Sunday Corset

Today was relatively okay, as was my week so far.

Last period, however, wasn't. It was English class, and we were discussing Chapter 12 of To Kill a Mockingbird. This chapter is almost completely revolving around Calpurnia bringing Jem and Scout to her church. Well, this sparked some kind of..."thing" (I don't know) in some people in my class. Resentment, possibly? Well anyway, they started consistently giving me crap for going to church. They told me that no one wanted me there, and to just "go to church." "I'm sorry, but I really don't care about anything you have to say. You go to church." "Your Jesus doesn't exist." Things like this were thrown at me from essentially two boys in our class, but others chimed in every once in a while.

We'd talk about how the church Calpurnia went to didn't have hymnals, and the boys would come up with some [weak] insult about that for me. Another part in the story refers to Shadrach [Meshach, and Abednego], and people asked what that was. I knew what it was, so I just said that they didn't want to bow down to an idol and instead were thrown into a furnace, but were saved. The response? "An idol, Anna, like your God?" "Oh, yeah, that's likely." "I saw a History Channel show about how the Bible was a bunch of bullcrap."

We had to make up titles for the chapters we were assigned to read over the weekend, and then voted as a class to see which one was the best. Mine, if I do say so myself, were quite clever. One of my friends offered to write it for me so as to avoid the boys yelling out, "Anna, is that yours? If it is, I'm not voting for it." "It's not that we hate the title, it's that we hate the author."

I realize that people being like this is inevitable; there will always be those who can't keep those kinds of things to themselves. I realize that some people may never get to the point (or these boys may have not reached it yet) where they can respect other peoples' religion(s), whether or not it is what they believe, too.

It is not so much the issue of them saying these things that I'm thinking so much about, it's about how I was reacting. I didn't say anything mean to the boys as a comeback as far as I know. To the History Channel comment I said, "Wow. That's...interesting." Other times I'd just ignore them. But I was very surprised (unpleasantly) how I was feeling inside. One of these boys either has Tourette's or just twitches all the time. I thought inside my head, "Maybe you should go to church, bud. God might cure your Tourette's or something." Ugh. That's atrocious. How could I think that? I mean, yes. I was angry. But I did not feel like that was an excuse to think what I did. That's not very Christ-like, now is it?

I haven't told anyone else about this issue. I think that had I told one of my friends, they would have told me, "Oh, Anna. Forget about it. You know the boys in our grade are immature." Oh, yes. I know that. Believe me. And maybe that's true. Maybe I should just forget about it. But no matter how weak these boys' insults, they were going to affect me. I don't care if that makes me "weak." It's frustrating. I have never been these (or honestly, many in my grade) boys' favorite, but still. How immature, inconsiderate, and disrespectful can you get?

So, any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for reading. Hope your Tuesday went well and your Wednesday does, too.


P.S. To those of you who are reading this as an "outsider" (without a Blogger account), and would like to comment, I allow anonymous comments. Go ahead and tell me what you think! (:

Zero.

Nothing. Zilch.
No new anything here.

Tyler and Nikko attended school for the first time together to most of their classes today. That's basically it.

Sorry. Now that swimming is over, I'm back to having zero life. ;_;
Hope things are going well.

Soooper excited.

So, life is pretty awesome right now.

:Tyler has been released from the hospital and has attended two basketball games as well as the absolutely HUMONGOUS wrestling tournament at BHS this weekend. He will be at school on Monday morning. Yes, Monday morning! It is so exciting for him to be coming to school again; I don't think they expected him back-they cleaned out their lockers and everything. Nikko is still in the hospital, but will hopefully be released in the next week.

:This weekend was conference for swimming. I was swimming the 200 and the 500 free, and I was very nervous. I shaved off 7 seconds on my 200, but added 6 on my 500 in the preliminaries. The top 18 in every event go to finals, and I was seated 19th before I swam the 200, and moved up to 14th! Adding 6 seconds, however, brought me from 13th to 16th. This did mean, though, that I would be swimming in finals in both events, which is a huge accomplishment, considering the even some of our seniors haven't been to finals.
Finals started at 1:30pm (warmups at 11:45am) this afternoon. I slept 11 hours before, and I was pumped for my 200 free. I was not excited about my 500 free, though, because I had done so badly the day before. But, I ended up dropping 5 more seconds off of my 200 free, and now I am but 3 seconds away from going to state! That means that next year, it is almost guaranteed that I go to the state meet. Woot woot! My 500 was, I can gladly say, just as amazing. It didn't started out so well, though. I got up on the blocks and the announcer said "Take your marks." Right then I realized I didn't have my goggles on, and I checked my forehead for them. They weren't there either, so I whipped around to everyone who was standing behind me. Everyone started flailing, getting the officials to stop (the race hadn't started yet). Lynzi threw my goggles to me, and I was okay. I got back up on the blocks and jumped in. I raced a fabulous race, beating everyone in my heat by at least 5 seconds. I got a 6:04.08, which is 9 seconds off my best time and 17 off the time I did the day before. It felt awesome.
So, I'm really happy about everything right now, but I'm also very glad my season is over; it was getting a little old. (:

Thanks for reading! Have good weeks!

Blah.

Sooo...
Nothing really too new here in the past week. I was sick on Friday with a huge swollen throat, but I was better by church on Sunday. I had/have a huge amount of work I need to make up for that day, but I'm almost done.

Nikko and Tyler and doing better and better. They are in a room together now, and it is possible that Tyler may show up to watch the wrestling tournament here at the school on Friday or Saturday. That's very exciting, and will probably be very emotional, should he come. In about a week, I've heard, the boys will go into rehab. I'm not sure how long that will take, but it's exciting that they're well on their way to recovery.
I know nothing about the girl who hit them, except that she's back at school. I'm not 100% sure if she's attending all of her classes yet, but I see her singing and dancing in show choir often, as well as [smiling] with her friends. Whether or not charges will be pressed has yet to be released.

I had a meeting with the GT coordinator, Mr. Kennedy, yesterday, about preparing for college. Hm. That seems very far off, but it was kind of exciting to think that just in a couple of years, we'll be in college. (:

Well, a class came to the IMC and I'm being kicked off.
Have a good rest of your week(s)!