4242: Messin' Up My Mind
Quickie:*looks at time* ...so much for that =p
[some of you may have seen this on Faceache, but I'm posting to illustrate a point]
Also, "this problem" could have been made significantly less irritating on the eyes without that stupid dust filter--I bet it could easily be a <5k GIF, but this is the Facebook era of swiping images off the Interwebs and reuploading them to a site that resaves everything to super-ass lossy JPEGs!
BIG HINT: [Spoilar!]The metapuzzle is, "Why would preschool children solve the puzzle faster than an adult might?"
The meta-answer is, "Preschool children are looking for the very obvious--the first things they see. Adults read more into a thing than there might be at a glance."
[typeface may also be a factor--that one's not as good as, say, Arial]
I ended up falling asleep with my eyes open at my desk again, this time daydreaming about past regrets. It's not really as dark as it sounds--when I was younger, I had a poor perception of consequences, so I ended up getting a lot of bad marks for failing to do homework and things like that, all the way through college and, to an extent, the present day. As a result, I ended up missing out on a lot of opportunities due to failing to do some tenuously-related thing: e.g., in elementary, I was punished for failing to do eight homework assignments by not being allowed to go on the class trip to Williamsburg [I was actually given a second chance and had a zero erased, only to have it IMMEDIATELY re-applied for some apparent infraction in a different class, if swiss-cheese memory serves--MY FIRST TROLLING].
[[UNLESS THE "FLOWERS AREN'T PURPLE" WORKSHEET COUNTS, WHICH IT MIGHT]]
[[[if I haven't mentioned that before, remind me]]]
The Williamsburg Caper failed to instill a genuine fear of failure in me--despite the fear others might have of failure, I unintentionally ended up coming to expect failure and endure its fallout--as I ended up spending that time instead helping out in the library, likely my most favourite place in the childhood world. I played Word/Number Munchers a lot, I seem to recall, excepting when I was assigned to watch the library's computer print some banner or other... v-e-r-y... s-l-o-w-l-y... on a dot matrix printer that took the computer's entire memory process to manage.
But.
I was still in my most favourite place in the world, so even being bored didn't really seem that bad.
Flash-forward to college: A tradition at my elementary school was to have prior graduates come to speak at the fifth-graders' graduation--a really quick introduction, "My name is _____, and I am currently _____." [Only one person said more than that, a dedication to one of our classmates who'd died in a car accident at 16, which I'm sure was completely lost on the kids.] I remembered not really comprehending the significance of the college kids who spoke at my graduation, other than one guy had a really long neck [and, at the time, I associated this in my mind with "nekkid"--sincerely not knowing what the word actually meant], and I'm certain the only significance of my going through the ceremony for that year's fifth-grade graduates was with my former classmates and with the teachers who were still there and remembered me--all of whom I would have enjoyed catching up with at the post-graduation reception.
If you don't see where this is going, I guess you're like me and just read without thinking. [I confess to being thrown by some rather obvious twists, just because I "fall asleep" and don't analyze what I'm reading/watching as it comes up.]
I genuinely wanted to attend the reception--I did with all my heart--especially since it was being held in my most favourite place in the childhood world. However, my ride was less than enthusiastic about hanging around, and I didn't want to be left behind, so I gave my regrets and walked out of the school for the last time.
"Well, I guess you can't say much about regrets, since you didn't have a ride otherwise?" This is why I've been kicking myself for the last so-many years: The elementary school I attended is something like two miles from my parents' house. It's not like the college is that much farther, either--I could have stayed for the party, walked home, and gotten a ride back to college from my parents. Did I really need Misery Guts* for a ride? HELL NO, and I'm a fucking moron for letting her antisocialism take away my last chance to visit my Real Home. How often do I get to just go back there?? Especially now--it's a 7+-hour drive just to get to the city, and who's going to let some random woman wander around the school? [and who would remember me NOW who is still working there?]
*To be fair, I don't think sentimentality is in her nature. She comes across as a bit like me, anxious around even familiar people, so I can't really fault her for being kinda bad with socialization--like I have much room to talk, eh? Still. Why did I let her decision ruin my party vs. just doing something I wanted to do and working out the logistics afterwards, especially since the logistics are pretty straightforward.
In a way, little things like that formed the basis for my detachment from permanence, that I can't count on being able to see/do X, Y, or Z forever, so the sooner I can move on, the sooner I can find the joy in new things vs. reliving the regrets of the old. I hesitate to say it's even why I'm not really that close to family anymore--mostly "out of sight, out of mind" more than any serious estrangement, since I'm exactly the same way with other friends living more than an hour away.
This is vaguely related to the puzzle in a way I can't quite remember how I wrote it in my head. I feel like adults attach all kinds of arbitrary things to stuff that's really simple. Homework is simple--do it and learn, or don't do it. [I usually opted for "don't" out of lack of serious, ingrained consequence.] Adults add arbitrary things like, "You didn't do eight homeworks, so you can't go on the trip." What does homework have to do with a trip to Williamsburg? It's so tenuous, applying math worksheets and reading social studies books to getting out there and seeing a whole other city.
Adults are so complicated.
[some of you may have seen this on Faceache, but I'm posting to illustrate a point]
Also, "this problem" could have been made significantly less irritating on the eyes without that stupid dust filter--I bet it could easily be a <5k GIF, but this is the Facebook era of swiping images off the Interwebs and reuploading them to a site that resaves everything to super-ass lossy JPEGs!
BIG HINT: [Spoilar!]The metapuzzle is, "Why would preschool children solve the puzzle faster than an adult might?"
The meta-answer is, "Preschool children are looking for the very obvious--the first things they see. Adults read more into a thing than there might be at a glance."
[typeface may also be a factor--that one's not as good as, say, Arial]
I ended up falling asleep with my eyes open at my desk again, this time daydreaming about past regrets. It's not really as dark as it sounds--when I was younger, I had a poor perception of consequences, so I ended up getting a lot of bad marks for failing to do homework and things like that, all the way through college and, to an extent, the present day. As a result, I ended up missing out on a lot of opportunities due to failing to do some tenuously-related thing: e.g., in elementary, I was punished for failing to do eight homework assignments by not being allowed to go on the class trip to Williamsburg [I was actually given a second chance and had a zero erased, only to have it IMMEDIATELY re-applied for some apparent infraction in a different class, if swiss-cheese memory serves--MY FIRST TROLLING].
[[UNLESS THE "FLOWERS AREN'T PURPLE" WORKSHEET COUNTS, WHICH IT MIGHT]]
[[[if I haven't mentioned that before, remind me]]]
The Williamsburg Caper failed to instill a genuine fear of failure in me--despite the fear others might have of failure, I unintentionally ended up coming to expect failure and endure its fallout--as I ended up spending that time instead helping out in the library, likely my most favourite place in the childhood world. I played Word/Number Munchers a lot, I seem to recall, excepting when I was assigned to watch the library's computer print some banner or other... v-e-r-y... s-l-o-w-l-y... on a dot matrix printer that took the computer's entire memory process to manage.
But.
I was still in my most favourite place in the world, so even being bored didn't really seem that bad.
Flash-forward to college: A tradition at my elementary school was to have prior graduates come to speak at the fifth-graders' graduation--a really quick introduction, "My name is _____, and I am currently _____." [Only one person said more than that, a dedication to one of our classmates who'd died in a car accident at 16, which I'm sure was completely lost on the kids.] I remembered not really comprehending the significance of the college kids who spoke at my graduation, other than one guy had a really long neck [and, at the time, I associated this in my mind with "nekkid"--sincerely not knowing what the word actually meant], and I'm certain the only significance of my going through the ceremony for that year's fifth-grade graduates was with my former classmates and with the teachers who were still there and remembered me--all of whom I would have enjoyed catching up with at the post-graduation reception.
If you don't see where this is going, I guess you're like me and just read without thinking. [I confess to being thrown by some rather obvious twists, just because I "fall asleep" and don't analyze what I'm reading/watching as it comes up.]
I genuinely wanted to attend the reception--I did with all my heart--especially since it was being held in my most favourite place in the childhood world. However, my ride was less than enthusiastic about hanging around, and I didn't want to be left behind, so I gave my regrets and walked out of the school for the last time.
"Well, I guess you can't say much about regrets, since you didn't have a ride otherwise?" This is why I've been kicking myself for the last so-many years: The elementary school I attended is something like two miles from my parents' house. It's not like the college is that much farther, either--I could have stayed for the party, walked home, and gotten a ride back to college from my parents. Did I really need Misery Guts* for a ride? HELL NO, and I'm a fucking moron for letting her antisocialism take away my last chance to visit my Real Home. How often do I get to just go back there?? Especially now--it's a 7+-hour drive just to get to the city, and who's going to let some random woman wander around the school? [and who would remember me NOW who is still working there?]
*To be fair, I don't think sentimentality is in her nature. She comes across as a bit like me, anxious around even familiar people, so I can't really fault her for being kinda bad with socialization--like I have much room to talk, eh? Still. Why did I let her decision ruin my party vs. just doing something I wanted to do and working out the logistics afterwards, especially since the logistics are pretty straightforward.
In a way, little things like that formed the basis for my detachment from permanence, that I can't count on being able to see/do X, Y, or Z forever, so the sooner I can move on, the sooner I can find the joy in new things vs. reliving the regrets of the old. I hesitate to say it's even why I'm not really that close to family anymore--mostly "out of sight, out of mind" more than any serious estrangement, since I'm exactly the same way with other friends living more than an hour away.
This is vaguely related to the puzzle in a way I can't quite remember how I wrote it in my head. I feel like adults attach all kinds of arbitrary things to stuff that's really simple. Homework is simple--do it and learn, or don't do it. [I usually opted for "don't" out of lack of serious, ingrained consequence.] Adults add arbitrary things like, "You didn't do eight homeworks, so you can't go on the trip." What does homework have to do with a trip to Williamsburg? It's so tenuous, applying math worksheets and reading social studies books to getting out there and seeing a whole other city.
Adults are so complicated.