SB DUB 11 WHOO!!

Classic is driving. The iTrip is disappointing and staticky as usual, but we still get ruffled sound from my iPod (and not his), this passenger door is howling because of the air passing through it; apparently the repair from the car accident Brian and I got in over summer didn't patch up the door completely. This car is like, four-out-of-ten crappy, but it has nothing on my brother's '93 Buick that we drove (successfully) 12 hours to and from Green Bay, Wisconsin, so we should be good.

I like the highway. There's a bunch of cornfields and far away farm buildings, but other than that, it's just super speedy cars and changing scenic skies. Also, if you're lucky, you have a good friend or two to enjoy the ride with. Right now, we are trying to pass a car that we're like, 70% sure is a cop, but he's being a dick about it and driving all fast and stuff.

Today Classic and I venture to Missouri, the University of. This makes two other-college visits for me, and two for Classic. Last time was Bradley. What a piece of shit waste of time that was. Anyway, we are going to visit Sunday Robert and we have about three hours of driving ahead of us. I hope to make a bunch of road trips over the summer, some of which will probably be to see Robert as he dickishly elected to spend his summer in Missouri for the sake of in-state tuition. Broke bastard.

College, the beast we have made it out to be, has smeared my pile of friends, that used to be concentrated in one town, all over the face of the US. It was worse last semester, but everyone lives elsewhere now. If I visit you, it means I give a shit about you. Spending time with friends used to be a de facto aspect of life, now I have to work for it. Maybe I'm supposed to focus on myself for a while now, or maybe I'm supposed to dump my friends and find new ones. Either way, I'm not havin' it. Here's to clinging to the past.

Being in Springfield again, as usual, is weird. I guess I'm still not used to not living in a different place. I'll grow up one day. It's different this time though, because it's warm outside. It feels like summer again. But it's not summer 2010 again. It never will be.

Spring Break and I have had our quarrels over the years. It's not long enough, and merely serves as a preview of what you will be able to do after you go through two of the hardest months of school you'll have throughout the year. But this one is shaping up pretty well. Brian and I have thus far survived our trip to Missouri and are looking to have a couple chillaxing days in Columbia, which we are hoping isn't another shit town (we drove through forty on the way here). The scenery changes from just cornfields to hills, cornfields and crappy towns pretty much as soon as you hit the MO/IL border. It's quite amazing, really.

I hope to do a lot of adventuring this summer. I realize that all the traveling I ever did until I was like 16 was done with my parents. Now I have the ability to go anywhere I want with my friends over the summer. And that sounds pretty awesome. Except the part where gas costs a shit ton. Last summer Sunday Robert had this stupid plan to walk to Champaign and back over the span of a couple days. I was kind of down, but at the same time very aware of how dead I would be.

Last summer I wanted to hang out in Springfield at the same places with the same people every night. This summer I want to camp, road trip, make money, and play Final Fantasy. It's no longer a time for goodbyes and bittersweetness, but a time to make something of myself and do a little growing up. 

--Eliot Sill  

GI Joe's and College Apps.

I love senior year. It's the best. There's absolutely no parallel in all of anything. It's like you can do things and seem like a mature person and you can do things and seem like a young kid. Both are okay. For instance, only in senior year can you make a campus visit, have a serious talk about your future with a college advisor, come home, go throw yourself down a slip 'n' slide for two hours, then go to work and earn a decent paycheck. You can never act too old or too young.

Fact: I have a box of GI Joe's by my toilet that I play with during my spare time when I take dumps.

Fact: I have a good reputation as a hard-working busboy at a Country Club. I treat members respectfully and they commend my good behavior and work ethic.

Fact: I have gotten drunk while staying up until three in the morning playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 with both of my older brothers on more than one occasion.

Fact: I run three to five times a week, along with carrying out a steady push-up/crunch regiment to keep myself in passable shape.

Fact: Yesterday I was playing with GI Joe's and using the bathroom while talking to a financial aid advisor at the University of Illinois about my epic fuck-up I referenced last week. (Long story short: What's my name?)

I think you get the point. The point we're at now in our lives is a perfect cross between maturity and relishing these last moments of childhood. The phrase "act your age" has almost no bearing on me because I might go to a symphony performance or play an hour of Robot Unicorn Attack when faced with that prompt.

Going forward through senior year summer, we have time for the bitter-sweetness and the nostalgia, but in these last breaths of childhood air, we have the opportunity to act like dumbasses for the last time. We made it through whatever educational path we chose, but soon we enter the transitional phase where education transforms into a working career. As of now the two are totally separate. So as I cross the bridge between childhood and adulthood, ready to be an adult, I go down it looking forward, but make no mistake, I have eyes in the back of my head. A four-eyed creature, savoring the past and salivating at the future.

Only kids can act like monsters.

--Eliot Sill