This Post May Save School Property

For those of you who are too busy watching television in a lodge in the Alps, or getting a heavy tan that will look ridiculous with the rest of you, I'll just sum up this post with a brief description of my evening:

1. I watched Contact.
2. I sat on the couch and pondered some fundamental philosophical queries.
3. My sister and I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed.
4. In a fit of rage, I broke my sister's toothbrush.

Admittedly, there's a good deal that happened between #3 and #4, but the long and short of it is in those four steps. For you troopers who do not own a private island and are therefore reduced to reading my blog for entertainment, I'll expand on the above list.

Since y'all may or may not have seen the movie Contact, here's a short summary: Jodie Foster goes up in space and provokes some thoughts. Anyway, I thought it was durn good, and I felt very intellectual and mature after watching it. After basking in my enlightenment, I headed off to the bathroom to brush my teeth, dragging my sister with me. (I felt very noble doing this: as the older sister, I shouldered more responsibility for my actions and could therefore act as the keeper of the younger one's basic hygiene.)

As I was flossing, my sister made some comment to the effect of, "Ew." I, of course, was untouched by her disgust, as she wasn't even flossing, meaning that I was obviously more mature than she was. I fired off a witty retort illustrating this to her, which she didn't understand. So I clarified by saying, "I think you have an IQ of 20." She kicked me. I decided to be the martyr and just turn the other cheek. But when she started talking again, I thought, Screw martyrdom!, and chose instead to thwack her in the face with my used floss. She responded by flicking her froth-covered toothbrush at me, which backfired and resulted in her getting the majority of the saliva/toothpaste on her own face. We started laughing, and I sighed inside, thinking the fight was over. Then she charged at me with the toothbrush again. So I grabbed the toothbrush and pushed it away, just as she pushed it towards me. So the toothbrush broke.

I already have no idea why you'd care about any of this. I shouldn't have made it a blog post; I should've just written it down in my multi-purpose journal and laughed at it later. But sadly, this incident pissed me off pretty badly. Not because my parents blamed me when my sister whined that I had broken her toothbrush; not because part of my sleeve now smells like Crest; but because my self-glorifying ego has been deflated a little bit. I am not mature. I am not noble. I am most definitely not a martyr.

And guess what? Neither are any of you. Personally, I thought that my sister and I had grown out of the phase when we would let minor things escalate to become biting, breaking, etc. Obviously, we haven't. I'm two years away from being a legal adult, and I haven't achieved my vision of the "mature me." And I don't think I ever will, because as I realized tonight, maturity isn't being able to whisk away irrational thoughts before they even enter your brain. Maturity is beginning to feel some strong emotion, then taking a recess to analyze whether it serves any good purpose; and if it doesn't, shoving it away for later. ("Later" could mean at the gym tomorrow, when you take out the week's angers on a punching bag; or it could mean a few months later, when weeks of irritations explode in a seizure of insanity and you destroy school property.) And I ask you: does this really represent progress?

Does it really make us better people if we take our anger at meaningless things, our desire to indulge in bad habits, our need to cry when our hair looks like Barbarella's (you may or may not have experienced that one), and suppress it under the pretext of being "noble" or "grown-up"? I mean, sure, if I had been Mature Me, one less toothbrush would be broken right now; but in all likelihood my practicality would have contributed to my tearing up the Spanish final exam in four months. So where do I go from here? Just try harder than ever to contain my temper, and then bring a koosh ball to my Spanish final? Or simply say, "To hell with maturity!" and go around doing and saying whatever the hell I want?

No, no. Neither would work. The first one would just...no. And the second one would gain me 100 pounds and almost as many enemies. I guess that self-control does serve some middle-of-the-road purpose, and I'm not denying that it's been a great asset for many people. (The first three such people who come to mind were assassinated, but I'll not talk about that.) Sure, maturity's the only thing that allows us to get anything done, even though it does seem to wreak havok with our natural instincts. So, if nothing else, I'll think twice next time before likening it to nobility. Because nobility is totally a case-by-case thing.

If you're wondering, "Why the hell did I even read this? She's got no thought-provoking conclusion!" then I have two reasons for you:

1. My venting to you may well have saved you bodily harm, as it has probably postponed my next attack of pent-up rage until summer vacation.
2. While having no thesis, this post DOES have a valid theme. Which you said you wanted anyway. So if you want philosophical intrigue, go watch Contact.

-Ahaneen