In preschool, I learned how to flush the toilet (it’s really a simplistically genius method). 

Then, in kindergarten, I learned how to tie my shoes.

In first grade, I learned that I was apparently “the world’s best tattletale.”

In second grade, I learned that cool math trick with the big square with little squares inside it (by the way, there are five squares all together, not four).

In third grade, I learned that I am actually a very intellectually talented human being.

In fourth grade, I learned how to exchange exasperated eye rolls with my teacher about my immature classmates.

In fifth grade, I learned not to eat the delicious-looking red berries if I get stranded on an island with a hatchet (I owe it all to Gary Paulsen).

In sixth grade, I learned how to tell someone to talk to my hand (but I still don’t understand why).

In seventh grade, I learned that the world is very sexist but I can still be friends with boys, even if my mom doesn’t agree (because America is a free country, and I happen to be a citizen).

In eighth grade, I learned that writing out proofs in geometry was invented to make my academic career as miserable as possible.

In ninth grade, I learned that upperclassmen only shove people’s heads in the toilets in movies (I think).

Unfortunately, I’m still learning how to balance my schedule and my mind to get them both at that perfect equilibrium where everything is just chill and I am free, for three seconds, to step up to the plate, conquer my fears, and become master (mistress) of all pertaining to the realm of philosophical thought.  However, three seconds isn’t very much time to work with, and I usually end up exchanging pleasantries with the catcher before I actually make it to the white bag with the cold metal of the bat in my hand.  The pitcher is getting pretty impatient with me by now, but you know, c’est la vie; I’ve never heard of a metaphorical pitcher ever appearing in real life to blacken someone’s eye before.  Besides, this is baseball I’m talking about, not hockey.  I would worry about a metaphorical hockey player spontaneously coming into being to darken my face a bit.  That might be why my sister, a big hockey fan, wears a mouthguard whenever she’s really stressed.  Or, you know, she might just have a screw loose up top.

So you’re probably wondering why I’m such a big baseball fan, or even better yet, how my train of thought can progress so far in only a few measly paragraphs.  Well, this is my diary.  Haha just kidding, it’s not--seriously, no one’s had their diary published since Anne Frank.  Her life was a bestseller, mine’s more just an “eh.”  But Anne Frank didn’t have an unhealthy obsession with sports metaphors, now did she?  Or a completely unorganized train of thought?  Look, I can be organized.  Just let me show you how boring it is.

1. Blah blah blah I learned a bunch of hilarious stuff in elementary school.
2. I learned stuff in middle school.  Bah humbug.
3. I learned stuff as a freshman in high school.  Yawn with a side of fries, please.
4. I am not a generally organized person.
5. I actually really, really, hate my life.

That’s right folks, you heard it.  I hate my life from my clean white socks to my pierced ears.

“Megan, come down for dinner!” my mother yells in an outrageously loud voice from the near vantage point of right-outside-my-door.

“I’ll be down soon!” I yell back, and my mother sighs, because both her and I know that I will not be down soon for dinner, that I will never be down soon for dinner.  We both know that my mother tallies the days on the kitchen wall, just like I do on my bedroom wall, and it’s been eight hundred and twenty-three days now since I’ve come down for dinner. 

I’ve learned too much to come down for dinner ever again.  I learned how to flush a toilet, tie my shoes, I am a renowned tattletale, there are actually five squares instead of four,  I am intellectually talented, I am good at showing exasperation through eye-to-eye communication, not to eat the delicious-looking red berries, how to tell someone to talk to my hand instead of my face, I can be friends with boys, proof geometry is the mathematical equivalent to a migraine, and people don’t actually get their heads shoved in toilets.

But there is one lesson, the most important of all, that I discovered and have kept hidden away in my chest for eight hundred and twenty-three dinners: I do not really exist.