"O Captain, My Captain"...Has Sunken Ship

Robin McLaurin Williams, age 63, died Monday August 1, 2014 due to asphyxia by hanging--a suicide.

Devastation does not even begin to mask my feelings. Confusion is another emotion I'm feeling. Disbelief, yeah that's a good one. Maybe I'll wake up and find that he's still alive...

Known to everyone as the wisecracking genie from Aladdin, the squinty-eyed, raw spinach munching Popeye, the hilarious Mrs. Doubtfire, the nerdy guy from Flubber and everyone's favorite English teacher Mr. Keating from The Dead Poet's Society and many, many more characters, this extremely talented, comedic man is now gone from this earth. No longer exists. MIA permanently. I'm talking about went to the restroom and will never come back to pay the bill and his date are all of us fans out there shaking our heads and asking around to try and understand why he left us the way he did.

Depression can do a lot to a person. He was found with a belt around his neck and cuts on his arms. He was sharing a home with his third wife who didn't even share a bed, much less a room with him. There are speculations that he was withdrawn for a while before his death. If so, why wasn't there anything done to help him?

I'm not the kind of person who follows the lives of famous people. You know, the whole who slept with who, who divorced who, who had an affair with who crap is of no interest to me. I don't have a favorite musician, actor or anything...but Robin Williams meant something to me. He is...was different. And I was very saddened to hear of his death, the cause of death and how he was feeling before he felt that he had no choice but to end it all.

We will never forget you Robin. You were inspirations to a lot of comedians after you. They looked up to you and your fans will always remember you. In your memory, I will forever seize the day.

#1 College Survival Tip for High School Seniors

Tip One: Be Realistic

You've been reading since you were two. You've been in a competitive dancing school since you were three. You've been playing piano since you were four. You've been playing tennis since you were nine. You skipped two grade and entered high school at age twelve. You've only ever taken honors and AP classes. You're a straight A student. You're the star of your high school's tennis, bowling and dance teams. You're president of the science club. You've done approximately two hundred hours of volunteer work at your local hospital. You've taken college courses at your local community college. You've won the Peace Maker award. You've found Amelia Earhart's skeletal remains while on vacation to Mexico. You found the cure for cancer in your senior year--

--Now you've woken up and you realize that it's report card day and you start writing your will because your parents are going to beat the crap out of you when they get home with your abysmal reprt card of three C's, two D's and an A--in gym.

With your grades, do you honestly think you can apply to Stanford? NYU? Harvard? Or any other Ivy League for that matter?

Lesson? Be realistic. Get out of your meaningless daydreams and get to work. Your record sucks, you've screwed up nearly seventy-five percent of your high school career, but there's still hope. Unless you want to wind up a a homeless person like my pal Sherman down the block with his two front teeth knocked out and a missing toe on his left foot, I suggest you do those summer assignments your mother has been bugging you to do, those assignments of which you vehemently argue do not exist.

_____________________________________________________

Hey, y'all, so....it's been a while. A loooong while. I really apologize. I've been on a three month hiatus and it was totally unannounced and I'm really sorry for the abrupt absence.

What you just read was a college survival tip taken out of my novel in the making College Adventures with Sheila Green. In this story are 20 tips on how you high school seniors out there can survive your last year of of secondary education and walk into your first day of college with ease and some cautious trepidation--just kidding! College is fantastic, but some youngsters, (look at me talking about youngsters as if I wasn't in the same place a year ago, HA!), enter college and just go absolutely nuts. Unless your like yours truly over here, who for the first few months went the class and then went straight home, you're going to need some advice, so SHANNON TO THE RESCUE!

These tips are comedic, but the general message should be taken seriously. If there are any seniors out there slacking, cut that out and get to work! It's August and before you know it, those back-to-school commercials will be in your line in vision when you're watching Pretty Little Liars or Switched at Birth or whatever other show you youngsters watch these days, (there I go with the "youngsters" again, hehe).

Over and out!