On experiences and stereotyping

Something I find really interesting is that this week, very little has happened to me personally.  I've watched a lot of YouTube videos, moved to the dorm I'll stay in over the summer, played dumb flash games on the Internet, applied for a few jobs.

Outside the walls of my dorm room, however, bigger things have happened.  The shootings in California happened last week, for instance; this has sparked a lot of controversy and discussion that I'm sure you can find online if you look up 'Elliot Rodger.' You can probably find his manifesto somewhere online as well. I've only read a few pages; I may read a bit more, but I think I'm getting the gist of it - he hates women and he needs to stop writing with disagreeing verbs. (For the record, I'm reading a copy of it here.)

It's an interesting read, I'll give him that, but I think part of Rodger's issues come from lack of apology. He stumbled into a girl at summer camp and she pushed him and swore at him; she hung out with the popular kids and didn't apologize later. Rodger didn't say he was mad because she didn't apologize - he was mad because a popular guy he had hung out with was now fraternizing with this mean girl.

I'm no expert in the field, so I'll leave the psychoanalysis to any psychology major willing to take it up. It's probably a fascinating topic.

I think that it's important to remember, though, that a few negative instances should not define one's views on an entire gender. For example, my girl scout troop took a trip to New York City near the end of eighth grade. We did a bunch of tourist-y things, including seeing a Broadway show. We took the metro back; since it was late, there was at least one person who was visibly not sober. To make a long story short, every female on our end of the car - even the six fourteen-year-olds - was offered a bouquet of flowers by a man who was clearly high.
The important thing to remember is that this is an isolated incident. That remains the only time I have been offered anything by someone hyped up on drugs; that is not the only time I have been offered flowers. Should I be wary of every man bearing flowers as a possible drug addict? Should I avoid going on the New York Subway? Should I be bolder about going on the New York Subway at night? After all, the worst that's ever happened to me is that an inebriated individual tried to relieve himself of a bouquet. They seemed to be nice flowers.

Experience is relative.

On weddings and stuff

Firstly: I know I've changed the formatting a little. I've been procrastinating a bit on homework by trying to figure out how to do a little bit of HTML - then I realized that HTML is not necessarily something one can just do, and have that just be the end of it.

But HTML code is not what I'm trying to talk about today. I'm here to talk about WEDDINGS! (and by WEDDINGS, I mean the wedding I went to this weekend). It was my cousin getting married, and it was something that has been a long time coming. Most people, after all, can't say they married the person they had a crush on in fourth grade. Most poeple can't say that people argue about who REALLY got them together - and who can say, really, because they met in the fourth grade - thirteen years ago. One account is that the older sisters were the masterminds, because they were good friends and, in their high school logic, wanted a way to become SISTERS FOREVER. The best way they could think of to do it was to make their younger siblings get married - but they should "wait until they're in high school, because then it'll last." It was another person who actually confirmed that each of them liked the other. Personally, I think it was whoever asked the groom to dog-sit when he was in middle school - because nothing is more casually romantic than saying, "hey, do you wanna feed my neighbor's dog with me sometime?"

The wedding itself was nice. The ceremony barely lasted 30 minutes, which was a pretty good amount of time. At the reception, there was a candy bar - not as in 'one singular Hershey bar,' but as in 'a table full of candy.' And it was great. Later in the reception, the flower toss resulted in the flowers landing near my feet. I picked them up, and then passed them off to the five-year-old in the crowd. Why? She wanted them, and she was far less likely to shove them into a suitcase twelve hours later and leave them to die, resulting in nothing but sad memories, laundry that no longer needs to smell good, and a lot of leaves and dried pollen in her clothing.
Also, had I kept them, there might be some more pressure on me for the next family wedding. See, the last wedding I went to was that of the bride's older sister. I caught the bouquet then, too. If word got around that I got the flowers at this wedding, then I would be expected to get them at the wedding of the bride's younger sister as well. I don't want that sort of pressure. I also don't want to be expected to get married before I've traveled the world at least twice.