Monday, March 17, 2008

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I was wearing a green polo shirt at church last night and my friend told me I should have saved it for today...I told her I had a sweater to wear today. And my green Converse...so, yeah, it's probably a little bit tacky actually. :) But hey, the sweater and the shoes are the same shade of green!

It is a very bright green sweater. When Mom saw me this morning she said "Green!" and Colin came popping out of his bedroom and said, "Wow! That's a pretty bright sweater!" I explained that since I wear green throughout the year, it has to be a very bright green to make it any different. :)

I tried to get Colin to take a picture of me, but he didn't really want to take pictures of me, so they didn't turn out very well....ah well, my camera has a timer on it. :)

I think the last time I actually remembered it was St. Patrick's Day and purposely wore green was at driver's ed...two years ago? Wow, was it only two years ago?

Ah, driver's ed...memories. Like how the fire alarm went off, twice, the first day of class. In a way that was good, because everyone relaxed in common disgust at being shuffled outside without our lunch twice, and how crazy it was that it was that day that the alarm was going off!

A guy from church went to the class too, which was nice, because that way I knew at least one person. Oh, and being unsocialized homeschoolers, we realized that neither of us knew how to pack a lunch. How lame is that? :D Although, the class was all homeschoolers and I saw some other strangely-packed lunches that week.

I think my friend ended up fitting in better than I did...he was the same age as most of the kids, 14 1/2, whereas at 16, I was the third oldest in the class. Which was fine with me....they acted hyper all week, and I just had to sit through listening to several of them waste time asking pointless questions. *shrug* He had his group of friends, and I made friends with a very nice girl who wasn't really part of the crowd either and we stuck together through the week. She and I both found the giggling, flirting girls very annoying, along with the pointless questions, and the time it was taking to get through things that were really perfectly clear if you just listened to what the teacher was saying! :)

Then for in-car, I got to drive with the oldest girl in the class, an eighteen year-old who had never driven at all! I'm thankful to God, and the good brakes in the car that I'm still here today! :P (Ford Taurus' have wonderful brakes!) Well, it wasn't quite that bad, but still... it was close. My teacher told Mom that I'd had to deal with and see things I shouldn't have had to...which sounds strange, but I think she meant the girl's driving! :D (Yeah, our teacher was a little strange too, but then I think you'd have to have an odd personality to be able to deal with teaching kids to drive!)

At some point during the class the teacher told us that before we did in-car we needed to have our parents take us to a parking lot and let us just practice stopping without slamming on the brakes, because she didn't want to be thrown through the window. Well, without thinking, I ask whether we have to do that if we've driven before? "You mean illegally?" she asks. Uh, yeah, I answer, just realizing what I've said. I felt better though when she asked who all had driven before and there were only two or three kids who hadn't! :)

We all had to take the test the last day, and when we were done the teacher sent us outside to wait for the tests to be graded. We got in trouble because some of us started throwing the little prickly balls from the Sweetgum trees (these things) at each other. The teacher wasn't real happy with us when we came back inside, and she made everyone who had thrown them go sit on the couches, and she lectured us. I'm sorry to say that I don't think most of us were very sorry, (no had gotten hurt or anything) and we were more worried that she was going to fail us because of it. But she didn't and we apologized. :( It was almost two-thirds of the class anyway, so I guess she wouldn't have made all of us redo the class, but she did succeed in scaring us good! :)

So, that, along with other random crazy stuff that I can't remember, was driver's ed. Oh, and my friend asked his mom if we could stop at Walmart on the way home the last day and get slushies because we passed the test. While we were there we saw this girl (probably in her late twenties) with a shirt that said "Skills" like from Napoleon Dynamite...and my friend said, "Sweet! ...Skills!" and high-fived her...at which point I wanted to either disappear or yell, "I'm not related to him!" because she looked very scared and obviously thought he was a little loopy. And I don't blame her, I probably would have been scared if some hyper 14 year-old had just unexpectedly high-fived me in Walmart! :p

Anyway, that last day of the class was St. Patrick's Day and I purposely wore a green shirt. One of the kids in the class put green paint stuff in his hair, (it looked, um, well, green!) and most everyone else was wearing green shirts too.

So, that was the last time I remember paying attention to when St. Patrick's Day was, and I can't believe that was only two years ago...it seems like it's been so much longer. Wow...

Okay, sorry for rambling on like that...it may be afternoon, but it's still a Monday and I've not had quite enough sleep! :p

I suppose I really should have worn orange today, since I'm certainly not Catholic, but the orange order seems rather odd in their own way. :)

Maybe tomorrow's post will make more sense...

7 comments:

Beth said...

Interesting. I am quite sure this is the first time I heard that you were in fear of flunking driver's ed because you got in a Sweetgum ball fight. The things you can learn online...

N said...

No, I told you. :)

Anonymous said...

I love your sweater! I'm the only one in the house wearing green today (but I always am anyway...).

It sounds like you had more fun in drivers' ed than I did! I'd much rather have gone with your friend than the people I went with (that sounds sort of sad...).

N said...

Since you probably wouldn't have gotten along with him, yeah, that does sound sad! lol You took it at a public school, right?

Hmm...drivers' ed, not driver's ed...I got that wrong didn't I?

Anonymous said...

We might have gotten along (or not!)...

I took it here:

http://www.stanleydriving.com/

I won a t-shirt with that lovely logo on the back, too. I was a very good student :P

Anonymous said...

Happy St. Patrick's day, Natalie :)!!!---Olivia Joy

Anonymous said...

Green...green...green.... Kermit the Frog would love this day. I actually really like orange, particularly since I am "a tiger." Today, I wore green, and a hat, (check your email,) just for the fun of it. OF COURSE I AM NOT CATHOLIC EITHER!