“Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom. July is dressed up and playing her tune.” -Seals and Crofts, Summer Breeze

Now for the eleventh time and ten years exactly after the end of the first, here we are on this lovely…

DAY
100

The final day of this eleventh round of the 100 Days of Summer! A tradition dating back to 2001, finishing a round of each day occurring exactly ten years after the corresponding days of the original run. Began May 24 and ends today. Another summer has come by, and goodness, who’d have thought a round of the 100 Days of Summer that begins with me dancing on a giant piano could be so crazy?

Oh, yeah, I danced on a giant piano! Let’s get into the recap.

Day 1, horribly sleep deprived and feverish with an ill-timed late spring cold, I picked up Kathleen O’Neal in Georgetown and headed to Greenbelt, only to get pulled over by a DC cop for going the wrong way down a one-way street. Gah! Despite delay, got to Greenbelt and caught Bolt Bus and by noon we were in New York City! At long last, I got to Ferrara in Little Italy, where I’d wanted to go the last several times I went to the city but wasn’t able to. Then to a piercing place Kathleen wanted to see, then to the Met, then met Gella! Then to FAO Schwarz where I found the Big Piano and played Ode to Joy with my legs. Hehe. And by 7pm we just barely made the bus back to DC.

Day 2, still feverish. Sitting in a hot car fixes that right up!

Day 3, skipped work and went to NYRA office for annual meeting planning.

Day 5, laaaaate night of hanging out with Kathleen!

Day 6, still hanging out with Kathleen since previous day, saw 3am brawl in Adams Morgan, helped buy groceries at like 6am before finally getting home and sleeping! Also, poorly attended board meeting where some troublesome staffing changes were mentioned. And the summer NYRA drama begins!

Day 9, some reading at library and then some Thai food, where the restaurant’s hostess said to someone “we don’t have sushi here, this restaurant is Thai, not Chinese”. Sigh. *facepalm* And that night, by amazing coincidence, the new South Park episode involved people not being able to tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people!

Day 12, to Baltimore for Orioles game with stupid family. Dad got mad at brother and wanted to cancel game, but brother and I walked toward stadium without parents regardless, forcing them to comply. Ha!

Day 13, gah! Fred Phelps wannabe trolls on NYRA! Banhammer! Oh and now they’re trolling me on Twitter. I can troll back!

Day 16, interesting new South Park… wait. What’s with that ending? Is the show over?!

Day 19, at library reading Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut, if you say “so it goes” one more goddamn time I’m going to find your grave, dig you up, and beat the shit out of your corpse! Also, bathroom electrical outlet seems to have stopped working for some reason.

Day 20, OMG WTF?! Four and a half hour long board meeting? Goddamn it, Hal, enough with the bylaw proposals. They all are terrible ideas anyway and I’m so writing these minutes in your BLOOD for this!

Day 22, think I’ll check my NYRA e-mail… what? Where’s all my messages? Were they lost in the server switch? Have I lost… all my NYRA correspondence since 2006?!

Day 23, oh, it’s okay! I managed to hack my way back into the inbox on the old server and forward everything over! I’m a genius!

Day 24, first of three runs of #16tovote on the 16th during the 100 Days of Summer! Decided to spend it skipping work and helping in NYRA office. Turned out to be lousy idea because I not only got there real late but had waaay too many things to do at once. NYRA overload!

Day 25, Thai food with Kathleen! After some road rage on Massachusetts Avenue. Oh, DC driving!

Day 27, finally a new watch strap! Having to carry about my watch since the old strap finally wasted away was annoying!

Day 31, hanging out with Kathleen again, this time at Popeye’s.

Day 34, rough morning! Then in afternoon, landlords came to fix electrical outlet though couldn’t find problem. Then found out housemates’ bathroom outlets weren’t working either, yet breaker was not tripped. Then landlord pushed a test-reset button on a garage outlet and that got it working again. Electricity is weird! And that night, saw Prop 8 documentary. With Kathleen.

Day 35, yay! We won the Brown v EMA video game Supreme Court case! Chat to celebrate!

Day 39, ah, more NYRA drama. A board candidate sent a nasty email to someone in a setting that has nothing to do with NYRA, nor was much worse than what other NYRA higher-ups have done. And this is our problem for some reason.

Day 40, Ethiopian food with Kathleen and Patrick. Or, no, that’s Eritrean food. As the cab driver pointed out, they are different countries, “like Maryland and Virginia”.

Day 42, Independence Day and watching ’splosions from nearby soccer field! And NYRA chat.

Day 49, think I’ll go to library after work, do some reading, come on back out… holy shit, dark clouds, severe thunderstorm coming!

Day 50, deep forum thoughts on Twitter, then purchased a Nook, then some pizza for the Fifty Fifty! Then Kathleen calls saying she wants to hang out. Then… learn Montgomery County, where I’ve lived my whole life, is proposing a fucking curfew! You’ve got to be shitting me!

Day 52, petitioning in Silver Spring with Alex and some anti-curfew group to stop this thing.

Day 54, the second of three #16tovote on the 16th runs in the 100 Days of Summer. And it’s being sort of hijacked. Bleh.

Day 55, board meeting! Samantha Godwin wants to change Resolution 00-L which specifies NYRA deals only with teens and twenty-somethings, that it shouldn’t specify an age group. Whole board agrees except for Alex. Fight ensues and Alex leaves meeting. Vote is delayed to give him chance to state case. Oh, dear!

Day 57, conference call board meeting to vote on 00-L. Alex did not show so changed resolution without him. Shame. Feel like he could have gone out of his long time on the board better than that!

Day 59, four years after first reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, went to see the movie of it in the theater! Pretty good!

Day 61, supposed to meet up with Kathleen but can’t get a hold of her! Oh, well, I’ll just get something to eat by myself in Bethesda.

Day 62, ah, she slept all day by mistake. So hanging out now. I get to her place at 6pm and she’s in candy cane pajamas and hugging a stuffed sheep named Truffles. Ha. Oh, and I was named Truffles’s “lady daddy”, a proposal I initially wondered was a really weird way of Kathleen coming on to me. LOL

Day 64, Montgomery County curfew hearing! Police chief defends curfew for hilariously fallacious reasons and gets owned by councilmembers who see right through it. Alex, Abigail, and Alan give great anti-curfew testimonies. Kathleen shows up late. She and I get food and hang out for a bit again!

Day 66, ordered some stuff at work that wasn’t totally needed yet, though would be soon, so I’d get the big boxes so I could smuggle food into the Annual Meeting!

Day 67, boxes arrived, left work early, grocery shopping, shower, stuck in traffic going to Silver Spring, have to dig up change because that metro’s parking lot has meters for some reason, get to NYRA office really late! Help assemble packets, argue a bit, then back to Silver Spring for curfew petitioning! And hanging out. And fighting with some pro-curfew woman who was all offended that we were campaigning against it. And lots of NYRA people around for Annual Meeting!

Day 68, ANNUAL MEETING!!!! Had to pick up Kathleen and Neethi first, off to College Park, really late start, deciding which breakout sessions to see, Mary Beth Tinker speaking, talking social media over lunch, SSDP chapter stuff, NYRA victories, and off to bowling alley for annual report and laser pointer and election stuff and awards and, well, bowling! Then dropped Kathleen and Neethi back at her place. Then avoided that damn sobriety check point on the way home before getting gas and passing out in bed. Long day!

Day 69, ANNUAL MEETING!!!! Even later start for some reason. Picked up Kathleen and Neethi then off to College Park again. Election results! I’m in for my seventh term! Lost Jackie, though. Then Hal’s presentation on, uh, Rebecca Black. Yeah. Then Alex and I hosted a youth rights theory discussion! My seventh annual meeting and I only now finally get to do something other than bring food! Yay! Then lunch in which some odd things happened, then UTEC’s presentation, and keynote speaker Robert Epstein himself! Who said a lot of things people took issue with and he and Usi got into this whole battle. I later found out it bothered some people but I thought it was awesome. And then it was all over! I invited some people for us to hang out that night, but plans sort of fell apart. Kathleen, Usi, and I went back to Georgetown before we were to meet Hal and Eric at a diner in Silver Spring. Then things got, um, interesting. We met up with Hal very late. Yeah, things got… interesting. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Day 74, wow! New volunteer in NYRA office is finishing off new website for us! Doing better job than the idiotic developers we’d paid a crapload of money for. Not too certain about this new forum though.

Day 77, off to Wolf Trap to see Berlin and (what’s left of) INXS. Good show! Glad I have my Nook now, which alleviates the common boredom between sets!

Day 78, forums are shut down for transfer to new one. I have a baaaad feeling about this…

Day 79, chapter chat, though Kathleen wanted to see me. Hmmm. So I left AIM open and in the chatroom while I went out. It worked! Got home to find I’d caught the whole chat and was early enough to still take part at the very end!

Day 81, almost time to launch the new site! I’m fighting with Alex over all the forum sacrifices we’ve made for the nice-but-not-vital forum-blog integration. He’s fighting with Usi over proper launch time. The NYRA drama this summer is endless! And far from over…

Day 82, and we’re launched at 8pm EDT! New NYRA website is live! Yay! Oh, and Kathleen needs to stay with me beginning of September and is informing me of this because of some housing issues. So must get the okay from housemates.

Day 83, yup, as predicted, everyone hates the new forum. Buggy and in general major step down from what we had before. WTF?

Day 85, the 100 Days of Summer’s third and last #16tovote on the 16th! Went really well, delving more into youth rights theory behind the desire for a lower voting age. Probably because of all the youth rights philosophy I’d been recently reading and discussing.

Day 86, youth rights theory is very important for NYRA. Can’t have victories without theory, and theory without victories is just, well, theoretical.

Day 87, after trolling Barnes and Noble’s Facebook with complaints for their question of “what’s the most obnoxious thing a teen has said to you?” question, went to DC for some event Dave Moss was holding. Foot behind head and singing “Swinging on a Star”! Hmm. Alex wasn’t there. He had been expected. What’s going on?

Day 90, hmm, can’t get to my site or email for some reason.

Day 91, Alex… is… leaving us…

Day 92, no, why?! He can’t! He just can’t!… Also, EARTHQUAKE!

Day 93, he is, he’s so tired from doing this for so long, NYRA is doing well enough he feels it’s time, and hopefully all the nasty infighting of late won’t ruin that.

Day 94, car maintenance. Oh, and Hurricane Irene is heading this way and looking to fuck shit up, just days after an uncharacteristic east coast earthquake!

Day 96, Hurricane Irene! Up early to feed parents’ cat and put backyard stuff inside because they didn’t bother to do so before they left. And back home to watch the storm! Lost power at 11pm. Ick. Probably another long outage!

Day 97, oh, wait, it’s back on at 2am, even while the wind is still going at full force outside! For Pepco, pretty good! Hehe, look at all the leaves and sticks everywhere outside!

Day 98, have to figure out hiring new NYRA ED. Who could possibly replace Alex?!

Day 99, catered food at work to scavenge after company board meeting. Mmmm!

And finally…

Day 100, pretty ordinary day at work, followed by a yummy sushi dinner. I go there now and then for their dollar sushi happy hour and always take a box home yet this time, while still letting me do it, seemed to not like it. Hmm. Now watching South Park!

As these 100 Days of Summer draw to a close, I notice things have in general picked up pace, especially with NYRA, but where it all is headed is unknown, not a trace of a clue. What will become of NYRA, with the board at each others’ throats, with the young man on whose shoulders the whole operation has rested at long last taking his leave from it? Will the whole thing fall apart? Or will it soar to heights never before imagined? Maybe something is to be learned by the recent earthquake and hurricane. We don’t get earthquakes here, and suddenly we get one, and it was of course unexpected, but really everything was fine. Then came the hurricane, for which we all prepared and braced ourselves, and she came raging through, and while many places did get destroyed and there were deaths, for others, it was a long lasting windy rainstorm with a not very terrible power outage, though that again varies by location and just plain luck. So maybe what seems greatly altering and inconveniencing and perhaps scary and damaging is really just a storm to weather, a ground shaking through which to keep your balance until it stops. And, as I’ve repeatedly come to realize throughout life, the main question you must answer, regardless of fear or heartache or disappointment, is… what do we do now?

So while pondering this, we say farewell to this eleventh round of the 100 Days of Summer! Until May 24, 2012, beginning of Round 12, in whatever shape the world will be in then!

This has been Day 100 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

Goodness, we don’t get those around here, in the DC area! Hit 6 or so on the Richter scale!

*ring, ring, ring*

Oh, hang on, I’m getting a call. *reads caller ID* It’s from California!

*answers*

Hello?

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

*hangs up*

Hmm, that’s weird.

—

Oh, man, what a hot day! It’s like 115 degrees! Doesn’t usually get this hot here in the DC area.

*ring, ring, ring*

Oh, hang on, I’m getting a call. *reads caller ID* It’s from Arizona!

*answers*

Hello?

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

*hangs up*

Hmm, that’s weird.

—

Uh oh! There’s a hurricane heading RIGHT THIS WAY! We’d better get ready. Winds are over 100mph! We don’t usually get hurricanes here in the DC area.

*ring, ring, ring*

Oh, hang on, I’m getting a call. *reads caller ID* It’s from Florida!

*answers*

Hello?

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

*hangs up*

Hmm, that’s weird.

—

WTF?! It’s a huge ass BLIZZARD! It’s like 10 degrees and we’re getting over three feet of snow! We don’t usually get this here in the DC area.

*ring, ring, ring*

Oh, hang on, I’m getting a call. *reads caller ID* It’s from Vermont!

*answers*

Hello?

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

*hangs up*

Hmph!

—

How about you all just come to DC then?

*sometime later*

“Eww, it’s so humid here!”
“There are severe thunderstorms every night?!”
“Gah, I’ve been stuck in traffic on the beltway for three hours and have only moved 20 feet!”
“What do you mean ‘one way street?’ They’re all one-way streets!”
“There’s so many trees! I can’t stop sneezing!”
“What do you mean Metro is single tracking?!”
“The electricity won’t be back on for several days?… Who the hell is Pepco?”
“Oh, my God, there’s stinkbugs and mosquitos everywhere!”
“Who would want to live here?!”

That’s what I thought.

This has been Day 92 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

All that said…

Sobriety checkpoints?! Seriously?!

I was driving back from the NYRA Annual Meeting a couple weeks ago on Wisconsin Ave, when way ahead I see a lot of flashing police lights. At first I figured maybe a huge accident or something weird going on. Then I pass some signs lit up by flares that said “Prepare to Stop. Sobriety Check Point.”

Oh, HELL no! So I turned right around and went a different direction.

Checkpoints?! What is this, fucking Israel?!

I was obviously not drinking. But I will not be subject to a sobriety test (I was also running low on gas!) for no other reason than I’m driving down this road at 12:30am. Not to mention I was really tired from doing the meeting all day so if that were obvious, I could see them assuming it’s drunkenness and making me take a breath test or something.

I don’t at all subscribe to the “if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about!” bullcrap. Sometimes people are doing something others think is wrong without realizing it. And even so, there’s no probable cause to be stopping me, asking me questions, making me prove my innocence when I’ve done nothing to imply I’m not innocent. Driving late at night is not a suspect activity! This shit is grossly unconstitutional and I hope the ACLU is on this.

Nor does this do anything about drunk driving. For one, someone who’s been drinking who approaches a checkpoint could easily do like I did and turn around and go a different way. In fact, when I did that, I almost expected to see a police cruiser following me!

Also, what’s with the ads for these checkpoints? Their only purpose seems to be to intimidate and make people believe the police are watching your every move (actually, maybe that’s not a bad warning…). And they show a policeman asking the driver if he’s been drinking, and for some reason the driver says “just a few”. Who in their right goddamn mind willingly tells a cop he’s been drinking while driving and thinks he’ll be let go?! Nothing about this makes sense!

If someone is swerving all over the place, then yes, pull their ass over. Or even if they’re already pulled over for something else and they seem drunk or buzzed, yeah, fine, run your sobriety tests. Testing fucking everybody who happens to be driving down a certain road? No way! That’s not probable cause. That’s just going about your own way and in no way indicative of a crime.

Stopping drunk driving is a good thing. But this is not at all the way to do it! Cut that shit out!

This has been Day 88 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

Been talking to new fellow NYRA Board Members Kathleen O’Neal and Samantha Godwin about this. Is it useless, perhaps even harmful, to work on “less serious” youth rights issues when there are more serious ones?

For example, a few times in NYRA we’ve discussed campaign finance laws, that limit the financial contributions minors can make to political candidates. From a fairness standpoint, obviously, this is wrong because your contributions should not be limited just because of your age. From another standpoint, well, if this rule were changed, would it really make that much of a difference to youth as a whole? Wouldn’t the only youth helped at all be those already economically privileged enough to be giving huge amounts to political campaigns?

Thing is, the system that blocks youth from contributing to campaigns just because of their age is the same oppressive ageist system that enables curfews. What sets it apart, despite affecting very few youth and not seeming to have much benefit, is that it’s probably a relatively easy battle. Chipping away at the oppressive ageist system, even the most seemingly unimportant chips, still cuts away at it, still is a victory against it, still proves it can be attacked and wounded, even if it’s barely a paper cut. Are there more important battles? Absolutely. But none of our youth rights battles stand alone, at least not if we make clear they do not. After all, a desire to see youth equally able to contribute to campaigns comes not from wanting to see candidates better funded but because of the simple issue of equal access and opportunity, something the oppressive ageist system denies to youth, even if this is hardly one of the worst denials.

Many of our issues get pegged as “trivial” actually. Not sure I can even think of one that hasn’t been! We get asked if it’s really so important that 20-year-olds can drink legally. Is it really so important that 17-year-olds can vote? Hell, I’ve heard that about behavior modification, perhaps one of if not the most horrific legal youth rights violation there is, mostly because it’s something that few youth actually go through (though I counter this with, even if few youth in the grand scheme of things actually get sent to these places, ALL youth are at risk as long as these places remain an option for parents and the state!).

I don’t think fighting smaller, easier to win battles harms our overall strategy. I think it helps in a way, mostly through morale, proves to ourselves and our supporters this is winnable. I do think we need to always keep our grander goals in mind and never let our talking points cloud it. I do think, for example, when arguing against curfews, we should avoid making arguments along the lines of “that’s the parents’ decision, not the government’s”, because, honestly, we don’t think the parents should really get to decide that either!

As I mentioned in my recap of the Brown v EMA victory, many saw our battle over the right to buy mature-rated video games to be a trivial issue and not worth our effort. Does it really matter that a 16-year-old can buy Grand Theft Auto unimpeded? Honestly, yes, yes it does. Because, as I concluded with, when discriminatory restrictions are placed, regardless of the seeming unimportance of what the restriction is on, particularly when the restriction has no compelling safety interest, and when violation can lead to serious penalties, it is no longer trivial. Also, youth rights issues do not each exist in a vacuum. They are not independent of each other, and though most people often think so, might fail to see a connection between a restriction limiting a game purchase and one that, say, prevents teens from working in that game store, and it is our job as youth rights activists to make sure people see that connection, that it’s all part of anti-youth oppression.

That is not at all to say a 16-year-old prevented from buying a video game and one who is physically coerced to practice her parents’ religion are equally oppressed, hell no. The latter is unquestionably a worse situation. Just that, while obviously different manifestations, they are symptoms and results of anti-youth oppression all the same, and we should be saying a big loud NO to all of it.

The smaller issues should not be ALL we work on either just because they are more winnable. We can work several fronts at once and be always mindful of and speak about how they are inherently connected. We should be stopping the video game bans AND helping youth be emancipated from horrible parents. We should be taking down ageist store policies limiting teen entry AND shutting down behavior modification facilities. We should be removing restrictions on youth political contributions AND ending corporal punishment at home and school. Because while ignoring the more dangerous youth rights violations in favor of smaller easier battles is wrong, looking only at the most serious while letting smaller ones slip by also looks very silly on our part and actually reduces our own seriousness about the cause.

Of course, in order to work on the trivial and the non-trivial, especially as trivial is very subjective, we must always be very clear when speaking out on these that they are part of the grander scheme of anti-youth oppression, not to pretend any of them stand alone and be sure none of our talking points, regardless of short-term expediency, imply this. Because seeming radical or fringe doesn’t matter as long as we obviously know our issue, have a good strategy, and take it very seriously ourselves. Our issues are only as trivial as we allow people (and ourselves) to think they are.

Edit: Alex wrote this six years ago making similar points. Though my entry is obviously better.

This has been Day 77 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

I’m going to say neither of those!

As a youth rights activist and founder of #16tovote on the 16th, I often hear that the voting age should be replaced with some sort of test one must pass to get the right to vote at any age. This way, at least only those smart enough or informed enough will decide the government and it’s not ageist.

Eh… not so much.

Proponents of test-instead-of-voting-age rarely seem to have a clear idea of what this test would be and are dismissive of how extremely easy it would be to abuse it, to end up disenfranchising people based on ideology, location, education level, or just plain test-taking ability.

And what would it be testing? US History? What about it exactly? Should someone be disenfranchised for, say, forgetting which President caused the Trail of Tears? Or what about questions about historical events whose details are up for a lot of debate (i.e. absolutely anything about the Civil War)? If such a test for voting were in place, would then have to be extremely basic questions like “who was the first President?” But something like that is common knowledge anyway. Someone who knows that could still very well be “incapable of voting” (whatever someone’s definition of that is). And even the few people who might not know that may still have pressing reasons to vote on something.

Maybe not a history test then. It’s also been suggested voters should demonstrate they know what the candidates they are voting on actually believe. Just one problem. Pop quiz! What’s John McCain’s stance on abortion? What’s Mitt Romney’s stance on healthcare? What’s Obama’s stance on LGBT rights and same-sex marriage? Good questions, seeing as those, plus others like it, are ambiguous. These politicians have been on both sides of those issues. Plenty of candidates flip-flop seemlessly or are even intentionally ambiguous or vague on these issues. Even without a voting test, this is a common annoyance for us average voters. It wouldn’t help if a misstep in navigating this political hellhole could also cost us our voting rights!

Then there’s a basic IQ or literacy test. Nothing to do with politics or history. Because apparently dyslexics or the learning disabled don’t get to have a voice in society. Or blind people, for that matter. As for IQ, what most people fail to realize is that like most other methods of measuring people mentally it is inexact and often used for prejudicial purposes (Asians are typically higher up, blacks are typically lower, whites are average, for example). Hell, it was originally created just for young students in order to help figure out what areas they needed help with, but has since spiraled out of control into other areas where it doesn’t belong. Using it to decide to deny someone their voting rights would be a most horrendous abuse of it.

There are other examples of proposed voting competence tests, but they all have the same pitfalls. In many cases, they decide voter eligibility on unrelated abilities or on method or reasons for voting. Voters vote for a reason, and they shouldn’t be blocked because someone else decided their reading comprehension or political savviness isn’t up to par. Or that they aren’t voting for the right reasons or the right way.

But of course, as we have currently, instead of all that, we just decide anyone under 18 is incapable of voting (whatever that means) and everyone 18+ is. That whatever test there is, all under-18s fail and all 18+ people pass. Age is a separate measure from political knowledge or literacy, but you often get opponents of lowering the voting age still making that case, that the voting age is because people under it don’t meet whatever the speaker’s personal preferences of “maturity” or political knowledge or whatever are. Or you also get those in favor of lowering the voting age saying it should be around 13 because that’s around puberty. What sexual maturity has to do with ability to vote, I have no clue!

Instead of saying people without certain civics knowledge should not be allowed to vote, we should be asking why so many people in a country governed by voting don’t have this ability, and seek to rectify that. Not to just cast them off as unworthy, especially if, despite this, they still do want to vote. And they should still be allowed. It is their right. They are governed and they should be allowed to consent to that governance just like everyone else.

And absolutely anyone setting these vague voting eligibility rules believes themselves to be worthy, while many others who do the same would rule them out. It’s yet another fear that, you know, people who think differently from you or haven’t lived as long as you have just as much a say in the government as you do! And as such, it’s incredibly un-American to want to silence them.

So what do I recommend? No voting age or test at all? So that even a 4-year-old can wander into the polling place and cast her ballot? Some youth rights people say things like “she can’t read the ballot anyway, she can’t reach it, she wouldn’t want to”. Which, honestly, is still very disenfranchising language. Supporting her having the right to vote must include support for her having the ability. Voting right now, being open to only adults, is built for adults. If young kids had the franchise too, then the voting system would have to change to accommodate their smaller sizes, lesser likelihood of being able to read the choices, their lesser ability to travel to the polling place. Perhaps pre-K classes could go to the polls together and file one by one into little child-sized voting booths with voting machines designed for people who may not be able to read well, that maybe lights up the candidate’s names and says out loud who they are. Whatever the case, even though even with adults there are lots of accessibility concerns (lots of people’s polling places are accessible only by car, essentially disenfranchising those who don’t drive and can’t get a ride and can’t mail in their ballot, for example), accessibility would become a much bigger issue with enfranchised children. You can’t just say they have the right to vote. You have to make sure they are able to if they want to. That will have to come with a lot more youth liberation advances down the road, which I should think would be in place by the time abolishing the voting age entirely would be at all feasible. Hell, just lowering it to 16, which is virtually free of these extra accessibility issues, is hard enough!

And saying someone shouldn’t vote because they’ll vote the same way as their parents is the stupidest fucking excuse ever. OMG, someone might vote the same as someone else! Oh noes! Again, it’s more micromanaging people’s exact reasons for why they cast their ballot, when really, it’s their own business why.

So what do I suggest? No tests, definitely. Voting age? Well, I’d like to see it abolished eventually and certainly encourage dialogue on it and ideas on how it would work (i.e. aforementioned accessibility issues) and what it would look like. For now, focus should be on efforts to lower it. I wouldn’t mind seeing it lowered to 12 or even 10 as things are. And, hell, once it’s that low, it’ll give a clearer idea of what going even lower might look like and how to deal with accessibility issues and any concerns over voting coercion (admittedly something little kids would be more vulnerable to barring any major societal shifts toward youth liberation, though development would still be an issue). Or maybe instead of abolition could drop it to 5 or something. It gets murky when talking about kids that young.

Some say with young kids voting, candidates would get voters through promises of free ice cream. Not an unreasonable guess. Replace that ice cream with healthcare and same-sex marriage, and suddenly it’s politics!

This has been Day 45 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

And today came the verdict at last…

7-2, in favor of EMA. Two dissenters were Stephen Breyer and (surprising absolutely no one) Clarence Thomas.

WE WON!!!!

Check out the official document here!

I’ve been retweeting a lot of remarks and articles today in response to this ruling, so here’s a nice roundup.

Hypervocal says

This marks the first time the Supreme Court has ruled on video games, and now, because of this decision, it seems that video games have earned an equal place at the First Amendment cultural table along with books, music, movies and other entertainment products.

Slashdot notably notes that

Notable in the opinion is a historical review of the condemnation of ‘unworthy’ material that would tend to corrupt children, starting with penny-novels and up through comic books and music lyrics. The opinion is also notable for the odd lineup of Justices that defies normal ideological lines, with one conservative and one liberal jurist dissenting on entirely different grounds.

Good ol’ Reason, complete with a pic of Schwarzenegger signing something behind a Protect Our Children sign, quotes some of Scalia’s great majority opinion and concludes with:

Acknowledging the legitimacy of concerns that some violent entertainment is inappropriate for minors, Scalia nonetheless reminds us that ‘even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply.’

Ars Technica seems just plain sick of this shit and is glad to see the ban failed, saying

The law, as it was written, was bound to fail. Every previous state law that tried to enact some sort of ban has been struck down as unconstitutional. California’s law sought to control the sale of games with “deviant violence” to children, but lacked a clear definition of what deviant violence would entail. While the California law would have added an exception to the first amendment to exclude certain content from protection, in essence saying that video games were not speech, the Supreme Court has decided that video games are in fact expression, and are afforded the same rights and protections as every other art form sold to consumers. With a decision this clear, we’ve hopefully seen the last of state laws attempting to regulate the sale of video games to minors.

GamePolitics shows that butthurt California State Senator Leland Yee, the guy who proposed and has relentlessly pushed for this video game ban and wasted a lot of taxpayer money on it, is butthurt

California State Sen. Leland Yee said that today’s ruling by the Supreme Court “put the interests of corporate America” before the interests of children.

…

Yee went on to say that the eight years of legislative and legal battles were worth it because it raised the consciousness of this issue for many parents and grandparents, and has “forced the video game industry to do a better job at appropriately rating these games.”

Taxpayers in California probably disagree with Yee, who encouraged the state to spend money to defend a law that was inevitably struck down. The only ones truly enriched by the legal battle and victory was the videogame industry because this ruling has set a precedent that can’t be ignored by lawmakers daring to tackle the subject of violent videogame legislation.

Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress goes in-depth about the opposing arguments between Justices Scalia and Thomas.

Thomas draws a draconian line in the sand, saying that children have no right to read or access any material or speech without obtaining their parents’ approval first: “The historical evidence shows that the founding generation believed parents had absolute authority over their minor children and expected parents to use that authority to direct the proper development of their children. It would be absurd to suggest that such a society understood ‘the freedom of speech’ to include a right to speak to minors (or a corresponding right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents.”

Yeah, Clarence Thomas is a douche. But then Antonin Scalia rips him apart!

And it’s a delight to see Scalia utterly dismantle his total disregard for the rights of minors in a footnote, saying:

Justice Thomas ignores the holding of Erznoznik, and denies that persons under 18 have any constitutional right to speak or be spoken to without their parents’ consent. He cites no case, state or federal, supporting this view, and to our knowledge there is none. [...] It does not follow that the state has the power to prevent children from hearing or saying anything without their parents’ prior consent. The
latter would mean, for example, that it could be made criminal to admit persons under 18 to a political rally without their parents’ prior written consent — even a political rally in support of laws against corporal punishment of children, or laws in favor of greater rights for minors. [...] In the absence of any precedent for state control, uninvited by the parents, over a child’s speech and religion (Justice Thomas cites none), and in the absence of any justification for such control that would satisfy strict scrutiny, those laws must be unconstitutional.

In other words: “Jesus Christ, Thomas, STFU already!” But go read that whole piece for the two justices’ opposing recounts of history.

Our good friends National Coalition Against Censorship give NYRA and the ACLU a shoutout in mentioning our joint amicus brief for this case, and say

The impulse to ‘protect’ children by restricting what they can read, see, and hear is pervasive, and the decision issued today makes it clear that vague assertions about harm, or social disapproval of certain kinds of material, do not justify government restrictions. That also applies to books in public schools and libraries, which are of course challenged regularly.

The Court also rejected the claim that “the state has the power to prevent children from hearing or saying anything without their parents’ prior consent.” The decision thus leaves it up to individual families to set their own rules, without officials saying “what the State thinks parents ought to” do.

Whether it’s video games, movie, comic books, or music, parents and youth have a legitimate interest in making choices about what is appropirate without unwanted and unwarranted state interference.

And there’s Mother Jones in all its glory, promising that

To the nation’s young gamers—

I know you are no longer satisfied by the rantings of Cave Johnson, the eccentric dead billionaire in Portal 2. I’m aware you cannot countenance another 30 levels of Angry Birds. I sense that, just for once, you want to see something hemorrhage like the old days. Well know this: the judicial branch has not forgotten about you.

In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court on Monday put an end to a long-stalled California law that would have prohibited the rental or sale of violent games to minors.

That articles also points out…

There are of course more extreme cases of double standards and slippery slopes. With all the demands to have video games like the Grand Theft Auto series (content includes gang warfare, indiscriminate violence, colorful language, and some tongue-in-cheek depictions of sex) kept out of reach of children, an impressionable youngster can still stroll into any Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy of Justine by Marquis de Sade (content includes sado-masochistic Christian monks, orgiastic rape, mass murder by arson, and rampant torture).

It’s not a stretch to claim the latter would be more damaging to your average fifth grader.

Reminds me of a guy at our rally who brought with him a comic book or something, whose video game version was M-rated and would have been banned, while that comic book would be perfectly okay for anyone to buy.

Unfortunately, there was the annoying one from Scientific American, harping on that Leland Yee is a child psychologist and therefore knows best what’s good for children

Yee’s stance on whether to let children under the age of 18 play video games depicting violent scenarios—murder, car jackings and the like—is that such games cause “an increase in aggressive behavior, physiological desensitization to violence, and decrease [in] pro-social behavior,” according to an earlier statement on Yee’s site. His position lines up with those of the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Among other supporters of Yee’s position is a group of psychologists and social researchers led by Craig Anderson, director of Iowa State University’s Center for the Study of Violence, who last year authored a paper that pointed to “clear and convincing” evidence that “media violence is one of the causal factors of real-life violence and aggression.” The study, entitled “The Influence of Media Violence on Youth” and published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, concluded that “research on violent television and films, video games, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts.”

Somewhere I think Tipper Gore had an orgasm.

SciAm does throw a bone to the opposing side. Uhhh, sort of.

The other side of the violent video games disagreement claims that violent crimes among juveniles are declining even as video games have gotten more violent and that it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between any one medium and a group’s behavior, let alone the actions of an individual.

In a June 2010 Scientific American article social psychologist Dara Greenwood evaluated arguments on both side of the debate. Whereas research by Cheryl Olson, a public health specialist at Harvard, found that children’s reported motivations for video game playing and found that their top rated choices were to have fun, to compete well with others, and to be challenged. Olson also elaborated on the psychological benefits such play might afford, describing how video games facilitate self-expression, role play, creative problem-solving, cognitive mastery, positive social interactions and leadership.

Greenwood acknowledged that “no media psychologists worth their salt would conclude that violent video games will turn your children into gun-toting sociopaths.” Still, she concluded that violent media, including video games, may affect people in “countless subtle ways, increasing hostility and apathy to those around us.”

That’s… something? Maybe?

Well, then there’s this at the end…

California’s loss in the Supreme Court has a greater impact than simply scuttling that state’s attempt to limit children’s access to violent video games. The 11 other states—Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia—that submitted an amicus brief in support of California’s law now find their options likewise limited.

OMG like oh noes! You mean states who want to infringe on the free speech rights of young people and game sellers are finding their options limited? Oh, we must feel so sorry for them! How dare they be blocked from violating their young citizens’ basic liberties based on not-very-conclusive “science”?

Yeah, go to hell, Scientific American. I am disappoint.

Hate to end on that note. So here’s one more bit of awesomeness from Mother Jones on the Scalia versus Thomas battle!

So it’s a good day for free speech and youth rights! My beloved organization NYRA was closely involved in this case, signing onto the amicus brief and holding that kickass RALLY late last year, and today all of our work has come to fruition, and justice has been served! Even just the tiniest victories take enormous work and dedication, but we’re on our way to a world where rights of youth are actually respected. It may seem a video game issue is trivial, but it’s not, it’s sooo not. Because when something turns discriminatory and could mean criminal penalties, especially for no real compelling purpose, it gets real.

In closing, here’s Eric’s review of the case on the NYRA blog.

This has been Day 35 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Really really getting tired of the trope about teens being lazy, always sleeping in on weekends, not wanting to get up for school, etc. Everything from so-called “teen experts” (who are invariably adults who are so astoundingly self-righteous they think they know teens better than teens know themselves and make a career of it) to Windex commercials mocks teens for – gasp! – still being in bed after sunrise.

Are you people really so goddamn thick? EVERYBODY sleeps in! You do, too, unless you’re one of these people who gets up at 5am every morning to jog or something. In which case, you may notice you’re mostly alone when doing this. This is not normal behavior. Sleeping in until you absolutely have to get up for school or work, or sometimes later, is the normal behavior. Sleeping on weekends until your body decides it’s tired of being in bed and wants to try movement again is what is normal. For all ages. When you deride teens for doing this, you’re deriding them for normal behavior. Why?

Oh, right, you’re the adult, so against any logic or awareness of the world outside of your prejudices, you simply must look down on teens and scrutinize them and marginalize them and make damn sure they don’t feel welcome in Your World. You know, because you’re mature apparently.

This has been Day 22 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

DAY
100

So my friends, another hot sunny summer has gone by, yet another round of the infamous 100 Days of Summer, the tenth round in fact! Which means next year’s eleventh round, each day is the tenth anniversary of the days of the original! These days have a way of being crazy, mysterious, wonderful, and terrible. And today we celebrate completing another hundred of them! So let’s review!

Day 1, okay, got a new algae eater yesterday, a gold one. I’ll call him Aurelius!

Day 3, as usual, NYRA board is being annoyingly quiet about important stuff. Do I really want yet another year of this frustration and silence?

Day 7, we can’t let Hyundai and Allstate get away with running ageist ads, at least not without complaints! Get them! Also, saw Soul Asylum!

Day 8, okay, fine, I’ll run for another year on the damn board.

Day 9, wait, crap, I think our AC is broken.

Day 10, yeah, I’d say so. Outside unit isn’t even running!

Day 12, gaaahhh! AC unit is in my damn room and needs to be replaced, so got all these repairmen trampling through my room taking shit apart in the mech closet. Oh and they used an acetylene torch at one point to put some parts back together afterward, so we had to cover up the two nearby sprinklers with cups so they wouldn’t be set off. Crazy!

Day 15, alright, my toe has been infected and hurting like hell and soaking it hasn’t done shit, I guess I’d better see the podiatrist.

Day 17, podiatrist says toe nail has to come off and I need antibiotics. Sigh. Ouch!!! Stupid paronychia.

Day 18, at work, limping and with only nine and a half toes, got to order some special kind of bacitracin for coworker, found only one company with it, just got to set up account to buy it.

Day 21, board meeting, we have moved the Annual Meeting back to Washington, DC! Okay, that makes things easier. Oh, and I requested my e-mail account be returned to me, since it’d been nearly two years. Alex and Stefan refused, but Keith seconded my motion and it came to a vote. It passed! I got my NYRA e-mail account back. Alright.

Day 24, the first of three runs of #16tovote on the 16th during the 100 Days of Summer! Awesome as usual.

Day 28, gee wiz, people sure are offended that I dared to say Father’s Day is stupid.

Day 35, NYRA-DC meeting! Larry is here to run the chapter! Should be awesome.

Day 37, oh no! At work, supervisor is having nasty diabetic attack! Paramedics had to come. They got some sugar in her and she snapped back to normal.

Day 39, alright, forums are dying and people want to be able to vote in NYRA’s election, so for anyone who makes 50 posts before end of July, I’ll sponsor membership.

Day 40, let out of work early for holiday weekend… there’s some smoke over near that car… FIRE! Some idiot threw a cigarette butt into dry mulch and it ignited. Had to put it out.

Day 41, took little brother to see Toy Story 3. BAWWWWWW!

Day 42, time for patriotic ’splosions! From the middle of the soccer field by my house, can see like six different fireworks displays in the area. Sweet!

Day 44, I think the fucking AC is broken again.

Day 45, oh lovely, turns out after like a month and a half of stalling and bullcrap, only now finding out I can’t order that special bacitracin because we’re not a physician’s office. Fucking hell.

Day 47, repair guy returns, again traipsing through my damn room, but this time not so much ruckus, just refilled the freon. Poor ozone layer!

Day 48, youth-related council hearing in DC with NYRA! And on metro ride home, Alex discussing NYRA’s financial situation and getting me all panicked. Jerk did that on purpose!

Day 49, alright, I’m putting up some NYRA flyers again. Hooked up my printer, printed off a bunch, and late at night, put some up at local bus stops, mailboxes, and a condo complex.

Day 50, the Fifty-Fifty! More flyers, though it was raining. Also, got pizza.

Day 54, there was apparently an earthquake here I totally never felt. Also, the July #16tovote on the 16th! Going great… and got a call from mom that Nigel is still struggling with his severe arthritis and can’t really move anymore…

Day 55, and it’s time to make a fateful trip to the vet… and say goodbye.

Alright, Round 10, you just killed my dog. You owe a lot of awesome shit to even come close to balancing this back out.

Day 56, went to WES, and actually said something in the community response, something pro-youth rights! Also, last NYRA board meeting of the year!

Day 61, NYRA-DC has an online chat to finalize the chapter charter… and it devolves into unspeakable chaos and drama. Oy.

Day 63, wow, that is a huge mass of red heading our way on the radar… and the lights are out now. Lovely. But holy damn, what a storm! But storm long since finished and sun is back out… and still no electricity. Sigh. Not again.

Day 64, lights are still off, at least they’re back on at work, only to come home later to find they’re still off at home. I hate you, Pepco. I’ll go to the library. Back at 7pm, still no power at home. So back to work, use computer there, watch evil little triangles on Pepco website outage map. Home at 9pm to find lights had just come back on. Another 30-hour outage, just like February.

Day 65, day after ending of long outage, got $218 Pepco bill. I HATE YOU!

Day 69, been thinking to visit state capitals. I’ll start with my own. Annapolis! Saw State House, ate a crab cake, and got a hat. Fun little outing!

Day 71, okay, just ordered some new NYRA bumper stickers! Hope they arrive in time for the Annual Meeting! Want to debut them there!

Day 74, I’d better hurry up and decide who to vote for in this NYRA board election. So many great candidates! So hard to decide! I guess I’ll just flip a coin for that ninth place person. Not that ninth choice matters in Single Transferrable Vote.

Day 75, yes! Stickers arrived just in time! Also, buying lots and lots of meeting food.

Day 76, NYRA ANNUAL MEETING!!!! I live tweet, but better yet, Jeff and Zac got the live streaming working so our online friends who couldn’t attend in person could still watch! And I cut Alex a deal, sort of. I did not hit him with the laser pointer during the annual report… I did it right after it while he was saying something into the live-streaming camera. Hahaha. Also…. STEFAAAAAAAN! He wasn’t reelected.

Day 77, NYRA ANNUAL MEETING!!!! Live tweeting and streaming going again, onto the second day! Got lots of pizza, again from Bertucci’s, and had a sweet strategic planning session. And I made Dave do his trick, where he stands on one leg and puts his other leg behind his head. And when the meeting was over, Alex ran off to church, I hung out with Usi and David SJ, then Jeff and Zac rejoined us, and met back up with Alex at NYRA office. Hal showed up, and we discussed NYRA stuff more. Then we got pizza. And sat there having fun and talking youth rights until the place closed. Fucking win.

Day 82, supervisor had another diabetic attack! Eek! Also, first Redskins preaseason game: squashed the Buffalo Bills. Hahaha!

Day 84, Galen says fuck it and cancels Sniper chats, since Max and I are the only ones who ever go anymore. Oh, well.

Day 85, the third and final #16tovote on the 16th in the 100 Days of Summer! Lots of tweets but not a lot of participants. Oh, well.

Day 88, another NYRA-DC online chat, trying again to finalize charter, bracing self for another explosion… and it was actually rather pleasant and charter was finalized. Nice!

Day 90, meh, constant stereotypes and ignorance of Comedy Central and other stuff is getting on my nerves, think I’ll watch NatGeo Wild for a while. Change of pace.

Day 91, I have got to clean this damn room.

Day 92, what the shit?! The AC is broken AGAIN? You kidding me? Also, finally had first board meeting. With a board that is once again being unresponsive. Sigh. Why am I doing this shit again?

Day 93, and repair guy is back once more to fix the AC, and this time found the leak causing the freon to be running out in the first place. Oh, the poor poor ozone layer!

Day 94, and now the fucking smoke detector is chirping because it needs a new battery. Which one? There’s three… oh, lucky, the third floor one. As in the one that’s waaaay up high on the wall and impossible to reach, and even with the ladder can’t quite get it. So had to get neighbor to help.

Day 97, DC is having dueling rallies! Glenn Beck rally versus Al Sharpton rally! Hal and I went to recruit some NYRA supporters at the Sharpton one. Early morning and under a vicious sun, but lots of fun! And we totally marched holding the NYRA banner.

Day 98, visited family to get mail, spend time with little brother, and… feed them because they’re broke. Sigh.

Day 99, car maintenance! Which took forever and made me super late getting back to work. So when I did get back, almost everyone had already left for the day.

And, finally, at last…

Day 100, today! Pretty much an ordinary work day, not terribly eventful. Sitting here eating a yummy summer salad! It’s got spinach, avocado, assorted nuts, corn, and pepperoni. Yum.

And ten times of these 100 Days of Summer, that makes today the 1000th day total of the 100 Days of Summer with all rounds added together. Kind of neat.

This tenth round, well, majorly sucked. I lost my dog! And if before midnight I receive word that all 50 states have lowered their voting and drinking ages and ruled curfews illegal, that NYRA is given a million dollars, and that It’s Raining Men song comes true (giggity!)… yeah, I think this round might still be a little behind. Seriously, losing a dog sucks.

As these 100 Days of Summer draw to a close, as the final four months of 2010 loom ahead. What’s going on? What’s happening? Last year, I closed Round 9 with the realization that to make things awesome, they must be, well, made awesome, in spite of any out of control circumstances. But I’m not sure what the hell is happening now. If anything. Then again, maybe that’s part of the fun.

And with that, I bid farewell to Round 10 of the 100 Days of Summer! It shall return on May 24, 2011, for Round 11, and whatever crazy crap will be going on then.

This has been Day 100 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

Since this happened…

August 30, 2000 – 6:30pm

I was just outside the cafeteria, watching people go in and out. All of a sudden, I saw him. He looked about my age, a few inches taller. He had short dark brown hair and wore glasses. There was something about him. He stood with a woman I assumed was his mother. Then a grey-haired man came up, his father apparently. I could not stop staring at him. After a while, he and his father left, and the mother sat on a chair beside the cafeteria entrance, waiting for them to return.

I stood around her, still trying to figure out what had happened. Who was he? Why was I now feeling so weird? After a while, the guy and his father came back. Another guy came up and talked to them; he looked about my age, too. But he went away, and the first guy and his parents went into the cafeteria.

I didn’t want to lose sight of them. Remembering there was a second floor balcony in the rotunda that overlooked part of the cafeteria, I raced up the nearby stairway and down a corridor to the circular railing. After a few minutes, the three came out and sat at a table. The guy was eating pasta with marinara, some bread, and a banana. I paced around the balcony, my eyes fixated on them the whole time. Luckily, they didn’t notice me. Not then, at least.

I went back down to the entrance of the cafeteria to await the guy and his parents. Soon I saw them get in the tray return line. Then they exited the cafeteria, walked by me, and went down a nearby stairway. I then ran outside and down the steps to the building’s basement entrance. The three went straight down the hall towards the back entrance of the building. I walked down the hall, too. Suddenly, before they reached the doors, the guy’s father turned his head around and glared at me, frowning. At that point, I slowed down. He said something to his son, who then half-turned his head and looked at me, and I’d swear he was smiling! They went on out the doors to a blue car and got in. Upon driving away, both of the guy’s parents gazed at me, and they weren’t exactly friendly gazes!

“Where are they going?” I asked myself, seeing the blue car drive away. Wait! In front of the cafeteria building, there was a parking lot bustling with families of students moving to the two dorm buildings that were right there. I ran back down the hallway and back out of the building to that parking lot. After a while, they drove in! I saw them get out of the car and walk into one of the dorm buildings. Ah! That’s where he lives! A little later, the two parents left the building, got into their car, and drove out of their parking space. Upon leaving the lot, they spotted me walking back to the cafeteria. They once again stared at me ominously as they drove away. As I ate my dinner, I reflected on all that had happened with sudden regret. That wasn’t a nice thing to do!

The above is copied from a little notebook (that I was somehow able to locate rather quickly just a little while ago!) where I wrote all that down the evening after it happened, with only a few changes in wording.

At a glance, what is this story? What became of the narrating girl and this guy she is suddenly so fixated on? Is this the beginning of a sweet little love story? Would she follow him into the dorm in what would turn out to be a very bad porno? Or no, considering this girl was 17 at the time, that’d be a little Chris Hansen-y. Would this mysterious guy turn out to be a sparkling vampire? Certainly, this must be the beginning of something interesting!

Well, not really. I think I’m the only one who’d find the entire story all that interesting, seeing as I’m of course that girl. Really what followed was nearly two years of obsessive stalking, if we’re to be perfectly honest here, which ended with a story I’ve already told. So a little bittersweet to remember it, the beginning of something that for better or worse shaped my college years dramatically.

It’s also interesting because of two uncanny things that occurred. For one, my being so suddenly smitten with someone I’d never seen before in my life. Well, actually, I do know why that happened, and I can’t really explain it too well, but in a nutshell, let’s just say he was in the right place at the right time (or perhaps wrong place at the wrong time, on his end, since he had to put up with me for the following two years, hehe). The other uncanny thing was assuming they were heading back out to the parking lot in front of the cafeteria, and turning out to be absolutely right. In retrospect, how the hell did I know that? I had no real reason to believe they’d go there, and they could have gone a million and one other places, including any of the several other dorms on campus and their lots. For all I knew, maybe he wasn’t a student there at all. But somehow I knew exactly where they’d go. Pretty cool when that happens.

So, ten years later, what do I think? I of course lost any interest in the guy himself long ago. But it’s interesting to think how much I’ve done since that rather course-altering event. Since then graduated from that school, went through over a year of soul-crushing unemployment and stagnation, joined NYRA, finally got work and built up some money, got more involved with NYRA and on the board, attended annual meetings, made some great friends, got a permanent job, finally got my driver’s license and then a car, finally moved out of my grandmother’s house, and last year took an awesome trip to London. I’ve been doing quite well.

Of course, ten years later, how well do I deal with guys now? Is that any better? I must surely know what I should have done differently, right?

Okay, I just depressed myself.

This has been Day 99 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

Well, soon after I wrote that, when visiting the local library on a Saturday, I saw a sign taped to the window saying that starting July 6, they’d be open an extra hour on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, closing at 6pm rather than 5pm. Still closed Sunday, though. I stared at this sign, recalling before when I tried to come right after 5pm one Friday to find it closed. Did I do that? I only said anything on here. Hadn’t said anything to them.

And then I went there again today to read some more of Twilight (you heard me) to find another taped up sign. Saying that as of August 15, the library would be open on Sundays year-round.

My friends…

I am powerful. Make a note of it.

This has been Day 90 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.