The Writing on the Wall

     I was recently on fall break, and what an eventful fall break it was. Not only did I see a woman on a sidewalk get punched in the face not once, but twice, have to run frantically through the streets of Chicago in an attempt to catch a train, get creepily hit on by a man at least forty years my senior in the middle of an empty park at sunset, and repeatedly wipe pus out of my dog’s eye; I also just so happened to make a new best friend.

     Now, our relationship has always been a little shaky. After all, we haven’t actually done what you might consider “meeting each other” yet. No, my new best friend and I met solely through the medium of textual messaging. On the last night of my break, I decided to go out to some of the local bars with my brother and his friends. After throwing back a few amaretto sours, I needed to use the bathroom. Now, normally I don’t spend tons of time inspecting bathroom stall walls. But since I’ve turned 21, I’ve discovered that the bathrooms in bars can actually make for some very interesting reading. I mean, without bar bathroom graffiti, how would I know that Cindy P. and Jason K. will last forever (despite the fact that Cindy P. seems to have already vowed her undying love to Jessie H.)? How would I know that Marissa is the best lay in town? Most importantly of all, how would I know that a certain phone number belongs to somebody considered to be a slut?

When I saw the phone number of this supposed slut on the wall, I could not help but wonder how and why the number had come to be written there in permanent marker. I mean, really, there had to be a good story behind that. Surely it would have something to do with betrayal, jealousy, love, and lust. Clearly there was a story behind this number that could rival any soap opera, reality TV show, or particularly intense episode of Arthur.

Naturally, I had to contact the person behind the number, so, mid-pee, I whipped out my phone and proceeded to send the number a friendly message. At least, I thought it was pretty friendly. I simply wrote “Hey, what’s up?! I found your number on a bathroom stall wall!” (normally I don’t use exclamation marks so liberally, but I wanted my friendliness to come across clearly). And what do you think the response was? I was expecting a cordial, “Oh, hi, nice to hear from you!  Yes, I am that slut being spoken of on the wall… what can I say, I like me some man meat!”. But no, I was sent a rude, abrupt, and disgustingly grammatically incorrect message saying “I think your full of shit”. I could not figure out what would cause somebody to jump to such a conclusion. What possible reason would I have for randomly texting a person, telling them that I found their number on a bathroom stall wall? None, right? That’s what I thought. But, instead of pointing this out, I responded with the facts of the matter as they were. I told the supposed slut the name of the bar I was in and the exact stall that her number was written in.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: how fucking bored must you have been to start texting a random number in the middle of a bar. Well, let me tell you: pretty bored. It turns out that when my brother and his friends go drinking, they basically just sit around playing pool while talking about the latest episode of The  Walking Dead. Since I am pretty terrible at pool and have little to no interest in stories about a post-apocalyptic zombie ruled world, there wasn’t much for me to do. So, even if this random person I was texting wound up being a maniac who would actually come to the bar and demand to know who had been texting her, at least it would have added a little excitement to the night.

Alas, my new best friend did not make an appearance. Her farewell message to me was touching, thought provoking, and perfectly summed up our friendship. Let me share her eloquent words of wisdom with you, they’re simply too beautiful for the world not to hear: “Yea I got a lot of haters don’t really give a shit .. if writin’ my number down is the worst they can do then they’re fuckin’ pathetic…. Have a good night”. I proceeded to damn her slanderers to hell and wish her a good night in return. When she did not respond to my last text, I knew our friendship had run its course. Yes, I will miss this wonderful friend that I made, but at least I’ll have the memories forever… or, at least until I clean out my inbox and forget about it entirely.        

When You're Rude, You're Not P-O-L-I-T-E

    Previously I said that my conscience is the thing that keeps me from being an asshole. But it doesn’t seem to always do its job. Either my conscience is pretty weak or I’m just such a huge asshole that no conscience can contain me, because the other day I definitely found myself being quite the asshole.

For as long as I can remember I have been attending this annual weekend long music festival right outside my hometown. For hours I sit outside, hot and sweaty, under the beaming June sun surrounded by other hot and sweaty people, all of whom are eating various fried foods and are themselves being eaten by various mosquitoes. Normally I would never attend an event that matches this description, but somehow, every year, I find myself there. It’s like I’m one of those flamingoes that tries to fly south for the winter but somehow ends up in northern Russia being fed vodka and petted by some guy named Yakov. Except in my case I’m fed corn dogs and “accidentally” groped by that creepy guy while in line for the port-o-potties.

     As my friend and I walked into the concert on Saturday evening we saw the group we were meeting sitting together in lawn chairs. There was just enough space for the two of us to sit down next to them. The only problem was that there was a middle aged couple sitting on the ground about five feet behind where we wanted to sit.

     “Well, we could sit there,” my friend said, “but I don’t want to sit right in front of those people.”

     Now, here’s where my conscience failed and the asshole was let out. My response to my friend’s concern was a shrug as I simply said, “I don’t care.”

We proceeded to set up our chairs next to our friends and sat down. After about five minutes I knew the couple behind us was pissed. I could practically feel the waves of self-righteous fury coming off of the man as he muttered, “Some people…” and “I’m just gonna bite my tongue…” Finally, the couple got up to leave, but first the man felt it necessary to let us know his displeasure. He stood up, leaned forward and furiously whispered into my friend’s ear, “You know, you should tell people before you sit down in front of them.”

     Now, I may have been an asshole by sitting in front of him, but this guy’s argument made no sense. It would have been fine for us to sit in front of him as long as we had asked first? The problem wasn’t that we blocked his view; it was that we hadn’t awkwardly asked permission to do so first. Really, we had been considerate by proceeding to sit in front of him thereby skipping over the awkward middle step. Either way, my friend and I would have ended up sitting in front of him. I’m sure this whispered outburst was as aggressive as this tie-dye wearing, pierced eared, be-ponytailed man had been in years. Based on the smug little smile on his face, I’m also sure he thought we would be too shocked and shamed to respond to him. But when a major douche like that thinks he has just somehow one-upped me, I can’t stand it. I turned around and said to him, “Man, it’s not that big of a deal. Just go away.”

     In my opinion, when somebody tells you to “just go away” the best move is probably to just go away. However, my comment only served to further enrage the sanctimonious couple.

     “Well,” said the woman, “and I was going to call him rude.” She indicated her boyfriend/husband/life partner/ weird mid-life crisis fuck buddy. The man sputtered in rage. He could not believe, could not believe, that somebody had actually responded to his condescending little remark. After a few seconds he began to say, “It’s P-O-L-I-T-E” over and over again as if somehow knowing how to spell an adjective endows one with the qualities of said adjective. I mean, it would be awesome if that were the case. I would walk around saying “B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T,” and “C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T,” and “N-O-T S-O-C-I-A-L-L-y R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D”. Alas, that is not how the world works. So, understandably, my friend and I could not figure out why this guy was spelling the word polite at us. He was almost chanting it as though he was a priest trying to exorcise the evil demon of rudeness that he seemed to believe had possessed our bodies. After a few moments of the world’s most absurd spelling bee, the couple walked away. I immediately turned to my friends.

     “So, it was okay for him to be rude to me, but I wasn’t allowed to be rude back to him? How does that make sense?” I thought this was an excellent point and spent the rest of the night scanning the crowd for the couple so I could point it out to them. I never did see them again and never got to throw my very valid point in their ever increasingly wrinkled faces. Needless to say, I was so focused on finding the couple in the crowd that I didn’t pay any attention to the music that night. I still have no clue who played. Okay, so being an asshole may have ruined my night, but the tie-dye guy had been an asshole too, so I take some comfort in knowing his night was probably ruined as well.      

An Ode To Humiliation

     What is the most awkward position you have ever been in with a teacher? Did you accidentally call your second grade teacher “mommy” once? How about that one time when the teacher farted in front of the whole class and nobody knew whether or not it was okay to laugh? Or maybe there was a time when you spotted your teacher in the supermarket and attempted to avoid him, but somehow ended up having to make painful small talk anyway. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’ll admit that those things have happened to me as well, on more than one occasion. But those are far from the most awkward moments I have ever had with a teacher. My most awkward moment came while sitting in my creative writing professor’s office this past semester as he read my poem about sex out loud.

     In my defense, I did not know he was going to read the poem right there and then in front of me, nor did I realize he was going to do it out loud. If I had known either of those things, I surely would have either edited the poem dramatically or turned in a different one entirely. Unfortunately, I was not well informed and turned in a poem about bumping uglies. Let me be more specific about this poem’s subject matter. It wasn’t really about sex, at least, not entirely. I wrote it in a foggy stupor right after I woke up one Sunday morning. You see, I tend to have extremely interesting dreams and one of those dreams had just been about one of my best friends getting married and going on her honeymoon. Now, don’t ask me why I was present on my friend’s honeymoon; I have no idea. Just know that in my dream I didn’t actually see any of the sex occurring, it was just pretty obvious that that’s what they were doing in their room, considering that they were on their honeymoon and all.

     When I woke up I could vividly remember this dream and it kind of freaked me out. I love my friend and all, but I would really prefer not to know as much about her sex life as I had in that dream. Being somewhat confused by what I had just experienced, I decided a poem was the perfect way to express my feelings. After all, poetry is supposed to be some great medium that allows the mind and soul to wander freely or something. If you believe poetry to be as noble an art as that, then I apologize for the very existence of this post which is all about how I high jacked the said noble art for something as ignoble as me feeling squeamish about my friend having sex.

     Had my poem solely been about two people having sex, the meeting with my professor really would not have been so bad. I would have been able to hope that he interpreted the poem as some deep, brooding thought on the nature of the human body. Instead, he chose to dwell upon the one line that made my face turn red. By the time he got three lines into the poem, he knew exactly what it was about and the atmosphere in that little room changed from friendly to ‘oh shit, how do we pretend that this isn’t as incredibly uncomfortable as it really is?’. In my professor’s defense, he was as mature as he possibly could have been about the whole thing. Most professors probably would have skipped over the poem entirely. The position we were in, male professor and female student in a little tiny office all alone, made things that much worse. But he was not going to skip over that poem. He is a lover of poetry at heart and was determined to discuss all of his student’s poems, even when they were as wildly inappropriate as I felt mine was.

So, this whole position sounds pretty awkward to begin with. But just wait; if you can believe it, it gets worse. Remember that one line that I mentioned before? The one that I said made my face turn red? Well it went something like this: “My friend has gone where I have never been, she has entered a realm that I will never know” (please keep in mind that I was only half awake when I wrote this and I was trying to be profoundly moody and deep). See, what I meant by that line was that my friend had just slept with this guy who I never would, seeing as he was now married to her and all. Of course, in my dream I knew that he could always just choose to cheat on my friend with me, but even my dream self seems to have had a strong sense of right and wrong and felt as though sleeping with my friend’s husband would be wrong somehow.

Upon reading that line this is what my professor had to say: “I don’t believe that. Trust me, I’ve been there. Don’t worry, it’ll happen”. You see, he thought I was lamenting my virginity, feeling as though sex would never ever come my way. As encouraging as it is to know that my professor has confidence in my ability to get laid, I would have preferred that he hadn’t said anything at all. After that there was no way to ignore the intense level of awkward in the room and throughout the rest of our meeting we pretty much avoided direct eye contact. As I exited the building all I could do was hold my hand over my eyes and shake my head from sheer humiliation. I decided that, at the very least, it had been an interesting poem and I now had a hilarious story to share with my friends.          

A Dog's Life

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to live a day in the life of a dog. On the surface it seems like it would be a very relaxing way to spend the day. My dog occupies the majority of his time with sleeping, eating, and being petted. I don’t think there is any human being who can claim that. Well, other than Hugh Hefner. But he pays those girls to do that. My dog gets to do those things because he, unlike Hef, is loved by the people around him. But when I look beneath the surface, I’m not so sure that a dog’s life is as idyllic as we often are led to believe.

First of all, think of all of the things people do in front of their dogs that they wouldn’t do in front of other people. They walk around naked, fart, burp, pick their noses, and sing stupid songs to them. Some people will use the bathroom even if the dog is in it and others will even engage in intimate sexual activity while their dog sits on the floor and watches. Now, granted, dogs would do these things in front of us as well. But it’s far cuter when they do it than when humans do. Go ahead and look at this picture and then try to tell me that a pooping dog can't be cute. There's no denying that that puppy is cute, but have you ever called a man taking a massive dump cute? No, I didn't think so.

Plus think of how boring it must be to be a dog. They sit around without any mental stimulation all day long. It’s no wonder they bark like crazy whenever they see anything outside. I would too if the most exciting part of my day was getting my belly rubbed for a few minutes. Although it would be nice if somebody would rub my belly, nobody does right now. Okay, so there may be some benefits to being a dog. You don’t really ever have to worry about anything, other than whether or not your own crotch tastes good, and you get room and board for free. Of course, that is assuming that you’re a dog with a home. Stray dogs are another matter entirely. I don’t think anybody would ever want to be a stray dog. Although this dog might not mind leaving its owners for a life on the streets.

Just remember the next time you want to strangle Fido for barking like crazy at the squirrel in the yard that seeing that squirrel is probably as entertaining for him as watching Avatar is for you. And if you’re one of those snobby pricks who doesn’t like Avatar because it’s not “original” then go ahead and instead insert the name of that one offbeat indie film that you’re the only one enlightened enough to truly understand.

    

   

Old Wounds Still Hurt

I was recently placed in something of a moral dilemma. I had gone to dinner with my younger brother at the oh so classy Steak ‘n Shake in our hometown. As our waitress placed our menus before us, I realized that I knew her. I had gone to middle school with her many years ago.
      Now, as shocking as it may be, I was not exactly at the top of the social ladder of coolness back then, nor do I claim to be  now. But to get to the top of that ladder now would require me to be a top notch beer pong player, so I’m not super upset about it anymore, despite all of the imaginary scenarios I make up that involve me being admired, fawned over, and even worshiped by the entire campus. But back as a very unkempt and timid twelve year old, it did bother me. And one of the people who had bothered me the most was this girl who was now about to serve me my dinner. Let’s just say that my outward appearance left much to be desired back then, and she had made sure I realized that on a daily basis.

I was at first concerned that she would recognize me and say something. That was the last things that I wanted. Having to put on a false smile and make insignificant small talk with a girl who had helped to make my adolescent years miserable did not really appeal to me. Luckily, either my looks have changed enough that she didn’t recognize me or she had forgotten about me entirely. I choose to believe the former. I really hope I’ve increased in comeliness since my pimply, disheveled preteen days. Either way, she did not seem to know who I was. After she walked away I leaned across the table and whispered to my brother, “I went to school with that girl. She was a real bitch. What should I tip her?"

You see, I had realized that before me lay a golden opportunity for revenge. Every afterschool special that I have ever suffered through had told me that ultimately a time like this would come; a time where the bullies and the bullied would face each other in adulthood and the tables would be turned. The only problem with my situation was that I had this little thing, which often gets in the way of my pleasure, called a conscience. That, plus my brother told me I was being petty. When a sixteen year old boy who has to as much moral direction and fortitude as a stuffed animal tells you that you’re being petty, you probably are. He also had these words of wisdom: “Well, look where she’s ended up. I mean, she’s a waitress…. at Steak ‘n Shake…”

I have nothing against waitresses. I know that it’s a very respectable position both as part time and full time work. But I had to admit that my brother had a point. If she had become wildly successful in life, she probably would not have become a waitress, and I would have felt more justified in continuing to hate her. But as things were, she was a waitress, and I had to admit that she was a really good waitress at that. She was friendly, prompt, and thoughtful. She deftly walked the line between being neglectfully forgetful of us and being just plain annoying with dozens of stops at the table to repeatedly ask “can I get you anything?”.

The service had been very good and I was satisfied with my meal. I had no reason to give her a bad tip other than because of the hurtful things she had said as a young girl more than eight years ago. I was pretty stuck; there really was no other option. I had to leave her a good tip. So I did, and I abated my feelings of regret by telling myself that maybe, just maybe, she actually did remember who I was and when she saw the large tip I had left her, she would be wracked with remorse for what she had done in the past. She would see that I truly had always been the better person and decide to devote her life to seeing other good deeds happen in the world, and it would all be because I had decided to leave behind a twenty percent tip rather than the five percent one the evil side of me had been begging to leave.

As it turned out though, I don’t think it mattered in any way. I paid with my debit card and my brother with cash, so I didn’t leave my tip on the table. When my former foe came around to clear away our dirty dishes, she found a two dollar tip for a sixteen dollar meal. So, maybe she wouldn’t see that I had actually been the good tipper that I was, but I still knew that she would ultimately get that money I had added to my bill at the cash register. And that was enough to satisfy my conscience, which had been relentlessly nagging at me throughout the meal, much like Jiminy Cricket did to Pinocchio. The only difference was that Pinocchio could have easily crushed Jiminy and been free for the rest of his life, whereas I will never be able to get rid of that little voice that always reminds me when I’m about to be a major asshole.   

Just Say ‘No’ to Automated Bathrooms

Automation is supposed to help make our lives easier, right? Automatic doors save us the hassle of having to actually extend our arms two feet to open the door ourselves, cars that can automatically parallel park themselves are a godsend to those of us who are woefully parking challenged, and automatic toothpaste dispensers always supply the perfect amount of paste thereby saving their owners a couple, nay, dozens of cents. But I have come to the conclusion that automation just does not belong in public restrooms.

            It was while at the movies with my brother that I came to this conclusion. As we were settling in to watch Hugo, which I will shamelessly plug here as a fantastic movie that everybody should go to see, I came to that awful realization that always seems to come at the most inconvenient of times: my bladder was quite uncomfortably full and needed immediate relief. So, I begrudgingly got up, leaving behind my $5.50 tub of popcorn that I knew my brother would immediately pounce upon and gorge himself with.  In any other circumstance I would have taken it with me, but you can’t eat food once it’s been in the bathroom. In your mind, even if not in reality, it becomes tainted by tiny pits of fecal matter that you just know fill the bathroom air.

            Once I had emptied my bladder and I had pulled my pants back up, I turned around only to realize that I had just urinated into a toilet that was supposed to have automatically flushed. The only problem was that it had not flushed when I had stood up. Well, I wasn’t just going to leave a toilet bowl full of my bodily fluids behind for anybody to see. The products of urination and defecation are a private matter between a girl and her toilet. Nobody else has the right to infringe on that privacy except, of course, for plumbers and the various creatures that live in the sewers, such as the teenage mutant ninja turtles.

Knowing I had to make the toilet flush somehow, I began to frantically wave my hands in front of the sensor. So there I was, in the movie theater at nine thirty at night, in a public bathroom stall, flailing my arms above a bowl full of my own urine hoping that somehow this would make the urine go away. Automation has become a part of our civilized culture, and yet that description sounds far from civilized. In fact, it sounds like some sort of deranged rain dance wherein the objective is to actually make the rain go away and the rain is actually your own pee.

Needless to say, I was eventually successful and happily exited the stall knowing I would be the only one to have viewed my expelled bodily fluids. But then another very similar problem arose, only this time it was in the form of the paper towel dispenser. Admittedly, I wanted to get back for the previews so I washed my hands a bit hastily and they were still dripping with a few soap suds as a reached for the paper towels. But I was not going to return to that theater with wet hands. I always get grossed out when other people come back from the bathroom with wet hands. That wetness could just as likely be pee as it could be water, and it might not even be clean water at that.

But no towels came out when I waved my hand in front of this new sensor. So I basically repeated exactly what I had done in the stall: I frantically waved my hands about hoping that somehow this would solve my problem. At this point, I was beginning to feel like a little organ grinder’s monkey dancing around for pennies. Twice within two minutes I had been reduced to spazzing out like that one special kid in elementary school did whenever he forgot to take his meds. And I had done this only for the most basic of things; to get the toilet to flush and to be given a ten inch piece of tissue paper to dry my wet hands.

Now, had the rewards for looking like an idiot been greater, I would not complain. If that toilet had flushed away my quirkily debilitating social awkwardness and if the dispenser had been shooting out hundred dollar bills, then I would have been all for the frantic flailing of arms. Hell, I would have done cartwheels if those were the rewards. But they were not, and if anybody else had been in that bathroom with me, I would have looked like an even bigger moron than my normal outward appearance would usually lead one to believe.

I’m not saying that I’m entirely against having things automated. Sometimes automation can be quite useful. All I’m saying is it would be nice if those automated things actually worked. That would save some of us from getting uncomfortable stares when we come out of the bathroom stall after having just been overheard screaming at the toilet for its stupidity.           

Assignment 20?

The other night I was facebook stalking like crazy, trying to forget the fact that I had many finals that needed to be studied for, and realized that a good deal of my facebook friends have blogs. Now, not to slight my friends in any way, but, well, I don’t exactly think a lot of them are the sorts of people that have terribly interesting things to say. Okay, so I’m definitely slighting them. But I think sort of cruel things like that all of the time. The only reason they’re still my friends is because I never give voice to those thoughts. But hey, they’re probably never going to see this so I can say whatever I want! Anyway, my point is that a lot of pretty boring people out there have blogs and if they can do it, I want to see if I can too. Not that I’m saying I’m exciting or anything. I’m just maybe a step or two more entertaining than the average bear. 

The name of this blog is not some obscure, esoteric bit of information that only the most sophisticated and educated of people could possibly understand; No, it’s not that at all. It’s simply a veiled reference to the fact that I am 20 years old and this is the assignment I have given myself: to write this blog in the hope that whatever wit I may possess will be enjoyed by a few other people with good senses of humor.

All of the time I think of the most hilarious things and never have anybody to share it with. Well, now I get to share it with you! Aren’t you so excited? Yeah, I would be too if I didn’t already get to live with the awesomeness that is me every single second of every single day for the rest of my life. Oh God, on second thought that isn’t so awesome. I know how bad I can smell at times, and I tend to get cranky when not well rested, I’m always hungry and need feeding. Geez, I’m like a baby. And I have to live with myself for the rest of my life? Great.

Well, hopefully I’ll keep this whole posting entertaining words for the world to enjoy thing up. If it turns out that I really am as lazy as my peewee soccer coach told me, then I definitely won’t. If that is the case, then I’m sorry you’ve read even this far because there will be no more entertainment to come. But my peewee soccer coach was an asshole. Who the hell makes seven year old girls run laps for giggling? Isn’t that all seven year old girls do? Anyway, I’ll try my hardest to prove him wrong by continuing to post.

Have fun with life.