You are a wonderful son, and a wonderful man. Yet another parent busting forth with the “man” thing! I’d have to check my chest for signs of hair when I got home.

Some kids do drugs. Some kids light stuff on fire. Me, I eat oats.

He said he "admired our courage" but didn't want to see us do anything to "damage our promising futures." He felt "proud as an American" that we had "exercised our right to peaceful free expression." But if we did it again, he didn't "know what action the state board of education might take against individual students." Translation: You've had your fun. Now sit down, shut up, and take the freakin' test. Or else.

He also said that if anyone did anything to mess up the rest of the testing, he was going to call 911 personally. Yeah, like that wouldn't make it into the nightly news again: WHEELCHAIR-BOUND CANCER PATIENT ARRESTED FOR FREE SPEECH.

It's amazing--my parents call everything a discussion. If I were standing across the street, firing a bazooka at my mother, while my father was launching mortar back at me, and Jeffery was charging down the driveway with a grenade in his teeth, my parents would say we should stop having this public "discussion".

Instead of agonizing about the things you can't change, why don't you try working on the things you can change

Mr. Watras asked me whether I was practicing, and I told him I was practicing my tissue basketball skills.