Prague, 9/8

I’m starting to realize something about myself that people have been telling me for years – I take myself entirely too seriously.

Anyway, journal entry. It’s Saturday, which I’m counting as the last day of my first week here, which also means I have only written twice prior, and I really ought to get better at that. The end result might be that I start carrying my large journal to write by hand in, and some day when they collect my memoirs for progeny, they’ll have to get this period of my life from two places. But that’s the price they’ll have to pay for what I’m sure is a riveting tale. Even if it hasn’t happened yet.

So despite the fact that I have a flair for the literary – actually, let’s be honest and call it a religious devotion to the literary and an adamant belief that life must fit inside dramatic tropes or none of it would make any type of sense. Anyway, despite being inclined to fit my life into a five act structure, I can’t really think of how to put what I’m doing into a narrative. I mean, I could narrate the things that I’m doing – trips to see tourist locations, mostly – but that isn’t horrendously interesting or wholly unique. And I’m spamming the shit out of my Facebook with pictures I’ve taken, so I’ll remember the locals even if I don’t remember the conversations I had with tour guides or how much admission cost. I think, really, the pictures will suffice for the grand things I do – concerts, tours, art exhibits – of which there have already been a lot. But this journal/blog I think is going to chronicle what it’s like being a single, white American young lady of mostly sound mind and healing heart in a foreign city.

So what is that like, really? Well, I covered last entry what living in my apartment is like. To recap, pretty but also heartbreaking. I miss speaking Russian, and while there is a girl working at the program’s office from Ukraine who seems incredibly eager to speak Russian with me, I’m also intimidated. She’s a native speaker and I think I can count how many verbs I know on one hand. Also, not a fan of the Czech language. It’s ugly, no one speaks emphatically, and I can’t differentiate a Czech accent from German. I miss Russian. I miss it a lot.

So a funny thing is happening to me here – I’m getting stared at all the time! Everywhere I go! Maybe this was happening to me in Denver and I just didn’t notice because in a car no one gives a flying fuck about much of anything, and other than driving and work, the only time I was out of the house was to be with friends. But I find that here, ESPECIALLY on the Metro, I catch people staring at me. And my Mom is saying, “It’s cause you’re stunning!” and I’m like “mreh, you have to say that. If I’m ugly it’s a bad reflection on your genes.” So I thought it was because I’ve taken to glowering and wearing red lipstick. Nothing really says “Fuck off” like a good old fashioned glower and red lipstick. Red lipstick, while stunning on a face as pale as mine, also kind of implies I’m willing and able to make you my bitch. It’s not true, at least not in a physical sense, but they don’t have to know that. And yet today, I wasn’t bedecked as I usually am here – professional, severe, and BLACK EVERYWHERE – but was wearing white shorts and a t shirt. I also was glower-free, as I had a very good day that makes me think I might have found a niche, this early on. If you know me, you know it takes me a long while to find a niche. Anyway, no glower, no lipstick, and I’m still getting looks. Do I really look that American? Bob Saget.

So, it’s probably worth mentioning what this program is like, since I’ve been getting a lot of questions. It’s put on by an independent company, International Study Abroad, or ISA, that coordinates with Charles University. So they do all the touristy stuff with us, and then we take classes at Charles University, which I’m pretty sure they also coordinate, though don’t teach. The first two weeks we take an intensive Czech language course, which I am frustrated with because it’s moving very slowly and I don’t think I know how to say anything. Also, and I might have mentioned this, but the Czech language is ugly and I miss my Russian. We take that until 2:30 in the afternoons, and while there’s usually something arranged for us after class, when I have the time I’ve been going to Old Town Square and haunting a couple art museums and churches. Despite having more or less expunged religion from my body like a bad cold, these churches are taking my breath away. And on the weekends, though not every weekend, they take us on excursions to the cool stuff we couldn’t or wouldn’t necessarily prioritize. Today we went to Kutna Hora, which at one point was the second largest city in Bohemia after Prague. Now it’s mostly a tourist town, with a stunning Gothic church, a medieval silver mine, and another gothic church that isn’t as big or as pretty, but is decorated almost exclusively with human bones. Check the pictures, they do more justice to all that than I could.

But let me take this opportunity to talk about the people running the program, who provide really the only semblance of structure for me right now. And if you know me, you know I love structure. So there’s Daniella, the program director. Very sweet, very helpful, always smiling, calls us her ISA babies. Then there’s Lucy, who is Daniella’s assistant and the one we go to with silly problems. She’s also very sweet, and sometimes its hard to distinguish where Lucy ends and Daniella begins. I’m sure as I get to know them better they won’t be a single entity in my mind. There’s Tamara, the one from Ukraine, who is (again) very nice and has already given me loads of suggestions for things to do with my spare time. She’s painfully shy, though, and I’m not sure if that’s because Ukrainians play things close to the vest or if she’s a shy person. And then there’s Martin, who is an anomaly both because he is male and because if you were to look at him on the street, you wouldn’t guess he’s 27 and has a Masters already. You would, however, guess he is a big, fat nerd just like me, but with twice the knowledge and half the pretentiousness. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve heard a great deal of nerdery in a Czech accent from him, which is like a little slice of home. If I knew any Czech people at home.

I think the only other thing worth mentioning at this point is how much time I spend alone here. I spend a good deal of time alone at home – you probably know that – but it’s in a place I’ve grown up in. Also, how to be comfortable with being alone was a hard learned lesson, but now I really do prefer to be alone. Alone and happy with my own thoughts is better than in a group worrying about what people think of me. And alone and doing what I want is better than in a group doing things I don’t want. Really, I think it makes the time I spend with people more special for me because I’m there because I want to be, not because I’m terrified of being alone. In Prague, that’s translating into a lot of nights at home with my book and a mug of tea because I don’t like going out, and I don’t mind so much when I see my peers hung over the next morning. But sometimes being left out – even if it’s my own doing – stings a little. But even as lonely as I might feel, lonely is not the same as miserable, and I know I would be miserable clubbing and drinking and making a general ass of myself. What I really need to do is find someone in Prague whose idea of a good night is nursing a whiskey on the rocks in a bar and watching Firefly. And then going to an art museum in the morning. That’s an awfully specific set of demands, though, and I’d probably just settle for one of them.

A couple observations:

·      Prague women are stunning, especially the ones my age. Prague men… well.

·      The temptation to get another piercing or tattoo is mounting, as I feel like my eyebrow spike is becoming a little too tame. A sensation that stems directly from how stunning the women are here. If they’re going to be pretty, I might as well be pierced. Another alternative is getting a side cut. I’ve always wanted one, and my hair is long enough on top. Or rather, tall enough, as it’s still doing the anime poof.

·      Food here is so starchy, I have to go out of my way to eat anything fresh and green.

·      I miss Tokyo joes.

Prague 9/2

9/2

It’s my second full day in Prague, and I think I’ve begun to settle. I bought a French press today that’s also a thermos, then bought both coffee and loose leaf earl grey. I had to go to two different markets – there’s a Czech word for the little markets that line our street, starts with a P and I can’t spell it. I’ve yet to find one that has fresh bread. Anyway, two different markets for milk and sugar, then back to the market across from our door to get a lighter for the gas stove, only to come home and realize that the stove will ignite itself. And then to boil water I had to use a pot because the kettle has either rust or lime built into a nice orange crust all over the inside. I might need to just buy a new kettle, but I’ll wait and see if the soak I’ve got right now will get it clean. So after all that I made myself two small cups – or one thermos worth – of earl grey with a little milk and sugar, sat down by the window, and read a little of my book.

But it’s quiet, and nice, and I wanted to write this down while it lasts.

So, living in Prague? Our apartment is nothing special – it could be, if it wasn’t a series of transient, four month homes for American students. If it was lived in, loved, and cared for I’m sure I would love it. It would be beautiful. But no one stays here more than a semester at a time, which is sad in its own way. We’ve got beautifully high ceilings, and there’s even a small chandelier in my bedroom. The kitchen is wonderful, though woefully under equipped, we’ve got gorgeous views, and the whole place speaks of warmth and character. But the furniture isn’t coordinated, neither are the dishes or the flatware. Nothing works especially well since the tenants don't care for the appliances’ longevity. And the worst are the tragically empty walls. I hate empty walls, nothing makes this place feel more transient than nothing on the walls. Maybe I’ll find a couple cheap scarves and tack them to the walls, if only for a little visual warmth.

I do, however, already have a nice little spot to read and write. I’m sure there’s a word for it, but we have one of those windows that stick out from the main wall of the building, making a gently sloped and trapezoidal “u” out of the living room. There’s three window panes, each with gauzy drapes and when they’re propped open for fresh air, the sounds of the street fill the apartment. Mostly it’s the occasional car, as we’re living in a pretty wealthy neighborhood and cars are a luxury whose necessity I can only imagine if you have more than two children and some place outside the city you go commonly. But the thing is, the suburbs where the prolific public transportation system has less of a presence is considered “creepy” and poorer. I found that interesting, as in America it’s the exact opposite. Well, maybe creepy applies to American suburbs, but less in a mafia kind of way and more of a Stepford Wives kind of way. Oh, they also apparently have a taxi mafia here, that will take Americans into the suburbs if they get into their taxi and I suppose extort them. But we only need to use taxis late at night after the metro stops running, and we’ve been given the info for a taxi company that’s trusted and uses fair rates. Other than the occasional car, conversations in Czech, the intermittent dog barking (it seems everyone in the Czech Republic has a dog – it’s making me a little homesick), and a child outside that is singing something are making up my soundtrack right now. It’s pleasant.

I have the place to myself right now, too, since my roommates decided to go play tourist after we hit the Tesco in the bottom of a department store. That’s where I got my French press thermos, in addition to a bedside lamp. I forgot to get a light bulb, though, and the little markets don’t sell them. I don’t want to go all the way back to the Tesco (it’s like a British Safeway) just for a light bulb, so I’ll wait until tomorrow and I’m back on that end of town.

It’s funny what little things are different here, but still feel pretty American. I got fairly familiar with the subway system in New York when I visited over the summer, and the metro here is much easier to use, far less convoluted and trains run more frequently. So using the public transport doesn’t feel strange, even carrying two bags plus my purse back from the Tesco across three stops. The newer parts of the city have a prodigious American influence – shops, especially. Even if the writing is in Czech, which is actually kind of rare, the images and the colors are very bright and look like any given mall on an American street. Until, of course, you look up and there’s an intricately sculpted Madonna or a giant gargoyle. It really isn’t until you start looking at the art and architecture that you realize you’re not in Kansas any more. Every single building here, with the rare exception of the occasional Soviet structural blemish, looks like it belongs in an architecture textbook. If it’s not the gorgeous and intricate buildings like the one I live in, it’s art deco or something even more modern. Nothing, except the odd soviet building, of which there are few, is simply concrete and blocky, like in America. In the malls and shopping districts it’s like someone threw a McDonalds wrapper over a magnificent painting – it almost hurts to look at. But outside of the shopping districts, everything is gorgeous. I think I look up more than I look forward, which is probably dangerous because I’m going to step into the minimal traffic.

The other thing, too, that makes it a little more… real, I suppose, is the street layout. Knowing what I know about Prague’s history, and medieval European history in general, I’m actually surprised that it’s not crazier. But that’s when I’m looking at the map. Certain neighborhoods make sense, they’re on a grid and I have a general idea which way is which. There’s also usually a slope to the street, so I can remember uphill or downhill. But in the older parts of town, it’s like a kid with a crayon drew the map. And there aren’t street signs anywhere, so to figure out what street you’re on, you have to look at the addresses on the buildings, which are in Czech. We took a brief tour of the oldest part of town yesterday, and I want desperately to go back and spend a long time meandering the streets, and especially go look at the churches. Oh, the churches are so pretty it hurts! But in an hour we made a big circle, and to me it felt like going straight because of all the turns we made. I’m kind of scared I’ll get lost, so I hope I can make a Czech friend, preferably an art major, who I can drag around one weekend and let them worry about where we are. The other thing I want to do, other than make a general tourist of myself in the old town, is go to the art museums in the old square. I keep wanting to use Russian words to describe these things, as the English words don’t carry the same gravitas in my head, but a waiter last night chided me for using too much Russian. “There are no Russians here anymore. You must speak Czech,” he told me. But “square” doesn’t feel right, I want to call it the “ploshid.” I can’t wait to learn Czech.

Speaking of Russian, though, I’ve found it’s doing me more good than English. Sure, everyone speaks English, but most shop workers are older, and even though Czechoslovakia always bristled under the USSR, and the Austro-Hungarians before that, I found that ordering coffee or dinner in Russian instead of English garners me more goodwill than my friends ordering in English. In fact, we were at a Czech restaurant – like a real one, with kabobs and beer glasses bigger and thicker than your two fists – and after two girls struggling to order in English because the waiter spoke such little English, that once he got to me and I ordered in Russian, he used me to communicate with the whole table. Which was pretty cool. He seemed pretty pleased I spoke Russian, as his Russian was clearly better than his English. Up until I started speaking Russian, he’d been pretty dour, but once we started gavoritim pa-russki, he was much more pleasant and helpful. This is the same waiter who told me I need to speak Czech instead, and when I explained I don’t know any Czech, he taught us to say “thanks.” I don’t know how proper this is, or if I’m even saying it right, but its “da-koo-yu.” He was pretty tickled to hear a bunch of American girls murmur our chorus of “dakooyu”s every time he swung by our table. It was fun, and after a plate of bacon-wrapped chicken and the saltiest potatoes ever, washed down with two massive mugs of beer, I had my first real moment of “I think I’d like to live here.” The girls I was out with went out again, this time with more enthusiasm and more intent to drink, and we parted at the metro. I think I’ll end up cultivating a reputation as the fuddy-duddy who doesn’t party, but I’m okay with that. It’s who I am in the States, it’ll save me money, and with the instillation of a reading lamp, my little reading corner is going to be a very pleasant place to spend a semester.

Bonus observations:

·      There is a pho place three doors from our building, and not only do I love pho (next time a bit spicier, though), it’s cheap and a big bowl will last me a couple dinners.

·      The best thing, after how pretty the city is, is the quality and abundance of cheap food. I frequently get takeout in our neighborhood for less than 100 Kc, which is about $5, and a sit down meal with a couple beers is often less than 200 Kc. The most expensive thing I’ve bought so far was my ghetto ass cell phone.

Random Job Skills I use but won't put on my resume

Here I sit at my office front desk with the end in sight of what has been the longest summer of my life. For a couple different reasons (break up, being seven types of poor, living far away from my friends, killing time until My Adventure in A Post Soviet Country), not the least of which has been the office job I'm currently working. And while this job has been an interesting lesson in finding ways to keep myself entertained for long stretches of time, mostly by reading MSNBC and posting random passive aggressive fliers that have something to do with dinosaurs or bears (always bears with this blog...), it's also been a refreshing break. Prior to this, as you might be aware, I waited tables at one of many restaurants in a national chain whose logo is a big red vegetable (or is it a fruit? It has seeds and grows above ground.), which was nice for the money but gave me salad-dressing themed nightmares the first year I worked there. And before that I was a cashier at a failing family entertainment center/arcade, which as tedious as it could be, also involved a giant ball pit, mini golf, and go karts that were used for my entertainment more than they really supposed to be.

So this post was going to be a list of things of things I learned at my most recent job, specifically things that won't make it onto my resume, and then I decided to expand it to random, non-resume skills I've developed since my first job at 16. Also, yay for another list on this blog.

1) How to open and fix various machines without a manual - List includes, but is not limited to, latte makers, two different models of copier/printer, phones, computers, ticket counting machines, ticket dispensing machines, arcade games, arcade game guns, radios, microphones, bowling ball cleaners, bowling lane bumpers, soda machines, coffee grinders, restaurant dishwashers, sinks, toilets, microwaves, go karts, and three different models of leaf blower. Of course, I also know how to break all these machines in embarrassingly stupid ways, which is where a lot of this knowledge comes from. That, and being the only one present and bored enough to agree to stick my small, womanly hands where they weren't necessarily designed to go. Oh, and a carnival roller coaster. Add that to the list.
Dressed up for a resume - Quickly comprehends random tasks of a mechanical nature.

2) How to spell velociraptor - This one seems pretty self explanatory
Dressed up for a resume - Excellent professional vocabulary

3) How to talk to clients and customers - This might belong on a resume but in a more polished manner. Next time I'm in an interview, I'm not going to tell them that the best way to talk to someone whose repeat business you're trying to court is to talk slowly, avoid big words, and call them expensive sounding titles.
Dressed up for a resume - Communicates well with clients

4) How to balance and carry a variety of items that were not designed to be carried together in large quantities - Examples include over a dozen bottles, multiple plates on and off of trays, multiple drink glasses of various shapes and sizes on and off of trays, various office supplies, three different kinds of leaf blowers, and anything dipped in ranch dressing.
Dressed up for a resume - Excellent multitasking

5) How to arrange dead flowers to look less dead - Also self explanatory
Dressed up for resume - Natural eye for visual aesthetics

6) How to write really quickly - Although not necessarily legibly
Dressed up for resume - Constant note taker to enhance understanding of tasks

7) The order of the alphabet - Without singing the song in my head. Silver lining to the massive quantities of filing I've done this summer.
Dressed up for resume - Remarkable memory

8) How to drive like a bat out of hell - I am always really optimistic about how much time it will take me to get ready and out the door, which leads to me having just barely enough time to get from home to work once I'm on the road. Also, driving home, I win at traffic. If there were high scores, I would be on that board.
Dressed up for resume - Efficient time and travel management

9) How to stack and balance things not meant to be stacked and balanced -  List includes plastic gameplay cards, metal tokens, foam play balls, golf balls, golf clubs, dishes, bowls, silverware, metal frying pans, wooden trivets, pens, manila file folders, chairs, and the entirety of whatever is currently in the office storage room.
Dressed up for resume - Uses space to its most efficient capacity

10) How consume caffeine - This might seem silly, but I have all the chemical tolerance of an eight week old puppy. It takes like a tenth of the normal dose of any state-altering substance to affect me, and since caffeine is also technically a drug, it "rocks me like a hurricane" in a very literal sense. But if the options were to fall asleep on the job or shake in a very suspicious manner, I picked to vibrate and thus picked up energy drinks in high school. Then it was shots of five hour energy while waiting tables, and now it's an almost hourly intake of coffee here in the office. I should be fair though, it's not always a need to stay awake. While waiting tables, caffeine was the only way to stay on your feet 13 hours into a shift. Even if five hour energy gives me the ability to hear my own ears.
Dressed up for a resume - High tolerance for long working hours.

My Belief in Batman - Or why I am who I am

This won’t be long, because I know I’m not going to say anything that hasn’t been said already. But here it is anyway: There is no God. There is no great source of goodness, and there is no great source of evil either.

Wait, let me explain why that isn’t cynical.

I just saw The Dark Knight Rises. That seems like a non-sequitur, but bear with me. We need to phase back to 2005. In 2005, Batman Begins came out. I was also 14, which was a big year for me, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Fourteen was the year I met everyone that was going to make serious waves in that era of my life. The person I am now? Yeah, she started forming at 14. There was the ass who broke my heart first, whose lasting contribution was the hard lesson “don’t play with kids who are mean to you.” There was the girl who was my best friend through most of high school, and she is responsible for the foundation of what people now call my “hipster-ness.” More importantly, she taught me that if it makes me happy, it’s alright to be weird. It’s okay to like anime, and sing songs about pirates in the school talent show. It’s okay to wear mismatched shoes and listen to music that doesn’t play on the radio, so long as you do it so passionately the criticism of others can’t possibly reach you inside your euphoric bubble of bizarre. There was the boy who would eventually become the man that most recently re-broke my heart. And while it’s easiest to talk about him like he never existed, even now I have to admit that if you broke me down into individual parts, his fingerprints would be on every nut and bolt. While I only met him at 14, we bonded over Batman.

The important thing here is not the Batman movies – which I have seen – nor the Batman graphic novels – which I have devoured – nor the massive universe of games, books, art, characters, or other various pieces that make Batman so further reaching than your average, non-comic reading, non-Xbox playing, non-wholly committed fan will be aware of. The important thing is what Batman stands for, for me.

See, 14 was another big year for me because it was the year I started wearing bikinis. And swearing. And watching R rated movies. And that’s a big deal because they were the first small steps in rejecting my father’s faith. And while I don’t think there is a giant, white, bearded clock maker out there watching us lead our little lives, I have to believe in something. We can live without religion just fine. We can’t live without faith, and faith cannot live without community. I think, at its purest, that is what religion is really about, and I have no opposition to that. So as my faith in a nice boy with a beard and a hammer, who was not white, had no published stance on homosexuality, and was probably misdiagnosing things like epilepsy as demon possession (I’ll give you a pass on that one, dude) started to fade, I had to replace it with something. The replacement wasn’t voluntary, but as my unwavering faith in redemption so long as I ate some bread and prayed twice a day began to waver, my new faith in people started shoring itself up.

I wasn’t the first person to say it, and I don’t think Nietzsche was either, but he put it better than 14 year old me could have. To paraphrase, Nietzsche said there is no such thing as truth. Truth is a social construct, or put another way, truth is something we all agree on so hard that no one can disagree. I like this, for a couple reasons. First, it allows for shades of grey I never felt my religion allowed for. Okay, we all agree rape is bad… but what about marital rape? What if she gets pregnant? Can she have an abortion? What if it was her husband who raped her? Shades of grey. And those shades of grey are really the only way we’ll ever be able to answer those hard questions. When I pushed the issue at church, the answer I got was, “God knows.” Well, that’s not a particularly helpful answer for a 14 year old. It’s not helpful now. I don’t think it’ll be helpful later. And I never liked being told what was right when I felt mostly capable of figuring it out myself. That was the second reason. If there is no universal truth, there is no universal law I’m being held against. And even if you claim to have the real version of a universal law, why do the guys down the street say you’re wrong? It’s not universal if no one agrees. The logic still doesn’t fit inside my brain. If there’s no real right, and no real wrong, and we’re all just doing the best we know how, the world starts to make a little more sense. And that spawned into the third, and biggest, reason I agree with Mr. Nietzsche: if there is no universal truth and there is no universal law, then there is only human truth and human law. Therefore, there is no universal source of good and no universal source of evil, there are only human sources of good and evil. And since good and evil are never really in black and white terms, not wholly, my shades of grey faith held true. And therein lies the final and greatest tenet of “What I Believe (Subject to Almost Constant Revision).”

The source of all the greatest things in this world, for good and for ill, come from people.

It’s taken me years to articulate that. I still think I’m doing it poorly. What I am roundaboutly getting to, though, is where I got the tools to figure out what precisely it is I have faith in, if not my father’s zombie carpenter. And once I built the foundation of that faith, how I articulated it. And reinforced it with a community of like minded thinkers.

The answer is this, and it reads like a list of my favorite movies and books. I got it from Batman. And Lord of the Rings. And Cowboy Bebop. It comes from Shakespeare. It comes from Anna Karenina, from Star Wars, from Spider-Man, from the works of Isaac Asimov, from Charlie Chaplin, from X-Men, from Blade Runner, from Notes from Underground, from Teeth, from Tanya Davis’s poem “How to Be Alone” and from the stand-up of Brian Regan and Louis CK. All those things other people go looking for in church pews – a sense of belonging, belief in something worth while and greater than myself, trust that people are mostly good – I find in director commentaries, in behind the scene footage, in online forums late at night.

And it all started with Batman in 2005.

The Time I Broke My Arm

            There are a couple of “staples” I tell in social settings (bars, parties, dates, random encounters because I’m awful at small talk), and the one I think I’ve been using the longest is the story of how I broke my arm when I was seventeen. Now, there’s nothing spectacular about how I broke my arm, but the story itself is somewhat entertaining when I tell it.

So this story actually starts with my grandfather. My grandpa, long before I was born, was the right combination of smart and lucky, and by virtue of those two things ended up retiring as one of many vice presidents at his company, whose primary business is government contracting for aerospace and defense projects. We like to say Papa was a rocket scientist, but he was always more of a businessman, which is good for us because businessmen have better stock options than engineers. So the best presents on our birthdays and Christmas have always come from my grandpa. It also happened to be that for most of my childhood, my grandpa split his time between Colorado and Florida, and he usually left for Florida around September, when my brother’s birthday is.

The year I was seventeen, we celebrated my brother’s birthday with my grandpa on a Monday, even though Paul’s birthday was on that Friday, so that he could give Paul his present in person. That year, RipSticks were the new big thing, and since you probably don’t remember what that is, let me explain it. Some moron somewhere said “You know skateboards and how the kids just eat that shit up? Well, I don’t think the skateboarding industry has hospitalized enough of our youth, so we better take two of the wheels off and put a joint in the middle so it’s extra unstable. They’ll love that!” I think they stopped just short of marketing the damn things as “death on wheels, because skateboarding wasn’t dangerous enough as it is.” And that’s what my grandpa got my brother for his birthday that year.

Now, Paul is one of those kids who, despite not being particularly active, can take one look at anything that might be considered a vehicle, even in the loosest sense of the word, and make it look easy and awesome on his first try. So when he got that RipStick, within five minutes he was swooping up and down our driveway like it was easier than walking, and significantly cooler looking.

So me being me (read: competitive and continually over estimating my own coordination), I had to try it. That Friday, so Paul’s birthday, I got home from school and was in such a good mood, I decided today was the day I was going to teach myself to ride that stupid RipStick. I parked the car, waved to my mother who was in the process of cleaning up a small garage sale, grabbed the RipStick, and went on my merry way. Of course, seeing me grab The World’s Worst “Toy” Ever, my mom insisted I wear a helmet, which might have made the difference between me writing this and me slurring that I want more applesauce because I spilled the first cup down my bib. If I’d actually belted the helmet, I probably also wouldn’t have spent my senior year being addressed as “Frankenstein-ella” by my dad (he’s not super creative).

So I got up on the RipStick, helmet jammed on my head and unbuckled because I’m stupid like that, and quickly became frustrated by my inability to get it going. I’m sure there’s a convoluted explanation about the physics that make this thing go, but basically, it works like this: there are two foot sized platforms with a wheel at each end, and a lubed up pole in the middle that allows the platforms to twist in opposite directions. By making a swiveling motion with your hips, the dumb thing moves in a generally forward direction. Or if you’re me, you make two swivels and fall off. After a couple tries, I managed to work my way out of the safety of our very flat cul-de-sac, and onto our very steep main street. I also figured out, almost simultaneously, that it is way easier to stay on top of a RipStick when you’re trucking down a hill.

There were about two seconds of “Hey, cool, I did it!” before I realized that at the end of our street, which was very quickly approaching, was a curb, and hitting it would launch me into hip-high grass that I knew concealed at least one large rock and probably a couple snakes. I know the snakes don’t sound like a big deal, but they are and I’ll explain that later. But I realized that really my only option was to “abort mission” as quickly as possible, and that meant jumping off. Now, I might have mentioned that I have next to no coordination, so somehow by jumping off to my left, I managed to pirouette mid air and land facing the opposite direction on the right side of my body.

I remember jumping, I don’t remember the twist, but the next – and very vivid – memory is of two distinct bounces. The first was the visor of my helmet hitting the pavement and then popping off my head, and then the next and less forceful bounce of my face meeting pavement with more enthusiasm than I had really anticipated. I think I blacked out for a moment, but I propped myself up and immediately checked my teeth and my lips. Last time I crashed that hard on a bike, the only damage had been a chipped baby tooth and a fat lips. This tells you exactly how physically inactive I am, that the last time I’d physically injured myself before this, I still had my baby teeth. Satisfied that my mouth was intact, I got back up and began collecting my scattered things – RipStick, helmet, and sunglasses. I knew almost immediately that my arm was a little messed up, because I couldn’t carry the RipStick with that arm, and instead had to cradle it against my body with my arms sticking out like I was a retarded T-Rex. I felt a little banged up, but at this point I figured I just needed to ice my elbow so that the feeling would come back, lay down, and pretend nothing ever happened.

The way I remember it, I scooped everything up, got to our driveway, and calmly called, “Hey Mom?”

The way my mom remembers it, I hobbled up to the middle of our cul-de-sac and shouted, “MOM!” in such a pathetic voice that all her maternal instincts were instantly thrown into high gear. She ran out to the driveway, worried to begin with, and what should she see but her seventeen year old daughter who can barely manage stairs without personal injury, limping forward with an arm that already looks “wrong” and blood pouring down her face “like Carrie, but worse” and sheet white to boot. I didn’t realize it, but that second bounce had scraped an abrasion all the way from my right eyebrow to almost my hairline, leaving a giant, raw, bleeding gash that you could actually see my skull through.

So mommy scoops me up in a whirlwind of matronly concern, and plops me at the kitchen table. As luck would have it, my registered nurse of a grandma had passed away earlier that year, and my mom had been going through all the professional grade medical supplies left over, looking for what was worth saving. And it all happened to be on the kitchen table. Like even in death, my grandma saw me grabbing that RipStick and said, “This isn’t going to end well.” So mom stuck a giant wad of gauze to my forehead, slammed some ice on my elbow, and said “We’re going to the emergency room. Now.”

I weakly protested, even as the last bit of shock was wearing off. I also, reportedly, said I felt really dehydrated right before I passed out for a second time on the walk to the car.

My mom took one look at the gushing wound on my head and immediately knew she wanted a plastic surgeon stitching it up, and for that we needed to go to the hospital 30 minutes away instead of the urgent care center 15 minutes away. Longest 30 minutes of my life. We didn’t know it at the time, but I had managed to crack the end of my elbow, and bones bleed. So as time passed, a very short amount of time, mind you, the space around my elbow filled up with blood from the greenstick fracture, and that blood started pressing on the break, which made it hurt more. The pain quickly escalated, like in a matter of minutes, from “Ow, that’s starting to hurt,” to me sobbing hysterically and clutching my arm, convinced that it was going to fall off. Also, to make me extra beautiful in this time of hardship, I’d already soaked through the gauze on my head. So when we rolled up to the ER, my face was mostly just a puffy mess of blood and snot that my mom was occasionally wiping from my face so I wouldn’t swallow it in the middle of my open mouthed sobbing. I remember, very distinctly, sitting across from a Mexican couple holding a baby that couldn’t have been more than 9 months old and clearly on the edge of pneumonia-induced death, and glaring at the baby because I didn’t want it getting admitted before me. I think they actually admitted me first not because I was more serious, but I was by far being the bigger baby.

Anyway, they admit me, clean up my face enough that I didn’t look like a snotty crypt keeper, pumped me full of drugs, and then left me there for an hour and a half. Someone had just had a heart attack, and no one was free to take care of me, but in my vicodin induced slumber, I didn’t mind so much. An hour and a half later, they gave me another dose and then started running tests. Let me tell you, you will never sleep better than on a hospital gurney pumped full of opiates. It was great. It was so great, I fell asleep in the MRI machine. However, when they woke me up to go get me x-rayed, that’s when shit got real.

I think by now I’ve established that I have a very low threshold for pain. I don’t know if you’ve ever broken your elbow (not your arm, there’s a distinction here), but the elbow is responsible for two main motions. Bending your arm (obviously), and also turning your arm over. You might think that second one is the responsibility of your wrist, and it very well could be a cooperative venture between the two joints, but surprisingly, when you’ve cracked the end of your ulna like a cheap fortune cookie, to take xrays of it there is significantly more twisting than bending happening, and IT HURTS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. By this time, the drugs have worn off enough that I appear to be capable of being responsible for moving my arm. They told me to turn my arm, and I think my response was something along the lines of “Make me.” So they did.

It took two nurses and my mother holding me down to get those x-rays because I started throwing punches.

They also had to shut the door despite the intense heat an x-ray machine will generate in a short amount of time because I was screaming so loud that children in the lobby could hear me, and started screaming too.

That’s really the climax of the story, because after that they were able to determine there was a hairline fracture on the end of my arm bone and it was a simple matter to make a brace for me and stick me in a sling. Yes, you read that right, I only needed a brace, not a cast. In fact, the break was so small that all of the pain was coming from the swelling, and the best way to get my bone to reabsorb the blood was to continue using it. I milked the “broken arm thing” for about a week longer than the doctor told me to, though.

There was also a plastic surgeon who was kind enough to suture up my face with no less than 28 individual stitches in three layers of skin. I still sport a scar from the gash that makes my right eyebrow grow in wonky, and there’s a pattern of freckles across my forehead where the abrasion was. If you catch me without make-up one day, I’ll show you, since by now they really have faded so much that you can feel them better than you can see them.

Also, this is why I never EVER get near anything with fewer wheels than God intended.

There is absolutely no reason I should like this music video as much as I do

Ok, this is me NOT going to the gym like a said I would this morning and instead updating my blog again like I said I was trying to get better at. So I'm kinda 1 for 2 right now.

Anyway, this is the video I'm talking about:

Now, if you know me (and if you're reading this, you probably do), you know I'm what you might call "quirky" if you're being nice, a "hipster" if you're ignoring the distinction that I really genuinely like stupid and banal shit as a form of escapism instead of an ironic statement about some political crap, or an "elitist" if you're being honest. I mean, cause I totally am. I am arrogant as all fuck (God, I hope my mom doesn't read this - I swear too much). If you like something, and it doesn't sound like something I would like even if you have previously introduced me to stuff I'm now crazy about, my reaction will range from polite avoidance to blatant "NO. DO NOT WANT." My friends Oliver and Claire might have noticed this, cause whenever I'm over and they suggest we watch something I'm not sure I like, I always suggest something safer. They play along with my rigidity nicely, but I'm sure they notice.

But Ex Boyfriend got the worst of this. He was the one who showed me this two minute and fifty-six second video in the first place, and do you know how long it took him? MONTHS. Seriously, less than three minutes, and I dug my heels in so much, that in the end he had to come back to Colorado and physically restrain me in front of a computer before I would watch it. Now, in my defense, I've learned by now that when Ex Boyfriend prefaces something with "You have to see this, it's soooo funny," it's either gruesome, like the story about a bunny getting shoved through a chain link fence he told me over my screams of horror once, or it's stupid like a gif of a cat hitting a dog with a baseball bat. So by this past summer, at which point we've known each other for 6 years, dated for 4, since split so I have to deal with as much of his crazy as I want to (we remain friends, which is why I can say this and also not be afraid of posting it on my facebook), I know that Ex Boyfriend's ratio of things I'll like to things I won't like on his suggestion list is abysmal. I think the odds of him showing me something I'll like on the first time around are roughly the same as winning small change in the lotto. Like, it'll happen, but not with enough frequency for it really to be worth my time. Anyway, he and my brother ended up sitting on me on the couch so I couldn't get away while they showed me Lonely Island Music Videos. And this one almost made me pee my pants.

Really, I should not like this video. I don't find mainstream humor funny at all. You can name every "comedy" movie out there, and I can think of one that I like: Tropic Thunder (because of Tom Cruise). Every other funny movie I like is mixed with some other genre. So a couple of SNL comedians shouldn't tickle my fancy. Besides, I can't remember the last time I found SNL funny. And while I'll admit that I do have some pretty pedestrian likes in music (I claim to balance it out with my love of 1940s jazz), I'm not a big fan of whatever Akon does. There are a couple songs he's done with other artists that I have on my workout playlist (fuuuuuuuuuuu I'm supposed to be at the gym), but as a general rule, I avoid him and his genre. And most of all, I do not like rap. Or at least I didn't when I first heard this song. Now, because I've discovered my love of performance/slam poetry, if the lyrics are good and there's a catchy chorus, I can put up with it. But last summer - NOPE. So to recap: don't like the genre of humor, don't like the artists, don't like the genre of music. Shouldn't like the song.

But here's why I do: it's about sex. See, I've previously mentioned that I'm a prude to the nth degree, but I actually have a very liberal opinion of sex. I don't care who's having it, I don't care how much you're having, and as long as I'm even a little fond of you, I don't mind hearing about it from you. Subject for a different post, but I would much rather hear the nitty gritty of your sex life than your religion or politics. So prude only in my own practice, and that's a totally different issue. Sex is, in my opinion, the most powerful of all human social interactions and the most compelling bodily function after food, sleep, and sometimes shelter. And while I acknowledge that sex has the potential to transcend its own logistics (Insert part A into slot B, repeat until sweaty. Satisfaction not guaranteed with every transaction) and become something beautiful (I think the common colloquialism here is "making love"but that just sounds so foofy to me), most of the time it's just going to be sex. Not only is it just going to be sex, it'll probably be awkward, elbowy, "Is that ok?" sex. And despite the fact that most of the sex we have, especially non-committal sex because every lover is different, is going to be bad, or at least mediocre, we keep on pursuing it. That, to me, is funny. It's funny that somehow we have high expectations, that we keep on chasing it, and that we idolize it even in the face of a couple millennia of our own futility. Also, when you totally decontextualize sex, the sweating, groaning, and jerky movements are so awkward that how can you do anything but laugh? 

Also, just how into this song Akon and the Lonely Island boys are just makes me loose it. Facial expressions FTW.  

For being the antithesis of athletic, I sure am competitive

Short post this time around. I'm trying to get better at blogging, and I think one of the things that stands in my way a lot is that I want to have coherent narrative that is FUCKING HILARIOUS before I bother putting it on the internet. Thing is, funny/embarrassing shit happens to me all the time in like 30 second blurbs, so I should share that with all two of you who read this. Actually, I probably shouldn't, as a lot of these hilarious/humiliating things are a little too revealing for my buttoned-up self. Case in point: I got really drunk Monday and woke up in the basement. To put that in context, I sleep upstairs. That's funny, but also mortifying. And now the whole internet knows and I'm seriously considering not posting because of that ONE SENTENCE.

Guys, I think I have some issues that need dealing with.

Anyway, that post I was talking about. So tonight I went with my dad to the DU hockey game, and except for the last ten minutes of the second period, it wasn't an enthralling game. But nevertheless, my dad and I were standing in the middle of the opposing team's section and screaming our heads off at everything. Now, I'm not an athlete in any stretch of the imagination. Unless they've made video games and actual sport (pizza's a vegetable now, folks. It's only a matter of time.), I make the cast of the Big Bang Theory look like the Harlem Globetrotters. But despite lacking enough coordination to get the fork into my mouth 1/3 of the time, I realized tonight that I am hyper competitive about the weirdest things, hockey games I have no control over being the least of them. So I present to you a short list of things I'm unnecessarily competitive about.

Side quests on video games. Playing through Mass Effect right now (shut up, Eric.), and my need to finish them and finish them quickly border on the neurotic. And I say that this is competitive, because I do this in other games, too. On my next play through, and god knows there will be another play through, I'll have to do all the side quests again even though I know how they end, and if I don't do them faster this time, I'll get mad at myself. I watch my play through times on games with multiple plays to beat myself. And bear in mind, this means hours. Hours, folks. Between all my play throughs of the first Dragon Age, I've logged at least enough time to get an extra college degree.

Grades This one at least isn't so weird. Or a least I know I'm not the only one who does it. My academic philosophy is "You don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your slowest friend." Which makes no sense since the professor isn't trying to eat the class (again, bears on the blog. GUYS I HAVE WEIRD ISSUES), but it more or less translates into "You don't have to be smarter than the professor, just smarter than most of the class. And since I've got a 4.0, it works. I gauge how much work I put into the class by exactly how smart everyone else seems.

Sex... or at least opportunities to have sex And we're back to the weird shit again. Ok, in case you haven't clued in on this one, I'm more or less insane. So when I've been involved with someone, or even emotionally invested enough to want to be involved with someone, and then it doesn't work out, my competitive psychosis kicks in, and I want to somehow prove I'm better than them by dating as much as possible. I would say sleeping around as much as possible, but I'm like the least physically warm person you've ever met, plus I'm what you'd call "prudish to the point of being a Puritan" so sex never actually enters the equation. But the person I'm pissed at doesn't need to know that, so as long as it looks like I might possibly be more... active? than they are, I'm "winning."

Basically all my hobbies Which are... shit, do I have time for hobbies these days? Let's go with cooking, baking, and being a clever, charming young lady (hey, who said you have to be good at your hobbies?). So whenEVER I see anyone doing any of these things better than me and they aren't older than me, I get a little pissed off. Like I have any control over it. Fortunately, this weird neurosis I'm at least a little better at hiding than the rest of them.

Next time someone asks why I don't want kids, I'm going to point them to this blog and then ask, "What here makes you think I should be responsible for the next generation?"