Category: Senior Literary

So, we all have been here for 3 weeks. That is crazy to me because it already has felt like 3 months. I want to start this off with, I am so happy to be back here. MSA is one of the only places where I truly feel accepted. Summer especially made me excited to come back, but we’re not going to talk about that. What we are going to talk about is how these three weeks have been. 

When I first got back here, I was ready to see my roommates as one of them was the one I had last year and who I consider a brother, and the other was friend that I began getting close with near the middle of the second semester and who is working his way to the brother title. Moving in was a struggle as always and after a rainy shopping trip with my mom, I was finally on my own again. Though I was excited, I was also scared. Not of being on my own, but of what was to come. I have heard horror stories from my seniors about how senior year will be. I was terrified of the commitment and terrified of the tasks at hand. I was also afraid of the social aspect. Most of my friends my junior year were seniors. This meant going into my senior year, I wouldn’t have many friends. There were friend groups that I floated around and visited and interacted with but nothing that I was a part of other than my seniors. But I had to swallow those fears and just see it for myself before I freaked out.

The first few days were surprisingly really fun for me other than orientation. My fear of the social aspect was quickly thrown out the window. Almost instantly, I was accepted by a group of people I was very fond with and interacted with a lot last year. Some I was already close to and others I have been able to get closer with. Having a group of friends that I relate to and can be myself around has definitely made this year a whole lot better. Not only this year but life in general. Another thing that helped get rid of the fear is the amount of people I have met this year. There are so many people that have come up to ME. I ALWAYS HAVE TO GO UP TO OTHER PEOPLE. Though sometimes it gets a little overwhelming, I have felt a lot better knowing that this many people want to be my friend. I will say though, I am a person with his own problems. Please, if you are a junior trying to be my friend, treat me that way and don’t put me on a pedestal. Now that I said that, I’ll move on from the friend yap. Not only have I been able to show off my new style, but I dyed my hair the second day of school and it is a choice I’m very happy I made. Just wanted to put that down.

Anyways, I have had a lot a fun this year. Sadly, the stories the seniors have told me were very true, but only on the responsibility and academics aspect. this is the most stressed I have ever been in my entire life. I have applied for five colleges so far, signed up for the act, and am dealing with a million due dates in one week. Next, I have to worry about scholarships and whatever else seniors have to do. But I understand that it is a part of growing up. Everything I am doing now is building my strength for college and for a career in what I want to do. This is a very scary time, but fear is a part of the process of being better. 

 

p.s. some of the stress is my fault ngl. but y’all already know that.

     I don’t know how to start this without getting emotional, but here we are—When I came to MSA I didn’t know what I was doing. I stayed in my room all the time because I was worried other would see that I didn’t really belong here like they did. I stayed close to the one friend I had that came to the from my town. I saw how amazing all my classmates were at writing, and I thought I wouldn’t make it.  

     But as the first couple weeks pasted, I found myself stepping out of my shell (or dorm room in this case) as I found that I enjoyed a lot of the same things as many people on my floor. Then as the first semester pasted by, I grew closer to those who I now consider my Best Friends, no matter how childish that might sound to some. I love my hometown very much, but I know that if I stayed, I would have never gotten the opportunities that I got here at MSA or would I have met the wonderful people here from all over Mississippi who taught me so much about places outside of the small world I used to live in. 

     This school has been more than just a building filled with classrooms—it’s been a collection of memories, laughter, heartbreak, awkward moments, and unexpected friendships. It’s been a place where we found pieces of ourselves, sometimes in the people around us, and sometimes in the quietest moments we didn’t think anyone noticed. 

     I’ll miss the chaos of the mornings, the sleepy stares in first period, the inside jokes whispered across the room, the lunch table drama, the group projects that nearly broke us (but somehow made us closer), and the teachers who believed in us even when we didn’t believe in ourselves. 

      We grew up here. We stumbled, we failed, we succeeded, we learned—and not just from textbooks. We learned about life. About people. About how hard goodbyes really are. 

      To the people who stayed, who left, who changed us in ways they’ll never fully understand—thank you. To the hallways that heard our secrets and the classrooms that held our dreams—thank you. To every single day that shaped us into who we are right now—thank you. 

     It’s time to say goodbye now. And as much as I wanted to sprint toward the future, I find myself pausing, just for a moment, to look back. To feel everything one last time. 

So, this is it. My final sign-off. Goodbye, school. You’ll always have a piece of my heart. 

With love, 

Crislyn Lance, MSA Senior Literary Class of ‘25 

Of course, I knew my very last blog for MSA was going to be about moments that are based on reflecting about time or about the journeys we take.                Not creepy or chaotic like my first blog.  That itself seems like a lifetime ago.  

Let’s talk lovelies.  Or just read, it’s what brings us together best. 

These past two school years have been the best story for me yet. Coming into MSA, I was ready to not get close to others out of habit of not fitting in.  I was worried that I would lose my passion thinking I would be amongst those who would make me feel as if my craft isn’t up to par, coming from an old environment when writing was considered inferior to things like sports and homecoming court.  I’m so happy by the fact that those nightmares didn’t occur.  

When I stepped into the Literary classroom, I found that I was surrounded by passionate individuals who had a voice and a strive just like me. And they weren’t here to step on me, but instead to lift me up so that I could stay and be taught by their own experiences.  I love being surrounded by other artists and their individual styles a lot.  Like A LOT.  Shout out to my senior class, their diverse voices are amazingly clever and bold, and every day since Junior year, I knew I struck gold with them as my classmates.  Amelia, Carter, Chanel, Cooper, Crislyn, and Sone’t; thank you with my full being for adding to the indents that carve me into a better artist. 

 Thank you too Dr. A!  Being under your instruction has helped me find a path to my voice.  Now I’m ready to take a path with more creative freedom. 

Throughout my time here at MSA I have grown quite a bit from the old person I was being just to survive.  I’ve learned what type of people I truly like surrounding myself around and I’ve learned that those people are usually the ones that I feel comfortable getting silent around.  I’ve learned to separate anger from stress and sleepiness from burn-out.  MSA has also taught me that it’s okay to want to be in solitude sometimes.  Being alone doesn’t mean you’re lonely.  Being alone has given me time to adapt to learning new things by myself because people I know aren’t always going to be around the corner when I turn.  That’s very much important to me because I come from a place where everyone sees everyone and everyone knows everything about you.  That doesn’t give someone a chance to discover themselves when people know every move you make and each choice you decide.  Getting a chance to decide for myself has been the biggest fresh breath of air.  Writing was my main escape from people, but now it’s no longer just an escape but a haven that I spend time in so I can spend a moment out of reality before I run back to it.  It’s great when I don’t mind reality.  

This whole experience has been worth it, and I can dive into all my gratefulness for my time here and all the people that are some people to know, but I’ll be here all day.  So instead, I’m going to go back to my roots with the movies.  This time, I’m dropping movies that sum up how I feel about this journey we’ve been through. 

MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED 

Madagascar was basically a movie about these animals and their self-discovery journey, right?  Well, they all learned something new about themselves every movie. Marty proved he was unique and not like the other zebras, he discovered individuality.  Melman learned confidence and courage.  Gloria learned self-acceptance and true love.  Then Alex not only learned loyalty, but he found his family.  Throughout my school life I’ve found different members of my family, and like any family some became estranged, and some taught awful lessons that I needed to learn eventually.  But here at MSA, this family taught me acceptance.  I first watched this movie in the Malco theater when I was in first grade with my aunt and my cousins.  We went to McDonalds after, and I even remember the drive, the fireworks shop we looked at was what I really remember seeing.  Sadly, my aunt passed not soon after from cancer.  It hurt because that was one of the lessons about life that I learned early.  Life’s journey isn’t always grand, but it’s the small moments that you cherish with people you love that are the most important. Like in Madagascar they went on all the wildest trips with each other, but they didn’t take any moment for granted.  They also stuck together until the end. Class, y’all gave me a lot of those moments.  Honestly. 

SING

Y’all know that part in the movie when Meena is trying to get Moon to stop having a pity party and he tells her “You and me, we’re both afraid for good reason.  Cause deep down, we know… We just don’t have what it takes.”  Yeah, y’all know the part.  Welp I’m pretty sure we all had that feeling at some point during our 13 years of school.  But listen, the moment I love the most in this movie was at the end.  When they are all lined behind that ribbon, and they clip the ribbon revealing a new beginning.  One that they worked so hard for despite the doubt.  We’re living in that moment right now.  After all these times we’ve wanted to give up, we didn’t, and now we will finally be able to cut that ribbon.  And just like for Moon and his father, all the self-doubt and pity parties you recovered from will be worth it.  Just close your eyes and listen to the applause.  You deserve it, after climbing up from rock bottom to see the moon.  

TOY STORY 3 

 

I got sick of watching this movie every day in fifth grade during state-testing.  Now, my heart is breaking remembering what this movie did to me.  It made me think that this moment would be so far away.  But now it’s 23 days away starting today.  Wow, okay, tearing up a little.  But this is the biggest feeling that I feel right now.  The feeling of letting go of old memories from your childhood so you can make new ones for your future into adulthood.  Right now, we’re all Andy’s.  And just like how he left his toys staring behind him, try not to get sad as you walk away from all the random friends you met at the water park,  all the teachers who gave you headaches, all the bus rides when you really wanted to laugh at those kids who  weren’t supposed be funny, and the bits of missed school days when your heart swelled at snow days, and it’s okay to get in the car like Andy.  All of those you may leave behind will understand. 

But yeah, again I just want to say thank you all and I hope to see you reign in your success in the future.  And like what Buzz said to Woody on his way to his next chapter, 

“To infinity, and beyond.” 

 

I’m not sure if this is the very last blog of the year, but I don’t see how we would have time to do another before the school year is over, so I’ll continue to assume that this is the very last blog.
It’s so scary to think that highschool is going to be over is less than a few weeks. Freshman year feels like a lifetime ago.

I know it’s cliche, and I don’t mean this lightly, but so much has changed. My taste in music, the way I dress, my friends, my family. People I’ve loved have died. Some of my cousins are getting married, some are already married and have kids. My parents got divorced. My grandfather died.
I’ve made lifelong friends from just spending 1-2 short years together. I’ve met so many talented people.

I like to brag about how, when were all distant, I know at least a few of us will make it big out there. I like to think I’ll see someone I went to school with here on the news. Hopefully for something good. And I’ll be able to say “I went to school with them.”

God, my brother is entering his sophomore year. That’s crazy to think. While my highschool career is ending, his has just begun. I can’t even imagine his senior year. What the world will look like in another three short years.

There are a lot of things I hoped I would have done before I graduated highschool. I don’t think many of things will happen. But I’m glad to have had the hope.

My sister will be entering her senior year soon. That’s scary. It’s hard to imagine myself in college, but I feel like it’s impossible to imagine my younger siblings in college. I can’t even begin to comprehend them starting a family, or getting married, or moving out of the house.

I feel like that’s just one way people cope with change that’s too big to handle. You just can’t fathom it. It seems less scary if it’s impossible. That doesn’t mean I don’t want them to. I want them to succeed. I want them to grow and progress through life. But it feels like I have to look through a foggy mirror to be able to imagine it.

I’ll be going to USM in the fall, and it’s nice to know that I’ll have the same roommate that I did this year. Assuming that he does go. There still might be a chance he goes to Georgia for college.
A new roommate seems scary, but I could also see it as exciting.

I think I really lucked out with my roommate this year. Parker and I have had so much fun together. We made up games to play on the 3rd floor. We made a like, super hard hide and seek game, where you would put on silencing headphones and blast really eerie music. All the lights would be off, and the other people had to hide in the room. We had people hiding on top of the cabinets, in chests, in cabinets, under beds. And the seeker would be completely blind and deaf.
We also had a game called the belt game. Where you would have to hold your feet still and try and doge a belt. If you screamed, the opponent gets a point, if you fall opponent gets 10 points.

Living at MSA has definitely ruined my eating habits. The amount of times I’ve eaten out with friends is absurd. I’ve never had more fast food apps installed on my phone at once than I have while living at MSA. It got to the point where almost all the employees recognize me whenever I go into Domino’s. The subway here, though is awful. I don’t know if any of you have had Subway here, the one at the gas station. I don’t know how someone could be so bad at making a sandwich.

My favorite monster flavour is Ultra Rosa, and I got super sad when I realized they weren’t being stocked anywhere anymore. BUT… there’s one gas station. One gas station in what feels like the state of Mississippi that still sells them. I was told that the only reason they keep them in stock is because they always sell out……. That’s because of me. Anytime I see ultra rosa, I buy as many as there are. I buy out the ENTIRE stock. It costs around $30, but it’s worth it, because for about a week I have my favorite flavour of Monster every morning.

All in all, I think MSA was a wonderful experience. It makes me question how my life would have been different if I had gone to school in hattiesurg though. Like how my brother and sister are doing. Would I have made more friends that I probably would have had a better chance at keeping in contact with? Probably. I definitely would have saved so much money on food and Gas. Gas is a killer. I go home every weekend because I work at a record store in Hattiesburg. And it basically just cancels out the drive there and back because of gas.

I’m very thankful for the chance I had to attend MSA, I’m very thankful that I got to meet everyone that I did. This school has done a lot for me, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to graduate from it.

When I say, Things Are Only Beginning, I don’t mean it in some melodramatic wind blowing through your hair kind of way. Like in the way I can’t say I don’t have some degree of youth to my disposition. Like, your life doesn’t end at eighteen or twenty, that’s crazy but like—When I turned eighteen, I had this thought: The Memoir Ended.

I had the Really Rough Period and then I went to MSA and things chilled out, and I definitely felt it that I had to put it on a scrap of paper at my mom’s house that I’d randomly scrounged out of my notebooks.

To quote:

“So you reached the big 18! Or the simple 18. Now you can do things like get married and [redacted] but you’re still young. You’re not even twenty. But all the scary things that have happened to you… Being a teenager and surviving all of that—For the most part you’re finished. You’re at the point where the memoir ends: you’re 18”

And I think after I wrote that, like maybe a few months after or so… I was very solidly proven wrong. I can’t even look at that paragraph and feel the same I was proven so wrong.

Thusly, what conclusion can be made?

You go through the easy part to go through the hard part again, and probably after a few months or years you’ll go through the easy part again. That’s how it works.

That’s a grimdark edgy version to say I don’t think I’m gonna stop being the parts of me I put behind a pane of foggy glass, because no that’s not a window, that’s a mirror you’re constantly looking at until you’re 52. And then you’ll be fifty-two acting like you’re twenty-six. You get me?

Something’s ending. I surmised that a long time ago. There are faces I’ll never see, voices I’ll never put to a sound, etc. But hasn’t that happened already? I’ve gone through that before. I’ve enjoyed a song for the last time, and it didn’t mean anything. I moved on to tomorrow. So what’s the point of this blog?

The Death of my time at MSA is still important to me. I won’t clog your pores with it, but it lingers on my mind. The space this place will fill when I’m gone, made for me to search through old photos, happy and sad ones. The bitter tastes and the ones that remind me to call that person or send me a message. I’m taking blinks of time and trying to press them down like leaves into books, but everything disappears and wilts, no matter how much force you put into it. And May 16th will come, and I will be gone. Circle of life, circle of life.

I think coming to this point of my senior year taught myself I am a repeat of a repeat of a repeat, constantly rewinding and stagnating on the same spots. But is that not the toll of being eighteen? Is that not the toll of seeing the world with wonder, full of promise and punctuation, and then leaving with nothing more than a bunch of memories behind you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLaDksDOcE4

you would think that after two years of blogs i would find myself more prepared with all of these blogs, not waiting until the day that they are due to actually start writing them. but i guess it is a good thing, life getting in the way that is. when i look back on myself, walking into this room for the first time, it feels like he isn’t the same person who is now pressing on the keys of this keyboard, writing this final blog post, but i guess in a way i wasn’t expected to be that person, i guess in a way i’m never going to be the same person twice, the crazy part is i think i achieved what i wanted here, in a way where i think im ready to start achieving better things someplace else.

 

“hi, im cooper (he/him) i enjoy classical art, writing poetry, and cooking. My favorite authors are hanya yanigahara, dorian gray, and mary shelly. and my main goal is to one day be someone elses favorite author. i hope that through this blog others are able to peer into my inner mindset and understand me through my work.”

 

this was the bio that i gave myself when i first got here and learned that i had to write blogs once a week, which looking back after almost an entire year of only doing them once a month sounds like a crazy achievement. 

 

looking back on what i wrote about myself, a lot of it is true, i still love to cook, write poetry, and read. and i still love every author that i have on that list, but now i get to add names, names like donna tartt, charles bukowski, and stephen chbosky. i also get to say that i don’t think i need others to “peer into my mindset” or whatever i was saying to try to explain away the insecurity that i had with my own writing. but i think i have grown enough as a writer where i don’t think i need that anymore, if someone says they understand me because of my writing, great, but if they can’t, then maybe they weren’t supposed to.

 

i came to msa wanting to get published, win awards, create pieces that i loved, and i did that, and a lot more, and now that im sitting behind this screen for one of the last times, with a lot of blogs that im proud of and just as many ones im not, i know that i am not the same person as the guy who wrote that first blog about A24, i am now a person who knows that i will never be the same, but am i happy that i got to be that person for a bit, because if not i wouldn’t be who i am now

 

not the person who is able to create pieces that he is proud of, or the person to not be ashamed of who he has become, and certainly not the person who is about to move across the country.

it took a long time for me to realize what it was going to take for me to keep growing, it took a long time for me to realize that 821 miles and studying under the best writers in the country was what i needed, but i guess you never really do until it is staring back at you in the face.

 

so as i look back and begin my final paragraph on my final blog for my final year at the mississippi school of the arts, i’m happy to know that i’m not just another person pushing their fingers against the keys to fill space and get ready for the next person, im happy to know that i wasn’t just another person in this chair, and im happy to know that i don’t think ill ever stop growing, ever

later, 

cooper

 

 

 

Frogbloginning (Frog-blog-beginning) 

 

And here we are again. It’s time… for the frog finale. The frog finale waits for no one, not even the past frog blog just a post before it. This is the final blog of senior year, and thus my final blog post at MSA. 

These two years have been everything in a heart and skull. There’s so much to leave, and leaving it dredges up blue tinted reminiscence. I don’t want to make my sendoff bittersweet. I’ll have all the time to taste that flavor at graduation, to sit with it on the car ride home. I want this goodbye to be frog. To be me. To be something I can be happy leaving! Which is frog. All of that is frog. Frogtastic, even. Obviously, there is no true escaping bittersweetness, but I can still make it me, and I can make it something I love. 

So, to you I say goodbye, but plant your feet just for frog! I want to start us off with a fun fact about general frog biology. I say general because nature knows that if there isn’t an exception now, there has been or will be. But our funky frogs sport no foveas (a small depression in our retinas where we have highest visual acuity). (source). They can spot tiny changes, but struggle with still scenery, so skittering bugs are easier for them to spot than a motionless rock. Everything stuck in stasis blurs into obscurity. This is all fine by frogs, however, because they’re sit and wait predators. It’s not like they’re going to track down their prey, and any prey is good prey anyways. Evolution just didn’t see a point in meddling with frog vision any further.  

Now, let us behold: the frogs!

Fowler’s Toad (Anaxyrus fowleri) 

(Source 1) (Source 2) 

This is a frog you’ve likely seen before if you live in the US. They’re pretty much the most common frog where I live in the south! Well, toad, but remember, for as long as I may repeat it: all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. It makes me smile to include Fowler’s toads at long last, because for how often I’ve seen them, a majority of my life they never had a name. When I was younger, my Oma used to take me and my sibling out looking for them. And they’re Fowler’s toads! Not to be confused with the American toad (Anaxyrus americanus), which not only looks similar, but commonly hybridizes with the Fowler’s toad. (See this visual from the Virgina Herpetology Society!) Unhybridized Fowler’s toads can be made clear by their pure white bellies, which can sometimes sport one central spot at most. As for the name, which I was personally curious about, is from herpetologist Mary. H. Hinckley, who named it the Fowler’s toad in honor of naturalist Samuel P. Fowler. 

 

American Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea, also called Dryophytes cinereus) 

(Source 1) (Source 2) (Source 3) 

I’ve actually only seen these guys a few times, but each time I have, it’s been a joy! Which is no surprise, coming from the frog person. I remember the first time I saw one as a kid, my first thought was that it must have escaped from somewhere, because Mississippi surely couldn’t have cool tropic-looking rainforest-maybe frogs. But then I realized I had just never seen them before, always having assumed Fowler’s toads were the default around here. The reason I saw Fowler’s toads more was probably because green treefrogs are aboreal! They like things from leaves to branches to the eaves of buildings. They also have calls for alarming other green tree frogs of danger, and they’re known to make their calls louder before rainfall. Also, despite the green in their title, they can change to shades of brown depending on temperature or stress levels. You might remember another frog species doing the same thing from previous blogs! It’s more common than you’d think! The green treefrogs I’ve seen have had sunny yellow dots along their backs as well.  

 

Southern Chorus Frog 

(Source 1) (Source 2) 

This part is for a frog I haven’t actually met at all! Their species is native to where I live, but alas, we are unacquainted. As froglets, they tend to stay near their birth pond, but with age they move outwards to pine forests, then back to shallows during breeding season. They like sand they can burrow into and limestone sinkholes, too! They spend most of dry season nestled nicely underground. Southern chorus frogs are called chorus frogs because of their distinctive call, which the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission describes as sounding like, “A mechanical, rasping trill, which some say resembles the sound of a ratchet-type wrench.” They sound pretty cool; you can look up videos online! The name itself is also just really neat sounding. Southern chorus frog. 

 

Frogblogending (Frog-blog-ending)  

 

And those are some frogs! I went with a bit of a theme this time, as you might have seen. Most of the frogs I put here are frogs we might not get the pleasure to see face to face; ones so outside our scope of reality that they’re easy to just absorb as nothing more than knowledge. So I wanted to do something closer to home for this final frog blog. This is a time that deserves a marker, after all. I think that there will still be Fowler’s toads at my college. If you ever want to learn more about these guys, there’s tons of sources online! Finding sources for these guys even pointed me to the websites of wildlife agencies for different states. AmphibiaWeb is fun to scrounge about on, too! 

To my blog, I think I should say goodbye. But goodbye sounds too final. I like the sound of “I’ll see you later,” more. So, I’ll see you later. Frog on! 

Hey you, you’re probably like me, and by that I mean about to graduate high school, eek, scary right? But in all seriousness, the closer the end of senior year approaches, the more I think about being a kid. And how this is a big deal for a lot of people, it’s like the first major checkpoint in life. And I’m living it, freaky.

So, in honor of all those weird feelings, I’d like to talk about an even ickier one, nostalgia. When I found it, people associate nostalgia with a positive emotion, I was befuddled, it’s always made me feel uneasy. I never kept any pictures of myself from middle school or anything, which I now regret. But I just thought looking into the past from the future was weird and unsettling. It felt more like mourning something to me, and it made me sad. That could be a product of society, burrowing the idea that women are only as valuable as they are young or something. I don’t know. 

That being said, as I get older, I feel less bad about nostalgia and more generally unsettled, but it has sometimes been pleasant. So in honor of that “growth,” I will be listening to things that make me feel nostalgic about my childhood. Its going to be in two sections: Little Kid, eeeh, and Middle School.

Little Kid: 

– Trailers 

A lot of my family members lived in trailers when I was little; trailer parks especially make me nostalgic. My granny on my dad’s side had the best Christmases in her old trailer. We used to play my cousin’s Wii U in her trailer and argue. And we all would wait for the bus in my auntie’s trailer. I think of them as a testament to a little goes a long way. A happy kid living in a trailer park can be as happy as any kid in a 3 story house. 

• The Wii

Let me tell you something about Wii Sports: Bowling, I get down and I dominate. Hours of playing Just Dance with my older sisters, watching them play Super Mario, and only getting to replay the easy levels. Getting DESTROYED in Mario Kart. And almost passing out during the Michael Jackson Experience. Very fond memories of the Wii. 

 

-LeapFrog

 

My memories of actually playing games on this thing are pretty much none existent. But the way the buttons and the little pen on this thing feel is such a specific feeling that I can feel when I think about it. I used to just love to hold it I think. 

 

-Nabi 

 

Now this one, I remember these games vividly. Lots of Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, Kung Fu Panda Kart Racing, and Riptide. I remember chewing ravenously on the little humps on the side as well. And we could watch Curious George on here too, so that was dope.  

 

-Silly little tablet’s name I couldn’t remember 

Much like the Leapfrog, I can’t really remember games on this one, upon googling examples, all I could remember was that stepping on them hurt a lot, and I might have had a Hello Kitty one. The movable camera was a blast, though I remember that.  

-Reading Eggs and/or Reading Eggs Jr.

I attended school in Brookhaven at Mamie Martin for first and second grade, and they would have us play these interactive educational games. There’s one other website whose name I can’t make myself remember. But what I remember most about reading eggs is the character customization. 

-This Clock

Mainly from I wanna say Head start to first grade we used these and they were my favorite ever. I loved working on times, finishing early and just twisting the hands around over and over again.

-Tire Swings

Me and my cousins would play on this a tire swing right outside one of there houses. I remember not really enjoying it cause I would have these shorts on and the tire was rough and hurt my legs. I was also scared there could be a snake or bugs in there. Pretty sure there was once. 

-Bug Juice

 

These things are God awful now, but when I was little, I used to throw these back like crazy. It was a staple for my father to pick me up one of these before dropping me off at home with my mom. 

 

-Kid’s Kingdom

The superior playground, I never had fun here. Except the one time I saw a lizard, got scared, ran, and lost my brand new shoe. I refused to go back for it, so my dad was mad. I remember finding out they closed it here and being devastated. 

I have begun to find things that I have now or in recent years that I know will be things to make me nostalgic in years to come.

Nostalgia is an uncomfortable emotion for me, so this was fun to write, and it even became fun discussing with other people my age. I would like to know what makes you nostalgic. I could literally talk about this for hours.