Lyssa Beyer

Dear Ask Anything,
Spring break is over and I think I am experiencing major depression. I miss playing all day and don’t want to go to school. How can I make it through?
Sincerely,
Aÿsnow bird wannabee

Dear Snow Bird,
Wait, so you are not one of those girls who has a new hair style to indicate to strangers they went somewhere even though it looks horrible? In that case, I know exactly what you are going through.

Over my spring break, I managed to finish off the final season of “The O.C.” and now am not only going through withdrawal from the show and characters, but additionally I am without an excuse to waste hours upon hours of my life. Who knew a show about teenagers doing the same exact thing episode after episode and never learning from their mistakes would be so addicting and time consuming?

Luckily, in between my “O.C.” binges, I finally found time to see “Dirty Dancing,” which only increased my lust for spring time and made me wish for a Patrick Swayze-type man teach to me to dance like Jennifer Grey.

I may be back to reality, but the emotions I felt after the film’s closing dance number were not forgotten nor lost in my four-hour drive back to a dorm room Housing and Residence Life wouldn’t let me stay in past 6 p.m. on Friday, March 14, despite me paying to live in it. But I digress.

What seeing “Dirty Dancing” made me realize is that I need a hobby. Sure, cancelled television shows are great to view even after their popularity is gone and watching them will no longer increase your appeal to the opposite sex. But being able to truly do something with your time, going from a lowly state to a higher one, is just something special. That is why, inspired by “Dirty Dancing,” I will seek out a Patrick Swayze-type dance instructor in order for me to truly reach my maraca shaking potential. And I promise, I will keep my pants on if it turns out to be Pat McCurdy.

So as you count down the days to summer movie releases like “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and the newest installment in the “Indiana Jones” franchise, find something you want to try your hand at, and go for it. That doesn’t necessarily mean learning to dance, and if I find out you steal my idea, believe me you will be like Baby and I will put you in a corner.

But doing something like making costumes of each of the previously mentioned movie’s heroes and wearing them around town, or something productive like that in general, is what you need. Having your mind occupied will take your mind off of your depression and allow you to still have fun while remaining productive by attending school.

Dear Ask Anything,
I noticed there are still a lot of confederate flags in the South? What’s up with that?
Sincerely,
Just wondering

Dear Just Wondering,
You couldn’t have submitted this question last year when my co-Ask Anything columnist Tim Langton was the biggest hick ever? All I would have needed to do to answer your question, had you asked it when he was still a man of the people and writing for the Showcase section, was ask him and he could have supplied me with all the answers.

But instead you asked when my co-Ask Anything columnist is someone who specializes in knowing that I take my pants off to dance for Pat McCurdy. How she knows this I don’t know, but I know she knows nothing about the South and that I really had to search for your answers as a result.

I think the best way to explain the answer to your question is to relate it to something you are likely familiar with, that being championship sporting events. That’s right, I want you to think about the World Series, the Super Bowl, and all the other major sports that crown their champion by having two teams play each other.

Now what is the first thing awarded to the winners of these events? Yes, T-shirts and hats commemorating their accomplishment is the correct answer.

The thing about this is, two sets of T-shirts and hats need to be made because there are obviously two outcomes to the game, even if the New England Patriots do happen to be one of the two teams.

In order for the shirts to be presented to the victors in a timely fashion, the makers of the products can’t wait for the result, so they make them before the game. This results in one set being wrong, and virtually unusable. I say virtually because the products with the wrong result are sent to Third World countries so they can benefit someone and aren’t put to waste.

The same logic is why you still see the confederate flag today. For the Super Bowl of all wars, the Civil War, there were two competitors – the United States and the Confederacy.

The winner was the United States, so it got to keep its flag, which in this case would be the winning T-shirt and hat. The Confederacy was the loser, and because of this, its flag was thus the wrong T-shirt and hat. The United States then had to find a way to not waste this material.

But instead of sending the remnants of the Confederate flag to a Third World country and causing tax payers’ money to be spent on a ship and crew to get the material across the high seas, President Abraham Lincoln decided the Confederate states were close enough to actually being a Third World country that he let them use the left over material to use however they pleased.

The plan was for the Confederate flag to be completely gone by the time Lincoln left office, and the symbol merely a distant memory. John Wilkes Booth, knowing how to delay the gradual erasing of the symbol, changed that pretty quick.

Andrew Johnson then took over as president, and being a southerner himself was lackluster as far as enforcing this policy and seeing the material being done away with.

Although the U.S. government worked hard to get Johnson impeached as quickly as possible, its wishful thinking only caused it to fight about how long the process should take and eventually the Senate acquitted Johnson because it was pointless to do so after this already extended delay.

Although Ulysses S. Grant, a hero of the United States during the Civil War, became the president after Johnson and did his best to speed up the process of eliminating the symbol, he could not make up enough ground which had been lost during the Johnson era.

Additionally, Grant faced the challenge of getting materials away from northern states that had migrated there during the Johnson delay. Unable to accomplish either, the reason you still see Confederate flags in the south today is because they are still trying to make up for the Johnson delay and use up all the Confederate flag material left over from when the Confederate states seceded from the United States.

Send questions to Hibbard 108 or [email protected]