Childhood Memory: Vieille Fille

Today, while I was in French class, I had another flashback to my younger years. We were reading this story about a group of boys who begin to collect stamps. One little boy, who is jealous and who wants to mock one of the other boys, steals a stamp from his outstretched hand, runs some distance, licks the stamp, and presses it to his forehead, crying, "Look at me! Now I'm a letter!" (or "Je suis une lettre!"). The selection is from one of the Petit Nicolas story books, which are absolutely adorable - if there are English versions, I would recommend looking at them - or better yet, learn French and read the original text.
In any case, the pressing of the stamp to the forehead reminded me of a thing that we used to do when we played Old Maid (somehow we got a French deck for really cheap so it had "Vieille Fille" written beneath the Old Maid, as well as the English and French versions of all of the other characters). Of course, as we played, we would mess with whoever was drawing from us by strategically lifting one or several of the cards, or by tilting one side of the deck in their direction, in order to make them think that we were trying to make them draw the Old Maid from that side. This and the reverse psychology version (which had to be employed every now and then once people got wise to the trick) often worked and were useful for getting the Old Maid out of one's hand. Finally, at the end of the game, whoever got stuck with the Old Maid was required to lick the card and stick it to their forehead in acknowledgement of their defeat. My father would stand and parade around the room with it like a king if he got it, and shortly after each person stuck it to the forehead, the card would be briefly cleansed and a new game would begin. Yay-hooray for Old Maid/Vieille Fille.

Return of the Brief Childhood Memories

I don't know why I quit posting these on here, since they were some of my favorite entries to write. Every now and then I have a vivid memory of something seemingly trivial from childhood and I like to record it so that I can say, "Wow, that was quite a significant part of the former moi," because one thing that I've observed from these is how important the trivial thing is in retrospect.
Today, I went to Brynn's frozen yogurt with Anna from the youth group, and we had a really nice chat outdoors before the storm arrived. I had had a bad day due to a persistent headache and an epic fail that I performed in trying to reason with one of my friends. However, we were discussing things of the past via Harry Potter and other things; eventually we came to the topic of bikers in the road. I mentioned how, whenever I encounter a biker in front of me in the road, I pass them in the center lane even though one is not supposed to pass in the center lane. Anna mentioned that she had forgotten about the existence of those signs, which read, "Do Not Pass in Center Lane," and that she always mindlessly used the center lane to pass bikers as well.
To which I responded that this particular traffic sign was one of the first things that I can remember reading in my early literate years. As a three and four year old, I gained a certain amount of pride from chanting, "DO NOT PASS IN CENTER LANE," whenever we passed one of these signs on Country Club Road (which we traveled often, given its close proximity to our old house). I would even holler at my parents when they merged into the lane to turn left, which is of course what it is used for, but I didn't know that at the time - I was under the impression that they were bending the traffic regulations, which to a child have the weight of absolute law behind them.
So, yay-hooray for traffic signs, which encourage literacy!

All that can be said about something like that is. . ."Oh my, oh my."

Walking along a city street
with a weary smile and eyes trained to seek distress,
a hand ready to extend and yield God's greatest solace
in the form of flesh on flesh
For gripping hands are surely the venue
wherein two brothers' souls will mesh

How do you stand apart from others,
Oh, acknowledged sage and elder brother?
Is it the darkness which pools beneath your eyes in light
where gather memories of men in mankind's night?

What madness made them hurt you, brother?
A century past and I shun my ancestors
like discarded villain comic book characters
I cannot understand them; they were not men, but some
animal inflicted by disease -
and time was most cruel to you - it enveloped your stars in its chasmic arms
and crushed them at once to silver bits
and it stretched you in hunger, by the arms and legs
until the image that it sought was complete, one which haunts me to the day:
A picture of a walking skeleton with jutting ribs
and tormented eyes - such a tortured death within them,
Of the self, and of love, and finally the death of God in muffled praise.

How do you stand apart from others
Oh acknowledged sage and elder brother?
Is it the darkness which pools beneath your eyes in light
where gather memories of men in mankind's night?

The End of the World, the Pastoral Symphony, and Aaron's Party

This is a belated post, because the last two events mentioned in the title happened last weekend - but you've got to hand it to me; I chose quite a date on which to be fashionably late. We are all still here on Earth - I texted Aaron to make sure that he had not ascended (he had not) - and I dined with my mom this morning (at Chili's), and I think that she is quite saint-like, and she had not ascended either. I feel bad for the people who have to take down all of those billboards.
Starting last weekend: it was an exciting weekend because of Aaron's gain of 16 years and the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven, which is my favorite of the 9 and which was the first Beethoven symphony that I had ever seen in concert. So, on Saturday evening, after my mom and I had visited that grandfather of mine in Durham (we attended to all of the usual traditions by going to the Golden Corral, etc), I was dropped off at Aaron's place at 7:00, dressed as Professor McGonagall (I was going to dress up as Ludwig van Beethoven, but that would have required a lot of hairspray and I didn't feel like doing that to my hair, especially because we were warned beforehand that we would be near to an open fire). I met a ton of lovely West folk, with whom I am now friends on Facebook. For the first part of the party, we mainly hung out down in the basement, listening to a lovely playlist which had some Regina Spektor and some Owl City and some other things - I socialized with Ms. Alexis, as it had been a while since we had last hung out (she had arrived early to put up all of the beautiful red streamers and other decor). Once other people started to arrive, we decided that we ought to go outside to play a game of Quidditch, in spite of the fact that it rained and the grass was all wet. Well, it was, but I was able to remove my shoes and make do. I was a Chaser on the Gryffinpuff team along with Aaron, and the Snitch was Ryan. Our Seeker was Sahar and the other team's Seeker was Egla (I think). After Aaron explained the rules to everyone, we lined up near our goal posts, preparing to charge the balls in the center of the field. Jamie hollered "Gryffinpuff!" obnoxiously and Haley shouted back, "Slytherclaw!" Ryan got a 15 second head-start, and then we were off. I must say, it was one of the most brutal sports that I have ever played. Gryffinpuff, unfortunately, lost all three of the games, but the other team did have a slight advantage in their numbers. After Quidditch, Aaron opened his gifts and proposed to people. Then, we ate some cake and danced to the music. Finally, we watched "Tangled," which I had never seen before - just as the movie was ending, that mother of mine arrived and I had to leave, but it was an amazing movie and an amazing evening.
The next day, I went to church and sang this anthem which was written by a woman who became a member of our church that day (she got up and gave a speech and everything; she had been a member when she was a little girl, but then she traveled all over the place to Berlin and other places far away). Afterwards, we ate at the new Breakfast of Course restaurant which is downtown, and after that, my dad said that we had a surprise at 3:00 (I knew that this surprise was the concert, because I had told him earlier in the week that the concert on Sunday was at 3:00). Right around three, we piled into the car and drove over to the Stevens Center, where we had a seat in the center of the balcony, close to the railing - it was a perfect view of the entire orchestra, moving together. This was particularly interesting with the Pastoral, because the music moves in waves (particularly in the first two movements) and you could literally watch the melody progress from the low strings to the high woodwinds. Maestro Moody took the third movement at the perfect tempo (I've found that lots of people like to take the "Merry Meeting of Country Folk" way too slow, like it's the merry meeting of old country folk), and of the entire symphony, the 4th movement, "Rainstorm," was absolutely phenomenal. You can pick up so much more of it live than in a recording, because on a CD, it is usually too quiet to hear the more intricate interwoven harmonies. You could hear it perfectly from the beginning, however, and at the first climax, the whole music hall exploded - the strings were zooming up and down, the timpani man was jamming, and the orchestra moved sharply together with each of the simulated lightning bolts. I nearly cried, it was so awesome. Then the Hindemith was also swell, and our overture (which was chosen by the audience!) was the overture to the "Barber of Seville" by Rossini.
In any case, it was an amazing weekend - and the following week was pretty swell too. Forgive me for any grammatical incorrectness, because I had to write this post in the space of about 10 minutes so that I could actually do some homework. That's all I have to say about that.