Goodnight?

Looking back on my first semester in college, I can see that a lot has happened and a lot has changed. Living in a new state as well as living with a different person was a big change for me. Luckily, my roommate was from a neighboring town from back home, so we had similar friends and similar lifestyles. We both loved going to the beach during the day and partying at night, so I thought we would be a perfect match. While we settled in each night that first week of school, we would  stay up for hours asking each other questions and telling each other stories. However, one night, my roommate was a little quieter than usual, as if he he had something to say but didn't know how to say it. Finally, I asked him what he was thinking, and he blurted out, "Why don't you ever say goodnight to me?" 

I was completely caught off guard by his question and at first I started to laugh a little bit. I could tell by his silence that he didn't find the question funny at all, so I bit my lip and held in my remaining chuckles. Clearly this guy liked someone to say goodnight to him, so every night since then I've tried to remember to tell him goodnight.

Five Fingered Freaks

A few weeks ago, one of my fingers got stuck in a taxi cab door and consequently broke. I was pissed and in pain, but I shrugged it off and walked into the House of Blues to watch the Pepper concert anyway. While I love the band's music, my mind kept on straying from the concert and a question kept repeating itself inside my head: Why do we have five fingers on each hand? I understand the reasoning behind having two hands; in case one is occupied you still have a vacant one, just like in an airplane. But five fingers? Having that many fingers seems excessive.

Remember the weekday morning cartoon "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?". Well those crime-fighting ninjas only had three fingers on each hand, yet they still kicked butt. Likewise, people in cartoons only have four fingers, yet they can still play sports, as illustrated (pun intended) in Rocketpower, and play cards, as shown in Yu-GI-OH!, just like normal humans. So why do we humans have five?

Maybe long ago people kept losing their fingers to things such as animals, frostbite, and just plain stupidity (I really wonder how many fingers were lost in the quest for harnessing fire), so maybe Evolution decided that five was the perfect amount of fingers for humans. In any case, someone should research this fascinating topic. Of course I would, but typing and looking things up on the internet is just too much work for someone with a broken finger.

Luck: It's All in Your Head

When I was a younger, I would frequently lose in games of luck, such as rock-paper-scissors or heads or tails. So from a young age I grew up thinking that I was just plain unlucky. To make matters worse, the more I thought about how unlucky I was, the more unlucky I became. Although I was never a pessimistic person, I always thought that I had to work harder than my lucky friends because everything always seemed to somehow work out for them. This mindset stayed with me all the way until eighth grade.

In eighth grade, everything seemed to work out perfectly. It was my last year of middle school and I was now one of the big men on campus. That year, school sat shotgun while my social life sat in the driver's seat. I was always a confident kid, but that year my confidence became borderline cockiness because everything always seemed to turn out right. for example, if I would forget to study for a Monday morning test, by some stroke of luck that test would somehow get pushed to Tuesday. Likewise, that year I was captain of the volleyball team, and I would almost always win the coin toss or rock-paper-scissors for first serve. While those lucky situations seemed insignificant, winning $1000 dollars in an art contest that I did not even know I was entered in proved in my mind that I was now a lucky person.

My lucky streak continued throughout high school all the way until I had the misfortune of needing braces for a few months senior year because of a surfing accident. All of a sudden, it seemed like my luck had vanished. When my girlfriend saw me with braces, she dumped me on the spot. Also, school seemed especially hard that year and I was constantly sick. Interestingly enough, my luck reappeared the day I got my braces off. That girlfriend that had dumped me three months before somehow knew my braces were off and said she wanted to hang out again. Additionally, school seemed easier all of a sudden, and I was no longer sick.

Looking back, I realized that my luckiness directly correlated with my overall happiness and state of mind. In middle school I had always been a tense and overwhelmed overachiever (I went to a tough private school and struggled to be at the top of my class), but once I had mellowed out and put everything in perspective in eighth grade my luck increased. Likewise, my stressed-out senior year left me feeling unlucky. From past experience, I've discovered that luck depends on one's mindset, meaning that someone can create their own luck if they have an overall positive attitude.

Hateboards

As you may be aware, someone stole my skateboard a few weeks ago, and I was quite distraught over the whole matter. After several agonizing days of having to walk everywhere around the campus, I finally gave in and decided to buy a new skateboard online. With the freedom to buy whatever kind of skateboard I wanted, I finally decide on an 80's throwback Vision board, complete with a cheetah print deck. Finally, after another week of walking to my classes, my new skate arrived. 

Tearing the packaging to pieces, I wrestled my new skate out its box. I slowly turned the board over in my hands and admired its breathtaking beauty, especially the cheetah print on the bottom (I'm a sucker for animal prints). Finally, I decided it was time to ride, so I took my skate out for a cruise around the campus. With the wind in my hair and my surroundings flying by, I felt renewed and ready to enjoy life again. So that night I decided to go skate the parking garage with my friends to break the board in. 

We rode the elevator to the top of the parking garage; each of us had our iPods turned to max volume while we listened to rap and hard rock music to pump us up. When the elevator doors finally flew open, we all piled out and raced down the parking garage as fast as we could. Even with our headphones in, we could all hear the screeching of our wheels as we carved down each of the levels of the garage. However, disaster stroke as we approached the second level. I had been powersliding down most of the previous 3 floors, (powersliding is performing a controlled skid or slide) so I thought I would switch things up and manual (a wheelie on a skateboard) down the whole second level. As I raced down the 2nd level balancing on only my back two wheels, some of my friends started shouting, "Jeff! Lookout!" I guess my front trucks (the metal structure that attaches the wheels to the board) had loosened up from all the powerslides and had actually fallen off while I was manualling. As a result, when I decided to put my front wheels back down on the ground, the wheels were not there so the board immediately stopped, sending me flying over the front of the board and further down the parking garage. Luckily, I avoided serious injury because I had rolled and the barrier wall at the bottom of the second floor had stopped me. However, my whole right side of my body was covered in abrasions. Because of all my bad luck with skateboards, I have begun to think that skateboards hate me.

But Stealing Someone's Skateboard Is

(Note: This story takes place in and around Southern Methodist University.) 

Wednesday, 8:00 pm. I skate over to Boaz Hall (a dorm at Southern Methodist University) and nonchalantly leave my board at the entrance to the building. I think to myself, "Hey Jeff, nobody's gonna steal your skate here for two reasons: One, most of the guys here do not know how to skate and two, everyone here at SMU can easily afford one." However, just to be safe, I hide my skateboard in some nearby hedge, so my skate is completely invisible to the passerby. I then proceed to have a great carefree night at some place off campus; in fact, I do not think about my skateboard once the whole night. 

Thursday, 7:00 am. I have a rude awakening. Right when I wake up I saunter over to Boaz Hall to retrieve my skate from the place I hid it the night before, only to find that it has vanished. I am bummed to say the least, but I cling to the hope that maybe one of my friends has grabbed it and taken it to his or her dorm room. 1:oo pm. After numerous useless calls to my Boaz friends about my missing skateboard, the first pang of desperation hits me like an arrow through the heart. Though I am never one to accuse, I start thinking that maybe someone really has stolen my skateboard. I start to get a bitter taste in my mouth at the thought of anyone going through with such a heinous act. In spite of my negative thoughts, I re-center myself, take a sip of water to wash that bitter taste away, and decide to trek to both Virginia Hall and McElvaney Hall to check the Lost and Founds. "Perhaps some good Sumaritan has turned in skateboard," I naively hope to myself. After I check both Lost and Founds, my naivety shatters. It turns out there are no good Sumaritans in this world today, just a bunch of criminals. What the hell.