Sterling Cub Reporter: March 2015

www.sterlingcubreporter.com March 2015 • Sterling Cub Reporter • 1

City holds logo contest

Pg. 5

Family hits the roadPg. 6

Girls tee off on the links

Pg. 12

MARCH 2015

Volume 1 • Issue 6 www.sterlingcubreporter.com

2 • Sterling Cub Reporter • March 2015 www.sterlingcubreporter.com

The Sterling High School Cub Reporter and all subsidiary publications are designated forums of free speech. The print edition is published October through May of each school year by the journalism class at Sterling High School. It is dis-tributed for no charge throughout Unified School District 376 buildings and the Sterling community. The first copy is free. Subsequent copies will cost $1 per copy. For infor-mation about being added to the subscription list, contact Todd Vogts at 620-278-2171. Letters to the editor are wel-come. Email them to [email protected]. All letters must be signed. Anonymous letters will not be printed. All letters subject to editing for legal, grammati-cal and factual reasons.

ADVISERTodd Vogts

STAFFAlex Veliz

Caleb HendricksDallas LackeyKasady Smith

Kylah ComleyLindsay GilmoreTaryn Gillespie

Sterling HigH ScHoolCUB REPORTER& www.sterlingstudentpublications.com

308 E. Washington, Sterling, KS 67579Phone: 620-278-2171 • Fax: 620-278-3237

OPINION

ADVERTISING SALESTodd Vogts’ Marketing Class

About the Cover Photo: Junior Skyler Carder observes a strip of magnesium being burned during a lab in chemistry. “I like chemistry labs because I enjoy seeing differ-ent chemicals react together and make a new element,” Carder said. (Photo by Taryn Gillespie)

Mother really does know bestI don’t know about you, but my parents

are always telling me, “We are just doing this because we love you ,and we want the best for you.”

I’ve never truly understood this, and I still don’t, but as much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m starting to learn that the majority of the time our parents are right.

I know that different parents have dif-ferent views on the way you should raise children, and I think I’m truly blessed to have the parents I do. Our parents have been there and done the whole “high school thing,” so they know just a thing or two about it.

It has always been hard for me to take advice from my parents because, as a 17-year-old girl, I could never admit that they might be right, and I think I’m mature enough to handle my own situations.

For some reason, when my parents give me advice and tell me to do one thing, it makes me want to do the com-plete opposite. I think I can speak for a lot of teenagers and say that they would agree with this. Not only do teenagers like me not take advice well, argue too much, and roll their eyes all the time, they are constantly disagreeing with their parents.

There are times where I have definitely not understood why my parents haven’t let me do certain things. For ex-ample, my freshman year all of my friends would go and hang out at the lake in town. My parents rarely let me go, and if they did, my curfew was usually a lot earlier than my friends. I’m talking like 10 p.m. This would always frustrate

me, and I would try to push my parents to make my curfew later and give them all these reasons to let me go. At the time I didn’t realize what was SO bad about go-ing up to the lake with my friends. Now I’m realizing that I wasn’t always hanging around the right people. Even though I was with my friends and thought that I wouldn’t make bad decisions, I was a freshman hanging around upperclassmen who didn’t make the best decisions. What good was going to happen?

My first two years of high school were with upperclassmen who weren’t the best examples, and my parents knew this. In the back of my mind, I did too, but I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted to be “cool” and fit in. I didn’t really recognize this as a

freshman or even a sophomore. This is just one of the many areas in which my parents

have been right. I was young and couldn’t be trusted to make good decisions around the people I wanted to hang out with.

Something else I disagree with my parents about is why I always get stuck doing the chores it seems like they hate to do. This is probably one of the big things I still strug-gle with today. I hate doing the dishes, laundry, cleaning around the house, et cetera. But what I need to, and have kind of started to, understand is that they are just doing it to teach me to have a good work ethic and responsibility.

What we as teenagers also need to grasp is that the little

KYLAH COMLEY

See OPINION, Page 9


NEWS

After school there are multiple different activities a Sterling High School student can participate in, but one that is often overlooked, and a rarity, is play practice.

Director Betsy Dutton held auditions open to everyone, including students in athletics, but it worked out to where rehearsal was after school everyday.

“Auditions were open to everyone,” Dutton said. “It just worked out, and we were able to have auditions after school.”

If one were to ask anyone who has been in a produc-tion at SHS, he or she will probably mention the late nights working on it,

“It’s way better having rehearsal right after school,” senior Cameron Fair said. “That way we could just get it done and have a free, uninterrupted evening.”

Opening night of the latest production, “Pride @ Preju-dice,” was Jan. 30, which experienced some problems, but the issues were not from within the cast.

“On opening night, it was distressing to look out into the audience and see faces lit up by cell phones,” senior Solo-mon Dold said.

The cell phone issue seemed to be displeasing, but Direc-tor Betsy Dutton didn’t know about the issue until after the show.

“I watched their performances every night, and I didn’t feel like they were affected,” Dutton said. “They will tell you they were startled because it was there friends, but I didn’t notice any change in performance.”

Dold said the bigger issue was one of feeling irrelevant. “You don’t know how upsetting it is to look out and see

an entire row of SHS students on their phones,” he said. “We had spent countless hours of our lives working on ‘Pride @ Prejudice,’ then to have it disregarded because someone would rather be on his or he phone. It is completely disre-spectful and blatantly rude.”

Other than some problems with the audience on the first

night, it seems that the actors were still pleased with the performance.

“It went well for being such a hard play,” junior Brayden Hosman said. “The line load was a lot, and there were a lot of quick changes.”

With there being only seven cast members, many had to play multiple roles.

“It was definitely difficult, but a lot of fun,” sophomore Madeline Wagley said. “Some of my changes were really fast, and that made it difficult to come in on time and keep my costumes looking good.”

Junior Jessica Ricker agreed.“I played Lady Catherine and Caroline,” she said. “Play-

ing Lady Catherine was fun because I got to portray her in a more outgoing way, and she was mean too.”

For the audience members engaged in the production, it seemed to go over very well.

“I thought it went well,” sophomore Kyler Comley said. “The facial expressions were great, and the different voices were well done.”

DALLAS LACKEYCub Reporter

Play goes through off-stage issues

Elizabeth played by Senior Kandra Pattison Hugs Mr. Bennet played by Brayden Hosman(Photo by Taryn Gillespie)


NEWS

244 South BroadwaySterling, KS 67579Ph: 620-278-2102

During the 2013-2014 years, a veterans memorial was built at the Sterling lake. This memorial is a place for those who have served, and those who have family who have served, to go and reflect. It is a way for the Sterling Auxiliary and the park board to thank those men and women who have served for our country.

Don Klein, a member of the Sterling American Le-gion, feels strongly about this memorial and has been a part of bringing it to life.

“The park board is the group who has done the building and planning for the memorial,” Klein said. “They coordinated with the Legion to decide the de-tails.”

The memorial was built to display names of all the veterans in the area. These men and women have fought for our country, and this is a way for Sterling to honor those men and women.

“The circle around the center is for bricks with vet-erans names on them,” Klein said. “Its designed so that they can continually add additional names and bricks.”

Right now there are empty bricks already placed that are going to have names put on them.

“There are 1,500 empty bricks they can fill right now, and it’s expandable from that point on,” Klein said.

This will take place as veterans or their loved ones want names added to the memorial.

“These renovations will take place as time goes on. It’s made so that even in the future, if a veteran wants their name in it, they can add to it,” Klein said.

This memorial is set up to not be selective of a certain branch. It was made for all veterans.

“If you look on the wall down at the bottom it lists all the branches of military showing that our memorial is for all veterans,” Klein said.

Having all the branches involved makes the memorial more special for some of those men and women who have served .

“I think it’s special because it’s honoring all vet-erans,” Klein said. “They have all served some time or another and signed on the dotted line, which is like a blank check giving their life for their country if need be.”

Veterans in the area are grateful for this quite spot to go and reflect as well as to honor those who have fought.

“It an outstanding memorial and its very beautiful and the veterans would like to thank the city for it,” Klein said.

The veterans memorial at the Sterling Lake will be expanding due to the ef-forts of the Sterling American Legion and the park board. (Photo by Taryn Gillespie)

Veterans memorial to continue to expandTARYN GILLESPIE

Cub Reporter


Proudly supporting Sterling High School!

For bigger cities, renewing their current marketing happens more often than smaller cities. For the past 30 years, the City of Sterling has had the same logo. This year, however a contest has been put in place to develop a new one.

“It is just a process that we are going through city-wide as a way of updating our operations and our future goals and plans. It just seemed like a fitting time to do this,” City Manager Taggart Wall said.

According to the city’s website, www.sterling-kansas.com, there were more than 41 entries from artists in three states and 11 cities.

“I felt like we got a good stock to pick from, and I look forward to look-ing through those with a local commit-tee that we put together,” Wall said.

This committee will consist of a representative from a local business, residents and city staff, according to the website. The total number of people who entered in the contest was 26, and they had their logos put on the website to be voted upon by the public.

“As long as they applied, everybody was put up, so everyone was given a chance to go through a popular vote,” Wall said.

With the committee making the final decision on the winning logo,

certain criteria will have to be met in order for that logo to win.

“There are several different items to consider. From our perspective, we need to think, it was 30 years since we did the last one, so this has to be some-thing that can last and that is relatively modern, something that reflects the nature of the community,” Wall said.

Along with the reflection on the community, the logo will also have to be able to be transferred to different mediums around the town.

“How would that logo look on clothing, on a truck or even a business card? We have a variety of things to look at because if it’s too complicated it may cost more. It may not look good, so we have make sure it fits every medium we use, which is quite a few,” Wall said.

Some of the community members that entered the contest came from Sterling High School.

“We had several people enter from Sterling, and some of those were from the high school. We always want to be able to partner up, whether it be from the town or the high school, so as much as we can reach out, that is what we want to do,” Wall said.

The teacher in charge of the Graph-ic Design class, Derek Schneider, had his students enter in the contest as a project for the students.

“It allows them to have, number one, community interaction with the class, and, second, have a more profes-

sional style of an assignment,” Schnei-der said.

The class, although it doesn’t focus on design too much, gave the students better understanding on creating a logo of their own.

“We have mostly worked with Illus-trator. I think that if we had the contest later in the year, we could have had more work with elements and prin-ciples of design,” Schneider said.

Schneider thinks this opportunity was important to put these skills to use in a real-world setting and not just have them confined in the classroom.

“This gets them out of the high school and into the community at large, which is what real life is like, and it allows them to do something that is specifically for a customer, not neces-sarily what we are doing in class,” he said.

For some of the students that entered in the contest, it was the first time they have ever entered something of this magnitude.

“It was exciting because I have never entered in any contest, or at least one that offered money,” senior Jamie Dechant said.

Junior Justice Holliday, who trans-ferred from Elkhart High School, said the experience was a bit more out of his comfort zone.

“I have never really experienced this kind of art before,” he said. “I like it better because we get more recogni-tion,” he said.

Sterling holds logo contest ALEX VELIZCub Reporter


FEATURE

With spring break just around the corner, students look forward to their time off from school. While some kids use their time off to sit back and relax, others utilize the time to get away. One family in particular has used time off to travel all over the country over the years, to see and experience new things.

“I remember going to Minnesota when I was in first grade for a family reunion,” senior Henry Weiner said. “We also were able to some Lewis and Clark historical stuff, we saw iron mines, and we were fascinated by Lake Superior and the fact that it was that size. There was just a lot of fun stuff to see there.”

The three boys; Henry, Edward, and William Weiner, have been taking trips to different places for

nearly 11 years. The Rocky Mountains, Black Hills, Grand Canyon, and Washington D.C. are just a few of the places that the family has been.

“The Southwest was probably my favorite place to go,” William said. “It has a lot of Indian places so we would visit those places, and then we went to the Grand Canyon and it was really big and I always thought I was going to fall off the edge. There was also Mesa Verde where they carved houses into a cliff so we got to climb around in that and that was sweet.”

It didn’t take long for the trips to become some-thing that the boys started to look forward to year in and year out.

“During the summer during grade school I’d be stuck in swimming lessons or be bored reading a lot, and as our vacation leave time got closer that’s what I always got excited about,” Henry said.

With all of the hours spent in the car, the Weiner boys used their time wisely and were able to do what they loved on the way to their destination. Read.

“It was a general rule of two books per drive,” Hen-ry said. “We pack a shelf in the camper full of books, and then we’d fill an apple box full of books, and so we would have like our own personal library when we were gone for five or six weeks. We are probably a bizarre family.”

The boys developed new hobbies when travelling, that stimulated their minds even more.

“I was given an Atlas for a Christmas present in 2007, and so I would look at maps for hours after I got that,” Henry said. “Then I would use it to help map out the route for our trip and tell my parents when to stop if I thought something looked cool.”

The family also used the trips as learning experi-ences, taking time at each place to find out more about where they were.

“When we went to a place, it wasn’t just to go look at things, it was more a mentality that if something looks cool let’s go learn the history of it,” William said. “We’d go to like museums or talk to rangers so we could learn more about it.”

The Weiner’s trips were also very flexible, which allowed them to experience more of what they wanted, and take their time in certain places.

“The other thing that was nice is that we got to go slowly on our vacations,” Henry said. “We’d take six weeks to make a swing through the Southwest, and we would spend 4 days somewhere at like Mesa Verde and learn information from there, then we would go onto Arches National Park and we would stay there several

CALEB HENDRICKSCub Reporter

Weiners reflect on numerous trips taken throughout their childhood

A young William Weiner works on building a drum at Bandelier Nation-al Monument in New Mexico.(Photo courtesy of Henry Weiner)


Nancy, William, Dan, Edward, and Henry Weiner take a family picture in front of the Grand Canyon in Arizona.(Photo courtesy of Henry Weiner)


days to hike some and study the geol-ogy of things, and then at the Grand Canyon we were able to just take the time to learn about the history that was around the area. It was nice to be able to take our time, like if we were inter-ested in something, we would try our best to try and figure that out while we were there and answer the questions that we had about things, so we would change our schedule accordingly.

Being able to take the vacations together made the trips even more meaningful.

“It was just cool that we could do it all as a family, and it helped me under-stand my brothers more,” William said. “Edward was more into the science of everything, and Henry was more inter-ested in the history of things, so it just help me learn more about my family and what they were interested in.”

With the boys being so involved in school, it has been harder for the fam-ily to get away. However, they are still trying to make time for another trip next year.

“Now a days with basketball and everything we don’t have as much time to do anything, but next year I think we are going to go back down to the Southwest,” Edward said. “That’ll be

the year before my senior year when I’ll be really busy, and so I wanted to take the trip down there to see the desert again.”

Looking back, the boys are thankful for the experiences that they had on their family vacations.

“They have been really cool ways to see the U.S., and the different areas it has to offer, you get to see so much

more of the world, and you understand so much more of the world outside of Kansas than you do if you’re stuck in Sterling for your entire life,” Edward said. “Seeing the world opens up your mind and it shows you all the interest-ing things that you can find outside of what you know, and I think it really fosters a want to learn instead of ac-cepting the limits.”

Younger Edward, William and Henry are sworn in with a group of kids as Junior Rangers at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. (Photo courtesy of Henry Weiner)

The Weiner family sits in front of the Delicate Arch at the Arches National Park in Utah. (Photo courtesy of Henry Weiner)


A proud supporter ofUSD 376

Academics, Activities andthe Cub Reporter

www.sterlingbulletin.com620-278-2114 107 N. Broadway, Sterling

from OPINION, page 2

chores we have to do is nothing com-pared to the constant work our parents do.

My parents are always cooking and picking up after my three siblings and I. They’re also taking us to all of our events, paying for all of my stuff, and going to their own jobs everyday.

I personally feel like school and our activities are nothing compared to real life we will face. Some could argue that we have school as our job, and that we as teenagers are invariably busy. But it’s nothing compared to our parents.

I couldn’t write this article and not talk about high school relationships.

We all know this is something teenagers do a lot of thinking about, and, at least for me, causes conflict with my parents. When they don’t like a girl or guy you’re “talking” to (since that’s what teenagers do these days)

and don’t think you should be with them, you should listen. They’re right. I know, I know, you’re in love, he’s a good guy, he cares about you, and you think he’s the one.

But actually, only 2 percent of marriages are a result of high school relationships. You could be lucky and be part of that whopping 2 percent, but it’s not very likely.

I spent two years of my life with a boy that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, and guess what, it caused a lot of pain and extra stress in my life.

You know who was telling me the whole time that I was putting all my eggs in one basket and in reality wasn’t going to end up with this guy? You guessed it, my parents.

Not all high school relationships are like mine, and I understand that. Also

some parents fully support their teen-agers boyfriends or girlfriends, and I think that’s great. I just know from ex-perience that when your parents don’t agree with your choices, you should listen and consider their advice.

So, I challenge you. Next time you’re in a dispute with your parents about cleaning, your curfew, or a boy you like, think about how your parents have already driven down the road ahead of you. They’ve come to the forks in the road, gone over the bumps, and reached the dead ends.

As much as you think they’ll never understand what you’re going through, they do. They only want what’s best for you. In the back of your mind, you know your parents are wiser. It just takes some time to realize it.

When you do, trust me, you’ll be glad you did.


1630 Avenue QLyons, KS 67554

620-257-2300 www.jacam.com

Proudly SupportingLocal Education

1020 W Main StLyons, KS620-257-5677

Proud supporter of Sterling High School’s

Students, Teachers, Atheletes and Coaches!



Traditionally, girls golf season in Kansas occurs during the fall, but for girls at Sterling High School the golf season will come in the spring.

Along with 15 boys, there are three girls trying their hand at the 18-hole game.

Juniors Mac Thrasher, Macreedy Kocher and Kaci Wil-son will be putting, chipping and driving on the course with the boys, and excitement is brewing for most of the team.

“I think that it is good for more girls to be getting into the sport. It’s just as much a girls sport as a guys sport. It’ll also give Dale a lot more to do,” freshman golfer Logan Gil-

lespie said.The decision to play golf this season varied for many of

the girls. “I went to state golf the past two years to watch the boys,

and I enjoyed it,” Kocher said. “One day I went out golfing with them, and they talked me into trying it. So I did. I hit the ball far, but it wasn’t so straight. Maybe Caleb can help me with that.”

Some were convinced by an outside party to try, while others decided on their own.

“I’m playing because I’m not in a spring sport. I like golf, and I think it will be a lot of fun,” Wilson said.

The excitement around the team involves many thoughts about long time golfer and five-year coach Dale Rose.

“I’m most excited about hanging out with the infamous Dale Rose. The dude is a legend,” Thrasher said.

Coach Rose has led the golf team to state every year since becoming the coach, placing second at two of his five state berths and fourth at another.

“The thing is, the reason a lot of us are good now is because we did Junior Golf when we were younger,” senior golfer Caleb Hendricks said. “Dale has done a great job of preparing us from when we were kids, and because of the experience we had when we were little, our game has car-ried over. We are able to be successful because of that.”

In other words, Coach Rose is a large part of the golf team’s growth and success.

“The real reason I’m playing is because of Dale. He is the bomb,” Kocher said.

Improvement is a common theme for season-wide goals for the first-time golfers.

“I want to be halfway decent and be able to keep up with people. Maybe I can improve enough to actually play in some tournaments,” Thrasher said.

As for the girls continuing the sport, most plan to make golf a permanent addition to their athletic schedule after the season is over.

“There’s no way to know what conflicts might come up, but, right now, I plan to play next year,” Wilson said.

SPORTS

“I’m most excited about hanging out with the infamous Dale Rose. The dude is a legend.”

— Mac Thrasher, junior

LINDSAY GILMORECub Reporter

Coach Dale Rose encourages additions to team of linksmen

Out of all the seasons in sports and in academics throughout high school, none is more busy and hectic than the spring.

There are four sports, forensics, music and journalism contests, a play,

and many other everyday activities going on throughout the school year’s fourth quarter.

“Everybody is leaving at the same time, so there are days where no one is there,” math teacher Wes Laudermilk said.

With so many things going on, many students miss part of up to three

school days a week.“I have lots of homework, and I

miss out on lots of events in classes. I also hate missing out on social time with friends that aren’t in track,” junior Emma Lambert said.

Even with being such a busy season, most high school students still enjoy playing a spring sport, and with four

LINDSAY GILMORECub Reporter


Sophomore Joel White leaps off the track into the sand during the long jump event last year at the Halstead track meet. (File Photo)

to choose from, it’s not hard to find something to try.

“I’m doing track this spring because it keeps me in shape, and I like it,” sophomore Maddie Thrasher said.

Part of the spring sports appeal is just the fact they are all played out-doors, rather than inside a gym.

“I think that it really helps that spring sports are outside since all of us hooligans and winter sport athletes have spring fever around that time,” senior Andi Dowell said. “It gives us a place to blow off steam.”

With the outdoor factor of spring athletics also comes the hope of indi-vidual, as well as team, success.

“You have your freedom to show off your individual strengths. Like in track, tennis, and softball, you can do your individual events and play your individual positions,” sophomore Emma Horsch said.

A majority of Sterling High School students do a spring activity, and with spring right around the corner, excite-ment is in the air.

“There are so many people involved in things during spring time, so it gets so many students involved in activities, and it makes everything so much more fun. That’s the best part about spring,” senior softball player Taryn Gillespie said.


INFOGRAPHIC

Notes on educationWhen we turn 4 or 5, our parents send us to this place called “school.” From that point on, our lives are

dedicated to our education, whether we want it or not. However, high school comes along and things begin to get a little more serious. Freshmen usually try to make it through the year without having a senior make fun of you. Sophomore year is the longest of the four years because you’re not quite an upperclassmen but you’re not a little freshman either. When junior year comes along, the thought that you’re going to be leaving next year runs through your mind, but that’s all it is — a thought. It doesn’t really bother you because you have a whole year to figure it out. Then senior year comes and you’re suddenly bombarded with things like college decisions, senior projects and graduation. Education is going to be facing tough cuts and problems, so where do we stand in education nationally, statewide, and locally?

81%of freshmen in the country graduate from high school with a regular degree

Kansas is ranked#5with Iowa in the country with 89% of freshmen graduating from high school

Girls have a higher graduation rate than Boyswith

84%of girls graduatingcompared to

77%of boysgraduating

statistics from Americashealthranking.org and citydata.com


On a scale from 0-100

Sterling is at 76for average weighted test scores

The Rice County average for weighted test scores is 53

while the state average is 54Of the population in Sterling 25 years and older

95.3% have a high school degree of higher

31.3% have a Bachelor’s degree or higher

12.4% have a graduate or professional degree

12.4% are unemployed

Of the students in Sterling High School

96%plan on attending college after high school

77% see educational goals as most important

11.5% of seniors think graduating from high school is important

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ENTERTAINMENTNOTE: Killer Serial Fiction is a part of Sterling Student Publications. It is the home of creative writing by Sterling High School creative writing students. Stories appearing here are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. These stories are presented for entertainment purposes only and are not intended to be read as being part of Sterling Student Publications news coverage. For more stories, visit www.sterlingstudentpublications.com/fiction.

Every channel I turn to says the exact same thing. Even the Cartoon Network isn’t safe. I decide to turn off the TV, seeing as I’m not going to be watching anything but those commercials about the new advanced Google Glasses.

I go to the bathroom and look in the mirror. I take my glasses off and try to imagine myself with the new Google Glasses. I’ll be the most envied person in the world!

I get to try the new Google Glasses before everyone else, and I can see why they would be envious.

The new glasses are awesome! They send emails to you, holograms can take your place, and it plans your day for you while you sleep. Basically, you don’t have lift a finger for anything.

I put my glasses back on, “I can’t believe that I’ll be going to the

Google building in the morning. It was really nice of them to pay for the hotel room, and it’s only an hour drive away,” I say to my reflection.

Wow, I must really be lonely. I need to go to sleep. I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

I turn off the bathroom light, walk over to the bed, pull the covers back, and crawl into bed.

I wake up to the annoying buzz-buzz sound of the alarm clock blaring into my ear. I roll out of bed and get ready for the day. I just got done brushing my teeth when someone knocked on my door. I answer the door and a man with a clipboard walks in. He looks goofy. His hair was tussled, he had old, coke-bottle thick glasses, plaid pants, black button up shirt, and a lab coat with different colors stained on it.

“Jim Methoue?” he asked not looking up from his clipboard.

“Yes, who are you?” He looked at me with a shocked face, but then he smiled and acted like I just asked the million dollar question.

“I’m Billy, the person who’s going to be tak-ing you to the Google building and back, and I’m supposed to collect more information on you.”

I just looked at him. He didn’t seem phased by me staring at him like he was a science experi-ment. Billy walked over to me and took out a tape measure.

“Hmm, lets see. 6-foot-2, hazel eyes, black hair.” He paused and wrote this down on his clip-board. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “You wear glasses. Do you have contacts?”

“No, I don’t have contacts. Glasses only.” He nodded as if this was the best thing in the

world. I thought my answer was awkward, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept writing and looking at me.

“I thought I already answered all the ques-tions,” I asked trying to not offend him.

It didn’t even faze him. He just continued to

write something down, and without even look-ing up he answered me, “Yes, you did, but this is just double checking…ready to go?”

I moved to get my hotel key and put it in my wallet, and we walked out of the hotel. Billy never looked at me or asked any more questions.

I didn’t think that this would be so nerve racking.

We get to the car and my fears were put to rest when I saw the Google van parked. The car ride was also quiet, but I didn’t mind. The build-ing was only an hour away.

The traffic was moving fast, so we were there in no time. We turned into the Google building, and Billy flashed his badge at the security officer. We pulled into the parking lot.

The building was big and grand. I was look-ing in every direction, and Billy motioned for me to follow him. We turned down a hallway and stopped in front of a heavy steel door.

Billy showed his badge once again to some guard and the door opened. The room was empty except for one chair in the center of the room. It looked like it was bolted down to the ground. Billy walked to the chair, and I’m still frozen at the door.

I’m just a couple of steps away from fame and the envy of the whole world.

That thought alone pushed me into the room and closer to the odd looking chair. When I got further into the room, I noticed a giant, one-way glass window. When I got to the chair I noticed it had metal restraints on the arms, legs, and head rest of the chair. Billy moved closer to the chair, when I sat down, to lock all the restraints in place.

Billy looked at me. He had a pained look on his face as he said, “Now that you’re strapped into the chair and I’m out of the way, your head will be moved up, and two robotic arms will come down to put the glasses on.”

I looked at him and was about to ask a ques-tion on why robotic arms when he continued taking my glasses off.

“The new Google glasses will replace your old glasses and will be stuck to your face perma-nently because we hope that these glasses will replace every electronic in the world, so why take them off?” I tried to nod in agreement, but it was hard with my head restrained. Then the thought of the word permanent crossed through my mind.

“Wait. Permanent? I thought that I could take them off every now and then?”

He looked at me and sighed. “As I told you, we hope to replace all electronics with theses glasses, and they will register how bad your eyesight is and will adjust to it.”

I was about to say something else when he added in quickly, “Now let’s start and let the world know that the new Google Glasses are almost ready for them.”

The fame I wanted. The fame of it all to go down a legend to be remembered. I shut up and gave him a nod, which he understood “as let’s do this.”

Billy walked towards the huge, one-way glass and gave a thumbs up. My chair starts to move back, and all I can see is the blurred ceiling and, just like Billy said, two robotic arms coming down. Something cold was placed on my head, and then I was sitting up in the chair.

Billy was back at my side unlocking the restraints. My vision was still a little blurred, but it was clearing up. Billy walked me out. In the car, he hands me a pamphlet on the glasses and how they worked, including a number in case something went wrong. We got back to the hotel and Billy walked me to my room and opened the door for me.

“Now, Jim, you should get some rest. The glasses will take a lot out of you and your eyes at first, so you should just rest.”

I nodded yes and with that he said goodbye and left me there alone. I decided to go to sleep and do what Billy suggested. I changed into my pajamas and went to sleep.

When I woke up, it was 5:30 a.m. I felt woozy.

Billy was right, my eyes do feel strained. I needed to wash my face. I go to the

bathroom to wash my face. I turn the light on, and there’s blood everywhere — dripping down the walls and splattered on the mirror. I looked down at my hands and they are soaked in blood. How could this have happened? The only thing I remember before I went to sleep was the Google Glasses going red and flashing “Manual over-drive activated.”

I thought it was just me turning them off. A stream of questions flooded into my mind.

“Did I hit the wrong button? Did I ruin my chance at fame? Will they say I’m too incompe-tent to handle the glasses and take them away from me?”

Panic set in. I needed to hide. I needed to cover this up. I needed to keep the one shot I had at fame intact.

I stopped panicking enough to remember that my hotel bathroom is covered in blood of who knows who or what.

Just then the question came into my head, the one question no one ever wants to ask them-selves, “Did I murder someone?”

Killer GooGle BY JAIME DECHANT

Documents

Sterling Cub Reporter: March 2015