Hezo Kittie

So Kurt left for Japan on Sunday. No Kurt for a week at school so far is quite an empty experience. Kurt goofiness will be aplenty when he gets back and shows us what crazy items he got from his Homeland. I personally like that giant air-shooting trashcan-shaped gun thing that scares the crap out of people when they aren't looking, me included.

Kurt is a good man. He busted out early last tournament, but I still have the utmost respect for his pokerplaying abilities, and am probably not the only one. One time, I realized I was dreaming and I got so excited subconsciously that I woke up in a blur in the span of a second. This is Kurt in poker. Each tournament is the next year of the World Series, and like a freaking noob, he's just excited to be a part of it. Then, in a split second, you've woken up just like that.

I didn't know what to expect coming into Breaking Down the Walls. The fact that every day they had more and more people come obviously meant that it was an overall good experience, and something the committee planned, since neither I nor anyone else had little idea what we were in for.

It was more or less what I expected. The best part about it was the fact that everyone who attended came voluntarily; each participant arrived with an open mind. It's said that imagination doesn't happen without a little effort, and what made the program work was the fact that each person trusted the system and schedule that they planned out for us.

I predicted something a la the last third of Mean Girls (though I won't give away what happened in case you haven't seen it) and that did seem about right. But with more goofy games. I'm glad that there wasn't too many people with the "This is stupid" pout throughout any of the whackiness that we did. Even though it seemed pointless in terms of a purely, um, thought provoking experience, I actually believe that it did make people more honest for the more serious things that happened later. Though Stu said that people who had fun with each other were more willing to share their story, I think it just loosened everyone up so that people weren't afraid to say, or in this case, present, the truth.

Which comes to Crossing the Line, arguably the most important activity of the day. It's an extremely simple concept with some very interesting conclusions. Everyone stands on the long side of the basketball court, and Stu stands on a table on the other side. He says a True/False statement, and if it applies to you, you can walk over to the other side of the court. Then you stop, reflect for a second in silence, and go back.

What I thought was profound was the fact that I not only learned a lot more about a small chunk of the Cal population, I realized a few truths about myself as well. Crossing the Line is a very conflicting experience, and he would say things that I never honestly asked myself before, probably not in my life. And the situation forced me to answer honestly, whether or not I was in the minority of crossing or not. The activity actually made me realize certain inadequacies about myself, something I never would have expected coming into the program. It also opened my eyes to the various problems that people my age were facing, which struck me as pretty scary.

It was, in a sense, an enlightening experience, but in all the wrong ways and emotions. There was this one freshman girl who was a total sweetheart, and we talked about our life stories for a few minutes. We then put our backs on each other and had to visualize each other, and I turned around and it was like I was seeing an entirely new person. It sounds pretty stupid to truly see someone with open eyes based on their physical accessories, but her earrings, the ring on her finger, even her livestrong bracelet and her slippers really changed how I listened to her.

Later in the day during Crossing the Line, she crossed for witnessing/experiencing domestic abuse, and it killed me to think of such a nice girl having to go through that. And I wasn't the only one with this revelation. Although Stu told us not to speak during the activity, you'd be surprised how silent Crossing the Line went when it got into the more personal experiences and opinions.

I wanted to stand on the end of the basketball court, have everyone jump onto my back from the upper gym like Kevin Garnett and carry this group of people on my shoulders. Overly optimistic thoughts for sure, but I wanted to find some way to channel my feelings of inadequacy into helping people out of their own holes.

The compassion I might've felt on that Thursday has turned itself into anger as I came back to the normalcy of school and I realized just how many tightly knit groups there really are in the school. Nothing's changed, I'm just now unaccepting to how closed our age group is. Breaking Down the Walls showed me and everyone else in the program the potential we and our peers had in friendliness, honesty, and compassion. It's tough to find these things every day outside of the people you know well.

On my mom's birthday last Thursday, I was sitting at my own table with my 9, 7 and 6 year old cousins in Milpitas at Outback Steakhouse. The waitress came to us and asked us for our drinks and I requested a kids menu and crayons of my own. Hearing Stu's remark about High Schoolers unafraid to be kids, this can't be too uncommon of an occurrence, can it? Yet she gave me a pretty confunded look as she left to gather the materials.

They say without our silliness we'll never be able to share our serious side. Maybe we're just too badass for this age, girls included. But as it turns out, as expected, that one day of Breaking Down the Walls was the exception, not the rule. I'd be hard pressed to live another day where the people I encountered were as open as they were.

Not exactly the way I thought it would change my perspectives on people and, even moreso, on myself, but an interesting experience I'm glad not to have passed up.

Bravo, indeed.

"One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky..."