-Entertainment Section-

This section is a wonderfully entertaining jumble of things put together to hopefully amuse readers, containing Harry Potter jokes, funny columns, memes and more - there are changes made each week so that's why this introduction lacks a list. The writers for this section are:

Dean McCormick

Lilia Le Fay

Alyssa Ella Piper

Maria Fell

Debanessa Gilson

Tali Mere

Entertainment Column 1: Ah, Sweet Memories!

Written by Dean McCormick

I could call this story several things that would sound better than what I’m actually going to call it. Some of them are “nature disaster,” “physics failure,” “horrific accident,” and such. It was a disaster that had several things to do with nature, physics does hate me, and it was a fairly memorable accident. But I’m not going to call it any of those things, because it really is something else. No, I’m going to call it (drumroll please)...

Just another one of my stupid anecdotes.

So, on that fairly melodramatic note, we’ll dive into the story.

It happened around mid-November of 2015. I was at a nature preserve with several of my friends, because our younger siblings were doing some science project in the building. Being the main homeschooling community of Cincinnati Ohio, our younger generations did things like that a lot, so we took it as an opportunity to hang out. This usually amounted to board games and lunch in one of the other rooms in the building, but we felt a little energetic that day, so we went out into the large yard in the back of the building that separated it from the preserve itself, to play Sharks and Minnows.

It took a while to refresh everyone of the rules, as none of us had played in years. My friend Aidan eventually got everyone to agree on what the rules were, such as the fact that it didn’t matter at all which side the shark starts on and vice versa. I myself was leaning against a tree staring at my phone while they argued, not caring in the slightest. I don’t tend to care much. I let Aidan deal with the other people, and let me just say, he does a better job than I ever could.

So once everyone was either satisfied with the rules we settled on or frightened into cooperation (that had nothing to do with me, I swear!), we lined up to start. I believe Alex was the shark first. He only tagged a few people, including his brother, before Aidan’s sister brutally collided with another girl in a failed escape attempt, as one of them had been tagged, I can’t remember which. I think I was one of the only people who saw the crash (and I use that term lightly), but everyone in that huge yard was alerted by the ominous earsplitting crack that emitted from the center of the lawn when they collided. It was shocking, how loud it was. I still would’ve jumped out of my skin if I hadn’t seen both girls being thrown backward several feet. Aidan’s sister cried a little, but I didn’t hear any sound from the other girl. She might have been unconscious.

But, if you can believe it, that wasn’t the worst accident that happened that day.

We started over after that. I think Alex was the shark again, either him or his brother. That game went by exceptionally fast, considering Alex is one of the fastest people I know, and his brother is one of the biggest. I didn’t have as much trouble avoiding him though, as I’m one of the smallest people I know. The two of them recruited all of the players as sharks, except for me and Aidan, in about five minutes. Aidan and I managed to avoid the grand total of eight or nine sharks for another ten. I’m not the most athletic person I know by any stretch of the imagination, but I do run pretty fast. And my size gives me an advantage, to some extent.

Now, before I dive into the climax of this little story, there’s something you need to know. The game of Sharks and Minnows was taking place in a large, grassy yard, longer than it was wide, with a cluster of oak trees and park benches near the center. It was surrounded with thick woods on three sides, with a building on the non-woodsy (for lack of a better word) side that was available to the community at large, which just happened to be our younger siblings that day.

That’s not important, I’m just giving you the lay of the land. What’s important is that it had rained the day before.

What, you want me to tell you why that’s important? Why ever would I do that? Patience. You’ll see eventually.

I believe is was the thirteenth pass across the yard, and either the fifth or sixth pass since everyone had been tagged save me and Aidan. It was getting hard for the both of us, mainly because when Aidan and I probably should have been working against each other somehow, to try to win the game. But instead we were working as a team, planning routes before we ran across and childishly strategic things like that. And the sharks were getting smarter, getting used to our maneuvers.

Little did we know, the thirteenth pass was to be the one in which one of us would fall to the gnashing teeth of the sharks. (What? I can be melodramatic if I want to be).

We both started on the left side of the lawn facing the building. The plan was to both start running along the left side of the yard, and then Aidan would turn around and run back to the boundary, circling around to run across the middle of the yard, while I turned and ran to the right. We would meet somewhere in the middle of the yard and make a “V” shape, running to the other side while simultaneously running diagonally away from each other.

It started out fine. It was a relatively new strategy, so we succeeded in confusing the sharks up until the point where Aidan and I met up in the center of the yard. Aidan had Alex hot on his tail, so he had to ditch the plan and make a beeline for the other side from where we met up, and our friend James got between us somehow, so I had to turn around and run in the opposite direction - which I didn’t do, because Aidan’s brother was right behind me. I had to make a decision in the next couple of seconds.

So I did.

I already had momentum pushing me towards Aidan’s brother, which made the following maneuver exceedingly difficult. I basically attempted to throw myself into the small space that wasn’t occupied by the two sharks by pivoting sharply on my right foot, pointing my left foot so it would land on the ground, and springing off of my right.

Do you have that pictured in your brain? Good. Now stop it. Freeze the entire image. You should see me, hovering a foot in the air with one leg pointed at the ground in front of me, the other dangling behind me, and two sharks behind me. You have to picture every detail, crystal clear.

Now, wait a minute. That’s just grass underneath of me, isn’t it? Nope! Look again! It’s a gigantic mud puddle. Enormous. Gargantuan. Four inches deep.

And I use the term “puddle” very loosely. There isn’t really a name for it in the English language. It was about five feet long and four feet across. The main body, anyway. There were several little rivers of it branching off into the grass from all sides, the longest one being about three feet, not counting the twists and bends.

Now just imagine that. There’s James and Aidan’s brother, not quite close enough to me to be in the puddle. And there’s me, hovering directly above the center of it. And the worst part is, I didn’t know it was there at all. It was completely concealed in the grass, as no one had cut it in weeks. I thought about suing the staff, but that didn’t work for obvious reasons.

Anyway, let’s unfreeze that image and watch what happens.

I’m sure you can imagine what I thought when my foot sank deeper into the ground than it should have. But what might surprise you is that I didn’t have much time to think about that, much less the splash that soaked my pants. No, all I could do was yelp as my foot slid three feet across the puddle, causing the splash to elongate, and then my foot left the ground altogether. I swear, it felt like I hovered two feet off the ground, parallel to the ground for several seconds, but it was obviously less than one before my whole body collided with the mud.

The splash was huge. Everyone within ten feet of the puddle was splattered with muddy water. It looked like someone had taken a video of a nuclear explosion and edited it so the fire was brown and wet and the light radiating from the shockwave was gone. It was rather traumatic for poor little me, spread eagle on the ground. All I could see was muddy water for a disturbingly long time.

But that was only the first layer. After the muddy water had exploded into the atmosphere, the second layer classified as “goop,” rose up into the air. And I mean literally rose up into the air. It was like someone had filled the outline of the puddle with some kind of brown cement and propelled it upward. If you were on the far side of the yard, you’d be able to see the exact shape of the puddle in the air. And I had to be in the middle of it when it went up, and worse, right under it when it came back down. All I could see was brown muddy goop above me. I only time than he was, lying there, every inch of my body soaked in muddy water and covered from head to toe in goop. I just layed there for a while with my eyes closed, fuming.

Aidan won that game, if you haven’t guessed. James turned tail and ran after the explosion of muddy water, but Aidan’s brother somehow managed to tag me without getting too much mud on him. I’ll never understand how he did it. He has the best luck of anyone I’ve ever met.

Entertainment Column 2: Everyday Instances

Written by Debannessa Gilson

“I
think it’s very important that our children receive a simple education in
science and other core Muggle subjects before Hogwarts so they are not ignorant
in any way if faced with living in the Muggle world. It also increases their
practicality and confidence with socializing, and the headmaster of the school
Hugo attends, who is actually a squib, watches out for any incidences with my
son. Hugo, however, has had no problems so far and is really enjoying the
socializing side of school, as well as learning more about the Muggle world as
he goes along. This also gives me more time to work on my writing and teaching
Rose the basics.”