Non-opposite Night: Back to the Future

Today is Thursday. Meaning tomorrow is Friday. Friday. Question:How much angst did I experience with every Friday growing up? Answer: too much. Why? First of all, Friday was "Spirit Day" at school, which meant that instead of uniforms, we could wear jeans and our "Spirit Shirt"! Well, my Spirit Shirt was never around, or it would be the case that there would be three of us girls, and only two spirit shirts. Sorry Megan, but I have to call seniority on this spirit shirt.

But I digress. This is not why Fridays were so stressful. As any child knows, Friday is OPPOSITE DAY! HOW EXCITING! It's unbelievable how much I simultaneously looked forward to--and dreaded--opposite day.

For those who don't know, Opposite Day (I think it deserves to be capitalized) is when you say the opposite of what you mean. for instance, "I love your haircut!" would be a great compliment to hear on any day of the year. Any day except Opposite Day, that is.

My problem with Opposite Day was not that I didn't take it seriously enough, but that I took it too seriously. WAY too seriously, some would say, although to them I would say, "what a nice haircut".

Here's the deal. it's Friday, Opposite Day, and let's say I want to have a secret meeting with my sister Christine in her room after dinner (this isn't so far-fetched, we had a secret club and thus meetings were essential). Would I say, "Christine, I DON'T want to have a secret meeting upstairs after dinner in your room"? Well that seems pretty obvious. Great. now EVERYONE knows. So how do I phrase it in an opposite-way?

well it can get complicated, to the point of "I don't want to not have a public meeting downstairs before breakfast in my room". Ha! Who's going to crack that code?! (Turns out, not Christine, which defeated the purpose).

Novice mistake.

I always got too hung up on what constitutes an opposite...e.g. dawn is the opposite to dusk , before is the opposite to after, but is before dawn really the opposite of after dusk? It seems like those are the same thing. Do two wrongs make a right? do two rights not make a wrong?

And when I would say, "Megan, don't give me your spirit shirt later", she didn't seem to respond to what I meant, being, "Megan, give me your spirit shirt now!" And then I would have to wear my uniform to school. Not cool, Megan.

To me, it seems like the point of Opposite Day would be to have the meaning of your phrase be the opposite. Maybe this would have been easier if I weren't the only one celebrating Opposite Day. I'll get my revenge some day when I'm testifying for the Supreme Court. "But your honor, it was OPPOSITE DAY! Ha!" I guess it's a good thing I still have that "in" with Sandra Day O'Connor.

With that, I say, Unhappy Monday to nobody!

When I am bored in class, I make lists. Recently I found some from last year--most still apply. All are ranked in order of my opinion.

Animals (cool)
tiger
okapi
quetzal
blue morpho
chinchilla
kangaroo
dingo
iguana

survival tools
water
matches
knife
compass
light

Countries (badass)
Brazil
Switzerland
Finland
Ireland
Australia
Chile

Dorm Themes
Prothetics (for Roth)
Lewis and Clarkin
FrosoCoHo
Sotone deaf
Paloma Prieta
Cedro Masochism

Best 5 States
California
Hawaii
Vermont
Idaho
Alaska
honorable mention: montana, Massachusetts, Oregon

Worst 5 States
Nevada
S. Dakota
Mississippi
Utah
Virginia
honorable mention: delaware, Alabama

Bad Ideas
knocking over my water onto my computer
invading Iraq
mullets
communism
NEW: clovers in the phone (4 leaf or otherwise)
almost hitting the Dalai Lama on my bike
eating a spoonful of cinnamon
icyhot up the nose

I've been luckier.

Well I am lucky to be alive, and being as I am both lucky and alive, I will address these two issues.

First. I found my first ever four-leaf clover. It wasn't as dramatic as one would expect; I looked online that a four-leaf clover occurs once in every 10,000 clovers (sidenote: the record is an 18 leaf clover!) so I figured I could find one pretty quickly if I scanned 3 clovers per second. Well, I found one, but it wasn't a four-leaf clover. it had four leaves, all right, but not in the right configuration. It was a fake PSEUDO-four-leaf clover. This is important. Thinking I had used up my 1 in 10,000, my search was a bit less enthusiastic, but soon after I found a REAL four leaf clover. In order to protect them both I put them in my military-grade phone. No safer place.

well it turns out ONE of these clovers is unlucky, and I think it isn't hard to tell which!

Since the clovers, my phone has not been working (you would think it would be luckier!) and a bird tried to fly into my room but more importantly, I almost died. Literally. Let's just say it was a good thing I had a backup clover.

we were up in the hills and saw a newt in a little pond thing. I was opposed to picking it up because I remembered that they can secrete deadly poisons, but we picked it up anyway. I even reached into my candy bag after touching the newt!

Well as it turns out these newts secrete a poison 100 times more deadly than cyanide! How UNLUCKY! (thanks, fake clover). If it had wanted to, the amount on the head of a pin kills an adult, so this newt had our number for sure. LUCKILY, it didn't kill us (thanks, real clover).

I think I might try to find another real clover to tip the balance in my favor.

I'll end with an excerpt from my brother's story titled: 2042. it's set post WW3.

"Somehow, somebody in my family had survived the radiation, and it carried over to their children. My mother was nine feet even! My clothes I had had since I was twelve; and since then I had grown three feet. One bad thing about the defects of radiation (like my height), was that my left pupil dilated extremely slowly, so I couldn’t go out in the sun too fast. "