And so another chapter ends.

Teenagers deserve a GOOD book.

Remember when I said I was going to write poetry? Don't count on that any time soon. I've little patience to write that sort of thing aside from the songs/poetry that I'll keep very personal for some time. So let's go on a different path.

I hate The Catcher in the Rye. It is a terribly pretentious book. I dislike the stream-of-consciousness style it uses. It revolves around a boy who finds everything around him "phony," yet its style feels forced and fake.

But I will give the late JD Salinger credit for having the literary balls to take on the tremendously complicated task of writing a book about teenage life in a way that doesn't insult the intelligence of teenagers or the reader.

Teenage life is a topic most often left to Young Adult Fiction shelves in public libraries, filled with series most often read by adolescent girls who get addicted to them for a few months and them forget them entirely (at least, that's how my sister does it). The books are cheesy, heavy-handed sermons preaching truths that have been drilled into our heads since the dawn of time, and the plots are simplistic and predictable (as Stephanie Meyers has proven, not even vampires and werewolves can keep a teenage romance from a ridiculously cliched ending).

Yet teenage life, as I can attest, is an absurdly complicated stage of life. So much hides beneath the stereotypes. Nobody falls under one label perfectly. Nobody is an archetype. We are weird, emotionally charged, complex individuals facing the greatest questions of life with are shining paragons of a hopeful future; at our worst we find all manner of ways to mutilate and destroy ourselves. We live the life of the old Romantics, only somewhat hindered by our relative youth. We're ambitious but forced to serve beneath those we find incompetent, yet, to quote an excellent song, "With answers for the world, the ambiguity shows." (100 points to whomever identifies the song.) We're scatterbrained (as that last parenthetical shows), witty, progressive, technophilic, satiric, perspicacious (this is easily my new favorite word) revolutionaries lost in a world that's as confused by us as we are confused by it.

So why the heck doesn't anyone try to write any "capital-l Literature," as Mr. McLaughlin calls it, about adolescence? I know we have our own stories of ideal teenage literature, but let's be honest--we weren't trying to write anything artistically huge. And adults really can't write about this experience after having gone through it; Salinger tried, and I think he oversimplified.

No, I think the teenage years are a topic best left to those in the middle of them. To that end, I'm very strongly considering carving time out of the summer/free time (whenever I end up getting it) to write a novel that does justice to the teenage experience. I know nothing of plot; I only know that it would have to be first-person, but from several different perspectives.

Here I pose a question to you, all three of you that read this.

If one was to write such a novel, what would have to be a part of it? What are the essential parts of teenager-dom that would NEED to be mentioned? What makes the 21st-century teenager who he/she is, as opposed to Salinger's 1950s teen?

I still hear "Mirage!" echoing through the halls.

(I must ask you not to read if you are not somehow affiliated with Mirage Indoor Drumline. It won't make sense to you anyway.)

I can say pretty safely that I don't think we saw that coming.

I'm going to be brutally honest here: hearing "In 10th place, with a score of 86.blahblah, Souderton" sucks. It just sucks. You can hear all the speeches about how you won't remember the scores and how it's all opinion and it will still suck. As I've said before, I'm a VERY competitive person. I was furious when I heard that. I wondered what could have possibly gone wrong. I was waiting for the judges to say there was a tabulator error that had shortchanged us about seven points. Obviously they didn't, but they made the equally moronic mistake of not understanding what just hit them.

I know the scores suck. I know saying 'scores don't matter' is the oldest cliche' in the book. But honestly, Mirage, we know we dominated on that floor. We know (and apparently, a whole lot of other people know) we deserved better than we got.

We had a monster of a show. That's the best show I've ever been a part of, indoor or outdoor. I lost track of all the high fives and screams once we got off the floor. We know we rocked that place. The audience knew it. Every line that saw us knew it.

The only people that didn't just happened to have green shirts and tape recorders.

My response to that?

"Dear TIA,

Suck it.

Sincerely, Mike Denison, a proud bass 5 for the Souderton Mirage Indoor Drumline, a drumline that came to Wildwood and dominated, a drumline that got a sucky score but knows it deserved better, a drumline that's pissed about it but won't forget everything else that went down this season, a drumline that will not let your inability to appreciate our domination get us down."

(I really want to send this to TIA, minus the part that reveals that I'm from Souderton, just so the rest of you don't get in trouble.)

Honestly, guys, remember that feeling when you came off the floor. Yes, it's so cliche', and yes, a higher score would have been nice.

But I am honored to call myself a member of this organization. For all my complaints, I'm proud to be your bass 5. I'll be shouting "Bell!" whenever I hear one ring four times for years to come. I'm incredibly sorry to see it all go, but I'm so excited to see what you non-seniors will throw down next year. And for my fellow seniors...good work, ladies and gentlemen.

Alyssa, Laura, Dan, Booda...I can't imagine a better line to work with and be a part of. You're all awesome.

Hats off to you, Keith and Brian, in particular, for dominating for four straight years as leaders of this great organization.

The scores will not keep us down. Don't give the judges that victory.

We did the only thing we know how to do.

We dominated.

Murphy's Law.

It's true. (At least, it proves itself quite true in very short bursts, and then lies dormant for a while. Right now, it is not dormant in the slightest.)

I really don't have anything profound to say. I'm just waiting for my Digital Media homework to get off its digital rear end and upload.

The next two weeks were already going to be stressful. Good ol' Murphy. You really did it this time.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Funny how when I most want to write, I have the least amount of time to do so. I should be studying for Euro or Calc now. But here I go anyway with a brief update.

--I really want to try my hand at poetry. AP Lit got me in that frame of mind. I'm not sure how this is going to work. I'm fairly certain that my writing style is best suited to essays. But I really don't think the essay will be a valid form of writing for much longer. (Oh wait. Blogs are just collections of essays. Darn it!) Anyway...there might be a sudden outburst of creativity up here when I have more time. Please, criticize to your heart's content. Whatever I write, I want it to be great, no matter how many drafts it takes to get there.

--I love Joey's "collection of quotes" post and am anxious to try my hand at it (I know, I'm not original). Again, that's rather time-consuming, or I'd have done it already.

--Here's a random philosophical musing for you.

Life does not get worse or better. We simply open our eyes and behold either the beauty or the flaws of the world and respond as our moods dictate.

Thoughts?

Jaded

I wonder how that word got its meaning. Jade is a pretty precious stone. It looks really cool (though I don't think Americans think that as much as the Chinese did). I have no idea how it became involved in a synonym for apathetic. But let's do what I always do and start with good ol' Webster (or his website).

"Jaded: adjective. made dull, apathetic, or cynical by experience or by surfeit"

We all are jaded in some way (at least, once we get past the age of five). We've realized that life has its downsides, and we can see some of them coming. By the time we're in high school, we can find them anywhere. We know the teacher's assigning homework just to keep us busy, not because they want us to learn anything (though AP teachers are less prone to this). We know our favorite reality shows are staged, our favorite athletes aren't the gods we make them, we know people will let us down. But sometimes we can swallow our rational, well-founded beliefs and just enjoy what's happening. American Idol can be entertaining, even if the winner is predetermined (jury's out on that one. If not, America, you have no taste in music--how did Adam Lambert NOT win?!). Tiger Woods likes having sex, Barry Bonds broke the rules, and every NBA star has at least one sex scandal to his name--does that diminish the fact that they dominate in their respective fields? Does that keep us from staying close to people?

Well, being jaded can't overcome one thing: high school anti-drug assemblies.

And for this most recent one, there's no excuse...for the presenter and the audience.

In my classmates' defense: that guy sounded idiotic. Apparently marijuana's defense mechanism is sending Mack trucks to run over Bambi, and your brains are immune to the effects of alcohol and cocaine once you hit 21 years of age.

In his defense: How said is it that people were laughing during his speech? Not necessarily those of us that found his logic hilariously bad (because it was, and I was laughing too), but that other people laughed and cheered at the prospect of legalized marijuana...and we were totally not surprised?

We surround ourselves with people ruining their lives in a million different ways. (Emily and Zac already covered two of them, so I'm focusing on this one.) And we don't care. We expect it. We look at people and lump them in the "stoner" category: glazed-over eyes, greasy hair, bad acne, short attention span...heck, I stereotype when I hear a certain kind of voice. We can spot a stoner a mile away. And we accept it. It's almost like an ethnicity--they're not bad, just different.

Only you can't die of being black or white or Asian or anything else. You can't change your ethnicity. There aren't interventions staged to change one's ethnicity (at least, I sincerely hope not). Drugs? Different story.

Okay, we can only do so much as high school students with no training in counseling. But at least we can show that we know that drugs are all around us, and we do not approve.

The words of anti-drug assemblies are falling on two different sets of deaf ears: those who are already committed to living drug-free, and those who are already addicted and won't be swayed by a few stupid Bambi references and neurological jargon.

Maybe some of the second group would be swayed if the first group gave a crap.

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Now playing: The Classic Crime - Vagabonds

The obligatory 'time flies' post from a senior in high school.

I promise, this won't be as controversial as the last one. (By the way, I had another comment ready, but blogspot 'couldn't process my request,' which means it was too long, so it was promptly deleted. I spent ten minutes typing it. Bah.)

So, it's April now. I'm in drumline again, which means April feels like it's about three days long. At the end of this month I will be in a bus with at least 26 or so other musicians and a few staff members, on our way to Wildwood, where we will channel months of blood and sweat (not so much tears) into kicking arse and taking names as only a drumline can.

After that, it's AP Exam time. Three days of my life will be consumed by taking grueling tests, and all the other days will be used to study for said tests. And then it's June, and my time in high school is effectively done.

Holy crap.

All these years of my childhood trying to imagine what high school would be like...and now I'm almost done.

I'll have spent four years in marching band, 3 in some sort of jazz band, two in drumline, one on The Arrowhead.

Time well spent, indeed.

In the meantime, I'm really looking forward to Wildwood this year. We absolutely have the potential to do way better than Souderton's done in years. This show is freaking awesome. I remember how championships felt as a sophomore; the adrenaline was ridiculous. I can't imagine how much fun this is going to be.

Except then as soon as it's over, there's not a whole lot of high school left.

Don't worry about me, I'm rambling.

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Now playing: Foo Fighters - Everlong