This past summer my mom told me that we were going to Germany to visit her cousins. Normally I would be excited to travel to another country especially one with so much culture. However, in prior visits to these family member we haven’t had the most pleasant experience. My family members we’ll call Marry and Robby, can be difficult to deal with. While Robby is mentally challenged and is overall one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, his sister Marry is in my words a nightmare. She has belittled me and my mother in the past, calling us “lazy” and “fat”. She treats us like she knows everything and we know nothing. She has also in the past invited herself to stay in our home in the U.S. for four weeks during the school year and heavy work load time for my mom.

This trip she decided it would be a good idea to eavesdrop into me and my mother’s conversations. My grandmother, though we love and support her, can be difficult. She is stubborn and a right wing fundamentalist who is convinced she can do everything at the ripe age of 93. My mom and I had a multitude of conversations during this trip about how to best deal with her and we often spoke negatively of her actions. Our biggest conversation occurred after my grandma disappeared for three hours without telling anyone. I spent two hours looking for her in a country I didn’t know and my mom called every number she could think of. She eventually returned and my mom and I had a long conversation about how to handle the situation. Marry decided it was a good idea to eavesdrop into this conversation and completely took it the wrong way.

A few hours later when my mom tried to talk to my grandma, she was completely cold and unreactive. At this point I reached the end of my “stresscation” while my mom and grandma were staying another week. During this week my grandma refused to speak to my mom and she couldn’t figure out why.

One they returned my grandma finally said why she was silent for the last week. Marry told her that we didn’t love her and we hoped she would pass away. This is entirely untrue and a complete overstep on Marry’s part. While my grandma can be difficult she’s still family and we love her as such. This caused a complete intervention to beheld including my mom and her brother. She couldn’t understand that Marry had lied and told her a ridiculous notion. This is until my Uncle Joey (mom’s brother) was able to reach her and have her understand that Marry was lying and made a comment without any facts or truth.

How we treat our elderly hs become apparent to me throughout this ordeal.  While I know my grandma is hard to deal with she is my family and we love her. Our words hold meaning that could crush self-esteem and we need to be better at communicating issues to all parties involved. We need to crete family policy and boundaries with my mom’s cousins so that this doesn’t occur again.

Many parents use time outs as a tool to discipline their kids. When a child did something wrong or something they weren’t supposed to parents would send their child to a corner to sit in silence. For me this was the worst punishment my parents could give me. I was always a hyper child my mind constantly raced. Sitting in silence with nothing to do felt almost torturous when all I wanted to do was run and play.
When I was five I thought it was a great idea to draw on the wall. I wanted to draw flowers to decorate our house to make it in my mind “pretty”. My dad saw this act and was immediately irritated. He sent me to time out for five minutes in the corner by the staircase. This punishment made me feel horrible. The first few seconds made me feel antsy and stuck. I hated being in the same spot for long. After about five seconds my mind told me to just walk away and I did. I left and when my dad went to check on me, I heard his surprise from the other room. He came and grabbed me and put me back in the corner and told me to stay another five minutes.

I stood there for maybe five more seconds and left again. While I understood my dad wanted me there to punish me for drawing on the wall, i couldn’t just stand there. I needed to be entertained by something, I needed to be doing something. Once my dad realized I left again he went and got me and asked why I couldn’t stay still. I explained that i needed to be doing something the best way a five year old could. To my surprise he understood and decided that the next time i misbehaved the punishment would be different.

After this act of drawing on the wall I misbehaved by riding my bike where I wasn’t supposed to. Instead of putting me in time out he decided to take away my bike for the week and told me to do something else. While I missed my bike and learned my lesson I was able to still do other activities where I wasn’t misbehaving. For me taking the thing that I misbehaved with was a much more effective punishment.

Many kids respond differently to different forms of punishment. For me taking things away was more effective then a time out. However, other kids could respond better to time outs, forced exercise, do extra chores. There are a lot of different ways to punish kids for misbehaving. Finding the right policies in your household could be a great way to push for good behavior in your children. The right policy could make all the difference in paenting.

When I was young I was very active in extracurricular activities. I tried a multitude of different sports and hobbies to bide my time. I did sports like basketball, volleyball, softball, and cross country. I also found a love for music when I was learning to play the guitar and piano. However, the one thing I didn’t really think about was martial arts. That was until my fourth grade science teacher was sharing a story about her karate class. This immediately peaked my interest, she spoke about how karate helped her form more discipline in her life and how much fun she had earning the next belt. After I heard her speak about her love for karate I went straight to my mom to ask her if I could sign up for karate class. My mom said yes and the next week I was in my first class.

We spent the first class learning more about the rhetoric of karate and the importance of discipline. While I found this class quite boring as the most exciting thing we did was practice a simple punch. However, this was only the first class and I continued to hold out hope for the next one. The second class came around and we learned how we leveled up belts and practiced a punch and a kick. While I enjoyed this class a little more, I was starting to feel like no one in the class took it seriously. While I understood this was just an entry-level karate class, I hoped for a little more structure and practice.

What really bothered me was the way you earned the next belt. You would typically think that you would demonstrate what you learned to level up but, in order to get the next belt you had to do kind deeds. While I understood the sentiment, I was completely baffled that the way to level up had nothing to do with karate. I ended up telling my mom about it and she found it odd too. With this new information I decided after that class to quit. While I could have tried a little harder I couldn’t get past the lack of actual Karate was done during the classes and the unrelated way to level up. It’s as if someone was tasked to paint a flower to become CEO of a technology company.

While doing good deeds is a nice aspect to instill in children, it had nothing to do with the class I signed up for. I found that taking that karate class was entirely a waste of money especially after hearing what went on later in the class. My friend who also took the class and said the next five classes were about the same. They spent more time talking then actually learning karate. Karate could have been another fun activity but it turned into a bore. Not all activities may be right for everyone and some policies within the activity may not translate well.

When I was in Kindergarten I used to take the bus every morning to school and from school. My mom gave me a talk before riding the bus pertaining to proper behavior and what to do if no one was at the bus stop t get me. On Fridays my mom often had to stay at work a little later and would mean that she may not be able to get home in time to let me in the house. My dad worked until late so there was no one able to let me in some times. My mom told me the first thing I do if no one comes was to knock on the door in case she just hadn’t made it outside yet. If no one answered I was to knock on our neighbors door and tell them the situation. My mom previously spoke to them about this. Lastly if they didn’t answer, I was to stay in the backyard until my mom came home.

While my mom not being home in time wasn’t a common occurance the few times it happened I was able to handle the situation and follow the instructions my mom gave me. On one Friday my mom wasn’t at the bus stop as I assumed she got caught up with work. Being five years old I thought it would be the greatest thing in the world if our door was unlocked and I could be in the house all by myself. However, when I checked our front door it was locked and no one answered my knock. While I was disappointed to not be able to have the house to myself I walked to our next door neighbors house and knocked on the door. They didn’t answer the door either. Since I was only left with one option I trudged to my backyard where I decided to play in my neighbors gazebo as they often let me play in it when I was younger.

Eventually my mom came home barely twenty minutes later. She saw me playing in the backyard and seemed happy and excited that I followed all of her instructions.

Leaving children unattended can be a dangerous thing to do but, if given the opportunity they could surprise you. I listened to my mom because I always understood that she knew best and in our situation her trust and instructions helped a situation that could have been potentially dangerous. Kids being left unattended can lead to kids running away, starting trouble in the neighborhood, or cause issues in the house.  However, a little trust can go a long way. While it is important to watch your kids, kids just might surprise you with their maturity and listening skills. Some of my friends had similar experiences growing up and that same trust was shown to them and they followed their parents instruction as well. While I would have rather been inside with my mom coming home from school I’m glad that my mom was able to trust me to stay safe when she couldn’t watch me.

Teen pregnancy has lead to some unwanted and unfortunate situations for a lot of cases. Many young parents, who are still children themselves, struggle with the responsibility of parenthood. While I myself have never experienced this kind of stress or scare I have had some encounters with the subject.

One time I was going out to the movie theaters with my friends. We were watching the at the time new movie Everything everywhere All at Once. Once the movie ended and I dropped all but one of my friends home my friend, we’ll call her Abby had to ask me for a favor. She explained to me how she has been feeling a little sick recently and that her period was late. This immediately raised alarm bells in my mind, as all signs pointed to pregnancy. She then asked me to take her to CVS or any drug store to purchase a pregnancy test.

We got to the store picked out a test and she decided to take it the next morning so she had more night of “not knowing”. The next morning I decided to call her and find out the results. Thankfully, in her situation, she wasn’t pregnant. However, the scare alone gave her more stress than almost anything else in her life. The stress of having a child that young was enough for me to feel stressed for her.

Being a parent is a full time job. It requires maturity, a living wage, a safe and suitable home, and much more. All of these things required for parenthood were not things Abby had. A child would have only made her life much more difficult and the baby would have most likely not have a normal or happy childhood. One big responsibility of parenthood is being able to put food on the table. When your as young as my friends was finding a job that can support two lives is exceedingly hard. With her fast food salary she barely has enough to cover herself let alone a newborn. However, as its stands in Pennsylvania, there are still options to choose from before a baby is born.

If she had been pregnant, she would be able to choose to keep the baby, put it up for adoption, or have an abortion. While abortion is still legal in PA, there is a lot of contention surrounding the subject. With most Planned Parenthoods in my area and many more having groups of protesters outside of the building. Having an abortion is not as easy as many make out to be.

There are many steps to it, like for some unknown and maybe unreasonable reason the “mother to not be” has to listen to a baby’s heartbeat before the procedure. While this might not sound like a big deal but, when your pregnant and your hormones are all over the place this can lead to rash decisions. While it is perfectly ok and respectable to keep a child conceived within teen pregnancy, a lot of people would rather not.

After many people’s senior year of high school, many go to the beach or some sort of vacation spot for “sweek”. The term “sweek”, refers to senior week, where graduating seniors will get a house at the beach and celebrate their accomplishments in high school. It’s one last hurrah before transitioning to college.

During my own “sweek”, my friends and I went to Ocean City, New Jersey, and stayed in my friend’s aunt’s beach house. The one thing about Ocean City that makes it different from other beaches is the sense of family and religious value. Ocean City’s main residents are small families that belong to a Christian Church. During the summer the church will send out their youth groups and volunteers to survey the people on the boardwalk. These questions usually start of with a completely non-religious question and then they segway into asking if “you believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”.

While my friends and I were walking along the boardwalk, one of their youth group members stopped us and asked, “do you have time to take a survey about the boardwalk”? We weren’t doing anything specific and thought it could be helpful to give feedback about the boardwalk so, we agreed. Without asking a single thing about the boardwalk, she asked if we were religious. She asked those who responded no if they would convert. She asked any religious question she could but not a single question about the actual boardwalk. We eventually got through the questions and realized that we just wasted our time answering questions none of us had any interest in.

The next day another youth group member approached us. She asked us if we wanted to take a survey about the boardwalk. We responded that we already took the survey and don’t want to take it again. However, this youth member didn’t move on. She asked us if we were sure and that she’s happy to ask us the questions. However, at this point our group was getting annoyed, we were tired of answering misleading questions. Even though we told her multiple times we weren’t interested in the survey, she wouldn’t leave us alone. So I decided the only way we were getting out of this situation was if we were more stern in our attitude. Up until this point we were trying to nicely decline but it was enough. I got up and went towards her, and I raised my voice slightly to say “we had no interest in her survey, we already took it, leave us alone”. This seemed to get her to leave.

After this event some of my friends were a little mad at me because they thought I was being mean to the girl. However, some others and myself thought I was justified in my actions. There is a social policy  that if someone doesn’t want to talk you stop asking, at least regarding surveys. Many people don’t take the time to complete surveys once, we did do it once and that didn’t seem to be enough to stop the surveyors. However, I still wonder if my actions in this situation were justified or not.

Back when I was in eighth grade I was having a simple sleepover with two of my friends. For this purpose, their names will be Alexa and Gabby. Gabby asked me if she could invite one of her other friends, Gia,  to the sleepover. After a hair of convincing I was swayed and decided to invite her.  Once she was here, she proposed we go to Wawa however, she suggested that we go at 2:00 am. While I wasn’t too keen on the idea, Alexa and  Gia managed to convince me and Gabby.  We waited until my parents were asleep and carefully walked out of the house.

We eventually made it to Wawa and got some food and drinks. However, Gia and Gabby walked off withouts us and decided to stop at CVS to use the bathroom. While me and Alexa made our way to CVS to catch up with them we heard a siren. The cops pulled the two of us over and asked us a few questions. What is your name? How old are you? Where are your parents? At first I felt a sort of calm that no matter what this was going to work out. However, as we continued talking to the cops my nerves started to get to me. As we were explaining the situation to the cops, Gabby and Gia are walking by on the opposite side the world. The cops suspected that they were trying to walk by without stoping because they couldn’t hear us calling to them. After calling them, they realized and came over.

During this time with the cops they told us about a curfew law. That minors are not allowed to be out past 10:00 pm without a guardian. While I now understand why the law is in place, at the time I didn’t know that this law existed. The cops ended up calling our parents and they came and got us. Thankfully the cops let us all off on a warning.

We were very thankful that no one got hurt. While we all got in trouble with our parents we learned that some laws are put in place for our own safety.

Overall, we had gotten ourselves in a dangerous situation. While we were young I’m lucky that no one got hurt and that the police were kind enough to let us off. Curfew laws can often vary between townships and counties. Our curfew laws were Sunday through Thursday, 10:00 pm to 6:00 am, Friday and Saturday 12:00 am to 6:00 am. These laws are put in place to make sure that kids aren’t going to get hurt or put into bad situations.  While I understand curfew laws are not the most risky laws to break they have a meaningful purpose. Their existence insures that officers can help keep children safe. This by either calling their parents or driving them home. Curfew laws have a useful and precautious use in today’s society. The curfew laws are put into place to protect children from getting into a bad situation

When midnight strikes the booms and blasts of fireworks roar. Fireworks are commonly used to celebrate the New Year as families across the country set them off. Many say that fireworks ward off evil for the year to come. Even though many people across the world use fireworks on New Years sometimes issues arise when the noise becomes too much.

During this past New Year I got together with some of my friends whom I’ve worked at Panera with. With a New Year on it’s way we thought it would be fun time to set of some fireworks in celebration. We decided it would be a good idea to set them of on an asphalt or concrete space to avoid fire hazards. With this in mind, we headed off to a small bridge with concrete flooring underneath. It was the perfect to set of a celebration of fireworks. The ground was solid, there were no houses around us, and my friend was certified firework handler. The conditions were nothing short of ideal.

We began to set of the fireworks one by one. As the pretty colors soared through the sky, we looked out in wonder of the pyrotechnics. The booming sound of each firework made us flinch every time. However, the crowd favorite of the fireworks had to be this sprinkler firework that came in a packaging that resembled a frog.

As we set off one of the last fireworks we saw a large car with a big light at the top of it it, approach the end of the wooded area. We soon realized that it was the cops about to put up a search light. As we saw the car we decided our only option was to run. As we ran through the woods we were surrounded by pricker bushes and logs that we needed to jump over. After what felt like 30 minutes of running we finally made it back to the house and plopped on the couch in relief.

While we understood that setting off fireworks could warrant a noise complaint is it really necessary to enforce a noise complaint where every house is making a similar amount of noise anyway? Fireworks have been a longstanding tradition on New Year’s Eve, what is the purpose of attempting to stop them when everyone is doing it?

It is currently illegal to own or operate a firework under the age of 18, but all of us were 19 or older. It’s illegal to use them after 1 am,  but we set them off at 9 pm. It’s illegal to set off fireworks within 150 feet of a building, we were in a park far from any houses or buildings.  So, what were we doing wrong?

I think that fireworks are over policed on days were fireworks are prominent. Fireworks bring joy and happiness to those who look upon them, why police it when everyone else is doing it. As long as the safety protocols are being followed I see no reason for cops to intervene.

When I was in fifth grade I attended a small private Catholic school; one of the topics taught to us was religion. My teacher at the time was very religious and almost jaded women. She spoke with authority and what she said is what would happen. Even though she was often strict during her class she would often veer off topic going on to talk about her personal life. She would talk about how her son is doing in school or about how her husband is a firefighter. One time she went on to talk about her first miscarriage.

She shared this story as if she were a hero, like she was doing the right thing but, when I heard it all I could think about is the poor hospital workers who had to deal with her. When she was diagnosed with the miscarriage she had to sign a contract to insure that she was informed and consents for the medical procedure. On this contract it wrote the medical term for abortion: “spontaneous abortion”. This sparked rage in my teacher. She told us how she screamed and yelled at the workers to change the contract to miscarriage. She refused to sign a document that used the word abortion at all. Even though she didn’t have an abortion in the form she was thinking even the thought of an abortion sent her into a fit. She refused to continue with the procedure until they changed the term, even though miscarriages get riskier the longer the child remains. This very tantrum could have left her with long term damage or even death in rare situations. When she told the story she appeared very proud of her accomplishment. She spoke as if she was bragging about yelling at these doctors for their “unrighteous” terminology.

When I heard the story I realized that this behavior wasn’t exactly normal. I can understand having a strong connection to  your faith but to the point if endangering your life over a minor terminology just seems a little overkill. Abortion alone is already such a controversial topic and causes outrage throughout the U.S. but to scream at the doctors trying to help you over the terminology for a miscarriage just seems a little pompous and uncaring. The doctors were simply trying to do their jobs in a safe and timely manner. I can’t imagine the amount of stress put on those doctors during this time. Religion should not be a weapon used against small things such as terminology.

This story made me wonder if religion is worth the time and devotion that people put into it? This squabble, over terminology almost ended up with harm to my teacher. Is this really worth it? Would we not believe that God understands that a miscarriage is different form the fine print. Isn’t it that trust in God that gets us into heaven? In my experience with religion and in my own belief God would have an understanding that in this scenario the term “abortion” isn’t what actually occurred.