Retrospective

I scrounged up some old things I wrote back in high school. A couple of them seemed decent enough to put up here, so here they are. :)

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Eulogy for my second hamster; also an assignment for English (6-22-02)

Sean

"He's dead!"

At first, I couldn't believe my ears. My mother was holding Sean up by the scruff of his neck. His little body was limp, unmoving. I hoped that he would move, even just twitch - anything to prove that my mother was wrong.

He remained still as a tiny statue.

Sean was my second hamster. He was a normal-sized one, larger than my first hamster Clint, who was a teddy-bear hamster. His fur was yellow with a hint of orange; not quite gold, more of a bright orange. It was long and fuzzy, although during the latter part of his life it had started to thin out, a sign of old age. Despite the "bald" spot on his back, I still enjoyed stroking him when I came home from school. He never seemed to mind.

My mother had placed him outside the cage to keep him from the other hamster, Ken. She said that he was still soft and warm; he had probably just died. I didn't want to see him lying there, stiff, his eyes closed. I was crying before I could stop myself. I knew that he was already old - hamsters have lifespans of around one to three years, and he had just celebrated his first "birthday" a few days before that - but his death was still a shock, for I hadn't thought that he would go so soon. I wanted to stroke his soft fur one last time, but I couldn't make myself do it. He seemed so different, when his life had already ebbed away from his body.

An hour or so had passed before I could strike up enough courage to hold him. At that time rigor mortis had already set in, and he was hard as a rock. So different from the usually soft and warm Sean whom I always stroked in the evenings after school. The difference startled me so much that I almost dropped him when I placed him back on the table. The touch of death had changed him, morphed him into an unmoving, unfeeling chunk of hardened flesh. After that I no longer looked at him until my father had taken him, placed him inside a little plastic bag and disposed of him outside. Sean was no more.

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Something I wrote in class when I was really bored; pardon the existentialism ^^; (1-23-03)

Student's Mantra

Sit down in class and perk your ears,
Listen to vacuous words floating in mid-air,
just missing their targets by half a thought.
Get pen and paper and write them down,
Fold a day's worth of information and put it in your pocket.
Stare at the exam paper sitting quietly beneath your nose,
Read over and over again instructions typed by weary fingers.
Wrack your brain for answers long forgotten
To questions whose importance remains dubious and unrecognized.
Work. Toil endlessly without fail, needlessly.
Devour countless books, ingest all information.
Use it to pass tests and get your diploma.
Go to college, sacrifice all pleasure and experience.
Get your degree and acquire a high-paying job,
Indulge in your career, in its mundane pointlessness.
Be slave to your family, slaving for money
The true backbone of your existence.
Face problems whose solutions you didn't find in class.
Receive burdens your forefathers handed down to you.
Aspire to become the most learned, the most lettered
Corpse in your graveyard.

[In retrospect, this poem is awfully bitter. Goodness, what was I so riled about? XP ahahaha]