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.