The truth is pessimism and optimism are meaningless, the future is hidden from us as humans and the only moment we know for sure is the one that has just past.

Why I talk to inanimate objects, and other strange ticks

My car is temperamental. She has mood swings that only I can seem to match. When she's not almost breaking my extremities with her doors she's refusing to let me in.
The only thing more frustrating than a car with the attitude of an angsty teen is when your freshman sister is inside while you are outside in below freezing weather scraping off ice. It is my expert opinion that all freshmen should take the bus. It builds character.
When they do not take the bus they start to think it is their god-given right not to freeze their little size 00 butts off waiting until the bus decides to show up. They think that they deserve to arrive home promptly and not wait 40 minutes surrounded by screaming idiots. Buses build tolerance. Buses build fortitude. Buses keep them out of my car.
This morning my car was a full swing set, as usual, the works: not opening, music blasting much higher than I set it, and not heating... at all. After finally coxing the doors open and turning down the blasting Christmas music I gave the sister simple instruction: Turn on my iPod, the song I want is set, just plug it in...Please.
Getting out the tiny window scraper I started my feeble attempt to get the majority of the ice off the windshield, or at least enough so I could see. I am not a physically strong girl. The heaviest things I carry are books, big books but books none the less. Sometimes I'll jog, but that doesn't do much for the arms. So, needless to say I'm not much of a scraper.
I feverantly work my punie arms trying my best to get myself out of the cold then out of nowhere the windshield wipers start, fast. After scaring me and hitting my hand, which was not fun, I slammed my palm into the windshield and screamed "Haley! NO!" pointing at her through the frosty glass. "NO!"
Yanking open the door she looks up at me in a state of shock and what could have been fear, but she probably had not seen me jump from 0 to 10 on the crazy sister scale. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" she asserts moving her hands away from the control (which turns on the windshield wipers).
"Are you saying they turned on by themselves?" Seeing she had no answer I reach in turn off the wipers and finish what I can of the scraping.
Settling into my cold seat, still fuming and cold but now with a throbbing hand from where I smashed it out of spontaneous rage I blast the stereo trying to drown out my feelings with a fast beat and slightly obscene lyrics. That was not what waited for me. She changed it to the Plain White Ts.
Driving to school I had calmed down a little but it takes me a while. Tomorrow, she scrapes off the ice.
The truth is: Getting angry not only solves nothing but usually leaves not only those around you hurt, but you usually end up injured some way as well.

Group hugs give me siezures

I have never been a hug person. Nor have I been a pat on the shoulder person. In fact I'm more of a don't touch me person. The affliction of the flinch has been with me as long as I can remember. Maybe it's because I come from a family that does not constantly touch each other. In fact I haven’t kissed my parents since the 5th grade when I told them I would not kiss them until they quit smoking, even then I was partial to boycotts.
Just because I'm not a big touchier does not make me unaffectionate, I choose to show my admiration in other ways, mostly with comments. My idea of a hug is far more abstract than just an embrace, I choose to converse. I want to look someone in the eye and engage them in a deep conversation about absolutely uncomfterable subjects.
I can remember walking up a flight of stairs with a friend of mine looking up at him, which is a condition I have become accustomed to because of my height or lack there fore of, rolling my eyes and calling him a padawan. To which he told me I had truly out-nerded myself, but isn't that what a hug is?
When you give someone a hug you spread open your arms exposing the most vulnerable part of you, the heart. When you give a hug you are completely open. Completely exposed. Completely vulnerable. When I look someone in the eye and reveal a little something about myself, in my own little way that’s what I'm doing. I'm giving them a hug, the only way I know how.
The truth is, anytime you reveal a little of yourself, in a hug, in a smile, or in a little bit of personal information you let that person know: Hey, I get it and you know what, I think you get it too.

Lucky like the Irish (and if you look at their history you'll see why thats ironic)

Sometimes I think I am the least lucky person in the world. If a friend were to ask if I thought it would rain and I were to look up to see the condition of the clouds then when I answer the question I would be wiping the first raindrop from my eye. I used to think I am just spastic, but recently I came to the relization that not only am I debilitatingly clumsy but I also am very unlucky… usually.
The fact I run into as many walls as a pin ball and fall down more than apples from a tree has given me bizarrely quick reflexes. My bad luck on the other hand left me overly superstitious and more than slightly ritualistic in my habits. My friends tease me for some of my more blatant superstitions such as not saying the name of the Scottish Play, you know MacB, that infamous Shakespearian catastrophe in a book. I do not walk under ladders not do I wear green on Wednesday.
Sometimes, though, for no apparent reason, and without any kind of prompting my luck will spontaneously change. Yesterday I turned a profit at the vending machine. I put in 60 cents and it spit out $1.25, now it turns out the machine was broken so I did not get that coveted orange soda, but, I now could afford a bottle of Coke Zero when before I could only afford a can.
The truth is: Luck seems to anticipate not what you want but what you need then serves it to you at the opportune moment.

Please, a moment of silence, you're teen angst died

I have never understood the strange relationship some youths have with bad poetry. They cling to obvious rhymes and gory imagery as if it would keep them afloat and quality were a rock. I also have never understood the sense of aw that they give each other when they are able to grasp rudimentary metaphors. Yes I know you can compare your behavior with a mask, this does not mean you should. I could eat rat crap but that doesn't mean I should. That would be yucky.
In my youth I was a victim on teen angst poetry, please, no laughs, no judgment, I am reformed. But much like an alcoholic a teen angst poet will never fully be able to escape that world once they crossed into it. It has left me scared with a deep deep hatred for the stuff. But not only a hatred for the poems but for all those associated with the misguided form of generic expression, middle-schoolers. I hate them. I always hated them. Middle school is what hate would be if it were formed from silly putty into a building- dirty, pointless, and impressionable. When I see middle-schoolers in the mall I want to push them off their overly hormonal horse and then rob them of their precious dark sweat bands.
Perhaps I'm judgmental. Perhaps I'm a bit angsty myself. Perhaps it is just the shame of having been one of them. I'm not sure. But as unreasonable as my prejudice is, it has it's root in something real. Shame. That really is all prejudice is: self shame, self loathing, self disgust. Not that I am shameful of who I have become nor do I loath myself or am disgusted with myself, but, when I look back at my notebooks and see three to six poems describing my four walls as a prison, how can I not want to bang my late teenage head into all four of those oppressive mask wearing walls.
The truth is, when we are prejudice against others, it shows what we do not like in ourselves.
This story is 100% true.

When I said "thats wierd" I was talking about fate...

Sometimes I think I was born to be crippled in a bizarre way. Trees, cars, and bedposts just attack and attack my leg. But lets start out with the most recent attack on my litte Achilles Heel... my ankle.
I, of late, have acquired a car that my constituents would refer to as "Ghetto." Meaning I have been forced to cover the passenger window with thick plastic due to a broken thingymabob that refuses to allow me to roll up said window.
Unfortunately the plastic did not want to stick today and so I was forced to try and wring the water out of the cloth seats, it didn't work. But as I patted and patted the seat in vain with a towel I noticed that my feet were becoming cold and wet so I closed the door... unfortunately I did not move my ankle out of the way before hand.
My poor sister whose virgin ears will always be marred my by blasphemous mouth from this day forth helped me into the house.
Luckily this is one of the least severe injuries I managed to cause myself and so my ankle is only bruised but that doesn't mean that I came away uninjured.
There is a part of my in constant motion. I sway, I skip, I walk, I pace, I pace, I pace. There is nothing more debilitating terrifying to me than loosing that. It's like a model whose face was seriously marred by an accident. Losing my mobility is the scariest thing that could happen.
It's not just the fear being restrained and out of control, it's the way people look at me. When I go on crutches everyone else seems to loose their hearing. "I'll get the door.... No... seriously I said I got it.... I'm serious... Don't!... DON'T!... UGH... hhhhh... whatever....thanks..." I loose a major part of my personality. People don't see me the same.
I am independence. I am freedom. I am ferocity. But when I'm incapable of moving that's not what people see. I become dependence, weakness, meek. People assume I don't mean it when I say I don't want your help. But when I can't move, even the small act of opening my own door is the small dignity that keeps myself intact.
The truth is... Fear is not an object, it's a loss.
This story is 100% true... I promise.

Nature is mysterious

I like nature, I like walking outside, I like the woods, I like animals. I can even tolerate bugs, as long as they don’t touch me. I do not like to touch them or their homes so I expect the same respect from them. I have a friend who does not see the world this way.
He jumps into ponds to hunt out snakes, turtles, toads, anything that moves and isn’t human. While waiting for class to start we would always sit on a bridge, not a big bridge mind you, but just a foot path over a stream. We would sit, dangling our feet waiting for the rest of the group before we walked to class together. He managed to see the head of a snake behind some bushes one afternoon and automatically started unlacing his sneakers to chaise after it.
“Is it poisonous?” I asked hoping to make him pause and consider the ramifications of his actions.
“Do you have your cell phone?” I failed to see the relevance of his question, but I answered anyways.
“Not on me.”
“Then I certainly hope not.”
Boys.
He never caught that snake, to fast for him, but he always found ways to make me nervous on that bridge. His favorite way was to pretend to fall. He would let himself fall backwards and then catch himself at the last moment, stopping my heart. When I told him I would stop watching if kept doing that to me he just started making gasping noises not even bothering to put himself in danger anymore.
“Why do you do this to me?” I asked once. His response was simple.
“I like messing with people, and you give better reactions than most.”
Sometimes human nature is as beautiful and mysterious as the moon. He reminded me more of walking headfirst into a spider web while walking the dog.
This one is 99.9% true.