Before 18 I should...

Sam tagged me with the “Things to do before 18” meme. I am supposed to list 6 things that I think one person should do before they turn 18. I will list the first things that come to mind.

1. The first thing that popped into my mind was getting into a relationship. It’s never too early to experience what it is like to care about somebody else, and develop feelings for someone in a non friendly way. The best lesson can be learned from relationship, and the earlier they’re learned the fewer mistakes one will make in the future.

2. Get a job. Getting a shitty job is probably the best way to encourage somebody to work harder in school. While working horrible shift at McDonald’s I would often take comfort in knowing that I’m not going to end up stuck with fast food for the rest of my life.

3. Plan a huge trip with a bunch of friends. A trip that will take you away from home for at least a week. I think trips like this build friendship a million times faster than by just hanging out, and seeing each other at school. The memories shared in these trips stay with you for life.

4. Find a hobby and practice it often. Particularly a hobby that involves creativity, and produces something that you are proud of.

5. Learn to critically think and to form opinion based on your findings not somebody else’s. Don’t take things as they are but learn to examine them further on your own.

6. Read about the universe, how it began, how big it is, and where we stand in it. Nothing is more humbling that realizing how insignificant we are. You definitely start looking at things differently.

Having mentioned these I want to mention that some of the points on the list are things that I wish I had done before I was 18, while other are things that I did and left a mark on me. Either way, it was a fun exercise coming up with the list.

Call animal control.. there's a bear in the neighbourhood

This week is my reading week. Not much reading has been happening, as usual. I have been dinking around watching movies, reading the odd non-school related book, and replying to a million emails.

This morning as I made my way to the kitchen from my bedroom, my mom informed that my dad with his detective skills had discovered that a bear was lurking in the neighborhood. He apparently saw footprints on the sidewalk early in the morning, which in his opinion resembled a bear’s foot print. I didn’t believe that it was true, but my mom went on describing to me the size of the footprint and the way it looked. There are bears in Ontario, but they’re usually up north, and when a bear happened to hang around in a nearby city it was because he escaped from a zoo.

During the evening my dad went on describing the footprint, and assuring me that he was certain a bear hanging around in the neighbourhood. He then told me that he took pictures of the foot print and suggested I look at them.

Exhibit A - "Bear footprint"

I looked at the picture and the shape of the footprint puzzled me. It didn’t look like anything I have seen before, and it was too large to be that of a dog. So, with family behind me I started searching Google Images of footprints of animals that live around here. First to remove doubts I searched for a bear's footprint.

Bear footprint

The raccoon was a negative.

Raccoon footprint

We tried dog, and that wasn’t even close. Skunk came next and proved to be a negative as well.

Skunk footprint

Finally, in a moment of brilliance my brother suggested “bunny.”

to make sure I looked at another..

Surely enough the foot-prints matched, and I felt like Cinderella trying on her glass shoe. The fit was indisputable, and the case was closed. We can all sleep comfortably tonight thanks to Google Images, and a little boy’s imagination.