Last week, me and a couple friends went to the new marvel movie, Captain Marvel. My official thought on the movie……….convenient, predictable, and annoying(spoiler alert ahead!). This last minute addition to the endless list of the MCU cast has done something incredible, it made me put Captain Marvel in last place for favorite characters. The beginning started out in no original manner, Captain Marvel has amnesia and very powerful abilities that doesn’t know how she got or how to control them. She is apart of a military unit for a galactic empire called the Kree and a certain mission goes wrong and she is captured by the enemy she and her team was fighting, the Skrull. As she was being tortured for information, she kept getting visions of her life that she doesn’t recognise. Captain Marvel is able to escape onto an escape pod and crash lands on earth of all places and meets with Nick Fury. Nick Fury, being played by Samuel L. Jackson, is by far one of my favorite characters and was the only reason I was able to stay through the entire movie. As Captain Marvel is learning about her past life she finds her best friend from that life where they were as close as sisters and were wingmen to each other when they flew for the airforce, what another a great coincidence, am I right? Marvel finds out that the Kree are evil and the Skrull are good, she fights with the Skrull to stop a Kree invasion, et cetera and et cetera. Just to make things clear let me tell what happend in a sentence. She is abducted by aliens, she happens to land on Earth out of everywhere else in the universe and in the state where she was abducted out of everywhere on the U.S/planet. I think it would be more likely for someone to be struck by lightning five times in a week than be able to be that lucky in a movie.     

The time is almost here. I’ve been waiting for a long time for it, yet I’m terrified it is here already. I’m just a couple months away from graduating high school. I mean it feels like just yesterday I was a junior, a week ago feels like I was sophomore and no more than a month ago feels like I was a wide-eyed freshman. Yet, when I see pictures of me as an underclassman, the difference in appearance sticks out like a sore thumb. Not only do I look different, but I see a certain naiveté in the eyes of my younger self that is definitely not there anymore. After summer vacation, I’ll be off on my own to college. I am planning on majoring in education at Truman State University. Right now at least, I am planning on following in my uncle’s footsteps in becoming a history teacher. History is by far my favorite subject and I think it would be a job I could be passionate about. Then again, that’s what I am planning on now but who knows what might change in the future. But I am getting ahead of myself. Nonetheless, the time is almost here for me to leave a place I have been going for four years of my life. I went there as a doe-eyed freshmen and I will come out as an adult, if you can even call me that. Damn, it feels strange just writing that out and reading it back. But that is life I suppose. It feels long when you are in the moment, but when you look back it feels like barely any time has passed.

One of the most important lessons I have learned in my eighteen years is that it’s possible find the good in a bad situation. What I mean by that is there are good things that could happen because of a bad situation. I have personally experienced this a few times, the most signifigant being my friend group. I met them when I joined the theater company and I never would have joined the theater company if I wasn’t cut from soccer tryouts. What was originally a miserable situation for become one of the best things that could have happened to me, knowing what I have gained. I mostly think of situations like this as life throwing challenges and obstacles. We can’t control what challenges and hardships life throws our way but what we can do is try to hit them. Not only challenges but also opportunities can present themselves and if it is something you are interested then just take it. How I try to live up to this is getting involved in something where I don’t know anything. I’ve recently did this on this year’s spring break service trip. I didn’t know anyone in particular who was going and if I did then it would be a happy coincidence, but out of that trip I have made several friendships that I hope last for a long time. I am not saying that it’s wrong to take opportunities with your friends, far from it. But it’s important to step outside your comfort zone and grow into your own person. What life will throw at you won’t always be pretty, in fact most of it isn’t, but its important to try to hit it an not cower away for fear of getting hurt.

About two weeks ago I was driving my Wrangler down my neighborhood when all of a sudden, a deer slammed into my car door. It left a couple of dents broke off a mirror but the damage could’ve been worse. The next day, my mom and I went to get a rental car while my Jeep was in the shop. The rental car was pretty nice but completely different to what I’m used to driving. If you haven’t driven a Wrangler before they aren’t that advanced. Unlike every other modern car on the planet, a Wrangler has a manual pull-up windows(no switches), locks that can be unlocked with the actual key(no buttons to push on the key), and they don’t even have automatic lights(have to manually flipped on or off). Now not only did the rental car have automatic windows, lights, and locks but also navigation screen in the center console. The figure of both cars are polar opposite, while the Jeep is tall and stocky, the rental was short and lengthy. Adjusting to this car wasn’t easy to be honest. Being used to maneuverability of the Jeep, parking the lengthy rental car was a complete nightmare. Luckily I didn’t get into any accidents because it would be extremely embarrassing ask for a replacement car for my replacement car. Even with all of car’s pros I couldn’t help but miss the simplicity of the Jeep. I’d often find myself manually locking the car even though I could have just pressed a simple button. For me, it was a strange experience to miss the crank window or the manual locking even though they can be a massive pain in the ass. I guess my point is that the thing that we would call an imperfection are often what we miss most, whether it’s a person, pet, car, etc. It’s our imperfections that make us the people we are and it’s what makes us unique.

How many times has an older person complain about how often you’re on your phone or more specifically on social media? More time than you can count, I reckon. It is very easy for people of the older generation to criticize how often we’re on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook,ect but they were lucky enough to grow up without this access and we were. If they did grow up with it, I guarantee that they would act the same way as us. Social media, a relatively new phenomenon but probably the most influential form of technology for people today. It created a way for people to show others what they’re doing in their life, to brag in other words of places they’ve been, people they’ve met, things they have, etc. People want to post things on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. because they want people to “like” them, it gives a certain amount of satisfaction knowing 300 people double-tapped on their post. I know of this because I share the same satisfaction whenever I post on Instagram, seeing my phone’s lock screen full of likes is the main reason I’m on social media. However, I am lucky enough that I’m not a slave to my social media account which is more than I can say about my highschool peers that have hundreds of posts on their page and their most important job is showing the world how happy their lives are. But are they as happy as they seem if they need the satisfaction of everyone liking their millionth duck-face selfie that they posted? I don’t think so. I would like to make clear that I don’t think that people who constantly use social media are mindless drones, hell, I have periods where seem to always being on social media. I have noticed that people are so caught up in making their life look perfect that they lose sight on what’s happening in their real lives. One simple truth is that life isn’t perfect and showing the look of a perfect life definetly doesn’t make it perfect either. Social media is something that no one outside our generation have experienced while growing up and it is up to us to show everyone else how to use it.

I have always been a big reader and have red many great books and book series. But, for me, the best one that I have ever red is The Saxon Stories. It is a series about a noble boy named Uhtred living in England during the time when Vikings would raid and invade the many small kingdoms that existed in Britan several hundred years ago. A group of vikings raided Uhtred’s land in which he was taken by one of the warriors and was raised as a Viking and named Uhtred Ragnarson. Even though he was taken by these invaders, Uhtred rather enjoyed his upbringing because of the freedom that was offered in the Viking Life. He also felt more attune with the Norse polythestic religon than he ever was with Christianity. Uhtred was brought up by Viking warrior Ragnar the Fearless as a son and was accepeted in their way of life. On the eve of Uhtred’s adopted sister’s wedding, a rival warrior set Ragnar’s house on fire which burned everyone inside and killed a family that Uhtred truely loved. Luckily for him, he wasn’t in the house that night but was immediately persucuted because the killers of his family spread the word that Ragnar’s adopted Saxon set the fire in order to be free of him. Uhtred is forced into the world of civilization by joining up with the Saxons of Wessex and the current king of Wessex, Alfred the Great. Uhtred is forced into a war of Saxon and Dane, both were his people at one point in his life and he must choose which side to fight for. I absolutely love this book because I am a geek to when it comes to viking history. The author is a man named Bernard Coswell and I never really seen anyone rival his skill for writing internal dialog.

I’m sure that everyone has a memory of a situation where nothing but luck either put them in that situation or was lucky in that situation. For the night I am telling you about, luck both put me in the situation and was lucky during. The night happend around five years ago, when the first professional soccer game in Busch Stadium was played. My current soccer coach called the organization who was in charge of the game and suggested me as being one of the ball boys at the game. At a lucky pick of a draw, I was chosen as one of the ball boys which was nothing but lucky in it’s own right but I haven’t gotten into the best part yet. Me and the rest of the kids needed to be join in one of the locker rooms to be told our jobs and responsiblites. As we were about to walk onto the field, the director asked who would want to be at the end of the field and my hand went way befor the other kids. He asked which side I wanted to be and I said the right side. When we got onto the field, I was in complete awe of all the professional athletes that were all around. I watched them countless times on TV but I was seeing them in person and up close. Apparently, I was so awestruck that I wasn’t paying attention because all of the sudden my stomach clenched and the next thing I knew, a soccer ball hit me straight in the gut. Now this wasn’t a weak, miguded ball but a hard and concetraed hit by a professional player. I dropped like a log the second I got hit. The worst part was that the air was knocked out of me for felt like several minutes, but when I was able to get my breath back a physician came to see me. Nothing was wrong me besides a strong ache in my gut so I was able to get back to the field. I’m glad that I wasn’t force to stay off because I enjoyed every minute of watching these players up close. After the first half, which ended to quickly in my opinion, the player who hit gave me hug and tossed me the jersey he wore the first half. I never let go of that thing the entire night, it was sweaty and had a rather bad odor it never left my grasp. Right now as I am writing this the jersey is above my head, framed and mounted on my wall. It is one my most prized possessions and will proably be a family heirloom. That was a night when luck was certainly on my side, I could have been standing a foot away and it miss me or I could have been place on the either side of the field, but I was standing at the right place at the right time and got something that I will cherish for a long time.

In one of my earlier blogs, I believe I you guys the time my dad told me that my Uncle Daavid was diagnosed with an agressive form of cancer. I knew that we would eventually see him, but to be honest, I was dreading the time we would. Not that I mislike my uncle or have no simpathy for him and his family, but I was expecting the visit there as dark and miserable and I wasn’t at all exicted to see my uncle going through the pain he was experiencing. However, my assumptions couldn’t have been more wrong. For one thing, this visit had allowed me to meet with relatives relavtives that I haven’t since I was five years old. The relatives were the children of my uncle’s first marriage, Christian, Amanda, and Heidi who all live in Europe. I got to really know Christian who lives in Germany and is now the funniest person that I know. He now has a beautiful South American wife and a child on the way. Heidi is working to become a preschool teacher which have doubt that she will be to achieve. Amanda came with her husband and her gorgous little girl who is two years old, Olivia. Her daughter takes after her mother by having the same blond hair and pretty blue eyes. It is a shame that it took my uncle getting cancer for the family to come together but we were able to make the best out of this horrible time for David. This breif trip taught me a very important lesson on how to look upon life. We have to really try to make the best out of a horrible situation because I belive that doing this will create the best memories. It won’t be easy, but it will most definitely be worth it.

Now I am sure that at one time or another that you were forced to read the Crucible at some point. I’m sure that it was as painful for you as it was for me, but the question still remains to be very controversal was who caused the most damage in that story. For people who were lucky enough to avoid reading this took, it is about the Salem Witch Trials where this one manipulative woman, Abigale, accused several different people of witchcraft. All of these lies and accusations were to replace the wife(Elizabeht Proctor) of a man(John Proctor) whom she had a love affair with. Completly justified, right? But it doesn’t end there! When being asked questions in court that she could not answer because of her guilty nature, she just behind her sweet and innocent appeerance of a damsal in distress which was enough to get way with somehting back then, apparently. When a friend of hers(Mary Warren) was tessitfying against her, she again played the damsal in distress and acted as though she was being bewitched and strongly implied that it was Mary who was doing the bewitching. This action lead to what Abigale wanted and it put Mary’s credibility into question. It is pretty clear that if Abigail had not accused these people of witchcraft, the horrible outcomes of The Crucible would never have happened. However, she is not the only person to blame for the horrible ending. If John Proctor stayed loyal to his wife, he would never have made an enemy out of Abigale. That being said, Abigale in my opinion, is definitely the most to blame. She is the most dangerous type of person out there, the type of person that no one expects would do any wrong and no could see coming to what they could do.

Something that is very frequent of both people my age and of adults is being stoped and pulled over by police. Unfortunately, I have experienced this more than once. Bad for me, but good for you because I will tell you to how to handle being pulled over which will most likely happen at some point in your life. My first piece of advice? Download the Wayz app onto your mobile device. It is a navigation app that provides a possible location for police cruisers near you. To be clear this app’s information is not the most accurate or up-to-date, but it gives a possible heads-up to anyone driving. Now when you are eventually pulled over, it is essential that you have all of your identification papers and proof of insurance on you or in the car. If you do not have one or any of these items, I advise that you don’t drive because the penalty for not having them for any reason will be much more serious than a warning or fine. It is important to Turn off both the car engine and any audio that you have on before the cop comes to your window. When conversing with the officer etiquette and respect is key. If the officer is a man then call him “sir” or if they are a woman then call her “ma’am”, and if you can’t tell then go with “officer”. Keep all saracasting comments or jokes to yourself, being pulled over isn’t a time to be a smart ass. Knowing your rights is also absolutely crucial. If the cop doesn’t say why you were pulled over then you have every right to ask them. If you’re being physically arrested then you must be read the Miranda Rights. You have every right to ask for the officer’s name and they have to answer truthfully. In the likely event of being pulled over with someone else in the car, they are encouraged to record the arrest/traffic stop to ensure legal action. Hopefully my experience of being pulled over will help you to not get the worst outcome of this experience. Or don’t, and recieve a much bigger fine or possible arrest for not being prepared.