Whose Fault is it?

You just finished eating your Big Mac, when you start to hate yourself for getting fast food for the 3^rd time this week. You keep telling yourself that your done this is the last time, after this no more. It truly seems like an addiction and you need to get your fix, but once that “high” goes away you feel guilty. You start blaming the fast food industry for having unhealthy food, and that their the reason America is becoming more obese by the day. But is it really their fault, have they been forcing you to get into your car and drive to their restaurant and then shoving the food down your mouth? No, they are simply a service that many people seem to be using perhaps too often?

        Day by day people are becoming more used to the way things seem to happen instantly and appear right into their hands. No longer is it the age where you truly had to work for everything you had, and you felt good about that. In the past families got by without having to have fast food for dinner, they cooked home cooked meals every night and spent dinner as a family. However I do understand that now parents are working multiple jobs and scraping by with what little they have, so they can't afford to cook dinners at home, not just because of the cost but they simply do not have time between jobs and able to have a time to sit down as a family.

       Fast food makes getting the family or yourself food a much simpler task and sometimes it is cheaper. The problem is people are upset with the fast food industry for causing people to eat unhealthy and causing medical problems. My question to them is always the same, “Whose fault is it?”. Why is it the industries fault when it is simply a choice, you can decide to eat it but you can also decide to not eat it. This isn't a world where everyone has to eat fast food and its the only food out there. If your going to eat fast food thats perfectly acceptable no problems from me, However there is one when you start to blame them for your problems when the fact is your choices are the reason you have the problem.

Summer Trip

         It's the beginning of summer, the weather is getting nice, schools are letting kids out, weekend BBQs. The perfect time for a fishing trip. You decide you need a break from reality so you start packing your car with everything you need for a camping trip with some friends. Five minutes from home you hope you didn't forget anything important. The weekend forecast is perfect conditions to do a little bit of fishing. The vibe in the car is filled with excitement of who is going to catch the most and biggest fish.
       You arrive at the camp and you unpack everything you need. You start to set up the tent which always seems to be a struggle. Its late in the afternoon and the sun is just about to go down. The sky looks beautiful with different shades of blues. You decide its time to start the fire and start making some smores. You put the marshmallow on the end of your stick and put it above the fire. You look away for 5 seconds look back and your marshmallow is on fire! You blow it out, its completely blackened so you decide to start over. This time it comes out a perfect golden brown and you make your smore. The first bite in the taste brings you back to when you went camping as a young child. The fire starts to die out and everyone decides its time to go to sleep so you can wake up early for the fishing trip.
         Ring Ring. Your alarm goes off you wake up, you unzip your tent and you look outside. The sun is just starting to rise and the water is shining. You grab a quick bite of a breakfast bar. Everyone gets all their fishing equipment and loads it into the boat on the dock. You untie the boat from the dock and set off to find a good fishing spot. You find a nice spot down the lake a little bit and throw your bait into the water expecting a fish right away. Everyone starts to catch some little fish none too big. You Stay out on the water for a few hours, but keep catching little fish nothing to bring home. You decide to have one last cast before you head in. You start reeling it in with no hope. When all of a sudden a huge pike jumps out of the water to take your bait. Your rod bends and you fear it breaking. Your reeling in as fast as you can but its putting up a tough fight, jumping out of the water and pulling in different directions. after a few moments you can tell its tired and you reel it in. You pull it out of the water and hold it taking a bunch of pictures with it. You decide your gonna take it home and have it put on your wall as a trophy.
        You head back to the campgrounds with your fish in the boat. You start to pack everything up because its time to go home. You can't wait to show everyone your trophy fish so you decide your going to throw a party to show it off hanging above your fireplace.
        You wake up to a loud noise. Your eyes open and you realize your in your own bed, you run downstairs and look above your fireplace and see no fish. It was all a dream and worst of all its monday morning and your late for work.

Moments

Just take a second and take a quick glance at life around you because if you don't you might be making the biggest mistake of your life. Don't just keep going with the flow and see where it takes you because years later you may find out that it brought you to a place where you never wanted to be. Look around right now are you happy? Or are you just going through life and just passing time hoping something will pop right out in front of you. You can't just take the straight road all the time sometimes you have to go off the path to a place where you may not be comfortable but in the end you realize that those moments in time are the ones that you remember and carry with you the most. 

12/21/12 Three Days of Darkness

       Every time you turn on the TV lately you hear about the Mayans predicting the end of the world. If that is true i only have 12 hours to live, but i don't believe anything will happen. However i decided to stay up and wait the last 12 hours out, you know just in case.

       i fell asleep while trying to stay up but hey i woke up guess nothing happened. I got out of bed and checked my phone. It said it was 11 a.m. but when i looked outside it was pitch black. I went downstairs and saw my family huddled around the living room watching the news. I asked what was going on and my mom told me that because of some planet alignment we were going to have 3 days of darkness. So i thought hmm strange but whats the big deal that just gives me 3 days to sleep. 

        It was the 2nd day of the 3 days of darkness and nothing bad had happened. I went downstairs to watch the news to see if anything had happened. The first thing that came up was that people were panicking, and were starting to rob and loot stores. Hearing this my family knew we had to watch out for people trying to break into the house and robbing us. 

      It was the 3rd day and what was believed to be the last day of darkness, and on the news it said that their were over a thousand deaths from people being robbed and stores being looted. The light finally came back around midday and i must say it did not affect my life even a tiny bit. Although i will have to say it was the most interesting thing i have lived through. 

The Bully

Joel was a young boy at a measly 12 years old. He stood at a petite 4 foot 11 inches. At school, the other boys always made fun of him because he was so short. Joel was also a little on the heavier side. This brought on names such as Rolliepollie and Lumpydumpy. The name calling really hurt poor Joel's feelings, sometimes it even made him cry. But, in 7th grade, someone finally stood up for Joel.   Thomas had just moved into town and knew exactly how it felt to be bullied. When he saw the boys making fun of Joel, he walked right up to them an told them off. The boys backed away very quickly because Thomas was large than them. Once the boys had left, Thomas helped Joel up off the ground, put his arm around him and walked him into school. From that day on, no one ever bullied Joel again because he had his best friend Thomas there to protect him.

Championship Game

It was the moment we had been working towards for months. It was minutes before our state championship game. Looking around the locker room at everyone's faces you could tell everybody was serious and ready. Our coach didn't say much he had said everything in the week we had before for practices. We knew what we had to do and that it was going to be the hardest game we have ever competed in.

    The arenas lights were dark as we were walking from the locker room to the door to the rink. The lights turned on as we were stepping out onto the ice and all you could hear was the crowd going crazy. We were undefeated and we were not going to let this crowd down tonight. We loosened up during warm-ups and scouted out the other team and then we went back into the locker room for a few minutes before the game.

     Coach told us to settle down and just to play our game, the game that brought us here, that has made us undefeated. He said " You need to come out fast, don't be nervous about it being the big game just think of it as one of the others, We just gotta put more effort in this game for your seniors, for some of them it will be the last time they ever touch the ice." Somebody knocked on our door letting us know they were ready for us to come out. The game was about to start.

     I came out to the opening faceoff and my hands were shaking, i was quite nervous. I couldn't calm myself, but i just hoped as the game went on i would relax and get back to normal. The puck dropped i won it back to the defense. They dumped into into the zone, but the other team came out with it. They gave it to their star player and he got past us and got a one on one with the goalie and scored blocker side high. It was only 40 seconds in the game and they had already scored, so coach called time out. He got us in close so we could hear him and said " Hey what are you guys doing? you just watched him go by each one of you. You guys need to relax, Its a hockey game for gods sake! Play your game, Don't let the game get to your head." 

     After the time out we played like our normal team, but they were also a very good team. At the end of the 1st period the score was 1-0 them. In the locker room Coach told us we looked a lot better after the goal but now we got to get something going on offense, and then he walked out. He walked out to let me and the other captains talk to the team. I stood up in the middle of the locker room and started to yell " c'mon on guys what are we doing out there, we looked awful. Do you want to let down me and the other seniors and even your whole school? Or would you rather show some pride for your school and lets go out and destroy this team and get the win!" 

       We came out in the 2nd period a lot better we were skating better and out team work was much better. Halfway through the period we got a 3 on 2 and the Dan slid it over as the goalie slid over out of position and i caught it by the toe of my stick and put it in on a practically open net. After that goal our team was fired up we tied the game. The rest of the period we had the puck in their zone most of the time but the goalie was making amazing saves and kept them in the game. 

       Coach came into the locker room and told us he wasn't going to say anything because he liked how we were playing and didn't wanna screw it up. We Tried to come out in the beginning of the 3rd like we left the 2nd, but they must of had a good pep talk because they were coming out hard. They were taking good shots and i was surprised they weren't scoring but we had one of the top goalies in the state and he was having one of the best games of his life. There was about 2 minutes left in the 3rd with the score tied and the opposing team called time-out. Our goalie, Nick, Came over to us pretty much yelling at us saying we needed to get the goal and with all the shots their getting that he was just getting lucky. Coach kept me out on the ice most of the time in the last period. They Dumped the puck in and i got it and looked up and saw Eric breaking out almost all alone. i passed it up to him and looked at the clock which said 10 seconds left. I didn't even skate up i just stood there watching the freshman go down one on 0 with the goalie. He faked left and went right and put the puck right off the crossbar into the net. Goal! The crowd went wild There was only 2 seconds on the clock and as soon as the time ran out after the face up the whole team went and tackled Eric. He was the hero of the game, He even got MVP of the game and was the only 9th grader to get that. 

       After the game and the celebration in the locker room i waited until most everyone else was out. I went over and gave Eric a handshake and told him he did a great job and i see him going far and that i hope this isn't the only championship that he wins. He replied " Tyler without you i would have never gotten the puck or that opportunity." I got home and just went up to my room and rolled into bed just smiling and eventually fell asleep as a champion in my senior year, just the way i always dreamed of it.

Being Nice Has Some Benefits

Today is going to be the first day of my new life at a whole new school,My mother and i had just moved after a divorce with my father to a new city where nobody has even the slightest clue to who i am. Here I can become a whole new person and not have to worry about what was in the past because the people here wouldn't know what had happened.

    Today was the first day of school which had me very nervous because i was a nobody with no friends. I had moved here from my hometown in the summer of my senior year. I knew school was going to be tough because by senior year in high school people are already in groups and don't accept outsiders. I had hope though that i would find friends and have that senior year everyone dreams of. 

     I drove my old 99 malibu to school and parked in the back of the parking lot, trying not to draw attention to myself. My thought for the day was to stay positive and talk to a few kids and try to make some friends. My first class i had was English, nobody even noticed i was there. They all just talked to their friends about how great their summer was and about all the parties coming up. I didn't think to much of this just thought oh well one bad class to deal with. But as i went to all my other classes the same thing happened and not a single person had even said anything to me besides the teacher taking attendance. I didn't think it was going to be this tough to make friends or to even talk to a person in school like this, but i realized that i was going to have to put effort forth and put myself out there.

      I drove home which was just down the street, it only took me a few minutes to the school and home. When i walked in the door my mom came running down the stairs to ask me how my first day as a senior ast a whole new school was. I think she was expecting some exciting story about meeting a whole bunch of new people but instead i just replied "fine mom". She knew from the tone of my voice this it wasn't fine so she told me to tell her what really happened at school. so i said " nobody even talked to me or even glanced near me the whole day!" She replied telling me that its going to take awhile and it wasn't going to be easy and all i can do is be nice and to try and just say hello to a few people and see where it goes. I said alright i mean it sounded easy enough so i decided i would try and be friendly and say hi to a few people. Maybe it will work  maybe it won't but it's worth trying. 

      The next day i parked in the same spot in the back of the parking lot. I walked into my first class of the day being Math, my worst subject, and when i went to my seat i said hey to the girl whose seat was next to me. She didn't say anything back but she did smile which i took as a hello, so i guess its worked so far. In the middle of class the girl that sat next to me leaned over and said " hey do you have an extra pencil i could borrow?" I did happen to bring an extra pencil today so i gave it to her saying she could keep it. It wasn't much of a conversation but it was the first thing anybody had really said to me in the school, so i must say i was pretty excited. As i went through my other classes i would say hi so some of the kids in the class some would say hi back and others would smile but nobody really said much to me. I was alright with this because i thought this was a good start, at least they know i am a pretty nice kid. 

      When i got home today my mother didn't run up to me asking me how it was, instead i ran around the whole house trying to find her which i found her in the kitchen. She asked me if i had a good day and i said i had a great day, i took your advice and its working. I could tell she was happy for me but she said she had to leave and go run errands and i would have the house to myself for awhile. 

       I couldn't fall asleep at all during the night i was too excited for school, which i had never been in my life. But i guess the thought of making friends just got me excited. I eventually did fall asleep but i kept waking up thinking it was time to get ready. It came time to get up and get ready for school, so i got quickly and actually had a smile on my face the whole morning. I even got to school early but still decided for my back parking spot. 

       In my classes today i was nice and even got into some conversation with a couple kids in different classes. The conversations weren't anything special mostly just about what we were doing in the class and how to do it. I felt a lot more involved in school trying to meet new people, i was more focused on that than my actual school work. 

       By the end of the first week of school a few kids in my classes actually knew my name and i knew theirs. One step closer to becoming real friends, just have to keep being nice and helpful. The girl in my math class who was the first person to talk to me told me that she was single and i must say i felt more than wanting to be friends with her but that would be a while. 

        Days would go by and after a few weeks i actually would people started to consider me a friend and they would even introduce me to new people that weren't in my classes. I even got asked to sit with a few kids at their lunch table, which i was thankful for because i hated eating my lunch by myself. After about 2 months i felt apart of a group of friends. They were all like me nice kids, who got good grades but still liked to have fun. We would hang out on weekends and they would invite me to some of their parties or anything new that was happening and i would go to most of what they invited me to. My mom would often say that i actually look a lot happier here than i ever did in our hometown. I kinda think shes right but i guess that's what happens when you start things off right by being nice.