The year was 2003, and the season was spring. I was in 8th grade and ready to take on the world (smart, sexy, and incredibly gifted in...the classroom). Being the gifted youngster that I was, I found school to be unremarkable and boring. My mother and I decided that the reason for this was that the work load was simply too easy for my powerful brain. So, lacking a challenging environment, my mind amused itself by other means. It enjoyed the hourly daydream, as well as staring off into space. By 9th grade, I discovered that I could read a book in class and still answer every single question asked by the teacher. However, this is 8th grade we are reminiscing about, so I was still trying to develop my slacking off skills. Thus, I found myself in Spanish class drumming an idle beat with my fingers bouncing off the desk in front of me (this sentence wins the awesome award). Now, let me add that our class was not doing anything at the time. The teacher was sitting behind her desk working, and we were supposed to be working on in class busywork (hooray for excellent lesson plans!). The teacher, hearing my melodious song, looked up from her desk and said, "This isn't band class, Piebald." Ok, first let me say that this is the wrong thing to say to someone such as myself. It opens way too many doors. And it's dripping in obvious sarcasm, right? So I chose to play along. My answer was as simply put as her statement.
"So?" I replied. Honestly, what else was I to say? She wasn't teaching, and I found her busywork below even the minimalist tendencies of normal junior high assignments. Plus, she was being honest, so I wanted to be honest too. She asked me to repeat what I said. Unfortunately, I was so proud of myself for sticking it to the man (I mean, woman) that I didn't come up with something to cover my blatantly rebellious answer with (like "I said 'Oh.'"). Then, horror of horrors, one of the less intelligent females in my class (I'm even being nice) chimed in with, "He said 'so.'" Great. My teacher gave me a detention for talking back to her. I was almost embarrassed. It was my first detention. (In an ironic twist of fate, the teacher responsible for giving me my first detention "went crazy" less than a week later, resulting in her immediate resignation from her teaching position. Being that I am a well-connected individual, I promptly visited the Dean of Students and requested that he allow me to not serve my detention, due to the nature of the situation. He agreed and told me to watch what I say around teachers. Thus, I can say with pride that I never had to serve a detention in my entire junior high or high school career.) Moral of the story: Always have a backup plan when rebellion gets you into trouble.
 |
| This is so true. |
But wait! That was just a random story. Now, onward to the topic of the evening...errr...morning (it's almost 3). I'll make this short, as this post has already consumed a lot of cyberspace. The topic in question is the quality of being "Random". People often label things they don't understand as "random occurrences" or "freak accidents". This bugs me for one overarching reason. The universe, in which we live, doesn't do random. It just doesn't. There is always a reason, always a process behind the event. I believe it is a great failing of humanity to simply write something off as blind luck. Humans throughout the ages have relied on this defense for being lazy and not pursuing knowledge. A quarter of Europe's population is killed during the years of the "Black Death", and the event is written off as an act of God. An individual wins the lottery, and we call it dumb luck. These things all happen for a reason. Picking a playing card from an opponent's hand can never be a "random choice". Even my previous blog post titled "random" is not random. My desire is to impart in others the same longing for knowledge that burns inside me. If I could be remembered on this planet for one thing, I believe that would be the one thing.
~The Piebald Penguin
