You’re in a public place. Maybe it’s a coffee shop, or a clothing store, or a classroom, or maybe even a bookstore. Actually, it’s probably not a bookstore.
But you’re there. You’re going about your own business, because you are a functional adult in society, or whatever the modern equivalent of that is (read: you’re probably a codependent, chain smoking, Jersey Shore watching, McDonalds scarfing wreck, but this is pretty much par for the course these days. society has gone to hell). Regardless, you’re doing what you’re there to do. You’re drinking a cappuccino (skim milk, of course), shopping for a pair of pants (which you’ll buy a size too small, because you’re going to get back to the gym really soon), catching up on the reading you didn’t do the night before (again, Jersey Shore), and probably simultaneously texting.
Everyone is always texting. Have you ever thought about that? I am relatively certain that texting is going to play a rather large hand in the downfall of our society, which to me seems fairly imminent. Think about it. All over the world, people are constantly sending messages to each other about what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, what they’re seeing.
The ironic part, of course, is that no one is doing, thinking, or seeing anything, because they’re texting. Jogs are going unjogged, conversations unhad, scenic views unseen, and memorable moments unexchanged, because we are texting and we miss them.
Excuse my tangent. Return to your mental image. As you sit in your coffeehouse/store/classroom or what have you, behaving as well as you can be expected to behave given the fact that you were raised on Rainbow Brite and corndogs (thanks, mom), something happens.
You get annoyed.
It’s a girl, probably. It is in my mental image, at least, and I’m leading this parade. I will, however, allow you to imagine that it is a boy, in order to prove wrong some nasty accusations in 2007 that I “have some sexist views” (from my twelfth grade English teacher. about a paper I wrote. which she also called “very good”)
This girl is probably being too loud. She’s laughing uncontrollably about something that probably isn’t even funny. She’s making faces, or noises, or jokes. She looks like an idiot.
You’re judging her. She’s an adult, for God’s sake, and people are trying to go about their business. Specifically, you. You are trying to go about your business, and she is interrupting you. What is she laughing about, anyway?
Approximately sixty-two percent of the time, I am you. I am annoyed at that girl. I am trying to read Faulkner, or mourn the state of my checking account, or study, or stalk Benson Luk on facebook (heyyy Benson), or write my riddled-with-genius blog (alternate reality). She gets on my nerves and I take advantage of the situation to use her existence as an excuse to whine.
The other thirty-eight percent of that time, I am that girl.
Warning: I will hear nothing of my own hypocrisy. I love hypocrisy. I don’t even think it’s bad. I have accepted it about myself and expect you do to the same.
Excuse me, I just got a text.
Back.
So that girl is me. I’m laughing at that text, or at the book I’m reading, or at whatever I’m making fun of Daniel about, or at something that I actually said (yeah. sometimes I laugh at myself.)
And you know what? I’m having more fun than you are.
I started thinking about being that girl when I read one of the epigraphs of Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which I am currently rereading. (read it. it really is genius.)
Here it is:
“‘I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation.’ - Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life.”
This epigraph resonated with me, because I feel more or less the same about the last seven years of my life. More or less, because when I think back, I remember a lot of laughing and silliness and happiness, and very few details. I like this.
When I originally read this quote, my first thought was of Tanya Tiwari. This meant, of course, that my second thought was of donuts.
If you know Tanya then you know what I mean. That girl is a ninety pound donut eating machine. Her ability to show a baker’s dozen of donuts where they can go (her mouth) defies the laws of physics, gravity and good sense.
The specific memory that popped to mind was of a rainy midmorning in the spring of 2007. We were seniors in high school, and we had a fifteen minute break before our Block 3 classes.
I was sitting in the locker area with Tanya when she glanced at me innocently. This is always a bad sign.
“I really, really want a donut.” she opened.
“Of course you do.” This was nothing new.
“I have some in my car,” she stated slyly.
“Are you serious?” I asked, completely unsurprised but hoping to help her see how ridiculous it was to hoard donuts in one’s vehicle.
“We could go get them...” she said, trying to make it my idea.
“Tanya. I don’t like donuts and it’s pouring down rain.”
“I have a huge umbrella!”
And so we ventured into the senior parking lot. The second that we reached her car, the innocent spring rainfall turned gale force and started whipping at our bodies from every angle, making the ridiculously large umbrella all but useless. I stood, battling the wind and rain and umbrella, while Tanya sat in her back seat wolfing down donuts from a Krispy Kreme box that appeared to have held at one point (presumably that morning) a dozen donuts. Maybe two. I chose to hold my comments until we had reached a dryer venue.
She finally finished at jumped back under the umbrella with me. Had I actually been strong enough to hold on to it, the sheer size of the umbrella might have actually offered some protection from the rain. As it were, it actually became a sort of wind surfing parachute that began to threaten to lift me right off the ground and whisk me away. It slipped from my fingers and flew across the field adjacent to the parking lot.
We were soaked in approximately two seconds.
Screaming with laughter and being pelted in the face with cold rain, we tore across the field and managed to recover the umbrella, which I promptly folded up and put under my arm for the run back to the locker area.
We returned just as people were beginning to pack up for Block 3 classes. We were soaked through (by the way, yellow skirts are see through when they’re wet), and laughing so hard that we could barely breathe. Tanya probably didn’t have donut crumbs on her face, but I choose to remember it that way, so that is the way I will tell it.
Tanya had donut crumbs on her face.
It probably doesn’t seem particularly funny, but I remember laughing hysterically at the whole situation. Maybe it was the fact that we were the only people who were wet at all, that we just suffered through that incident so that Tanya could eat a donut, or that we just felt overwhelmingly alive the way you do after you get caught in a rainstorm.
Who can say?
I remember people looking us like we were idiots. Which is fair, because we looked like idiots.
That being said, when I read Klosterman’s epigraph about thinking back on the previous years in a generally positive light, I agree and that situation pops to mind.
It was totally worth looking stupid, to have that memory of just being happy for no reason at all.
If you think that I’m going to wind this up by advising you to withhold judgement the next time you see that girl (or boy!) in a coffeehouse/store/classroom/zoo, I’m not.
I think she’s obnoxious too, possibly more obnoxious than you think she is due to my predisposition towards disdain.
I’m just saying, I’m not going to apologize when it’s me.
love it. you are hilarious!
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