What? What?! How can that possibly be?! Do they not remember? Could they be too young to know? How could that show have possibly not had even a slight impact on their lives? It was huge to me!

This may come as a shock, but I had a hard time learning how to read and write. By second grade my reading and writing was still kindergarten level. I could recognize the letters, but little else.

And it was frustrating! I hated it! I hated being sat down in a group, constantly struggling as the other students got better and were moved to other groups with similar skill levels! It got so bad they eventually started moving me to a special ed classroom during reading and writing because they could not provide me with the individualized attention I needed.

But I wanted to read. Not because I was supposed to. It was resources like Reading Rainbow that made want to read; that showed me the stories I couldn’t read on my own. Then I could look at the book they showed and at least understood what was happening. I’d become invested. And that’s the most important part of learning something. Being interested in your work gives you drive.

And there was no click. I didn’t just get it. I was always a year or two behind. I struggled on through junior high, high school, college- I still can’t read advanced terminology out-loud. I learned through memorization. Stuff like medical journals? You could give me a solid minute and I’d still never figure out how to pronounce that stuff. But I can deconstruct the word and approximate the meaning. If I see it again, I’ll can separate it from similar words.

I can read. And write? From tenth on through college I got straight As in Composition, even as I struggled in other classes. I didn’t get corrections from teachers on my papers, I got notes in the margins. “I love this part!” “This is a great line!” But it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t have something to get me started. Reading Rainbow was that something. And I’m not special. If it was that something to me, it was the same to others- can be the same to many more!

I recall a student in high school who always joked and laughed and smiled. And I mean all the time. Then toward the end of the year we had some writing assignment about a date we would always remember and had to present it to the class. Most ponies did something, you know, happy. Some of us wrote about how tragedies had affected us. He wrote about how both his parents were killed in an accident. About living with his grandparents and seeing psychologists. He was in the accident.

After his presentation, everypony started acting different around him. But he just sort of bushed it off. He was all, “That happened like a year ago. If I needed anything before it would have been too late now.”

Life is strange. How ponies can or can’t cope with things is… impossible to read. We complain about the most mundane things, but this colt lost his parents only months before the school year started. And you’d never have guess it in a million years.

So, I have a paper towel covering my eye and a bunch of bandaids keeping it attached to my face.

I’d love to know how I strained my left eye playing a video game while my right is totally unaffected. I mean, I figured I just had something in my eye, but I couldn’t look in a mirror because Bon-Bon had just sprayed in the bathrooms because a roach fell on her back when she walked into one.

I look ridiculous. And this on top of still being sick.

This sucks.

1) Think of a good question and ask it. If it really is a good question, I would consider that stylish.

2) Me too.

3) Was legal? You’re asking me to imagine up a world where something that’s illegal used to be legal, but is no longer? Benedict, explain why this would be a pointless exercise.

4) If you say so, sure! With any luck we’ll be at least a half a kilometer away from anypony, if you’re diggin’ what I’m layin’ down.

5) I’m so sorry, Strawberry. But no, there’s nothing wrong with you. There are a number of possibilities for why you aren’t mourning. It’s possible you haven’t fully grasped what’s taken place yet. You may not have known them well enough, or maybe it’s been so long since you’ve seen them that it feels like nothing changed.

I had a close friend when I was younger who I hadn’t seen in a long time. When I found out she was shoved out of a moving carriage by her “coltfriend” and died on the scene, I never really mourned. Mentally, I recognize that I’ll never see her again, but psychologically it doesn’t feel any different. Like it’s just been a long time since I’ve seen her, but she’s still out there somewhere. Her absence hasn’t created a gap because it’d been so long since she had any direct impact on my life.

I don’t know if any of that helps at all. Again, I’m sorry.

Never again.

Tech guy fixed mai computa!

Back in business! And I can play City of Ponies again!

Okay, so this is what I managed to get out of her in between sobs.

Sweetie was trying to play something with Ruby. I think it was Penguin Club. An overlay popup ad came up and she tried to click off of it, but it moved. It was one of those ads that expand if you mouse over them. Anyway, she accidentally clicked it and it put some horribly evasive virus on my desktop that won’t let me open a single program. It just keeps telling me to buy their stupid anti-virus scam.

Point being, I can’t work on any music until this is fixed. Can’t play City of Ponies either.

Actually, a tree uprooted itself, fell into another tree, and both trees fell on my next-door-neighbor’s roof.

Turns out taking all the loose branches off of trees only helps so far.