So about that notebook

Once again, I've lost motivation to keep telling stories of the purple notebook past the story of Shrek 2. It's honestly not that interesting of a story. Okay the beginning is kind of amusing because it's my first outing with friends in Saline and it's my first spontaneous outing - that is, no prior planning - and back then my parents were super paranoid and didn't know anybody and I didn't really tell them about much so they didn't really know of anyone either except maybe Kitty. And maybe the end has some interesting bits. But everything in between is kind of boring except for one part which back then I wasn't sure I wanted people reading but now I don't really care so in the middle of the story I go off on this random personal bit which I wanted people to read even less... eventually I finished the story but by the time I was done I was kind of sick of it - that is, writing out the stories of my freshman year seemed irrelevant and tedious. So after Shrek 2 the purple notebook - or at least the part of it detailing "It All Started in English Class" - kind of drops off.

So instead of making you deal with my freshman rambles and distractions and drama dealios, I'll summarize.

We were either currently reading or had just finished "Catcher in the Rye" in our 9th grade English class. As a class requirement, each person had to give an OR - oral report, a short presentation or leading of a class discussion on some topic - at some point during the semester, and for this particular instance I signed up to do mine along with a nice girl who sat near me, Sarah Cravens (who did not seem to be part of the couple cult that surrounded me). I don't remember what it was on, maybe the symbols in the book and what they represented or something, but anyway, we got together in her basement the Sunday afternoon before it was due, I believe, and finished it up pretty quickly. Then Sarah mentioned that she and some other band dorks were going to see Shrek 2, which I hadn't heard about, but I was interested in seeing. I don't remember now whether she actually invited me or invited me out of pity or if I kind of assumed I was invited or what but however it happened, I got invited to this movie outing, but I of course had to call my parents and ask, since, as I mentioned, they were paranoid.

So another thing - I hadn't had much experience with cell phones - in fact for all I know the phone I had could've easily been one of my parent's phones since I'm not entirely sure I even had a cell phone freshman year - so I wasn't familiar with the whole "cell phones don't usually work in basements" thing. So I tried calling my parents and it worked - at least it did for a few minutes, long enough for me to explain (a) that this wasn't any sort of date for anyone since of the people attending, most of them weren't dating, and of the people who were dating, their significant others were elsewhere for the evening; (b) that it was just a bunch of band dorks, no one dangerous, and we weren't going to get into any drugs or alcohol or crazy parties or anything like that; and (c) that I was going with Sarah, her friend Kevin Dahlberg, Mike and Christine Venner, and "the Zills" - and then it cut out.

Of course, I knew who the Zills were. Sarah knew who the Zills were. Everyone I knew from school knew who the Zills were. But apparently I had not once mentioned the Zills to my parents previous to this, because one of the first things they asked me as soon as I called them back on Sarah's landline was "What's a Zill?". And apparently when the phone cut out my dad turned to my mom and said "What is a 'Zill', and what does it want with my daughter?" - which is now an infamous Zill-related quote in my mind and it always makes me laugh.

Eventually I convinced my parents to let me go, and I went, and it was fun, though at this point I still had trouble differentiating between Zills, so I can't remember which one of them I sat next to and awkwardly shared popcorn with at the beginning. Afterwards Sarah, Dahlberg, and I had some vaguely interesting adventures. We saw some shady kids run out from behind a dumpster as we walked by which made Sarah and I mock Dahlberg about how he totally didn't look very scary. I'd never directed anyone to my house since I moved there in August and I wasn't familiar with the roads so that made getting home interesting. At one point - the darkest part of Judd Road, I think - Dahlberg turned off his headlights just to scare Sarah and I. At another point the road just kinda ended without warning - Warner does a little jog at Bemis but I didn't know it at the time - but we managed to get back on track by going towards the general direction of civilization, and eventually I found a road I knew and was able to direct Dahlberg to my house in the boonielands.

And that's about it, except for the sidestory that created a bunch of drama. And here it is. At some point my parents asked if this was a date to which I answered "No, I don't think so." and then asked Sarah to confirm. Sarah then thought of all the possible ways it could be a date and concluded that it wasn't, and couldn't possibly be, unless Katey randomly came back from Muskegon super early, or unless there was a couple she didn't know about, etc., ...or unless I hooked up with Kyle.

At which point I learned Rule #1 of my crazy daydream-filled mind: NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER give me a hypothetical situation. EVER! My mind will take it and run with it and get sidetracked and run with the sidetracks until it forgets what the original situation was, resulting in ridiculous daydreams and crazy ideas for potentially awesome stories and adventures.

Examples of this include:

• What if (insert HP plot randomness here)? --> tons of crazy fanfiction - including dragons, angels, phoenixes, resurrecting the dead, Santa Claus (he could be related to Dumbledore, you never know), Enya music, me, the HP actors, JKR, time traveling, book stores, story self-awareness, and lots of other stuff - that I never wrote out except in one case where I improvised some H/Hr shipping fanfic over IM to Debbie
• What if the Saline band and the Mattawan band met in Disney? --> crazy stories of kidnappings, rescues, band nerdiness, and somehow the HP actors got in here too so there was like, me in a limo with them...I...I don't remember how anything happened lol.
• What if (insert couple here) had kids? --> Zilllets, future Saline, tehDemonSpawn, Alex, Lily, (Isa)Belle, Lizzie, Jeffrey?, various other children not yet named, Enilas kids
  
• What if we lived in the Puritan era? --> crazy Puritan story, which kinda sidetracked into...
• ...What if we were all pirates and there were captains of certain crews of people that corresponded to who hung out with each other in high school (thought up during high school)? --> crazy pirate stories, which may have blended into...
• ...What if there were spirits that instead of being spirits of people from the past were instead spirits of people from the future? What if we saw our kids as these spirits? What if they had powers and stuff? And what if people's spirits had a true form that showed who they really were? But the future spirits didn't have a true form since they were still ruled by probability since they didn't exist yet so it was impossible to say exactly who they were? --> very beginnings of Enilas, which eventually became more like...
• ...What if we all had awesome powers and fought for awesome and were so cool that the bards told stories of us but heroes in stories can't be complicated so they had to simplify us and create multiple characters but then we all settled down and had kids and the kids had crazy powers and they knew of the characters in the legends but they didn't know it was us and then they went on to do crazy legendary stuff that the bards sang about with their kids? --> current version of Enilas

So of course, I thought about it, and somehow through thinking about it, developed a crush on Kyle. I learned later that crushing on Kyle was kind of a phase that all band girls, especially those playing flute and clarinet, went through at some point, for some strange reason. The only thing that resulted from this was a lot of awkwardness and possibly slight creepiness at times. Sarah convinced me to ask him out to Homecoming that year, but of course he said no. Eventually the crush just dwindled into nothing except feeling a strange rivalry towards Angie, who I thought for a while might be my "good twin", due to our similar birthdays and seemingly similar interests, and now that's gone too. Did I mention that I'm kinda obsessed with twins? Cuz I am. They always seem to crop up around me. Obnoxiously often. Which may be part of the reason that there is an obnoxious amount of twininess and twin power and whatnot in Enilas.

I have other stories I could tell but I think that's the end of the 9th grade stories unless someone requests them. No idea when I'll post next. No idea who reads this. Gotta wonder if it's only Rebecca. Oh well.