Everytime you touch someone, you change the world.

When I lived in Alabama, there was this woman named Ms. Austin. Ms. Austin was the mayor of the thriving metropolis called Killen and also a bus driver. She was very proud of these positions, but her favorite job was being a substitute at our high school. She was famous for sending students to get her cartons of milk and regaling students with fantasies of a new sidewalk to be built through Killen.. the whole 2-3 blocks of it. But Ms. Austin was most famous for her “speeches”, if you can call them that. Everyone at Brooks High School knew her speeches. Her favorite was referred to as “the fingerprint speech”. She’d hold up her index finger and say something like “Kids… this is your identity. No one on earth has this. You are unique. Remember that.”
Now, we all laughed at Ms. Austin for implying that our entire self is contained in the tip of our index finger, but she was merely restating an age-old cliché… only you are truly you.

No offense to Ms. Austin and most of the civilized, supposedly enlightened world, but I’m going to have to slightly disagree.

Granted, no two people are exactly alike. That’s definitely true. Not even twins are completely identical. But I’ve found amidst my moves.. my sojourns in many states.. that I’ve met the same set of people over and over and over again. Nearly everyone I meet reminds me of So-and-so from South Carolina or Whatsherface from Virginia. I always think, “Wow, I wonder if she knows there’s someone exactly like her 5 hours from here.” It’s kind of a depressing thought, isn’t it? Everyone says they live by the mantra “be yourself” but I’ve found that there are generally only so many different people, each with slight variations to make them just a little different from the others of the same original mold.

Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but don’t worry…I’m not fully convinced that everyone is like someone else. There are a rare few that you’ll meet in your lifetime who are unlike anyone else you’ve ever even imagined to exist. In Zorah Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God the heroin believes that each human in existence was once a ball of shining, bouncing, glittering stuff that was covered over by mud because the angels were jealous of its light. She believed that each little mud ball lived searching for the other little mud balls. These rare few… these true originals… I picture them as little mud balls, ordinary dirt covering something wonderful, searching for others yearning to shine with them.

I think that we all start out as little balls of shine. As we grow, we get covered over with the dirt of this world, trying to conform and fit in somewhere among the other little mud balls. But some of us, we begin to shake the dirt off as we mature. We shine. We live. We are unique.

I know that my previous English teacher is reading this, overjoyed that I used a reference from a novel we read in class, and that I applied it to my own life. I think it’s important that we look for wisdom in everything we do, see, encounter. Our acquired wisdom is part of what makes us different from all the other little mud balls.

The wisdom I’d like to share with you today: Shake off the mud around you. Don’t let me meet you twice!
-Geenuhjay@yahoo.com

I have such problems with jealousy. I'm such a jerk sometimes.

I had a very nice birthday.

Morgan gave me an old school N-64 and I am SO excited :) Maybe that makes me a nerd. I don't really care. I never had one as a child and I've always wanted one. It was so sweet of him to remember that. I've been playing Mario Kart and I couldn't be happier :DD

We had dinner at the Melting Pot, my family and Alex and I. That was amazing, as expected. We were all too full for cookie cake, except Dad. And Granny said awkward things as usual. And Mom nearly stabbed Dad several times with her fondue fork.

I really have nothing to say anymore...

I'm going to Hanging Rock with Erin, Britt, and Hann today. It'll be nice to see them again. I haven't seen much of them all summer.. that's mostly my fault and I admit that.. but between Alex and Morgan and things I actually have to do I don't really see many other people. Course it would help if Brittany would be in town for more than a week at a time :) (I know you're reading this, laughing.)

Okay. SO. I"m done talking about nothing now. COllege is soon. That's exciting and kind of sad at the same time.

I'm definitely bringing my N-64 along.

It has been a very good week so far.

I only hope I'm being silly.

This summer, I have managed to land myself one of the easiest, most enjoyable jobs imaginable: taking care of two bright, fun young girls. Our daily activities include swimming, eating, reading, watching Disney movies, mall-hopping, and the occasional trip to the movies. It is the latter of these that has inspired this week’s column. I have not been so angry in a very long time.

Surely you’ve seen at least the latest previews for the Disney-Pixar film “Wall-E”, the story of a little trash-compacting robot searching for love. I took the girls to see it the day it came out because honestly, I was pretty excited about it. I’ve always loved Pixar films. I laughed and smiled and squealed in a girly fashion as Wall-E fell in love with the robot Eve and warmed the hearts (or mechanical parts) of all those he encountered. There was more to the movie than just a cute little robot and an awkward romance. There was a powerful environmental message contained in the happy plot: stop destroying earth before we’re forced to leave it.

Humans in the movie are depicted as fat, lazy, and oblivious to everything beyond the screen in front of their faces. They glide through a giant spaceship on rolling chairs and are given everything they need without having to lift more than a finger by a company called Buy-N-Large.

Now, I’m a fairly intelligent girl. Morgan Stewart, who accompanied the girls and I to the movie, is a very well-informed and intelligent person also. We both understood the movie’s message and even caught the possible stab at large corporations, but neither of us thought, “Hey! Those liberals are trying to warn us of the dangers of large corporations and present paranoid propaganda to young children! Shame! Shame on the Malthusians!” Nope. Didn’t think anything of the sort. We thought, “Hey, this is a good lesson, right? Take care of the earth!” Simple? Apparently not. Critics and politicians and conservatives in general are condemning Wall-E, saying that it flings unfair and unexpected propaganda at young children, invading their young and impressionable minds with liberal paranoia.

I asked my two girls what they got from the movie. These are two intelligent, pre-teen girls. Middle school-aged. They both said the same thing I did… that we should take care of the earth. If that’s all they took from the movie, how can younger children be expected to understand what Disney may or may not have been saying about large corporations?
Of course, Morgan Stewart felt that these critics were being as ridiculous as I thought they were. He said, “If it's a part of the "Liberal Agenda" to care about the environment and the state of our world at large, paint me paranoid and crazy, I'd rather be labeled a nut than to think like one.”

The point is, a children’s movie should be allowed to send a simple message without being called propaganda. If adults take more from Wall-E than a simple environmental message than so be it. A child is not going to see the red spacesuits worn by the humans in the movie and think, “Communism!” If that’s what a parents thinks, then that’s their own problem. They’re old enough to think for themselves.

Come on guys, leave the sweet little robot movie alone. Don’t you have better things to do than berate Disney-Pixar for wanting to make the earth a little cleaner? Seems harmless to me. Last I checked, 8-year-olds don’t think that big corporations are the root of all the problems they barely know about, and they’re certainly not going to assume that from a movie about a little robot who likes musicals and just wants to fall in love. Find something better to do, you stupid people.
-Geenuhjay@yahoo.com

Last night was a very silly Carmen Electra birthday for Chelsey, and I am so glad I decided to go. I really missed those girls.

Okay, so I've messed up a lot of things recently. Made some mistakes. DId some things the wrong way. Yet, these girls look past that and love me anyway, because instead of seeing mistake after mistake, they see the girl with the crazy hair who laughs way too hard and takes a billion pictures. That's all I wanted all along.

I don't try and deny that some of the things I've done were wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong in expecting my friends to still see me as me in spite of my actions. I am still me, and there are some who don't see that. There are some who let my relationship with someone else effect my relationship with them. Yet the one person who is entitled to judgement and condemnation and anything else terrible he can think of remains as close by my side as ever. What does that say about the strength of my relationships?

I needed last night. I needed to see that I'm still me, and stupid things I may do can't change that in the eyes of those who are truly there for me.

I'm back from Boone, and I can't wait for college.

I feel like a different me when I'm in Boone. I think differently, I see people differently. It's strange, but I think the Boone-Gina is the real Gina and the girl here is just the product of her surroundings. Maybe I'm just insane?

Anyway, college, YES. Also, got a new laptop (MacBook) annnnnnd it came with a new iPod touch! Its amazing. Also, I made a friend. It's been good.

But I still feel funny about this one thing...