An Open Letter on Central High School

I’m sure you had your reasons for the way you handled today’s events, I just don’t understand them. I’m getting ahead of myself though.

Let’s start at the beginning

Today was the retreat for juniors in full IB. Since I am not in full IB, this was looking to be a pretty easy day. I was one of the first people to arrive to my fifth block Psych class (it’s around 11:15). Our teacher was gone and, according to the substitute, had nothing planned for class. I sat down and started talking to some friends.

Ten minutes into class, I overhear someone else say the word “gunshot”. Naturally, I’m curious and I ask what she’s talking about. She tells me that during passing period a backpack was dropped off the balcony and a loud “pop” was heard. Some people thought it was a balloon or a bag or chips but others argued it was too loud for that. Overall, we were confused. It seemed that if a gun really had gone off we would be in lock-down. Several people left class and came back reporting several officers by the main office. Something was up.

Then someone’s cell rang. He listened for a moment and then told us

"It’s my mom, she just received an alert saying a gun went off at school."

As you can imagine, this was a surprise. We had all thought that if a gun really had gone off we would be the first to know. Not long after we noticed several local news stations had reported the incident, but there was still no word to the students.

After lunch it is made painfully clear that a lot of people are still totally in the dark about what happened, so I start to tweet everything I know.






It was confirmed through several teachers that they were told not to say anything about it. A friend of mine, who teaches at another school, told me that they are legally obligated not to.
At this point I also linked to several other news reports on the subject. They all said pretty much what we had pieced together from our eye witness account. A gun went off and they had arrested someone. There wasn’t a lot of information out there but the fact is that they released it to the public before they released it to us. At the time, I was more understanding than I am now.




It was clear they wanted classes to resume as normal and they did. Or at least they resumed as normal as they can with rumors flying left and right. As one student put it:



At this point nothing new was really coming in. We couldn’t tune into the news conference and none of the websites provided any updates. Nearly two hours had passed since the gun went off and there had still been no announcement.
Finally at around 1:30, they released an official statement. It was obviously being read and we would find out only a few minutes where it was being read from.


This letter bothered me. There was no new information, I had already learned this through eye witness accounts and parent info. My dad even emailed me the message he had got after it happened.


So why did they wait two hours to let us in the loop? And if they were waiting for more information then why was anyone informed at all?
At the end of the day I was told that several people had been called down to the office an told to delete their tweets on the subject. Presumably this was too get rid of any speculation but at this point I don’t even know.

And if we ever do find out what exactly happened, it seems we’ll be the last to know.

Erika Wallace (or It's a Small Small World)

It's been a while, I will admit that. Here's a story for you all.

Two summers ago I went to an improv workshop. While I was there the instructor told me a story about the time he made a fake eHarmony account under the name Erika Wallace and basically messed with people. Fast forward a year and I get a friend request on Facebook from none other than, Erika Wallace. I don't accept but I don't refuse either, vaguely wondering if this is related at all to the story I had been told.

As it turns out, yes. I was going to that same camp that summer and the next day during break I see him talking to another teacher about something on the computer. I take a shot in the dark.

"Did you get a friend request from Erika Wallace too?"

He's surprised. "Yeah!" He answers. "Do you know who it is?" I don't. We suspect it was one of the other kids from last year and move on. Sort of...I don't forget Erika. I look at the request every single time I get on Facebook. Erika and I have a mutual friend. She went to the camp as well, so I don't think too much of it. Still I am unwilling to answer the request. It stays pending for months.

Then, today I see the number has changed. 

Two Mutual Friends

Further inspection shows the unexpected. Earlier in the year I had come across a girl on Lamar's swim team who I had wanted to befriend. I tried to be cool but instead I had just been incredibly awkward. She was nice about the whole thing. We became Facebook friends (A step up from acquaintances). I take in the new information.

It's enough. I accept the request.

Snub

I wish I had some fun story about cool happenings but I don't.

I just wanted to say that Tatiana Maslany deserved that Golden Globe on one more social networking site

You Thought I Exploded Didn't You?

Well if you did, you weren't paying attention to that Twitter widget. Or the more likely situation, you weren't reading my blog.

Yeah as it turns out there was no bomb. Just a lot of terrible bomb puns. One of which was myself remarking how I was going to die in math class, thus going out with an algerBANG.

...I probably deserved to blow up for that one...

I'd blame the lack of updates on the musical but that wouldn't be fair. Yes I have been spending a lot of time working on the musical. No that isn't the reason for my blogging absence. I'm just really bad at consistently updating things.

Here. Have this picture

teen beach movie was fantastic don't talk to me

Bomb Threats and Dinosaur Faces

I don't really want to retell the tale of my my face got covered in dinosaurs and then spread around the internet.

So let's just say it happened. And I'm kinda famous for it.

That's really all you need to know.

You see actually I'm here to complain about the bomb threat at my school.

Yeah. My school is supposed to go sky high tomorrow.

To be fair, it was written on top or a urinal and so it likely to not happen. All the same, the building was searched all weekend and Monday we can only enter through two entrances. The logical part of my brain knows it's just a kid who wants out of school. Still, a part of me has run a million different scenarios that all end with a bang.

I guess it's just one of those things. I'll let you know if I make it through Monday. Although my failure to survive might be more due to Mondays in general than bombs...

Of Clones and Stick Figures

If you haven't watched Orphan Black,

Um...Why not? It's amazing. Go! I'll wait.

...

...

...

You back? Never left? That's cool. Whatever...

Anyways a few days after I finished Orphan Black I wondered if there was any way I could get involved with the fandom. I mean with Warehouse ending I just wanted to make sure I was a part of something else. My problem was, and always had been, I really don't have much to offer. I mean I can draw, but not people. I'm capable of writing but I really don't have the time during the school year. I was about to give up when an idea came to me.

In an attempt to reach out to the Warehouse fandom, I had created a blog called poorlydrawnwereherse. It was essentially comics made up of really poorly drawn stick figures. each comic had it's own little joke that would poke fun at the characters or the show. The fandom had really liked it but Warehouse fans are few in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention most fans are shippers and I have no ships in Warehouse 13. I didn't particularly prioritize the blog and it kind of fell to the wayside.

I figured Orphan Black's larger fanbase would probably like a similar blog. I knew I could get a large following but it would take some time and a lot of comics before that would happen. My eventual goal was to be featured on the official Orphan Black tumblr. With this in mind, I gave each character a stick figure equivalent, wrote a few comics and launched poorlydrawnorphanblack.

There were a few miscalculations however.

1. Orphan Black is a larger fanbase, that is true, but I didn't quite realize HOW large. The show averaged about 400,000 viewers an episode for the first four episodes and the numbers only went up from there. (The Renew Warehouse 13 online survey averaged about 4,500 viewers)

2. Despite it's massive size, The Clone Club is rather tightly knit. Meaning, stuff travels way faster than in the Warehouse 13 fandom.

Within the first 24 hours my little blog had 5 posts and 74 followers. As my tiny queue drained more followers trickled in to tell me their thoughts.

I figured it was a success and drew a few more comics. And then on the third day of the blog's existence I got a message. Essentially is told me to go check out the Orphan Black tumblr. Here is what I found.

 

I was beyond shocked.

I had made 17 posts at this point, this reblog was WAAAAAAAY ahead of my schedule.

Not to mention this was not JUST a reblog. It was a shout-out!

Suddenly I didn't have a hundred people to keep happy. The number skyrocketed. Not to mention the positive responses

 

started coming in

 

LIKE CRAZY!

As days went by I got more requests in 24 hours than i'd seen in my entire YEAR running poorlydrawnwereherse! Here is the stats for the last month.

Tumblr couldn't handle all the new followers they should all be new.

Yeah. That graph is showing NOTES.

The followers are still coming in each day.* And the requests follow.

I had never anticipated such an amazing reaction to my idea. It's mind boggling.

I've officially deemed this my job, after school of course**, and I don't get free-time until I've worked on it. And I plan to work on it every single day. I may lose a little sleep, but for a fandom and a show this amazing?

It's worth it.


*In the hour or so it took to write this post I gained two followers
**Today was actually the first day of school. You might get a post about the first two days tomorrow.

Three Hannahs and a T-Bird

I know a lot of people named Hannah.

That's not really surprising, Hannah isn't a particularly uncommon name. Most people know a Hannah. Most Hannahs know a Hannah.

But relatively speaking, I know quite a few people named Hannah. I'm only going to talk about three though.

I'm not going to bother with last names, heck, I haven't even mentioned my name on this blog so we'll just stick with Hannah.

In elementary school I knew a girl named Hannah.

She was extremely tall for her age. I think she played basketball too. For all purposes let's call her Big Hannah.

But Big Hannah wasn't really all that great at making friends. Most people didn't really hang out with her that much. At the moment, I can't remember why. But odds are she was annoying.

I'm not saying Big Hannah and I were best friends. We weren't even friends. I was nice to her when she talked to me, and she was...herself. When I left my regular school system to go to a special 5th grade, ended up changing my educational track for good.

I haven't seen her since.

I saw Hannah O yesterday. I saw her for the first time in months the day before that.

Hannah O is a volunteer at WOW with me. She also went to that special fifth grade I talked about, but she went the year after I did. Being from the first crop of volunteers is hard, most of the friends you made at the start are gone. Not to mention everyone is younger than you.

Thankfully there are always some good kids. I met Hannah O during a summer when I had a lot of freetime. We started an easy friendship and always managed to balance a good amount of work and fun. One day during a camp we made up a ridiculous dance routine for the kids. They didn't appreciate as much as we did, but it was still fun.

At one point her iPhone pass code was SWAG. I have yet to see if this is still the case.

Anyways, I got busy. Between swimming and plays I didn't have much time to volunteer during the school year. I forgot about Hannah O.

Monday I walked back into the animal room. I wasn't particularly excited about work, I had done a few programs last week and had found no one to really talk to.

Now, I should say no one was all that excited to see me either. I got a few "I haven't seen you in awhile"s and "Nice to  see you" comments. But I mean nobody was thrilled. Which is reasonable, since most were from the forth or fifth crop and didn't know me anyways.

But when I walked back into the animal room Monday, Hannah O was more than happy to see me.

And I was more than happy to see her. We hung around all that day, as well as the next.

I don't know if I'll be working much this school year, but if I am, I hope it's with Hannah O.

If there is one person I am going to be glad to see come school next week it's Hannah. (This Hannah doesn't need nicknames because she's Hannah. That's all there is to it)

I'll be glad to see a lot of people. But Hannah is going to be the person I resist tackling on the first day back.

Hannah and I met in drama.

You know how every time you enter a new group there is always one or two people you want to get to know? Hannah was that person. Lucky for me it was mutual. Pretty soon Hannah, Sasha*, and I became convinced we were actually the same person. At semester we all moved up to drama two together. We rocked the IMPROV club. We were unstoppable. Well until puppets anyways but I won't go there.

Hannah is one of the few people in this world I am capable of texting back in a timely matter. Hannah might even say I am a little too capable. (One time I walked away from Hannah and started texting as I walked away.)

Hannah may or may not be developing a biological need for wintergreen mints. This may or may not be my fault. She might also be in constant need of a back scratch. This is probably my fault.

One time Hannah fell asleep on me. Despite this she will not let me sleep on her, I figure it's gonna happen anyways.

Hannah also ties my shoes for me which is nice because I like making people tie my shoes.

I like Hannah.

In fact the more I think about things to say about Hannah the more I realize I will probably accidentally tackle hug her.

There you have it. The Hannah I never knew, The Hannah I almost forgot, and The Hannah I can't wait to see again.

*You guys know Sasha. I'm positive I've mentioned her a few times...