For the record, I have a crush on Van Johnson. He’s the new Gary Cooper, who was the new James Stewart. I’ve watched In the Good Old Summertime almost as many times as I’ve watched Amelie, which is to say: a lot.
This week, in between packing boxes, cleaning up, and filling out change of address cards, I’ll be watching The Last Time I Saw Paris for. sure.
Dear Dentist (Who Looks Like Chris Evans, Which Makes Going to the Dentist So Completely Awesome That I May Never Brush My Teeth Again):
I would like to express my sincere appreciation regarding the new massage chairs which you have installed in your practice. They are totally awesome. It was a pleasant surprise to have my back lightly massaged while one of your hygienists lacerated my gums as she furiously picked at my teeth and reminded me, in a fairly passive-aggressive fashion, to floss. I also really appreciate the free toothbrush, even though I have one of those fancy electric things, and the one you gave me today will be used more for cleaning the grout in between the tiles in my shower and less for cleaning my teeth. Still: much appreciated.
What I would like to talk to you about is when, exactly, it became a faux pas for me to try to snag a toy out of the toy box at the end of the appointment. I don’t remember having a conversation with you about this. I don’t remember you offering me a bouncy ball or a sweet plastic ring with a giant fake ruby or even a sticker with an anthropomorphized molar proclaiming how awesome I was during the fluoride torture, to which I held up my hands and laughingly responded, “No, no thanks - I’m too old for that!” and we had a good chuckle about it before I left your office. We did not have that conversation.
Like, I get it: going to the dentist is traumatizing for kids, and I understand that bribery is necessary to avoid a temper tantrum of epic proportions. Go to the dentist, get a toy, maybe even a sticker too, everybody wins. But why does this have to stop? It’s not like when you turn, what, 18? that going to the dentist suddenly becomes awesome, negating the need to entice people with treats. Sure, I’m 30 and you shouldn’t have to bribe me with shiny trinkets to get me to come back in six months (the threat of gingivitis and/or rogue bicuspids and/or incisors which are curiously devoid of enamel apparently isn’t enough to get me to come back in July) but you know what? It couldn’t hurt. I want the Goddamn bouncy ball.
Yours sincerely,
K
The fun part about getting more active is becoming acquainted with muscles you didn’t think you had. Like, really. Like, you really thought you were a genetic anomaly because no matter how many sit-ups your sadistic gym teacher made you do or how many crunches you do at the gym, your rectus abdominis is apparently MIA. I’m 99% sure that the only thing keeping me upright and protecting my inner organs is a layer of sesame seed bagel.
But the second you start doing things? Yoga for example? You get real acquainted with every single muscle in your body, and you do so real quick. Can’t hold your cell phone to your ear without feeling like a thousand knives of fiery pain are stabbing you in the shoulder? You pulled the group of muscles comprising your rotator cuff! Hurts to sneeze? Probably because you’ve shredded your obliques! Can’t fucking walk? Maybe because you pulled every single one of the four muscles in your left quad! Apparently, I have a trapezius. How do I know that? BECAUSE IT GODDAMN HURTS. It’s like the Gray’s Anatomy of pain.
More angry people at Starbucks! What? I know! How could anyone be ANGRY at a STARBUCKS??
Customer #1: Orders a grande, no water, NO FOAM chai latte, and then sends it back TWICE for not being foamy enough. The barista kindly explains that 1) Customer #1 ordered the drink with NO FOAM so it shouldn’t be foamy at all, and 2) even IF she wanted more foam, by virtue of it being a chai latte, it doesn’t foam up the way milk does. Customer #1 is now crimson and kind of vibrating on the spot, and spits, “I order this every day, and it’s been fine every. other. day.” The barista shoots her a look that’s all, “Honey, what you want isn’t technically possible, so unless your usual Starbucks is in like, Narnia, and Aslan HIMSELF is making this chai latte with his particular brand of magic, IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.” Customer #1 grabs her mediocre foam chai latte and leaves, swearing under her breath.
Customer #2: Orders a grande iced dark roast. For anyone who isn’t familiar with this drink, it involves pouring HOT COFFEE over ICE. After preparing the drink, the barista hands it to the customer who looks at the cup, then at the barista, blinks, and asks: “Where’s the ice?” The barista looks at Customer #2, then at me, then back at Customer #2. Customer #2 catches the exchange, gets all defensive for not fully grasping basic principles of thermodynamics, and stalks off.
Maybe these people may want to stay away from stimulants, because this much anger amplified by the effects of caffeine can’t be good.
It probably speaks volumes re: where my head is at in terms of home ownership that the FIRST THING I DO in preparation of the big move is to make sure I have cable and internet set up within 24 hours of moving in.
There were some daaaamn angry people at Starbucks this morning, and as much as I love my morning latte, holy SHIT guys - it is just coffee.
Customer #1: Grabs a bottle of water and starts drinking from it before she’s paid for it so you know she’s That Person. She gets to the counter, orders a grande Komodo Dragon blend, but lo and behold, the morning rush has run through the current batch. The barista says as much, asking her if she doesn’t mind waiting three minutes while they brew some fresh coffee.
Let us pause and reflect what has just transpired: a busy coffee shop has MOMENTARILY run out of a particular blend of coffee during their peak time and an employee of said coffee shop has offered to brew FRESH COFFEE in what amounts to PRETTY MUCH NO TIME AT ALL. It happens, right? And it’s not a big problem, right? Well, according to this particular customer, it’s pretty much the end of HER fucking world, evidenced in how she settles herself in the Oh No You Di-int stance, and snarks that it’s “unbelievable” that a coffee shop would let a batch of coffee run dry and not make a new one.
Guys, I worked at Starbucks for like, six weeks, and it happens. You know what’s unbelievable? Unicorns. Faster-than-light-speed travel. Charlie Sheen’s popularity.
After the barista asks the customer if she’s okay with waiting three minutes while they brew a new batch of coffee, the customer plants her hands on the counter and says - and I am not making this up - “Here’s what you’re going to do. Tip the canister, pour out what’s left. Top it up with Pike Place if you have too.”
Unfortunately for the barista, who was on the receiving end of the most scathing glare I’ve ever seen, the Pike Place was running low as well. Thankfully - lest further “inconvenience” cause this woman to reveal her true form (that of something from the seventh Bolgia of hell) - there is enough coffee in both canisters to mostly fill a cup. The barista then gives her the coffee, saying that it’s on the house, to which the woman replies, “I know” before storming off.
Doesn’t get much worse, right?
Customer #2: Throws his change on the counter and decrees: “Grande Komodo Dragon blend.” The barista noticeably deflates at this and repeats what she JUST finished saying to Customer #1: Komodo Dragon is out. So’s the Pike Place. We’re brewing more. She asks, “Would you like an Americano?” He says, “No I would not!” with such offended, disgusted indignation, it’s breathtaking. Dude, she didn’t ask if you wanted a grande sewage rot with room for whatever the fuck is lodged in the wheel wells of her car after driving through six inches of dirty, melting snow. She asked you if you’d like a watered down espresso shot.
After recovering from the alleged offense, he - again - demands a grande Komodo Dragon blend. The barista REPEATS: “Would you mind waiting three minutes while we brew the coffee?” to which this guy responds “I don’t think so”, grabs his change off of the counter and charges out the door.
The hell??
My 10 year high school reunion was two and a half years ago. No, I didn’t feel old. I didn’t feel like I’d wasted the last 10 years. I didn’t feel overly nostalgic for the time I’d spent in high school. I’d read stories and watched movies about people facing down their 10 year high school reunion with fear or regret or sadness, or unending excitement because high school truly was The Best Years of Their Life and they never really got over it. Personally, I think it’s all blown out of proportion, and when I got the invitation for the reunion, I didn’t really feel anything. If I said that I was surprised it had already been 10 years, I was lying because I’ve been more aware of the last 10 years than of any other epoch in my life so far. Blame it on keeping a journal, I guess.
The problem with the high school reunion these days is that it’s not really about getting together with old friends you still have or the friends you had back then and remembering the Good Old Days. It’s more about wanting to show off, wanting to get laid, or genuine curiosity. But Facebook has pretty much annihilated any curiosity because let’s face it: I know everything there is to know about the Class of ’99 because of the obscene amount of information available on the internet. There was no mystery, there was no revelation. Besides, of the people who comprised the small circle of friends I had in high school, I was still friends with most of them, and we kept in touch regularly so it wasn’t about reminiscing either.
When I saw the guest list and read the list of names, I didn’t recognize 90% of them. I spent most of my time in high school learning, hanging out with my friends on a staircase landing near the computer labs, and spending weekends in either my parents’ living room or my friends’ parents’ basement watching movies and drinking a lot of soft drinks. SOFT DRINKS. High school parties? If they happened, I didn’t know about them. Ex-boyfriends? Didn’t date in high school. Life-changing experiences with friends I made while studying abroad? Memories made while changing the world with other like-minded people who wanted to make it a better place? See the bit about hanging out on a staircase landing near the computer labs.
Still, I couldn’t help but think back to the day I graduated from high school. It feels like only seconds ago, I was sitting in the auditorium, surrounded by people I didn’t know because we were seated alphabetically, which from a logistical standpoint makes total sense, but from the point of view of an 18 year old, it was stupid because I wanted to be with my friends. Instead I was seated beside people I didn’t know and the only thing we could have had in common was the same first consonant of our surname.
I watched my classmates walk across the stage and listened to speech after speech. I remember one in particular, or at least part of it: “Remember you are loved, you will always be loved. Sometimes, you may not know by whom.” It sounds…extraordinarily creepy now, but I remember being absolutely struck by it at the time. I remember taking pictures outside, and there’s one that I have somewhere of all of us, arms slung across each others’ shoulders, wrapped around each others’ waists, someone making a peace sign. That picture would be so different now: there would be new best friends, there would be some unease between people who have grown apart, there would be husbands and wives and kids.
My sister’s 10 year high school reunion is coming up this year. I’m not sure if she’s going, and if she doesn’t, she’s really not missing much. There’s such a hyper-idealized vision of reunions that there is no way they won’t be intensely disappointing. You’re not going back to your high school to drink and listen to 80s music and dance with the person you never got to dance with. You’re going to a run-down bar that used to be a funeral parlor. True story.
“You know, when you started getting invited to your ten year high school reunion, time is catching up.”
“Are you talking about a sense of my own mortality or a fear of death?”
“Well, I never really thought about it quite like that.”
“Did you go to yours?”
“Yes, I did. It was just as if everyone had swelled.”
So, you know when you buy a cup of soup thing and you’re like, Sweet, I’m going to make some soup for lunch because it seems like a soup kind of day, and you follow the instructions to the letter, uncapping this, removing that, stirring that other thing, and you put the cup of soup in the microwave for a minute and FIFTEEN SECONDS (no more, no less) and about twenty seconds in, it falls over? Like, don’t people spend INORDINATE amounts of time designing microwavable cup of soups so that they don’t fall over and spill chicken broth and mini pastas everywhere? Aren’t there focus groups? And human factors testing? And ergonomic design trials? AREN’T THERE? Related: do you KNOW how hard it is to clean up tiny pasta? JESUS.
I don’t think it’s the microwave’s fault, because even though the little plate thing spins, it spins slowly and smoothly. There aren’t any bumps or cracks along the track because the dude who designed the microwave DID HIS GODDAMN JOB and designed a FUNCTIONAL APPLIANCE. Rather than that asshole at Campbell’s who’s just being difficult.
For some reason, I’m flashing back to my last class in Contemporary Theory in Psychology last April. At the end of the lecture, the professor handed out the questions for the final exam. I know what you’re thinking! The PROFESSOR handed out the QUESTIONS for the FINAL EXAM! How awesome is that?! The entire class got the questions ahead of time and instead of trying to study an entire semester’s worth of information in five days, we could focus our efforts, concentrating on certain material, really developing a deep understanding of certain theoretical perspectives! SWEET!
And then I read the first question:
“It is in the nature of the interplay between ontology and epistemology that, lacking a settled and defensible ontology, there is no rational basis on which to choose a mode of inquiry. In order to establish what there is it is necessary to have the right sort of method, but then the right sort of method already presupposes at least a provisional answer to the question of what there is.” - Dan Robinson (2007). Argue why you agree or disagree with Robinson by comparing two theoretical perspectives we have studied this year.
Uh…all of the above?
