Giggly

Dear Mr. Sheehy,

Hi! I certainly had an interesting year with you! It was fun even though I never quiet handed anything in except that one paper and I was really very proud of myself. Before I go on I would like to warn you that this may be a sappy letter. I just lost a loved one, my cousin, and she was pregnant and she was driving through an unmarked intersection and another car t-boned her and killed her… so it’s been an interesting eighteen hours so far. Anyway, on a lighter note, I really did have fun with you this year! I may have been a nuisance, but you know, it’s the people that you meet that teach you something.

I really did learn something in your class, besides all those silly vocabulary words, I learned that it doesn’t matter who you are or who you want to be, you can just be yourself, who ever that may be, in this department. No one laughs at anyone, unless you told a super funny joke, and you did want them to laugh. No matter what kind of problem you have or anything at all it all gets shared and it all gets fixed, or at least they make you feel better for the moment. I’ve learned to open up to a lot more people and to accept everyone because this could be their bad day or week or month maybe even year.

How have I changed? This question is a very good one! So here to tell you more is Emily about how I’ve changed. “Koleen has seriously changed so much within this past year. You might’ve seen her walk in on the first day of class, laughing about one thing or another, and thought ‘Oh great. Another one of those students.’ But now, you look at her and say ‘That’s one of my students.’ And you can tell how much she has gained from this class, much like the rest of us. Believe it or not, but no matter how wild this bunch seems, we loved this class and so did she.” Thanks Emily!

The influence in my life has probably been my sister and my family to just get my stuff done so that I can graduate and just get out of school. I don’t know if you have noticed or not but I rarely do my homework and that is all going to change. I just want to get out of school and start maybe a fabulous life. That would be so cool! My family knows that I have a problem doing school related stuff. It really all started in the second grade, I had all the worksheets that we did back in Arlington, South Dakota. So I figured that I just didn’t need to do it. So I really made it hard on myself that I started that trend so early, and knowing that I still follow it just kind of bugs me. I don’t feel like I accomplish anything in which I don’t, but it’s still all the same.

I will remember you eating all those oranges in front of us, but then I got smart at the end and brought my own apple. Yummy! Oh and all the silly little videos that you showed to us. I think if you did more videos like the ones you showed, your kids will learn more. How can I forget all the silly things like the www.icanhascheezburger.com?

Oh yeah! That’s right I went there… ha! That was probably the best site that you showed us the entire year! The pictures that students could send you and your family photos I will miss! I love pictures of everything; I love it so much that at one point in time I considered pursuing a career in photography. That’s kind of out of the picture now.

I know this, you know this and the bum on the street knows this, the most challenging part of my year was the vocabulary, and just doing it and handing it in. That reverts back to second grade also. Some other things that were challenging for me was the understanding some of the story’s and why they happened and why the author decided to write about that.

I learned that if I’m stressed out I tend to get more done, but afterwards I have a relapse of laziness and I just don’t want to do it because I feel like I have burnt myself out. Plus when I get stressed, no one wants to be around me because I start yelling and absolutely going nuts! This year has been hard and now the end of the year is even harder because of my cousin.

My story of the year would be how Mr. Sheehy would stand on tops of desks and ask if it would be weird if he taught from up there. The orange smell would linger and make my mouth water when he had those and the story of the squirl on www.icanhascheezburger.com and electricity was coming from his little finger tips and we put captions on it that said, “I told you not to touch my nuts!” That was probably the best!

It truly has been an amazing year with amazing people that have amazing talent. Whether it’s Jasmine with her writing or Emily Weber playing Kim in Miss Saigon, or just being yourself when you are around others. That will probably get you farther in life than just a great job. So be yourself no matter what, and if someone tells you that you are stupid for showing emotion, let me know, I’ll go and beat some sense into them… some sense of pain… then we’ll see who shows emotion.

When you first read the story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, you get this picture of this man who has no home, probably nothing to eat, maybe no family, even one-armed, and yet you continue to read. You get no feeling of love or security. Then you learn about this lady, she is a mother of one and from what you can tell, she has no husband. Her daughter, Lucynell, is, what you would say now a days, “Mentally Handicapped.” She was a deaf, mute who had many learning disabilities. She had no pity party for herself, because she didn’t know any better.

Then this man comes along and he was just looking for work and then he spots a car and wants to know how he might achieve the car. Then he finds this woman sitting on the porch and he starts talking to her… “You can take the car but I have a lovely daughter,” not at all mentioning that she was thirty-three, but sixteen. Well you would not have known the difference, for she did not look a day over sixteen.Do you want to get rid of your daughter so badly that you would be willing to give her to a complete stranger, who could murder her and you would not even know. But then he agreed to marry her just for the car, with the paint job.

Before they get married, he teaches her words to say just like an amazing husband would. You end up thinking ‘Wow! This man will take care of her and they will live happily ever after.’ He does some things around the house for the mother, also in their agreement. Then comes the big day! They get married, and he decides to take her for almost a honeymoon. They get to driving, the sack lunch that her mother, his new mother-in-law, had packed them lunches. She finished off her lunch first. Then decided to take her hat pluck off the cherries one by one and throwing them out the window. This innocent lady decides to fall asleep.

“Maybe she’s hungry…” he thought. So he stops at a roadside cafe, buys her lunch and pays for it. She is so tired she just decides to fall asleep on the counter at the cafe. To which he tells the man behind the counter that she is a hitchhiker. He then leaves. He comes upon a hitchhiker and picks him up and lectures him. I’m sorry but if you lecture the little guy… then maybe you should take your own advice… until then you have no place to talk. The hitchhiker jumped out of the car. A storm comes and this man believes, truly that the storm will swallow him whole. To which I’m thinking… “Oh man I really hope it does!!!”

The end of the book is here and I am so happy! Our first book is out of the way and it wasn’t even that bad. It had its moments where is was blah… but other than that it was good. On Family Guy, I saw Peter reading the book because he was going on a cruise and so I was like, “Oh my gosh… Mom! Look at the book he’s reading! We are reading the same one in English 11!” I had a merry ole’ time just sitting and staring. Ok, on to more important things! So at the end of this book, the old man gets home and just passes out on his bed, I would totally do the same thing after a time like that. The whole trip still would have been boring though…

So some questions I still have, is the old man tired from keeping the fish on the line, or waiting to make sure that no sharks ate anymore of it, or did the sharks tire him out? And what about the bone spurs? Why is he so obsessed with them? If the old man could, would he be Joe Dimaggio?

Just some food for thought there.

Symbolicly, I see an old man fighting hard f0r this fish and I can’t help but think of someone fighting for their life in a battle of cancer. They must have the mentality that they want it bad enough but their not sure that it is going to happen for them.

“Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If sharks come, God pity him and me.”

What this quote has to do with the point that I was previously making, the sharks are like the cancer cells, and him refurs to kemo and me is obviously the person with cancer. You never tend to think about thinks this deeply until you have an expiration date posted on your forehead. Then it feels like you have nothing left.

Well we read some more in the amazing book in Mr. Sheehy’s class. Today I figured out that there is a bigger picture in the entire book than I thought. Obviously we were asked to blog about it. Well the way I see it, the old man catching the absolutely amazingly huge fish, represents maybe a big task that he must overcome. In other words, maybe a big problem he must solve. For instance, his wife passing on and him not having anyone, will he remarry or will he die alone? I know, very disterbing, but it’s the truth and you must look at the bigger picture. Maybe he has the mentality that he doesn’t want anybody else. Or maybe he just doesn’t know if that will be right.

As Emily said in her blog, “Two people who want something so badly, they won’t stop fighting for it.” This reminds me of the Shakespeareian play, Romeo and Juliet. They both want something, their love, so badly they are willing to kill themselves just to be with each other.

Dear Mr. Hemingway,

            Like William Shakespeare, you are a legend. You are now taught to over a million students in the 11^th grade. Although your books can get rather boring and very blah, they have a bigger picture to them. They have more symbols linking to the real world than I first realized. Some of the things that you have written have been very inspiring to the world. If you are the philosophical type, you tend to think very hard and very deep about a lot of the book. Even the littlest things can mean the largest things in life.

            I think you suicide was maybe not the best thing. If you could have decided to live longer, and put some of your books in a current era, they would have made more sense and had an even greater effect on the world. Because you have the intelligence and the wisdom, you could have made your books relate to a lot more people and people would have actually liked your updated books. When you took your life, you continued to make a name for yourself.

            I comment on you because our eleventh grade English class just finished on one of your books, The Old Man and the Sea. Your book had a lot that related to my life and some awesome analogies that really made me look at my life as a whole, differently. Some think of you as the greatest travel writer since Homer. But I look at you as just another man that wrote a book.

What do you think about when I say American Man? Well what typically comes up when I talk to the people that I hang out with the typical hillbilly-banjo-playing-long-bearded- man.

Well what came to mind when I asked myself, the typical blond-shaggy-haired, blue eyes and the most amazing washboard stomach and he would be very tall. He would love surfing and hanging out with his friends and his amazing self! He would maybe have a girlfriend, brown hair, blue eyes and very tall (shorter than him) and very skinny model-esk type.

He would drive a Dodge truck, by the way, just because Dodge is just the best. No arguments-hands down the best.

OK! So the first book of the year! WOO HOO!!! So, so far in the book there is the main character (the old man(who would have thought of that?)) and he seems like a very humble person and he likes to take care of him self and if you are the right person… he would very willingly share his greatly earned wisdom with you. From what it sounds like so far, it doesn’t seem like he has any family besides his wife, which if that were me by the way, I would totally move on because it seems like he never even talks to her because he hardly mentions her or maybe that’s because he misses her to much and it pains him to talk about her. Getting way off track! Hahaha! Well anyway, there is also a little boy who seems like he is the old mans care taker. He buys him food. Which reminds me, if this guy is a fisherman, shouldn’t he have enough money to buy his own food in the first place? Or is he just a fisherman because he thinks it is fun and that is his only means of food?

So there is a part in the book that oddly strikes my eye and it is,

“The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.”

That oddly struck struck my eye because there are many people in the world that don’t have any food and I just kinda wondered if he was one or not. He is a fisherman with bad luck though so that is my thought…

A blog is something that you can put all your wishes, hope, dreams, what you believe, and what you agree and disagree with. It is somewhere on the internet that you can put anything you want to, so other people can see it and share what they think, believe, and what they know. All of the new age teenagers have heard of blogs through MySpace. They also have blogs on Yahoo and Hotmail for support groups and hobby groups.

I think that the year of English 11 looking me in the face will be fun! I am a little nervous about using a blog for English this year. I just don’t want to be too opinionated and offend someone, but sometimes that is basically what it is all about right? Sometimes you have to something wrong in order to get the world to look differently about something, it possibly could be something that you strongly believe in and something that you think is right opposed to something that you know is not right! So just remember a blog can get you something that you want but it’s not always right… and if is right, then it’s not always something you want. I don’t think I’ll use a blog for my problems and dreams… people might laugh… or will they feel the same way?