A monologue about owning books and other thoughts from moi

It was missing for about two years and then I found out.
Actually, it was sitting on the green, small table next to my dad's couch in the basement, underneath a notebook and another book.
Keep in mind that once, I had been desperately seeking out this book, and then had to settle with the notion that I must have sold it or given it away.
I had no inkling that I would find it.
It reminds me of that line from the Order of the Phoenix movie when Harry looks up at Luna's shoes, her Converse shoes hanging by their laces as put their by bullies, having been lost for quite some time, and then his friend Luna says "Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect."
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That reminds me, I've been rereading the Harry Potter series.
I don't know why really. I decided early September or October last year that I was going to freaking do it, one way or another, and then from there I slowly made the assumption that I would streak through them in the heat of summer. Every time I heard a blasted reference or read an amazing gif analysis on Tumblr, I reminded myself that I was going to read this series no matter what and finally remember everything that I needed to remember about the books that were once so dear to my heart.
They weren't that dear to my heart as much anymore. They were dear to my memory and my childhood, but present (at the time) 16 year old Danah hadn't reread (I "read" the series for the first time in 4th or 5th grade? So everything has been a reread since) any of the books in the series since the very last time she was in Syria, which was right before freshman year. I'd lugged three pound copies of the Deathly Hallows and the Half-blood prince, and risked (and received) a gigantic library fee only a few years earlier for bringing a library copy of the Order of the Phoenix with me.
But I had no bond with them, you know? High school changes you, alot, and you start thinking about other things and reading other things and you lose interest in a series you put alot of stake in.
So I decided to put a stake in them.
I didn't even pick them up purposefully at first. It was mid-July, I had nothing integral to do, and...I knew I should. So I pushed through every book, pushing past through Harry's adolescent years in a matter of days, and tolling through Harry's teenage years.
And boy, they reminded me of my own (still going) ones.
It's really freaking weird.
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So I'm sitting in my bed, with two books I'd never really though I'd read together. One is a relic of my childhood, a book bought the day after its release (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) that's older than several of my cousins, and then there's the sleek, old copy of Looking For Alaska that I thought was gone but wasn't really gone, but hiding in my house this entire time.
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It's strange how books start to have their own appearance to you. You love a book long enough, and you start to see that copy of the book, that bundle of pages in your hands, as something other than the countless editions you find in Barnes and Noble or you find online.
Which is why I'll never buy a new edition of the Fault In Our Stars. My copy might be temporarily lost, out on the outskirts and hopefully returning to me because of a bad lend, but hopefully it'll come back. Because that edition, torn and ugly and not as sleek as it was at the start, is still my bright blue book that I got signed by the author. It's still my book.
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Yeah.

Doing Things (By Yourself?)

God forbid, I write a post that's not about me. (mostly)
This is about everyone that's helped me get me to the point where I am now (and in a good way).
It's hard to remember on a consistent basis that I would not be in the position I am now without the countless support and selflessness of the people within my family, or my friends.
I also cannot say that I would be where I am now without my parent's wealth or insistence that I be above my peers in academic excellence.
Think about it. Parents pay for our education and screw ups, raise us as helpless infants, tolerate our annoying cries in the middle of the night and selfish whinings as tweens and teenagers.
Parents are the reason we're alive and successful the way we are, the reason we're ambitious and look ahead instead of around us.
Granted, our parents didn't make us become these things. We could have chosen not to be. But they made being these good things an appealing and available option. Money can't do everything for you, but it can open doors you didn't know could be opened.
With the wrong set of parents or friends, we could see education or selflessness or intellectualism as something beneath our attention, and end up focusing on things that aren't worth anyone's time.
Our parents and schools opened doors for us that we didn't even realize needed to be opened until it was too late. Thankfully, they were there for us to notice when we didn't or couldn't. The same can't be said for everyone.
The things most of us have done are mostly reactionary, or so I fear. We don't make our own opportunities, but check out the ones in front of us. I think of school clubs and organizations and programs when I say this, and I fear that the only reason we have access to these things is because of our privilege than whether we actually deserve them.
I'm just worried that one day the opportunities to do what we want with our lives won't be in front of us, and in the face of that limitless emptiness, we won't do anything at all without it being handed to us or taught to do it. I fear that without English classes we wouldn't write essays in our spare time, or read about History or brush up on Foreign Language. I fear that our education is seen as something as the basis for the rest of our life instead of just the beginning of a long-life accumulation of knowledge. I don't want to stop learning and doing things, but I don't want to be helpless without a structure to do those things.
Does any of this make sense? Probably not

The "Too Cool Kids"

It's bullshit. The whole "Queen Bees" mythos is such a joke. Not because that the elitism or the "brattiness" doesn't exist in real life, (Oh, but it does) but because it isn't as simply hiearchal as the media likes to play it up to be.
There is one large social group that is filled with people that go to the same parties and hook up with one another and smoke pot and etc etc, or the people that are at least well aware of these happenings. Granted, these are the kids that hear that rumor going around or the ones that are spreading it, the main audience for a majority of the "high school" drama that isn't directly related to school.
The wide majority of kids don't belong in this group, but the most vocal and "popular" members of each class are. Most kids have their own social group, containing their own dramas and gossip and information that the first group wouldn't care less about. These groups get smaller and smaller as you go down the list until you're looking at two best friends hanging on to each other for dear life, and those few unlucky kids without any real friends at all.
These groups are always bonded together by something, whether it be a similar set of beliefs/knowledge, a long history, a shared sport or extracurricular activity, etc. These groups mingle and merge and many people can be a part of more than one. The more well-liked or vocal you are, the more influence you have within these groups, even of those people you don't directly know because they've heard you in class or seen you in the assembly.
There are no Queen Bees, but there are people who act like it, and people in that social class/group. And they get judged.
They get judged by those who don't want to be a part of that group where hooking up is something casual instead of scandalous, and socializing is more important than grades.
I am not one of these people, no way in hell. I don't believe in that, and I wouldn't dare let my kids or my friends start doing that.
But the stereotype is starting to piss me off.
Sure, some of them seem "slutty" or "bitchy" and that kind of thing, but once you get past that (if ever), you start to see individuals, people liking certain things and being different from their peers in their own way. Some of them will still be shallow and cruel and vindictive, but you start to see them as more than the stereotype that can be assumed by their seemingly shallow conversations.
I have started feeling particularly defensive about this because I used to assume these stereotypes. I didn't even know I relied on these stereotypes as judgement until I met a few people that transcended it.
What's more terrifying about this stereotype is that we don't know how these people live their lives, or how they've been taught to live their lives. We don't know what hell they've been through (and we all have seen our own hells, even as you jerk your head towards their seemingly shallow banter in class) or what terrible things they've seen or even what beautiful things they've done. We don't know.
All we know is the stereotype, the ones that colors our lenses so fully that we can't see them in any other way.
At least, until we make ourselves.
(A somewhat patronizing rant, I know. Forgive me. It's been brewing in my head for awhile. Also, I continued to use the phrase "Them" because I didn't want to start going by individuals, and it's easier, at least for the sake of this essay, to go by that label. I wouldn't suggest thinking that way after this post.)