Taylor Swift, you are really getting on my nerves now + other stuff

Today in the Swift/Kennedy saga:

Taylor Swift, 22, flew her boyfriend Conor Kennedy, 18, out to Nashville to spend a few days with her.

I have quite a few concerns about this whole situation.

1) If this kid is 18 years old then HOW exactly is he a junior at Deerfield Academy? I know a lot of kids at Dartmouth who graduated from this place and they're all the same age as me. I didn't turn 18 until I was a senior in high school. I'm not saying he's stupid but he might be if he doesn't attend class.

2) WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS? Taylor, I know you didn't go to high school, or boarding school for that matter, but you can't just pull your boyfriend out of school because you missed him. Get real, girlfriend, GET REAL. It's been MAYBE a week, TRY SIX MONTHS YOU HARLOT. I'm kidding, you're not a harlot, but you do need a healthy dose of reality check.

3) His dad is okay with this? Like what's the deal, dude? I know your wife just died and you're not reading my blog but COME ON (Gob voice).

Maybe I am just not rich or privileged enough to understand the reasoning behind any of this.

Other things that have really got my goat:

- Prince Harry's nakey nakey pix in Vegas

• Why in the motherlovin' world would the Royal family ever be mad about this? IT'S FABULOUS. Be naked more often, Harry. The world heartily approves.
• But if you were doing cocaine, Harry, I really can't defend you/ For shame.

- Republicans (especially Mary Fallin)

• Do you not know what context means? Or fact checking? I swear you people are the biggest bunch of turds I've ever had the displeasure of viewing on my television. To quote Fogel, er I mean...McLovin', "Read a f***ing book for once."
• AND you, Mary Fallin, I'm embarrassed to even say I'm from Oklahoma because of you. I can't believe the lies and utter nonsense that just pours from your mouth. Did too much hairspray seep into your brain or something? Do you even read the newspaper (not the Oklahoman)? Or do you only know how to regurgitate what other people tell you?

- Car shopping

• If you don't have to do it, don't.

Links pertinent to this post:

Taylor Swift Being Clingy | It's ain't healthy, baybeh

Is bullying widespread or is it isolated?

Because to be honest, I don't really remember being bullied or seeing anyone bullied when I was in elementary, middle, junior high, or high school.

Granted I grew up in a college town with a bunch of kids whose parents largely either worked in one of the factories or were professors or worked at the college. I'm not saying this has anything to do with how people parent but it might. Maybe everyone goes to church. I don't know.

I only remember one kid being harassed. The assumption was that he was gay (we never knew one way or the other because he never said...well, maybe he did but I never heard about it). He was also "weird" as in he wasn't a jock or popular or one of the smart kids. It wasn't that he was uncool, he just had no filter when he talked and he kinda lacked social skills. I thought he was nice enough, plus I never really felt like he took what those guys said seriously. He almost kinda played along with them. I think he knew they were stupid. We apparently had no tolerance bullying policy but the kids that harassed him were already in in-school suspension so what did it matter if they were bullying, right? If they were already getting in trouble, what more did the administration need to do?

Once in junior high, two of the popular boys came up to me and tried to use pick-up lines on me. Then, I was flattered mostly because I had terrible body image issues and thought I was ugly and fat. But then a boy (one of the assholes I tried to save) told me I was "porn star hot" and my body image issues were solved (but still didn't want to be compared to a porn star...gross). Now, I still resent that kid for solving my body issues that way but I appreciate the sentiment. He was young and stupid. I get it. And I'm not sure if those two boys were sexually harassing me because I didn't feel harassed or bullied. It WAS wildly inappropriate though and now that my cousin is in junior high, I am absolutely terrified that she'll experience the same thing. I guess the fact that I'm terrified of something like that happening to her is a signal that maybe it was harassment.

Maybe I never knew if anyone was bullied in my school system because I never hung out with people who were bullied. I was a goody two shoes throughout my entire life. I still tend to hang out with people who are hesitant to be mean and "do the wrong thing." This is not to say that in order to not be bullied you had to fly under the radar, be extraordinarily nice, and always do the right thing. But I was always friends with EVERYONE. I remember after Columbine happened, I knew I had to treat everyone with kindness and respect because who knew what kind of problems they were having, you know?

What is bullying? The more I think about it, the more I think maybe bullying doesn't have to occur repeatedly. I had always endured people (mostly girls) saying rude things like, "Why are you such a goody two shoes?"and "Who wears pink Barbie overalls anymore?" (We were in the fourth grade). But it was never repeated. They would just say something once and it was never mentioned again. Maybe my inability to classify anything that happened to me as bullying stems from the fact that I had fabulous parents who reassured me on a daily basis that I was smart and beautiful and funny and if people didn't like it they were probably jealous.

I've been reading a lot lately

Mostly because I know I won't have time to read when I get back to school but also because I couldn't read all summer due to my study abroad trip that I was supposed to be preparing for and now I'm not going on the trip (which is entitled to its very own post). Either way, these books...I won't lie...they're romance novels. In my defense, they don't look like romance novels. You know, the big strong muscular dude with a half naked woman dangling around his neck. That's not what's on the cover. They look so innocent! They trick me into thinking they're regular books and then I get ten pages in and then there's this line about how they touch for the first time and the woman feels "a quiver low in her belly." EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Have you ever felt the quiver? In real life, with your man. Yeah, me either. At that point, I'm too far into the story to stop, right? I know what you're thinking, I'm 20 years old. Why do I need this in my life? It's not like I'm a lonely housewife.

...But I am a lonely girlfriend in a long distance relationship.

So does that give me a free pass? Is it okay that these stories are quite frankly enthralling? Of course they're always about the big hulking (HOT) asshole who just needs a good woman to save him from himself. For a while, I was stuck in that pattern in my own life. Date an asshole, think you can fix him, he breaks your heart, you keep running back to him because you can get something that you need from him. The fact of the matter is...these books lie. You can't fix him. No matter what you try. You cannot make him stop drinking, pay his bills, be faithful, be truthful, whatever. He is the way he is because he wants to be. You cannot groom him into the man of your dreams because...the man of your dreams is the man of your dreams when you meet him. He's not a fixer-upper and he's not a dog to be trained. He's the man you need him to be when he appears to you.

I love the Kennedys

I truly do.

Not in a creepy, Google Alert kind of way but ever since I was...well, I don't really know when it started, but I have always been enamored with the story of their family. I realize by putting this out on the internet, I have now destroyed any chance I had at ever dating a New Englander with that boyish charm so evident in the Kennedy men.

I suppose my interest was piqued while I was in middle school. In my seventh grade language arts (read: English) class, we watched a movie that I believe was supposed to teach us about researching for essays. Regardless, the movie was about a high school student who was somehow trapped and library and some weird time traveling stuff happened and he was transported to the 1960s. There, he learned all about the Bay of Pigs incident. Thus, John F. Kennedy was involved. I should say that one of the great mysteries of my life will be that I cannot remember what this movie is called. Lord knows I have searched the internet high and low for it. Many a time I have googled "film research bay of pigs student time travel" and various other keywords but have come up empty handed. I will someday, I promise you that.

So, weird language arts movie inspires seventh grade to learn more about America's very own royalty...big whoop. Why do they matter so much to me? Why did I cry about Ted Kennedy dying? The truth is, I don't really know. Maybe I thought JFK was cute...but really if we have to come up with a conclusive answer here, I'm going to say it's because he was a Democrat...and a damn good one at that. For someone who grew up in a family where I honestly think I would have been shunned if I were a, oh, I can't even type it without feeling wrong, Republican, the Kennedys were a beacon. Good Democrats through and through.

Let's say for arugments sake that I was/am (don't want to really say which) slightly, maybe, just a little bit obsessed with the family. We can blame it on my eighth grade Extended Studies (again read: Gifted and Talented) teacher for putting my class through a unit about the JFK assassination. We had to research the hell out of people involved from Clint Hill (one of the CIA agents...the one who jumped on the back of the car when Jackie was reaching for that piece of Jack's skull...you know...oh, nevermind) to Abraham Zapruder (you know him, trust me).We talked about the Magic Bullet theory and we even went to Dallas to go to the Sixth Floor Museum (!!!!!!!!) and at the end we even acted out our very own Warren Commission (I was Clint). We watched Oliver Stone's JFK and that's probably what did me in. I totally reject the notion that LHO (Lee Harvey Oswald) acted alone. I won't go into specifics but I just can't believe the Magic Bullet theory. I'm with Jim Garrison on this one. But I digress.

Once I had a roommate at a youth journalism conference I went to in D.C., and GUESS WHAT. She was obsessed with the Kennedys too. We even tried to convince ourselves that it was kismet and that our room number was somehow related to the Kennedy universe. (We deduced that it was the date JFK Jr. was conceived. Don't ask.) I went to DC with my family the week before my conference and while my mom was off looking at Great American Art, my dad and I went to Arlington National Cemetery. I guess I didn't connect the dots until we walked up that hill to their graves. Then it hit me, they were there. It was an extremely real moment for me as I wept (yes, I wept) at first Jack and Jackie's and then at Bobby's.

I still haven't been to see anything in Boston or Hyannis but it's on my to-do list. I like to think I haven't gone yet because I feel like I might, like, cry a lot or have a breakdown or something.

It goes without saying that I have seen every TV show and movie and read every book that I could get my hands on about these people but I don't believe I've ever been able to put into words the impact that this family has had on me. I can say that I wrote my Dartmouth admissions essay about how they inspired me to want to give back to my community and do something better with my life. I used to want to be a politician because of them. I still do, but on a smaller scale. After all, in one of the many books in my personal Kennedy library, I read that an early motto of theirs was "I shall pass through this world but once. Any good that I can do or any kindness show, let me do it now. For I shall not pass this way again."

God bless them. Really.

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 The post today was inspired by Taylor Swift living out my personal fantasy by purchasing a house in Hyannis just to be closer to her boyfriend....a Kennedy.

Links and stuff for this post:

Ethel (sarcastically?) endorses her grandson's relationship with Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift reportedly buys a house by Ethel's
Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
JFK/RFK/EMK Gravesite/Monuments/etc.