The Over-Awesome/Under-Noticed Awards

By Jed Stalker

With an extensive three articles under my proverbial belt, I have been asked to contribute regularly to the literary receptacle of goodness that is commonly spoken of as The Voice. I gladly accepted, and began trying to think of things to write about. Unfortunately, I soon realized that most of the topics I came up with were things that bothered me. This was distressing, because I do not like complainers. In fact, sometimes I complain about complainers. (Do your worst, irony!) With this in mind, I wasted no time in compiling the most comprehensive list of underappreciated awesome things ever. I then narrowed my list to five, because it doesn’t do to appreciate underappreciated things too much, as that makes for boring articles. So anyway, to make my list, the item in question must be both awesome and underappreciated. Thus cookies do not appear, because while they are always in the running for the best part of one’s day, everyone realizes it. Neither does oxygen make my list, because while that element and its life-sustaining properties are vastly underappreciated, anyone outside the chemistry profession would be hard-pressed to call it awesome. Without further ado, I give you the OverAwesome-UnderNoticed awards!

5. Blue Jeans:

While denim has been put to some questionable if not outright devious use in the last few decades (I think I glimpsed a denim-upholstered couch in one of the innumerable Christmas-sale commercials I’ve seen in the last fourteen minutes or so) it is, and remains, the greatest casual-attire fabric known to man. I was given the pair of jeans I am wearing now in my junior year of high school. In the four or five years we’ve been acquainted, my pants have endured rips and tears, fading, paint stains, oil stains, and some of the unidentifiable stains known only to those who sometimes play uncoordinated games of football wherever they happen to find themselves. What am I left with? Why, a garment that could probably fetch fifty bucks in the right department store window. Jeans rock.

4. Garlic:

This spice can be found in shakable containers on pizza-related shelves everywhere. It is delicious, is supposed to be good for your heart, and it keeps away vampires. What’s not to love?

3.Bloomsburg Housekeeping/Food Services Staff:

These quiet and amazingly good-natured human beings keep me fed and clean, and if you are reading this, I assume they do the same for you. Let’s show some love for the Staff, people. The way they continuously and graciously serve even when being consistently overlooked reminds me of my grandparents. Speaking of grandparents…

2. Grandparents:

Young people think old people are dumb, until they get older and realize that young people are dumb. Old people invented cool. If ever you need freshly baked cookies, a few vicious games of pinochle, or a soft-hug/firm-handshake combo, find any couple over sixty five and make friends. You will not be disappointed. Grandparents are veritable Archives of Awesome.

1. Technology:

I am belligerently behind the learning curve when it comes to technology. I would rather eat blackberries than write things on them. But the fact remains that a hundred years ago, my job would have consisted of plowing fields with some help from horses. Fifty years ago, a calculator was as big as a barn. Today, I am pushing buttons on a fancy paperweight and, because of it, words I authored will show up in hundreds of trash cans. If I could figure out time zones, I could talk to my cousins in California with the aid of a ten-ounce piece of plastic in my pocket. And there’s a little invention called indoor plumbing that I will be grateful for until the day I die.

So there you have it. The awards have been awarded. Your homework, faithful reader, is to appreciate the winners until there is some equilibrium between their Awesome and Appreciation quotients. (I suggest writing odes.)

Submit odes to voiceopinion@bloomu.edu.