Her Graduation Day

Today I went to my cousin Imani’s College Graduation. It was a beautiful thing to see. I saw some old relatives, new relatives, and relatives I’d never seen before. One of the weirdest things that I saw was my cousin Nigel, he’s twelve years old and he’s already my height. I was thought we would hopefully be a lot alike since we had the same name but we weren’t. We get along very well, but have opposite interests. I’m really glad to have as a part of my family. Nigel and I sat next to each other at the Graduation.  We started the ceremony and it took forever. The person that took the longest to speak was Tim Kaine who spent hours talking about his life (his long, long, long, LONG, life). So many speeches and so many students you get bored quickly. The only thing keeping us amused was a pair of binoculars that we used to spy on people. We looked for Imani in the seats, we saw a guy picking his nose, and we saw people holding signs up saying, “GO (enter graduate name here)”. My cousin Kehinde fell asleep three times. There were over three hundred students and they were called one after another. That alone took over an hour. There was just one name we were waiting to hear so we could scream at the top of our lungs. IMANIIIIII! I was so proud of her graduating and getting her diploma. I almost cried. We took picture after picture just hoping that such happy family moment would go away.

Pursuing My Future

The career that I want to pursue is Graphic Design/Game Design. I’ve had a passion for game design for as long as I can remember. I got a Nintendo 64 for my birthday and I was hooked for life. But honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to be a game designer. Practically anyone who has picked up a controller has said to themselves, “hey, I could make a better game than this”. So how could I one of those millions stand out above them all. One thing I did was I signed up for a game designing website. There I found blogs of real game designers and their advice. I even talked to one in IM messaging. He explained to me that one thing about game design is that you won’t be a part of everything. Game designing is a very “straight forward job”. Most game designers have to choose a field and that’s all that they’ll work on. So it occurred to me, what field of game design I want to go in to. I decided on animation. Now, I never wanted to do animation. I said it would be the last thing I would ever do until I speaking to one of my teachers. He was the Geography teacher and I was talking to him about a theory that I had. It had to do with how the continents really split and he commended me for my theory. So I asked him if I should go public with it? He said to me that it’s hard for him to understand my theory without seeing it. THAT’S when it hit me. I can’t just tell people what to make and they’ll make it the exact way that I see it in my mind. I have to use my own creativity to bring my thoughts, theories, and creations to life. This is why when I grow up, I want to work in animation.

Yvonne's kids

I went to Atlanta, Georgia last summer. I went to visit my father for about eight days. While I was there I met his girlfriend Yvonne. She’s very strong and sweet at the same time. She’s a great lady and I like spending time with her. I also like spending time with her five kids! (That’s right; count them, 5!). They were ten, eight, six, and two four year old twins. They all had very different personalities and didn’t always get along. Their mother kept the kids in line and they wouldn’t dare defy her. She made them listen to everything they had to say. After a few days with the kids, we really started to click and they said that they saw me as a big brother. I got along with them very well and it taught a little bit about fatherhood that I will always cherish. Yvonne only had one son who I felt really looked up to me a lot. He has to live with four girls and I know that that’s probably torture for him. He said that he liked having somebody around that can finally beat him at video games. The oldest girl is ten and she’s the mature one. She was the easiest to talk to because she was the oldest. I don’t know why but I didn’t really get to know the six year old that much. I adore the twins to no end. They are the cutest little baby’s that I have ever met. It was time for us to say goodbye and nobody was super happy about it, but we knew that the day would come. I got on that plane with knowledge, memories, and a giant wad of babysitting cash (Cha-Ching).

The day of my operation

The day of my operation I wasn’t scared. I was just ready to get it over with. So my mother drove me to the hospital as we prayed. We sat in the waiting room for over an hour which was so boring. The only thing that was keeping me entertained was that there were two ladies that were speaking in sign language sitting across from me which was fun to watch. A kind nurse took me to a room and I got into my gown. She asked 2 million questions. Then another doctor came in and asked 2 million questions. And so on until I got my shots. Two anesthesiologists showed up in my room and asked if I was ready. I said “Yeah” and they injected me with some serum. My eyes immediately began to droop and all I was thinking was “what the heck did they just put in me”. They wheeled me into a room and I maneuvered myself over to the table where they would perform the surgery. I looked up into a light and…

The next minute I woke up in a bed looking at my two feet and there was a lady I’d never seen before next to me. “You’re finally awake sleepy head” she said. Apperantly I’d been asleep for an hour after my surgery was over. I didn’t even greet her I just said in a sort of angry way, “I thought I wasn’t going to have cast for my leg after the surgery was over!?”. She told me that it wasn’t a cast, it was giant bandage that they had to rap my leg in. What! They put me in a wheelchair and my mother drove around to the front of the hospital to help me into the car. That anesthesia is very strong because even by the time I got home my balance was so shot that I could barely crutch myself in a straight line down the hall. It was 2:00p.m. and I just lied in my bed and went to sleep because it had been a long day.

My leg

August 31, 2007 was the day that I broke my leg. So I ask myself, why is it April 7, 2009 and I’m in a wheelchair going into and operating room for surgery. I broke my leg from tripping out of a stationary car. I went to the doctor and got it x-rayed. They told my leg had broken in two places because of a hole caused by a bone cyst in my leg. They gave me a cast that stretched from my toes to my thigh. I had just been accepted to open high school I went to school for the first day. My doctor insisted I be home schooled since my school had no elevators. I was out of school for two full months and I wasn’t able to come back until my cast had come off.

The day had arrived when my cast was finally going to come off. They gave me a medical boot I arrived at school on Halloween day. It was awkward and I didn’t know anybody. Eventually I didn’t need the boot anymore. I made lots of friends and took full advantage of have the ability to walk again. I started playing sports, walking more, and exercising. One day I went to the doctor and he told the hole in my leg wasn’t healing right, that I still had a hole in it. So he told me to go to physical therapy for my leg and inner knee pain. The therapy was working. My hole began to close up and my knee pain was gone. But my doctor was still worried, he wanted to do surgery to seal up the hole and remove the bone cyst. Then he said something that scares me to this day. “We have to make sure that his cyst is not cancerous.”

Littering

Normally those who live in either urban or suburban areas know about littering. Most of them have most likely contributed to littering. You can’t go for a walk without seeing a beer bottle smashed in the dirt, plastic bag floating in the wind, or stomped out cigarettes in piles. People don’t normally see this as a huge problem at times. Some people think that it’s no big deal; its just one piece of garbage. The truth of the matter is, that if there were two million pieces of garbage on the ground and you throw a cup on the ground it becomes two million one. There are trash cans on nearly every corner but people are to lazy toss it in. If you go to a fast food restaurant buy a cheeseburger, don’t throw the rapper on the ground just because no one is watching. Put it in your pocket and wait until you reach a trash can. If your pockets are full of junk, then hold it in your hand. The only time anyone is ever appalled by trash is if there are pills and piles of it. If you throw something on the ground, like a candy rapper, it will eventually be part of that pile. Part of a pile that won't go away for hundreds of years. We need to take care of the earth instead of treating it like a toilet.

When I'm bored

My room is a bore
There’s nothing to do
There’s nothing to eat
There’s nothing to chew

My TV is broken
My Phone won’t work
I would go outside
But my friends can be jerks

And then there’s my game
My boredom be tamed,
But then there’s my father
Who lost my charger

My computer? Of Course!
There’s something there, I’ll bet!
But I forgot my computer
Can’t get on the net

I’m laying on my bed
Staring at my toes
My mom said “read a book”
But I don’t own one of those.

My parents are at work
My sisters at school
I’ve become so bored
That I’ve begun to drool

I said to myself
“Hey I know what to do”
“I could play a board game”
But for that you need two.

There must be no end
To my everlasting boredom
I guess I’ll just sit here
And write a few poems