1200 words

It's late on a Tuesday afternoon, I'm stepping up to a thin white line spray painted into the grass. For the past two weeks I've been running more than I ever have in my entire life. I've quickly been forced into the closest thing I could call "in shape" that I've ever been in. My nine teammates surround me giving me tips about what to do when the gun goes off. Being the only freshman, I'm the only one who is finding everything around me new.

When I came into the first day of practice, I didn't know what I was getting into. As a middle school football player and unmotivated recreational runner, I had never run more than five miles, slowly. I first met a sophomore named Bo Waggoner, who would go to state the next 3 years and become the top runner at Duke University. He was a very down to earth guy and seemed happy to know that at least there would be one new person on the team this year. Eventually the rest of the team showed up; Five seniors, a junior, and three sophomores. Coach Dugai finally arrived and talked for a short time about the season ahead. Afterwards, we did a short jog to the track and warmed up.

Our first run would be four and a half miles. The first day loop was what it was called, due to the fact that it had almost always been Dugai's first workout for his team. We started right outside the football stadium and started at what would eventually become an easy pace for the run. For my first year, though, I was always running at almost my fastest pace, which was still pretty slow in comparison to the rest of the team.

The first day loop is basically a square, it starts off going to a main street and turns left at every main street until your back where you started. When I started off this run, the route had been explained to me but I still wasn't overly sure what it was. The team pulled very far ahead of me by the time I had gotten down the first street. By the time I got to the third street, I was very tired and couldn't quite remember what the route was. I ended up turning into the Toledo recreation center, which I knew as the route for the Maumee 5K and tried to figure out if the team had gone this way.

After somewhat wandering around I decided just to go back to the high school through the 5K route. As I came down the last street, the team had been there for a good ten minutes waiting for me to come in. Feeling very disappointed with how bad of shape I was in I was already contemplating quitting the team and coming back next year. As I ran towards the end of the loop the team was lined up next to the end and started clapping me in. It made me feel accepted by a team for the first time and I quickly changed my mind about quitting and finished the run.

For the next two weeks we practiced hard and the team was always helping me along the way. When I played football in middle school, I was horrible and most of the team let me know on a daily basis. When I started cross country though, the team knew I wasn't fast, but they were always trying to help me and encouraging me along the way.

On the second Thursday of practice, we ran a workout known as 800s. They are basically a speed workout made to make you faster but not without a good amount of pain first. The idea is to run at race pace around the track for two laps. Then, after a couple minutes of a break you do it again and try to match that time. It's not so much about having the fastest time on one of your 800s, but about keeping a consistent time.

Realizing how hard every other workout hard been so far, and how much the team had warned me about them, I knew this was going to be a very difficult run. We all lined up on the track, we were going to do four today, we were told. Coach Dugai gets us set and says go as he starts his watch. I raced around the track twice coming in at a time of around 4:30. After getting a drink we did another, followed by another. The next two I came in around the 4:40s. When the last one came up I prepared to give it one last go. After I came around the first time two of the runners were already done and one of them, Alex Washburn, joined me and started pushing my pace. He ran slightly in front of me constantly pushing and saying things like " Come on Phil," or "Push it, just stay ahead of me." I started running with everything I had to stay in front of him and with the rest of the team cheering me on I finished the two laps in a time of 4:16.

During every long, slow run, the team would run at my pace and help me get better by giving me advice. Finally the day of the first race came.

Our home course was an old fort from the war of 1812 named Fort Meigs. The course ran around the outside of the fort so there were a number of hills making the course very difficult. As we stood at the line waiting for the gun to go off, I was filled with nerves. I had no idea how to strategize my race, what the course was like, or how I was going to do.

This race was always the first of the year and is known as the Maumee Lid Lifter. Our team would invite three or four schools to run but only two would normally show up since they were small schools.

Being a home race, Coach Dugai was the starter. He gave the simple rules that I would hear dozens of times over the next four years. The white lines mark the course, 2 laps around the course and finish by the picnic tables. Then, "I'm going to put the gun and my other hand up, I'll say runners set. You step to the line. Then when everyone is still, I'll fire the starting gun and drop both arms. Good luck."

When he finishes his speech, we are all quiet waiting for the first instructions. "Runners set!" We step to the line. BANG! The gun fires and twenty-some high school runners are sprinting to the first turn. I quickly fall into the back of the pack and let the flow of adrenaline carry me through the first half a mile. As I come around to the end of the first lap, I get ready to go up the biggest hill on the course, Agony hill. Named mainly for how long and steep it is, making it sheer agony for most runners who have to climb it during the race.

As I make my way to the top of the hill, most of the people watching the race are at that spot to cheer us all on. The cheering gives me all the motivation I need to get to the top and I cruise through the last part of the hill. The rest of the race flies by as I battle with another team's last runner. As we scale agony hill for the last time we are neck and neck. We come into the last turn where I learn that, while I had been giving all my energy over the entire race, the other runner had not and he quickly sprinted away from me to the finish line. I ended up coming in last place with a time of 29:47. To cross country standards, that's a very slow time. But to my own standards, that was the fastest I'd ever run. The team congratulated me on my first race and we gathered together to talk to the coach about the race.

He congratulated us or winning the meet and told us to get ready for the warm down. At our home races this meant a three mile run home.

We got home and the next day began preparing for our race on Saturday. Now that the season started and we were kind of in the full swing of things, training was a lot easier. Instead of doing difficult runs almost daily, we changed to having a long run on Wednesday, 800s on Thursday, and a short easy run on Friday to prepare us for our Saturday Invitationals. When Saturday finally arrived, we left the high school at around 8 A.M. to ride the bus an hour away to the Fremont Ross Invitational. An Invitational is very different from a dual/tri-meet in that instead of two or three teams, there are around twenty and the races are all broken up. There are two divisions and varsity is separated from junior varsity.

I'm going to attempt to explain the semi-complicated method of scoring for cross country, so if it's hard to understand, you're not alone. On any team the top 7 runners make up the varsity squad. Five of them score points and the last two try to beat the other teams' top 5 to displace their score. The lowest overall score is the winning team. If your finding it hard to understand, don't worry it took me about half of my freshman year to fully comprehend it as well.

RIF 2

After reading this second part of Running in the Family, I was a bit confused because Ondaatje started pulling away from stories from his family's past. Or so I thought at least. The chapters in this section all started out with something seemingly irrelevant but ended up connecting somehow to his family.

An example of this is in the first chapter of the section, Ondaatje starts off talking about a mapin his brother's room which starts off almost meaning nothing but in the last paragraph ends up connecting to the first Ondaatje to live in the area of Ceylon. The chapter "Tongue" does the same. It starts talking about this animal called the kabaragoya. It seems to mean little at first but ends up relating to a myth about it's tongue and how his grandmother believed that myth and made his uncle eat the tongue.

Overall the format of these chapters is quite different from the last section. Whereas the last section Ondaatje would simply go through each chapter directly talking about his ancestors, he now talks in present time at first. Then, he talks about something and how it relates to his ancestors and the past in general.

The other side of the section, was a collection of poems. I'm still not overly sure what they meant or really had to do with the book in general. I'm sure we'll go over it but I just couldn't figure out why they were added. A few of them have a small connection to the Ondaatjes but I'm not really sure.

I look forward to the next section because I want to see what the format is going to be like in that one.

rumbling with the courage crew

It took me awhile to think of what falls into the parameters of the last month. I finally figured something out and it could have been the blow to the head on that day that was the reason for my horrible memory.

About three weeks ago I attended a concert in my hometown of Maumee, Ohio. It wasn't a big concert by any means, it was a few local bands one of which I'm pretty good friends with and another whom I know the lead singer from.

When we got there the first band had already started playing and there were very few people there. The small crowd had been opened up though by a small group of kids who were hardcore dancing.

Before I go any further I have to explain that hardcore dancing is in my opinion one of the stupidest things that a lot of people do at concerts. It's opened up like a mosh pit, except everyone in it is just flailing their arms and/or legs around and not normally touching each other instead of running into or just plain hitting each other. It could be argued that mosh pits make no sense but these make even less in my opinion. Anyway, this is kind of beside the point.

Anyway, normally these hardcore dancers are at least able to control their movements so you're not even more annoying when they come running into you. These kids were not the same. As we are standing away from the crowd, someone runs into another person who goes flying into my friend sending her straight to the ground. Being the natural gentlemen they were they didn't think it necessary to help her up and went about their own business. This made us angry at the people but there wasn't much we could do about it since it was a concert, so we went about watching the show.

After the first band got done playing, the band we knew was getting ready to go on so we moved to the front row to get ready. As they started playing the kids, who I would later learn considered themselves a gang called the Courage Crew, started their idiotic fun once again. As I said before it doesn't bother me until someone runs into me. One of them came flying into me and my friend Nick and I threw him back toward his friends.

We were basically going to not care because it's a concert and these things happen. That was until one of them decided to jump on my back for some reason. On top of the other events of the night I had had enough. I punched him and threw him off me to the ground and Nick punched him. I went to pull him back to hit him but he pulled away and I ended up just ripping his shirt. At this point I was pissed off but I figured it was over so I started watching the show again. Then four of the other kid's friends, as I said before part of the CC, came over and started punching and kicking both Nick and myself. I got kicked in the side and as I turned around to see what just happened one of their fists landed on the upper side portion of my head.

About a minute later security came over and pulled them away. My friend from the other band went over and told them he would have them thrown out if they did anything else. And that ended up being that. After our friend's band finished we said bye to them and left. Bruised but knowing we had survived a rumble with the "fearful" Courage Crew.

Running in the Family

When I started reading this book, a few things caught me off guard; the chapters are only a few pages long each, a half a page of italicized writing introduced the book, and it started on page 17. After reading the first few chapters though, I got a few different thoughts.

Ondaatje has a very unique writing style, at least compared to the reading that we have done as a class this quarter. Instead of using a lot of descriptive language that we've now become used to, his writing can be very simple and straight forward most of the time. At other times he tends to use some form of imagery that almost seems ridiculous.

An example of this comes early on in the second chapter when Ondaatje is describing the size of the doors in the house. He writes, "The doors are twenty feet high, as if awaiting the day when a family of acrobats will walk from room to room, sideways, without dismantling themselves from each other's shoulders" (p. 24). It seems like a very random metaphor to use just to simply describe the size of the doors in a house.

I find it interesting that he uses such short chapters to get information across. Instead of taking his time talking about every event around his and at this point his grandparent's lives, he uses shorter, straightforward sentences to get the point across right away. Sometimes he doesn't even tell the story. In the chapter "April 11, 1932," the entire chapter is a quote of someone who was around at the time telling the story. I think he mainly does this because he himself wasn't alive yet so he wants the story to be told by someone who was.

He also talks a lot of his family's alcoholism in these few chapters. Not all of it is in the same mood as the rest. A small amount of the time, he considers it good. In the very beginning, it's while he's drunk that he decides to go back to Asia. Later on however, he talks about his father's alcoholism, and how he would have to hide his alcohol everywhere, so his family could not destroy it.

I'm ready to get further into this book, as it is still in the developing stage. This seems like a good book and I want to see what exactly is going to happen in the coming chapters.

900 words

In the book Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, author Bret Lott presents stories of his childhood alongside stories of his children to show how alike they actually are. The essays are set up so that it is in the order of his children growing up. Alongside these stories, Lott adds essays of his childhood around the same age which make the two more easily comparable. A lot of the time he is also comparing the two of them during the same chapter. Whether or not he even realizes it, he is pointing out the similarities between generations. In his writing, Lott shows that his children have a similar childhood as he did by constantly comparing and contrasting the two between paragraphs, chapters, and even sentences. By doing this, he eventually does come to the realization that they are very alike, but in some key areas, maybe due to his own parenting, they are different.

In some cases he is even pushing for his sons to be the way he and his brothers were. The first example of this coming early in the book from the first chapter; while talking about the garage, Lott writes, “Brad, Tim, and I had no choice but to take turns running as fast as we could along the asphalt driveway, then jumping flat footed onto that cement, blasting from pure California Saturday morning sunlight into the black garage to slide barefooted as far as we could arms out like surfers’ for balance” (p. 4). Then later in the chapter, “I can hose the place down and teach my boys the finer points of garage sliding” (p. 10). Lott slips in the last sentence subtly to express how he hopes his sons will have the same sort of escape from the family to bond as brothers. He first explains how after losing the garage he lost touch with his brothers, then adds that sentence to show how he wants his sons to be different in that aspect. He, as the father, stepped in to make sure that his sons would have the opportunity to have a place to bond just like he did when he was younger.

Probably the best example of the similarities between generations comes during the "Allegiance" chapter. During this chapter Lott tells a story of allegiance between him and his brother and compares it to a conversation he hears between his two children at the end of the chapter. In the second paragraph of the first chapter, Lott writes, "'Swear to God,' was what he said to me often during our childhood and adolescence. 'Swear to God you won't tell Mom,' he'd say, then wait for my answer: 'I swear'" (p. 151). This is a conversation, of course, between Lott and his brother. Lott later writes, "'Jake don't tell Dad,' Zeb whispered, and it seemed Swear to God you won't tell ought to be the next words I would hear" (p. 163). After reading stories of the first conversation occurring many times during the chapter it's almost eerie when Lott hears his sons talking in private at the end of the chapter. This isn't something Lott taught his children, obviously since he is unhappy to hear that Jacob is already "dumb with allegiance," it's just one of those things that make the two generations very similar.

As pointed out earlier, there are points where Lott is hoping that his children will be different, and at that point he comes into the picture as the father once again to give his children a better childhood. An example of this comes during the "Learning Sex" chapter. Lott’s experience learning sex was simple; he learned most of it from people in school and other not so accurate sources. By the time his father finally asked him what he wanted to know, Lott had this to say, “I already know” (p. 94). Later on, Lott writes, “At least—and at best—both Zeb’s mom and dad have had a hand in how he came to find out” (p. 96). This means that Lott learned from his experiences as a child to become the father that he is now. Instead of letting his children become just like him, he steps in to make sure that Zeb and eventually Jacob don't have to go through middle school believing all the lies that get spread around. This is obviously more of a contrast from his childhood experience but Lott early on decided after his own childhood that his children should be different.

Throughout his essays, Lott, whether or not on purpose, shows huge similarities between his childhood and his children's. Whether it's the allegiance that brother's are destined to show for each other or something as small as garage sliding, Lott and his children have similar childhood experiences. Lott was able to recognize that this was happening and made sure to be a different father in some cases. One of these being the "Learning Sex" chapter when he writes about how he made sure his children would have a different knowledge of sex than he did and that they'd learn it at the right age. Throughout this book, Bret Lott shows through his writing that his childhood and his children's childhood can easily be compared. His writing is constantly comparing and contrasting the two and there are definitely a lot more similarities than differences. The parts of Zeb and Jake's childhood that are completely different are mainly due to Lott's parenting being different then his father's.

300 words

Throughout the book Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, Bret Lott introduces his childrens childhood alongside his own stories. He uses his experiences as a child to guide him through being a father to his own boys. This becomes evident even from the first chapter. While talking about the garage, Lott writes, “Brad, Tim, and I had no choice but to take turns running as fast as we could along the asphalt driveway , then jumping flat footed onto that cement, blasting from pure California Saturday morning sunlight into the black garage to slide barefooted as far as we could arms out like surfers’ for balance.” (p. 4) Then later in the chapter, “I can hose the place down and teach my boys the finer points of garage sliding.” (p. 10) Lott slips in the last sentence subtly to express how he hopes his sons will have the same sort of escape from the family to bond as brothers. He first explains how after losing the garage he lost touch with his brothers, then adds that sentence to show how he wants his sons to be different in that aspect.

Another example of Lott using his experiences to shape his fatherly role is presented a little bit later in the “Learning Sex” chapter. Lott’s experience learning sex was simple; he learned most of it from people in school and other public and not so accurate sources. By the time his father finally asked him what he wanted to know, Lott had this to say, “I already know.” Later on, Lott writes, “At least—and at best—both Zeb’s mom and dad have had a hand in how he came to find out.” This means that Lott again learned from his experiences as a child to become the father that he is now. This example is different, though, because he made sure to be the opposite of his father so that his kids will not have to go through believing all the random lies about sex.

This is only part of what I will later add on to for our 900 word blog later this week

Thesis

In the book Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, Bret Lott uses his childhood experiences with his father to dictate his own role as a father.

With age comes understanding...will finish later

As far as myths go there are not that many that come to my head. I know there were a good amount due to a lot of things that happened in my family when I was younger that I wasn't really old enough to know about. Nothing too huge of course but I wouldn't of understood what was going on back then anyways.

I'm not really sure if what follows really counts as a myth since it wasn't really the biggest secret in my family (except to me, of course) but this is my best shot at one.

One I can think of starts right around the time my parents got divorced. It was around 1994 my parents finally decided to get a divorce. They had been together since 1986 but the last of those years were filled with a large amount of fighting. Eventually they just decided that to end the marriage.

Pretty soon afterwards, my mom and I had to move out of the house they had lived in together. The reason I was told at my young age was that the house was messed up and needed a lot of things fixed. The real reason was never actually given to me but I can assume now that it had something to do with her inability to pay for it at the time.

That was the time we started living one of the approximately 7+ apartments we would live in. They ranged from small apartments to townhouses through the years. During this time I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house. They were some of the nicest people you could meet, my grandma had been a teacher when she was younger and was responsible for most of the good grades that I would get in grade school.

Their neighbors on one side had a grandchild and the neighbors to the other side had a lot of them so naturally I had been friends with all of them since I was born.

Anyway, so I started spending a lot of time over there because of the many kids that I had to play with and loved hanging out with. Well, that's what I was told and believed at least. The real reason was so that my mom could work the large amount of hours that she had at her multiple jobs. She was mainly working at two restaurants as a waitress trying to support not only herself but me as well.

Eventually she also went back to community college to earn a degree so she could get a stable job. I'm actually still not overly sure if she graduated college when she initially went out of high school.

So basically for the couple of years that she was trying to stabilize our life after the divorce, I was spending a large amount of time at my grandparent's house having fun with my friends. It took me awhile to realize that that wasn't the only reason I was over there on pretty much a daily basis.

The only reason my family really hid this from me is because there is about no chance I would've understood what was going on anyway. Nonetheless it probably would've had me worried all the time for no reason as well.

No one really ever told me all of this but there were a few ways that I found out. One thing was that being a kid, I would hear a lot of things I wasn't supposed to. They wouldn't mean much at the time but later on it might. Another thing is that my mom would tell me she had just gotten off work when she picked me up from my grandparents just about every time. I eventually also got old enough to realize that moving a lot tends to mean that you have problems with affording the place that you live.

Basically, figuring out this 'myth' just took me getting older.

Well I thought I was done but I guess I also can't finish this without mentioning the delicious taste of Dorito's.

Titles are hard version 2.0

Throughout Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, Karr’s Mother has a number of episodes due to her Nervousness, whether it be flying off the handle about something as small as something not straightened up, or something bigger like her closet drinking problem. Her Mother hardly seems easy to get along with, let alone live with. Though Karr mostly shows contempt for her Mother, she proves that she has unconditional love for her through her actions.

Karr writes “After they took Mother Away, I sank into a fierce lonesomeness for her that I couldn’t paddle out of into other things.” (158). Mary’s Mother at this point has just gone completely “Nervous” as the book would describe and burned down many of the things making up Mary and Lecia’s childhood. In my opinion it would be hard to miss anyone including a mother after something as traumatizing as that, especially if we already had a rocky relationship. And their relationship definitely wasn’t perfect, and Karr even shows that part of her isn’t sure about wanting her back when they are going to see her. Karr writes, “I finally told Daddy I didn’t want Mother to come home if she was gonna go crazy all over again, just because we hadn’t cleaned our room” (171). As the reader, I’m unsure about whether this is actually Mary’s indecision about her Mother coming home, or her fear that her Mother will come home just as Nervous as when she left. Nevertheless, Karr begins to miss her mother so much that nothing around her can pull her out of this loneliness that she is feeling. Her situation isn’t helped by any of the neighborhood kids since the local trend (even adults do it) is to label anyone’s faults no matter how hurtful it could be to them or their family. Due to this, kids are constantly making fun of her because of her mother. Ironically it ends up being her distraction from her Mother for awhile. This distraction doesn’t last long as she ends up sinking back into loneliness just days later.

Karr later writes "I would like to claim that I worried the bone of this choice a long time, but I did not. In an eye's blink, I killed the very sister who'd taken my place in the bullets path"(pg 255). While the first quote shows that Mary becomes very lonesome without her mother, this proves her unconditional love for her. She has decided that even through everything her mother does, she would choose to have her live over her sister. This comes as a surprise since Lecia is the only one who can really help Mary deal with their Mother. Throughout the book Lecia helps Mary through some of the difficulties with their mother. It seems ironic that she'd rather have the reason for her family's dysfunction live over one of her few outlets.

Mary’s Mother has a lot of problems as far as being Nervous goes. Mary shows that even at her young age at the time she’s trying to deal with her mother’s problems and enjoys having her around. Though Karr mostly shows contempt for her Mother, she proves that she has unconditional love for her through her actions. This is thoroughly proven throughout the book especially at the times when she is away at the ward and in times of haste.