Monday, May 6, 2013
Mel waxes on semi-poetically about a staple of Narragansett life throughout her early to late teens.
May was always my favorite month of the year when I was in middle and high school. Actually, it still is, now that I think about it. What wasn't there to love about the month of May? The weather is warming up, baseball season is in full swing, and it was the final stretch of school. It's that weird stretch of time where there was still school, but it seemed as if everybody seemed more distracted about the summer. Plus, all the really cool field trips always happened during this month. From the fourth grade up until my junior year, there was one thing that always excited me – the annual carnival that always took place the week before Mother's Day, leading up to the day in question. I love carnivals. I enjoy them in all their hokey and …
Monday, April 22, 2013
Mel shares her thoughts and recollections from the past week.
I've always been a big believer in the goodness of humanity, but man was that belief put to the test in this past week, only to be ultimately rewarded. What happened this past week was a testament to not only that belief, but also the belief that goodness will always overcome evil if the hear, the courage, and the spirit is there. Evil prevails when good does nothing, after all. I don't think doing some whole super eloquent writing of this would work for me. If you want to see some great writing of this, then you should check out some other writings including this piece from Charlie Pierce in Esquire and this piece from one of my favorite sportswriters Chad Finn. And there's several others that capture things far better than I could even…
Monday, April 8, 2013
Mel’s first car and its misadventures are legendary. Long may she run.
Today, my brother and sister both stopped by at different times of the day to show off their new cars. Instead of being bitter and cranky about this, since I don't really have a ton of money to my name and I have already decided that I need a new phone before I need a new car, I began to reminisce about my first ever car and the misadventures that I had gone with it from the end of my junior year all the way to my first year of college. It wasn't that much of a car. No super special new shiny car. I got it about two and a half months after I got my license. It belonged to somebody that my parents knew of and they were looking to sell it. Since I was basically using my mom's car most of the time, they asked me if I wanted it. The decision …
Monday, March 25, 2013
Because laughing at inappropriate times seems to run in the family.
As my mom and I were heading into the church this past Thursday to attend a memorial service for my third grade teacher / cousin (for those who had her for third grade, it was Mrs. Rawlings. She died this past Saturday), she turned to me and said "Remember, we are not to make eye contact at all during the service, alright?" which to some may think because if one of us is crying, the other will cry. However, with my family this is not the case. You see, we're both prone to fits of inappropriate laughter. Anytime my mom and I are together at any place where laughing is frowned upon, a case of the giggles naturally seems to follow. It's not like we're laughing about what had happened, it's just that sometimes, our minds tend to wander at the …
Sunday, March 3, 2013
A string of coherent thoughts on an early March birthday.
Editor’s note – Mel originally wrote this column last year, but due to an oversight, it got lost in the publishing queue. However, since the core concept still applies, we’re posting it today. When it comes to my birthday, it's probably at the most awkward time of the year for people. On Tuesday, I'll be 28 years old. I'm still trying to grasp this concept of me being in my upper 20s. That kind of weirds me out. I get the feeling that perhaps I've missed the bus for adulthood a few times over. Or that I'll end up being, as the meme calls it, forever alone. These thoughts sometimes go through my head and thinking of becoming another year older always makes me think it. It's silly, I know, but that's how my brain works at times. When …
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Speaking out once and for all about my support for LGBTQ rights (with apologies to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for the title).
DISCLAIMER: The following is the opinion of myself and myself alone. It does not necessarily reflect those of the staff here at Patch or anywhere for that matter, but it is possible. You may not like my opinion, but that's fine. That's your right. I don't agree with it, but I respect your right to have an opinion. I’m tired of being silent about my support for LGBTQ rights. Yes, I said it. I support equal rights for LGBTQ people. I had been silent about my support for years (at least publically) because of my own fears of being labeled as a lesbian because of the way I dress. People already suspected that I was to begin with since I tended to dress in a manner that was more masculine in nature, but to say I support it would make them …
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Because Bob Marley had it right when he once said, "In this great future, you can't forget your past."
It all started with a glance at an old map of Rhode Island from 1870. I saw something on Reddit about an old map of Rhode Island from that year. I looked at it, at first, mostly just amused about how different the map looks in some ways but yet not at the same time. Narragansett was a part of South Kingstown, Warwick and Smithfield were both in one piece, and Lincoln and Central Falls were a year away from being incorporated as their own towns/cities. While looking through this, I suddenly found myself becoming curious about my ancestors. I knew a little bit about them, mostly from things that my parents told me or what I may have randomly looked up one night and forgot about. So I decided, for curiosity sake, to look up my maternal …
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Or how the zombie death flu nearly threw a monkey wrench into my prom plans.
DISCLAIMER: This article may not be good for anybody who hates stories involving vomiting. If my immune system was a baseball player, it'd be the kind of player that'd end up grounding into a triple play in the clutch with nobody out and the bases loaded. Colorful imagery aside, it's true. It seems that I always have a tendency to get sick when I sincerely don't want to be sick. It could happen before a big project is due and I'm actually ready to present it (never the other way around), my birthday (this happened twice), about to embark on the last week of an internship (now), or in front of my fellow classmates. That last one is especially awful. I ended up being "the nerdy girl who puked in front of class." (In my defense, it was …
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Saturday, November 3, 2012
A 9th grade story of Halloween plans gone downhill.
If there's one question that I can't answer it's got to be the eternal question of "How old is too old to go trick or treating?" And my inability to answer that question led to me beging really badly burned by some friends of mine my freshman year of high school. Now, for the record, I went trick or treating until I was a senior in high school. I did tag along with a friend my freshman year of college who was taking one of her little neighbors out, but we mostly hung behind. Despite the fact that I could pass for 15 at that time, I wasn't going to use it to my advantage then, especially since my friend wasn't going to join in. Even though I went trick or treating those other three years of high school, I kind of lost my enthusiasm and …
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Or, "A Toast to the Real Nice Guys."
I may not be a leading expert on all things related to the matters of the heart. I'm the first to tell you that I'm a D-student in that course. I oversleep and miss all the important memos so that when the exam comes along, I end up either failing miserably or just doing good enough to get a passing grade which constitutes as being just friends. So maybe I am just not understanding the whole appeal of the "bad boy / loner / brooding / troubled boy / rebel" as a result of this. It's probably the oldest trope in the book. We've seen it in all forms of media time and time again from Romeo and Juliet to Pride and Prejudice to The Sheik to Rebel Without a Cause to (shudders) Twilight. We see the dark brooding mysterious man always win out for …
Eric Menke
9:07 am on Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Happy Birthday, Mel! I enjoy reading your articles. Keep writing. more ›