Last chance stories

Since today is the last time that I'll probably be posting until after finals, I thought I would end with a bunch of stories that I planned on sharing, but didn't get a chance to. These are ideas that I wrote down a while ago that I thought would be good blog topics.

Scar

I think scar stories are the best. I have a little scar on my forehead that's about half a centimeter long. It all starts when I was in first grade...
We lived in El Centro, California at the time. I was six years old and Chris, my brother was eight. We were playing in the backyard. Our backyard was basically a field of dirt, but it has a metal pole sticking out of it. I guess the pole was used to dry clothes on, but I can't remember. Chris and I were playing out there and we decided to have a "gong" contest. We had to find something to hit the pole with and see who could make the loudest gong. I got an aluminum baseball bat and hit it as hard as I could. It was pretty loud and the vibrations hurt my hand. Chris said, "That was nothing. Watch this." He took a PVC pipe and hit the pole has hard as he could. The PVC pipe shattered and a pointy, long shard hit me right in the forehead. I started to bleed pretty bad and Chris went to get Mom. I remember Chris telling me that it took two big towels to soak up the blood, but now that I think about it I think that was an exaggeration. If it took two towels to soak up the blood, I'm pretty sure I would've gotten stitches, which I didn't. I tried to take a picture of the scar for you to see, but the flash washed it out so you couldn't see it, so you can imagine that it looks kind of like this.

Family sayings

We had a lot of things that we said as a family that are inside jokes. And they have been repeated for years. Here is an incomplete list of some of the things you can say and situations in which you would say them:

• "63" (As in "Man, David is so 63 right now.") Use this when someone is all sullen and grumpy.
• "JP" (As in "Nathan looks very JP tonight.") JP stands for Johnny Polite. You say someone is JP when they're dressed up all fancy and speak with a British accent. It helps if you hold your hands like the Van Trapp children and have a part in your hair right down the middle.
• "Edwin Redslob" (As in "Chris looks like Edwin Redslob in many of his school pictures.") I mentioned him before. He is pretty similar to acting JP, but you have to flare your nostrils.

There are others, but I don't have time to explain them all, so I'll just list the rest: flexibles; Austins; buy the mystery by the mystery; family friends; bayer; Aidan; the Lewis family tragedy; and get my wish. Can you think of any others?

Gender

I've been thinking about gender lately. I'm glad we have the Family Proclamation that teaches that gender is an essential characteristic of eternal identity and purpose. Without that knowledge, I think there could be a lot of confusion, especially nowadays. We were learning about all the different types of chromosomes in one of my biology classes and we talked about the different things that could go wrong with the XY chromosomes. It was pretty freaky. I think the weirdest one is this disorder where someone has the XY genotype (meaning they are technically male), but the Y chromosome is repressed so they look exactly like a girl and their body functions as a female body...until they hit puberty. Then the Y chromosome is activated and the girl's body changes into a boy's body. How weird and emotionally challenging would that be? Luckily, this is extremely rare.

And that is it for NaBloPoMo. Whew. I think by November 2010 I'll be ready to do this again. Hopefully I'll be able to think of cool topics by then. Well, depending on your time zone, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.