On being the better man

I hope you all feel lucky, because I had a very serious injury while laboriously attempting to chop up a butternut squash last night, and my index finger is causing me considerable distress. I'm thinking of calling AFLAC. In spite of my disability, I find myself stranded on this icy Thursday and I thought perhaps telling you all a story would serve me better than my current activity of shoveling Mike and Ikes, (Tropical Typhoon), into my mouth while checking my empty email inbox over and over.

Let's face it. As we go about our daily lives, we often encounter people who "just have it coming." The douche-bag*(see bottom) who cuts you in line at your local blockbuster, or swipes the last snow shovel from your grandma, or the Biff in the Ed Hardy bejeweled long sleeve t-shirt who loudly points out the unattractive fat girl just trying to get a fucking drink.

We all have to deal with these people and sometimes, just sometimes, we are tempted to take our sweet revenge, especially when a tantalizing opportunity to teach them their lesson presents itself. But two jerks don't make a right, and we should really be striving to turn the other cheek, so to speak, mainly because the cost of taking such action can often outweigh the benefits of your savory vengeance. Case in point.

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to get to go to summer camp most years. I loved camp--the teachers of the school year are replaced by horny college students who have little interest in your actual obedience and you get to swim and ride horses. At church camp, however, there are sometimes those counselors who are not cool, and in fact are the nosy moms of campers who wear really high cut jeans and look disapproving at least 75% of the time.

In addition, kids don't just magically lose their inherent meanness after memorial day and twelve is a terrible age for a girl who didn't mature at a freakish rate because of the massive amounts of growth hormones consumed in our chicken nuggets. At the same time, twelve is also a notorious year for BOY CRAZY, during which the girls develop ridiculous crushes on little boys who want nothing more than to throw dirt at each other and play with GI JOES. This odd mismatch causes a lot of problems.

Anyways, there was this dreamy boy I went to camp with during the summer of twelve, and by dreamy I mean he had a mysteriously shaved head and was the all around badass of the capture the flag course. I was stricken. Thus, you can imagine my excitement when before chapel one day, he called me over to talk to him! I was floating on my flip flops. Unfortunately, my happiness quickly turned to horror, as he began to recite a sonnet he had composed in my honor, to the uproarious belly laughs of my peers (Yet again):

"Roses are red,

Violets are black,

I'm sorry your chest,

is as flat as your back"

Aside from being confused about the obviously false statement that violets are in fact black, and not violet, I was humiliated. I looked down in misery at the great plane that was the front of my kool-aid stained t-shirt, and promptly ran away and cried.

So being young and naive, when the opportunity for justice presented itself, I seized on the reins ands whipped those ponies until the wagon wheels fell off.

The monkey bars are a true test of playground prowess at almost any age. Only the strong survive. The unfortunate incident of the chapel poetry reading was old news by camp standards by the time I found myself playing on the same piece of playground equipment as my clever lyricist. We were all taking turns climbing on the top of the monkey bars and leaping mightily to the ground. Yet again I was at the mercy of the cruel man-child, who had posted up directly in front of me, and refused to let me pass or jump off.

I had had enough of these shenanigans. Luckily my flat chest allowed my arms free movement and I flung them out and shoved the would-be poet. To my horror, he lost his balance and toppled over the side of the monkey bars. I wish I could say that was the end of the story, but this particular set of monkey bars had an additional pull up bar, about halfway down the side of it. So adding to my dismay, and most assuredly his dismay, his body managed to flail its way to position one leg on either side of said pull-up bar, firmly lodging it into his fledgling testicles. Gravity then took its final course, and he landed directly on this wrist in the dirt, as children circled laughing, and little tattle tales flew like the wind to give me up to the authorities.

Did this kid deserve it? Well, he definitely deserved some form of punishment, but I'm not sure he deserved a trip to the hospital at the tender age of twelve to have his business extracted from the body cavity. And as a result of my violent action, the previously mentioned super high pants wearing mom counselor attempted to convince the camp director that I was a sociopath and needed to be sent home. (Apparently I threw the kickball too aggressively as well). Perhaps worst of all, I was forever more known at summer camp, even in the following years, as the girl who ripped little jimmy's balls off.

So before you get back at someone for their insolent behavior, consider being the better man. It may save you an embarrassing nick name.

** I just learned that spell check does not accept douchebag as a proper English word, but you may become grammatically appropriate by cleverly placing a hyphen between the bag and the douche.)

On making mistakes

Recently I've been reading a book on yoga that I was given this christmas and the author talks a lot about action and consequences. We all know, at least theoretically, that every action has a consequence, whether it be positive, negative, violent or even just slightly uncomfortable. The whole point of talking about it, is that we should be striving to be present in every action we carry out, carefully considering what the effects of our action will be. I'm highly in favor of this approach, even though none of us are very good at it.

I would like to motivate you somewhat, with...you guessed it...a story. A story about certain types of actions, and their consequences.

Sometimes when we act, we act out of anger or excitement, possibly we act out of ignorance. I'd like to take you once again, to the more hilarious period in my life known as "childhood," specifically to a unremarkable day in second grade (there it is again). My mom worked a lot when we were young, and as a single mother, had to do things-- dirty, shameful things, such as putting us in the smelly afterschool program at the elementary school. Well lets be fair here, I tortured my sister so much she couldn't handle babysitting me anymore.

The afterschool program took place in the gymnasium, where we were kept like a bunch of monkeys, and thrown snacks and jumpropes and other various toys we could fight over. All in all we were remarkably unsupervised, and the dodgeball could get pretty ugly.

Adding yet again to your mental picture of me as a child, you may add "freakishly small," to the list. Freakishly small, yes, timid, no. There was a sixth grade boy, (I've always had problems with men), who was bragging about how high he could jump. Knowing physics at an early age, I began to badger him in a very whiny voice about how he was full of shit (doo doo).

"NUH UH, I CAN JUMP SO HIGH I CAN JUMP OVER YOUR HEAD, SHRIMP!"

ok. Now we have a problem. This is the part where your action will determine the outcome of the situation. Unfortunately I took the low road and replied,

"I'd like to see you try, idiot!"

What a stupid bully, that guy didn't understand the subtle nuances of verbal taunting. I didn't want to literally watch him attempt to jump clear over my head, because unless his parents had been forcing him to train for the olympics, it was sure to end in disaster. I realized my mistake early on and began to think of an exit strategy.

Children are pretty simple so my exit strategy was: turn around and run the other direction. The difference in size between a tiny shriveled second grader, and an overcompensating bully type sixth grader is pretty substantial. Everything turned to slow motion. I was pumping my tiny legs as fast as I could, but I could hear the horrendous thud of his light up nike sneakers gaining fast. It was cheetah vs antelope, and the cheetahs only goal was to clear the top of my head.

This would not be the first time physics would flatten me. He was going for it. I imagine his sneakers sparkled tiny red lights upon the forceful contact with the back of my skull, and as I fell face first onto the gymnisum floor, I thought to myself "Told you you couldn't do it."

My victory was short-lived however, since my chin had exploded on impact. I spent the next hour or so watching the gigantic bubble where my chin had been grow to enormous proportion. It resembled something like a biodome, and I imagine there could have been tiny Pauli Shores and rare species of fern co-habitating there.

SO anyways. I blame the ridiculous story of David and Goliath for giving me false impressions on the probability of success when combating larger opponents. Sometimes its a good idea to shut your shrimp mouth, and listen to those animal instincts.

Perspective

It is always a useful exercise to imagine your current situation from new perspectives. We all have the tendency to assume that someone else is seeing the same situation in the same way, and it can cause all sorts of problems like extreme road rage, or unwelcome and awkward romantic advances.

Like everyone, I've gone through a few very dark periods in my life and I've learned that even the most despairing situation can seem a little better when you change your perspective, even momentarily.

I won’t go too far into detail here, because the story is rather sad and not as funny as I'd like it to be. However, the experiences I gained from this sad story are as priceless as gold, which is about 1100 dollars an ounce right now, I think. Anyways, I have always struggled with a bit of mental instability, which probably doesn't surprise you considering the spike clowns, bedwetting and teeth grinding. Anyways, there was a very rough period where I couldn't seem to control myself and, long story short; I ended up in an in-patient mental health treatment facility.

If ever you are feeling crazy, or depressed, or have the feeling that you can’t seem to function correctly, I invite you to visit one of these facilities. From the minute that I awoke from my one and a half day, drug induced coma, I realized a few things:

a) I am not at all crazy

b) It is a terrible thing to be crazy

c) Many people caring for crazy people are they themselves, crazy.

The halls were painted various shades of circus-themed colors, which given my history with clowns and my current suicidal state, I didn't enjoy so much. I recently discovered a few pieces of notebook paper that I scrawled on during my stay there, shoved into an old journal. One of the pages contained the following analysis.

"...As if they think the bright colors will make us feel less like killing ourselves and others. Let's hope it works"

Adding to your mental picture of this particular place, each room shared a suite-style bathroom with the adjoining room. Now, perhaps this doesn’t sound too strange. Quite normal. Like college right?!

I had checked in, and was moved to my own room under cover of darkness. When nature called, I made my way to the bathroom and peered in. I instantly shut the door tightly, because the door on the other side of the bathroom was wide open! If you've ever seen Girl Interrupted, or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, you can imagine why I was (yet again) absolutely terrified of using the bathroom. There could be a full on psychopath sharing my bathroom, who perhaps would have an irrational fear of toilet flushes, or maybe even a violent way of saying hello, the possibilities really were endless, and I wasn't about to reach my hand and the better part of my arm into a crazy person's room to close the door. On top of that none of the doors in this place lock. Cool.

My fear was reinforced by "group therapy" the following day. "Group Therapy" consisted of sitting in a circle while a nurse's assistant asked us three questions.

1) How are you feeling today?

2) Any suicidal thoughts today?

3) Any homicidal thoughts today?

I was pretty zoned out until I heard this combination. "Pretty good; yes; yes." I later saw the same fellow leaving on a weekend pass to visit his family. Hope that went ok!

Anyways, my story now takes you to the common room, in which there was a TV which was never turned off of the MTV Hip Hop station. I found out why shortly. All of the chairs in this place where specialty items specifically designed to prevent their use as weapons, i.e. extremely heavy. Like, I couldn't move them...at all. There was a man/boy who was always in the common room and would spontaneously drop into pushups at the command of some unheard drill sergeant, and also (much to my entertainment) knew all of the dance moves to the most popular rap songs of the day. Since they wouldn't let me continue sleeping my existence away, I was enjoying music videos against my will this day, stopping occasionally to glare at the nurses’ station and imagine their violent deaths.

One of the other patients decided he had had enough of the rap music. A channel change. No big deal right? I mean, sometimes in suburbia this could result in a severe Indian burn or a wedgie or perhaps even a passive aggressive silent treatment, but the mental hospital is a different world. Our spontaneous push-up guy was not in favor of a change, and roared with rage. To my utter disbelief, he effortlessly picked up one of the chairs which had to have been made of lead, and threw it at the other patient. The channel was promptly changed back and our guy happily went back to push-ups. So if you want to be able to throw retardedly heavy objects, do a lot of pushups, I guess.

I made a mental note and continued to stare blankly at the wall until our hip hop loving friend decided he wanted to be my friend. Previous to my stay at this lovely facility, I had spontaneously shaved my head, and currently looked like either a really sad lesbian, or perhaps a political prisoner falsely accused of smuggling heroin in Thailand.

So anyways, my super strong companion sat next to me and struck up a conversation. Important lesson: even men who are completely out of their minds will still try to hit on you. So while my hands sweat profusely, he turns and regards me carefully for a minute and then looks me dead in the face and says quite seriously,

"You ever think about growing out your hair?"

no shit.

That is a refreshing perspective. So perhaps next time you look in the mirror, and whisper all sorts of hateful things to yourself, either because you see every flaw, or every mistake that has brought you to your current physical or mental state, you should stop and imagine how a schizophrenic, super-buff bachelor (or bachelorette), who spends every sad day of his life in a circus themed prison, might see you.

Bureaucracy

Today I received two letters. One from Norman Regional Hospital which basically said: fill out a claim form with your insurance or they wont pay. I also received one from my insurance which basically said the same thing. However, there was no claim form in the envelope so I investigated online. The claim form was a whopping 3-4 lines long and included such vital information as "Doctors name" and "Reason for visit"....I also had to input my address.

It makes me wonder what exactly the hospital submitted to the insurance company in the first place....did they not include the fact that I had indeed been seen at the ER, and perhaps even WHY? Of course not, that would be too simple.

But if you think struggling against bureacracy as an adult is frustrating, recall childhood. I'm, of course, reminded of another touching playground memory.

It was a glorious sunny day. I stood tall on the top of the big toy, surveying all around me. On this day of days, I decided it would be a good idea to attempt a front flip off of said big toy. Unfortunately, mastering front flips takes some practice, and ideally should be done in a pool or on a trampoline etc..So instead of landing on my feet, I landed flat on my back, violently forcing all of the air out of my lungs and instantly triggering a severe asthma attack. (In addition to my teeth grinding, night terrors, and bedwetting, I was also adorably asthmatic so you can go ahead and add wheezing to your mental image of me now.)

I made my way to the teacher on duty at recess and struggled to say to her. "I cant breath, I need to go to the nurse"

She so cleverly replied, "If you can talk, you can breath"

and there you have it: small, bitter people, doing jobs they hate, making your life more difficult in any way they can. Its a beautiful thing.

Fear

There are a lot of things in the world that hold us back from reaching our potential. Today in freshman French class (sarcastic cheer), as I sat paralyzed after being asked a question en francais, my mind wandered to the topic of fear. Fear is a common theme in all of our lives, and often keeps us from experiencing new things, or accomplishing tasks. As children, and also adults, a very important task we must accomplish daily is using the bathroom successfully and without incident. Unfortunately for me, fear often intervened. There were two main problems with the business of bathrooms. The first is fairly minor, and probably quite common among children. That mysterious chair that you poop into, also makes a very loud, sudden sound when flushed, and then violently sucks away the contents of the bowl. Naturally I assumed a few things.

1) I could be easily sucked down the toilet along with my business, and no one would ever know what happened to me.
2) The hole in the bottom of the toilet was obviously a portal to another dimension, from which evil spirits could emerge and tickle and/or pinch my bum. (Tickling was another irrational fear of mine, but I'll save that story for later)

Luckily the portal usually only opened when the toilet was flushed, so that particular fear could be avoided by simply not ever flushing the toilet. I'm sure my mom loved this.

However, there was one other tiny problem with using the bathroom. Some children develop imaginary companions during the early part of their development. Supposedly its perfectly natural and most of us grow out of it. However, my imagination concocted something a little more sinister. You see, I actively hallucinated (auditory AND visual) that medium sized gremlin type creatures wearing clown outfits lived in every bathroom. I, of course, named them

SPIKE CLOWNS (artist rendering pictured)

The name still sends a thrill of fear down my spine. They wanted to eat me and torture me and put me in the toilet, and would appear sometimes before I entered the bathroom, prohibiting its use completely, or during usage, which often resulted in me making a premature and messy exit. This is a pretty scary thing. However, The amazing thing about human beings is that we can overcome our fears, and many times we have no other choice. I'm happy to report that I can now successfully use the bathroom without incident, usually. Its a success story we can all identify with I'm sure. I hope it inspires you to be bold today, NO FEAR.

Lets talk about the importance of social skills

I think I will organize my stories by category. We all know what the first category will be, its a crowd pleaser with almost any audience. Thats right, I'm talking weird childhood behaviors and public humiliations!

So without further adieu,

*trumpets*

WEIRD CHILDHOOD BEHAVIORS AND PUBLIC HUMILIATIONS!-Pt 1: Elementary

The importance of public appearance becomes violently clear as we emerge from the innocence of kindergarten, into the horrible miasma of telling time and learning what construction workers do. We are fully coming online. Once you can tell time, your innocence is lost forever. Forever. You start to become aware of, not just others, but what others must think! You learn things such as, eating your food in a weird/gross way can mean certain lunchtime mockery and possible multi-child chanting. So you try not to be so gross, although some kids just own it.

You begin carefully crafting your image. Oh boy do some of us girls have a predicament. You want to be cute and adorable, but you also want to beat up boys and look tough. But beware, for dabbling in too many personalities can end in disaster. The setting: the jungle gym. The kind of jumgle gym that probably has some sort of profound mathematical significance, but mostly its just the kind where you hang upside down and make monkey sounds. It had rained. There were giant mud puddles everywhere. I was wearing my most beautiful white bejeweled sweatshirt and matching white stretch pants with lacy cuffs. I took a brake from playing monkey to particpate in a contest that was going on to see who could jump over this particular largish mud puddle. Pff. No problem. Peice of cake. The thing was like 2 foot in diameter. I was agile like a monkey. I shoved my way to the front and leaped with all my might. Unfortunately power is not all that matters in muddy terrain. We need traction people, traction. My left foot slipped back violently. I was facedown in the muck. I rose like swampthing, letting out a roar of agony and ran like the wind, the shreiking laughter of the boys fading behind me. They wouldn't let me go home so I had the pleasure of wearing the smelly unclaimed lost and found clothes that came out of a cardboard box in the nurses office.

So that was my first lesson in the dangers of pride and ego. If you get too up on your high horse, you end up in wrinkled ninja turtle t-shirts from the nurses office that smell faintly of pee. kid pee. Now every person struggles with ego, but perhaps more people struggle with their front, their image. I'm talking about shaving your butt to fit in with a group of baboons. They are vicious animals, friend.

There are three types of actions in the realm of trying to fit in. There are actions which no one buys, and you are called out publicly, which usually ends up in you crying and writing in your journal. Then there are those which actually work, those idiots, and you get a foot in the door. My personal favorites, are the types of actions which you THINK you get away with, but are so preposterous that no one would have believed it, and they probably all had a good laugh at you. Children are especially good at this one.

Some examples:

After striking out with the cool kids, the weird kids, and even the fat kids in the year of 1992l, there was one clique left that might offer assylum. The girls who wore glasses. I wasn't going to let my 20/20 vision exclude me from a potential friend group,so I sneaked into my older sister's room and swiped her old pair of glasses. Oh man these were great, they would probably cover half of my face now, I cant imagine what they looked like on an 8 year old. I'm pretty sure they were from the "Justice Ruth Ginsburg's Designer Eyeglass Collection by Lenscrafters" So the next day at recess, I put them on and stumble onto the playground, groping my way toward what looked to be my potential targets.

Me: "Hi guys, guess what? My mom said I needed glasses, so now I can be part of your club."

Glasses Girl Club: "Really?"

Me: "Yep, what are we going to play"

*at this point it becomes apparent that I cant see jack shit with those huge peices of plexiglass over my eyes*

Glasses Girls Club: "YOU DONT WEAR GLASSES!! LOSER!"

Wow kids are mean.

That same year, second grade was rough, I had the pleasure of sitting next to the prettiest most awesome cool girl in school, Whitney White. She had the COOLEST retainer. It was purple and had glitter in the plastic. Everyday she brought it to school and set the little case on her desk for storage during lunchtime and snacks. I didn't have crooked teeth but what I DID have was a problem with night terrors, bed wetting and rabid teeth grinding. Not as cool, but when the dentist gave me my very own mouth guard, the first thing I noticed was that it came in a box just like Whitney White's!! What perhaps escaped my attention was that it was a gigantic translucent peice of plastic that looked something like what a boxer wears, and I was unable to effectively communicate while wearing it. BUT nonetheless I took it to school, and began wearing it, setting MY little case right next to hers. My teacher called me to her desk. She asked if I really needed to wear that all the time. With a flurry of spittle I calmly explained that "yesth I'm schuposhed to wear it or elsch I gesh in shrubble!" God I wonder what she was thinking. She probably felt sorry for me, although on second thought, probably not since she later gave me the only recorded sentence of detention for a second grader, and publicly blamed me for breaking her leg (indirectly by giving her the flu?)

Oh to be young again.

Tales from the Quip

My grandma always tells this story about my three year old self. Apparently I was asked my thoughts on a situation, probably something like "Do you want to go see the giraffes or ride the goat?" My little face contorted with the misery of indecision, and I told her simply: "I just don't know where to go or what to do!"

This seems to be a common theme in my life. And as one with no clear sense of direction, I've bounced around like a single bouncy ball hurled violently down a dormitory staircase, and with every collision I gain a new weirdo story. I've been thinking of writing them down, and I guess thats what I'm going to do. I also stumbled on some pretty hilarious/sad journals from throughout my 25 year stay on earth. So I'll probably include excerpts from time to time, just to please those sadistic fucks who love the stench of melodrama. Reading through them I was reminded of watching a 4 year-old with a splinter on funniest home videos, screaming the most blood curdling, agonizing, shriek of pain. I'm not totally sure someone who had been recently disembowled could recreate the sound. Well anyways, thats what teen poetry sounds like to me. At least mine. Some of it.

Right. Blogging.

So I'm going to prattle on from time to time here, sitting in my rocking chair, telling stories. I hope they make you laugh, or at least snicker.