Craziness

Today was a most interesting day, both joyful and sad on a personal level, and just weird on an external one.
My mom drove me to school this morning, and because she had to work early in the morning, I got to school a bit earlier than usual as well. I headed up to Ms. Jones's classroom, and sat with Elisabeth and Jeremy (they're always there early because their parents are teachers). We discussed the typical early morning subjects: everything, whether it made sense or not. We also got into a bit of a scuffle over a Doctor Seuss book, Fox in Socks. Elisabeth and I both admitted our dislike of the book, particularly because of the entry involving the tweedle beetle battles in a puddle in a bottle on a poodle eating noodles, while Jeremy claimed that this was his very favorite work of the innovative man that is Doctor Seuss.
And then, when the morning announcements began, Principal Pascal came onto the intercom to inform us that, "as we might already know, a freshman unexpectedly passed away on Monday night by the name of Aaron Alan." No, I didn't know that, and neither did the entire class, I'm pretty certain; we were all shocked into the moment of silence that followed this statement.
Even worse, directly following the morning announcements, I heard mutters of "suicide," and "hung himself," the latter of which may or may not be true, though a teacher confirmed the former. I just can't believe that someone so young could be that sad. To top it off, Ms. Jones said to us, "Those of you from Hanes: did you know Aaron Alan?" Some nodded, but I felt terrible that I had let some kid just exist in my presence for years without knowing him; I couldn't place him in my memory at all, and I was rather sad about this all day.
We all did the best we could to deal with our guilt; we moved through the day with as much cheer as we could muster. In Instrumental Music class, we listened to and analyzed this neat version of the "Mna Mna" song by the band Cake. In French, we learned how to understand and give directions to places. We took a quiz in math class, I spoke to the people in the office during lunch about my bus schedule, and we played the usual music in Band. I spoke to Elizabeth during Life Management Skills (we were in the gym today because Mr. Pinnix wasn't here; Elizabeth's gym class coincides with my Life Skills class); she was particularly affected by the passing of our fellow student, as he was in her class. We talked of lighter things for the latter half of the period, and both walked away feeling a little better. In dance class, we listened to a lot of songs on Mrs. Reece's iPod, so that we could decide democratically on a song to dance to in our concert. I was not particularly excited about anything that was written down for consideration, except for "Fidelity" and "Ain't No Other Man but You."
After school, I attended the second meeting of the creative writing club, which was my first. Though I finally perfected a poem today in math class which I think that I will entitle "Michael and Sylvia," I read three other poems that I was more confident with, entitled "Idle Summer Nights," "Waking Up," and "Singer," the last of which I was self-conscious about until I heard some of the other poetry and realized that it was not overly mopey. All the people there seemed really nice and they offered great criticism; I also really like Ms. Fitzgerald, who sponsors the group, I think; she seems to have an enjoyment for good literature (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, etc.)
I left the club a little early, at 4:30, meeting my mom at the side of the building. We drove over to the hot guy movie store to pick out a movie. It was our lucky day; he was there just as I predicted yesterday. We found out that there are in fact two Johns and that the name of the other guy who works there is Jimmy. He also informed us that he felt that people were hesitant to guess his age because they didn't want to hurt his feelings, though I personally think he's being paranoid. Oh well. We rented a Hugh Grant movie called "About a Boy," which actually turned out being really cool (I think I've seen part of it on the television). I also really liked the soundtrack, which consisted mainly of songs by Badly Drawn Boy.
I worked on my math project a little bit tonight, and I received a super-encouraging email from Mr. Dodds, who tells me that he is doing his best to find a place for me to play the piano for the church. Right now, my mom seems to be heating something up in the microwave, and so I will depart.