Ryan the Interim

Ryan was two years ahead of me. I'm fairly certain that we met on my first day of seventh grade, but I could be wrong. I don't like to think extensively about it because I was painfully idiotic around practically anyone older than me.

Our school was a combined junior and senior high school, and we all fit nicely on a campus which had once been just a junior high. There were around 100 students in each grade, seventh through twelfth. In general, everyone knew everyone else or at least, could recognize a fellow student if one was spotted on the street or at the mall.

Because of this, Ryan was friends with my eldest brother despite the fact that David was a senior and Ryan just a freshman. I use the term "friends" loosely. As David tells it, Ryan once tied him to a chair and left him face down in a puddle. Either way, that is how he and I met. My older brothers and I would arrive at school earlier than most, and Ryan would already be there. One almost got the feeling that he was always there.


It seems almost as though I led two separate social lives in seventh grade. I made friends with kids my own age at break and at lunch time, but before and after school, I spent time with my brothers and their high school friends.

I made some of my best friends in seventh grade. Michael was in my PE class, but I didn't officially "meet" him until his friend tried to sell me chicken at lunch time. I bought some but never received it (I'm still waiting to get my 30 cents back). KellyAnn sat next to me in Math for most of the year, but I didn't officially "meet" her until we were in the school production of West Side Story. I was a Jet girl, she was a Shark guy (Most of the "guys" in that play were actually girls). Amy was still at our elementary school that year, but I would call her every night and gush (mostly about high school boys).


Ryan, the topic of many of our conversations, was the first of my many embarrassing junior high crushes. My brothers' friends and the high-school-theatre guys made up the pool of my potential soul-mates. Somehow, at different points in time, I managed to convince myself that each of them was the man with whom I would spend the rest of my life. I cringe when I recall the way I spoke and behaved around them and couldn't possibly write about it in detail.

At the end of seventh grade, I sent Ryan an email, confessing my feelings for him. Now, I kick myself for how seriously I took the situation. When he didn't email back, I was "heartbroken," but I soon became grateful that he never, ever mentioned it.

After I read essays (or any sort of literature) that deal with improving one's writing, I find that my writing either improves slightly for a short period of time or becomes somewhat stilted and stiff. Both results occur because I think more about how I write after reading about it.

Last night, for my English class, I read essays about "the writing process" and "finding the right words." Having said this, I apologize in advance for any pretentious wording or awkward sentence structure.

Today, it is cold and foggy in San Francisco. I know this because I can look out of my dorm room window and see that it is gray out there around the little, familiar skyline on the horizon. Here, however, it is sunny and warm. It isn't summery, but I'm comfortable without a sweater. I wore thong sandals to class today.

I sort of wrote about this last summer, but it can't be said enough. What did I do to deserve to live somewhere like this? People come from all over the world to be in California, and just because my grandparents had the initiative to come here, I get to grow up here.

On a side note, we had an earthquake last week. It was pretty rad. My campus is located right on the Hayward fault, so earthquakes are to be expected. People keep saying The Big One is coming, but they've been saying that for years now.

California seems to have lucked out. There have not been any major natural disasters in a long time... Maybe it's just that I've only been alive for twenty years and have no perspective on the matter.

Grama says there was a tsunami when she was a teenager. That sounds pretty significant.

It's nice to write something rambly for a change.