If looks could really kill, then my profession would be staring

As I've entered another year of productivity and education among my fellow school-spirited Wildcats, I can't help but notice how much my life doesn't resemble a teen movie.

Since The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Grease and 10 Things I Hate About You, I've been dedicatedly learning, from a surprisingly early age, the portrayed values that would prepare me for the senior high experience. Such as, "Jocks and unconventionally beautiful nerdy kids have underlying sexual tension," "Men being undeniable jerks are acceptable, so long as they buy you things," "Your life will resolve itself at prom, and conclude itself at graduation," "Being stoned makes for wittily humorous one-liners," and my personal favorite, "Become a socially trendy slut an your man will love you."

Now, as things are, I'm getting increasingly closer to my own cap and gown ceremony, and not ONCE have I been part of a poppy dance routine. In fact, I've never even been wooed by the token Hot But Egotistical Jerk only to be rescued by the Possibly Less Hot But Charming Loner when the Jerk shows his true colors. Come to think of it, the last time I was rescued in any manner was probably when my age consisted of one digit and I decided that wandering off alone in a large store was a pretty good idea. Similarly, my mortal enemy has never been vengefully humiliated in front of cheering peers, nor do I have an Obnoxious Blonde Counterpart to fulfill the role of said enemy.

My ratio of actual class/homework/activity time to parties/sex/drunken debauchery time also appears to be way off.

To do:

- Buy a pair of emo glasses, start wearing lots of layers, paint all the time, and eliminate all but one friend to officially define myself in a stereotype.

- Acquire the perfect balance of feminist strength, lack of self confidence, and faux haughty attitude.

- Assign a mortal enemy.

- Rewire intercom to constantly play late 90s pop hits.

Alive to watch it all, the view through our last summer

Blame it on impending autumn, but I'm feeling nostalgic. Not the nostalgia of the middle aged mother looking back fondly on her whimsical days of youth; I'm pretty sure I'm too young for that right now, considering I'm experiencing now the very youth I'll be looking fondly back on in a few decades. More like the nostalgia of someone who knows their life won't be stagnant for very long. When you're a teenager, nothing stays the same for any considerable length of time. You're always going on to new things, or watching other people go on to new things, or preparing for the next step on that metaphorical staircase of Becoming An Adult. You have friendships that you're convinced will last you through the years, but drift after several months. So you get nostalgic about things that happened only a year ago, because to you, that seemed like a heck of a lot longer ago than it does to say, someone who's 53.

I'm not even sure if my current state of mind can be called nostalgia. I'm just in one of those rare and odd moods where I suddenly want everyone I'm close to to know exactly how much they mean to me and the impact they've had on my life, before everything changes again and they go off to new and better things. I know things aren't going to stay the same, so it only seems logical that I make sure that I don't leave anyone in any doubt of their worth in my eyes, before I don't have the chance to tell them anymore. There's a reason I fight distance, time constraints, teasing, and the occasional maternal prejudice to keep up my relationships.

Last year I fulfilled this sort of mood by writing some of my departing senior friends "love notes" about what I appreciated about them. I'm not thinking that'd pan out right now because A) that doesn't include my considerable number of non-college bound friends and B) a good portion of the college-bound ones have already left. So I'm guessing this limited edition Sappy Linda is just going to go to bed, get up for school, and hitch her proverbial skirt up for the next mini-step on that metaphorical staircase without any heartfelt, romantic-comedic-esque revelations.

But, if you're reading this, chances are high that I love you, and I'd like you to know that.

Wasting words on lowercases and capitals

I'm a fan of English. I've dedicated roughly 87.5% of my life to learning, developing, and refining my sense of grammar, diction, and vocabulary, and frankly I'm rather proud of the results thus far. There's a certain satisfaction in being able to state things in a clear yet witty manner using a precise combination of subjects, verbs, adjectives, and predicate nominatives. Besides the fact that having an extensive grasp of the language is helpful when scribbling timed papers on Truman Capote, it also exudes a general aura of intelligence. If the fact that most high schools around the country require four years of English class is any indication, I'm not the only one who appreciates the value of literacy. No one wants to sound stupid.

That being said, it seems ironic that everything in our culture seems to be trying to make the general population speak as unintelligently as possible. Between white twelve year olds wearing G Unit jerseys trying to convince me that "shizzle" is a word and internet ditzes who use "dun" instead of "don't" and flank every sentence with "lol," I've just about lost faith in America's ability to speak. There's no problem with not sounding like the Bronte sisters or not knowing what "incorrigible" means, but in a world where "da gurl dat think she ballin but she not" is an acceptable sentence, some sort of issue can't be denied.

I'm not sure when we deviated. Was it back when Nick At Nite started encouraging the misspelling of everyday words? Was it more recently, when white suburbia was struck with the sudden urge to be "ghetto"? Or was it Michael Jackson (while he speaks fairly articulately everyone can agree he is the embodiment of everything unnatural and wrong)?

It can be argued that the degeneration of our linguistic skills is in some ways natural; back in the day contractions were considered horribly informal and Mark Twain was shocking. But do we really want a future in which our business leaders debate the economy using streams of expletives and the occasional "yo mamma"? I'm just going to assume and hope that the hip, slang-using teens of today will mature into the hip, slang-using rappers, DJs, and neo-hippies of tomorrow, while the rest of us nerdy, literate people will do what we always do: be the successful ones in the end.

Straight up.

Angry nerd rock

Of the top 4 things on my mind, here's 3:

The upcoming school year is looming far too near in the future for my comfort. There really are a few things in this next term that I'm slightly apprehensive about. Most rapidly to mind is the fact that I'm only 20 pages into Wuthering Heights, but beyond that as well. Cathi's soon moving out into a life that seduces so many into moral and beneficial habits like drinking and drugs. Though I have full confidence in my sister's set of virtues and the fact that putting anything besides clean air into her lungs will send her into an asthmatic induced coma, it's still going to be weird being separated from someone who's been such an integral part of my life since, you know, birth.

Other concerns primarily involve school and whether or not I'm going to be able to handle it in addition to the other things I've enlisted myself in for the next year. I may even have to start cutting back on my internet time, although the fact that maintaining long-distant contacts is becoming increasingly important to me would make that even more difficult than it would be otherwise.

*Next* I was channel surfing while getting lunch and landed on Danielle Panabaker's face on the Disney channel. Apparently she's the star in their newest movie. I practically fell off my chair. The same person I had to analyze pond insects with in 6th grade, there on the TV. I saw her on a Lifetime movie once, but no one watches Lifetime, so it didn't strike me so much. I checked out her website and she has pictures of herself on the set of some movie wearing a NVHS sweatshirt. Flanked by a picture of her and Helen Hunt. It's so strange.

*Again* I had an interesting conversation about my emotions the other day. Or, rather, how I don't seem to have any. And I can never seem to explain myself correctly in that respect. I personally think that I feel things rather strongly. But I also am rather fond of the old "internalize your emotions" bit. It's a lot easier to deal with other people, and makes me feel considerably less melodramatic and vulnerable, if I'm not always showing irrational surges of mood swings. I'm much more comfortable turning raw emotion, whether positive or negative, into dry humor and sarcasm than I am expressing it. Which, obviously, can prove to be a problem when sincerity is a must. It's something I'm working on, please be patient.

If anything could ever be this good again

Well, I'm home.

This last week has already started to blur together into one large memory of Virginia goodness, so any sort of present commentary on the subject is reduced to simply my observing that I had a great time, am a little tanner, feel somewhat drained, miss Brian, am considerably more satisfied with how I spent my summer, and will look forward to December. It was worth every minute of struggle to get us there.

It's an interesting feeling to want time to stop and progress at the same time. Anticipating the next moment, but not wanting it to come because you know it will just end. Now that most of what I was looking forward to has occurred, been enjoyed, and ended, it feels kind of anticlimactic being back home.

One of these days I'll write a real post.