The Most Wild Day of My Life

April is here and while the month is not necessarily important to me, it is for many others. April 2, 2018 marks the second wedding anniversary of my oldest brother, Cody. He and his wife, Tiffany, were married my senior year of high school in our kitchen. Everyone’s perfect fairytale. Unbelievably, the day did not go entirely as planned.

In the weeks prior to the wedding, my mom and I spent hours making the bride’s bouquet, the arch the couple would stand under during the ceremony and other countless efforts. The wedding was supposed to happen in our backyard with an almost limitless amount of space for the guests. We had chairs set up, homemade bows to go on the back of each chair and a trail of pictures to line the aisleway. We did a fantastic job.

The bad news: no one got to see it. Almost as soon as the last guest arrived, it began raining. We decided to have everyone stand inside and wait it out. Not a big deal. It’s a belief that rain on a wedding day is a sign of good fortune. Almost an hour later, the rain stopped. We were ecstatic to begin the ceremony. A group of us grabbed towels and ran outside to begin wiping down the chairs. They were soaked through quickly and I was handed the towels and told to run, emphasis on run, inside to grab more towels.

Just when we thought the hectic events were over, we were introduced to a whole new world of chaos. As soon as I walked in the door with an arm full of dripping towels, I looked to my left and witnessed the most stress-inducing event that could have happened. A certain person spilled entire large black coffee from Tim Hortons right beside the wedding cake. Naturally, the mess went everywhere and covered the entire bottom of the cake. I immediately went into panic mode. How is it that in a room full of adults, I, only having recently turned eighteen, was looked to by each person and expected to handle the situation? I understand the captain of the evening, my mom, was outside and unable to take charge, but I never accepted the position of second-in-command. Instead, it was thrust upon me and I handled it the best I could.

I went to get towels to clean up the mess. Timed seemed to stand still. While there were a lot of conversations and most people were unaware of what had happened, in my mind, it felt like people were throwing themselves on the ground, shaking their fists in the air and crying to the heavens for compassion. Dramatic? Yes, but this is situation was a whole new world for me. AP English could not prepare me for this.

As I’m sopping up the rest of the coffee, my mom comes in the door, looks me in the eye and is about to get angry at me for not taking more towels outside when she sees what I’m doing. She stood looking and simply said, “What happened?” She seemed calm but also like she was about to flip the table over. I explained, and we hastily cleaned the mess up.

If that wasn’t enough, as soon as we were done, it started raining again. Almost immediately after the start of the second rainstorm, it began hailing. It was at this point that we all threw our hands up and decided to abort our beautiful plan. We had everyone standing in the kitchen and began the ceremony. Shortly afterward, it stopped raining and I laughed even though I wanted to yell. That was one of the most stressful days of my life and only half the details made it into this story. Happy April!

An Ode to Ken Kesey's, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

As a giant nerd, my favorite part of this reading happened within the first paragraph of Chapter 5. It was the reference to the novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Paine paraphrases Ken Kesey in saying the inmates are now in charge of the asylum. This entertained and delighted me much more than anything else we have read for the class. The best part? The point being made is incredibly true.

Social media is ran and controlled by the individuals in charge of the platforms but is only as important and influential as the users make it. The companies could have the best campaigns, platforms and ideas but are only as popularized and needed as the users make them. Without users, social media platforms are useless.

As we all know, people are very much active on many social media sites. Paine writes of an interesting fact stating every minute a new blog is made. I am unsure whether this is a real statistic or dramatized exaggeration, but I would not be surprised if the number truly is that high.

Being able to “run the asylum,” the “inmates” have the ability to alter our world in almost every sense. Paine describes an event many users participated in. The author explains that during the 2005 election in Iran, there was an overwhelming controversy in which 200,000 tweets were made per hour on Twitter. These posts would have been seen by such a large audience and were held in their attention for a period of time that it would have become impossible for a user not to hear the opinion of at least one person. These posts would have had an impact on some readers and could even alter or strengthen one’s stance. By using Twitter as a means of expression, those posting to the platform had a direct influence on the topics users had an interaction with.

To believe users have no impact on the way social media is used and how it is used is incorrect. The only way the sites gain attention is by the users deciding whether or not they want to give away their attention. Without them, social media would be nonexistent but I believe because of our vapid narcissism and need to express opinions, social media will always take up a chunk of our time and space on our phones.