Onetime I read a book about these kids that got an extra hour every night at midnight to run around and be mischievous and save the world and what not…

I’m not sure what kind of motives that author had, but really. That book was ludicrous. The hour after midnight is always disappearing before my eyes. To think that these kids got to have entire adventures every night for an hour when I don’t even feel like I’m being allotted my full 24. 

Time is just so bogus…

Alright. So my first night in my new room I had quite a dream, or maybe a series of dreams… Anyway. I dreamed that I had to watch this horror movie advertisement about a cannibal clown and how he was in an asylum but then, of course, breaks loose. I watched the same scenes over and over. It was awful. I tried to close my eyes but… it was a dream, so that didn’t work for obvious reasons.
It was one of my most thorough dreams and I really did not want to go back to sleep after I woke up.

So what was a poor Sarah to do? I’ll tell you.

I laid in my bed and thought to myself, Who is the most handsome man I can think of off the top of my head? Oh yes, John Stamos.

And then after letting him replace the thoughts of a clown biting my shoulders, it wasn’t long before I was able to drift back to sleep.

So here’s something that happened to me today that only proves how awkward I am. I wanted to share it directly with my friends, but their facial reactions to my self-deprecation stories have made me realize how easily I could scare people away. So I’m saving my awkward for the interwebs.

Anyway…

Friday night I saw the opera “Street Scene” and my friend, Anne, had a big role in the performance. When we saw each other Sunday afternoon, I told her facetiously, “Oh hey, so I saw an opera Friday night, and I thought of you, like, the whole time.” Anne tried to hide how annoyed she was when she smiled and said, “You’re clever.” After she walked away my roommate asked, “How long did it take you to think of that?” (She definitely is not as good at pretending she isn’t annoyed as Anne is.)

The truth is, I had genuinely wanted to tell Anne that I saw an opera Friday and it made me think of her. (Much like how you want to tell your mom when you watch adorable videos about cats.) Somewhere between getting her attention and starting my story, I realized that I’m an idiot as I found a connection between thinking of Anne and watching Anne during the opera.

It might surprise you how frequently a bad joke is actually just me desperately trying to cover up how absentminded I am.

I could never be a vegetarian. I’m not saying that I have to have meat in every meal, but I could never declare myself a vegetarian and then stick with it for more than maybe a week at a time. 

Although, I guess peer pressure can occaisonally play games with my brain. Especially considering my general support for unity, and my mother that is super allergic to peanut products. I just don’t like the idea of singling a person out because of what he/she eats, and (to an extent) I try to accommodate for people with nontraditional diets in a fashion that won’t make them feel secondary or uncomfortable. For example, I try not to eat loads of meat right infront of my vegetarian friends.

My best friend from high school is a vegetarian, and we used to spend enough time together that I occasionally forgot that I wasn’t. Every once in a while after ordering something with chicken in it I would have a minor panic attack and think, Oh, crap! I’m not allowed to eat this! Of course, an instant after completing that thought, I’d remember that Megan is a vegetarian and I am not, and the only damage done is to the respect for me, once held by the people who just saw the strange series of expressions fly across my face.

Now that I’m in college, I have learned that it will take a long time for me fully recognize the vegan diet. Now, before you stop reading to think some mean and snarky comment, I’m not telling you that I don’t know what the vegan diet is. It just isn’t quite second nature for me to remember. In an attempt to correct my general absent-mindedness, I have had to ask myself some embarassingly silly questions.

• When have eggs ever been a part of a bread recipe?
• Does the lack of meat, butter or cheese take away the properties that make speghetti food?
• Are fruits and grains inferior in any way, just because the name isn’t plant-based-products-only-arian?
• What kind of cow would you have to milk to be able make peanut butter?
• Which animal was raised inhumanely so that we can have Dr. Pepper?

… I don’t think I could ever be vegan either.

If I could pick one way that you and I would have something in common, for the sake of this blog post, I would make it be that both our souls shed a tear every time we read, “I know that only some people will be willing to do this, but post this as your status for just one hour if you [insert some way to be connected to a really well known issue society is dealing with].” I have yet to understand why posting some advocacy status about an problem that is already very, very well known by the population is going to do anything, but overload my News Feed with a list of people I need to unfriend.

The most common one I see is about cancer. I especially don’t see the purpose of posting something that says cancer is a bad thing. Nobody disagrees. Maybe if I saw somebody post a status saying, “Sad day. My boyfriend has three types of cancer and won’t even let me have one of his tumors as a pet,” I would understand that something needs to be fixed in our society’s world views. But even then, I don’t understand how a facebook status can really influence anyone. Their are two kinds of people that will read your generic facebook status about the suckiness of cancer: the people that want to comment on how much they agree with you, and the people that want to make sure it isn’t a joke before they tell facebook to stop showing your updates. That little status is going to do nothing for anybody who needs to be advocated to.

But let’s say that everybody with a facebook account posted, “Boo cancer,” all at the same time, and left it up for two hours. I honestly doubt that all of a sudden, some scientist would say, “You know, I was going to put off publishing this cure to cancer, but now, I can tell that the world does want it enough. I’ll put it in the mail today!” This isn’t like the start of a show where there’s somebody standing in front of a curtain saying, “I can’t HEEEEEEEAR YOUUUUUU! Do you really want a cure for cancer?!” Lots of people are devoting their lives and life savings to stop the spread of cancer, and a facebook status isn’t going to speed up the process. All that status does is tell the science world that it isn’t trying hard enough. Mean while, the real problem needing to be addressed is the population’s aversion to actually do something that would help people suffering from cancer (such as donate money or give blood/plasma/care packages). 

I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to want to express their opinions. I’m just saying that when people express their opinions and then ask me to agree (and share the fact that I agree with other people) in a way that implies it’s what I should do to be a good person, it is very not ok.

Although, a gray area appears when considering various situations like if Chuck Norris promised to punch out a tumor for every anti-cancer post that he got tagged in… I guess I’ll just address that when it happens.