What your cheering for the 15 year old mediocre singer? Scream for the 81 year old man!!

Yesterday I had the chance to go this concert/conference called me to we. Or they called it "We Day" but like the rogers centre(For you non Canadians it's a sports stadium in Toronto that was formerly called the sky dome and I will always call it that). Anyways... it was run by free the children which is a pretty cool organization. I wasn't a huge fan of Justin Beiber or surprise guests the Jonas Brothers but ELI WEISEL WAS THERE
He wrote this book called Night which I consider on of the most influential books I have ever read. I hope to find a picture of me having my fan girl explosion later but I have been too lazy to upload pictures.

So...I guess I need to get to my point.

The day was empowering it was eclectic and electric. It makes you want to do more. I guess that is my point. That you can see everything that is terrible in the world and you can sit and cry (which sometimes you do need to do) or you can sit down and say HOW CAN I CHANGE THIS? Sometimes we like to throw money at a cause and hope that it will go away but really we need to get out there and do something. This day made me not only question myself as an activist but it made me question myself as a person. How often do we see the big issue get scared and do something small?

Big issues call for big solutions sometimes.

I have more stories to tell but I am trying to keep one story to one post so there will probably be multiple posts today.

FANCHILD ALERT

This is partly fanchild and part new lesson today. I'll start with the lesson cause it has a nice segue into my deep passionate totally mentally based yet platonic love for david levithan.

So I helped run orientation day today for the grade nines. It was my job to promote band and choir and the arts to the new members of my community.

What started off as a cheery "Get involved with your school's arts program sign up for band or choir today!"

Took an hour of not being listened to,mocked and ignored to change to

"Band and Choir"

and a few more hours to change to...

"Confident in your heterosexuality boys? Stick it to the jocks and join band or choir"

Needless to say we only had 10 signups total.

But it got me thinking about my orientation day. How different I was. Cause high school whether you have a good time or not is important. Even in a school as small as mine it's not very hard to reinvent yourself. Whats cool about orientation day is that these kids are picking their new lives and actually becoming young adults. The teams and clubs and classes that they chose are going to bombard them with new people and experiences. High school changes people.



AND SEGUE!

What's my connection? Well what I love most about David Levithan is the fact that he provides such an amazing array of characters gay straight etc etc and it's no big deal

Cause that's the way life works right? Or at least if you live in a moderately tolerant community gay and straight and whatever aren't huge. What I hate about LGBT teen literature is that a lot of it is one giant stereotype spread over the course of a novel. So not only is David Levithan a great writer who makes people feel all happy and stuff but he writes real characters who aren't defined by their straight or gayness. David Levithan takes the whole high school world and growing up and what it does to you and keeps it real.
That's something I learned this summer. That keeping it real is the best and most important thing you can do. We so often decide what everyone else is going to do what they are thinking and people surprise us.It's really beautiful.
So what this long and jumbled fangirl post comes down to is these three things
1.David Levithan Rocks
2.Keeping it real is great it lets us move forward and grow
3. By keeping it real we have to assume others are keeping it real and stop writing scripts for everyone then people surprise us and it's amazing.
One week left getting a new roll of film developed. I think I'm ready for this to be over.