Unleash the Raspberri

The Senior Independent Study was never that independent.

A and I decided we were going to write a book about scary stories. We were going to interview creepy people and it was going to be great. Instead, the SIS Committee said no to our proposal and suggested that we “write a book where children learn to dream”.

I didn’t know whether I was mad or just puzzled at the shitty Peter Pan suggestion.  

Our friends J and A had to change their proposal a thousand times before finally deciding they would study the Physics involved in Basketball. Their original idea was something like an underage bar, but apparently the word “bar” freaked the fuck out of the Committee. 

The Committee was like Big Brother because we never knew who they were or where they discussed our projects.

Physics and Basketball were two things J and A were never fond of, but they hung a little hoop as part of their display and gave candy to whoever scored.

When our scary story book was rejected, A and I decided we would write one on the adolescence of Colombian women. This idea proved interesting, but never got as creepy as writing scary things would’ve been.

We interviewed some of our friends’ mothers, our grandmothers, and important women our very abled sponsor befriended. My grandmother told us how my grandfather and she received a beautifully wrapped present on Christmas which turned out to be a human head. Not even my parents knew that. I guess the SIS turned deep this way.    

We spent a lot of afternoons interviewing these women. Even though the interviews lasted like twenty minutes, we’d be stuck in traffic for two hours. After our interviews were completed be started transcribing them, but then we got bored and hired someone to do it.

Our SIS log was due every three weeks or something, but it felt like it was due every day. Just when I found myself wondering when the next due day was, I was informed it had been due the day before. B was the teacher in charge and she liked to threaten students. One day she told me how it would feel like if I didn’t graduate with all my friends, all because of that log. That fucking log. Because they had to be signed by our sponsors, inevitably, a couple of people from the grade perfected the art of fake-signing. Maybe they started charging per signature.   

After a year’s work, supposedly, we presented our projects in the gym. The entire school visited, but most only liked the stands in which food or entertainment was offered. We did not have candy, but we had a book, and that’s what mattered.   

My friends had wonderful projects. L and E, for example, pulled a Bear Grylls and survived in the woods for two or three days. This is admirable, seeing how I get withdrawal syndrome two minutes after arriving to my farm of internetlessness. They produced a documentary and showed how they actually ate a snake and found berries. I guess they’re the ones to stick with, should there be a zombie apocalypse.

M’s project questioned the possibility of having an aquarium in Bogotá. The conclusion was no, but at least she had fish, who had funny names and were hard to transport without something going wrong or extremely wet.

S and M designed a luxurious condo that I wish I could live in. It looked so pretty it was probably the most expensive hypothetical thing in this city. I thought about the parties I could throw in the common area.

Their stand was right next to K and C, who actually made a video game. Their stand was always full of little egocentric children, each thinking they could beat the game. K and C brought cake in case anyone won. I think the game was unbeatable, like Tetris. This way, the cake stayed untouched until K and C had it themselves. It was cute because their judge was an old lady who stared at the screen without blinking, like seeing a TV for the first time. Surely, she was trying to understand the project before actually deciding whether it was good or bad.

I was never sure what N’s project was about. I only remember her heels were very tall, and her decoration was elaborate and distracting, like Time Square. There was even a mannequin, and I wonder where she got it from.

D and N made a restaurant and brought delicious food I was too busy to try. V did four paintings but only finished two and a half, I think.

After two days of presentations, the school awarded the best projects. Since our book did not win anything, I’m going to go ahead and say the school was biased, like always. I mean, a book.

I do not know how to conclude this post. I could get corny and say how this project taught me a lot and made me a better person. Although it’s already been a year, I believe it is still too soon to see whether I am a better person. I still procrastinate. I still bite my nails. If something changes though, I’ll let you know.    

1. One time I was drunk. My friend was drunk too, and she said that there existed many animal species but that we didn’t know about them yet because the government hadn’t been able to classify them, so they were currently hidden.

This friend is not studying Biology. The government does not classify the species either (these are the senseless words of a drunk), but whoever does implies the species need to be classifiable. We like categorizing stuff, but not because we’re organized. It’s because we’re obsessed with belonging, so we want to know where the line between in and out is drawn. That way we know where to stand, instead of just walking around all lost, like a hungover teenager in a giant beach.

Think of inside jokes. Isn’t it a great feeling, to look at your friends, and the look says a million things in half a second, and you snicker, because you get it. Doesn’t it just suck when you don’t get it? You become the awkward, forever alone person who did not go that party, that night. And you get a little sad. You get over it because there is bigger shit in life, like final exams and malnutrition and wars. It is a little sad, though.

2. Everything we do, we do because we want to belong. Of course, every now and then comes and independent who really gives a fuck and God, how I wish I was like them. I care, though. I care deeply.  

Belonging fucks up one’s priorities. Let’s talk about priorities. Why do I wear painful heels every weekend, and use eyeliner for no one specifically, and wake up the next day with a heavy hangover (and the treacherous taste of vodka lingering in my mouth), and a mean conscience that laughs at me?  

Okay, but why do I get all intellectual and pessimistic? Can’t a girl party? Of course she can. I just don’t understand why she—me—wears what she wears, those shoes that to alien eyes would probably look like sophisticated and oddly located torture devices.

Why? Why do I suffer to impress people? Why do I even want to impress people? Why can’t I just say, I don’t care what you think? I deeply care what you think. It’s probably the reason why write what I write, somehow always trying to impress someone, somewhere.

3. There is a reason why carpe diem is the biggest cliché ever. We do have a tendency to live in the future, or worse, the past. What if I stopped thinking, what if ? What if it were only right now, always?  

Then I would probably have to erase everything I’ve ever written, seeing how everything I write is occasionally filled with hopes. Thinking of a better future is definitely normal, least for me. Everything you’re doing right now it’s because you want a future. 

The girl sits in front of her computer. She thinks, how does one begin to describe the best night in one’s life? It can be risky. She doesn’t want to sound hopelessly in love, like Cinderella, who was a stupid kind of optimist that never knew there was more to life than settling down.

She tries, though. And it goes something like this.

At first the girl did not know why the fuck she was there. The street was empty and the people were sketchy. Some of them were wearing caps. She did not trust people who wore caps at night, like they needed protection because they were evil. The crowd that was gathered at the entrance of the place though, they all looked younger than her, which produced a funny contrast, emphasizing that she was old and scared and that she’d lost her membership in the reckless youth.

Her friend and she debated whether to go inside. The music seemed fine, and this she analyzed, turning her head back and forth between the empty streets (with people wearing caps), and the tiny, very hipster entrance to somewhere that was supposed to be amazing.  She believed most of the things she heard, least, considered them. This way, she paid the cover and found herself in empty heaven.

Yes, the place was empty. She could count the people. She would’ve, and then she would’ve convinced herself this was going to be totally lame, but she was distracted by the lights instead. She did not know the songs, but she knew the music. It was Techno. And it was Techno, all night.

They had found a Rave, sort of. A fucked up kind of party which she had always thought belonged to Skins, and nothing else. But they were here, and she couldn’t believe it. She was restless. Now she realized she had been looking for this her entire life. Like those people who were probably doing cocaine in the bathroom, she couldn’t stop. This was her drug. It was her drug so much she did not care that they sketchy people were doing badass drugs literally steps away from her. She did not care that the sketchy people were sketchy; they too were dancing, here. She did not care that this would be over eventually and that she had to wake up and act sane again.  

There were no rules, here. You made your own moves and no one care whether they were good or bad. You swayed or jumped or combined or discovered. After all, everything looks good under a strobe light.

Because she likes to believe she’s into Buddhism sometimes, this was Nirvana. Nirvana isn’t a quiet place, necessarily. It’s your favorite place and moment in the world, that which combines extreme excitement and satisfaction and thirst for more. And there was more. The DJ, a super hipster who she fell in love with in two seconds, played Fedde Le Grand and Skrillex. Skrillex, here. For the first time in her life, she did not have to think before acting. She was figuring it out. This was Carpe Diem and all that Chicken Soup for the Soul, shit. This was her soul alright, not her mind.

Her love for Techno, shamefully, might have something to do with the fact that you can dance it on your own. A Rave is like a party full of careless Forever Alones who are each having their own little bash, in their heads.

She wants to go back. The next time though, wearing something other than heels. This isn’t a place made for heels. This isn’t a place made for everything she has. This is a place made for what she is.    

We probably realized M was a better person than all of us when we got drunk and she didn’t. The fact that she stayed calm while being surrounded by annoying, horny and/or crying drunks makes her even better.

M is for multitasking. While we were too busy complaining how much work we had, M actually completed it. We always acted surprised and wondered how she did it, but she did wake up at 5 am every morning on her own. She probably still does.  

She’s very much like me. Although my love life wasn’t exactly marked by a certain Mexican presence, we liked the same movies and books and felt the same way about hooking up, adolescence and life. We’re both still very awkward at it, too. We don’t talk everyday (while most of us lose entire lives on Facebook she saves the world), but we understand each other and our crushes on imaginary boys.

I guess we became friends because we liked doing kickass Social Studies project (there were no boyfriends to distracts us, anyway). Although some girls would call hooking up with someone a project, our projects were literally a phalanx timeline and a newspaper titled The Daily Bay Leaf. Certainly, not boys.   

I shared a lot of moments with her (corny moment). I was with her the first time I stayed up late, not for fun but for a project, of course. That was the first time I tried coffee, too (more sugar and milk than actual coffee). We were painting our DI scenery that was due in a couple of hours. There was little light so it was hard to know what colors we were using. I remember I’d always let the paint dry in my hands, reason why my skin was sick ogre colored the next morning.

During our 8^th grade Science Fair, M handled a crisis situation while A and I, her reliable partners, supposedly, hid under the nearest table. For all we knew, a balloon could’ve exploded in her face.

I threw her a Good-Bye party before she left for France. This was my very first party, and there was no alcohol. Have you ever been at a party where everyone is sober but everyone is dancing? It’s beautiful. Clearly, this kind of miracle doesn’t happen anymore. A party’s awesomeness depends on the amount of alcohol per meter squared.

But back to M (six guys from my grade crashed that party, though. I was proud). We all have obsessions. While most girls usually obsess over boys, heels, diets, or all of the above, M obsessed with ice cream and Disney. I remember trying to beat her at Disney’s Scene It. I remember her iPod, filled with Disney songs and not horrible, horrible Reggaeton.

Over the years I met most of M’s family. One of her aunts goes to my club and I always say hi, and she always asks me about college and stuff. All of us (including N, this is important) met her French cousin when he visited during Middle School. N loved him of course, and of course they dated. Of course they kissed at a party, and of course we all started, clueless in our little middle schooler minds.    

We went to Knoxville, Tennessee during 8^th grade, a weird city in which cops traded DI pins and let us cross the street with exaggerate enthusiasm. We met another team, and this guy told M she looked like Shakira. N got mad, so he had to say she looked like Shakira, too. We became penpals and talked for years, and he’d always end his e-mails with something like “Say hi to lovely Mariana”. We thought he was weird, but I recently added him on Facebook, and he’s hot now.

Oh, well.

We drifted apart when I decided I wanted to mess up my life. Unlike her Mexican drama, my drama was completely earned (via alcohol). Also, while I worried sick about my social life and my future (how the shit does one choose between writer and astronaut), M literally ran the school. A lot of people said they ran the school and earned credit for it, but it was always M, being undercover and modest. This way she is our friend, but also someone we all look up to.

There are promises to every relationship. Although I promised her I would take her to South Africa as part of my luggage (which clearly I didn’t), we swore to each other we were going to dress up as Twister for Halloween, one day. Maybe we will.