A Fairy Tale Piece of Reality

     As I have discovered by now, fairy tales aren't true. Not everyone can be a princess, fairy godmothers aren't always there when you need them, and not everything has a happy ending. However, fairy tales are rooted in truths. After all, there are some people who live in castles, men and women do occasionally fall in love, and once in a while, things turn out happily ever after. And if you can find one of these themes in our everyday world, take a chance, chase after it, and seize the moment because you might not see anything like it for a long time. Fairy tale settings are also based on elements of truth, and if you find one such place, take notice of it because hey-- it's cool.

One of the cleaner, less chaotic aisles in the bookstore. 

     That's what happened to me this weekend when my family and I drove into a nearby big city and discovered an amazing bookstore. After we had eaten lunch in a local restaurant, my parents took us down the street to a bookshop they had frequented in their college days. We stepped in side, and Oh. My. Goodness. The store was truly something out of a story book, although it wasn't exactly picture-perfect.
     You know the cluttered apothecary or the crowded shop in your favorite fantasy story? This bookstore has all of those elements, and more. The shelves are close together and filled to the brim with books. Boxes containing magazines, children's stories and historical fiction line the aisles. Scraps of paper litter the floors, and around each corner there's a footstool, originally meant to help patrons reach books, but now covered in stacks of dusty old tomes. The shelves lean in, providing an almost a claustrophobic feel to those who wander in search of a good read. The store rises for three stories, each one more chaotic than the last, and sells almost any book you can think of (and the ones you can't), if you can find it. All in all, the bookstore is a place that seems to have leapt right out of the pages of a novel. Or maybe, it's leapt right in. 
Thanks for listening,
Maggs       

Thoughts on High School

     High school is a crazy place. Everywhere you turn, there are bullies demanding lunch money, blonde cheerleaders with pompoms, and angry wrestlers duking it out in the hallways. Nerds run every which way, avoiding the scathing glares of the "in crowd" and druggies stand in corners, waiting for the teachers to leave so they can start smoking. Large football players argue loudly about last night's game while skater boys tromp around in their clunky shoes and baggy sweatshirts. 
     But really. How much of this is true? How much of this is just urban legend, made up by the classes before us and publicized by the media? Honestly, quite a bit:

Top 7 Biggest Lies of High School

• You'll use this when you get older: Every kid who has ever attended high/middle school in the United States has heard this one. And truthfully, they're lying. Unless you want to become a mathematician, you probably aren't ever going to factor trinomials again.
• Being in the band is extremely uncool: Biggest. Lie. Ever. I mean, yes, we band geeks are very geeky, but we're geeky in a fun, lovable way. If you seriously doubt this, I suggest spending some time with us-- maybe sitting in on a practice or attending a marching show? 
• Everyone goes to parties on the weekends and gets drunk: Well, yes, some kids do go and get drunk. But most of us? Yeah right. On Saturday nights, you can find me at home with a good book or having a mini-movie-party with a couple of friends. 
• Cheerleaders rule the school: Big, definite no on this one. They may be considered the coolest in their own social circles, but they don't usually take charge of the entire school and terrify the underclassmen.
• Lunch money= bully magnet: For the record, I have never witnessed anyone being shoved up against some lockers by a thug and having their lunch money stolen.
• Homework rules you life: In middle school, the teachers were constantly telling us that the homework level in high school would be insane, and we'd have to start forming gook working habits so that we would be ready to fulfill all of the learning requirements we were presented with in high school. In reality, going from middle school to high school is only slightly harder than going from 7th to 8th grade.
• You'll never fit in: For the most part, this isn't true. Yes, there are some kids who really don't fit in anywhere. However, almost everyone finds a group to hang out with-- the band geeks make friends with the choir kids and the theatre people, the math nerds and computer dorks chill together, and even the weird kids form their own cliques. 

Remember-- many of the things they say about high school aren't true, and for the most part, it's a pretty great place.

Thanks for listening,

Maggs