You know, technology robs correspondence of certain tonal elements. For instance, the script in this message is very even and measured, and the backspace key allows me to erase any hint that my hand is anything but steady as I type this. If this were, say, 1908, I fear my shaking pen could produce nothing but characters only sometimes recognizable as letters in the English language. "Was something wrong with my pal Jess when she wrote this?" you might wonder in your old-timey inner voice. "I can't make hide nor hair of this chicken scratch, see." And you would be rightly interpreting my halting handwriting, for I have just had an encounter. . . WITH LIGHTNING.
So I was on my way home from watching the mind-blowing season finale of Lost at my friends' house, and it was raining pretty good. I'd seen some lightning earlier and even made some stupid comment about standing too close to the metal drainpipe on the side of their house. Oh, how blithely I snarked at mortality!
I drove through the rain squinting for the lines on the road, knowing they must be somewhere under all the reflected city light on the wet pavement. My mind raced with island theories and the first tentative thoughts I'd allow myself to think about the structure of Lost next season.
Fleetwood Mac's Say You Love Me was playing as I pulled up to my place and looked in vain for a parking spot. I think they must be sweeping the next street over tomorrow, because there are twice as many cars on my street tonight. So I circled around and decided to park by the back of the house and try my keys in the back door for the first time since I moved in.
I parked under a big tree and actually thought, "Oh, man, this is so one of those fateful decisions. I'm totally getting struck by lightning." I considered going around to the front door, but it was pouring rain, so I made a quick dash for the back door.
The chorus I'd cut off in the car continued in my head. "'Cause when the lovin' starts and the lights go down and there's not another livin' soul around..." I made it to the back gate and clasped the metal latch. And then every molecule of the air was positively rent with the loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard; at the exact same moment, the night was suddenly white. There was no counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder to determine the distance in miles from from the storm. It was closer than the idea of the word "Mississippi." When I tell you the ground shook, I mean it shook hard enough to set off a car alarm on the street.
"Holy shit!" I shouted, completely disregarding my earlier resolve to be a courteous neighbor and approach to the back entrance quietly. I shoved my metal key into the metal lock and hurried inside, where I stood in my kitchen and shook for a minute. Eventually, I put one foot in front of the other and went to my couch, where I sat and shook for a minute.
My ears have just stopped ringing, and one thing is clear to me tonight: we never know how long we have on Earth. We do, however, know that there are only two more seasons of Lost. Do you know how much that would have sucked if I had gotten struck by fucking lightning before finding out what the hell is going on with that island?
Showing posts with label destiny. Show all posts
Showing posts with label destiny. Show all posts
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
By the Time You Read This...
...Well, I'll probably be at home, watching The Daily Show or something. But by the time this is posted, I'll be walking--wait for it--to work! There are those who say it can't be done, and at least one of them is sometimes me, but I am going from zero to six miles in one day, baby, and there ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride.
Thus begins what I think I'll call my Summer of Doing Shit I Said I Would. Even if I only do it once before my genetically faulty knees buckle under the pressure of not being a jerk to the environment, that's fine.
I'll set this to post at 6:27 a.m. tomorrow, when I hope to be exactly halfway across the bridge over the Mighty Mississippi, which is exactly halfway to work. Here goes!
Thus begins what I think I'll call my Summer of Doing Shit I Said I Would. Even if I only do it once before my genetically faulty knees buckle under the pressure of not being a jerk to the environment, that's fine.
I'll set this to post at 6:27 a.m. tomorrow, when I hope to be exactly halfway across the bridge over the Mighty Mississippi, which is exactly halfway to work. Here goes!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Aha!
If you were to venture to Oprah.com, you could find a collection of celebrity accounts of their “aha moments.” Invariably, they are tales of experiences wherein your favorite female star realized she's not as eco-conscious as she could be (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), that she hasn’t properly introduced her deceased mother to her children (Oprah’s BFF, Gayle King), or that she is both black and beautiful (Alfre Woodard).
This one’s for you, Oprah.
This past weekend, I had a real-life “aha” moment. I felt the universe tugging on my skirt (yeah, I was wearing a skirt), all, “Psst. Jess. Hey. Psst.” I was occupying my place as the third leg in the generational relay race through time that had gathered around my mother’s kitchen counter. My grandmother and I had just returned from the dedication ceremony for my friends’ new baby. I had told my mom about all the delicious food my friend had made for the lunch reception afterwards and was just about to marvel at the vast differences between my life and my friend’s when I remembered to ask what she had done all day. Turns out, she was pretty exhausted, what with all the burning of the Bibles.
“Psst. Jess.”
“Shut up, Universe! Mom, you did what?”
When I left that morning, I knew my mother would probably spend the day cleaning, as she’s preparing to sell her home. In a house where six people once lived and various people have stayed over the last ten years, it’s now down to her, my grandma, my little brother, and all the shit we deserters left behind. And so the task of gutting the house has largely fallen to my mom. Sure, she makes piles for Goodwill and “do you want this?” stacks for me to look at when I visit, but lately, it would seem, she’s taken to burning stuff she doesn’t want to take with her when she moves.
“How many Bibles did you burn?” I asked, a little astonished.
“I don’t know. Maybe five.”
“You found five Bibles here? Whose were they?”
She couldn’t say for sure.
“What else do you burn?”
“Oh, just shit I find. You know, some papers, a big map, some clothes.”
Some Bibles.
No wonder I’d been nervous about going to church to see my friends’ baby dedicated. I’ve always felt a little silly sitting in congregations where I clearly do not belong…which is to say, all of them. When I do find myself in church for the inevitable procession of marriages of friends and baptisms of their babies that comes with being 20-something, I’m usually able to sit quietly, sing inaudibly, and maybe even give the impression of deep understanding with my patented faraway, could-be-thoughtful gaze.
My grandma had met these friends of mine at the wedding that was my left knee’s undoing. She’d developed quite a crush on their little family, and so when I got the invitation to the dedication of their third child, I thought it was the perfect chance for her to ogle my friend’s husband (only peripherally, thanks to macular degeneration) and coo over their truly lovely and ever-growing family.
And so I sat with my grandma in church on a Sunday morning for the first time I can remember. The congregation was very young and friendly, with people constantly catching my eye and smiling right at me. They were different from my usual crowd, but I managed to smile back after a few initial suspicious glances proved to be pretty clearly not the appropriate response. People shook my hand and welcomed me; their hearts seemed warmed by the sight of me in my skirt, leading my mostly blind grandma to the restroom.
I was almost out. With a few nods to people I recognized from the service and a loud declaration to my grandma that, “it really was a thought-provoking sermon,” we were in the parking lot and the home stretch. There was only one church member between my slow-moving grandma and our parked car. It was an older gentleman with a gray beard and a large motorcycle. He was putting on a leather vest that was truly riddled with various buttons along the alternating themes of patriotism, motorcycles, and Jesus.
And then something fluttered in the corner of my grandma’s eye. Universe! Why did it have to be the corner? That’s the only part where she can see!
There were two flags waving on the back of his motorcycle: one was the stars and stripes; the other was black with the POW/MIA insignia. The man told us a touching story of how the Lord had returned his POW/MIA flag when it had been dislodged by enemy wind on his way home one night. He hadn’t realized it was gone until he got home, but just as he was vowing to never give up on his missing flag, his wife pulled into the driveway and held it out to him, saying, “You missing something?”
Come on! But I kept my mouth shut. I smiled and said, “That’s amazing. Well, have a great ride home.” And I turned to continue toward the car. As soon as my grandma spoke, I knew.
“Well, you better watch out with your American flag,” my grandmother said to this very patriotic man. She pointed vaguely to where she knew I stood. “She’ll run right over it if you give her the chance.”
He was a large man, and he turned like a bear to face me. Somewhere in the cackling, nervous laughter, I managed to form the words “Canada,” “motorcycle,” “flag,” and “it was an accident.” The bear seemed placated, if not wholly amused. I held out my hand to my grandma and politely begged her to come along. She was shouting over her shoulder, “And it was on the Fourth of July,” when we finally reached the car.
“Well, that was a nice service,” she said from the passenger’s seat.
At my friends’ house, my grandma found a woman roughly her own age to talk to, the grandmother of my friend’s husband. They shared family stories over plates of cheesy potatoes and meatballs. Collected in the house were four generations of this particular family, with this woman’s great-grandchildren shouting playfully in the other room and her daughter sitting with us, sharing doting observations of the little ones.
I told my grandma her best chance at great-grandchildren was probably my younger brother, but even that chance seemed slim at the moment. “You should have taken this woman’s lead,” I joked, with a big gesture so she could see I was indicating her new friend. “You should have just had more kids to begin with and increased your chances.”
We all chuckled.
“Oh, I think I had enough.” My grandmother laughed.
We all laughed.
“And I think I’m safe now,” she said with a nudge of camaraderie to her new friend.
I laughed a little nervously.
“You’re safe, aren’t you?” she asked the woman.
“Oh, yes, I should think so,” the woman replied with a laugh.
“G—“ I started.
“Well, you never know,” she continued. “Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn't fire in the furnace.”
Later, in my mother’s kitchen, the Universe tugs at my costume of a skirt. “Pst. Hey.”
How could my friend and I—roughly the same age, having grown up in the same area, gone to the same college—lead such vastly different lives now? I’d seen members of all the generations of her family earlier that day, and here were all three generations of mine, all sharing what we’d done that day.
“Psst.”
Aha! And I realized that probably at the same moment my grandmother had been joking about postmenopausal sexuality, my mother had been poking at a pile of burning Bibles, smiling through the smoke with a real sense of accomplishment.
This one’s for you, Oprah.
This past weekend, I had a real-life “aha” moment. I felt the universe tugging on my skirt (yeah, I was wearing a skirt), all, “Psst. Jess. Hey. Psst.” I was occupying my place as the third leg in the generational relay race through time that had gathered around my mother’s kitchen counter. My grandmother and I had just returned from the dedication ceremony for my friends’ new baby. I had told my mom about all the delicious food my friend had made for the lunch reception afterwards and was just about to marvel at the vast differences between my life and my friend’s when I remembered to ask what she had done all day. Turns out, she was pretty exhausted, what with all the burning of the Bibles.
“Psst. Jess.”
“Shut up, Universe! Mom, you did what?”
When I left that morning, I knew my mother would probably spend the day cleaning, as she’s preparing to sell her home. In a house where six people once lived and various people have stayed over the last ten years, it’s now down to her, my grandma, my little brother, and all the shit we deserters left behind. And so the task of gutting the house has largely fallen to my mom. Sure, she makes piles for Goodwill and “do you want this?” stacks for me to look at when I visit, but lately, it would seem, she’s taken to burning stuff she doesn’t want to take with her when she moves.
“How many Bibles did you burn?” I asked, a little astonished.
“I don’t know. Maybe five.”
“You found five Bibles here? Whose were they?”
She couldn’t say for sure.
“What else do you burn?”
“Oh, just shit I find. You know, some papers, a big map, some clothes.”
Some Bibles.
No wonder I’d been nervous about going to church to see my friends’ baby dedicated. I’ve always felt a little silly sitting in congregations where I clearly do not belong…which is to say, all of them. When I do find myself in church for the inevitable procession of marriages of friends and baptisms of their babies that comes with being 20-something, I’m usually able to sit quietly, sing inaudibly, and maybe even give the impression of deep understanding with my patented faraway, could-be-thoughtful gaze.
My grandma had met these friends of mine at the wedding that was my left knee’s undoing. She’d developed quite a crush on their little family, and so when I got the invitation to the dedication of their third child, I thought it was the perfect chance for her to ogle my friend’s husband (only peripherally, thanks to macular degeneration) and coo over their truly lovely and ever-growing family.
And so I sat with my grandma in church on a Sunday morning for the first time I can remember. The congregation was very young and friendly, with people constantly catching my eye and smiling right at me. They were different from my usual crowd, but I managed to smile back after a few initial suspicious glances proved to be pretty clearly not the appropriate response. People shook my hand and welcomed me; their hearts seemed warmed by the sight of me in my skirt, leading my mostly blind grandma to the restroom.
I was almost out. With a few nods to people I recognized from the service and a loud declaration to my grandma that, “it really was a thought-provoking sermon,” we were in the parking lot and the home stretch. There was only one church member between my slow-moving grandma and our parked car. It was an older gentleman with a gray beard and a large motorcycle. He was putting on a leather vest that was truly riddled with various buttons along the alternating themes of patriotism, motorcycles, and Jesus.
And then something fluttered in the corner of my grandma’s eye. Universe! Why did it have to be the corner? That’s the only part where she can see!
There were two flags waving on the back of his motorcycle: one was the stars and stripes; the other was black with the POW/MIA insignia. The man told us a touching story of how the Lord had returned his POW/MIA flag when it had been dislodged by enemy wind on his way home one night. He hadn’t realized it was gone until he got home, but just as he was vowing to never give up on his missing flag, his wife pulled into the driveway and held it out to him, saying, “You missing something?”
Come on! But I kept my mouth shut. I smiled and said, “That’s amazing. Well, have a great ride home.” And I turned to continue toward the car. As soon as my grandma spoke, I knew.
“Well, you better watch out with your American flag,” my grandmother said to this very patriotic man. She pointed vaguely to where she knew I stood. “She’ll run right over it if you give her the chance.”
He was a large man, and he turned like a bear to face me. Somewhere in the cackling, nervous laughter, I managed to form the words “Canada,” “motorcycle,” “flag,” and “it was an accident.” The bear seemed placated, if not wholly amused. I held out my hand to my grandma and politely begged her to come along. She was shouting over her shoulder, “And it was on the Fourth of July,” when we finally reached the car.
“Well, that was a nice service,” she said from the passenger’s seat.
At my friends’ house, my grandma found a woman roughly her own age to talk to, the grandmother of my friend’s husband. They shared family stories over plates of cheesy potatoes and meatballs. Collected in the house were four generations of this particular family, with this woman’s great-grandchildren shouting playfully in the other room and her daughter sitting with us, sharing doting observations of the little ones.
I told my grandma her best chance at great-grandchildren was probably my younger brother, but even that chance seemed slim at the moment. “You should have taken this woman’s lead,” I joked, with a big gesture so she could see I was indicating her new friend. “You should have just had more kids to begin with and increased your chances.”
We all chuckled.
“Oh, I think I had enough.” My grandmother laughed.
We all laughed.
“And I think I’m safe now,” she said with a nudge of camaraderie to her new friend.
I laughed a little nervously.
“You’re safe, aren’t you?” she asked the woman.
“Oh, yes, I should think so,” the woman replied with a laugh.
“G—“ I started.
“Well, you never know,” she continued. “Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn't fire in the furnace.”
Later, in my mother’s kitchen, the Universe tugs at my costume of a skirt. “Pst. Hey.”
How could my friend and I—roughly the same age, having grown up in the same area, gone to the same college—lead such vastly different lives now? I’d seen members of all the generations of her family earlier that day, and here were all three generations of mine, all sharing what we’d done that day.
“Psst.”
Aha! And I realized that probably at the same moment my grandmother had been joking about postmenopausal sexuality, my mother had been poking at a pile of burning Bibles, smiling through the smoke with a real sense of accomplishment.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Take Back the Knight: How Baby Got Back in the Saddle
I have lived in the shadow of defeat for the past year. Sure, I’ve gone to work, socialized with friends, even made a few new ones. I’ve laughed and joked and gone about my life, but it has all been under the pall of tainted honor. For one year ago, I met a knight who proved my better. I fell to the swift sword of his infectious beat. One year ago, I fell to the notorious Sir Mix-A-Lot.
I won’t soon forget the challenge Mix-A-Lot issued to the assembled revelers at my good friends’ wedding reception. Sure, I had a couple chocolate martinis in me…and some rum from a thermos a friend had spirited into the building, but I felt ready to meet Sir Mix-A-Lot on the level ground of the makeshift dance floor covering the marble of the Minnesota Historical Society. His words said all the wrong things, objectifying women, reducing their worth to the circumference of their backsides; but the beat of the song said something else. The rhythm pounding through the rented sound system said, “I dare you not to dance to this.”
Well, this knight had picked the wrong day to make assumptions about my reluctance to dance due to moral and political reservations about a song’s lyrics. As a woman who sometimes forgets to brush her hair, I was feeling special in my plum-colored bridesmaid dress, neatly curled hair, and professionally applied makeup. And I had an advantage over Mix-A-Lot: he didn’t know of my family’s wedding dancing legacy. He couldn’t know that my father is none other than “The Dancing Machine” of southeastern Wisconsin.
Ah, but as fate would have it, my father’s legacy is a cruelly ironic one. For as I bore the mantle of The Dancing Machine, little did I know that my knees were quaking under the weight of it. I had inherited my father’s weak knees, and they were about to prove my very public undoing.
Just as I was answering Mix-A-Lot’s call to shake it, shake it, shake that healthy butt, there was an ear-splitting POP, and I found myself flat on the very moneymaker I’d been shaking mere moments before. At first, I was at a loss as to what had happened. My mind raced for the answer, quickly weighing the little evidence I had. There was the loud POP and the fact that I was on the floor. “Am I shot?” I wondered. But before I could remember if Sir Mix-A-Lot was from the East or West Coast, I caught sight of a foot to my left. It was wearing my shoe and appeared to be attached to a leg in my skirt, but the angle was all wrong; it couldn’t be attached to me.
As my friends formed a supportive circle of laughter around me, I was horrified to discover that the foot and the awkwardly bent leg were indeed mine. Unable to stand on my own and finding all my friends’ hands occupied in the act of pointing at me, I exited the dance floor by the only means left to me: this baby scooted backwards out of the flashing lights and into the darkness of a shame that has haunted me for a year.
The scooting may have managed to jostle my wayward joint back into place, but I limped through the world for a good two months. And when the swelling in my knee and foot finally went down, I carried the scars of my encounter with Sir Mix-A-Lot on the inside. My confidence was shaken; my ability to continue my family’s proud wedding dancing legacy was in doubt. I thought about Mix-A-Lot often, thought of a rematch. I knew how to find him; he had brazenly shouted his number, 1-900-MIX-ALOT, as I struggled to remove my fancy shoe from my rapidly swelling foot. But I couldn’t bring myself to meet him again…
…That is, not until a wedding I attended last weekend. It was in a small town in Wisconsin, and there were far more people at the bar than on the dance floor. This was my comeback dance, and I had eased back into it with the twist and some flailing to Love Shack. Along with the bride, I was one of about six women on the dance floor when the DJ announced a special request from one local man to another. The bride and her local friends froze as the DJ continued, “I don’t really want to know what this is all about, but here we go.”
“We got to get out of here,” the bride said as she joined the exodus from the dance floor. I was almost back to my table when I heard that unmistakable beat and that whiny woman’s voice urging Becky to look at another woman’s impossibly big butt, and I knew in an instant why everyone had run. This whiny woman is but the herald to the dark knight who commands feet and legs to dance and, yes, knees to bend unnaturally before him. As the local women scattered, I couldn’t blame them for their fear. The last time I’d faced Sir Mix-A-Lot, I’d ended up missing two days of work and riding the electric shopping cart at Target.
“I like big butts, and I cannot lie,” came his voice through the darkened dance hall. I spun on my heels and looked back at the deserted dance floor. Lights flickered on empty parquet flooring. Not a soul, it seemed, was brave enough to face Mix-A-Lot in that arena. I looked to my friend Sarah, who had been witness (pointing, laughing witness) to my fall one year ago. She looked to the dance floor and back at me then nodded slowly; I knew would not face him alone. I persuaded the bride to come back to the dance floor with us, and several women reluctantly followed her.
Our little mass of flailing femininity moved toward the dance floor, and I steeled myself with quiet resolve: I would not kneel before Sir Mix-A-Lot…mostly because I can’t really kneel anymore without shooting pains in my leg. But as I took those first tentative steps back into the flickering lights, that familiar beat pounding through the autumn air, I was surrounded by women shaking their butts in solidarity, and I knew I had already won.
I won’t soon forget the challenge Mix-A-Lot issued to the assembled revelers at my good friends’ wedding reception. Sure, I had a couple chocolate martinis in me…and some rum from a thermos a friend had spirited into the building, but I felt ready to meet Sir Mix-A-Lot on the level ground of the makeshift dance floor covering the marble of the Minnesota Historical Society. His words said all the wrong things, objectifying women, reducing their worth to the circumference of their backsides; but the beat of the song said something else. The rhythm pounding through the rented sound system said, “I dare you not to dance to this.”
Well, this knight had picked the wrong day to make assumptions about my reluctance to dance due to moral and political reservations about a song’s lyrics. As a woman who sometimes forgets to brush her hair, I was feeling special in my plum-colored bridesmaid dress, neatly curled hair, and professionally applied makeup. And I had an advantage over Mix-A-Lot: he didn’t know of my family’s wedding dancing legacy. He couldn’t know that my father is none other than “The Dancing Machine” of southeastern Wisconsin.
Ah, but as fate would have it, my father’s legacy is a cruelly ironic one. For as I bore the mantle of The Dancing Machine, little did I know that my knees were quaking under the weight of it. I had inherited my father’s weak knees, and they were about to prove my very public undoing.
Just as I was answering Mix-A-Lot’s call to shake it, shake it, shake that healthy butt, there was an ear-splitting POP, and I found myself flat on the very moneymaker I’d been shaking mere moments before. At first, I was at a loss as to what had happened. My mind raced for the answer, quickly weighing the little evidence I had. There was the loud POP and the fact that I was on the floor. “Am I shot?” I wondered. But before I could remember if Sir Mix-A-Lot was from the East or West Coast, I caught sight of a foot to my left. It was wearing my shoe and appeared to be attached to a leg in my skirt, but the angle was all wrong; it couldn’t be attached to me.
As my friends formed a supportive circle of laughter around me, I was horrified to discover that the foot and the awkwardly bent leg were indeed mine. Unable to stand on my own and finding all my friends’ hands occupied in the act of pointing at me, I exited the dance floor by the only means left to me: this baby scooted backwards out of the flashing lights and into the darkness of a shame that has haunted me for a year.
The scooting may have managed to jostle my wayward joint back into place, but I limped through the world for a good two months. And when the swelling in my knee and foot finally went down, I carried the scars of my encounter with Sir Mix-A-Lot on the inside. My confidence was shaken; my ability to continue my family’s proud wedding dancing legacy was in doubt. I thought about Mix-A-Lot often, thought of a rematch. I knew how to find him; he had brazenly shouted his number, 1-900-MIX-ALOT, as I struggled to remove my fancy shoe from my rapidly swelling foot. But I couldn’t bring myself to meet him again…
…That is, not until a wedding I attended last weekend. It was in a small town in Wisconsin, and there were far more people at the bar than on the dance floor. This was my comeback dance, and I had eased back into it with the twist and some flailing to Love Shack. Along with the bride, I was one of about six women on the dance floor when the DJ announced a special request from one local man to another. The bride and her local friends froze as the DJ continued, “I don’t really want to know what this is all about, but here we go.”
“We got to get out of here,” the bride said as she joined the exodus from the dance floor. I was almost back to my table when I heard that unmistakable beat and that whiny woman’s voice urging Becky to look at another woman’s impossibly big butt, and I knew in an instant why everyone had run. This whiny woman is but the herald to the dark knight who commands feet and legs to dance and, yes, knees to bend unnaturally before him. As the local women scattered, I couldn’t blame them for their fear. The last time I’d faced Sir Mix-A-Lot, I’d ended up missing two days of work and riding the electric shopping cart at Target.
“I like big butts, and I cannot lie,” came his voice through the darkened dance hall. I spun on my heels and looked back at the deserted dance floor. Lights flickered on empty parquet flooring. Not a soul, it seemed, was brave enough to face Mix-A-Lot in that arena. I looked to my friend Sarah, who had been witness (pointing, laughing witness) to my fall one year ago. She looked to the dance floor and back at me then nodded slowly; I knew would not face him alone. I persuaded the bride to come back to the dance floor with us, and several women reluctantly followed her.
Our little mass of flailing femininity moved toward the dance floor, and I steeled myself with quiet resolve: I would not kneel before Sir Mix-A-Lot…mostly because I can’t really kneel anymore without shooting pains in my leg. But as I took those first tentative steps back into the flickering lights, that familiar beat pounding through the autumn air, I was surrounded by women shaking their butts in solidarity, and I knew I had already won.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Moon Men and Earth Mothers: a Tale of Endless Love…and Hate…and Love…
“And, love,
I’ll be that fool for you,
I’m sure.
You know I don’t mind.
Oh, you know I don’t mind.
And, yes, you’ll be the only one,
‘cause no one can deny
this love I have inside.
And I’ll give it all to you,
my love, my love, my love,
my endless love.”
--Lionel Richie and Diana Ross
I’m standing in the self-checkout lane at Cub. Because this is the Cub on University Avenue in St. Paul, two of the registers are covered with quickly written magic marker signs that read “Out of Order.” This leaves two open registers. At one, of course, a man is having trouble entering the weight of the produce he’s buying. At the other, a woman is fidgeting with a large stack of coupons. Clearly, it would have been much faster for these people to just go through the express lane and let the professionals handle the registers.
But there’s something appealing to a certain group of people, of whom I am one, about the self-check-out lane at Cub. Here you can buy whatever you want without all the hassle of human interaction. In some small way, you are making a statement about your fierce independence. So self-reliant are you that you’ve taken on the responsibilities usually reserved for someone with a nametag and extensive knowledge of the price per pound of produce. “See?” you tell yourself once you’ve quieted the electronic voice telling you to remove that “unexpected item” from the bagging area. “I can do this myself. I don’t need anyone else.”
But even as I stood waiting for my turn to prove my independence, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross crooned over the store’s loudspeaker, professing their eternal devotion, their deep and abiding need for one another, their endless love. And all at once, the epic story of man and woman—of humankind—crushed in on me. It had been screaming at me since I left the house, but until now, I hadn’t really heard.
I had decided to bring my roommate’s dog with me for a late-night run the store. Before getting in the car, I walked her down to the end of the block. As we approached the corner, a car parked on St. Clair pulled a U-ey in what I would call a pretty urgent manner. There were no other cars on the street, so I wasn’t sure what the woman driver’s hurry was until a man’s voice shouted from a window in one of the upper stories of the apartment building across the street, “Fuck you, bitch!”
His voice was so angry, so loud; it absolutely shattered the calm night air. As a pickup truck loaded with what was probably the woman’s share of the household furniture followed after her speeding car, I scanned the lighted windows of the apartment building for the heartbroken man’s silhouette. Also, I scanned for the silhouette of the heartbroken man’s gun. Finding neither, I quickly moved from my hiding place behind an annoyingly small tree and double-timed it to my car down the block.
The man’s wrathful cry was still ringing in my ears as I waited for oncoming traffic to slow so I could turn left onto University Avenue. The light changed, and a white pickup truck that now had the green light moved impatiently into the intersection and made as if to hit my car. For the second time in five minutes, a man’s voice rang angrily through the night, but this time, the intended targets were my own delicate female ears. “Asshole!” he yelled.
I don’t know if I was more surprised to be thus treated or to have the wrongly gendered “asshole” applied to me. I wanted to set the record straight, to let him hear my woman’s voice and alert him of his faux pas. To my frustration, all that came to me was, “Shut up!” Too late, I thought to add a more gender-appropriate curse than his and shouted, “Bastard!” but he was gone, already speeding off in the opposite direction.
“What is wrong with the men in this city tonight?” I wondered aloud to the dog in the backseat. She looked back at me blankly, perplexed and utterly without an answer.
I had an odd list of things to pick up at Cub: cookie dough, a barrette for my increasingly unruly hair, and bread. I made for the health-and-beauty section of the store and found it nearly deserted. There was only one other person within a five-aisle radius, and it was a man. At first, I’d been surprised to see a guy in this section, but any uneasiness I might have felt at entering this secluded corner of the store at night was quelled when I saw that he was examining the nail-care products. “Phew,” I said to myself. “It’s just a harmless metrosexual.”
I found the aisle with hair accessories and noticed out of the corner of my eye that the man was walking slowly towards me. I got in my defensive stance and prepared to scurry around the end cap if he got any closer. I was especially concerned to realize that he seemed to be whispering to himself. I grabbed my barrettes and glanced up to plan my escape route. It was then I noticed a cord trailing from his ear to his pocket. He was not talking to himself about the various brands of lady shavers but to someone on the other end of the phone. His voice was soft and appeasing: “They’ve got a three-pack on sale, baby.” The marionette string that was his phone cord twitched, and his arms moved for nail polish remover, for conditioner and razors not of is own volition but in direct response to the whispered commands of a woman he loved.
My heart was softened a bit by the scene of a man running unmanly errands for his special lady. I had nearly forgotten all the shouting and swearing I’d heard tonight as I picked up the cookie dough and made for the bread aisle. I snagged a loaf of the cheapest wheat and noticed a small piece of cardboard on the nearly empty shelf. On one side was an ink drawing depicting the familiar pattern of a skull and crossbones, but where the skull should have been, the artist had drawn a heart with eyes that were crying. A similar figure appeared on the back of the cardboard, perhaps an earlier draft of the emblem, along with a crude drawing of a cloud and several lightning bolts.
“Hmm,” I thought as I headed toward the self-checkout lanes.
Several minutes later, still waiting for the man with his produce and the woman with her coupons to figure out the machines, I took a deep breath to avoid strangling them. In my newly calm state, I became aware of the music playing over the store’s sound system.
Lionel Richie sings, “My love, there’s only you in my life, the only thing that’s bright,” and I think of the moon. Tonight it’s low and waning. As I was parking my car in the grocery store’s lot, I’d noticed its pale form hanging dejectedly over Herberger’s. It’s two nights since the moon was full, and now it looks like someone took a lady shaver to its right side. The Man in the Moon will lose more and more of his light to the black of the night sky, and he seems to know it.
Diana Ross’ voice seems placating to me now, offering assurances of her love in irresistibly sweet tones, singing over Lionel’s lines with a soft urgency. Diana, goddess of the hunt and of the moon, reassures her man: “You’re every breath that I take. You’re every step I make.”
I thought of the woman speeding away from the apartment building on my street, the end of romance breaking the night with a disembodied curse from above. Was it the waning moon shouting after her from its low perch in the sky? “Go on, leave! And take that sliver of light off my right side with you! Fuck you, bitch!”
The squeal of tires, and my mind morphs her dark hatchback into a white pickup speeding off into the night. Had the man heard me shout my lame “Shut up…bastard”? Did he feel bad about calling me an asshole? Probably not. Had he wished he called me a bitch? Maybe.
And I wonder to myself if the man in the health-and-beauty section has moved on to the feminine hygiene products yet. Is there a pillow-soft voice whispering directly into his ear about a preferred brand of tampons?
Love is a treacherous thing, it seems to me. The mystery bread-aisle artist had captured the sentiment so simply, so eloquently in the skull-and-crying-heart drawing.
“And your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, tell me how much you care.” Lionel and Diana are working their way to the song’s climactic declaration of endless love, and all the events of the night press upon me in a fleeting glimpse and only marginal understanding of the epic struggle, the eternally rocky relationship between men and women. And suddenly I think of the lightning in the heart-and-crossbones drawing, the violence with which the sky seeks electrical balance with the earth.
There is something in the air tonight between the men and women of St. Paul, all toiling under the waning moon. I know I must do something on behalf of my sex, a small gesture at reconciliation. Some human interaction might be required. For this moment in time, I will have to abandon my independence and the self-checkout lane. I see that there are two express lanes open, one with a female cashier, one with a male. I make for the lane with the man at the register.
He rings up my three items, and I slide my credit card through the machine. A sign above the man reads that credit card transactions for purchases below $25 don’t require a signature. But this might be my only chance to communicate the apologies of my sex for our role in the lunacy of the evening, to reassure this man that, like Diana, we all “can’t resist your charms.” So I pick up the fake pen attached to the credit card machine and pretend to get ready to sign.
“Oh, you don’t have to sign,” the cashier says as if he’s doing me a huge favor. I look him straight in the eye and channel Diana Ross for my one word reply that contains the whole of human interaction: “Awesome.”
I’ll be that fool for you,
I’m sure.
You know I don’t mind.
Oh, you know I don’t mind.
And, yes, you’ll be the only one,
‘cause no one can deny
this love I have inside.
And I’ll give it all to you,
my love, my love, my love,
my endless love.”
--Lionel Richie and Diana Ross
I’m standing in the self-checkout lane at Cub. Because this is the Cub on University Avenue in St. Paul, two of the registers are covered with quickly written magic marker signs that read “Out of Order.” This leaves two open registers. At one, of course, a man is having trouble entering the weight of the produce he’s buying. At the other, a woman is fidgeting with a large stack of coupons. Clearly, it would have been much faster for these people to just go through the express lane and let the professionals handle the registers.
But there’s something appealing to a certain group of people, of whom I am one, about the self-check-out lane at Cub. Here you can buy whatever you want without all the hassle of human interaction. In some small way, you are making a statement about your fierce independence. So self-reliant are you that you’ve taken on the responsibilities usually reserved for someone with a nametag and extensive knowledge of the price per pound of produce. “See?” you tell yourself once you’ve quieted the electronic voice telling you to remove that “unexpected item” from the bagging area. “I can do this myself. I don’t need anyone else.”
But even as I stood waiting for my turn to prove my independence, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross crooned over the store’s loudspeaker, professing their eternal devotion, their deep and abiding need for one another, their endless love. And all at once, the epic story of man and woman—of humankind—crushed in on me. It had been screaming at me since I left the house, but until now, I hadn’t really heard.
I had decided to bring my roommate’s dog with me for a late-night run the store. Before getting in the car, I walked her down to the end of the block. As we approached the corner, a car parked on St. Clair pulled a U-ey in what I would call a pretty urgent manner. There were no other cars on the street, so I wasn’t sure what the woman driver’s hurry was until a man’s voice shouted from a window in one of the upper stories of the apartment building across the street, “Fuck you, bitch!”
His voice was so angry, so loud; it absolutely shattered the calm night air. As a pickup truck loaded with what was probably the woman’s share of the household furniture followed after her speeding car, I scanned the lighted windows of the apartment building for the heartbroken man’s silhouette. Also, I scanned for the silhouette of the heartbroken man’s gun. Finding neither, I quickly moved from my hiding place behind an annoyingly small tree and double-timed it to my car down the block.
The man’s wrathful cry was still ringing in my ears as I waited for oncoming traffic to slow so I could turn left onto University Avenue. The light changed, and a white pickup truck that now had the green light moved impatiently into the intersection and made as if to hit my car. For the second time in five minutes, a man’s voice rang angrily through the night, but this time, the intended targets were my own delicate female ears. “Asshole!” he yelled.
I don’t know if I was more surprised to be thus treated or to have the wrongly gendered “asshole” applied to me. I wanted to set the record straight, to let him hear my woman’s voice and alert him of his faux pas. To my frustration, all that came to me was, “Shut up!” Too late, I thought to add a more gender-appropriate curse than his and shouted, “Bastard!” but he was gone, already speeding off in the opposite direction.
“What is wrong with the men in this city tonight?” I wondered aloud to the dog in the backseat. She looked back at me blankly, perplexed and utterly without an answer.
I had an odd list of things to pick up at Cub: cookie dough, a barrette for my increasingly unruly hair, and bread. I made for the health-and-beauty section of the store and found it nearly deserted. There was only one other person within a five-aisle radius, and it was a man. At first, I’d been surprised to see a guy in this section, but any uneasiness I might have felt at entering this secluded corner of the store at night was quelled when I saw that he was examining the nail-care products. “Phew,” I said to myself. “It’s just a harmless metrosexual.”
I found the aisle with hair accessories and noticed out of the corner of my eye that the man was walking slowly towards me. I got in my defensive stance and prepared to scurry around the end cap if he got any closer. I was especially concerned to realize that he seemed to be whispering to himself. I grabbed my barrettes and glanced up to plan my escape route. It was then I noticed a cord trailing from his ear to his pocket. He was not talking to himself about the various brands of lady shavers but to someone on the other end of the phone. His voice was soft and appeasing: “They’ve got a three-pack on sale, baby.” The marionette string that was his phone cord twitched, and his arms moved for nail polish remover, for conditioner and razors not of is own volition but in direct response to the whispered commands of a woman he loved.
My heart was softened a bit by the scene of a man running unmanly errands for his special lady. I had nearly forgotten all the shouting and swearing I’d heard tonight as I picked up the cookie dough and made for the bread aisle. I snagged a loaf of the cheapest wheat and noticed a small piece of cardboard on the nearly empty shelf. On one side was an ink drawing depicting the familiar pattern of a skull and crossbones, but where the skull should have been, the artist had drawn a heart with eyes that were crying. A similar figure appeared on the back of the cardboard, perhaps an earlier draft of the emblem, along with a crude drawing of a cloud and several lightning bolts.
“Hmm,” I thought as I headed toward the self-checkout lanes.
Several minutes later, still waiting for the man with his produce and the woman with her coupons to figure out the machines, I took a deep breath to avoid strangling them. In my newly calm state, I became aware of the music playing over the store’s sound system.
Lionel Richie sings, “My love, there’s only you in my life, the only thing that’s bright,” and I think of the moon. Tonight it’s low and waning. As I was parking my car in the grocery store’s lot, I’d noticed its pale form hanging dejectedly over Herberger’s. It’s two nights since the moon was full, and now it looks like someone took a lady shaver to its right side. The Man in the Moon will lose more and more of his light to the black of the night sky, and he seems to know it.
Diana Ross’ voice seems placating to me now, offering assurances of her love in irresistibly sweet tones, singing over Lionel’s lines with a soft urgency. Diana, goddess of the hunt and of the moon, reassures her man: “You’re every breath that I take. You’re every step I make.”
I thought of the woman speeding away from the apartment building on my street, the end of romance breaking the night with a disembodied curse from above. Was it the waning moon shouting after her from its low perch in the sky? “Go on, leave! And take that sliver of light off my right side with you! Fuck you, bitch!”
The squeal of tires, and my mind morphs her dark hatchback into a white pickup speeding off into the night. Had the man heard me shout my lame “Shut up…bastard”? Did he feel bad about calling me an asshole? Probably not. Had he wished he called me a bitch? Maybe.
And I wonder to myself if the man in the health-and-beauty section has moved on to the feminine hygiene products yet. Is there a pillow-soft voice whispering directly into his ear about a preferred brand of tampons?
Love is a treacherous thing, it seems to me. The mystery bread-aisle artist had captured the sentiment so simply, so eloquently in the skull-and-crying-heart drawing.
“And your eyes, your eyes, your eyes, tell me how much you care.” Lionel and Diana are working their way to the song’s climactic declaration of endless love, and all the events of the night press upon me in a fleeting glimpse and only marginal understanding of the epic struggle, the eternally rocky relationship between men and women. And suddenly I think of the lightning in the heart-and-crossbones drawing, the violence with which the sky seeks electrical balance with the earth.
There is something in the air tonight between the men and women of St. Paul, all toiling under the waning moon. I know I must do something on behalf of my sex, a small gesture at reconciliation. Some human interaction might be required. For this moment in time, I will have to abandon my independence and the self-checkout lane. I see that there are two express lanes open, one with a female cashier, one with a male. I make for the lane with the man at the register.
He rings up my three items, and I slide my credit card through the machine. A sign above the man reads that credit card transactions for purchases below $25 don’t require a signature. But this might be my only chance to communicate the apologies of my sex for our role in the lunacy of the evening, to reassure this man that, like Diana, we all “can’t resist your charms.” So I pick up the fake pen attached to the credit card machine and pretend to get ready to sign.
“Oh, you don’t have to sign,” the cashier says as if he’s doing me a huge favor. I look him straight in the eye and channel Diana Ross for my one word reply that contains the whole of human interaction: “Awesome.”
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Booblog
Warning: the following is rated PG-13 and may not be suitable for some audiences. Parental discretion is advised.
Recently I realized that, were my life a movie, it would be rated PG-13 for language and possibly "intense situations." I wouldn't get an R rating; that's for sure. I don't swear much, and the naughtiest thing that's happened to me lately was being felt up by a two-year-old at a tea party on my front lawn.
The invitation to tea had been extended to my roommate and I by our ten-year-old downstairs neighbor. She and her mom and little sister have become something like a surrogate family to each of us, inviting us to birthday parties and piano recitals, borrowing kitchen items, and sending up portions of whatever they bake. The oldest girl is taking a summer finishing class--you know, where little ladies learn real manners--and had some sort of a test the next day.
So it was that we all came to be sitting on a blanket on the front lawn of our apartment building, a plastic tea set and plateful of cookies spread before us.
"Do tell us about finishing school, won't you? It's ever so interesting." I prompted, pinkie up as I sipped carbonated juice from a plastic teacup. We learned about how to properly hold your saucer and cup and how to signal when you shan't have any more tea (lay your upside-down spoon across the top of your cup, of course).
At one point, the middle-aged woman who lives in the other downstairs apartment came home and walked past our little spread. "Oh, a tea party, huh?" She was holding a styrofoam container of leftovers and told us there were buffalo wings inside. "I just love the hot stuff," she explained.
It's hard for me to look at this woman without thinking of a recent incident in which she answered the door, plastered and pants-less, after an evening of drunken shouting at no one. I'd finally knocked on her door sometime around midnight when the banging on the wall started to worry me.
"Are you okay in there?" I'd asked. "Do you think you could stop the banging? Because I have to get up for work in--"
"Honey," she'd slurred, flinging one hand out while the other struggled to pinch together the strained edges of a very small towel she'd wrapped around her waist, "I don't care what time you have to get up in the morning."
Now she cast a wary eye on her leftovers. "Sure doesn't help with my hot flashes, though. And we'll just see how much I love the hot stuff in the morning."
My young neighbor stirred her plastic spoon in her make-believe tea and searched for a ladylike response to talk of menopause and bowel movements. "Well, have a pleasant evening, won't you?"
"Sure."
As she walked into the building, I felt glad to be on the blanket with the family, an observer of crass behavior rather than a practitioner. A few months after we moved in, I scandalized the ten-year-old by saying "crap." Scandal has since proven to have a sliding scale, and it's slid quite a bit.
One Saturday, after working a few hours of overtime, I came home to a note from my roommate: "Margaritas in the freezer. Help yourself!" Perfect. I ate dinner and sipped--
Whoa, tequila! The ice and citrus flavor were footnotes to the liquor in this stuff, and who reads footnotes anyway? The dog watched as I sat alone at the table, each sip bringing a shudder and a puckered, cartoonish expression to my face.
"Bleh!" I said to the dog. "That's a strong drink!" I hadn't even drank 1/3 of the large glass I'd poured before I started feeling a little buzz. I sipped about half of the concoction and then, in what I considered a very wise and responsible move, poured the rest down the sink. It was one thing to have a little drink after work on a Saturday, but it was quite another to get boozed by myself at 4:00 in the afternoon.
What I needed was some fresh air, and what the dog needed was a walk. I put two and two together and congratulated myself at how unimpaired were my powers of reasoning as I fumbled for the dog's leash and a poop bag.
"Poop bag," I snickered.
The dog looked at me like I'd just stumbled out of a bar, pulled my keys out of my pocket, and said, "I'll take you home. My car's just over here." In the end, though, she was more interested in going outside than she was in judging me. She let me clasp the leash to her collar, and we headed down the stairs and outside.
My little neighbors were in the front yard and greeted me with their usual enthusiasm. "Let's play a game!" the oldest one said. By this time, I was a little drunk, and I readily agreed to a fairly straightforward game called "tell a funny story." I regarded my audience and decided bathroom humor was the way to go--and, man, was I right. They loved this stuff! I regaled them with my entire potty-story repertoire, the finale being a cautionary tale about the wrong way for a girl to pee in the woods.
"See?" I thought, congratulating myself on being fun and informative. "They can use this."
The buzz had started to wear off by the time their mother came to check on the girls. We were all rolling with laughter, and the toddler looked up and said, "Jess pants were down, and then she fell."
Somehow my camping story seemed less funny as I quickly repeated it for an adult audience--less funny, less educational, less appropriate for children. I resolved to watch my tongue around the little ones.
And I did. I was being really good for a long time, but there, where I least expected it, at a tea party emphasizing manners, my resolve to be proper was sorely tested. The youngest girl suddenly decided she wanted to sit on my lap, and I obliged, extending a polite invitation for her to take a seat on my knee.
Without so much as a "how do you do," the toddler dramatically hit my left boob and exclaimed "What is this?" I laughed a little and looked around at the other tea party attendants. Only her mother had an inkling of all the good manners about to be smashed to pieces. The little girl turned her attention to the right boob and tapped that one. "What are these?"
So great was her horror at her discovery that no one could ignore her screams this time. It was as if she had just stumbled upon a spaceship on her front lawn. "WHAT IS THIS?" she yelled tapping and hitting and genuinely astounded.
And we all laughed. Teacups were forgotten, half-chewed cookies spit out. Her mother shouted her apologies through her laughter.
"What are these?" A string of euphemisms went through my mind: boobs, tatas, knockers, hooters. None of them seemed to have the right shade of meaning for a 2 1/2 year old girl. "Ask your mom," I finally said. Somewhat at a loss over the scene she'd created, the little girl soon gave up her crass line of questioning and moved on to exploring the ant hills on the sidewalk.
My niche in this place seems clear to me now. I just have to find the right towel to keep by the door.
Recently I realized that, were my life a movie, it would be rated PG-13 for language and possibly "intense situations." I wouldn't get an R rating; that's for sure. I don't swear much, and the naughtiest thing that's happened to me lately was being felt up by a two-year-old at a tea party on my front lawn.
The invitation to tea had been extended to my roommate and I by our ten-year-old downstairs neighbor. She and her mom and little sister have become something like a surrogate family to each of us, inviting us to birthday parties and piano recitals, borrowing kitchen items, and sending up portions of whatever they bake. The oldest girl is taking a summer finishing class--you know, where little ladies learn real manners--and had some sort of a test the next day.
So it was that we all came to be sitting on a blanket on the front lawn of our apartment building, a plastic tea set and plateful of cookies spread before us.
"Do tell us about finishing school, won't you? It's ever so interesting." I prompted, pinkie up as I sipped carbonated juice from a plastic teacup. We learned about how to properly hold your saucer and cup and how to signal when you shan't have any more tea (lay your upside-down spoon across the top of your cup, of course).
At one point, the middle-aged woman who lives in the other downstairs apartment came home and walked past our little spread. "Oh, a tea party, huh?" She was holding a styrofoam container of leftovers and told us there were buffalo wings inside. "I just love the hot stuff," she explained.
It's hard for me to look at this woman without thinking of a recent incident in which she answered the door, plastered and pants-less, after an evening of drunken shouting at no one. I'd finally knocked on her door sometime around midnight when the banging on the wall started to worry me.
"Are you okay in there?" I'd asked. "Do you think you could stop the banging? Because I have to get up for work in--"
"Honey," she'd slurred, flinging one hand out while the other struggled to pinch together the strained edges of a very small towel she'd wrapped around her waist, "I don't care what time you have to get up in the morning."
Now she cast a wary eye on her leftovers. "Sure doesn't help with my hot flashes, though. And we'll just see how much I love the hot stuff in the morning."
My young neighbor stirred her plastic spoon in her make-believe tea and searched for a ladylike response to talk of menopause and bowel movements. "Well, have a pleasant evening, won't you?"
"Sure."
As she walked into the building, I felt glad to be on the blanket with the family, an observer of crass behavior rather than a practitioner. A few months after we moved in, I scandalized the ten-year-old by saying "crap." Scandal has since proven to have a sliding scale, and it's slid quite a bit.
One Saturday, after working a few hours of overtime, I came home to a note from my roommate: "Margaritas in the freezer. Help yourself!" Perfect. I ate dinner and sipped--
Whoa, tequila! The ice and citrus flavor were footnotes to the liquor in this stuff, and who reads footnotes anyway? The dog watched as I sat alone at the table, each sip bringing a shudder and a puckered, cartoonish expression to my face.
"Bleh!" I said to the dog. "That's a strong drink!" I hadn't even drank 1/3 of the large glass I'd poured before I started feeling a little buzz. I sipped about half of the concoction and then, in what I considered a very wise and responsible move, poured the rest down the sink. It was one thing to have a little drink after work on a Saturday, but it was quite another to get boozed by myself at 4:00 in the afternoon.
What I needed was some fresh air, and what the dog needed was a walk. I put two and two together and congratulated myself at how unimpaired were my powers of reasoning as I fumbled for the dog's leash and a poop bag.
"Poop bag," I snickered.
The dog looked at me like I'd just stumbled out of a bar, pulled my keys out of my pocket, and said, "I'll take you home. My car's just over here." In the end, though, she was more interested in going outside than she was in judging me. She let me clasp the leash to her collar, and we headed down the stairs and outside.
My little neighbors were in the front yard and greeted me with their usual enthusiasm. "Let's play a game!" the oldest one said. By this time, I was a little drunk, and I readily agreed to a fairly straightforward game called "tell a funny story." I regarded my audience and decided bathroom humor was the way to go--and, man, was I right. They loved this stuff! I regaled them with my entire potty-story repertoire, the finale being a cautionary tale about the wrong way for a girl to pee in the woods.
"See?" I thought, congratulating myself on being fun and informative. "They can use this."
The buzz had started to wear off by the time their mother came to check on the girls. We were all rolling with laughter, and the toddler looked up and said, "Jess pants were down, and then she fell."
Somehow my camping story seemed less funny as I quickly repeated it for an adult audience--less funny, less educational, less appropriate for children. I resolved to watch my tongue around the little ones.
And I did. I was being really good for a long time, but there, where I least expected it, at a tea party emphasizing manners, my resolve to be proper was sorely tested. The youngest girl suddenly decided she wanted to sit on my lap, and I obliged, extending a polite invitation for her to take a seat on my knee.
Without so much as a "how do you do," the toddler dramatically hit my left boob and exclaimed "What is this?" I laughed a little and looked around at the other tea party attendants. Only her mother had an inkling of all the good manners about to be smashed to pieces. The little girl turned her attention to the right boob and tapped that one. "What are these?"
So great was her horror at her discovery that no one could ignore her screams this time. It was as if she had just stumbled upon a spaceship on her front lawn. "WHAT IS THIS?" she yelled tapping and hitting and genuinely astounded.
And we all laughed. Teacups were forgotten, half-chewed cookies spit out. Her mother shouted her apologies through her laughter.
"What are these?" A string of euphemisms went through my mind: boobs, tatas, knockers, hooters. None of them seemed to have the right shade of meaning for a 2 1/2 year old girl. "Ask your mom," I finally said. Somewhat at a loss over the scene she'd created, the little girl soon gave up her crass line of questioning and moved on to exploring the ant hills on the sidewalk.
My niche in this place seems clear to me now. I just have to find the right towel to keep by the door.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Bastille Day
I am happy to report that I didn't run over anything on Bastille Day. Specifically, I did not run over any French prisons. This might not seem like cause for relief. There must be cause for concern before there can be cause for relief, and really, what does a French prison have to be concerned about? Answer: nothing...364 days out of the year, that is. But on that one remaining day, Bastille Day, there is one thing that should make its stony foundation quiver with fear: me behind the wheel of a car. For I have the most obscure and useless super power: I run over the symbols of holidays ON the holiday they represent.
The first display of my "ability" came a few years ago when I was driving home from a holiday shift at the video store. I always worked holidays because they paid time and a half. This day was Easter.
The family had gathered at my mom's house for Easter dinner, and I was turning left into her driveway when a rabbit bolted out in front of my Toyota Camry. I didn't even have time to swerve. I stopped in the driveway and tilted my mirror down until I could see the lifeless body of the poor animal lying on the side of the road. It only took a few seconds to confirm that there would be no Resurrection this Easter. That bunny was dead.
I didn't tell anyone about the incident, afraid I'd be shunned from normal society because of my newfound power. No, I'd go on about my life as usual, speaking of this to no one and just trying to lead an ordinary life. And for a long time, it seemed like I had managed to suppress my ability. Maybe I got too comfortable. I let my guard down.
My dark secret came violently into the open earlier this month when, on the Fourth of July, that most hallowed of American patriotic holidays, I ran over the flag of the United States of America with my friend Sarah's Buick LaSabre.
We had gone to Canada to see the White Stripes play in Thunder Bay on July 3rd, and we had decided to symbolically reenter the United States, declaring our independence from Canada on the 4th. We awoke in Thunder Bay on the 4th, a Wednesday, to find everyone going about their Canadian business. Banks were open, and people were going to work. With no one else taking notice of the birth of our nation, Sarah and I made do with what we had and celebrated America by going to Wal-Mart and eating breakfast at McDonalds (two things I NEVER do in the States). As we made for the border, we joked about getting out from under the heel of the oppressive Canadian number system. This country didn't take into account our beliefs in denominations like miles and inches, and that was something we just couldn't live with. No, we'd flee to America, where numbers really meant something. There we'd find acceptance.
Once over the border, we headed down the two-lane highway to Duluth, taking in the grandeur of America and Minnesota's North Shore. We went a steady 55 American miles per hour, slowing down for the occasional town.
We came to one town where the line of cars slowed considerably. Up ahead, there was a pickup truck towing a flatbed trailer that was decorated with sparkling streamers and a sign extolling the virtue of "sticking together" or something. A few townspeople were standing in the bed of the truck, practicing their parade waves for the people walking on either side of the road to and from a classic car show. Behind the truck was a motorcycle with several flags sticking out of the saddlebags.
The parade truck turned left, and I was just trying to read its sign when a fateful gust of un-American wind dislodged one of the flags from the motorcycle. Old Glory fluttered lightly to the pavement in front of Sarah's car. I had only a few seconds to decide whether to stop, risking being rear-ended by the line of cars behind me, swerve into the other lane of the highway, or embrace my destiny.
Time moved slowly. To my left, the sun glinted off the sparkling float decorations. The motorcyclist had pulled over and was running back along the right shoulder of the road toward his fallen flag. Sarah had seen it all from the passenger's seat and seemed to also see the inevitable future as well. The look of horror on her face was a silent testimony; I, on the other hand, screamed as I accelerated. "I'm running over the flag on the Fourth of July!"
All of our windows were open, and what had simply been a loud statement of tragic irony must have seemed like an impromptu protest cry to anyone outside the car. The motorcyclist threw his arms up in disgust as the star-spangled banner yet waved under the Buick's tires. Sarah was pinned to her seat in horror, and my knuckles were white on the wheel as I sped up on the road out of town, checking my mirror nervously for motorcycles and the angry fists of a small-town mob.
People always fear what they can't understand, and so I must learn to look over my shoulder, remain vigilant against a world that might be, say, offended by my actions. Maybe one day I can harness my ability and use it for good. I could become a an anti-colonialism champion on Columbus Day or provide hungry families with roadkill turkey on Thanksgiving. I didn't ask for this power, but I must learn to live with it.
The first display of my "ability" came a few years ago when I was driving home from a holiday shift at the video store. I always worked holidays because they paid time and a half. This day was Easter.
The family had gathered at my mom's house for Easter dinner, and I was turning left into her driveway when a rabbit bolted out in front of my Toyota Camry. I didn't even have time to swerve. I stopped in the driveway and tilted my mirror down until I could see the lifeless body of the poor animal lying on the side of the road. It only took a few seconds to confirm that there would be no Resurrection this Easter. That bunny was dead.
I didn't tell anyone about the incident, afraid I'd be shunned from normal society because of my newfound power. No, I'd go on about my life as usual, speaking of this to no one and just trying to lead an ordinary life. And for a long time, it seemed like I had managed to suppress my ability. Maybe I got too comfortable. I let my guard down.
My dark secret came violently into the open earlier this month when, on the Fourth of July, that most hallowed of American patriotic holidays, I ran over the flag of the United States of America with my friend Sarah's Buick LaSabre.
We had gone to Canada to see the White Stripes play in Thunder Bay on July 3rd, and we had decided to symbolically reenter the United States, declaring our independence from Canada on the 4th. We awoke in Thunder Bay on the 4th, a Wednesday, to find everyone going about their Canadian business. Banks were open, and people were going to work. With no one else taking notice of the birth of our nation, Sarah and I made do with what we had and celebrated America by going to Wal-Mart and eating breakfast at McDonalds (two things I NEVER do in the States). As we made for the border, we joked about getting out from under the heel of the oppressive Canadian number system. This country didn't take into account our beliefs in denominations like miles and inches, and that was something we just couldn't live with. No, we'd flee to America, where numbers really meant something. There we'd find acceptance.
Once over the border, we headed down the two-lane highway to Duluth, taking in the grandeur of America and Minnesota's North Shore. We went a steady 55 American miles per hour, slowing down for the occasional town.
We came to one town where the line of cars slowed considerably. Up ahead, there was a pickup truck towing a flatbed trailer that was decorated with sparkling streamers and a sign extolling the virtue of "sticking together" or something. A few townspeople were standing in the bed of the truck, practicing their parade waves for the people walking on either side of the road to and from a classic car show. Behind the truck was a motorcycle with several flags sticking out of the saddlebags.
The parade truck turned left, and I was just trying to read its sign when a fateful gust of un-American wind dislodged one of the flags from the motorcycle. Old Glory fluttered lightly to the pavement in front of Sarah's car. I had only a few seconds to decide whether to stop, risking being rear-ended by the line of cars behind me, swerve into the other lane of the highway, or embrace my destiny.
Time moved slowly. To my left, the sun glinted off the sparkling float decorations. The motorcyclist had pulled over and was running back along the right shoulder of the road toward his fallen flag. Sarah had seen it all from the passenger's seat and seemed to also see the inevitable future as well. The look of horror on her face was a silent testimony; I, on the other hand, screamed as I accelerated. "I'm running over the flag on the Fourth of July!"
All of our windows were open, and what had simply been a loud statement of tragic irony must have seemed like an impromptu protest cry to anyone outside the car. The motorcyclist threw his arms up in disgust as the star-spangled banner yet waved under the Buick's tires. Sarah was pinned to her seat in horror, and my knuckles were white on the wheel as I sped up on the road out of town, checking my mirror nervously for motorcycles and the angry fists of a small-town mob.
People always fear what they can't understand, and so I must learn to look over my shoulder, remain vigilant against a world that might be, say, offended by my actions. Maybe one day I can harness my ability and use it for good. I could become a an anti-colonialism champion on Columbus Day or provide hungry families with roadkill turkey on Thanksgiving. I didn't ask for this power, but I must learn to live with it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
