The library at my university (which I am in a love-hate relationship with: I love to read [duh], it's a huge library, but doing homework here is terrible) is hosting a banned books week event, also covering music and film.
The reason I have such a love for reading is based on a few things:
1.) It broadens the mind. Reading a book could change someone's entire outlook on something, it can make them more accepting of others, give them new ideas, etc.
2.) It's an escape. When life is getting me down, I like to sit down with a good fantasy book because a.) I realize I'm not being hunted by the most terrifying Dark wizard of all time or trying going on a terribly horrendous journey to destroy something that will give power to someone who wants to ruin the world I live in and b.) I could have it worse and if Harry and Frodo can deal with their problems, well so can I.
3.) It expands your vocabulary. Learning new words is something I love.
So, I was looking over the banned books list we have here in the library and I saw a goof PILE of books I had read. Thank you, Mum, for not being that crazy, close-minded, overly bearing, psycho-mama who demands a book be removed from a library because it has a sexual reference a fourth grader is NOT going to understand or says "damn" twice and for letting me read almost anything I wanted.
Srsly. Only time I wasn't allowed to read something was like, a graphic romance novel when I was twelve, but then I read it when I was about 15.
Anyway, like I mentioned in my first BBW post, I've read a goof portion of banned books.
Obviously all the Harry Potter books. Goosebumps-I was scared by those ONCE, ever, and I was seven aka NOT the target audience. The Color Purple-i KNOW why that was banned. Julie of the Wolves-another WHAT?!! to me. Firstly, I love this book. I've loved it since the second grade. It was published in 1972 and has been challenged in THIS century, where we are branching out and becoming more accepting. I don't get that. The challengers claim the book should be banned because of a supposed "rape" scene. What actually happens is Julie aka Miyax, had an arranged marriage with a boy who was mentally challenged. The boy was being teased for not "mating with his wife". So he catches her alone once (she was usually working with/for his mother) and kisses her. Srsly. The other reason is the issue of divorce. Because Miyax walked out on the boy she is essentially divorced. First of all, THEY ARE THIRTEEN. No challenges made to that. Because it happened in biblical times it's okay, right? *facepalm* It's okay for her to be married at thirteen, just not for her to walk out on a toxic life (her mother-in-law was abusive and husband potentially dangerous)?
Sometimes I don't understand people. Or human nature for that matter.
Anyway, I checked out the book again to see if I could try to understand WHY. I got a few pages in and remembered some of the key points.
Now that I'm done ranting, I'll explain why I didn't post yesterday and why there are two posts for today.
I need to go back a few years. Two, to be almost exact.
I was a Junior is high school, livin' it up, playing volleyball, everything was great.
I stayed at TE's house one night. It was a Thursday night. I remember that.
You'd be surprised how much sticks in your head sometimes, even at the weirdest times.
I get a phone call close to eight in the morning. It's Mum and I can tell from her tone that somethings up. She told me to get home and I might want to bring TE with me, she didn't want to go if we were getting in trouble.
So i run home (which is seriously half a block from TE's place) and Mum meets me on the lawn. She's holding both phones and I can see she's been trying not to cry. Very calmly, she tells me there's been a wreck. First things that run through my mind are SD, Bandito, someone really close. Then she tells me it was Holly and she had her baby cousin in the car. Holly was thrown from the vehicle, but the baby was thankfully strapped in.
Holly was one of the girls on the volleyball team and a year above me in school. I'd known her since we moved there-she was an active person, her parents own the grocery store there, everybody knew her. We weren't particularly close, but we were friends I'd say. R would always flirt with her when we went into the store.
When the Durango flipped, whoever stopped to help went to her and she told them to get the baby first. Holly loved kids and wanted to be a teacher. She always had a baby cousin or her niece or a friend's child hanging around her. When they got back to her she was gone.
I just sat in the grass and cried. I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I couldn't imagine things without the vibrance that was Miss Holly. When I finally got inside, I called TE. She couldn't say anything either. Then the texts come in, and phone won't stop ringing and everything is chaos.
You have to understand that Ags is a very small town. It's so close knit and together. Everyone seriously does know everybody. It shook the whole town.
It was kind of traumatizing to some of us. To realize that things could end in an instant, just like that.
The baby was alright, other that two broken legs. She's going on four now and is a bright, wonderful little thing.
Exactly a year later, about a mile down the highway, Calvin's cousin Jon passed the same way. I didn't know him very well, but it was still terrifying.
So, the date is coming up again and I'm getting paranoid.
For one, TE has a habit of driving a little crazy. You can reprimand her all you like, that's how she rebels.
So, basically, I'm terrified.
Yesterday, she calls me during her break at work. She's in the car and has it on speaker. Talk for not thirty seconds when I hear 'OH SHIT!" a weird noise and nothing.
I'm yelling into the phone at this point, having a heart attack in the computer lab.
Then I heard the door ajar alarm and calmed down by a tiny fraction.
My heart rate starts to return to normal when she picks up the phone and says, "F*&k dude, I just got in an accident. I'll call you back." I yell at her to see if she's okay but she had hung up.
Knowing she won't answer if I call her back, I go through the rest of the day a tad on edge (more like brink of insanity). Then she called me last night and I stopped having fits.
She was perfectly fine other than shaken up and pissed off.
But it still scared me worse than I had ever been scared before because she is my sister and just the thought of her being gone terrifies me.
I should mention that I love Calvin to pieces. I called him after she went to bed and he listened and comforted me and made me feel better. But sometimes, after all that being pent up, you need a good cry, so I did and I felt a bit better.
TE called in the middle of me writing my post yesterday so I got distracted and didn't finish it.
Anyway, needed that off my chest.
Tata!
P7
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