May 1, 2010 - Cerberus is pretty big

Sixth Grade Journal – April 25, 1995

Cereberus¹

Cereberus is the three-headed dog that guards the chambers of the underworld leader Pluto². He is mean and enjoys eating people, he will not eat anyone who bears him gifts. He loves barley cake³. Cereberus really dislikes anything living. He has done his job since the underworld was created⁴, Cereberus is pretty big.

Cereberus has three heads and looks like a Rotweiler. He is mean, ugly, and has three big sets of teeth⁵. Its enemies are anything living that makes it into the underworld. Cereberus is always mad⁶ and he get to munch on human bones for doing a good job. He permits spirits⁷ to enter the underworld but not to leave.

¹ – That is, Cerberus.

² – According to Wikipedia, Cerberus was actually tasked with guarding the entrance to Hades, making sure that the living cannot enter and preventing the dead from exiting. Nevertheless, I have this image of him standing outside of Pluto’s “chamber” like an actual watchdog.

³ – I think this was from the Psyche myth, but I could be wrong. As a side note, I really really go back to reading Greek mythology more often.

⁴ – I’m not sure that this is the case. I couldn’t really find anything about the “origin” of Cerberus in the underworld, but it’s hard to imagine that he wasn’t there from the beginning.

⁵ – There might be a little bit of repetition going on here. Just saying.

⁶ – I think that might be an unfair characterization. It seems natural to assume that he’s unpleasant because he eats people and lives in Hades, but maybe he’s happy and fulfilled in his life and work.

⁷ – And spirits only, as I’m so you have gathered from the fact that it’s underlined.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 27, 1995

Today I have enrichment classes⁸, I have CAT/5 testing, and Evan M. is coming over⁹.

⁸ – See, they must have been really fun if I mentioned them again.

⁹ – It’s hard for me to remember the chronology perfectly, but this must have been before Evan and I had our falling out over the fact that I had a crush on his girlfriend. Sad but true.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 28, 1995

My feelings about achievement testing are that I think that I did well in math but I think I did terrible vocabulary and memory¹⁰.

¹⁰ – What can you really say about an entry like this? I mean, I used to be pretty good at math and now I still have a relatively underwhelming vocabulary. And memory? I think this blog shows exactly how much (or how little) I really remember.

Sixth Grade Journal – May 1, 1995

My most prized possessions are my 4 basketballs signed by the ’91, ’92, ’93, and ’94 Kentucky Wildcats basketball team¹¹.

¹¹ – My Dad always won various signed basketballs (as well as the previously mentioned trips with the team) as auctions like Big Blue Madness (or Big Blue Bash or Midnight Madness or whatever it might have been called at any other time). Of course, I got one of them signed myself during one of those trips…and then dribbled it so much over the course of the weekend that I wore off all of the signatures. Genius!