By: Moses | May 10, 2011 at 11:28 pm | 18,942 comments
For twenty years, one hundred eighty three days, eleven hours, and somewhere in between sixteen and seventeen minutes, I was oppressed. I was denied. I was restricted. First, it was the squadron of women uniformed in tall high-water pants and floral blouses who took charge. Then, it was the dictatorial duo who were supposed to be responsible for me. And eventually, it became nothing more than the sincere the lack of opportunity that stagnated my progress. This restriction, this oppression left my development in shambles so much so that to this day—in spite of the high-water wearing elementary school teacher’s best attempts at enriching my vocabulary—I have absolutely no idea what to call the object of my longing but “paper-cutter thingies.”
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By: Moses | March 7, 2011 at 10:45 pm | 18,680 comments
During my drive home everyday, I end up seeing a lot of things–some utterly boring, others insanely interesting. The one thing I’ve come to always expect is seeing familiar faces. It seems like I see a bunch of people everyday. There is this older guy who likes to read the paper by the pond. There is a tall lady with the day care center who always has 20 kids following her to the park. There’s even a shaggy haired kid who walks in the middle of the road and makes me slam my breaks every once in a while. I’d bet we all have seen these people in our lives. The type of people who we smile at not because we know them but because it just feels right. The type of people we know without really knowing. These faces are the ones we’ve come to love as our community.
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By: Moses | February 27, 2011 at 10:54 pm | 19,702 comments
There are somethings that get older with time. As the seasons change and the months pass by, certain things seem to grow grizzled and some even begin to exude the ineffable glow of experience. Other things—well, there are just somethings that seem to have always been old. Those things are called history books. Growing up, the first day of school meant many things: a backpack that didn’t smell like glue, new clothes that just had to look just like the ones everyone else was wearing, and the painfully horrible “first day of school” haircut. But somewhere in between being greeted by the smiles of new friends and joking about how the familiar smiles of old friends were missing teeth, you would get your books. The teacher would always call out our names and she was passing out the “new” books, but there was always one book that got saved for last—the history book. It was the biggest, heaviest, and dustiest book of them all, and no teacher trusted their employee benefits package enough to risk trying to carry around a stack of heavy history books.
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By: Moses | December 21, 2010 at 1:04 am | 19,599 comments
People are weird. We willingly bring four thousand and something pound masses of metal, gas, and rubber to a halt just because we see some red octagon hanging from a pole somewhere down the road. If that sign is a yellow triangle however, bringing that car to a stop suddenly isn’t necessary, but simply an option. Apparently, some little metal scrap from a random junkyard can get shaped by a hapless machine in such a manner that now everyone that comes across it finds themselves obliged to succumb to its will with no regard to its immigration status as an inanimate object, its religious affiliation as being from among those veiled in paint, or even its political affiliation as a non voter. And, this is who is leading us and making our decisions for us? Some little sign is responsible for telling me whether I can continue to move down the charted course at a steady speed or whether I need to come to a complete stop, look both ways, and slowly accelerate? This whole system is absurd.
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By: Moses | November 29, 2010 at 12:51 am | 17,075 comments
Kids just get it. By moving a few years ahead in age, we’ve fallen a few steps behind in understanding. These kids though, they get it. Those coloring books aren’t just some random obsession. It’s not about deciding whether Crayola crayons or generic Walmart brand colored pencils are the best medium for brightening up the outline of your favorite Disney superhero; those coloring books are a lot more than that. Those coloring books prepare you for what is to come ahead; in some subliminal way, shading in that page is akin to foreshadowing the rest of your life, but sometimes we forget that.
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By: Moses | November 4, 2010 at 8:06 pm | 21,389 comments
I was looking down and I could see a lot of people. There was probably a hundred—no, two hundred—people right in front of me, but I couldn’t see a single face. No exuberant eyes or satiny smiles were greeting me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at; it all looked so foreign from here. At first, I was a little tentative about making my way forward. This place was just so packed, so I stopped for a second. Looking around, there wasn’t too much going on. With her gangly fingers delicately woven around the long, vertical seam of a Starbuck’s cup that had “Jessie” sharpied on it, there was a women who didn’t really look like a Jessie walking right in front of me. And, to the right of me was a guy talking on his phone so obnoxiously loud that the couple sitting across the—wait, who could he possibly be talking to at 7:45 in the morning? It was way too early to be yelling that loudly into a phone. It was way too early to even be awake. Maybe, I should just come back later. Why was I even here? This was pointless.
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