I came home earlier today than I normally do, around 4:30. See, normally Friday's I try to do something at least somewhat social to hold me over for the weekends, but today I just feel kinda tired of people. Normally the solitude kills me, but in this case I'm feeling just a little happy - happy to be alive and some bullshit like that.

See, friends of late have been concerned about one thing - Prom. Even I cant resist asking the question, "Who are you going with?", which always leads to a big period filled with silence and coaxing but never really gets me anywhere. This meaningless banter has really gotten to me, and it seems as if there's no escape from endlessly telling people that I wish there was a girl I wanted to ask, so maybe that's why I feel better just getting away from everybody for awhile.

Unfortunately, I was supposed to pitch in throwing a surprise party for a close friend today. I honestly tried to be there, but somehow last night when I was told of the time and place, I misheard the place and ended up about 30 miles from where I was supposed to be. At the point where I figured out my error, I just gave up on the whole social thing for the weekend. I'll try again next week.

Yeah, sorry about that Jon.

Recollections today will be integrated into the entry, rather than being a section in itself. You see, there's this annoying habit I have with any music that has anything that resembles a beat: I tap my shoe to it. I do this everywhere: in my car I tap my foot on my dead pedal, in the crowded troy high cafeteria I step all over other people's shoes in desperate attempts to tap my feet, I even did it during homecoming and winter formal while I was dancing, which undoubtedly made me look somewhat foolish.

Sometimes I notice I'm doing it and I have alot of fun with it. For example, I'll be in my car listening to a rocking song and notice my foot beating on the dead petal and change feet, so I'm tapping the accellerator. I can only imagine what that looks like to people driving around me, then again I can only imagine what it looks like when you see me singing along to a song you cant even hear.

Now the question at mind here is: Where did this habit develop? After some consideration, I came across a part of my past I havnt thought about recently, my band years at Travis Ranch Middle School.

Simply put, the person who taught me to tap my foot to everything was my band teacher, Mr Topping. Mr Topping was a character. He was one of those guys you could see living at home with his mother. He would come to school some days and spend a half hour raving over his new gadgets. Specifically I can remember him spending our time talking about his new PA system which he had installed in his room, as if he wasnt loud enough allready; he also talked alot about his fancy bike. See, he didnt make enough money to buy a car, apparently, so he rode to and from school on a fancy electric bike. Now I dont know about you guys, but I think electric bikes are on the same level as Segways and those crappy Mopeds: too lazy to actually ride/walk/run, but not classy enough to hide oneself in a decent used car. Not only did this man tell us he rode this bike, though, he raved about it day after day and how he saved so much money riding it and all this bullshit and I cannot believe I put up with it.

Then there was his court. He actually named it Topping-court, and had the class been a class of law or government or something of that nature, this court would have been totally appropriate. But this was band class, and at least once a week our insane teacher would waste an hour of our time trying a random student for hitting a tympany or yelling in the bus or some other menial crime that never came out with any punishment higher than a lunch detention. Here is genuine proof that openly punishing students does not work: nobody, and I mean nobody in our band class respected Mr Topping. He couldnt even control a bunch of Middle School Bandos properly, he had to attempt to publicly humiliate them by setting up "court days" in order to subject them to anything resembling a "punishment", and he failed more times than he succeeded.

I can still remember those days when he would say "would the person who planted the stink bomb in the bus yesterday please raise their hand" and when nobody (shock) did, he would say "I'll give anybody who tells me who did it a dollar". Guess what? His bribery never worked. I swear the man got more pleasure out of attempting to control kids than teaching. I can only imagine him in a bar or something. Probably a laughable situation.



ANYHOW. I need to do some english and whatnot now. But first I'll get a healthy dose of Simpsons. Long weekend ahead, hopefully I'll have fun, because I'm guessing the coming week will be pretty stressful on me.