This Week Was Strange

That means I really don't want to think about next week. Research for my trend? Well yesterday I spent the whole day (ish) at a forensics tournament because ever since I was about seven I have been at the ones in Holland, selling food. No one has worked longer than my mom and I. Most parents stay for one or two years and then let someone else take charge. So every year they go to my mom for advice and totally disregard it. (I may or may not be coming to a point here) Anyway, they let my mom and I take over the cash registers, and we are hopeful that they listened to our advice that the would need ridiculous amounts of ones and quarters because kids come with twenties for a bag of chips (50 cents). Of course, we open up our registers to find one quarter roll to split between both of us, and a total of zero tens, three fives, and twenty-some ones. We are trying to warn the lady in charge that as soon as the lunch crowd hits (anytime in the next few minutes) we will be toast because we have enough change for roughly two kids with twenties. So it was quite annoying and a lot of people now think I am bad at math because I had to keep asking my mom if she had any change and many people thought I just didn't know how to give them change for a twenty. (No, believe it or not, I actually can tell you that I should give you eighteen dollars, but of course I don't have it!) So one poor kid waited for about ten minutes until we could get change for him and a few left without fifty cents they should have had. My point: after seeing a lot of kids go through I did not see any of them wearing Five Fingers or going barefoot. But then again no one was running and I don't think you're allowed to wear things connected to your topic. As weird as that may sound, it is extremely possible that someone might have been giving a speech about the shoes. But then again there are thousands of other topics they might have been doing and some of then weren't even giving prepared speeches. So that's why I didn't post yesterday. Otherwise I have done some additional reading for my topic. I need to start a new paragraph.
     Research this week has been a lot of reading. I've been spending a lot of time with Runner's World (A running magazine) that has different stories about minimalist shoes and some about barefoot running. I found this sort of surprising considering all the ads for running shoes in there. I also found a Popular Science article about bad news for the running shoe. That was pretty exciting. A lot of the things I find link back to two things. Either they read/heard about the barefoot professor and the Harvard study, or they read Born to Run. (I'm not discussing Bruce Springsteen) So I decided it was probably the tiniest bit important to learn about this book. I found a website for the book and what did I find? A list of ten big newspapers that wrote about running barefoot. How lucky! (There is also one of these on the Virbram website for all the times newspapers mentioned FiveFingers) I sort of looked through those and a lot were interviews with the author, Christopher McDougall. Then I found an almost hour long (52 min) Google Talk with the author which I am still working my way through because it's obviously pretty long. So far it's quite interesting and I don't really want to have to pause it. One thing that's been hard is not trying to make this into a persuasive essay. I think it's really easy to just find out why it's good more than why it's growing more popular and where the trend is growing more popular. But it is really weird to think about these people that were told not to run because of injuries and that they would hurt themselves and then they learn about running barefoot and try out shoes like the Five Fingers and suddenly there's no pain. It's also been hard to think about because of something I just heard the author of Born to Run. He just read something that an editor from Runner's World said about how we were not 'engineered' to run long distances barefoot. So I'm sort of curious as to how the magazine has put out multiple articles about how shoes aren't necessarily a good thing and some people might benefit from not using them. I think as of now I have a lot of proof for my trend. :)

Before I forget! This coming Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (March 24, 25, 26, and 27) our school will have a performance of The Music Man! It's in the Holland High performing arts center at 7:00 on Thur. Fri. and Sat. and 2 pm on Sun. Tickets will go on sale an hour before and doors open at 6:30! (Or 1:30 on Sunday) Some of you will remember Delaney from last year's class and will recognize her as the leading female role: Marian! I will also be in it as one of the old ladies who walks around and is annoyed with everything that happens until I become irrationally excited. (That's the best way to describe it because almost no one has a real name for their character and if they do it's one that you never really hear) Anyway, you are all invited and I think if you came you'd enjoy it!