Term Paper

My Life as a Mythic Detective

I am not the most observant person. Growing up my brothers would always tease me saying that I wouldn’t last long in a city because of this fact. So when I was assigned to be a mythic detective, let’s just say I was a little nervous. I have done my best to observe the world around me and to make connections to the different mythologies. Let me tell you, life is much stranger than fiction. My brother Steve came home this Christmas after a very long and arduous busy season. (He is an accountant in San Francisco). He is an avid snow boarder and loves to do all kinds of tricks and jumps off of cliffs. Before Steve left to go to the Yellowstone club (the day after Christmas) to go snowboarding with his friends my mom told Steve to be careful, he just brushed it off. At the Yellowstone club Steve and his friends decided to race on all of the groomers when they weren’t doing tricks. Well there was a ditch that was covered in snow down one of the groomers, and Steve being a little arrogant in his abilities was cutting in and out of the trail, so he didn’t even realize he hit a ditch until it was too late. Steven admitted to me that his next action was out of pure arrogance. When the ditch launched him into the air, he tried to land the jump on an upslope rather than just let himself biff it. When he did this his mouth jammed into his knee and screwed up his leg and destroyed his teeth. He was blessed because when he did this, his teeth jammed upward and a fraction more and he would have died. Instead, he is just missing his two front teeth and is ego is a little bruised. But during this entire thing Steve was still his smiley happy self and acted like nothing happened. All he could say, is this real life? Looking back now, Steve was a bit like Icarus. He was warned by my mother to take caution but he shrugged it off thinking he was too good to get hurt. He then proceeded to goof off and not take heed of her warning and then got in a life threatening situation. All of this because of arrogance.

Life is stranger than fiction. I have a friend who I grew up with. She is gorgeous, but she doesn’t want anything to do with men. She sees no use for them, and that women can do without them. Well every guy who comes into contact with her pretty much falls in love with her. It is the craziest thing. I mean things that happen in the movies or bad teen television shouldn’t be able to happen in real life right? Well it happens to her all the time. Who needs to watch bad chick flicks when you can watch her interactions with men. To be honest, she reminds me of Daphne from Daphne and Apollo. She is beautiful but she doesn’t want a guy, and yet men don’t get that and so they fall over themselves chasing after her, and really it just pushes her away from men. I would go more into detail but I don’t exactly have her permission to talk about her love life. All I can say is twilight has nothing on her life.

My mother is the most intelligent woman I know. She had her masters in speech pathology and she was great at her job. She stopped when she had kids because she wanted to be a stay at home mom and she was the best mom a girl could ask for. Well things happened in my personal family life that I don’t exactly like sharing, but to sum it up my dad was a very bad person, stole over $750,000 from my mom and her family, and abandoned us.  When my mom went to go back to work, she found out that my dad stopped paying for her certification. (He was in charge of the finances). So she couldn’t use her masters s she had to get a job that she is overqualified for. She now works up at the hospital as a receptionist at one of the offices. She has so many stories and all I can say is people are insane. People will treat my mom as if she doesn’t have a brain in her head because she is just some receptionist. Well one day my mom had it. One of her coworkers is just someone who isn’t happy in life so she takes pleasure in hurting other people. I would say that Ovid would agree when I say she is a villain. Well one day she was talking to a patient about hearing aids in front of my mom (and at the same time being condescending to my mom acting as if she knew nothing) and the lady said something that was completely wrong. My mom had had it up to here with everything and finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She showed up her coworker and corrected her in front of the patient and one of the doctors. Well she gained a lot more respect in the office and most people don’t look down at her for being a receptionist, but the coworker now has a personal war against her. Again is this real life? Things like this should only be in books and movies. But it happens, just like in the story of Arachne.  Arachne was better than Athena, but even when she proved this, Athena made a vendetta about it.

Well this was my attempt at linking my life to Ovid, and when I did I realized that myths aren’t that out there. Real life really is stranger than fiction