Edward Kay

Hello. Welcome to Day One of my diary. For those of you not familiar with me already – and I think that’s pretty much everybody, based on my knowledge of statistical probability – I’m 11 years old and live with my parents and my younger brother Daniel (who’s a bit of a pest) in Downview. It’s a small city in a mostly agricultural county known for the high quality of its turnips. I know, how exciting. I attend Grade Six at Downview Public School. The biggest thing there is the football team, the Downview Danes.

Neuroscience isn’t really my specialty (though I admit I’m a science geek) but I’d say that most of the guys on the football team are living proof that even modern helmet technology can’t protect you against brain injuries.
But that lack of intellectual capacity doesn’t affect the team’s popularity one bit. And another five or six years of taking concussions for the Danes football will give the county a new generation of turnip harvesters, who will probably be very good at their jobs, except for the occasional mood swing.

I don’t mean to sound sarcastic, it’s just that Downview is one of those towns where the school board puts such a high priority on the football team (”Go, Danes GO!”) that they spend the resources there instead of on other school programs like science, math, and the arts (they got rid of the music program altogether last year to save money).

They even have a giant head of a Danish Viking on the front lawn of the school in honour of the team. I don’t have a photo of it handy but here’s a link to a Viking head just like it (which I would publish except that it’s copyrighted material).

By the way, I tend to use a lot of parenthetical elements when I write. My English teacher says I should quit doing it, but it breaks up the flow less than footnotes, which is more properly scientic, but most grade 6 kids don’t use them anyhow (and this is an outlet for my personal thoughts, not a thesis anyway).

Well, I’d better wrap it up for now. Tomorrow’s a school day and I’m putting together a project on photon-sail-powered interstellar space travel. It’s kind of a hobby of mine, figuring out ways to get out of Downview. Later.