Tired of Talking

Hi! How are you?” “I’m good, how are you?” Everyone knows the drill. When you bump into an friend at the mall, or pass by an old teacher in the hall at school, this is typical. But for Tionna Slater ’21, this little chit-chat isn’t enough for her.

When Slater was asked what she is passionate about and enjoys doing, her response was atypical for a teen girl.

“I like to have deeper conversations with people,” she said. “I hate when I’m texting someone, and they’re just like, ‘Oh how are you, how was your day?’ I mean, it’s thoughtful, but I like to talk about deeper subjects.”

Freshman Cecilia Sileo knows this all too well. “I think Tionna is someone I could go to if I really needed to talk about things.” Sileo said. “But on the hand of just daily conversations, I find that conversing with her is pleasant and maybe even calming.”

Slater also provided the surprising thing near the top of the list of the things she doesn’t like.

“I hate in the summer that everyone wants to go swimming.” she says. “I don’t know how to swim, first of all.” Many can look back at those faded memories at the local pool, getting swim lessons, along with all the other five-year-olds splashing around. Parents gushing through the glass window. Well, Slater isn’t one of them. “Having water all over my face is not very fun. I don’t want to do that.”

Speaking of memories, Slater explained how she wants to be remembered by her friends and family after she dies.

“I want at my funeral, you know like the eulogy, I want it to be a bunch of positive stuff, the good stuff about me,” she said. “I don’t want it to be just like a regular funeral, I want people to remember me very specifically, like remember the little stuff about me.”

This was an important subject to Slater, just like how she appreciates her mom the most out of anyone. “My mom, she’s very wise, and she can teach me a lot of things. She’s the best,” Slater said. “I want to be that type of mom, like when I get older. She’s not perfect, but she has really nice aspects about herself that I really admire.”

She said the admirable characteristics of her mom include her strange sense of humor, that others don’t understand, despite Slater and her family. Her mom also always helps people, even after they ‘burn’ her, and Slater thinks that’s cool because she herself would not do that. Another characteristic of her mom would be she tries to be understanding and accepting, as opposed to jumping the gun.