Ahhhhh. The great outdoors..........

The world is becoming more and more dependent on technology. As electronics advance, we become lazier and lazier, and we stay inside, playing "bubble wrap 4:with colors" on our computers. As each day passes by, we spend less and less time in the great outdoors, our mother nature, whom without it, we would be lost. Rarely does a person, in our technologically advanced times, notice the beauty of sunlight reflected on tranquil waters, or the imperfect but beautiful patchy grass. I'm not telling you to be like Henry David Thoureau and detach yourself from society at a cabin near Walden Pond, but I am simply asking you to get out of your bedroom and smell the roses. Or at least go change your screensaver to a picture of a tree or something.

Precomprehensive exams.

Pre-comps. The word that strikes fear into the innocent hearts of sixth graders. The word that makes your spirits plummet deeper than the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The word that makes your stomach do a somersault. The word that every sixth grader fears most. Pre-comps. It is unspoken of at the lunch table, children eating their lunches in complete silence, even though it's their only chance to talk to each other. But they all look at the floor while walking in the hallways, twirling their hair, biting their pencils. No one dares to chew gum or leave their CJ's accidentally open under their desks. No one dares to look at the clock, because of fear of being mistaken for cheating. No one dares to wear a watch in case it beeps during the silent tension, breaking the aura of concentration. Sixth graders stand alone in the hallways, with wet, salty tears trickling down their purple cheeks, and the girls' mascara streaking down their dainty fairy faces, like black tears. The look of death, of cold, hard realization, the look of ugly despair crosses the face of the short, usually happy boy, who didn't fill out his scantron. The A-student sixth-grader, top of the class, buckles under pressure and bombs the test. In the sixth graders' heads, echoes of their parents voices repeat themselves like a broken MP3. "If you don't get that 100....." or "95 and above or you will.....". The sixth graders don't dare repeat the last part of the sentences in their heads, in fear of being jinxed, or putting a curse on themselves. The eternal silence is like an ocean of blackness, drowning all the sixth graders in its dark grasp. The thoughts going through their pubescent minds are what people thought with their heads in the guillotine. Some sixth graders make horrible, silly mistakes on their tests. Others blank out completely. But there are always the ones who just can't take it, the ones who let out cries of agony, the ones who know they have been doomed from the start.