As a junior I am a member of the 500 something most stressed out people in school. Not only am I a junior but I am a student, along with about 2100 other kids, at one of the top ten high schools in the state and while the stress at any school can get rough, everyone knows that the pressure can be intense and the workload can be high. So in the spirit of staying sane, I have started this blog to remind my fellow knights, and myself for that matter, to stop and smell the roses, take a walk in the park or watch a funny movie; essentially want everyone to take a deep breath and smile. Inspired by the website 1000awesomethings.com, I will be posting this blog twice a week until the the end to the school year, 82 times in all, about things that are meant to make you grin. Happy moments, enjoyable memories, blissful feelings; you name it, I’ll post it. So, overall, take a minute to just relax and think happy thoughts.
Thought #8- Watching favorite childhood T.V shows
Let me just say this straight out; when I was little, about five or six, my goal in life was to be older than Arthur (yeah, I was a little off) and I really have no idea why.
I think it goes with out saying that this is one of the few childhood dreams that I have actually accomplished, seeing that I am almost seventeen years old and Arthur has been eight since 1996. My dreams of being a cowgirl, the first child president and, of course, a princess did not really work out as I had planed. It’s shocking, I know.
But that’s not the point. The point is that I really, really liked Arthur and thought he was really cool so when I was little and I watched it almost everyday.
Whether it was Arthur’s Perfect Christmas special, or the episode about Buster believing in space ships, you could count on me to plant myself in front of the T.V and give that aardvark my undivided attention for at least half an hour.
With that being said, I have had a long week of coming early to school and staying late to work for the disgusting number of commitments I have made for the month of October. On top of all of this, I have had the usual homework and studying obligations.
This is not just me complaining about how stressful my life is, because usually I can handle this amount of work without really breaking a sweat but, hey, sometimes a girl can only take so much.
So as any self-respecting, over-tired junior in high school would do, I took my first free moment, right before bed on Wednesday, to go and mindlessly surf youtube for a little while.Through a series of strange searches that ranged from music videos to Jenna Marbles I had the odd urge to digress in maturity a decade or so and watch an old cartoon.
By some stroke of luck I found a youtube channel with possibly every Arthur episode ever made. Watching those episodes really brought me back to the “good ol’ days,” if you will.
Slipping back to those easy years are a way to remind yourself that your life hasn’t been always been about making the grade, winning the game or making sure your social life is a happy one.
Sitting down and watching Arthur, Ruggrats, Cat- Dog, what have you, brings back the moments when the term GPA meant absolutely nothing, your best friends were whoever sat next to you in class and college applications weren’t stressful because they didn’t exist in our world and because a college was just a place where your parents went.
Slipping back a decade or so from time to time is nothing to be ashamed of because it was a part of who you were, a piece of yourself from days less stressed. There is a point in everyone’s life where they just want to have those slow days of play dates, juice boxes and imaginary friends where the biggest issue in your life was if your mom would let you have ice cream for dessert.
Overall the past is a nice place to visit but not to stay because the earth keeps turning and time never stops. Living in denial of what is happening now will only hurt you in the future, but that does not mean you can’t hang out with Arthur, Buster, Brain and D.W every once and a while.
