First Installment

These pages are so blank. Scary isn’t it. The pressure mounts. Those nails I spent so long trying to grow creep slowly to my mouth and are ground down to the nubs as I check my watch one more time.

Dead line. The phrase rings over and over in my mind. Dead line.

Strange how one little word can mess up your psyche. My psyche.

Lately I’ve been working really hard on finding a market and publishing my work. My writing. I want my name to be known. I wanna be out there. I wanna be famous.

But before I can get that far, there’s a few things that I have to do first. I have to cover this little white page with words. Scores and scores of words.

Under normal circumstances that wouldn’t be a problem.

But I have a dead line. Every time I hear those words, a part of my mind clamps up. The flood gates close and the banks of the river dry out.

Terrible isn’t it. As soon as I have a point to write (the opposite being pointless scribbles on a dead tree), I lose all inspiration.

It doesn't matter what I do. Whether it be a poem for a very important contest or an essay for English class, there is no choice but to run around the room, hyper and high strung, barking at every one in my way like a little dog.

But in the end, It’ll be okay. I’ll finish the piece by the deadline and the sweating, and the pacing, and the bouncing off the walls will have been worth it.

Well, enough idle chit chat, I’ve got work to do.

Second Installment

The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round. But what about the wheels of a car?

To avoid the havoc and the mental distress that my parents would have had to go through to teach me how to drive, they enrolled me in a state drivers education program. For a mere two hundred dollars -- which, might I add, could have been spent on five really cute pairs of shoes -- I get to spend twelve days, four hours a day of my summer vacation learning how to drive, and basically risking my life.

Not to perpetuate stereo types, but student drivers are dangerous. Especially the student driver that I get to drive with. Every one in the class spends an hour in the driver’s ed. car a day. Only twenty of those minutes do you get to do any actual driving. The other forty minutes of that time, you are sitting in the back seat watching one of two other kids ridding along with you, and the driver’s ed. teacher, trying to decide which petal is the gas, and which one is the brake.

Ha Ha Ha. Very funny. Not really, that's not a joke.

Now, I’m not saying that every student driver is dangerous. I don’t think that I am. (I’ve only confused the accelerator and the brake one time. One time!) I don’t think that Tammy*, the other girl that I’m driving with, is either.

I do, on the other hand, have a genuine concern for my life when John* gets behind the wheel. You know how when you drive, you drive in a strait line? Well, he doesn’t. John* doesn’t know how to signal either. He also can’t seem to remember how to keep his foot on the gas. Or the brake, for that matter. Which can be a serious problem when you’re heading for, oh I don’t know, say a brick wall!

The whole time he drives, I take deep breaths and close my eyes. Tammy* laughs. She has a death wish.

The other day, my best friend was complaining that she wouldn’t be able to take driver’s ed.. It was my turn to laugh.

* = Its a fake name, duh!

Third Installment

Like most people, going to school has never been a favorite activity of mine. The early mornings, mean teachers, tons of homework; it’s just not my thing. So needless to say, I was not happy when “Back to School, Back to Cool” commercials for H.E.B started showing on cable TV five or six times a day.

I just can’t explain it. There’s something about school that gives me hives. Maybe its the expectation. Every year I wait nervously for the start of a new school year; excited and bored at the same time. For some reason I always tend to think that this year will be the year. This year will be the year of fun, friends, and parties. Over night I’ll become the social butterfly that I hide in the pit of my stomach and every one will love me.

But, predictably so, that never seems to happen.

This year was different, though. I didn’t expect. It wasn’t something that happened to me concisely. I didn’t suddenly snap to the fact that I’m never going to be the Drew Barymore of the high school party scene. It just happened, and it made my life a little bit easier.

The weekend before school started I went shopping and actually came out of the mall happy. Instead of hating myself for the fact that I didn’t look like Tira Banks in my new Guess Jeans, or being angry at the world for the fact that Tommy Hilfiger is not, and will never be, an item hanging in my closet, I went shopping and I had fun.

That Monday morning, I pulled open the glass doors of my high school and walked in confident. I wasn’t worried about the fact that my clothes weren’t in style. I wasn’t worried about impressing some one. And I wasn’t worried about what other people around me would think. It was great.

And guess what? I don’t know any one in any of my classes and that’s okay. I sat down next to some nice people, turned around in my chair, and said hey.