What happens when you let your fifteen year old write a post for your blog...

They say you should write about what you know. The problem is, I know about a lot. So every time I start to write about one thing, I invariably go off on a tangent and then a tangent of a tangent and… well, you get my drift. It makes writing challenging and exhausting. And I lose interest.

I have to say, now that I have taken Trig, I actually know what a tangent is. Before it was just an expression, a figure of speech. I knew what the expression meant, but I didn’t really know what a tangent was. In case you never took Trig, or it was like thirty million years ago when you did and you have now forgotten, a tangent of an acute angle in a right triangle is the ratio of the side opposite to that angle with the adjacent side. I don’t think that is what they mean in the phrase “go off on a tangent,” though. That is a different kind of meaning of tangent. It means you go off course or change course or start talking about something else entirely different. I am not sure how they are related. But now, whenever I say “go off on a tangent,” this little voice inside my head shouts: “Opposite over adjacent!”

Which I suppose is weird. But, in all seriousness, when you are thinking about stuff, anything really, doesn’t some tiny voice inside your head invariably shout out something automatically? It need not be relevant or important, but it just kind of pops out. And you may not even notice it. Well, you notice it, but you can still ignore it. Because if you listened – I mean, really listened – to that small voice inside your head, you would never get anything done. Because you would be constantly sidetracked by tangential comments.

Sometimes, though, it is important to listen to that small voice. It can mean the matter between life and death. The trick is knowing when to listen and heed and when to just nod your head and keep on doing what you were doing. I haven’t quite figured that one out yet. But I am sure it is only a matter of time. I think there is some sort of formula or causal relationship involved. I may have to wait until I take calculus to figure it out for sure. Or maybe I will just invent a new kind of math so I can figure this kind of thing out for myself.

You know that’s how calculus was invented, right? Isaac Newton was busy trying to figure out why apples kept falling on his head, and he had to invent calculus so he could mathematically solve problems about falling apples and gravity and stuff. If calculus doesn’t do the trick for me, I may have to invent a new kind of math, too. Because I have a lot of problems to solve. And it gets confusing. Of course, I probably need to read more about Stephen Hawking first, because he figures stuff out in his head all the time and he may have already invented the kind of math I need. Because we are both interested in the origins of the universe. And Big Bang. And the cosmic loop of time.

I mostly keep this kind of stuff to myself. Because kids at school look at me weird and laugh when I start talking about it. I thought my science teachers would be able to help me out, but they haven’t really come through for me either. My eighth grade science teacher looked at me once in class and said, “You know, you are way over my head!” That made me kind of sad. I am just a kid. How can I be way over a teacher’s head?

I wonder if we can use science to prove that we have souls. What is a soul? Does it die when we die? Or does it live on forever? Do we come back as different people? Or is this all there is? That scares me. The thought that this is it. In the grand scheme of time, humans don’t really live all that long, and at the rate we are going, it is only a matter of time before we blow our planet up or get rid of all the oxygen and asphyxiate ourselves.

If I start thinking too hard, my head starts to hurt. It is just like a big swirling whorl of confusion in there.

I can talk to my mom about all this stuff, but she starts turning things around and asking me questions back. That is OK for a while, but then I finally realize she hasn’t answered any of my questions. I think it is because she doesn’t know either, and she doesn’t want to let me down. She says she is just playing “devil’s advocate.” That doesn’t mean she supports Satan or anything. It just means she is asking questions, trying to stimulate discussion of all sorts of different angles. Which is cool, I guess. Only I get tired after a while.

I talk to God a lot, too. He or She or It doesn’t answer me back directly, of course. Although I think that would be kind of cool. I don’t actually think God is a He or a She or an It. In fact, I am not actually sure there is a God. But I like to think there is. It gives me someone to talk to in my head. I don’t go to church, but I have my own religion. In my religion, people are free to think of God in whatever way they want, as long as it is not bad or evil, and when you die and go to heaven, heaven is whatever you think it is. So, everyone’s heaven might be different. I am kind of like a Buddhist, too. In fact, I kind of look like Buddha. Some people call me Buddha. But that’s because I am so big. Not because they know anything about either Buddha or Buddhism. Or would even know that I am like a Buddhist.

I started doing yoga this summer. I don’t really like sports very much. My mom said that was fine, but I needed to find a physical activity or a way to exercise. She said I needed to go outside more and get fresh air and move my body through time and space. She said I was spending too much time at the computer or up in my room reading. I think she is wrong. How can you spend too much time at the computer or reading a book? Especially reading a book. I mean, you could spend your whole entire life reading books, and you would barely even dent the number of books that have been written over the centuries.

Last summer I read Dante’s Inferno. It was awesome. I read it in English, not in the original Italian because I don’t know Italian. But it was still awesome. My mom told me she heard on NPR that the modern Italian language was based off of the language Dante used in his writing. I think that is so cool. Most other European languages are based on how people spoke in a particular city. Like in France, French was based on how people spoke in Paris. But in Italy… well, there really was no Italy the country until really recently. I mean, compared with other countries. So, there was really no one big, main city or center of language and culture. So, when they went to make Italian, they said, “Yo, let’s use Dante’s Inferno to make a really cool language.” I think that is so neat.

I would like to have my own language. That would be cool. It would be the official language of my own country. I want to secede from the United States when I grow up and make my own country. We wouldn’t have to do anything stupid, and there wouldn’t be any taxes. We wouldn’t have war, because I would make it illegal. Prices in my country would be good, too. So you could afford to buy a house and a car and support your family. Because you could afford the things you wanted and needed, there wouldn’t be any crime. It would be a nice place to live. I would be a benevolent dictator.

I think I said I was doing yoga. This morning I did yoga in the park. Well, not all by myself because that would be creepy and weird like the neighbor guy we had in Cincinnati who would go out into the neighborhood playground area and just start doing his Tai Chi moves. It was weird. I mean, he knew all of us kids were there playing and stuff, and here comes this old dude doing weird, strange body moves. It was like he was in his own Jet Li movie. He knew everyone was watching him. If you were some old dude doing weird body moves, would you want the whole neighborhood watching you? I rest my case.

I guess it would be more accurate to say I was doing Yoga in the Park. It is a program. A class. Offered every Saturday morning in our local park. It was a bunch of old ladies and women my mom’s age and me. The grass was all wet and I put a towel under my yoga mat, but I still got grass bits all over because they had just mowed the grass. All these women were in their yoga suits. I just had on shorts and a t-shirt. Which is what I wear all the time in the summer anyway. I am not really very flexible, either. So, a lot of the stuff they did was really hard for me to do. I had a hard time concentrating, too. When you do yoga inside, you are usually in a studio, although the yoga I have been going to was in the basement of a church, the same church where our band held its annual spaghetti dinner to raise money so we could buy a trailer to haul all our stuff around to games and band competitions. So, it seemed weird to me to be down on the carpet in this basement room where I know people had been eating spaghetti and meatballs only a few months before. But when we do yoga, the room is empty and pretty boring. And I can concentrate on my breathing. Which is like a huge, big part of yoga.

In the great outdoors, though, there are so many distractions! First of all, there were all the trees all around and the playground where a bunch of loud, bratty, crying little kids were playing. And the grass was wet and cold. And you could hear all these birds singing. And the traffic on the road. And airplanes going over. And I kept feeling like bugs were falling into my hair. And I was afraid people were looking at me. Because I was the only guy there, and I was a kid. And I wasn’t wearing a yoga outfit. And I am big and can’t really bend myself into a pretzel. The teacher kept smiling at me and telling me what a good job I was doing. That only made me more nervous, though, because I knew she was just saying that to make me feel better and every time she said it, all these ladies would turn around and look at me. God, it was a nightmare!

But it counted as exercise. So, now I am all done with that for the day. Tomorrow I am supposed to go swimming. And if I don’t do yoga or go swimming, then I am supposed to at least go for a walk. I like to go for walks. I can think when I am walking and plan out stories in my head and video game scenarios and reflect on the origins of the universe and which super power I would want most if I were a super hero. Besides omniscience and the ability to transport myself, I would really like to be able to have lasers shoot out of my hands. Or have four arms. It would be really cool to have four arms. I could get so much more done in life if I had two more arms.

I like summer a lot. Not the heat and the sun. I don’t like those so much. I hate sunny days. I like it more when it rains. So I can spend all day inside. And my mom won’t bug me about going outside and getting fresh air. I like summer because it means no school. I hate school. I think school is a waste of time. I already know everything I need to know to be a grown up, so why do I need to spend all my days being bored in school? I think they should make a law that once you finish like eighth grade you don’t have to go to school any more. Unless you want to. But why would you ever want to unless you were one of those teacher pet overachiever nerds? They drive me nuts. The world is too full of teacher pet overachiever nerds, if you ask me.

I want to design video games and write books when I grow up. I don’t need to get anymore schooling to do either of those. Well, OK, maybe it would be a good idea to take math and English. I kind of like math and English. But then you should be allowed to go home and play video games and read books the rest of the day. And do whatever you want. Because stuff like Spanish and Civics are stupid and a waste of time. Well, I like band, too. So, you could go to school in the morning and take band, math, and English. And then go home and life wouldn’t be so bad. I wouldn’t mind going to school so much then. And I would have time to do the things I really want to do in life instead of boring, stupid, pointless crap. Oh, and there wouldn’t be any homework, either. Because homework is boring and stupid and a total waste of time.

If only I were in charge of the world, think how much better a place it would be! Just wait til I grow up and found my own country. Now, that will be the happening place to be.