"You Like That" with the bonus feature "Totally Censored and I Hate David Bowie"

THIS IS MY HEADING
Matthew Paul Sibley
Trimester II
Block 6
Gottlieb
English
Literature Of Conflict
Blog Essay I
Final Draft
12/12/2006
Personal Essay
Based on Sedaris/Kingsolver
25 Points (Maybe how much this assignment is worth)
Blogg Assignment
"The Agora"
beta-blogger.com
Class of 2008
Damn thats a good heading. I only have to write like, 3 lines now and I'm done. Score.

You like that? That’s a little trick I learned in Mills. If my paper was ever too short, I would just keep adding on to the heading until it looked long enough. Pretty clever. I don’t think Mr. Mills ever caught on to that. I don’t know if Mr. Derek Gottlieb is perceptive enough to notice, but I better write this thing anyway. Before I got started, I read a couple, and some are pretty good. But most are just OK. (Mine is going to be one of those that is just OK). Also, I have no idea what I’m going to write about.
This one time I was driving home from school. It was Saturday, and I just took this PSAT prep course thing that totally blew. Why the hell would you ever practice for a practice test? Isn’t that why they made the practice test in the first place? Anyway, I just thought I’d mention that because I ride the bus to school everyday, except for when I go to school on the weekends. Which is pretty much never, because that would be the most depressing place to spend a weekend. Or week, for that matter. Anyway, I was really tired because the PSAT class was really boring. Imagine filling in bubbles on a piece of paper. Now imagine that being the exciting part of the class. But I digress (I love to say that, some I’m gonna try and use that at least one more time before the essay ends). So I was driving, right, and needed to turn left on to Hampden. It was the red arrow, and so I stopped and started waiting for the green arrow. How could anybody screw that up? I’ll tell you.
Like I said, I felt like that PSAT course sapped me of my soul, or at least made me kind of drowsy. I was listening to the radio (KS 1075, number 1 for hiphop and today’s hottest music) and just waiting for the green arrow. I guess I must have dozed off, because when I looked back up at the light it changed to yellow. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. At first, I was very angry at the traffic light for skipping my turn. I thought, “It can’t do that. It was just red. Why doesn’t it change to green? I want green.” I was actually angry at the stoplight for skipping my turn. Then, I thought that maybe the lights went red, yellow, green. You know, “Yellow light, get ready to go.” My thought process was that maybe I had just forgotten this widely known fact. I mean, I still confuse my left and right hands sometimes. (Think about that. If you asked me to raise my right hand, and you caught me early enough in the morning, I would have to think about it. Seriously. {But, if you caught me at dinner, I would be able to answer right off the bat, because I eat with my right hand. Back to my story.}) As luck would have it, the stoplight did not skip my turn and the lights did not go red, yellow, green. I was just a dumb ass. Realizing that I had slept through an entire green light, I chuckled to myself and proceeded to slump back down for some more shuteye.
Just as I was preparing to do this dude who tapped on the window of car my car. It scarred the crap out of me. The dude seemed like a nice guy (who was just really pissed off), but for my story we will make him a sweaty red neck. Because I hate sweaty rednecks. Anyway, he peered into the car and said in a very condescending tone (which I guess you’re gonna get a lot of if you sleep through green lights on a busy intersection) “You know you can go now? You can go on green.” He talked to me like a was foreigner, as if he meant to say, “I don’t know how they do it in your country, but in America, we go on green lights. Got it?”. I felt like he thought I was Yugoslavian. Don’t ask me why, that’s just how I felt. If I had my wits about me, I would have said, “I’m American, asshole” or just pretend to speak Yugoslavian to him. Or gone through when the light was green. Instead, the only thing I could think to do was give him a thumbs up and a big smile. That didn't seem to cheer him up at all.

Those thirty seconds waiting for the next light were really awkward because that was the first time I looked at my rearview mirror and had realized how many people were behind me. They probably honked and stuff too. Oops. In those thirty seconds, I realized that if I was one of the guys behind me, I would be extremely pissed. I think the only reason sweaty redneck didn’t shoot me was because he forgot his gun in his other in his trailer (instead of shooting me, he angrily played his banjo at me in his Ford F-150). I had an epiphany. Actually, two.
The first was that this could have been much worse. What if sweaty redneck had remembered his shotgun? Or worse, what if there was somebody I knew behind me? They might have made fun of me. Thank God that didn’t happen. Or, what if there was a pregnant lady behind me who needed to get to the hospital? I can just picture that guy tapping on my window saying something like, “lets move it buddy, she’s crowning back here!” or “Step on it, pal, her water just broke!”. That would be bad.
The second epiphany was one that I just now made up to validate my essay-blog thing. This is basically the point, or reason, behind this entire essay. Ready to have your mind blown? Okay. Here it is. My point. In life you must take advantage of the opportunities that you are given. Wow, that was deep. But how is that relevant, you might ask. Well, I’ll tell you. That green arrow was my opportunity to turn left. And I missed it. Luckily, that opportunity comes about every thirty seconds. So, it wasn’t so bad.
























That would be funny if that was just the end of my essay, because it's like, "you told me that whole story, and that was your point? That was like, 3 sentences of crap you added to the end so that you could have a point to this whole story. I mean, that's barely even relevant at all.". But I feel like I need to add more, because even after my heading, some people have longer stories. And the longer it is, the better grade you get. I hope. Anyway, you need to take advantage of the opportunities you get because they don’t always come around again, like stoplights. Sometimes, if you miss an opportunity, its gone. Forever. Like a train that only comes by once, or something. I don’t know. You think of a better metaphor. Oh, the Titanic only came by once… But that’s kind of a bad example because that’s not really an opportunity anybody would regret missing. (Could imagine going up to someone and saying “what wrong?” and they say, “I’m really bummed. I missed the Titanic.”). That’s actually really sad. I digress (told you). These opportunities are important because they can make all the difference in your life. Like getting home 30 seconds earlier. Or getting into college. Or sinking on a ship called the Titanic. But about the college thing: if you don’t take advantage of the wonderful education here at CA, you will have squandered an opportunity. Like right now. I’m taking advantage of this opportunity to get a good grade and go to college and stuff. Wow, this paper has really grown on me. At first I just started writing, and now this is supposed to get me into a good college. Damn. Also, other people could be counting on you to follow through on your opportunities to improve their lives. Like the pregnant lady. If I had gone through that green arrow, that theoretical pregnant lady’s life would be much nicer. Unless she wanted to continue the family tradition of giving birth in a pick-up truck. That was a red neck joke.


Now my paper is done, and all need to do is to think of a catchy title, even though I doubt anybody will read this no matter what I call it. “You like that?” is the opening phrase. Maybe that will be the title. Maybe I could just get one person to read it if I made the title their name. Or, two people to read it, if two people in Gottlieb have the same name. “Alex, read this.” I bet they would. Then, afterward, they’d be like, “why the hell did I read that? Sibley totally tricked me on that one.” Na. I’ll stick with “You Like That?” because somebody might think it’s a dirty sex story, because “You Like That?” kind of sounds like the title of a Cosmo article or something.