Rational Insanity
By Bryan Mari Argos

Back to school blues

I miss those days when I was still a student and when the last few weeks of May were always associated with preparing for the opening of a new school year. Now, as I lovingly recall those days, I keep on figuring out how I could make Mays last few weeks more exciting for our students in such that the 2-month long vacation is not really wasted. I consider the last few weeks of May wasted when we spend them pouting in our rooms, thinking about how the summer is about to end in exchange for another grueling year in the hands of our teachers. The last few weeks of May can be real fun, you know, we just need to have the creativity in making them the most unforgettable weeks of our student life. Here are some really crafty and cheap things to do to make those “back-to-school blues” wither and die a natural death.

Learn the craft and discipline of book covering. Take all your school books and notebooks and cover them with the weirdest materials you can find. Use some fabric scraps or recycled junk food bags (use the big bags we find in imported chips for this one). Jazz up your art work with little cut-outs from old magazines, dried leaves, or even flattened bottle caps! When your masterpiece is done, use some clear plastic to cover it with a protective layer and your boring everyday books and notebooks are turned into instant Picassos! Be as wild and crazy as you can be!

Recycle old school bags. Use some spray-on fabric pain or ordinary canned spray paint to give your old bag a new twist. Before spraying on the paint, use some masking tape to cover up certain areas on the bag (the way they do with stenciling). When the paint is dry, peel off the tape and you have a jazzy retro bag you can truly call your own! You can also use old safety pins to make it sparkle and shine or sew on some old buttons for the same effect. If the spray paint thing does not really fit your fancy (especially when your bag is a fabric bag), get some rubber bands and tie the bag up tightly at certain points. Dissolve some pure chlorine powder in warm water, then dip the tied-up bag into the solution for about five minutes. The result is a cool tie-dyed effect. The fun thing about this is that we don't really know what color the bag will turn into because of the reaction of the chlorine on the fabric dyes, so try it out and be amazed at the new spectrums chlorine can create! Don't forget to rinse it thoroughly to wash off the chlorine!

Experiment with new sandwich ideas for your lunch pack. Try a combination of the least used ingredients to come up with exciting new tastes. Use some asparagus with chicken or crushed pineapple in mayonnaise with tuna chips on a piece of brown bread. Forget the usual peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, try something new, something adventurous! Here's for starters – get some dried fish (use only a small amount of this as it can be really salty), shred it into small pieces, mix it with some tomato ketchup or tomato sauce, throw in small bits of mushrooms, black olives, and grated cheddar (preferably the milder ones), then line the bread with some white onions, slobber on your mix, and you have a wonderful, lip-smacking, healthy, anchovy sandwich!

Make post summer presents for your friends whom you have not seen for the entire summer. Share the cheer of school with them. Use the fabric from your old unusable uniforms to make little cell phone pouches, or fancy draw string bags for them. Use the same tie-dye technique I taught you above to add a jazzy touch to your gifts. If you have some metallic paints, use those to write their names on the pouches with little silver raindrop designs or tiny golden shining suns. They will love you for these! If you don't have old uniforms you can use, make little friendship bracelets from yarn or twine, or if you find this a bit too exhausting to do, use some super glue or hot glue sticks to glue a large safety pin unto a little ornament such as a busted ref magnet or a detached key chain. Thread colored glass beads on the loose arm of the safety pin and you have a cool trinket you can pin on their bags to make them feel how special they are to you and how much you missed them!

These little things can really take the blues off the last few weeks of May when everybody is going ga-ga over the depression brought about by the end of summer. Sometimes, some kids even go to the extent of ripping out back-to-school newspaper ads just to express their disappointment over summer being too short. Try all these activities yourself or with younger kids though and you will find that they will be wanting to go back to school as soon as possible!

Be rational; be insane…every once in a while!!! Hello to Anne and to Mary Dale! Hello to my dearest readers, Chan, Mr. Bobot, Vic, Vincent, and Rex, Alex, Arvin, Corz, Jim, Kiara, Malikh, Audrae, Franz, Hendrick, Janice, Jay, Jim, Jonathan, Mark, Marz, Mel, Pres, Nhonoy, Niel, Piper, Rheavil, Joey, Alma, Rodolfo, Ecker, Ryan. Hello also to a new addition to our RI Barkada, Roni, thanks for the great comments, to Miss Dieter of Lapaz, to Ian of Bacolod but who is in Iloilo right now, to Narle, Sunny and to Anuj of CMC, I love you all! Byers! Salamat gid sa mga walang-hintong text and reactions nyo! Catch Rational Insanity in TNT's online edition, check us out at www.thenewstoday.info, text me at (0920)9254269, or email me at prague@eudoramail.com.