Y'know, Andrew Jackson's name is very similar to the name of my favorite teacher...

Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of the United States.
A war hero, from the Battle of New Orleans and an invasion of Florida.
A husband and father, married to a woman named Rachel (very complicated situation regarding that, but never mind it for now).
The installer of the spoils system and Jacksonian democracy.
A person who tried to kill the National Bank.
(...If you're confused about this, look it up. Personally I recommend Wikipedia. XD)

And this is my retelling of his story. It is mostly made up, so do not take it seriously. It's just for fun, seeing as we haven't gotten to write fiction all year in school.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a boy. He was born to two people who were quite vocal about their opinions. Even at the age of five, he was already a mischievous, energetic boy who threw terrible tantrums when he didn't get his way. His family moved to a new town, which unfortunately did not welcome them. The town was a small one, set in its ways, fearing the changes that the outspoken, troublemaking family might bring, tried to drive them out. When the family stubbornly refused, a few particularly fearful townspeople encouraged others to help them burn down their house. Although the family managed to escape the fire alive, their home and farmland had been burned to the ground, the animals had disappeared, and they were all injured from the fire. Andrew's parents had been burned and were coughing heavily from the smoke that had entered their lungs, and they lived for a while, all of them in the wilderness, before they died.

Only Andrew was alive, and he was very weak and confused. This wasn't his first time facing death - truth be told, he actually spent time burning ants with a magnifying glass in his backyard (Oh! The horror!) - but he hadn't thought his parents would die on him. He didn't believe it at first. He poked them and tried to peel their eyes open and even screamed as loud as he could in their ears. But soon he was worn out and frustrated from his lack of success, and very hungry. He couldn't find anything to eat, besides mushrooms, which looked rather poisonous. Frustrated, he curled up in a ball on the ground, and fell into an uneasy sleep, accompanied only by his growling stomach.

While he was dozing, a few wolves came along, cautiously sniffing their way through the forest. Farmers often tried to shoot the wolves whenever they saw them, thinking the wolves would eat their livestock. The wolves smelled death, and followed it, but the meat did not look too appetizing. The two dead humans that the wolves discovered had all sorts of weird things on them, something that looked like a band with metal on it, and something on their feet that was hard and brown. The wolves smelled something living, too, and that was Andrew Jackson.

The wolves were faced with the decision of what to do with him.
1. Eat him (Not good...He didn't have much meat on him)
2. Leave him there (Not good either...He might scare away the other wildlife if he was left to his own devices)
3. Bring him with them (Not really that great either, but the wolves decided on that. They were curious to see what he would do.)

And so he was dragged along by the collar of his shirt to the wolves' den. The feeling of being pulled along on rocks and dirt woke him up, but he was still too tired to realize what was going on, and once he had been laid down on the ground, he went right back to sleeping.

He woke up later, feeling something poking him (it was a wolf prodding him with a paw), and sat up with a jolt. The wolves leaped backwards, startled. Andrew rubbed his eyes and studied his surroundings. He was lying in the shade of a tree, and there was a rocky outcropping nearby, under which the wolves lived, presumably. The wolves looked at him warily, wondering what the human boy would do now that he had been revived. Andrew realized his parents were nowhere to be seen, but then his stomach grumbled in protest, and he forgot about it.

Andrew noticed a dead deer, which had been killed by the wolves. He wasn't sure he'd be able to eat raw meat, so he tore at the deer until he had a hefty piece in his hand, and then left the area, looking for a fire or some other thing he could cook it with. One of the wolves almost chased after him, unhappy at the loss of food, but was stopped by his brethren. They decided that the human was probably leaving and would not be their problem anymore.

But that was not to be. Andrew Jackson soon trotted back, holding a stick on which the deer meat was skewered, and he was eating it with relish. He had poached some flint and managed to make a fire, and then roasted his meat campfire style. Jackson was already on the way to being a gourmet chef (but unfortunately, there was no TV at the time, and so he couldn't host his own cooking show).

Andrew's mind was much clearer now that food had quelled his hunger, and so he watched the wolves curiously. They, as well, stared back at him in interest. Andrew figured that if he seemed like one of them, he'd be able to interact with the wolves. He tried a howl, but it sounded terrible, because Andrew had never been a good singer. The wolves found this hilarious and began to bark in laughter.

Andrew began taking on the ways of the wolves, trying to become one of them. He would run with them, but he couldn't keep up, nor did he have the ability to hunt the way they did. He had to make do with traps he had devised, which could catch small prey. He slept with the wolves in their den now, and it was a cozy and pleasant time. Each day seemed fresh and new and exciting, and Andrew felt glad to be alive, for he enjoyed being in the outdoors, with so much freedom.

These days, however, were not to last. Years had passed, and by now Andrew was about ten years old. The wolves were relaxing after having eaten and Andrew was experimenting with his new idea for a food (he thought that perhaps he could create a sweet treat, a kind of fluffy white candy that could be cooked over a campfire, which he later called a "marshmallow") when they heard the sound of voices and feet stepping on brush. The wolves perked up, baring their teeth, and seeing their discomfort, Andrew put aside his primitive cooking utensils and hid himself as best he could.

The noise turned out to be from people, rugged men on horses with loaded guns and who chewed and spat and peered around with squinted eyes. The wolves were immediately alarmed. These men had probably come to exterminate them, as wolves were considered pests. The wolves had dealt with human guns in the past and knew just how deadly they could be. There was nothing to be done but to leave and run away until the men gave up chasing them.

Andrew couldn't keep up with the wolves, unfortunately, and the wolves were in too much of a rush to wait for him. Though he was a wiry and strong boy, he tripped over a tree root. Frustrated, he let out a yell and tried to break off the limb of a tree, but it only swung back and thwacked into his face. He could hear footsteps again; the hunters had heard him and realized that there was a person in the wilderness.

The wolf hunters came over to him, and one of them, a man with bushy eyebrows and a mustache that he could wiggle, said to him, "What's yourr name, son?"
Andrew could still understand English, but not very well. His brow furrowed in thought. But no matter how long he thought, he couldn't think of it. "Not know," he said to the man.
The man gave him a puzzled frown and conversed with his fellows before saying, "Well, where is your family, son?"
Andrew thought of saying the wolves were his family, but he figured the hunters would not take too well to it. In fact, they'd probably think he was lying and burst into hearty peals of laughter. Later they would probably talk about the funny boy they'd met when drinking in a pub.
"Not know. Maybe dead."
The men talked amongst themselves once more, and then the man got off his horse and lifted Andrew onto it. "We'll go to town, then. There's a family that might take ya." And off they went to the town just outside the woods, with Andrew looking back wistfully, having left behind the kitchen tools he'd just made.

Andrew Jackson had to get used to civilization again, and it was an uphill battle. He had never been formally schooled in his life and was illiterate. At first the other children made fun of him, but they soon learned that he had a short temper and settled all disputes with violence. Many a child had to stay home and recuperate from black eyes, broken noses, and all other sorts of scrapes and bruises. Andrew was sent to church over and over again to repent, but he would just slump over in a pew, stubborn and sullen as usual. The reverend took this to mean that Andrew was not willing to atone for his sins and apologize to God, and so Andrew Jackson earned the reputation of being "unchristian and unfit for civil life".

Jackson continued to be misunderstood by his peers, even as he grew to be an adult. He wasn't really such a mean person, but he had become bitter from all the things people had said and done to him, and so the boy he actually wanted to be, a quiet, happy boy living a peaceful life, had disappeared, covered by the self he showed to others, so frustrated and lonesome he had felt. One of the first people to sympathize with him was a woman named Rachel, who could understand that feeling of other people being so hard to deal with and how sometimes you just felt like running away from life.

Having lived away from people, Jackson needed a bit of help melting back into human culture, and Rachel suggested marriage. It was a human tradition to get married, after all. Jackson learned about Rachel's unhappy marriage and how her husband was saying he wanted to get a divorce, so they got married, since Rachel was the most reasonable choice for Andrew.

Jackson also learned that politics was the human thing to do. So he got into it, as well as war, though war was a dreadful thing. But he was still impulsive and made decisions like taking over Florida (wanted to try the orange juice, and he was forbidden by Spain to take any).

Then he was shocked by the death of Rachel. This was the first death he could really remember. At least his parents had died long, long ago, and he couldn't remember too much of it. But now, here was his best friend of more than thirty years dying on him. Andrew forgot about all that he'd been working on and let his inner anger take over. That boy who had been wild, partying and playing games when he was supposed to be studying to be a lawyer, came back, after he'd spent so much time crushing it down. And after he avenged Rachel, by kicking out everyone he thought was to blame for her death, he still felt empty inside. And he went on to get rid of the Native Americans and the National Bank.

But it was never enough. And it never would be.

(Ugh...This story didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. I got too confused because I would stop and starting writing it once in a while. Oh yeah, and I'll be gone from March 7th-12th, so don't expect to hear anything from me in the meantime)

Labels: andrew jackson, anger management, church, death, education, family, fiction, florida, horse, hunters, marshmallow, meat, politics, rachel, revenge, story, violent, war, wilderness, wolves

I know, my previous post, "Blood is Thicker than Water", also mentions thickness, but really, this title is fitting, so I am using it nevertheless.

Not that long ago, one of my pencils disappeared. I had only started using it recently. It wasn't really a great pencil - in fact, it was a Disney Princess pencil featuring Belle from Beauty and the Best - but I hate to lose pencils since they go to waste. I was giving up on finding it when I noticed a pencil on top of a supermarket flyer. It was the very pencil I thought I had lost. And my dad doesn't go around circling what he wants to buy on supermarket flyers, so that left one culprit - my mother.

This isn't the first time she took a pencil when she saw it lying around. I found two pencils of mine which I also thought I had lost in the room of our house that is her home office. I just wish she would ask me before she uses them. It's annoying, thinking that I've lost pencils when in reality they're hanging around the house, all because my mom wanted to borrow them for some reason or another. I guess she thought I would be annoyed if she had to keep asking me to lend her pencils, but still, having my writing utensils disappear mysteriously is really not convenient.

What really bothers me the most, though, is when people borrow things from me and don't return them. It happened in elementary school - I lent a girl my scissors and I asked for them back, but she didn't even remember having borrowed them. I eventually found them in the classroom. Then I went on a trip to a bowling alley with my class and a classmate wanted to buy a drink, so he borrowed some money for it. He never repaid the money (I don't know whether he would remember after all these years anyways).

And I had a repeat of the incident I mentioned about the scissors. In French class, we were making sachets in December. Sachets are basically little pouches with something scented in them (like potpourri). These can be left someplace, like in your clothes drawers, to make things smell better. A classmate borrowed my scissors to cut string, but she didn't return them. The next day, I asked her if she had my scissors, but she didn't seem to remember that (just like that girl a few years back). So I had to go into the classroom scissors box to find mine.

I wonder if I should just stop lending things to people. It's kind of a lose-lose situation. If you lend something and it gets returned, that's the one good outcome. But if you lend it and it gets lost, that's bad for you, and you'll lose trust in other people. And if you don't lend something, then people will think of you as stingy, since you have things but don't want to share them. (Sharing is caring, so goes the saying) Maybe I should require people to give me a compensation for lending which will be returned to them when they return what they borrowed. (Like how my science teacher will lend you a pen if you give her one of your shoes. That way you won't forget to return it, unless you want to hop around all day on one foot.)

I guess there's really no perfect solution to anything, though. You can choose to make yourself happy or you can choose to make other people happy...(You're lucky if it's the same thing)

That reminds me of something Thomas Jefferson apparently said. Because of Jay's Treaty (look it up, like on Wikipedia or something) France felt like the USA was taking Britain's side, so the US needed to repair its relationship with France. John Adams, the president at that time, asked his vice president, Thomas Jefferson, to go to France and work things out. Jefferson would have been a good choice because he was a Republican (Republicans at that time were supporters of France, whereas the Federalist Party supported England), and Jefferson was a respected man. However, he refused. Adams got upset, saying, "Aren't we supposed to be friends?" and "But you're the vice president!" and probably also said something about how he should go because he is vice president and not let the fact that he is the Republic party leader be an influence. But Jefferson said, regarding the role of vice president and the role of head of Republicans, "They are one and the same."

George Washington had said that political parties were bad, that they would cause unnecessary divisions and disagreements. Politics in general seems to be quite a mess sometimes. (No wonder my mom doesn't really like politics...) I mean, it got so bad one time that Aaron Burr, who was supposed to be Thomas Jefferson's vice president, actually shot Alexander Hamilton. (Hamilton had kind of convinced people to turn against Burr, thus making Jefferson president instead of Burr) And the US presidents end up with grey hair and wrinkles from their stressful job. I wonder what their true motive for getting into politics is, then. Do they hope to make a difference? Do they want prestige?

Labels: aaron burr, borrow, france, jay treaty, john adams, lost and found, money, motives, party, pencil, politics, president, republican, scissors, shoes, stress, supermarket, thief, thomas jefferson

We have this sort of inside joke. I tell her I am "burning up", which basically would mean I am getting angry. Then she says she'll "douse the fire" or "use a fire extinguisher". We have this conversation quite often. This time, she not only spoke her response, but also made sound effects and pretended to shoot me with a hose or something! I seriously was freaked out, because now I know for sure my grandma is not a harmless old lady after all, if she likes to pretend she is shooting people.

Two of my friends and I somehow ended up talking about the propositions during brunch - you know, those things we vote on in the USA. They were talking about people who wanted to vote no on Proposition 8 (which I will just say is regarding whether gay people should be allowed to marry).
Me: Isn't that a good thing?
M and N (in place of their names): No!
N: If you vote no, you're letting gay people marry.
Me: But that's good, right?
*M and N back away*
M: It's not...normal. For there to be gay people.
*I remember a similar comment from my mom, and mom's friend*
Me: But everyone should get to eat wedding cake! Who doesn't love cake? (besides myself)
*All laugh*

Anyhow, I should return to doing my homework right now, and stop being distracted by the Internet and my large pile of Halloween candy. (It is really tempting! I get hungry just from looking at food most of the time. Unless it's some gross vegetable I can't recognize, with sauce and oil all over it.) I've already eaten multiple pieces today! I don't know what I'll do if I can't stop eventually.

Labels: cake, candy, friends, politics

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