Exactly How Far Over the Rainbow?

There are very few issues I have officially stands on and even fewer that I passionately make efforts to show my support for; I prefer to graze the center line and listen and appreciate both sides; however, the exception is gay rights. I would believe that love is undefinable and has no boundaries of race, religion, gender, ect anyway, but the main reason I feel so strongly in favor of gay rights has to do with a story of my first best friend and how I lost her friendship. I've mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, but let me explain a bit deeper.

Danielle and I met when we were three years old. Our older brothers were best friends, so it was only natural our paths would cross. We became inseparable instantly and stayed that way until that day in fourth grade.

It was lovely weather outside, and after lunch the two of us happily skipped out towards the playground, holding hands. Halfway through the hallway we were stopped by a large fifth grade boy we'd never talked to before. He pointed at our hands and laughed, yelling to his friends, "Hey look at these girls, they are totally gay."

I tilted my head questioningly. What was gay? I'd never heard that word before. I glanced at Danielle to see her eyes as big as saucer pans. She jumped and threw my hand away from hers as if it had burned her. My best friend ran away, leaving me standing there, clueless as to what had just occurred. The boys laughed and walked off. She did not say a word to me for the next six years.

I suppressed the memory of it and blamed everything on her new best friend, saying she had stolen my best friend from me. Then in high school, I befriended the most accepting group in the school. Among them were straights, bisexuals, gays and lesbians.

They are the type of people who talk with touch. For a while when they would try to touch me, my shoulder, my knee, my elbow, my head, didn't matter, I would flinch away. I never understood why until one day when I was emotionally upset, I remembered how Danielle and I truly broke apart.

I was scared of my friends touching me. What if people would think or say something? Would they leave me like Danielle had? Was it wrong for me to hug someone who I did not wish to have sexual relations with? That's when they told me that they HAD been told such things, thought of as what they weren't, but they did not give a damn what anyone thought. We know the truth and that's all that matters.

There you have it. I lost my best friend at the age of nine because someone suggested we were gay. I'm straight, but I've felt the sting of discrimination based on sexual preference. I believe that love transcends the boundary of gender.

Who is the government (or anyone else for that matter) to say who anyone can or cannot love? Or can or cannot be a couple? "Oh fine, you can get bonded, but we wouldn't recognize you or give you the same treatment as a heterosexual couple." Sorry, not good enough! Two people in love should have the right to get married and be treated like they are a couple by the government and our society as a whole.

Observant

I learned more from the ten minutes I sat in the cafeteria waiting than I did with an hour(ish) of folding clothes upstairs at the Baldwin Center. I felt like sitting there awkwardly in the rusty chair and staring at my hands, but I knew I needed to write this post, so I let my eyes wander the room.

I first noted the windows. The eerie frosted glass making the passing figures of children fuzzy bright colored silhouettes with echoing footsteps. I saw the bulletin board. Posters against drug use in English and Spanish. Instructions for giving CPR and first aid.

What threw me was the paper about Grandparents acting as Parents support group. I realized that there were not just a family or two like this, but enough to have an official group for them. My parents have always been there, providing and encouraging me; I can hardly imagine growing up without them.

After a pause for thought, I scanned more of the room and saw the giant freezers, the television, all the many sizes of highchairs, the table of books, and lasty, the piano. My first thought was, "I wonder how out of tune it is?" If only I knew how to tune a piano.

Truth or Fiction? Part 2

Prompt: Write two memory posts. One real; one fake. Let the readers figure out which is true.

Story 2: Bubbles on the Holiday Trolley

First off, I must inform that my four best friends and I are... unique and a bit... totally insane.

Anyway, one day over winter break, we got really bored and decided to take a ride on the Holiday Trolley downtown. Earlier in the day, our group had gone on a shopping spree in the dollar store and bought packs of fruit-scented bubble-stuff, coloring books, crayons, "grow your own" animal kits, and a pregnancy test. I said we are insane.

So we pulled out the bubbles and started blowing away on the trolley. There were a pair of little girls wearing matching fluffy pink coats in the seat in front of us, and they started to chase after the bubbles, giggling adorably.

After a few minutes, we pulled out the books and were coloring. One of the girls peeked her dark blonde pigtails over the seat and saw our coloring books. She began laughing and asked if we were allowed to color at our age. We told her, "Of course, you are never too old to color, silly!"

Upon abandoning the trolley, we left a few coloring pages, a half-grown polar bear (grown with water from a water bottle), and the scent of peach and strawberry bubbles in our wake. I wonder what the next people who took our seats thought.

Answer: Fiction

Truth or Fiction? Part 1

Prompt: Write two memory posts. One real; one fake. Let the readers figure out which is true.

Story 1: My First Day of Spring Break

On the way home for 'Spring' Break (In what why, shape, or form is this spring?), my mother and I stopped at the dollar general in my hometown. When we left the store, me holding bags, I caught sight of one of my old classmates exiting a car alongside her mother. She began to squeal and ran over to hug me.

The four of us gathered there in the parking lot and talked briefly. During this time, an 80ish year old lady backed out of her parking spot in a tiny gray car. She preceded, even though she could have avoided it no trouble at all, to turn and drive straight into our group.

Our mothers jumped out of the way as they could do so easily from their positions. My classmate was behind me and luckily was not hit. I was.

The car pushed me a few feet and I stumbled clutching onto my classmate, while her mother banged on the car's windows until the lady stopped. My mother stood there in complete shock.

After a second, the three of them began to scream at the woman for hitting me. In response, the little old woman stuck out her tongue and drove away. We were all too out-of-it to think to write down her licence plate.

My classmate hugged me tightly and I just fell into hystrical laughter in her arms. Sore, brusied, shaken, but otherwise fine. What a way to start a spring break, huh?

Answer: Truth

I am just saying...

One thing I learned from reading Stephen King's memoir is not to overuse adverbs or "fancy" verbs. I write anime fan-fiction, and I have a mild case of this disease. Since third grade, I don't think I've ever written "said" in a story, just the word said by itself.

He pleaded. He screeched loudly. He said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Never just said. It is just how King says on page 121 (of my copy of the book); I am afraid of the readers not being smart enough to understand what I mean. Therefore, I must explain exactly how a character says something to be sure my point comes across.

But King is correct; my reader's are not complete idiots. They know exactly how the character is saying a line from the other things happening in the scene. I'm going to watch if I'm over-describing, to the point of annoyance, from now on in my work.

Quote from King's memoir of what I'm referring to: "Believe that when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it--fast or slowly, happily or sadly. Your man may be floundering in a swamp, and by all means throw him a rope if he is... but there is no need to knock him unconscious with ninety feet of steel cable." (121)

Acceptance Makes the World Go 'Round

This post is not exactly from a prompt; I mixed a couple of them together. I have a few things I need to say, all of which surround a single topic... acceptance.

Acceptance is the reason I love anime. The sad truth of the world today is that being accepted as who you are is often a rare thing in a person's life. Everyone wears a mask (sometimes several). When I enter an anime convention, I feel my mask fade away. Anime geeks are such accepting people. I can walk up to 95% of the people and ask for a hug, and they will just open their arms for me. It's a wonderful feeling.

Acceptance is what I want most. Back in fourth grade while skipping out onto the playground and holding hands with my best friend of five years (over half my life at that point), a fifth grade boy walked up and started laughing and pointing at us. He called us gay. Being nine, I had no idea what that meant. My friend was not so sheltered. She threw my hand away as if it had burned her, ran off, and did not speak to me for years.

Then in freshman year at high school, I befriended this girl named Brittney. She was even slower than me at running the mile in gym class. We would jog together and talk about everything. A couple months into school, I mentioned that I had never been baptized. Brittney froze like a statue and stared at me as if I had just blown up into confetti bits. "You... were never baptized?" "No..." "I can't talk to you anymore..." That was that; she turned and spirited in the opposite direction, leaving me in complete shock.

Acceptance is why I am the way I am. It does not matter your past, your looks, your beliefs, your sexuality, your race, your anything. I don't care about any of that. I have seen and felt rejection, and I will accept anyone.

This is my promise to myself.

Keep the Emmys Coming People!!!

Prompt: Choose a well-known public figure and post a blog using this person's persona to log a typical day in their life.

This is going to be fun.

WARNING: This will involve a bit of swearing due to my choose... and sexual references.

Hello all my wonderful ladies and gays! So today I was craving some more of that wonderful publicity you all know I enjoy so very fucking much. I had another meeting with Racheal True, and she told me that now that I have a facebook, I need a blog to get even more in with the young hollywood crowd.

Luckily, I learned my lesson with "faceplace", I'm not letting my mother anywhere near this page! I can see her now: "Daughter! I clicked another annoying button-thing, Jesus Christ! Mary and Joseph! Bring me a case more of wine!!!"

Yeah... no... not going happen! So, I've gotta go cause I have to smoke a couple pounds of Oxycocoine before the photoshoot for the poster of my next show. *cough, cough* Already sold out people!!!

Then, I have to teabag Snoop Dog. Go find some more "huge" clothes with Paris, which tend to be quite the opposite of huge, you know kinda really tight and showing off our young hot bodies. Oh God... I wonder if Barbara Walters has a blog on here. *smirk*