I'm on a Raft

Sometimes bad things happen.

And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

Hahahahahahaha okay, so THAT'S just a giant load of CRAP. No matter what happens, you can fight for what you want.

Like when one of the most terrible tragedies in the entire history of the whole universe happened to me.

Alice moved away.

But maybe, since you don't know Alice, you can't quite comprehend why this is so horrible. You see, Alice, like a lot of my friends, is very special. She's only lived in the U.S. for 5 years; she used to live in Korea. Now this in itself made her kind of special: sometimes she'd say things like "a whole cup of smoothie" or eat Korean yogurt (which is very yummy). But she was also very funny and nice and social and literally everyone loved her.

This is Alice. She's camera shy.

And then she freaking moved all the way back to South Korea!

Well a big party was thrown for her and we all said our good-byes and about a week after summer '09 started, Alice went back to Asia.

Do you have a best friend? Ignore my awkward and seemingly random transition and answer the question. Do you have a best friend?

I'm glad to say that I do. Her name is Alyssa and, like all best friends, we sometimes say things that are supposed to be jokes and then become one of the best days ever.

Like when we promised Alice that we would save her and decided to ride a camel to the West Coast and then raft across the Pacific where we would rescue Alice and bring her back to where she belongs.

Maybe we were crazy, or just crazy in love (with Alice), but I'm pretty sure we did this because, dude, it was Summer '09 and we were going to seize the day and try to build awesome crap like our idols, Phineas and Ferb, and a raft was an easy place to start.

So one day I went to Alyssa's house with only our mission on my mind.

"First," she said after I arrived, "we need to make a map so we don't get lost."

"Then don't we need Alice's address?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah. Crap..."

Luckily, Alice was on Facebook even though it was somewhere around 2 in the morning in South Korea.

"Oh, good, now we can find out where she lives," I said, relieved, "But don't let her know we're building the raft."

"Got it. I'll be subtle."

Alyssa: alice :)

Alice: alyssa.

Alyssa: DKW [this is our nickname for Alice], i have a question.

Alice: yes, IAW [this is Alice's nickname for Alyssa]?

Alyssa: where do you live? like whats your address?

So much for subtlety.

Alice: ...why?

Alyssa: no reason

Alice: [Weird Korean words]. I'm scared.

Alyssa: thank you!

"Okay," she said, "now we just gotta plug this into a translator..."

And obviously that didn't work so we figured we'd write it down, make our map anyways, and just ask for directions when we got to Korea. We got off of Facebook and instead went to the best mapping site ever: MapMyRun.com.

"Okay, we're here," Alyssa said, locating our town on the map, "and we wanna go all the way over...here!" She clicked on Korea.

A notice came up saying something about only going ten miles at a time.

"Wow. Really? That's gonna take forever," I grumbled.

"Korea is north of us right?" Alyssa asked, ignoring me.

"Sort of," I replied. She began making ten mile marks in a northwesterly direction. And eventually, it became fun.

"Oh, we should go through this town. It sounds exotic."

"I wanna go to Canada. Not that part of Canada, that part of Canada!"

"Oh, too far. We'll loop around here..."

(This is how long the journey would be. Over 6,000 miles.)

"Um, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I think we're lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."

"Well, stop and look for Korea!"

"Found it! So we just go in this direction. We're good."

...

"Never mind, we're lost again."

"You know what? We'll finish this later," I decided. "Let's go build the raft."

"Yes! The boxes are in my backyard."

We grabbed some paint and duct tape and a few other supplies and headed out back where the boxes sat, waiting to be put to use.

Our first order of business was locating the biggest boxes and flattening them out, since that's basically all a raft is. Once that was done we had to tape them together so it was big enough for me, Alyssa, Alice, and the camel. The tricky part of the operation was getting the edges of the cardboard perpendicular to the ground to keep water off our raft, but we eventually got it.

I scrutinized our raft and said, "We need a flag."

"Hold on!" Alyssa ran inside and returned a minute later with a pink pillowcase. "We'll use this." She placed it on a table and grabbed some puffy paint. "What should it say?"

"The Squad of People Dedicated to the Capture and Rescue of DKW Team," I replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Only that wasn't fancy enough for my best friend so she changed "Rescue" to "Resqué" but that worked for me.

"We should sign it," I said when she finished.

"No, we'll handprint it."

So we got as many colors of paint as we could and covered our hands with them. When that was done we pressed them onto the flag. And then we washed our hands 'cause that junk was gross.

"Now we need like a big stick so everyone knows we mean business," I continued. A quick search yielded a decent-sized branch that we could use to proudly wave our flag.

The next twenty minutes was spent struggling to duct tape the giant stick onto our raft without anything getting ruined. But thanks to our awesomeness we somehow managed to accomplish our task.

"What about those?" Alyssa indicated the smaller, unused boxes.

"We need life jackets," I replied, "since our raft is made out of cardboard and everything."

She nodded, opened up a box, stepped into it, and hiked it up so it rested around her abdomen and looked almost like a flotation device.

"It needs decoration," she stated, so I grabbed some paint and scribbled "[Heart] DKW" on it.

And by this time we were feeling pretty artsy so we decided to decorate our raft too. Or maybe that happened earlier. I mean seriously, I don't remember what I had for breakfast three days ago, so me actually writing this is kind of a miracle, let alone in order. But either way, we grabbed some Sharpies and drew some of our friends on it so they felt less left out. Exhausted, we finally headed back inside.

I ended up going home without completing the raft (by which I mean without Saran wrapping it so the cardboard wouldn't sink and get wet), but that didn't matter since Alyssa's mom threw it away about a week later.

But it turned out that that didn't matter either because by some miracle Alice came back and graced America with her presence. And she recently told me that she's planning on staying in America this summer instead of going back to her homeland. And I think that's a good choice because I'll probably never build another raft ever again.

So I guess that means we lived happily ever after.

The Zipper

Summer is one of those words that isn't really defined by the dictionary. It's more like it's defined by memories or things. Summer is spending all day at the pool. Summer is catching fireflies in the backyard at night. Summer is never wearing shoes; it's the amusement park, the beach, staying up all night with your best friend, having no concept of time, reading in the shade, ice cream cones, dancing in the rain, watching a thunderstorm, never putting on your sunscreen. Summer is living in the moment and not once ever regretting it.

Everyone's definition of summer is different. That's part of what makes it so awesome. So, from my personal definition of summer, I'd like to share one thing: the Homecoming Carnival.

I never liked the carnival much when I was little. The rides were either unsafe (at least to me) or no fun, it was usually muddy, and all the food, even the good food, was greasy and made me feel a little heavier the next day.

But all of that changes when you're in high school, and you're trying to have fun with your best friends while you still can, and it doesn't matter where you go as long as you're together. So, last summer, when some friends asked about going to the Homecoming Carnival, I said, "Yes." Not because I wanted to go to the carnival, but because I wanted to spend an afternoon with some friends.

The day started off like all should--with a good laugh. Now, because I'm a teenager, I basically came out of the womb texting. So, naturally, before getting out of the car, I finished up a text and put my phone in my pocket.

A few minutes later, I'd met up with my friends and decided to check my phone. However, there was something different about it...the battery cover had disappeared! Like seriously. I made everyone walk between where we'd met and where I'd been dropped off. It was just gone. Like magic, only not as cool.

So. Why tell you this? We thought it was funny. Maybe no one else does. I don't care. But it's also...FORESHADOWING! Sort of. I think so anyways.

The carnival, in case you don't know or have forgotten, is a lot of waiting around in line. It's not fun. Not even when everyone in the universe is there. So what do you do? You think. And it was somewhere in a line for something that I decided I had a new life-long goal to pursue. And that goal, my friends, was to befriend a carnie. I mean, carnies must have interesting stories, right? So I decided that, at some point in my life, I'd need to be best friends with one. And by "some point in my life," I really mean, "today or my whole life will have been a waste of time."

Now, at the carnival there's this ride called the Zipper. It's one of those rides where you get in a cage thing and then the ride goes in a circle or spins or both and your cage flips all around. The Zipper was one of those rides that, as a little, kid, I was sure I would die if I got on.

But things were different this time. When you're 15 and someone wants to ride the Zipper, no one backs down. Not even when you think you are going to die.

Remember Stacey? Stacey was there. She was also under the impression that we were going to die, so I pretended that it wasn't a big deal and told her I'd ride in the same cage as her. You know. Big, tough man and everything. Can't be a wimp now.

So, I spent the time waiting in line pretending to be brave. Well, maybe not exactly pretending. I'm pretty sure that I knew I wouldn't die, but you can never really shake off things you knew as a child; part of me wasn't sure about this.

Finally, we reached the front. Stacey and I were the first ones on for the new round, which meant that we had to around once while the first people got off and the new ones got on. We passed the time by looking at the graffiti: Carmen wanted us to call her. Or him. We toyed with the idea of doing it, but eventually settled for just memorizing his/her number.

(From left to right: Rachel, Stacey, and I

in front of a fun house mirror.)

The ride lurched as the Zipper moved to let on new passengers; Stacey screamed. Like serious terror-filled holy-crap-we're-going-to-die screamed. And she did it again and again and again and again until the cycle ended.

I saw a carnie approach the cage. At first I thought maybe the life-long dream I had decided on earlier might come true, but then he started pulling at the door.

Was he trying to make us get off? Maybe he was confused. "We haven't ridden yet," I informed him. The Zipper would be such a rip-off if I didn't even get to ride it.

The carnie didn't hear me or just thought it was best to ignore me.

"Maybe it's because I was screaming," Stacey said, "I'm sorry."

The carnie called one of his co-workers over and they both looked over the door.

"Are we going to die?" I asked jokingly. I mean, now that I was here, it wasn't so bad; we definitely wouldn't be dying anytime soon.

But the carnies didn't answer.

"We're going to die."

Stacey screamed.

"I don't wanna die!" I shouted at the carnies. Maybe more at Stacey. I didn't want to seem rude in my final moments. "There's still so much I have to do!"

Another carnie came over. With a screwdriver.

"Alright, seriously, are we going to die?" The carnie was using the screwdriver. Right before the ride was supposed to start. This wasn't safe. We were going to die. Killed by the Zipper.

I had finally made my peace with the world, totally prepared for my untimely and tragic death, when the carnies walked away without a word of explanation. The ride started up a few seconds later.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"We're going to die."

The ride was gathering speed; the cages began rocking. Ours would most likely fly off and crash into the Ferris wheel. At least, that seemed like the most probable outcome.

We went up-side down.

On the ride that would soon be our death.

Stacey screamed.

I laughed.

Maybe I'd gone totally crazy since I was about to die and everything. But I thought it was funny. Stacey's screams of pure, unadulterated terror somehow made a giggle rise in my throat. And I soon realized that we weren't going to die, no matter how much or how loud Stacey screamed.

Somehow, we survived the Zipper. Well, our heads hurt from being up-side down and we both wanted to puke, but we survived. Our fear was conquered. Stacey even wanted to go again.

I learned a lot that day. Yeah, stuff about facing your fears and obstacles, and being optimistic even in the face of certain death, and just living in the moment because you don't really know when your time is up. But I didn't really learn that. No, the real lesson here is much simpler:

Never trust a carnie.

As long as you spent money at their carnival, they are fine. They do not care if you (almost) die. Not even a little.

Never.

Trust.

A carnie.

Intoduction to A Dash of Awesome

Hello, people of the Internet, and welcome to A Dash of Awesome.

First off, I'm glad you Stumbled here or that you're some weirdo who scours the Internet for random blogs. It means a lot just knowing that people are reading this.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering what this is. Well, it's a blog, stupid. But, more specifically, it's a blog about me and my whacky misadventures. Let's face it: I'm awesome. And funny stuff happens to me. So be glad I'm sharing it with the world.

So maybe now you're wondering, "What funny stories? All you're doing is talking about yourself." Well, yeah, I am. This is an introduction to A Dash of Awesome. I'm trying to introduce stuff.

And now you're probably saying, "Fine then, what stuff?" To which I must say, "Stop talking to your computer screen like a crazy person and read instead because I was getting to that part."

So. Numero uno. About me.

My name is Samuel Jackson. And before you ask, my middle name does not start with the letter "L" because my middle name is Thomas and that does not start with an L. However, I do like to tell people that I plan on changing my middle name to L. It won't be short for a name; it'll just be L.

That's me! Aren't I adorable? :)

Anyways. I'm 16 years old and I live in Ohio and I don't think I'll be giving out more information in case you're a rapist or something.

Moving on. So now that you know the basics, I guess I'm going to explain why I'm doing this. Like I said before, I'm basically going to write about the random, funny things that happen to me. Which is appropriate because there is actually a story behind even this.

I have a friend. Several, actually. But I'm only talking about one right now. Her name is Stacey.

This is Stacey. She enjoys making weird faces at the camera.

One day last summer, Stacey and I planned an event called "The Best Day Ever." I'd go into all sorts of detail, but the Best Day Ever is its own story and right now it's just need-to-know info.

Anyways, ever since the Best Day Ever, we've been planning a second Best Day Ever. We just like to talk about it a lot I guess. And if it ever happens, I'll probably let you guys know.

But we must continue. The next piece of need to know info is a book. One of my favorites. It's called I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. If you've read it, awesome; if not, I shall explain. It's by a man named Tucker Max, and he basically just talks about times when he was drunk in an inappropriate situation and the unhealthy amount of girls he's slept with.

Now, I personally think the book is hilarious, but I could understand why others wouldn't. So if you thought the book was vulgar and you want to scold me about my lack of morals, let me save you the trouble--don't. Just because I like the book does not mean I approve of that kind of behavior or anything, but obviously Tucker and the people in his life are fine with that lifestyle, so I'm not going to complain. I'd never do it, but, hey, it's funny. If you were offended, that's cool, but I don't care.

Oops. I went off on a tangent. I do that sometimes. It's a sign of intelligence. Well, it is if you ask me.

Now, back to the story. Stacey had not read the book I was previously describing, and she really wanted to, but the friend I had loaned it from was loaning it to someone else. And then I remembered...I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell was a blog before it was a book. Naturally, I told Stacey of my amazing discovery.

However, instead of reading it, Stacey said that we should write a blog about our funny stories like Tucker did (only ours would be rated PG instead of X) on the Best Day Ever.

Now, I'm not sure if she was joking or not, but I thought about it, and I decided that that would be kind of cool. I mean, if people like stalking their favorite celebrities on Twitter to find out what color socks they're wearing, or if they read about what some stranger in Australia had for breakfast, why wouldn't they read my funny stories?

And the more I thought about it, the cooler it seemed. I know I'm young, but I'd like to think I know a lot about life. Maybe I could enlighten people? Or, who knows, maybe my readers could enlighten me? And I did used to want to be a writer; maybe my blog would become a book like Tucker Max's had.

I can't read the future, but there's nothing to lose right? So now I'm here.

And it only took one story that's barely even a story, but that's why I'm here. Sure, I want people to laugh and I'd like to be some sort of Internet celebrity, but maybe my stories can really change how people think. I live a good life; someone is bound to learn something from me.

Okay, done with corny, inspirational stuff. I have a few more things to add here.

The title. It's A Dash of Awesome. Why? Well, "awesome" is my favorite adjective; it had to be in the title. As for having a dash of it...I honestly don't know. I just came up with it somehow, and I liked it. I know that I was hinting that I have some philosophy to life above, but it's not part of some Recipe to a Happy Life or something (but if it was, a dash of awesome would definitely be an ingredient). If anything, the title just shows you how random I am.

And lastly...This is your blog as much as it is mine. Honestly, I expect to learn more about life from you guys than I expect you to learn from me. Actually, probably less than half of my stories will have big, important morals. Some will just be funny; some will be me posting songs or YouTube videos I like; some will be me going, "SAM IS MAD, HE ONLY GOT B+ ON MATH TEST!!!" So tell me YOUR stories, your favorite song, about the B+ you got on YOUR math test. Awesome thrives in other awesome; our awesomeness combined can really make a difference.