tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55383765142037040942024-03-08T02:54:12.494-08:00Looking Inward: Memories, Musings, and MiscellanyDrew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-45509611185142082242012-01-25T09:34:00.000-08:002012-01-25T09:34:40.590-08:00Why I Suck At Updating<div><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7456593227107078"><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, if you look really hard, under the title of my blog, it says that I will update it Tuesdays and Thursdays. It doesn’t say </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Tuesday and Thursday, but that’s the goal most of the time. As the none of you who’ve been actively keeping up with my updates are probably aware, I kind of suck at keeping to this goal, though. I mean, some weeks I manage it, and others I’m in the desert or something and can’t connect to the internet. But most of the time, I just get swept away in my own life, and updating just kind of falls by the wayside.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, this feeds into my existing neuroses pretty handily. I feel awful when I realize I haven’t updated in time, because I have this fantasy in my head where there’s someone on the internet who reads my inane whining and prattling and finds some comfort in realizing that someone else is going through the same things, or takes solace in the fact that there is indeed someone out there more lame and crazy than they are, or just finds everything I say tremendously hilarious. When I miss a day, I feel like I’m letting this imaginary person down, and it feeds into my ridiculous obsessive need to always be helping make someone else’s life a little better so I can feel needed even though I'm sure no such person actually exists.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the same time, the constraints my life and my complete inability to maintain focus put on my ability to generate the kinds of things I put on this blog (angst-ridden personal diatribes and mildly entertaining stories from my past, mostly) make it really hard for me to manage this. For example, here’s how my day today broke down:</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12:00-4:00AM: On skype, talking to a few people but mostly my friend Tara. Our conversations consist mainly of sending stupid .gif files back and forth, interspersed with the occasional REALLY EXCITED CONVERSATION IN ALL CAPS ABOUT SOMETHING REALLY NERDY. In this case, our all-cap conversation was me getting her pumped for the Hunger Games movie which OH MY GOD IS TOTALLY A THING AND I CANNOT WAIT. We also discuss one of the several hopelessly lame stories I’m writing; this one’s a sort of adventure series in which the main characters have various superhuman abilities. It occurs to me that I have these same kinds of conversations with a lot of my friends.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:00-4:30AM: I initially try to sleep, but my brain won’t cooperate and shut up, so I decide to work on that story a bit. One of the action scenes seems a bit too abrupt, so I work on fixing the pacing somewhat.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:30-5:35AM: I am exhausted, so I try to go to sleep. My brain is still having none of this, so I spend the next hour tormenting myself by doing my usual review of the past day’s events and highlighting every single thing I did wrong, with the additional joy of thinking through what I’m planning to do in the week ahead and placing bets on where I’m going to fuck up next.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5:35AM-2:00PM: I sleep in, because I have no classes on Tuesdays, because I am a winner. I wake up when my friend Noa sends me a text wondering if we’re still going to the mall that afternoon. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2:00-2:55PM: I do not respond to this text message, because that would entail opening my eyes and getting out of my warm bed to get to my phone, and I have never wanted to do anything less.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2:55-3:00PM: I come up with the gist of my response to this text as I haul myself out of bed, and then spend four minutes making sure that the phrase “Sure, how about we head over there at around 4:30?” is as inoffensive and non-threatening as can be, because I am a crazy person.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3:00-3:45PM: I read the new pages on my favorite webcomics, read the new Cracked.com articles, and play a little bit of Wakfu. It should occur to me to start working on a blog post, but I am still only half-conscious at best.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3:45-4:25PM: I shower, get dressed, and head out to meet the bus.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:25-4:45PM: Even though it’s mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, I still have to deal with a drunk girl who decides to ignore the open seats and sit right next to me. She must be pretty smashed, because she starts flirting with me. I wait around a minute in the hopes she’ll stop on her own before I inform her of my homosexuality. She mutters something I don’t care to repeat, and then exits the bus a few stops later.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:45-5:00PM: I browse the selection at the Aeropostale in the mall, before realizing that I have neither the willpower nor the money to be trying on jeans. To make myself feel less bad about being fat, I spend ten dollars on a video game, which will help to perpetuate the cycle.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5:00-6:00PM: Noa meets me, and we wander about Target. They’re in the midst of moving a bunch of sections around, so it takes us a bit to find everything we need. It was at this point that my stomach pointed out that I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours. This leads me to purchase two large bags of chips, in addition to everything else.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6:00-6:20PM: We ride the bus back to campus. Thankfully, no drunks accost us this time. By this point we are both mildly ravenous, and the prospect of food is all that is keeping us going.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6:20-7:30PM: Joined by our friend Annie, we break new ground in the field of devouring food.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7:30-11:00PM: Another friend joins us, and we engage in two of our favorite pastimes: playing video games and watching stupid/hilarious/mostly-stupid videos on youtube. We also determine that I will host a movie night this weekend.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11:00-11:30PM: I try to help one of my best friends with some emotional distress. I am no help, and manage to contribute nothing, and even though I am supplied with an idea for something to get him for his birthday, I can tell this is going to end up on my mental highlight reel at the end of the night.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11:30PM-12:05AM(Wed.): I play my new game. It’s pretty fun, but I think it would be better if any of my friends played it too.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12:05-12:15AM: I mentally berate myself for not updating my blog yet again. Truly, I am a terrible human being. I also feel bad for making such a big deal out of feeling bad, because I can’t even let myself feel entitled to my own sadness.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12:15-12:45AM: I whine to Tara about how bad a person I am. A barrage of hilarious .gifs later, I feel less terrible. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12:45-1:30AM: Inspiration strikes! I begin writing a piece on how my younger sister’s influence has worsened some of my own personality flaws and weakened my bonds with my other family members.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1:30AM: WRITER’S BLOCK. I can’t think of how to continue the bit on my sister, and I’m not at a good stopping point.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1:30-2:30AM: In the process of complaining to Tara, I prove yet again that I am an incredibly lame human being, correcting her use of “Bat-Shark-Repellent” to the more accurate “Shark Repellent Bat-Spray”. I am familiar enough with Batman to make this distinction, and yet too unfamiliar with human interaction to get a date. This saddens me. I also start and finish this piece, checking with my friend/50%-of-my-readership Jaden to make sure this isn’t the dumbest idea ever for a post.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br class="kix-line-break" />So as you can see, I do actually try to stick to my ideal posting schedule, it’s just that I kind of suck at doing so. I’m trying to work on this, so please try to bear with me. </span></div></b></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-40607797471615667492012-01-19T22:29:00.002-08:002012-04-12T03:05:11.795-07:00Escape from Los Angeles<div><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This last summer, three of my friends and I went up to Anime Expo, a giant anime convention in Los Angeles. I had managed to secure use of my parents’ giant blue Honda Odyssey, which has been affectionately dubbed the Land Whale, so we all piled in, filled a cooler with four dozen cans of soda (net worth at the time: nine dollars), and went north. When we got there, we proceeded to have two days filled with madcap hijinks and nerdy good times, which all went off with nary a hitch, until it came time to leave.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had a few friends from school who were at the convention selling their art, and one of them was supposed to come stay with my family for a few days. The plan as I had conceived it (admittedly without checking for a long time) was that we’d simply leave the convention with him as a part of our group at the end of the con on the fourth of July, pile into the Land Whale, and head back down to San Diego.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When I actually ran this idea by him, I was informed that this wouldn’t work. First of all, he’d brought too much stuff for him to take it from another friend of his’s house where he’d been staying to the con for the day, and furthermore, he’d made plans to get dinner with some people. The new plan was that the group I had driven up with would get dinner elsewhere, and then pick him up when he was done and head down. In my head, I imagined that we’d be getting back at around 8 o’clock, or 9 at the latest, and then he’d stay with me until his flight out of LAX that Friday.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We went to In-n-Out for dinner, stuffed our faces for a bit, and then I began waiting for a call. As the sun went down a little before seven, I called and asked how to get to the house he’d been staying in. He gave me an address, and couldn’t really give any further directions aside from the major road it was just off of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not being a native of the Los Angeles area, I ended up taking a wrong turn or eight, and soon we found ourselves driving down the street as people set off fireworks at what I thought was a rather unsafe distance from traffic. I tend to be a bit of a nervous driver when I’m not familiar with the area, so the knowledge that we were lost as it was getting dark, and the constant stream of sudden explosions that seemed to be mere feet above where I was driving were starting to make me a little crazy. It also didn’t help that, given that we did </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> little actual sleeping during our trip, I was a little tired.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Add to this the fact </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that, as I mentioned in my last post, I have an almost-pathological need to be seen as someone to be relied upon, and now I was driving cluelessly around the city while undergoing the initial stages of a panic attack as three of my closest friends watched. I’d already taken waaaaay too long finding an In-n-Out for dinner, and now I was dragging everyone around the city on a fruitless search for someone they’d only met briefly the day before. We tried calling several more times for further directions, but my friend’s phone must have died, because I kept getting punted directly to voicemail.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I knew the friend lived in Venice, so I’d become hell-bent on at least getting that close. This led to around an hour of me slowly collapsing into madness as we all cruised down the street, shouting “FUCK THIS CITY!!!!” at the top of our lungs. Finally, at around 8:30 or so, he called back on his friend’s phone. We described where we were, relieved that he’d be able to ask someone who knew the region. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He proceeded to inform us that his friend had no idea where we were. </span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After around fifteen minutes more driving, I’d managed to get myself to an intersection she recognized the name of. She gave us pretty helpful directions, saying we needed to take a nearby street until it ran into a major boulevard, which was (naturally) a block away from the In-n-Out we’d eaten at hours beforehand.</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />
</span></b></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once we reached that street, we needed to keep going until we hit Washington, which would be distinguishable by the Staples and 7-11 that sat across from each other. We followed the road north, until we did indeed see a Washington Blvd with a staples and a 7-11 facing off across it. Relieved, but still cursing and defaming the city at the top of our lungs, we turned onto the street, excitedly telling Ground Control at our goal that we’d found the street. “So, we just keep going, right?”</span></b></div><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
</b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, just keep following that road and you’ll get to us.”</span></b></div><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“So, which way do we go when the road splits here?”</span></b></div><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7270994603168219"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...”</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The road splits into two here. Which fork do we take?”</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...the road splits?”</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we discovered after I pulled over to let out a rather diverse string of profanities, this was a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">different </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Washington Boulevard, one which also had the identifying stores where it intersected the main road. We returned to the main drag, determined to either get to our destination or go on a murder spree, although the latter idea may only have occurred to me.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, we found the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Washington Blvd, with the SAME stores marking it, and shortly thereafter, I was ringing the doorbell. My friend was waiting inside with a cadre of his artist friends he’d been staying with. When he reflexively asked if we’d had any trouble, I’m sure the way all four of us glowered at him didn’t make the best first impression, but we were beyond the point of caring. We piled back into the Land Whale, and I finally got home at 1:30 in the morning.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few days later, I found myself driving back up to LA early, because something had come up and he’d decided it would be easier for him to spend his last night at that friend’s house before leaving for his home in Virginia. Unlike the initial group we’d had, he had a smart phone, and he kindly offered to look up directions for me.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I, of course, declined, as it wasn’t necessary. The route to that house has been burned indelibly into my memory thanks to that harrowing night, and I made it there without a single missed turn. Five months later, one of my fellow survivors would call me out of the blue to share that, as she’d been driving home from school with a few of her peers, they’d found themselves in the same neighborhood. Once she’d recovered from the horrible flashbacks, she was able to direct them straight through the region, warning them about the decoy Washington Blvd and the horrors that could ensue should they let their guard down in this tame, suburban labyrinth.</span></div></b></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-74763119058248491762012-01-17T03:28:00.003-08:002012-04-12T03:14:41.931-07:00What I Was Thinking About Last Week<div><i>Sorry I didn't post anything last week; I've been sifting my way through a lot lately, a good portion of which I think comes out in this rant. </i></div><div><b><br />
</b></div><div><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don’t think it’s that unusual that I have a little voice in my head. I don’t mean the kind of voice that tells you to kill people or anything. I just have a little internal monologue, offering mental commentary on things I say or do. I’ve gotten to a point where I can make it through my day to day life without this little narrator interrupting things too badly. He almost never has anything positive to say because of my lingering self-loathing issues, but I’ve gotten to a point where I realize I need to tune out the negatives in order to function well. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This last week, though, he’s been getting clever, finding ways around my defenses by attacking areas I didn’t realize were vulnerable. It all started innocently enough; one of my best friends, whom I’ve known since forever, told me some guy at work had asked her out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course, I was ecstatic for her, because she’s been wrestling with some image issues of her own for a while, and it was nice for her to finally be seeing that she was awesome, deserved a chance to be happy, and would be getting these chances.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A while later, as I was walking home from her house (walking motivated by the combination of me needing exercise and not having a car of my own), I started to feel a bit ill. I didn’t really know why, so I slowed down and started trying to figure out what was wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Having known this friend since forever, we’d kind of grown dependent on each other. While a lot of our friends had started dating, and a few had even found long-term relationships, we’d been each other’s first choice for complaining about how much it sucked being Forever Alone. We’d each insist the other wasn’t actually doomed to a life of solitude, and at first I thought that’s what it was.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve always really thought that this friend was way too great to actually end up alone, but as far as we could tell, this was where we were going to be stuck. Now, seeing her getting a chance to break out of that, I thought maybe my problem was that I was jealous, that I didn’t really want her to find that if I couldn’t. Of course, my inner heckler jumped on this, and I started to feel like I was the worst friend in the world for thinking this, even though I was actually happy for her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that wasn’t accurate. I didn’t feel any negative emotions directed at her. I just felt bad about the whole situation, how we had come to rely on each other for this, and now she didn’t need me anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Suddenly, I realized. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t finding love and everyone else was, or anything like that. The problem was, and continues to be, that people keep finding that they don’t need me anymore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Once I reached that conclusion, I almost immediately saw how far-reaching it was in my own life. In most of my friendships, I try to keep the focus on the other person. If we’re going to talk about personal problems, I’d much rather it be me trying to help someone else with theirs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>That’s motivated largely by my having a very difficult time feeling like I should feel bad about things in my own life. I always feel that while my problems are big in my life, in the grand scheme of things and in comparison to those of others they’re really not that big a deal. I can’t help having issues though, and this leads to me hating myself for feeling bad, which then makes me hate myself for hating myself, and so on into infinity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since I’m really interested in trying to help other people solve problems or, failing that, at least sharing their burdens, and also went to high school, where everyone makes everyone else feel awful, I’d become kind of a trusted confidant for a few of my friends. Now, we’d gotten older, and people were starting to branch out. Over the past few years since graduating, people have started finding others to rely on, which is of course really good for them and probably for the best, and I support these endeavors wholeheartedly.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Still, it’s hard for me. The people who used to rely on me were finding other people to lean on, and it was starting to take its toll on me. This seems kind of dumb to me as I reread it, but this needing to feel useful is kind of one of my driving motivations in life. It’s led me to feel like I constantly have to work in order to keep my friends, in order to be deserving of being around them. It’s why, when I’m at home, I almost always try to borrow the family van when people need rides somewhere. Wanting to feel needed is the reason I’m almost always the one who organizes trips, movie nights, and the like, even though the stress of trying to make everyone happy is overwhelming, because it’s less awful to me than the empty feeling I get when I’m not helping people. It’s why, when a friend asks me to help them find something, I drop what I’m doing and divert all my resources to finding it until I succeed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On some level, I’m sure this seems admirable, but all my helping is motivated by entirely selfish reasoning. If I help this friend that’s going through a rough patch, if I can make them feel better, then maybe they’ll continue to be willing to put up with all of my insecurity and personal unpleasantness. And my constant need for approval mixes with my fear of abandonment, and that concoction spills over to areas in which it’s no longer a positive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, given that I like all of my friends, I want them all to like each other and get along too. But sometimes, when I’ve introduced two friends and they’re getting along famously, that petty voice in the back of my head will chime in and make me feel regret or jealousy, because now I’m not going to get as much of a one-on-one connection with them. I know it’s selfish and makes me a worse person for thinking it, but sometimes I can’t help wishing that I had more exclusive time with some of my friends. </span></span></div><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel awful for feeling that way, of course, but I’ve realized that it’s not all me wanting to make myself more of a necessity to those close to me. I think some small part of my wanting to spend more time with some individual people is that, after years of trying to focus only on others, I want to open up. This blog, of course, is proof that this wanting to be understood has become a common theme in my life. </span></span></div><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there’s more to it than that. I think it ties into my whole “</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nobody-wants-to-date-me-and-I’m-probably-going-to-be-alone-forever-boo-hoo-poor-me” thing I mentioned struggling with in one of my previous posts. The main factor behind my feeling that way is that, recently, I’ve found myself needing some kind of additional external validation. At this point, I’m able to function in society, and I’m realizing that I’m even able to present myself to people in such a way that my broken parts don’t really show through.</span></span></div><span id="internal-source-marker_0.5524219176732004"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Talking to one of the few friends with whom I still have that confidant-type relationship, I found a better way to explain it. As I think about it, I feel like the brave little toaster in some ways, although I try not to think about that movie too much because the scene with the air conditioner is still one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Everyone around me is growing up, upgrading from having a close friend to confide in to finding someone they love to fill that role and others. I’m becoming obsolete. I’m trying to keep up, to find my own niche and someone I can fill that role for, but in the end I’m just that one waffle iron on the shelf in the thrift store. Maybe some people who come into the store will look at me and think “waffles are awesome.” At the end of the day, though, I’m still sitting on the shelf, because most of the people who thought about it decided they didn’t want waffles after all, or they decided they’d rather get a new one. There’s just too many broken pieces and bits of frayed wire to justify buying it, and some day in the future the people running the store are going to decide it’s not worth it to keep the waffle iron on the shelf and I’ll end up getting thrown out.</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m greedy, though. That’s not enough. What drives my wanting to find love is my wanting to find someone who doesn’t only accept the façade I put forth when I’m out in public. I’m trying to get to the point where I can find people who know about my constant internal self-criticizing, my academic struggles, my total lack of self-confidence, and the many less-than-proud moments of my life (never being able meet my own expectations, coated with lying to and inadvertently hurting people I care about with a dash of failed first relationship which lasted all of a week and a half and left me uncertain I should even classify it as such thrown in for flavor), acknowledge all of it, not care, and still find that they want and/or need me around even with all of my baggage.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But then the insecurity kicks in again, that feeling that I don’t deserve to feel bad about things. Moments after I finished that last paragraph, I looked at it again, and immediately berated myself for leaving it in. The paragraph before it I looked at again and thought, “I can’t even make myself a more appealing appliance than a goddamn waffle iron in my own metaphor?” Why am I putting all of my whiny bullshit out there for the general consumption when other people clearly have their own problems which are way more important and substantial than mine?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I don’t know, and I feel pretty certain that I’m going to regret complaining the moment I hit post. But I think the idea behind putting this generic, mildly depressing diatribe out there on the internet is me trying to make it that much easier for me to end up where I wanted to be in that extra-whiny bit a few paragraphs back. I feel like, if there is somebody out there who might actually accept my imperfections, cracks, and broken pieces outright, I want to do what I can to make sure they know what they’re getting into beforehand. And to make sure I know what they’re getting into, too.</span></span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-32627347372118700662012-01-05T02:37:00.002-08:002012-04-12T03:20:28.411-07:00A Birthday Bash to Remember<i>Okay, this one REALLY makes me seem like a terrible person. Which I totally am, but I like to think not for the reasons outlined here. As always, comments are appreciated and I love all three people reading this for taking the time to do so. </i><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.013975212768747691" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I feel like I should start this particular anecdote with a bit of an explanation/disclaimer. So, here it is: my Squid Incorporated DISCLAIMER 3000 (Copyright Squid Inc). While my childhood self was a definite force working against the greater good, this was not always deliberate. Indeed, some of the most seemingly awful things I did were not at all deliberate. Such is the case for this particular story.</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.013975212768747691" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It wasn’t deliberate. It wasn’t as though I woke up that morning and said “I think I want </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">blood and circuses</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for my birthday.” </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I was turning ten years old, which puts my brother at age six. During this period in our lives, our main hobbies consisted of harassing each other. I don’t mean the usual subtle, tit-for-tat stuff. I mean we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">lived</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to make each other unhappy. We would each go to great lengths and use any means necessary to lessen the quality of life the other experienced.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This particular year, my birthday fell on a Sunday. This meant that I had to get up at 6:30 to start getting ready for church. Throughout this process, Craig and I continued our game of misery. First, he drank the last of the milk; I got back at him by leaving the bathtub on the “shower” setting so when he turned it on he got a faceful of frigid water.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We continued on in this fashion on the way to church, and we added a new element to it upon our arrival. Now, not only were we doing our best to introduce each other to abject despair, we had to do so while being quiet and subtle enough to avoid disrupting the service and irritating our dad.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To this day, I’ve never been to a religious gathering with that high a concentration of shin-kicking and muttered threats, although I hear some evangelical sects come pretty close. Dad noticed, of course (we actually kind of sucked at being sneaky), and took me aside after the service. I was informed that, should I continue to behave in such a fashion, I would not be receiving my presents. Me being kind of dumb, I was still partially convinced that I could be getting my own fighter jet or something, so I shut right up.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, this did nothing to stop my brother from needling me, and so the entire ride home was filled with his poking and teasing and just general unpleasantness. I have never had an easy time dealing with sass (I much prefer to be the one doing the sassing), and so it was only via the utmost fear-motivated determination that I managed to refrain from fighting back. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Finally, we got home, and after a few moments, my mother opened the door, welcoming us back. I, having finally started developing a rudimentary ability to interact with people normally, politely asked where my presents were. I was told that they were past the stairs, down the hall in the kitchen.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Before I go any further, an extra bit of disclaimer is needed. I’ve always been big for my age, both in terms of height and weight. This led to me being less than graceful as a child, to put it mildly. To put it more honestly, I moved with all the grace of an epileptic hippopotamus being harassed by a swarm of bees. To make matters worse, I often forgot how big I was, leading to a lot of moments where I’d accidentally break something because I didn’t know my own strength. Furthermore, I may have been and continue to be a terrible person, but I basically never knowingly set out to injure people. When I end up doing so, regardless of how I actually feel about the person, I immediately feel like the world’s worst person.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The stairs in our house are accompanied by a long, iron railing. Upon being told where what I assumed was a massive pile of presents for me could be found, I took off like a shot, sprinting down the hall as quickly as a kid that fat could manage. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately for everyone involved, but mainly himself, Craig took this chance to attempt another attack. He ran along beside me, attempting to block my path. Maybe he was trying to trip me up; maybe he wanted to beat me to the kitchen and steal my presents. As is so often the case, I will never know his motivations, for reasons that are about to become abundantly clear.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Noticing the potential obstacle posed by my six-year-old younger brother, I opted for the simple solution and tried to push him out of the way. Again, I didn’t know my own strength.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was at this point that the aforementioned </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">iron railing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> entered play. Due to a combination of my strength-not-knowing-influenced shove and a new whatever-is-the-opposite-of-super power, the worst timing in the entire universe, I pushed my brother directly into the railing, which stood just about level with his head. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is also the day I learned one of the facts of life: gaping head wounds bleed like <i>crazy</i>. Being somewhat squeamish about blood, the combination of my colossal guilt and the blood, which I feel I the need to re-state was <i>all over the place</i>, I bolted, leaving my presents and locking myself in the bathroom, where I stewed in feeling like a bad person for a while before my parents hauled me out and tossed me into the car.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Several hours, a lot of screaming, and a visit to the hospital later, my brother got several super-fun stitches, and had to wear a big white patch of gauze on his forehead for over a month afterward. To this day, he brings this up whenever he wants to convince me to do something. I still feel so guilty about it that he succeeds around 85% of the time. Interestingly, when I try to do the same about the time he broke my toe on another one of my birthdays, I have less luck. But that is a story for another time.</span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-86607202177843055032012-01-02T23:08:00.000-08:002012-01-02T23:08:35.274-08:00Cracks in the Façade, part II<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.27645499649727145" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Here's the second part of my ongoing examination of my insecurities with my own identity in an attempt to make myself understood. This isn't something I write about much (well, basically ever before this), so I apologize if it's not good. Comments (I think the button's after the end of the article?) are always appreciated. </i> </span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.27645499649727145" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.27645499649727145" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.27645499649727145" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.27645499649727145" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As mentioned above, and previously in my MAGICAL TIME TRAVELLING LETTER TO MY SEVENTH GRADE SELF(which is probably way better written than this), high school was a period of a lot of self-discovery for me. One of the most notable of these discoveries was the fact that, unlike the majority of human males, I happen to have a certain predisposition toward those in the possession of a Y-chromosome, which leads me to- all right, that was entirely too much work. Long story short, I’m gay, as spending any amount of time hanging out around me would make abundantly clear.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While the (eventual) bluntness of that declaration shows that I’m not really unsure about that anymore, high school was a different story altogether. I started school early, so I’ve always been a bit younger than most of my peers. While most of them started getting interested in dating and so on (ahem) in junior high, I was a couple of years behind. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I then found myself not gravitating toward girls, but instead being drawn in the other direction, it was a not entirely unexpected finding, but one that could have provided me with no shortage of hardship. For those of you who were somehow fortunate enough to have never dealt with high school students, let me fill you in on a little secret: a lot of them aren’t very nice people. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m sure I was pretty unpleasant in high school, but there were people at my school who made me look like a saint. If I’d just thrown my cards on the table, I might have had to deal with everything from knowing people were saying awful things about me to actual violence. This was partially motivated by my adolescent need to over-dramatize everything, but there was at least some basis for my reaction.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s always interesting talking to someone who has something against a specific group and doesn’t realize you fall into that group. Hearing how the people around me would talk about gay students, both specific people and in general, made it clear that I didn’t want people to treat me like that.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, motivated entirely by cowardice and a lack of faith in my own feelings, I didn’t really open up about my sexual orientation at all through high school. I even somehow managed to convince two awesome female friends to “go out with me” at various points, although nothing ever advanced beyond the purview of being best friends.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After escaping high school, I realized that I never had to see the people I didn’t like again if I didn’t want to, and the pretense dropped away pretty quick. Since that point, I’ve realized that Past Me was a moron. While I’m now comfortable with who I’m attracted to, I’m still pretty cautious when it comes to other people. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even though I’m pretty sure I know both of the people who actually read my blog, I’m still really nervous as I post this that someone whom I haven’t had the “I’m gay” discussion with (given my policy of not bringing the topic up out of the blue) will read this post and then there will be some big confrontation and my life will be reduced to a tiny little ball of sadness and solitude and that’s basically hell for me because I need to be around people all the time.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At the same time, I’m worried that even people who I’ve had that talk with are only okay with it because it’s just kind of a nebulous thing that’s out there, but that isn’t affecting anyone. Long story short, nobody-wants-to-date-me-and-I’m-probably-going-to-be-alone-forever-boo-hoo-poor-me.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now that that’s out of the way, I really do wonder if people would be as okay with me if my being gay consisted of dating men, instead of feeling sorry for myself because nobody’s interested. It’s one thing to accept something on a theoretical level, and quite another to do so in a real-world setting.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I really shouldn’t be this paranoid. Almost every time I’ve had this conversation, the other party had already been working under the assumption I was gay before the topic was even brought up. Still, because I am a crazy person, I’m even operating under this level of paranoia around some of my most open-minded friends. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As I think about it, I don’t really know how I feel about all of this. I know that, at the most basic level, this is how I’m wired, but I really don’t know if I’m ready for anything resembling an actual relationship. My problem is twofold. First of all, I’ve got a boatload of personal issues tied to my weight and general appearance. This is kinda old hat for me, and I’ll go into more detail on that whole bag of issues another time.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Second, I usually end up in this odd limbo regarding my own feelings about other people. By the time I get to know someone well enough that I think there might be something more there, I already like them a lot. The problem is, I tend to like them well enough that I’d rather just stay platonic friends with them than risk starting a relationship that might end in my no longer being even as close to them as I am now, which I know firsthand can be really painful.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But these are my own problems, and I’ve gotten better at dealing with them. Still, I won’t really know if I’ve truly come to terms with this until I end up in a situation that put them to the test.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While I’m far from being the most upfront person in the world, I’ve made a lot of progress from where I was in high school. Back then, I wouldn’t have even thought about writing anything like this, so while the writing itself may not be my best, I’m glad I’ve done it because of the amount of progress it evinces.</span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-68733452053728029952011-12-29T00:42:00.001-08:002011-12-29T00:42:42.790-08:00Playing With Fire (This One's Not My Fault)<span id="internal-source-marker_0.5522359008015156" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Most of my stories from my childhood make it sound like I was, if not the spawn of the devil, then the offspring of some lesser spirit dedicated to making people’s lives a bit more difficult. Indeed, I was far from being an easy child, as the distant, haunted vibe my parents throw off whenever they think back to those days proves.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> However, I was far from being the only problem child in my family. Even before we formally adopted her, my sister brought a whole truckload of issues with her, but that’s not entirely under her control (and I’ll save those memories for later). My younger brother, on the other hand, caused almost as much damage to our house and the sanity of my parents as I did.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> One of the earliest examples of this that I can think of is the time he set fire to our kitchen. At the time Craig was around three, which puts me at around seven years old. The school year had yet to start for me, so I was naturally upstairs sprawled out on the couch in front of the television.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Craig was doing the same downstairs in my parents’ room, taking advantage of their waterbed in order to optimize the enjoyability of his television viewing experience. My dad was occupied in the living room, working to clean the aquarium. My mother was at work, and we were all expecting a fairly low-key day of lounging about. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At some point, my brother got up and went into the kitchen. He may have been planning on getting a snack, or he could have been planning on visiting with our dogs. I may never learn his initial motivation, as he was too young at the time to remember it now. What I do know is what he ended up doing.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As my father siphoned out and replaced the water in the aquarium (or something; I admit I’m still a bit foggy on the mechanics of aquarium maintenance), he heard Craig open the microwave. This wasn’t at all surprising; since a young age, my brother has shown an almost prodigious knack for stuffing his face and then not gaining weight.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My dad heard Craig open and close the microwave, enter a time, and then start it up. From his obscured vantage point, he saw my brother retreat back to his cartoons. A few minutes later, the microwave was still running, and my brother walked back in to check on it. The second time he did this, he walked back with a look that my father described as “more worried than a three-year-old should ever be”. It was a few moments after my dad made this observation that he saw the smoke.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I say “smoke”, don’t think the light gray haze that accompanies your average culinary blunder. This was an acrid black cloud that dramatically reduced visibility and smelled of utter despair. My dad dropped what he was doing and ran into the kitchen.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The microwave was on fire. Not sparking, not kind of melted, but completely ablaze. A massive black scorch mark was slowly spreading across the wall marring the wallpaper my mom had picked out years prior.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At this point, the combination of the smell and the wailing of the smoke alarm had become overpowering enough to draw me out of my television-induced stupor. I hurried downstairs, wondering what was going on. My dad immediately ordered the both of us out of the kitchen, somehow managing to put out the fire.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When we conducted an autopsy on the remains of the microwave, it was discovered that there was a lump of melted plastic and metal in it. Well, a lump of melted plastic and metal separate from the lump of melted plastic and metal that was the microwave at this point.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It would later be revealed that my brother had found a recording microphone somewhere and, noticing that it shared a prefix with the microwave, decided he wanted to see what happened if they were to be combined. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unfortunately, my brother failed to travel back in time or gain eternal life or whatever he’d been trying to do. Instead, he got to be the reason we re-wallpapered our entire kitchen and bought a new microwave with a password-protected child lock.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As seems to be the case with so many of my memories, Craig seriously damaging our house was not a one-time occurrence. As the years went on, he’d knock holes in the walls (once or twice with his head), nearly rip out the railing on the stairs, and almost set the carpet on fire. Of course, if you want more details on those stories, you’ll just have to keep slogging through my interminable ramblings until I decide to share those stories.</span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-73627746733414741402011-12-26T23:50:00.000-08:002011-12-27T02:27:30.038-08:00Cracks in the Façade, part I<i>I apologize in advance for the less-than-hilarious-or-touching nature of this post; being home for break is making my notoriously absent attention span even more of a problem than usual. Here's part one of me looking at some of my insecurities.</i> <br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.24940668057611892" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think something broke in me somewhere on the way through my teen years. When I was a kid, I was pretty typical, if a bit louder and more obnoxious than most. While there were certainly some events that stand out as weird, they’re not any more absurd than typical childhood hijinks (well, most of them anyway- more on this in later posts). Once I hit high school, all of that went out the window.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I was younger, I never had to apply myself in school. I entered kindergarten reading at what was at least a sixth-grade level, and I had little trouble with any of the subject matter I encountered through elementary and middle school. Suddenly, as I began to take more honors and AP classes, the material caught up with me. I could still do the work, but the fact that I now had to work to do so started some corner of my mind thinking that I’d magically become stupid overnight. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even now, the voice in my head sometimes brings that up, although he tends to prefer the tack I discovered as I entered college. The issue isn’t really my intellect; it’s the fact that, when faced with a task that might need me to exert myself, my brain decides that ANYTHING but what I need to do is suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve gotten to the point where I realize that laziness, and not ignorance, is my main issue. Not that this makes anything any easier for me; if anything, it’s worse. When I’d tell myself I was dumb, it made it possible for me to escape blame. I couldn’t help it if I was stupid, but I should be able to fight off sloth long enough to get things done when they need doing.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another area in which I can continually find fault in myself is my physical appearance. I’ve been pretty overweight for most of my life. I’m never going to be petite or lanky, but I really feel like I shouldn’t be nearly as big as I am presently. It probably doesn’t help that whenever I’d walk into an audition (I used to have an agent and get parts as an extra in things), I’d leave knowing I hadn’t got the part because of my weight. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I usually got called in to these auditions because they were looking for an african-american boy around my age to fill the part. If it wasn’t my weight that botched the audition, it was the fact that, apparently, I wasn’t “black” enough. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This was another sore spot, because being of mixed African-American and Caucasian heritage meant that I never really felt like I fit in anywhere. This was made worse by the fact that the city I grew up in was overwhelmingly caucasian, while the members of my extended family I saw with any regularity were not. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Trying to take experiences and knowledge gained from either setting and apply them to the other led pretty consistently to me feeling like some kind of oddity, as though instead of being black and French I was part octopus and part giraffe.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I got to high school, a lot of my pre-existing insecurites became too prominent for me to ignore. While in middle school, I’d been able to hide my utter lack of social skills by never talking to anyone, I found myself being forced to interact with people all the time. This was the largest school I’d attended, and I was still one of a very small (I think the high point was five or six) group of students whose skin was my color.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This meant that, in every AP history class I took, whenever the topics of slavery and racism were brought up, at least half of the class would turn to look at me, as though by simply being descended from slaves I had some deep personal knowledge of everything to do with the enslavement of Africans. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Every time something race-related would come up, from Martin Luther King Jr Day to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, I’d either end up dealing with people who assumed that because of my skin color I had some deep insight, or someone who thought that because of my skin color, my opinion on the topic was so obvious that my opinions didn’t matter.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I was a starter for the school’s quiz bowl team all four years, and I constantly had to deal with people who wrote me off as being no help to the team. It helped that I would then proceed to contribute significantly to our team crushing theirs, but even after four years, I still felt like I was being forced to prove myself, to demonstrate that I belonged there instead of it being assumed that I did.</span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.14409367351354785" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I may have thought this was the name of the game in my life at the time, but it was soon made clear to me that my own idea of how others viewed me was far from accurate.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One week, I grew tired of my complete inability to do anything with my hair (more about the whole “gay” thing is up ahead) and decided I wanted to try something a bit more drastic than trying to relax it. I convinced my mother to drive me to a stylist two towns over who could cornrow my hair.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The next day, I headed off to school, hurrying to meet the carpool and just generally being blissfully unprepared for the ordeal ahead. The other people in the carpool managed to both note the new hair and not say anything offensive, but around thirty seconds after I got to school, it started. I walked up to some of my friends, and they kind of gawked at me. One guy’s jaw even dropped slightly.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another friend wasn’t that subtle. “Woah, Drew. You </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">actually</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> look black for once!” This would turn out to be the phrase I heard most often that day. For a while, I thought I’d come to terms with my racial identity issues, but that day proved that I still had a lot of personal growing to do.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The first thing I did after getting home was hop in the shower and revert my hair to its default state. I’d been convincing myself that I was conveying myself to others as someone who was of black heritage, and was also everything else that comprises who I am. That experience showed me that, however confident in myself I may have acted, I wasn’t broadening any horizons. Instead, I was put back into that giraffetopus box, as an oddity completely detached from race.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As I began my senior year, I found myself having to deal with people’s assumptions about my race at the same time as I was coping with people’s ignoring my racial identity. Whenever the topic of college applications came up, I was told that I’d be sure to get in somewhere good, not because of my test scores (a 35 on the ACT, along with perfect history subject tests and a math subject test score in the 94th percentile), but because I was able to check the “African-American/Black” box under “Race/Ethnicity” on my applications.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Curiously, I figured out how to deal with this through a kind of last insult about my appearance. At my high school graduation, we were allowed to write our own brief messages to be read as we walked to get our diplomas. In mine, I mentioned that I would be attending Cornell University in the fall.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the giant ball of chaos, hugs, and crying that followed, I started looking for my family. As I searched through the swarm of people, an elderly couple approached me. At first, I simply walked past them, but the woman grabbed my arm. She recognized me from where she’d been sitting in the bleachers (another hint as to how easy I was to pick out of the crowd) and wanted to congratulate me on getting in to Cornell.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“It’s such a good school, especially for someone who’s the first in their family to go to college!”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I politely excused myself to find my family after this, because yelling at the elderly is too dickish even for me. Nowhere in my little blurb had it said anything about me being the first in my family to go to college. My grandmother was a teacher, and my parents are both very highly educated (my dad went to U Chicago and went on to get a law degree, and my mother went to Brown at 15, going on to get a master’s degree in marine biology).</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, as I fumed, I sort of came to terms with this particular facet of my issues. I couldn’t really do much to shape other people’s prejudices. On the other hand, I didn’t have to let the opinions of other people dictate how I viewed myself. For the time being, I’m more or less at peace with this particular aspect of my broken self-image, although I’m sure I’ll end up reverting to my giraffetopus form sooner or later.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(to be continued) </span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-41259800234583278482011-12-14T21:53:00.001-08:002012-04-12T03:29:44.873-07:00Preschool <i>So, this is kind of disjointed and rambly. I blame the three hours of sleep I've had over the past three days. Sorry this one kinda sucks, but it goes to show that I still have a lot of room to improve, and kind of really need to. Please comment; I need to know how to improve.</i><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.4179296825739248" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, all the stuff I’ve written about myself makes it pretty clear that I’m rather hesitant to engage people. People who know me might find this to be a bit surprising, given my annoying personality. Still, I’ve found that I tend not to be very adventurous. I’m content with my relatively small comfort zone for now, and I try to work with that.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I was two years old, I had no such issues. One of my father’s favorite stories from this time period is about my first day of preschool. As could be expected from a parent dropping off his then-only child at school for the first time, he was a bit concerned.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Keep in mind, before I hit my teen years I was a typhoon of bombastic, potentially-hilarious overconfidence and zeal. Thus, as my father hesitantly pulled up in front of the building, I was already concocting a plan.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">He moved to unlock his door, but I was already in motion. In a flash, my seatbelt was unbuckled and I was opening the door so I could leap out of the truck. By the time my dad, in his tortoise-like lack of quickness, had opened his door, I had already come around the truck to meet him. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In my mind, his role had been fulfilled. He had taken me to this land which I, in my youthful hubris, had determined I was destined to rule. Now, his job was done, and I no longer needed his services.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“All right. You can go now.” Having dismissed my father, I turned away from him, striding toward the building’s front door. I was already picturing the magnificent kingdom which awaited me.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Imagine then, my frustration when I realized my dad was holding me back. Looking back, I realize how weird it would have been for this little kid to storm into the preschool without an adult to explain why, but at the time, this just made me angry.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This also set the tone for much of my preschool experience. It was kind of too early for me to really say I was an advanced student, but I certainly stood out in terms of stubbornness and refusal to work with others.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For example, one part of my preschool program was regular meetings with the parents to discuss how everything was going. Given that I spent my formative years apparently practicing to be a supervillain, my parents both made a point of attending these. While the adults were meeting, I was supposed to be out on the playground, out of earshot. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In an attempt to get me to respect the privacy of those in the meeting, the adult staff were out on the playground with the kids, keeping them distracted. Unfortunately for them, the kids outnumbered the adults. When everyone was getting settled in, I whinily demanded that we play hide and seek. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You can tell what happened next. They closed their eyes, and I promptly hauled ass back to the building, ending up (I thought) hidden outside of the door. I would later realize that people had been onto every step of my cunning scheme, but they’d decided it was easier to just roll with it than to try to dissuade me.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My unwillingness to accept outside authority extended into factual knowledge as well. At the San Diego Wild Animal Park (a sister facility to the Zoo), there was an annual tradition of setting up animatronic dinosaur exhibits for around a month in the fall. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As previously discussed, I was pretty dumb when I was little, although I made up for it with bluster. Still, in class, when they mentioned that dinosaurs were all extinct, my hand was the first to be raised.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“You’re wrong.” Social skills have never been my forté. “I went to the Wild Animal Park last week.” It is at this point that I uttered a phrase which, while kind of lame, was the start of my lifelong proclivity for bad puns. “They have dinosaurs that got UN-stinct.”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve just realized- I really never developed my sense of humor past preschool, I just refined what I had. That makes me sad. I’m going to sleep now.</span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-90560698455020099002011-12-12T22:14:00.000-08:002011-12-27T00:49:40.982-08:00How I Ruined My Dad's Birthday<span id="internal-source-marker_0.11561785281847836" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>As always, comments would be greatly appreciated.</i> </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.11561785281847836" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> When I was in first grade, my dad’s birthday happened to fall on Super Bowl Sunday. To celebrate, he had a few of his friends and their families over to watch the game. He and his friends were all really into the game, but the kids wanted nothing to do with it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Eventually, the plan was hatched. My mom, along with a few other adults who didn’t really want to watch the game, would take the little bundles of hyperactivity that were myself and the four or five other kids to the local playground. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Ordinarily, this would have made my whole life. When I was six, I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">lived</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for the playground. It was one of my favorite places to go before I got too old and lazy to enjoy it as much. I could spend hours running around in the sand and on the play structures, with or without accompaniment.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> But that day was different. That day, I was feeling ambitious.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The neighborhood I lived in had several community “recreation centers”, playgrounds and pools dispersed throughout and used by nearby residents. In school, I had heard from a friend that the other ones were all vastly superior to the one near my house. I hadn’t done much with this information yet; my family only had access to the one near my house, so I knew simply convincing them would be a futile effort.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> However, one of the friends my dad had invited lived in another area of the neighborhood. Seizing this opportunity, I took my chance to strike.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “Mom! Manfred (not my friend’s actual name) lives over by the pool with the diving board! Can we go to that playground instead?”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “Why? That one’s a longer walk than ours, Drew.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> While I hadn’t thought that we’d be walking (although the fact that there were more than a dozen of us should have been a clue), I didn’t let this phase me. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“No, we should go to Manfred’s playground! It’s way better than ours.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I feel that it should be pointed out that I had never actually </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">seen</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> this playground before in my life. While we did have to drive past it to get to Manfred’s house, it was kind of tucked away behind the pool and attached multipurpose building. I was basing all of this on hearsay.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Anyway, we argued back and forth for a minute or two, her bringing up the logical points that it was further, our playground was fine, and that it was just generally more inconvenient. I fired back that 1) I’d heard a rumor that this Manfred’s playground was a gajillion times better, and 2) see point one.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Eventually, I won. This wasn’t because of my superior arguing skills. Instead, it was a victory earned through my superior ability to ignore how uncomfortable our arguing was making the guests. Not wanting to continue making a scene, and not wanting to have to deal with a crying and/or vengeful six-year-old, she acquiesced.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Soon after, we were underway. As I’ve discussed previously, I had and continue to have an attention span that’s so short that this sentence took five minutes and as many random youtube videos to complete. That’s with 20 years of learning to control myself, too. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, as the rest of the group walked on the sidewalk, talking amongst themselves, I was running all over the place, checking out everything there was to be checked out and, I’m sure, trespassing on countless people’s property without my mother noticing.</span><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A short while later, I hit upon a hilarious prank idea. Around a block from the playground we were going to, there was a big hill covered in ivy. At the top of this hill, bushes concealed everything from view. I ran ahead, cutting through a stranger’s yard to reach the top of the hill without the group seeing me.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I lay in wait like a tiger, ready to feast on their terror and fear. When they got closer, I leapt into action, sprinting down the hill toward them. They all reacted exactly as expected, shouting and jumping. Everything was going according to plan.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Suddenly, my world inverted itself sickeningly. It seemed that, somewhere in my incredibly thorough calculations (a phrase which here means “poorly thought out idea that even a six-year-old version of myself realized was pretty dumb), I had somehow missed a large root. My leg, however, did not. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I hit the ground hard, getting the wind knocked out of me. My leg was hurting, but it didn’t seem like anything too serious, so once I could breathe again, I tried to stand up. It was at this point that the pain in my leg moved from “okay, that’s definitely not pleasant” to “AOUHGDFIUFGISKKJDHKGHKHJFHJHGHOLYFUCKBALLSTHATHURTS” and I moved from semi-standing to sprawled out on the ground. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br class="kix-line-break" /> The trip to the playground, that magical odyssey for which I had argued so passionately, was brought to an unceremonious end with the goal in sight. After getting carried home and taken to the hospital, it was revealed that I had completely torn through one of the muscles in my calf, thus ending my dream of becoming an Olympic figure skater before it even had a chance to exist.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Me being both six and (I can’t stress this enough) kind of dumb, I briefly thought I would never walk again, or at the very least be confined to a wheelchair for a long time. Instead of being in any way saddened by this, I was excited. In my head, I was already pondering how my parents would get to park in one of the parking spaces right next to the playground, so I could get from the car to the jungle gym as quickly as possible. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At no point during this did it cross my mind that not being able to walk translated into not really being able to do much on a jungle gym. Again, I was kind of dumb.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When the doctors came in, I was nervous to hear what they’d have to say. I’d finally gotten to the point in my cognitive processing where I realized that not being able to walk would be kind of awful. I was awkwardly sitting in a chair next to my parents, waiting to hear what lay in store for me.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The doctor more or less handed me a pair of crutches, told me to use them for the next few weeks, and showed me the door. I had wasted hours of people’s time, ruined my dad’s birthday, and set a precedent for my brother or myself getting badly injured whenever a family birthday rolled around. And the kicker?</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I went to the playground a few weeks later. It was nowhere near as nice as the one closer to my house.</span></div>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-32945773287292173172011-12-07T21:10:00.000-08:002011-12-07T21:10:21.990-08:00A Letter to the Past<div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.9665404439587042" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>So, today finds me working my way through entirely too many essays. I didn't have time to write something new, but here's something I wrote and put on my facebook a few weeks back. I'm sorry it's not something freshly written, and I apologize for this week just being a pair of lame introspective posts. Next week I'll try to throw in an additional hilarious story of what a horrible child I was for your trouble. Again, comments and criticism are greatly appreciated.</i></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.9665404439587042" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><i> </i> </span></div><div dir="ltr" id="internal-source-marker_0.9665404439587042" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I was 11, I had to write a letter to my future self for my honors english 7 class. I received this letter in the mail a long time ago, but for some reason I’ve been thinking about that letter a lot recently, and trying to reconcile the disparity between my vision of the future back then and my reality now. I decided it might be helpful to write a reply. Plus this way when I discover time travel I can totally freak my past self out.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">DISCLAIMER: Ordinarily, when I write something, I go through and edit to make sure I don’t come across as a mental case. I didn’t do that with this.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dear 7th grade Drew:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I got your letter a while ago, but it was only recently that I decided I actually wanted to respond to it. I feel like I owe you an explanation for how things ended up so different from how you pictured them being at this point in our life. I know things are nowhere near where you wanted them to be, but I’m hoping that by giving you the reasons why, I can both explain this to you and reflect some for myself. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I’ll start with the first thing you asked: I know you expected me to be going to Stanford to become a Zoologist/Veterinarian/Marine Biologist. Instead, here I am at Cornell, clear on the other side of the country, studying history and planning to be a boring old teacher. Once you get to high school, you’ll start actually doing some research into colleges, and you’ll realize that you don’t really want to go to Stanford. There’s a bunch of reasons for this, but I’ll let you realize those yourself. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyway, the bigger question is the difference in majors. Well, while you’ll keep the interest in animals and things like that, you will SUCK at science and math. After your first semester of college, you’re going to want to never have to take any of either of those classes ever again, and those distribution requirements will become a bit of a problem. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ve always liked history, even though I know you’re not a fan of Mr. Allen for turning everything into a drawing contest. But from 8th grade on through graduation, you’ll have nothing but amazing, funny, and interesting history teachers, and you’ll start to realize that maybe this is something you want to do. Plus, you’ll realize how sweet it is to get summer break as a grown-up.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Next, I guess I’ll give you a summary of the questions you asked about my personal life. First of all, your sister is in boarding school, so you don’t have to deal with her that much. I mean, you’ll still have some issues with trust and dealing with manipulative people, but that’s only partially her fault. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No, you don’t have a car of your own; even if you had enough money to both afford a car and pay for gas, you split your time pretty evenly between opposite sides of the country, so it’s just not practical. In terms of jobs, you’ve worked a couple of different jobs at Legoland, swearing never to do so again each time. You also worked at the fair one summer with Delani, who’s going to go from being that girl you were kind of a jerk to in elementary school to one of your best friends in the entire world. At college, you work as an usher for the music department, and you’re a supervisor in one of the dining halls on campus. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That question about whether or not I have a girlfriend is going to become both hilarious and a bit depressing over the next few years. The hilarity is simply because, once start your teen years, you’re going to realize that girls aren’t exactly your target demographic. Then it gets sad, because you’re going to realize a couple of things as you move into college. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">First of all, you’ll realize that you’re both really awkward and kind of a dork. Second, you’ll realize that you tend to become EVEN MORE OF BOTH OF THESE THINGS when you’re around people you like, which tends to make people even less interested in you than they were to start. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thus, you’ll enter your third decade of life (your pre-10 years count too) without ever really having been on a “date” as such. At present, it’s basically looking like time to start accepting the inevitability of being Forever Alone (you’ll get the reference once mom and dad finally upgrade their internet service and you start spending more time online), although things might look up if you grow out of being such a spaz.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now that you and Craig are more or less technically grown up, both of our parents are working again. Spats passed away when you were in high school; you still miss her, but now we’ve got two new dogs, Chloe (who loves everybody) and Lizzie (who is terrified of you for no reason), and while they’ll never replace Spats, they’re awesome. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You still keep in touch with a lot of the people you do now; when James E moves away at the end of the year, you’ll never hear from him again unfortunately, but you make tons of new friends in high school, which just all around goes WAY better than middle school does. You and Craig can both drive now, which is kind of terrifying. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When you get to college, it’s rough at first, but you slowly but surely build up a group of awesome people to hang out and watch movies with. Also, I’m just realizing that, given the nature of this letter, I’m throwing around pronouns all willy-nilly like some sort of madman. I apologize, but hopefully you’ll know what I (we? you?) meant.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">OH. THAT REMINDS ME. You kind of act like a crazy person a lot. Aside from the aforementioned dorky awkwardness, which will come up all the damn time, you’ve got wildly fluctuating self-esteem. A lot of the time, especially around people, you’re kind of arrogant (you develop all kinds of lovely personality traits to balance out your increase in douchiness, I like to think), very prone to sarcasm, and just kind of generally sassy. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On the other hand, when you’re by yourself, you pretty much have to be listening to music in order to keep yourself at least a bit distracted. Otherwise, you enter a vicious downward spiral. You’ll use pretty much anything to criticize yourself: your weight (still too high), your work ethic (still too low), your looks, your inability to deal with money like an adult, and you’ll kind of focus on how everyone else you know seems to be better about all of these things than you. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ll still have that uncomfortable nagging feeling that when you’re not around, your friends all meet up and talk about how they all hate you and they only hang out with you because it lets them gather further material to use when they all hang out and talk about how they all hate you. One of your best friends will introduce you to this French cartoon, and when you get to the end of the first season you (a grown man of some 19 years of age) will cry openly at what transpires. You will never let yourself live this down. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, like now, you write things, but you can never decide whether you want to share them with people in an attempt to get critiqued/garner pity/try to make yourself understood. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t get depressed or anything; you’ll go down that road enough as it is, and I don’t want to encourage that. There’s a lot of pretty legit stuff happening in your life too! Your family’s pretty cool. Now that you don’t live with your parents all the time, you don’t argue with them nearly as often. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ve got a metric f***tonne of friends at home to hang out with, and you’ve almost got more people you can be comfortable around at Cornell than you do fingers. You actually like the jobs you have right now, and they pay decently well. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Some of your classes are teaching you stuff you learned waaaaay back in third grade at Park Dale Lane, but other ones are really interesting and you feel like you learn a lot in them. And you do fun things, like have movie nights with your college friends and find going camping with your friends when you’re at home. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You are actually a halfway decent writer, even though you normally won’t admit it to yourself. If you were to take a photo of all your friends, it would look like something off of a college recruitment site: ridiculously diverse and all HIGHLY photogenic. Seriously. You basically find the most adorable, amazing people you can (,; and Zeke) and make them hang out with you. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While because of the aforementioned crazy you can’t be sure, most of them seem to really like you, and as long as they stay around, that Forever Alone thing I mentioned above isn’t going to be nearly as awful as it could be. Basically, your life is a bit of a roller coaster. One more lame thing: you have such low blood pressure that you totally black out on roller coasters. It kinda sucks, but you won’t really care because roller coasters will still be awesome.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Future Drew</span>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-28000820044013664472011-12-05T21:23:00.000-08:002011-12-05T22:22:27.216-08:00With A Bang, or With A Whimper?<span id="internal-source-marker_0.1729959956608651" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(Please feed me comments! I'm trying to become a better writer, so if you point out what sucks about a given piece, I can try to make that not suck as much in the future.)</span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.1729959956608651" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I stepped out of my room earlier today, and I noticed something unusual. My room is directly across from one of the main entrances into my dorm, which is the largest one on my campus with around 13,000 undergrads. Ordinarily, this hall is filled with the sounds of tipsy underclassmen stumbling toward their own rooms, people playing pool down the hall, and dozens of other such noises. Today, it was different. Today, I couldn’t hear anything. It felt like I was the last person alive in the entire building, just like it does </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">every</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> year as finals draw closer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Still, it got me thinking; I started considering all the various ways the world has come to an end in fiction. If this were really it, and all my hallmates had either perished or fled, how would I want it all to come to a close?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I think I could rule out any kind of war, be it nuclear, vs robots or aliens, or otherwise. The constant conflict would drag out our extinction entirely too long, and dying in a bomb blast or some similar event would take me too much by surprise to get closure. I’m the kind of person who absolutely refuses to challenge the status quo when it comes to my relationships with people, and I feel like I’d be too busy holding out hope for my own survival to spend any time doing something more personally productive- telling people how I really feel about them, settling any outstanding issues in my life, et cetera.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The same goes for a zombie apocalypse. Everyone thinks they’ve seen enough zombie movies to survive, but I doubt people’d really be equipped to handle something that bizarre. I know I wouldn’t be anywhere near the most likely to survive, but even then it seems pretty clear that I’m going to have to deal with fighting off the reanimated corpses of friends and loved ones before eventually joining them. Even if I somehow ended up surviving for a long time, after some point, continuing to survive would seem pointless if the undead have overrun the rest of the world.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Anyway, my point is that if the world’s going to end in, say, two weeks, and I couldn’t stop it, only choose how it happened, I’d pick an asteroid impact. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> First of all, going out like the dinosaurs would be kind of awesome.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Beyond that, I feel like the problem I have with most of these doomsday scenarios is that they give people way too long to hold out hope before they inevitably perish. In this scenario, I at least would be sure I wasn’t going to make it out alive. Even if humanity did manage to save some part of ourselves somehow, I know there’s no way I’d make it onto the Space Ark or whatever.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> There’s a lot of reasons for this. First of all, I really don’t stand out that much from most of humanity. I’m decently smart, not hideously deformed (if a bit too pudgy), and I have several useful skills. But if the human race is trying to send their best and brightest into space to continue the species, I’m not on that list. </span><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’d like to think I’m in the top 50% of our species in terms of intelligence. On a good day, I might like to think I fit into the top 25%. but with seven billion people on Earth, even trying to take just the most survival-ready 1% is still a logistically-impossible seven hundred million. Add to this my physical traits, along with the fact that I’m not exactly inclined toward continuing the species, and I’m on the ground staring at the rocket as it blasts away from Earth.</span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, being left behind as our time counts down to extinction, I’d hopefully be able to gain some measure of inner peace. As I mentioned above, I tend to vigorously uphold the status quo in my personal relationships. I’ve got some kind of mental block that keeps me from telling people how I really feel if there’s even the slightest chance of it making them uncomfortable. I’d rather just stay friends than tell someone I feel something more and risk losing what I’ve already got. </span></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><br />
</div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Hopefully, with the extra motivation of my impending demise, I’d take that last opportunity to really be open with people. I’d like to think I would be able to own up to my past failings, apologize to people I’ve hurt, and let those I love know just how much I do. As the end drew closer, I’d hope that would lead to my facing death with a clearer conscience.</span>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-84365889143485854782011-11-30T21:07:00.000-08:002011-11-30T21:07:20.948-08:00In Which I Learn the Importance of Planning Ahead<span id="internal-source-marker_0.06583315203530415" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It was a dark and stormy morning. The year was 1993. Because it rains so infrequently in San Diego, a lot of things aren’t really made to handle much water. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.06583315203530415" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> My family’s backyard was one of these things. Sure, there were drains installed in the lawn to keep it from flooding, but to this day I suspect that they didn’t lead anywhere before we replaced them. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This meant that whenever it did rain, our backyard turned into a miniature sea. This particular morning, the storm had already submerged our lawn. While making me breakfast, my dad had grumbled something about having to go out and unclog the drains. I sat at the table watching him cook, and then Iooked outside. The morning would go downhill from this point on for my parents.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now, before I continue, I feel like some additional information is needed. At the time we had two dogs, both of whom were strictly “outside dogs”. One of them, Opus (named after the penguin from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bloom County</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> for reasons nobody but my father will ever understand or find funny), was... </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">high strung</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, to put it nicely. To put it less nicely, he was both an incredibly neurotic specimen and kind of stupid. My mom once affectionately described him as “part Puli, part English Sheepdog, and part fencepost.” </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I loved him to pieces, but when he got scared, which happened all the time, it was like his brain panicked and decided that living in a world with whatever had scared him wasn’t worth the effort. I think he was kind of a canine idiot savant; he could never figure out that we didn’t disappear when he lost sight of us through the glass doors leading from the kitchen to the backdoor, but god </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">damn</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> could he escape from things. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Every year on the Fourth of July, the sound of fireworks exploding so far away you couldn’t even see them would set him off, and he’d find some new way out of the safe haven that was our yard, running out into the drunk driver-filled streets in an attempt to escape the noise. Every year we’d track him down, take him home, figure out how he’d gotten out and fix the problem, and every year he found a new way out. Really, it’s a miracle he never got hit by a car or lemminged his way off a cliff.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Our other dog was Spats. She’d been given that name (again, by my dad) because the had these little white patches on the tops of her paws that looked like the things people in the days of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Great Gatsby </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">would wear over their shoes. We’d gotten her as a puppy when I was still basically a baby myself, and she was my best friend in the entire world. She was a big dog, half black lab and half dalmatian, and she was the sweetest dog I’ve ever met. She used to kind of act as the brain for both herself and Opus; I can only imagine how much more trouble he would have gotten himself into without her being there.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Anyway, on this particular morning, both dogs were standing out on the patio, having shunned the relative shelter of their doghouses to look in through the doors and garner pity. Opus was particularly effective at this; when he got wet, he went from looking fluffy to... I feel like </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">bedraggled</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is the most appropriate word, but it doesn’t really seem to show the magnitude of his appearance.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Opus was right up against the glass, his soaked fur hanging off of his body, and whining. His whine was unlike any other noise I have ever heard. It sounded a bit like a regular dog whine, if the dog were on helium, and dragging one paw claws-out down a blackboard while scraping the other across a window. It was both painful and pity-generating, and it could not be tuned out. How was three-year-old me supposed to just ignore that? </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Add to that Spats, who was just sitting innocently outside the window. Well, sitting and staring at me with a look that seemed to say </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I trusted you, I keep this dumbass safe for you, I even let you put that ridiculous bandana on me a few weeks ago, and this is how you repay me?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I felt as though she were Julius Caesar and I was Brutus, mid-stab. I had to make this right somehow. I owed her that much.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Dad?” I said, putting on my most convincing little kid “gimme” whine.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yeah?” He said, the sighing undertone he always seems to have when he deals with me present in full force.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“We should let the dogs in.” My grasp of diplomacy was not the best, and I was still in the phase where I was convinced that my parents would do whatever I told them to. “They’re wet and sad. They want to be inside.”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My father looked at the two soaked canines, one of whom (Opus, of course) had just decided to take a break from whining to run out into the massive puddle that was our yard and jump around for a minute. He then looked at where the kitchen’s linoleum met the carpet, which he’d had professionally cleaned less than a week prior. “No, Drew. They’ll track mud all over the house.”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I kept trying, but I made no further progress with him. After he made me breakfast, he headed out; he had a meeting at church, and would be gone for several hours. My mom walked in from her office, sitting down at the table with me. I looked back at the window. Spats was still gazing forlornly in my direction. I couldn’t let her down. I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">wouldn’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> let her down. My best friend was counting on me, and I had to prove myself worthy of her trust. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Mom?” The “gimme” voice was getting a workout today.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hmm?”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I looked out at the window, checking to be sure Opus wasn’t going to weaken my efforts. Seeing that he had returned to his vigil next to Spats, I turned back to my mom. “We should let the dogs in so they can dry off.”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My mother protested, pointing out that they lived outside and they might track mud in. I was undaunted. I would not fail again. Eventually, she caved.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Fine. They can come in, but I’m blocking them in the kitchen with chairs so they can’t track mud all over the place.” This was fine by me. While I didn’t realize this at the time, history teaches that appeasement is seldom a good strategy when someone makes a grab for power, a lesson my mom would soon learn.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Soon enough, a barrier was erected, and the door opened. With a cacophonous scrabbling of paws on linoleum and jingling dog tags, the two ran into the kitchen, grateful for the shelter. The phone rang, and my mother got up, returning to her office to take the call. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All my life, I’ve had a really short attention span, and it began to take its toll at this point. Now that I’d finished my breakfast, the kitchen held no appeal for me. I wanted to go watch TV in my parents room, but I couldn’t very well leave my four-legged comrades behind, could I?</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No, I decided. We’d been through too much together for me to abandon them now. Instead, I simply moved one of the chairs out of the way, planning to sneak past mom’s office door and down to my parents’ bed to see what cartoons I could find. Then, of course, I could-</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Before my plan had even had time to take shape, the dogs had taken action, becoming black-and-white blurs as they sprinted down the hallway, leaping easily onto my parents’ bed and proceeding to wrestle and make a great deal more noise. I ran down the hall after them, hoping I could quiet them down before my mom found out, but I was too late.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As I ran past her office, I could hear her telling whoever she was talking to that she’d need to call them back. She then sprinted into her bedroom, breaking up the brawl and grabbing both dogs roughly by the collars as she took them back into the kitchen. Once she’d set the barrier back into place, she turned her attention to me. I’m sure she only actually yelled at me for a few seconds, but apparently even that was enough to cross a line with my toddler-aged self.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the moment, I simply nodded, crying and apologizing very convincingly. Beneath my penitent, sorrowful exterior, however, I was already trying to figure out how best to end her in what had just become a vendetta. A short while later, I got my chance. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As I’ve mentioned, our backyard tended to overflow when it rained. In an attempt to fix this problem, my mom went out into the backyard to remove any leaves that might have been blocking the drains. She left the door open, just in case the dogs needed to come back outside. Expecting to only be out there for a minute or two, she had neglected to bring an umbrella or her house keys. Everything was falling into place.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I walked back into the kitchen nonchalantly, pretending to be interested in something near our hideous harvest-gold-colored stove. As I got closer to the door, I put my plan into motion. She didn’t seem to hear as I slid the door shut, but the loud click of the lock certainly got her attention.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">She walked over to the door, yelling for me to open it, but by that point I was already in motion, enacting Phase 2 of my plan. I ran to the front door, knowing that I was probably racing her there. The dogs took off through the gap I left in the chair-wall, heading right back to my parents’ waterbed.</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No sooner had I slid the deadbolt into place than I heard my mother try the knob before sighing and knocking. Now I had her right where I wanted her, and it was time to twist the knife. After she finished hammering on the door, I moved right up next to it and, in the most polite, even, and innocent tone I could manage, cheerily asked “who is it?”</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“You know DAMN WELL who it is! Open this door NOW.” It was at this point that my emotions shifted from the triumph of victory to the realization that not only was she eventually going to get back into the house, she was going to be pissed off when she did so. I immediately abandoned my mutinous revolution, running back down to her room and hurriedly shepherding the dogs back into the kitchen. Then, I was faced with a quandary. On the one hand, the longer I left her out there, the angrier my mother would get. On the other, she’d still be plenty angry if I let her in now. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The realization that my dad’s meeting would probably be over soon was what forced me to make a decision. My heart heavy in anticipation of my imminent punishment, I slid the deadbolt back out of the way, opening the door to let her back in. </span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5538376514203704094.post-82221042151723643522011-11-28T22:40:00.000-08:002011-11-29T00:11:22.624-08:00Packing Up<i>I wrote this a few years ago, at the end of my freshman year. Reflecting on it now, I don't like how preachy it gets in several places; that's a quality I think I'm glad is less prominent in later things I write. I also think I'm getting a little less pretentious in my word choices, but I can't be as confident on that point. Furthermore, parts of this kind of make me seem like I'm a crazy person. This is true, but I like to think my crazy has changed form with time. Anyway, here you go:</i><br />
<br />
In all of my life's experience (which, I admit, is rather limited), I have only rarely felt as melancholy and nostalgic as I do now that I'm packing up and preparing to leave my freshman dorm room. Even as I decide what to store, what to throw into the almost inevitably overstuffed suitcases I'm bringing home for the summer, and what to dispose of, it seems that almost everything I've kept over this year reminds me of something significant to me, good or bad. <br />
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To start, the textbooks (mostly being sold or donated). Some, like the hulking behemoths of biology and calculus textbooks, remind me of a first academic semester that drove me almost to my breaking point. I spent God only knows how many hours poring over those books in an attempt to gain understanding, and it did me no good. I made it out of that term by the skin of my teeth. <br />
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Yet, even as I think back to the repeated disappointments that were my midterm grades, I am also reminded of the positive aspects of that harrowing time. Had I not realized just how ill-suited I was to the requisite courses expected of anyone majoring in Bio, I would never have broken from my pattern of unflinchingly sticking to my own plans, even as they became more and more obviously ill-suited to the situation as it was evolving. I don't have to declare a major until the end of the next academic year, and I doubt I'll be fully set on one even then. <br />
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I doubt I'll find it very difficult to get rid of those books; they were of immeasurable value to me as the catalysts responsible for starting my transition into being a more flexible person, but they've served their purpose with regards to me. Hopefully, they'll help some other freshman either reaffirm their confidence or shake their faith enough to inspire a needed self-examination.<br />
<br />
I next turned my attention to my small set of "first-aid" supplies: A box of band-aids (one of which was used over the course of the entire year), a bottle of nasal decongestant (never used), and two small bottles of ibuprofen for headaches (each of which has been emptied and refilled several times). This again hearkens back to the way I was before this year: I tried to plan out every possible contingency and work out how to get the result I thought I wanted in spite of them. I'm still like this to some extent; Every decision I make, and most of what I say, is carefully thought out and designed to get me what I want with the minimal amount of negative fallout. But in the past, these plans all fit into one overreaching strategy: I was going to end up working at a zoo, living in a nice apartment, and in a committed, long-term relationship, all on my own terms.<br />
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Now, realizing how little of my future I can control in the present, I try to take things on a more case by case basis. I still put way too much thought behind most of my life, but I'm just trying to make the next few minutes, hours, or days better, instead of trying to make my entire life fit into a very demanding frame. Sure, I'm likely to add to my first-aid collection when I come back (some basic cold and flu meds are certainly called for), but it's not because I'm afraid of being thrown off-course by injury or illness; I acknowledge that these problems are inevitable, but I also realize that, whatever shape my life is in when I get sick or hurt, it'll definitely help for me to be able to minimize the degree to which such conditions hamper me.<br />
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Having condemned my medicines to their cardboard prison, my gaze falls upon my modest collection of DVDs and computer games. Again, these are symptomatic of my condition as it has evolved; almost all of them were purchased in my first semester, when I had no better way to spend my lesiure time. It was hard adjusting to being one of only a handful of people I'd ever met before here, especially because I wasn't particularly close with any of the people I knew here.<br />
<br />
While I do forget it occasionally, I generally try to be aware of how difficult to deal with I am. It can't really be helped; it's in my nature to be a sarcastic, unbearable jerk. When I first got here, though, that was only part of the problem. I have a relatively small comfort zone when it comes to picking friends. Generally speaking, I am most comfortable around people who are somewhat similar to me: intelligent, more likely to know some obscure sci-fi or fantasy reference than who's playing in the Super Bowl this year, and uncomfortable around strangers. <br />
<br />
This made adjusting to a large collegiate student body incredibly difficult. My high school graduating class was less than 500 students, and the entire student population was under 2,000. Even there, having gone to the same middle school as many of my peers, I had never spoken more than a few words in passing to around half of the people I now consider to be my best friends until we were stuck in the same classes senior year. Suddenly, I was just one face in a sea of over 13,000 undergraduate students at Cornell, most of whom were (understandably) not of the sort I'm comfortable around. <br />
<br />
Even when I met someone who potentially shared some of my interests, I had problems. For example, the boy in the room one door down and across the hall (I think his name was Caleb) just packed up the last of his things and checked out. He was one of a few people on my hall I really think I could have been friends with. Unfortunately for me, I overcompensated for my caustic personality, never pursuing friendships with my neighbors(one of whom was friends with my one of my best friends' roommate at another school), or most of the dozens of people I saw in passing and thought I could possibly be friends with. Whatever part of my mind was in charge of those decisions evidently decided it was better to remain distant instead of risking frightening them off for good. We could have been good friends, but now I'll never know because I was afraid. <br />
<br />
Looking at my bed as I prepare to strip the bedding, I am reminded of the number of vulnerable moments I found myself in over the course of the year. From my near-breakdown first semester over academic pressure and having an impossible time making friends to hours of staring at the blank white ceiling and trying to figure out how I could alter my grand plan to still attain the same results, I usually found myself worrying up until the moment I lapsed into sleep. <br />
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There were periods in this year, even once I'd started getting things moving in a positive direction, where I couldn't talk to anyone from home without a tremor in my voice. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, and an AP Psychology course I took last year taught me that all manner of fun mental disorders first manifested at around age 18. Every time I started to feel overwhelmed, I worried that it would be the start of a complete warping and stunting of my mental faculties, be it through an anxiety attack or schizophrenia. As far as I know, it hasn't happened yet, but it's something that's still present in the back of my mind.<br />
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Not everything brings back a negative memory, though; as I try to figure out how I'm going to fit my myriad hats into suitcases destined to be filled to the brim, I remember working on what turned out to be a nonsensical, confusing skit for Japanese class. The audience might not have understood what went one, but it didn't matter, because in the process of writing and memorizing that ludicrous script, I laughed more than I had for weeks beforehand. The overarching memories of this year may be of anxiety, confusion, and sorrow, but they are constantly interrupted by moments of joy and contentment. <br />
<br />
There are certainly many things about this year that I'll treasure for a long time: absurd arguments about Jesus' viability as a presidential candidate, my first games of telephone pictionary and mafia (incidentally, both took place on the same day), studying for japanese tests, playing (and sucking) at DDR, running into a friend I hadn't seen in months at what passes for a mall in Ithaca, and countless other things. <br />
<br />
A lot of these memories don't have material foci in my room, which I think illustrates the most important advice one can give a prospective college freshman: GET OUT OF YOUR DORM ROOM AND DO THINGS. It's advice I received before coming here, but I cast it aside and assumed that the fun times would come knocking on my door. Unfortunately, the fun times don't knock, because they're busy being fun for the people who aren't huddled over their computers in their rooms. You have to go to them, and while it may seem daunting, words can't even begin to express how worth it it is, even if you get shot down a couple of times. <br />
<br />
All I ever got out of staying in my room was loneliness and the occasional bout of self-loathing. Sure, maybe you're self-sufficient enough to manage on your own, but that's what I thought, and nothing could have been further from the truth. You've got nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by branching out.Drew Spillerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02469033834809211778noreply@blogger.com0