not sure if you're a boy or a girl

Sometimes, I think I’m King Arthur.  I dreamed of giving her a better life.  And I tried, I really did.  I loved intensely.  I did everything I could and more.  However, one person trying to make a difference was no match for feelings of anger and hatred, and the dream was shattered by unnecessarily drastic actions that I’m not sure anybody really understands.  But I can have peace, knowing that for a short time, I made a difference.  And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Once there was a fleeting wisp of glory.

I love my 8th graders. They’re so awesome. When I was at Shady Hill, people took Physics By Design because they wanted to get out of science by playing with Legos. This class that I’m helping with is genuinely excited about physics.  Today is Black History Assembly where all the little Shady Hillers take cancel afternoon classes so they can go and show the parents what they’re paying for.  This was a conversation I overheard yesterday…

Travis: Ms. Bratzel, do we have science class tomorrow?
Ms. Bratzel: Yes, morning classes are all the same, just 5 minutes shorter.
Travis: YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!

And that is why I love this class. They’re building Lego balances right now and there’s one group that has found the mass of the little connector pegs for the sake of making their balance even more precise. Can I say it again? I love this class.

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Also, I felt obligated to inform the internets (really, Facebook told me to do it) that Gabi is beautiful.

This post was sitting in my drafts, dated 14 December, 2009

So on the plane a couple of nights ago, I wasn’t binding because I really really hate sleeping in that thing. However, the guy taking our dinner order (we flew Business Class. Hooray for complimentary upgrades) greeted my dad and me as “gentlemen”. When I got up to use the bathroom, he treated me as the same. I was pleasantly surprised, but thought nothing of it. Then, we landed and the border control officer asked my father “are you travelling with your son?”

This has happened before, when I’m not trying particularly hard to pass. It happened travelling to England over the summer with the woman sitting next to us my mom was talking to. It’s happened at Trader Joe’s (when I wasn’t even wearing a hoodie).

This made me wonder, what makes a boy a boy (from an observer’s perspective)? Apparently there’s something that makes me come across as a guy no matter what. Your thoughts?

Gabi just told me that I haven’t updated in a while. I’m sitting at Starbucks in Concord center, writing this on a napkin in pretentiously loopy scrawl. The sun is causing an optical illusion against the window. You know the kind where white spots appear in the corners of a grid? It’s doing that. John Barrowman is singing some shitty love song with the name I can’t remember in my ear and I’m sipping a $3 cup of tea. In other words, life is exceedingly dull.

As I’m now finding out, the theatre has internet. In case you hadn’t figured, it’s now tomorrow afternoon in relation to this post. I’ve been hanging out at the theatre the past couple of days. Yesterday we worked on Jacob’s ladder, but today I’m being lazy and downloading Hamlet. And following the Proposition 8 trial on liveblog (http://prop8trialtracker.com/). My biggest concern is because the stay on cameras in the courtroom was sought by the right wing supporters of Prop 8, I am getting only reports with a strong liberal bias. I’d really prefer to be seeing what’s actually happening.

So, I’ll go through things that have happened to me recently:

25 October, The AFI Show – This is up there among my best concert experiences ever. I got there at noon and waited. And waited. And waited. I was about 20th in line. Ma got the flu, so she couldn’t go. I ended up giving her ticket to Renae, who is epicly awesome. About 2 hours before doors, Mary who sent me the black Crash Love said “hi” to me. However, I’m much less gregarious in person than I am online, so that was about all we said to each other until we got into the House of Blues. I spent a good chunk of time waiting with James and Asa. All hail the DF for holding my place in line for me while I was off associating with the commoners. The show was fantastic. Renae, Mary, and I ended up right on the barricade, Hunter’s side. Hunter is hardcore. There’s really no other way to say it. I died when they played The Despair Factor. Fucking awesome. And, I finally got to hear The Interview live. I remember posting in Ask AFI back in 2006, begging for them to play it. The only way to describe the entire crowd singing (yes, singing. Not screaming or shouting) the end of that song is “magical.” I have to say, though, I love Hunter and Jade and Adam dearly, but I couldn’t stop myself from following Davey around. The man has stage presence that I couldn’t appreciate back on the Decemberunderground tour when I couldn’t actually see any of them much of the time.

After the show, I waited around. Talked to Adam. He’s possibly the nicest person I’ve ever met. I walked up to him and was just like “uh…” and he smiled and said hello and offered a hug. We ended up shaking hands and had a short conversation about stupidity on the Board. Then Hunter came out. I waited for ages to get to him, and there was still a crowd of people waiting so all I said was “great show”. Davey came out last, and ended up hanging out on the steps of the bus. I was second to last in line to meet him, and he wasn’t giving out hugs (sad. He’s one of the few random people I’ve never met that I would like to hug). I told him about my experience nearly going off the road listening to End Transmission. At which point he laughed and said “No, don’t do that! I don’t want you to do that.” Adam, Hunter, and Davey signed Days of the Phoenix EP for me. Jade was nowhere to be found. Smith signed my ticket, but it smudged. So I went back to him saying “SMITH, THERE’S BEEN A CRISIS” and he signed it again in Sharpie. And then proceeded “save me” from being hit by a car. I had to explain to him that we Bostonians don’t stop for cars (they stop for us).

29 October, My First Acceptance – On the morning of the 30th, I was frantically working on my MIT application. I hadn’t actually started writing the essays until that Wednesday. Trying to procrastinate, I checked my email. There, in my inbox, was a note from UCAS saying that my application status had changed and to please go check. I logged in, thinking it was some technicality of clarification. Instead, I found a letter of unconditional acceptance to the University of Edinburgh for a Masters in Astrophysics. So in theory I could slack off for the rest of the year and still go to a world class program next year. It took a lot of pressure off, but I got my MIT and Caltech applications in anyway.

29-30 October, Carving My Zukins – Instead of working on applications, I ended up carving pumpkins for the Zu Boutique contest. I think Zu is as pretentious and hideously ugly as the next person, but I never pass up a chance to win free stuff. Especially when the free stuff is “fabulous prizes”. So I carved two pumpkins. One as a joke (with the Glitterboy logo), named “Trick” and one that took 3 hours to complete (with a combination of the Cat People shirt and the cover of All Hallows EP) titled “Treat”. #Twitterfail is preventing them from judging yet, though. Boo.

Earlier Last Week – my Nitro box set came in the mail. Best waste of $220 ever. It’s gorgeous and grey and /920. Yes, I’m becoming a rare vinyl collecting nerd. Eric approves. I’ve been listening to it non-stop since.

This Past Thursday – I received my second acceptance letter from Royal Holloway, University of London for an undergraduate degree in physics.

I feel like I’m probably forgetting something here. I’ll update again when I remember. Now let’s see if I can scrape together the cash to attend NEFanX and meet Gareth David Lloyd…