Tag: Being Cannibalistic

The Thing You Find When Packing Pt. 3

During my senior year of college, I decided that Tom and I should make a customized game of Trivial Pursuit. We would use the board and the pie pieces from the regular game, but would write questions of our own.

Being that it was my idea and I was still in school, and, thus, since I was a bad student, had lots of time on my hands, I got my questions written. Tom, who had a job and I’m not sure even agreed to the idea, never wrote his.

And, so, these set of questions, which are in and of themselves a kind of time capsule, have traveled with us on our many moves. I find these things every time we move, and every time, I get farther away from the knowledge, both personal and trivial, I held in my mind when I wrote them.

I’m not 100% sure what the categories are, my best guess is: W (no clue, maybe Wildcard), MP (Motion Pictures), CT (Carrie and Tom), S (Stories – the TV shows we watched), F (Friends and Family), R (Random – basically my opinions). Here are some example questions and answers:

Q: According to the man on The Learning Channel, what is bigfoot NOT like?
A: Hollywood Neanderthals

Q: Where did I give you the heart attack punch?*
A: At the Main Street intersection on the way to El Rodeo’s

Q: What lie did my sister once tell her teacher about me?
A: That I was hearing impaired.

Q: What does it mean if it’s green?**
A: You have a sinus infection.

Q: Who deserves an Oscar more, Glenn Close or Morgan Freeman?
A: Morgan Freeman (he has since won an Oscar – I was right!)

Q: When do you know it’s about to stop snowing? ***
A: When the flakes get bigger.

And now, they will be packed away again, so that the next time they are found, I better be A. fucking 30 years older or B. dead, and my children and/or nieces and nephews are going through my stuff, cursing me for keeping crap like this. Sorry, future grown children.

*Tom made some joke at my expense that was worthy of being punched, and I punched him kind of up under the ribs and he had to take a moment because his heart hurt. I’ve yet to be able to re-create it.

**”It” is snot. This is something my mom taught me. She is not a doctor.

***As far as I can tell, this is an urban legend that began and ended in the cul-de-sac I grew up on. If anyone else held the belief that when the flakes get big and fat, it will stop snowing, please let me know.

 

The Things You Find When Packing Pt. 2

Alternate title: I’m glad I’m not a teenager.

There’s an endless amount of reasons why I’m happy I’m no longer a teenager. While packing and rifling through stuff, we found two of those reasons in a box of papers.

The first is a treasured relic from the Art Department of the high school Tom and I went to:

This is a Bathroom Buck. It was given to students by a teacher named Mr. Downing, who wanted total control and had a lot of rules in his class, but had no air of authority whatsoever. He was openly mocked and I’m not sure if he either knew it and pretended otherwise, or if he just really didn’t pick up on it. I’m sure the Bathroom Buck was developed because one too many teens blatantly wandered away from his class. He taught photography, and for photography projects, we were really only allowed in the small area right outside the classroom, which was a huge concrete-covered area with railings and stairs. The number of photographs of sullen introspective teenagers sitting on or standing under stairs is probably in the thousands.

I know this is Tom’s Bathroom Buck, because I’m sure I used all of mine.  Notice that it says “void if presented at an inappropriate moment.” You see what I mean? Lots of rules with no air of authority.

As an adult who has grown accustomed to a certain level of being able to use the bathroom whenever she wants, the sight of this Bathroom Buck fills me with dread. While I’m sure plenty of high school students did plenty of bad and naughty stuff under the guise of a bathroom break, to teenagers like me, who actually had to use the bathroom, the constant outside control of my bladder was really nerve wracking.

This leads me to the second treasure. In the grand scheme of things, I was a pretty good teenager. I didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink, etc, probably 60% because I wasn’t interested and 40% because I was always grounded due to being a crappy student, which was my major teenager-y flaw. As I’ve written about before, my personality type is pretty straight-laced, so as far as getting into trouble, I wasn’t that bad. I was, however, moody (still am, unfortunately). Even girls who are Myers-Briggs Thinking (as opposed to Feeling) get the Teenage Mope. Here’s a picture of me at Christmas, I was probably 16 at the time:

This picture fills me with all sorts of feelings, but the the main one is hilarity, which I’m declaring a feeling for the purpose of this sentence. There I am, poor teenage Carrie, at my aunt and uncle’s house for Christmas, surrounded by family who love me after probably receiving a gift I asked for. And the thing that I really like about the whole thing is that I bet my dad took this picture because he thought it was funny. Why else would you take a picture of that pile of teenage self-pity?

When Tom found it, he held it up and said “awwwwww, look at sad Carrie.” And he did seem to genuinely feel bad for her. And a part of me does, too, because that Carrie really was sad at the time, but for the most part, it makes me laugh. This is why, if we develop time travel technology, I should never be allowed to visit my past selves.

Maybe she’s sad because she used all her Bathroom Bucks. And that’s how you tie together a blog post.

If I Didn’t Already Know I was a Giant Nerd

My birthday was yesterday. I share my birthday with the whole earth, which, as an introvert, is pretty nice because I can just hang back while the earth gets all the attention.

On the occasions where I get multiple presents (mainly my birthday and Christmas), sometimes the stars align and I get a haul of the things I truly wanted and like. Not stupid clothes, or dumb stuff I need, but things that reflect the kind of person I am, which is a humongous immature nerd.

Yesterday was a reminder that not only am I a humongous immature nerd, but I was lucky to find another one to marry.

Exhibit A: We decided to go grab some lunch. Right before we left, Tom filled up his mug with the last of his coffee and we got in the car. He placed his coffee mug in it’s holder, and next to it sat my big-ass mug that lives in my car, which I drink water from because I’m a non-coffee drinking square:

Exhibit B: Tom bought me something that he thought might be more for him than me, and to acknowledge this possibility, he decorated the wrapping paper:

This is a Simpsons reference.

I opened my presents (some from Tom, some from my Mom, and Mom’s gifts were part of the reason the haul seemed especially nerdy; she usually gets me the less eccentric things I ask for). I stepped back and took in the sight of my spoils, and it was good.

1, The Mighty Boosh, the complete series DVD
2. Twin Peaks, complete series DVD (this was the one wrapped in a Simpsons reference)
3. The Joke Shop from the Department 56 A Christmas Story village
4. A Christmas Story leg lamp Christmas lights
5. A birdhouse in the shape of Mad Hatter’s hat from the Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland”
6. Book 6 of The Walking Dead
7. A lottery ticket. If I win, obviously the money will be spent on many nerdy endeavors.

Do liking any of these individual things make me a giant nerd? No. Even though you might think they would, they wouldn’t. It is the volume of it that makes me a giant nerd. You get a Mad Hatter birdhouse, some sensible slacks, a pair of earrings, and a blender, and it just doesn’t say the same thing when it’s paired with these six other things. I did get a 12″ frying pan, so my mom got me one traditionally useful thing. But, I plan on using it as a weapon during the inevitable zombie take-over as much as I plan to make scrambled eggs in it.

This haul was also a nice reflection of the nerd balance I like to strike in my life. A Christmas Story and Alice in Wonderland needs to be paired with a dead teenager wrapped in plastic and the zombie apocalypse. Life is about variety, am I right?

Famous Last Thoughts

Over this past weekend, I was visiting my mom and sister in North Carolina. It was a relatively quick trip, just Friday-Sunday. I had already completely fucked up the extremely basic math of packing:

Friday + Saturday + Sunday + Monday = 2 whole days there = 2 changes of clothes.

That is incorrect. The correct answer is 3 changes of clothes. I am really, really bad at math.

I usually always leave something there when I return home. Mostly it’s clothing. Sometimes it’s a phone charger, or my keys, or the camera. One time, it was a pair of sandals that smell like sweaty ass-foot, so it was really more an act of cruelty to my mom than an inconvenience to me.

This time, I really didn’t bring that much, and as I loaded my car, I took mental inventory:

“Ok, I have my phone, it’s charger, my e-reader, the camera, my laptop, my keys, toiletries, clothes…well, if I do leave anything, it won’t be too important, because I have all the essentials. If I leave anything, it won’t matter, I’ll get it next time I’m up.”

I left my laptop’s power cord. And, just to be sure I really screwed myself over, I ran the battery down to nothing the night before. I failed to heed the words of Journey, “be good to yourself, when nobody else will.”

My mom said she’d try to send me my cord today. Until then, I’m stuck** with Tom’s MacBook, old-lady-complaining about how I don’t know how anything works and my bunions are killing me, even though I don’t even have any bunions.

So, I’m going to take a break, soak this MacBook on warm salt water, and hopefully that will make everything better again.

**incredibly spoiled

 

My Bad Habit: Writing Posts to Further Avoid Having to Talk to My Neighbor

I have many, many bad habits. I pop all my zits (fuck you beauty magazines), I can’t have junk food in the house because I will inhale it in a day, I will stab your sentimentality with a broken bottle, etc. But the bad habit I’m currently suffering from is social avoidance. Which, admittedly, isn’t exactly a habit, it’s more of a neurosis, but I’m not splitting hairs, which is also a bad habit.


You see this? It’s a giant dead tree. It has a leprosy-like oozing wound towards the bottom. It looks like The Jolly Green Giant has been kicking it. All of its branches are on one side, because, and this is just a guess, when the tree was alive, it also was socially avoidant.

This big, dead, dented tree is leaning towards the electricity, internet, and cable-making lines. Every day (ok, twice a week), when I leave the house, I think, “I sure hope that tree doesn’t fall,” and then I think the same thing when I get home, twenty minutes later.

Since we’re trying to sell the house, we think it’s in our best interest to get rid of it (and, you know, because it will kill civilization when it falls), but the problem is, it’s right on the property line with our neighbors. We’re pretty sure it’s on their side of the property line because of a row of now-dead formerly fluffy ornamental plants, which we assume serve as a natural dividing line.

The logical thing to do is walk 200 feet or so, knock on their door, and ask them about it. The neighbor husband works from home, so it shouldn’t be hard to catch him – I’m home all day, too.

I’ve spoken to these neighbors probably 4 times. The first time was when I met them. The other times involved the fact that they let their dog out in their unfenced front yard and forget about him. I don’t like this about them – we live on a very, very small cul-de-sac, right near a busy road. Their previous dog was hit by a car. They haven’t pieced together the problem yet. So, not only do I have my general social anxiety and avoidance to contend with, I also have crazy thoughts like, “I don’t want to go over there when the dog’s not out because he’ll let the dog out when I come to the door and then the dog will get hit by a car and I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

I’ve actually come to the conclusion a few times that I’ll just pay to have this huge tree removed to avoid having to have a 2 minute conversation with my neighbor. But, then I realize that’s crazy, and then I reset the feedback loop.

And so there sits the tree – a giant, dead monolith commemorating my inability to initiate a conversation.

I’m not even going to get into my next bad habit, which will ride the coattails of the current one. Once it’s settled, if I have to deal with the tree, that will involve a phone call, and then we’re talking another month or so of avoidance.
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This post was written in response to Studio30 Plus’ writing prompt, “Bad Habits.“