A few days ago, while I was reading, I happened to look over at my feet and became so touched by their embrace I took a picture.
This is a healthy thing and I am normal.
This is a healthy thing and I am normal.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Friday, December 27, 2013
pretty hard
My older sister was shuffling through the cupboards in her XXXL 'Leaf me alone' sweatshirt and spoke of her stomach hurting. Because she doesn't usually complain unless she's close to dying - which is unusual compared to most teenage girls - my mother became slightly sympathetic.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I hope you get your period soon."
"Well I don't."
"I know. Being a girl can really suck. But, if you were a boy, you'd have a penis. And sometimes that could get pretty hard."
No one laughed. The dog continued sleeping and my stepdad continued scrolling through his phone and my sister continued staring with the look of 'so done' on her face and I stood in the kitchen with the sentence "It can't be all that difficult having a penis if you get a higher annual salary out of it" literally on the tip of my tongue as my mother lost control.
She had done it.
The best joke.
The best joke she had ever and will ever come up with ever in her time on earth. Ever. Here it was, in a kitchen on a Friday night, and she basked in it in the glow of the hallway light losing herself.
There was clapping and snorting and chortling and coughing and bent-in-half wheezing and every sort of imaginable I-just-made-a-funny physical reaction any human could perform, right there. She had done it. She had done it, and she would not move on without the best joke of her life being lived in the moment it was still alive.
It caught up with us long after it should have. Jacob looked up from his phone and sighed, "Dang it, Heather," and my sister narrowed her eyes and whispered "No," and I slowly spun myself around and into the corner between the fridge and the wall, where I live through every best joke's existence, closing my eyes and steadying my breaths until its time has passed.
After a moment, I wiped my eyes, removed myself from the pun corner, and excused myself from the situation by saying, "I'm sorry, I have to write this down. Good night."
This joke will now live longer than you will.
And that is a very frightening thought.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I hope you get your period soon."
"Well I don't."
"I know. Being a girl can really suck. But, if you were a boy, you'd have a penis. And sometimes that could get pretty hard."
No one laughed. The dog continued sleeping and my stepdad continued scrolling through his phone and my sister continued staring with the look of 'so done' on her face and I stood in the kitchen with the sentence "It can't be all that difficult having a penis if you get a higher annual salary out of it" literally on the tip of my tongue as my mother lost control.
She had done it.
The best joke.
The best joke she had ever and will ever come up with ever in her time on earth. Ever. Here it was, in a kitchen on a Friday night, and she basked in it in the glow of the hallway light losing herself.
There was clapping and snorting and chortling and coughing and bent-in-half wheezing and every sort of imaginable I-just-made-a-funny physical reaction any human could perform, right there. She had done it. She had done it, and she would not move on without the best joke of her life being lived in the moment it was still alive.
It caught up with us long after it should have. Jacob looked up from his phone and sighed, "Dang it, Heather," and my sister narrowed her eyes and whispered "No," and I slowly spun myself around and into the corner between the fridge and the wall, where I live through every best joke's existence, closing my eyes and steadying my breaths until its time has passed.
After a moment, I wiped my eyes, removed myself from the pun corner, and excused myself from the situation by saying, "I'm sorry, I have to write this down. Good night."
This joke will now live longer than you will.
And that is a very frightening thought.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
In Other News, I am NOT Dying (a long and boring medical post)
TO THOSE OF YOU WHOM I MAY HAVE TOLD OF MY IMMINENT DOOM:
So I'm not dying.
EXPLANATION:
One day I was reading in an undershirt and discovered that one section of what seemed to be my rib was very much not symmetrical to the other side. It was on the right side of where the ribs meet the sternum and I felt either side and the right side was very much larger than the left. My bones, however, are extremely easy to feel, and I realized many other people could have this exact problem and not know it because they could not feel their sternum-ribs on their chests.
DIAGNOSIS #1:
My mom is a midwife. She used to be a biology teacher and then she was a mom and now she's training to become a midwife. This means 1) we cannot eat dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, 2) we cannot have people over for dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, and 3) every problem can be easily fixed with aromatherapy oils and vitamin D.
This means that my mother is the first physician I ask.
I try not to go to my mother about medical things, because 1) most of what she says is what doctors would call "uncredited" and 2) I am only slightly less uncomfortable than a twelve year old boy at the word 'vagina' being spoken.
But I went to her and described my condition and unbuttoned my shirt and showed her and she said
"Oh, you must've inherited that from your stepdad."
"...I don't think that's how it works."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Have you been taking vitamin D?"
"No."
"Take some vitamin D."
"Okay thanks."
DIAGNOSIS #2:
The next day I rode my bike to the library because I had signed up to volunteer and nobody was around so I had to take myself there and the bike was really the only option.
I ride there all the time in the summer, and hadn't been expecting 1) the cold, 2) the pollution, or 3) the fact that I was not as "in shape" as I was in the summer.
It was bad. The cars were bad. The city was bad. The cold was bad. My lungs were even worse and that was when I decided I probably must be dying.
I went to my mother again.
"I think I'm dying."
"Why would you think you're dying?"
"Because there's an abnormality on my rib and it hurts to breathe and I need to study for Spanish."
"Oh. How about lavender oil?"
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with lavender oil." (this would take too long to explain.)
"Here, let me feel your sternum."
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with my sternum." (her favorite thing is to make fun of my sternum)
But she thought it was funny and laughed and sat me down on the couch and shook me around by the shoulders and told me to close my eyes and "relax", which is extremely hard for me to do considering I can barely stand hand-holding in the hallways, which is a miracle in itself.
"I need to study for Spanish," I said.
My mother shushed me and continued rocking my shoulders. She pretended to be a chiropractor and know what she was doing and felt each bone in my ribcage and said, "Yep. You've got a problem."
"I think it's called imminent doom."
"You sound like Jacob."
"I don't want to be a hypochondriac but I also don't want to die."
The house was quiet and all the kids were asleep and my older sister was at work and my stepdad was finishing cabinets in his workshop and it was dark and quiet and I appreciate that I have a mother who can also pretend to be a medicine man from the fifteenth century. She was picking up little black bottles and boxes of homemade skin butter.
"My lungs hurt."
"Your lungs?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
She stared at me. "Your right boob is bigger than your left one."
"Why do I come to you for this?"
"No shh. So your lungs hurt?"
"Yeah. But that could be from breathing in the toxins from the roads while biking. Or from not biking for so long. Or whatever. It's probably nothing. I'm probably not dying."
I honestly believed I was dying.
"Okay." She held me by the shoulders and looked up at me. She smelled like too many good things. "So. You have a very strong belief system running down your core, where your spine and sternum is, right? That's your belief system. And you're trying very hard to keep it straight and something is tampering with it and you're questioning it. Right? Your beliefs are held in your lungs. When your lungs hurt, your belief system hurts."
"...Okay."
"Also, you're nurturing too much. That's because of your bone seeming to be pulled bigger. You're trying to provide for more than you can give. You don't have to babysit for me all the time or do all the stuff I make you do. You just have to take care of you. Okay?"
"I don't really get how you could get all that just from - "
"You know what would help you? Lavender."
At this point the feeling of death and doom and destruction was so close I figured lavender was not the worst thing that could happen. She started pulling out little black bottles and shaking them.
I was laughing.
She started dumping sleep scents on my sternum that I didn't know how to pronounce and kept spilling too much and took out vegetable oil "so the strength of the rose's energy won't burn your skin" and I actually became so tired by the hippie medicine I didn't care to fight it and just sat there and leaned my head back and laughed at the absurdity of the logic and thanked her for her help.
Fortunately, I didn't study and sleep came far too easily and I still thought I was dying.
DIAGNOSIS #3:
After the original diagnosis, I asked if I could be taken to a real doctor to make sure I don't have cancer instead of a tampered belief system. Even though, with Medicare, the visit would have only been five dollars, my mother's strong distaste for professional medicine brought me to a chiropractor with boxes of tea and a small fountain in the waiting room.
There is an extreme fear associated with chiropractors. It's almost up there with my fear of intimacy, swimming pools, and construction sites. Touching is at the very top of my fear list. Chiropractors do the touching thing for a living. It's not just harmless touching either. It's like cracking your bones touching. Like, Not only do I have to touch you, which you don't like anyway, but it's going to be while you're not looking. And it's going to hurt.
I used to have scoliosis, and mentioned it to the lady working there, who felt my back and told me I was only as crooked as most people are, which I found only slightly less than comforting.
The diagnosis was, in the end, that I was leaning a weird way when I write and should stop. The cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum was getting bunched up on one side, which could be fixed by stretching and breathing through my belly instead of my chest.
Also I was diagnosed as being insecure.
But because chiropractors, no matter what anyone says, are at least a little more qualified than my mother, I took it and ran with it and thanked the sky that it was over.
The conversation with my mother in the car:
"Do you think I still ought to, you know, go to a doctor?"
"Why would you go to a doctor?"
"Cancer?"
"You don't have cancer though. You have a conflicting belief system and an overfilled heart and are insecure in the way you breathe because you're not sure how much oxygen you deserve to take in with the space you occupy on earth. Also you lean on your elbow when you write."
"Okay, okay." I didn't say anything for a while. Then, "But I'm pretty sure my beliefs are okay."
"Nothing's messing with them?"
"Nope."
"..."
"..."
"He's really pretty, that boy with the bare foot that-"
"Alright fine, I don't have cancer! I'm just writing weird."
"Make sure to take vitamin D when we get home."
"I'll take all the vitamin D in the world. I'll hook myself up to an IV of vitamin D. I'll inject it into my veins like narcotics. I'll be a vitamin D pill-popper. Vitamin D dealer. All the cool kids will start taking it. Vitamin D will cure the ailments of the world."
So just in case I told anyone who's managed to scroll all the way through this about how I'm probably dying, I'm probably not. Don't go writing any eulogies yet.
Have a nice Wednesday.
Egg nog.
EGG NOG.
EGG NOG WEDNESDAY.
So I'm not dying.
EXPLANATION:
One day I was reading in an undershirt and discovered that one section of what seemed to be my rib was very much not symmetrical to the other side. It was on the right side of where the ribs meet the sternum and I felt either side and the right side was very much larger than the left. My bones, however, are extremely easy to feel, and I realized many other people could have this exact problem and not know it because they could not feel their sternum-ribs on their chests.
DIAGNOSIS #1:
My mom is a midwife. She used to be a biology teacher and then she was a mom and now she's training to become a midwife. This means 1) we cannot eat dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, 2) we cannot have people over for dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, and 3) every problem can be easily fixed with aromatherapy oils and vitamin D.
This means that my mother is the first physician I ask.
I try not to go to my mother about medical things, because 1) most of what she says is what doctors would call "uncredited" and 2) I am only slightly less uncomfortable than a twelve year old boy at the word 'vagina' being spoken.
But I went to her and described my condition and unbuttoned my shirt and showed her and she said
"Oh, you must've inherited that from your stepdad."
"...I don't think that's how it works."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Have you been taking vitamin D?"
"No."
"Take some vitamin D."
"Okay thanks."
DIAGNOSIS #2:
The next day I rode my bike to the library because I had signed up to volunteer and nobody was around so I had to take myself there and the bike was really the only option.
I ride there all the time in the summer, and hadn't been expecting 1) the cold, 2) the pollution, or 3) the fact that I was not as "in shape" as I was in the summer.
It was bad. The cars were bad. The city was bad. The cold was bad. My lungs were even worse and that was when I decided I probably must be dying.
I went to my mother again.
"I think I'm dying."
"Why would you think you're dying?"
"Because there's an abnormality on my rib and it hurts to breathe and I need to study for Spanish."
"Oh. How about lavender oil?"
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with lavender oil." (this would take too long to explain.)
"Here, let me feel your sternum."
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with my sternum." (her favorite thing is to make fun of my sternum)
But she thought it was funny and laughed and sat me down on the couch and shook me around by the shoulders and told me to close my eyes and "relax", which is extremely hard for me to do considering I can barely stand hand-holding in the hallways, which is a miracle in itself.
"I need to study for Spanish," I said.
My mother shushed me and continued rocking my shoulders. She pretended to be a chiropractor and know what she was doing and felt each bone in my ribcage and said, "Yep. You've got a problem."
"I think it's called imminent doom."
"You sound like Jacob."
"I don't want to be a hypochondriac but I also don't want to die."
The house was quiet and all the kids were asleep and my older sister was at work and my stepdad was finishing cabinets in his workshop and it was dark and quiet and I appreciate that I have a mother who can also pretend to be a medicine man from the fifteenth century. She was picking up little black bottles and boxes of homemade skin butter.
"My lungs hurt."
"Your lungs?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
She stared at me. "Your right boob is bigger than your left one."
"Why do I come to you for this?"
"No shh. So your lungs hurt?"
"Yeah. But that could be from breathing in the toxins from the roads while biking. Or from not biking for so long. Or whatever. It's probably nothing. I'm probably not dying."
I honestly believed I was dying.
"Okay." She held me by the shoulders and looked up at me. She smelled like too many good things. "So. You have a very strong belief system running down your core, where your spine and sternum is, right? That's your belief system. And you're trying very hard to keep it straight and something is tampering with it and you're questioning it. Right? Your beliefs are held in your lungs. When your lungs hurt, your belief system hurts."
"...Okay."
"Also, you're nurturing too much. That's because of your bone seeming to be pulled bigger. You're trying to provide for more than you can give. You don't have to babysit for me all the time or do all the stuff I make you do. You just have to take care of you. Okay?"
"I don't really get how you could get all that just from - "
"You know what would help you? Lavender."
At this point the feeling of death and doom and destruction was so close I figured lavender was not the worst thing that could happen. She started pulling out little black bottles and shaking them.
I was laughing.
She started dumping sleep scents on my sternum that I didn't know how to pronounce and kept spilling too much and took out vegetable oil "so the strength of the rose's energy won't burn your skin" and I actually became so tired by the hippie medicine I didn't care to fight it and just sat there and leaned my head back and laughed at the absurdity of the logic and thanked her for her help.
Fortunately, I didn't study and sleep came far too easily and I still thought I was dying.
DIAGNOSIS #3:
After the original diagnosis, I asked if I could be taken to a real doctor to make sure I don't have cancer instead of a tampered belief system. Even though, with Medicare, the visit would have only been five dollars, my mother's strong distaste for professional medicine brought me to a chiropractor with boxes of tea and a small fountain in the waiting room.
There is an extreme fear associated with chiropractors. It's almost up there with my fear of intimacy, swimming pools, and construction sites. Touching is at the very top of my fear list. Chiropractors do the touching thing for a living. It's not just harmless touching either. It's like cracking your bones touching. Like, Not only do I have to touch you, which you don't like anyway, but it's going to be while you're not looking. And it's going to hurt.
I used to have scoliosis, and mentioned it to the lady working there, who felt my back and told me I was only as crooked as most people are, which I found only slightly less than comforting.
The diagnosis was, in the end, that I was leaning a weird way when I write and should stop. The cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum was getting bunched up on one side, which could be fixed by stretching and breathing through my belly instead of my chest.
Also I was diagnosed as being insecure.
But because chiropractors, no matter what anyone says, are at least a little more qualified than my mother, I took it and ran with it and thanked the sky that it was over.
The conversation with my mother in the car:
"Do you think I still ought to, you know, go to a doctor?"
"Why would you go to a doctor?"
"Cancer?"
"You don't have cancer though. You have a conflicting belief system and an overfilled heart and are insecure in the way you breathe because you're not sure how much oxygen you deserve to take in with the space you occupy on earth. Also you lean on your elbow when you write."
"Okay, okay." I didn't say anything for a while. Then, "But I'm pretty sure my beliefs are okay."
"Nothing's messing with them?"
"Nope."
"..."
"..."
"He's really pretty, that boy with the bare foot that-"
"Alright fine, I don't have cancer! I'm just writing weird."
"Make sure to take vitamin D when we get home."
"I'll take all the vitamin D in the world. I'll hook myself up to an IV of vitamin D. I'll inject it into my veins like narcotics. I'll be a vitamin D pill-popper. Vitamin D dealer. All the cool kids will start taking it. Vitamin D will cure the ailments of the world."
So just in case I told anyone who's managed to scroll all the way through this about how I'm probably dying, I'm probably not. Don't go writing any eulogies yet.
Have a nice Wednesday.
Egg nog.
EGG NOG.
EGG NOG WEDNESDAY.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Ironing My Future
I was on my second cup of tea and I don't even really like tea and it was finals week and I should have been studying but instead I was ironing.
I am the only person left in the family who irons. Everybody else just stopped wearing clothes that required it. And the ironing board is just barely holding on to the wall with half a screw and I wait until the house is dark and quiet before starting because I don't want a kid to come dashing through the hallway and get burned.
And it was on this night when I ironed a crease in a shirt where it wasn't supposed to be and shouted
Then, it dawned on me.
It isn't that I am absolutely sure to fail. It's just that it's likely.
But this world doesn't really seem to appreciate most of these things.
There it was.
The night before finals.
The loophole.
I could marry a businessman.
This is what happened in my head that night:
Ironing? Totally useful.
It was brilliant. All I'd have to do is get really good at ironing - I'm talking apron, oven mitts, the whole deal - and be able to pull off trophy wiving, and boom -- total success. Totally not homeless.
The only problem was - well, there were a lot of problems.
I'm not exactly a natural trophy wife. There are a lot of factors involved.
These are all things I am bad at.
I could be perfect at ironing, right? Like, totally pro. No creases. Ever. And then there'll be some guy in a flannel someday start telling me about his favorite authors and I'll have to say, "I'm sorry sir, but ONE of us has to marry rich. Or at least end up halfway successful. Somebody's gotta sell here. I'm sorry dude. Have fun with your wood carving career though. You're really interesting. And your shirt isn't ironed properly. But that's okay because you're an artist and it's okay for you to have creases in your shirt."
I continued my ironing that night with a new sense of purpose and a new set of goals. All I have to do now is get really good at enslaving men with my good looks and charm, and then the ironing will be like a surprise. Like a hidden talent. And I won't tell him until the day after the marriage papers are signed and all of his shirts will be perfectly ironed and he'll say,
"Shady, did you do this? Did you really do this?"
MORAL: There is no moral because I no longer need morals. I am going to marry rich and nothing is going to stop me.
(Just kidding. I couldn't ever really marry rich because I can't even do the tricking-you-into-thinking-I'm-pretty thing. I don't really even iron exceptionally well. Also I passed most of the finals and probably won't end up homeless. Don't worry, Christie. There's always the postal service.)
I am the only person left in the family who irons. Everybody else just stopped wearing clothes that required it. And the ironing board is just barely holding on to the wall with half a screw and I wait until the house is dark and quiet before starting because I don't want a kid to come dashing through the hallway and get burned.
And it was on this night when I ironed a crease in a shirt where it wasn't supposed to be and shouted
Then, it dawned on me.
It isn't that I am absolutely sure to fail. It's just that it's likely.
There it was.
The night before finals.
The loophole.
I could marry a businessman.
This is what happened in my head that night:
Ironing? Totally useful.
(sometime in the future)
The only problem was - well, there were a lot of problems.
I'm not exactly a natural trophy wife. There are a lot of factors involved.
I could be perfect at ironing, right? Like, totally pro. No creases. Ever. And then there'll be some guy in a flannel someday start telling me about his favorite authors and I'll have to say, "I'm sorry sir, but ONE of us has to marry rich. Or at least end up halfway successful. Somebody's gotta sell here. I'm sorry dude. Have fun with your wood carving career though. You're really interesting. And your shirt isn't ironed properly. But that's okay because you're an artist and it's okay for you to have creases in your shirt."
I continued my ironing that night with a new sense of purpose and a new set of goals. All I have to do now is get really good at enslaving men with my good looks and charm, and then the ironing will be like a surprise. Like a hidden talent. And I won't tell him until the day after the marriage papers are signed and all of his shirts will be perfectly ironed and he'll say,
"Shady, did you do this? Did you really do this?"
MORAL: There is no moral because I no longer need morals. I am going to marry rich and nothing is going to stop me.
(Just kidding. I couldn't ever really marry rich because I can't even do the tricking-you-into-thinking-I'm-pretty thing. I don't really even iron exceptionally well. Also I passed most of the finals and probably won't end up homeless. Don't worry, Christie. There's always the postal service.)
Friday, December 20, 2013
The Best Joke
"Am I the only girl who drinks books and reads tea?"
"No."
This joke took me a half an hour.
You'd think, since I had all that time to think it through - rearranging books, testing lighting, making tea, fixating the ten-second-timer camera on the music stand - I would've figured out that it wasn't funny.
But no.
No.
I am still funny.
(And I still haven't gotten around to finishing the book.)
Thursday, December 19, 2013
A Post About Fridge Magnets (this one gets really weird i'm so sorry)
From a family who doesn't celebrate birthdays or tack things onto the fridge, Nick Daniel is a pretty noticeable thing.
Nick Daniel is an insurance agent or something else boring I don't understand. He comes to our house sometimes and we feed him and listen to him talk about retirement plans and investments and show us graphs and stuff and then we ask him about his girlfriend and give him tips on his life.
Every time one of the kids has a birthday, we are reminded of it by getting a Nick Daniel magnet in the mail. I like making a big deal out of it - like, WOW, I got a magnet with Nick Daniel's face on it! What a day to be alive! And I stick it right on the fridge where everyone can see, as if he's a high test score or a finger painting or a family photograph.
Then, one day, something happened.
This happened.
Nick Daniel is an insurance agent or something else boring I don't understand. He comes to our house sometimes and we feed him and listen to him talk about retirement plans and investments and show us graphs and stuff and then we ask him about his girlfriend and give him tips on his life.
Every time one of the kids has a birthday, we are reminded of it by getting a Nick Daniel magnet in the mail. I like making a big deal out of it - like, WOW, I got a magnet with Nick Daniel's face on it! What a day to be alive! And I stick it right on the fridge where everyone can see, as if he's a high test score or a finger painting or a family photograph.
Then, one day, something happened.
This happened.
I think I might have to explain that this is not the first time.
My household has a strange habit of finding faces scrawled out of photographs completely inconspicuously. Once one is discovered, we ask every single member of the family - (there are seven) - if they know who the culprit was. And, every single time, no one confesses.
And it'll happen again. A beautiful family photograph with a hole scrawled out of it with a car key, right on someone's face. We decide to blame it on the baby. We decide to stop asking questions.
We have a pretty decent idea about where it is coming from. But when you know someone is scribbling out faces, you don't exactly want to be the one accusing them of scribbling out faces. You know?
But this - this was a travesty. Nick Daniel did nothing to anyone except teach us about savings. He is all we have on our fridge.
And birthdays only happen once a year.
... Coincidentally, we've got ourselves an awful lot of birthdays to account for.
"I'm back."
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Stolen Words
Words have labels on them.
They have names.
And I have a habit of stealing them.
I notice the words appear after being around certain people for certain amounts of time. Some people pick up traits, or habits, or gestures, or - in my case - strange and specific phrases.
I will notice myself speaking differently from year to year. Not only because of words I pick up from books, or the internet, or from just getting older, but they are very specifically not mine. They may seem familiar. They may seem ordinary. But the thing is, I know exactly who they belong to.
People in my life primarily live on in these words which I continue to use after they leave.
To me, the words have faces. They have cracks in the sidewalk and a flower that isn't mine. They have a swingset in the rain and a bump on my head. They have a glistening eye-roll and a smile and a light shrug of the shoulders.
Every time I find myself, for the first time, picking up a stolen word, I swallow it and step back, astounded from where it came. As if whoever I said it to will gasp and point and whisper That's so-and-so's word. ...How do you know so-and-so? Where have you been lurking?
It's like crying at a funeral you weren't supposed to go to.
But every time, whoever I'm talking to just acts like it's mine. Like, "Oh, that's a weird thing to say. Haha." But it's okay for Shady to be weird, so they let it go.
Here are some of my own personally stolen words:
You wouldn't tell the difference, right? Okay, maybe for a few, but overall the words seem to be mine. They don't seem like they've come from specific individuals and bad habits, right? You see what I'm saying?
I'm telling you though, words have labels.
I'm probably stealing already stolen words here. They've got as many names etched into their letters as a retired library card in the back of a worn-out book.
So, maybe it isn't really stealing. Maybe it's more like... borrowing.
Either way, we all do it.
MORAL: WORDS LAST LONGER THAN PEOPLE, AND IF YOU HANG AROUND WITH TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS WHO SAY 'FLUBS' ALL THE TIME, YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING TO BE AT SOME CLASSY WEDDING SOMEDAY AND SAY IT AROUND A BUNCH OF CLASSY LADIES AND LEARN THAT YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HANG AROUND WITH TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS WHO SAY 'FLUBS' ALL THE TIME.
They have names.
And I have a habit of stealing them.
I notice the words appear after being around certain people for certain amounts of time. Some people pick up traits, or habits, or gestures, or - in my case - strange and specific phrases.
I will notice myself speaking differently from year to year. Not only because of words I pick up from books, or the internet, or from just getting older, but they are very specifically not mine. They may seem familiar. They may seem ordinary. But the thing is, I know exactly who they belong to.
People in my life primarily live on in these words which I continue to use after they leave.
To me, the words have faces. They have cracks in the sidewalk and a flower that isn't mine. They have a swingset in the rain and a bump on my head. They have a glistening eye-roll and a smile and a light shrug of the shoulders.
Every time I find myself, for the first time, picking up a stolen word, I swallow it and step back, astounded from where it came. As if whoever I said it to will gasp and point and whisper That's so-and-so's word. ...How do you know so-and-so? Where have you been lurking?
It's like crying at a funeral you weren't supposed to go to.
But every time, whoever I'm talking to just acts like it's mine. Like, "Oh, that's a weird thing to say. Haha." But it's okay for Shady to be weird, so they let it go.
Here are some of my own personally stolen words:
You wouldn't tell the difference, right? Okay, maybe for a few, but overall the words seem to be mine. They don't seem like they've come from specific individuals and bad habits, right? You see what I'm saying?
I'm telling you though, words have labels.
I'm probably stealing already stolen words here. They've got as many names etched into their letters as a retired library card in the back of a worn-out book.
So, maybe it isn't really stealing. Maybe it's more like... borrowing.
Either way, we all do it.
MORAL: WORDS LAST LONGER THAN PEOPLE, AND IF YOU HANG AROUND WITH TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS WHO SAY 'FLUBS' ALL THE TIME, YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING TO BE AT SOME CLASSY WEDDING SOMEDAY AND SAY IT AROUND A BUNCH OF CLASSY LADIES AND LEARN THAT YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HANG AROUND WITH TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS WHO SAY 'FLUBS' ALL THE TIME.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
A Moment of Shame in a Jeep
The engine starts and an extremely familiar song starts playing from a disc in the car radio.
I look at my sister in the driver's seat.
She looks at me.
"...Is this Dear John again?" I ask her gently.
She has been listening to Dear John on repeat for the past two weeks straight. I didn't think it had made it to her car.
She stares at her lap, hands gripping the steering wheel. Frowns. Sighs. Looks at the radio. Slowly, she turns her head, looks me dead in the eye, and says,
"Don't hate the playlist, hate the player."
and turns it up to full blast as she screeches out of the driveway.
I look at my sister in the driver's seat.
She looks at me.
"...Is this Dear John again?" I ask her gently.
She has been listening to Dear John on repeat for the past two weeks straight. I didn't think it had made it to her car.
She stares at her lap, hands gripping the steering wheel. Frowns. Sighs. Looks at the radio. Slowly, she turns her head, looks me dead in the eye, and says,
"Don't hate the playlist, hate the player."
and turns it up to full blast as she screeches out of the driveway.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
socks
boy socks are extremely warm and soft.
i only have one.
it's extremely warm and soft.
i might not give it back.
i only have one.
it's extremely warm and soft.
i might not give it back.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Knight With Paper Towels
This morning I awoke with the sudden urge to save the day. This day. Today.
I'd forgotten about that time I became a knight and have since had this strange inner responsibility to help people. But the thing is, helping people is hard. Putting coins in a plastic box is one thing, but finding people - real people - who truly need it, and who you're actually able to help, as a teenage girl, without possibly being harmed in some way? Helping is really hard.
But I needed to save the day. I needed to.
And I didn't. Not even a little bit, all through the morning and afternoon.
The last class of the day was Economics. No one learns anything in Economics, because 1) It makes no sense, 2) The original hired teacher had a baby and left us with a very kind old retired teacher who doesn't ever use the white board and talks like he's murmuring you to sleep, and 3) We get to sit where we want.
This is the phenomenon that has occurred in the Economics room since changing seats:
I'd forgotten about that time I became a knight and have since had this strange inner responsibility to help people. But the thing is, helping people is hard. Putting coins in a plastic box is one thing, but finding people - real people - who truly need it, and who you're actually able to help, as a teenage girl, without possibly being harmed in some way? Helping is really hard.
But I needed to save the day. I needed to.
And I didn't. Not even a little bit, all through the morning and afternoon.
The last class of the day was Economics. No one learns anything in Economics, because 1) It makes no sense, 2) The original hired teacher had a baby and left us with a very kind old retired teacher who doesn't ever use the white board and talks like he's murmuring you to sleep, and 3) We get to sit where we want.
This is the phenomenon that has occurred in the Economics room since changing seats:
I wondered why I was so aghast at this transition, until I realized I sit here:
The teacher kindly refers to the line of desks against the back wall as "Murderer's Row." This is not really because we are all that awful, but because of the terribly good behavior of the boys and girls at each other side of the room.
Imagining they would all have soo much to talk about, being around their own gender, and soo little learning going on, they ought to be a happy chorus of giggles and goofs.
This is not what happens.
They are very quiet. And very bored. And try to pay attention and can't. And they hate the class and everything in it.
Then there is us.
I think it would do us all a bunch of good to say, before I start, this is a pre-IB classroom. The prestigious, intelligent, hard-working brilliance of the next generation. Seated here. In this class.
Murderer's Row is segregated, not as much by gender as by conversation.
The blue square sitting next to me is named Martensen. Martensen loves. A lot.
Today Martensen brought pizza.
An entire Ziploc freezer bag of pizza and a bowtie he'd found on the floor. I wore the bowtie and he ate the pizza and things went very smoothly for about thirty minutes until he started laughing.
We spend most of the class laughing, and were used to joining in, whether the joke was funny or not. Martensen forgot how. Martensen kept laughing. Martensen could not stop.
After a while we became concerned. "Marten, calm down now," the musicals girl said.
"Martensen." The math puns kid put his hand on his shoulder. "Breath in..."
Martensen breathed in.
But then the math kid went back to doing his work, and Martensen did not breathe out. He waited for further instructions until the laugh bubbled and boiled inside him and erupted in a sudden and tragic display of outright hysteria.
Laughing, crying, drooling, banging his head against the desk, he lost it. At first we tried laughing. Then it wasn't funny. It was just very disconcerting.
"Marten - Marten, are you okay?"
It was then that Marten started bleeding from his nose and promptly left the classroom without another word.
Thirty seconds later I noticed several texts on my phone.
"Hey do you think Marten's doing okay?"
"Oh. Um - I'll be right back."
It was an easy save, right? Get to the girls' bathroom, get some paper towels, knock on the boys' bathroom, hand him the paper towels, boom - saved. Knight in shining armor.
Except I never use the school bathrooms around that area and couldn't understand that the boys' bathroom is always right next to or in front of the girls'.
There was hurried wandering from one hallway to the next until I finally found the girls' bathroom, ran in whistling the Indiana Jones theme song, got the paper towels and left down another hallway, before returning to find that Marten was directly next to the restroom I had just been in.
A girl was playing on her iPod in front of the restrooms. She looked at me, looked at the paper towels, and responded to my pointing by saying, "He's in there."
I knocked on the door a few times and nothing happened. Guys went in, and almost immediately came back out with a sick kind of look, until eventually I called his name. He opened the door, smiled broadly despite the blood, and took the paper towels.
The sink was red and the floor was spotted and no one else was inside.
He returned almost immediately after I did with an entirely different dilemma.
His clean white shirt was now spattered with the blood of angry men and his tear-stained face of hysteria was still in full bloom. After a difficult changing of shirts, he wiped the emotion from himself and apologized for the outburst.
"Don't apologize for bleeding," I told him.
"I was laughing but I think I meant to cry..."
"That's okay."
"I'm sorry you had to save me."
"I'm a certified knight. It is my honor and privilege to do so. Emotional instability aside."
"Thank you for being my knight with paper towels."
Thank you for being my knight with paper towels.
I think I feel a pin being made for this one. Or better yet, a name-tag.
MORAL: We should always help wherever we can, even if it's doing really stupid stuff, like holding open doors and letting people ahead of us in line at the store. Chivalry isn't always found in steel-plated armor atop a strong-legged stallion. Sometimes it's found in a friend in a bloody bathroom.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Pachelbel Pajamas
I was practicing cello in my room when my sister came in with her violin to "tune me".
Long story short, we got bored on a Saturday afternoon and made a music video. And I can't upload it because I can't do the technology thing. But here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bp1jSGrwlA&
I RECOMMEND WATCHING UNTIL THE END, THERE'S A PLOT TWIST. (Also one of my little sisters came in and yelled at me.)
Pretty proud of myself. I mean my editing skills aren't stellar, and the tempo is kind of all over the place, but it was funner than studying for semester finals at least.
Oh, DISCLAIMER: You can see my actual face and I'm not actually a featureless blue blob of pixels. I just wanted to warn you. Prepare yourself for disappointment. Also the rainbows have nothing to do with sexual orientation. They're just rainbows.
Long story short, we got bored on a Saturday afternoon and made a music video. And I can't upload it because I can't do the technology thing. But here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bp1jSGrwlA&
I RECOMMEND WATCHING UNTIL THE END, THERE'S A PLOT TWIST. (Also one of my little sisters came in and yelled at me.)
Pretty proud of myself. I mean my editing skills aren't stellar, and the tempo is kind of all over the place, but it was funner than studying for semester finals at least.
Oh, DISCLAIMER: You can see my actual face and I'm not actually a featureless blue blob of pixels. I just wanted to warn you. Prepare yourself for disappointment. Also the rainbows have nothing to do with sexual orientation. They're just rainbows.
Homecoming Hindsight
There was a sea of humans pretending to be tigers. Shouting and cheering and whooping and hollering, adrenaline and comradeship pulsing through the crowd in the mob-like human tendency to put on the masks of monsters, and I was just trying to get out of there.
He was standing on the floor, beaming, all charisma and charm, winning an award for something he didn't believe in. Conducting the crowd which way to shout. Got on one knee, handed her flowers, and it was all pretend, just a part of the show. All staying in character on a stage made of gym bleachers, and I really needed to leave. The doors were closed and guarded, the benches thick and unmovable with bodies. In ran the football team, the volleyball, tennis, swimming, and I was already late.
The band played and the crowd cheered and I covered my ears and closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.
Even after the assembly, when the people went outside and the band packed away their music, the masks stayed on. The great act was still in effect. Boys and girls pretended to love and the crowned winner was walking through an empty floor as I was on my way out. I congratulated him, one congratulation out of the many he must have heard that day, from many giggling young girls and laughing young boys. One small, insignificant word that I assumed meant nothing to anyone but me.
"Congratulations on winning the Most Beautiful award."
He turned around, grinning.
"You too."
Strange butterflies then. Moth-like creatures fluttering awake in a small adolescent gut, tiny heart gears beginning to turn. I frowned. Gritted my teeth.
I thought he was saying it to make fun of how not beautiful I am.
Jerk, I thought to myself. Doors closed and I stuffed my hands in my pockets. The afterthoughts of summer played silently in the air, mixed in with the smells of a parade - hot dogs and sodas and sweat - shouts from the dunk tank and laughs from the crowds.
Inside, he walked ahead, blushing.
And he meant it.
Now it's winter and the word is wearing out, the name that I assumed meant nothing to anyone but me. Like the knee patches on jeans of six-year-olds, strings sticking up out of the rough blue fabric like a shameful nakedness not meant to be seen. And now it requires an explanation, and now I realize I was wrong.
And now here I am on the floor of that gym, looking up at the faces all shouting my name, and I see a girl with a strangely panicked look holding her hands over her ears. Her, with all her ideals of beauty and imperfection and equality of souls. All her lessons in expression and authenticity and how much it is we don't know. And I see how much she doesn't see. That sometimes, in a great display of fallacy, a small piece of truth hides away behind the masks we cover it with. There are flowers in his hands, and his face is growing red.
And she thought he didn't mean it.
He was standing on the floor, beaming, all charisma and charm, winning an award for something he didn't believe in. Conducting the crowd which way to shout. Got on one knee, handed her flowers, and it was all pretend, just a part of the show. All staying in character on a stage made of gym bleachers, and I really needed to leave. The doors were closed and guarded, the benches thick and unmovable with bodies. In ran the football team, the volleyball, tennis, swimming, and I was already late.
The band played and the crowd cheered and I covered my ears and closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.
Even after the assembly, when the people went outside and the band packed away their music, the masks stayed on. The great act was still in effect. Boys and girls pretended to love and the crowned winner was walking through an empty floor as I was on my way out. I congratulated him, one congratulation out of the many he must have heard that day, from many giggling young girls and laughing young boys. One small, insignificant word that I assumed meant nothing to anyone but me.
"Congratulations on winning the Most Beautiful award."
He turned around, grinning.
"You too."
Strange butterflies then. Moth-like creatures fluttering awake in a small adolescent gut, tiny heart gears beginning to turn. I frowned. Gritted my teeth.
I thought he was saying it to make fun of how not beautiful I am.
Jerk, I thought to myself. Doors closed and I stuffed my hands in my pockets. The afterthoughts of summer played silently in the air, mixed in with the smells of a parade - hot dogs and sodas and sweat - shouts from the dunk tank and laughs from the crowds.
Inside, he walked ahead, blushing.
And he meant it.
Now it's winter and the word is wearing out, the name that I assumed meant nothing to anyone but me. Like the knee patches on jeans of six-year-olds, strings sticking up out of the rough blue fabric like a shameful nakedness not meant to be seen. And now it requires an explanation, and now I realize I was wrong.
And now here I am on the floor of that gym, looking up at the faces all shouting my name, and I see a girl with a strangely panicked look holding her hands over her ears. Her, with all her ideals of beauty and imperfection and equality of souls. All her lessons in expression and authenticity and how much it is we don't know. And I see how much she doesn't see. That sometimes, in a great display of fallacy, a small piece of truth hides away behind the masks we cover it with. There are flowers in his hands, and his face is growing red.
And she thought he didn't mean it.
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