If you're anything like me, you went to bed on November 7th excited for the day to follow. Of course, history would soon be made, but after the harshest, meanest campaigning we have ever seen, I was ready for it all to be over. For me, neither candidate was ideal, but, if I'm being honest with myself, it never even occurred to me that Trump could actually win. Now, I'm not going to go into depth about my reaction to his victory, but I think it is safe to say that talk about the election has done anything but die down. At this point, most Americans have made their political beliefs abundantly clear, and, once again, if you're anything like me, you're sick of it. I'm not trying to condemn your beliefs or force you to change your viewpoints, but seriously, on behalf of a lot of people, shut up. The world will keep turning, even if it doesn’t know how enraged or ecstatic you are about Trump’s win, and if you just can’t hold back, try to keep it somewhat clean. Not all Trump supporters are sexist, racist bigots; not all Hillary supporters are lying, “nasty women.” Everyone has their reasons for supporting a certain candidate- albeit some reasons are more respectable than others — and if we are going to survive this as a country, we need to respect that. I get it- this election is monumentally important. The next four years will be some of the most influential in our lifetimes. I know it is important to be an informed citizen, but at this point, I think we are all too informed. So please, just take a break from it for a while, and if you find that to be a little hard to do, here are some replacement conversation topics…
1. A contestant on Teen Jeopardy who didn't know the correct answer to the final question decided to cut her losses and write "What are...THOSE?"
2. The song "Hey Ya!" by Outkast is actually really depressing.
This is one a lot of people don't know about. Next time you hear the popular song, instead of dancing like we all do, actually listen to the lyrics. The song's "main character" actually finds himself having fallen out of love with his wife. Even further, the song's writer even predicted that its meaning would be ignored due to its upbeat, catchy tune, hence the overlooked lyric, "Y'all don't wanna hear me, you just wanna dance."
3. Joe Biden memes
Alright, I concede. This one's a little political. However, I think that this is something we can all come together to agree on- Obama-Biden memes are hilarious. Whether or not we admit it, we've laughed at all of them.
4. One woman spent her whole life waiting for her Mr. Right, and she finally found him at age 80.
5. You could talk about what happens when you google "zerg rush".
Just do it.
6. Only one basketball coach at the University of Kansas has ever held a losing record- James Naismith.
7. James Naismith invented basketball.
And he lost. Yup.
8. Usain Bolt broke a world record with an untied shoelace.
So to all of the haters that tell you to tie your shoelaces, maybe they should untie theirs.