Nonfiction with Nil

There are a bunch of shows out there that have made me think, "damn this sucks now that it's over", but none of them have came close to the feeling of sorrow I felt after finishing Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar takes place in a world where people have the ability to bend the elements of water, earth, fire, and air. Only one person has the ability to bend all 4, the Avatar, and they maintain or restore balance to the world. When the old Avatar dies they get reincarnated into a new Avatar while retaining all information from the past one. The show focuses on Avatar Aang who disappeared (was frozen in ice) 100 years ago who has to stop a war caused by the Fire Nation. Aang meets Katara, a Southern Water Tribe waterbender, and her brother Sokka and their mission is for Aang to learn all 4 elements and defeat the Fire Lord in under a year. This has been my favorite show since I was a little kiddo. I would remember on weekends early in the morning I would get up to wat

Not surprisingly, I felt extremely out of place on the first 2 weeks of subbie year. Sounds typical right? The first day itself wasn’t exactly too much of an issue since everyone had an angsty vibe. We would be spending almost 5 more years with each other which, at the time, was nerve racking. That’s why it felt absolutely amazing when Ms. Morford made me stand on a desk of shame 7 times in a row for not bringing all my school supplies to her class! (sarcasm) Anyways I told myself if the Uni atmosphere didn’t work out I would end up going back to my old school and old friends. The Uni atmosphere itself didn’t make me feel out of place but rather the way I felt slightly alone. I had no friends from my old school, Urbana Middle School, to really talk to. Everywhere I looked it was everyone talking to their current friends, from Franklin or Countryside or Next Gen, while I fumbled and tried my best to fit in somewhere. I didn’t feel entirely important since I didn’t see anyone else who w

I absolutely love music. Today I actually lost my headphones and I have never been more angry at myself because I lose them like every 2-3 days and end up finding them a week later. That was sorta unrelated but whatever. Anyways, My earliest memories of music is often tied into TV shows or movies that I watched at a very young age. As a kid, many of the shows I watched taught things through song or just had a lot of dancing and singing in them. One show I remember in specific was called The Wiggles and my most memorable song from it would be “Fruit Salad”. The lyrics are pretty straightforward and were easy to process and sing along to for a 3 year old. “Fruit salad...yummy yummy! Fruit salad...yummy yummy!” Yall get the picture.  Another one of my earliest musical memories comes from Jurassic Park. This movie single handedly sparked my interest in dinosaurs and paleontology and is still my favorite movie to this day. I’ve seen it too many times and have gotten used to all the musi

  It was a pretty normal day. Not much different from the others where I would play foosball during my free periods and Mario Kart on my phone. However, there was one thing that was different than most of my other days.  After school I head to Siebel to chill with my friends, Max and Arav, and I finish an episode of Lucifer instead of doing work. Max taps my shoulder and asks if we could head to County Market since he wanted to grab some Takis. When we enter County Market and are on the way to the chips aisle, we get interrupted by a woman yelling out, “Free Bingo with free prizes!”. I looked at Arav and Max and we all decided that playing a game of Bingo wouldn’t exactly hurt. We sat down in the cafe section of County Market and there were only a total of 6 or 7 people playing including us 3. We each received a Bingo board and the prizes, which were different types of snacks including waffles, were arranged on a table. Behind the gamemaster was a huge Keystone cooler which was th

*record scratch* *freeze frame* So you must be wondering how I got here, huh? This is a picture of me hitting my head against a hotel exit sign while wearing a sombrero and holding a big stack of red solo cups. And to be honest, I’m wondering how I got here too. This story starts when I was around 6 or 7 years old, even though the picture is from this July. When I was young, my parents made family friends with this really spiritual couple and they were a part of this larger spiritual organization. They invited us, along with a few other of their family friends, to meet up on the weekends and start up a small center. Similar to a church but just at someone’s house. On the weekends I would go to their apartment and they would watch videos of people asking their life questions to the figurehead of the organization. I just played Mario Kart or board games with some friends during that part. Most importantly, there’s a large conference for the people of this spirituality to g