To Everything There Is a Season



Sometimes its hard to face reality and realize you are growing up. This story is basically the story of the narrators first Christmas not believing in Santa Claus which is always a sad occurance but he looks at the bright side of being treated like an adult. I would like to think that we all stay young and innocent forever like Peter Pan and his lost boys but we all have the small moments and reality checks that force us to grow up.

For myself I haven't had many, to be perfectly honest I really haven't grown up nearly as much as some others my age. I have a sister who is 13 and a brother who is 18. My parents mostly sheltered us from the harsh world and waited as long as possible to tell us about Santa Claus and the Easter bunny not being real and all those nice things. In fact they still haven't told my sister. 

With all of that my reality check wasn't the Easter bunny or Santa not being real but when my parents told me that my grandfather had cancer and had to have surgeries, chemotherapy and was going to live with us during the process and recovery. This came to me as a huge surprise, my grandfather is a big strong man standing an impressive 6'5. I have always and still do think of him as the smartest man alive to date; he seems to know everything about anything. When I was told he had cancer it was a reality check even the biggest smartest people can get sick. This made myself and my siblings grow up we had to help my grandma and parents take care of my grandfather. We all grew up a little bit acting as stand-in adults. "...I am not so much surprised as touched by a pang of loss at being here on the adult side of the world." Although he on his way to recovery now it was scary for a while and to everything there is a season and this was the season I grew up.

Here is a quick picture of the Rolling Stones rocking out to lighten the mood

History of the English Language featuring Patrick Star

History of the English Language

Surprisingly I found the history of the English language interesting. Usually the first reaction of an average student on learning that they will be stu(dying) the history of the English language is a feeling of dread, terrible boredom and surprise. Which all around comes to a look like this:

The English language was influenced by many other languages through historical events. Which are divided into four different time periods. Other peoples invaded and took over forcing their languages to mix with English, creating a strange mix of all of these languages which people whose first language is not English find very difficult to learn.

Old English 450-1100

I found old English the most interesting because of Beowulf. Beowulf is a 3000 line poem written about a warroir and the amplified tales of his adventures. I was amazed that our present day English evolved from that almost eligable writting.

I was even more surprised when our class came to the conclusion that there has not been an original story written in over 2000 years!(Archetypes). Almost every story we have follows the same plot of a hero, villain and treasure.

Middle English 1100-1500

During the middle English period the languge is becomes a bit more readable and understandable. Middle English was dominated by Chaucer. He wrote for the common man, more believable stories and more humour. I found Chaucer compelling because his stories were the first with no violence which was strange at that time. He wrote comedy and used word play. "Bawdy" using very crude humour.

Doesn't Chaucer look like a funny guy?

Early Modern 1500-1800:

I did not find early modern to be extremly stimulating but it was the introduction of the printing press and this standardized the spelling of words. This was the era of the sonnet craze, which might be a great and interesting thing to learn about for some people but I do not enjoy poetry very much. I would rather someone just tell me what the heck they want or what their thinking instead of reading me a poem. Although poems can very romantic and such I dont quite see the allure of writting, reading and analysing them but I do enjoy the play on words that poems often use.

Boring and baldish

Present Day English 1800- today:

There isn't much of a history of present day English if its the present day but many new words have been introduced and are continually added to the language because of the darastic change in technology. I  personally feel like our generation is ruining the English language with new slang. "rachet" " swerve" "swag". Although I don't enjoy poetry it is a refreshing change from present day English.

P.S Lil Wayne is horrible.