Going Bad

I am the girlfriend with an expiration date.

Best if used by June 1.

I am a bottle of milk. A turkey sandwich.

That green stuff in the Tupperware behind the eggs.

I have a shelf life. A half-life.

I am only as good as time says I am.

The Road Not Taken

I majored in English.  When most people hear this, their immediate response is "oh, so you're an English teacher then, right?"  No.  I am not an English teacher, I have never been an English teacher and I am fairly certain that I will never be an English teacher.  There was, however, a period of about three days in eighth grade where I thought that being a teacher sounded kind of fun.  But then I stopped, looked around the classroom full of angsty preteens and decided that perhaps there was a better career out there for me where I wouldn't have to confiscate pogs and tell kids that snorting Pixie Sticks isn't good for their nasal cavities.  Yet, I get this question almost daily and lately, I've started to wonder what I'd be like had I followed my eighth grade whim and become an English teacher.  I'd probably wear lots of tweed and would suddenly become obsessed with elbow patches.  I'd use a beat up yardstick to point to my slanted, cryptic writing on the blackboard and would be slightly offended every time a student mistook a lowercase "r" for a "v".  I'd make my kids refer to their literature by saying the author's last name before they said the title of each book.  Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  Paton's Cry the Beloved Country.  Shakespeare's Othello.  I'd speak of the literary canon in near religious terms.  I'd own too many pencil sharpeners and would buy eight dollar pens every time I went to Office Depot.  I would start adopting pets and would give them literary names: a cat named Dickins, a dog named Boo Radley and a hamster named Hamlet.  Everything would be an archetype or a symbol for something else.  I would read too much into everything.  I'd eat a turkey sandwich on wheat with an apple for lunch everyday and would have a not-so-secret crush on the slightly nerdy music teacher.  After 5 years of me turning red and saying things like "grood day" every time I saw him, we'd finally start dating.  Some of our students would see us furniture shopping together and rumors would start to circulate.  Eventually it would come out that he'd been married all along to someone I used to know growing up and I'd go back to my life of turkey sandwiches, tweed and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.  So no.  I am not an English teacher.

Unnecessary Plurals

The letter S has done many great things for humanity.  It has allowed snakes to talk.  It has even saved us from reading about the Adventure of Uperman.  So why is it that some people feel the need to abuse the power(s) of the S.  Is it that perhaps people think sticking an S on the end of a word will magically make that thing multiply like the loaves and fishes?  Does it just roll off the tongue at such a rate that it can't be stopped?  Seriously, what's with all the unnecessary S's?  For instance, when you're going shopping at Safeway, don't say you're going to Safeways.  You're not going to Safeways.  You're going to one Safeway.  One.  There's no need to stop by all of them.  They all have the same stuff.  Also, if your child needs to use the restroom, please don't ask him or her if he or she needs to "go potties."  And when you're out of coins for a wishing well, don't tell your children that you're "all out of monies."  It may seem like cute baby talk, but it's actually extremely annoying and is only teaching your child bad grammar.  That child will grow up and shop at Safeways.

Some Thoughts on Giving Birth

The term “giving birth” is pretty bizarre when you think about it. Do we really give birth, like it was some sort of Christmas present? And if we’re giving birth, does that mean that infants are getting birth? Are they supposed to say “thanks for the birth” as they enter this world? Perhaps a nice card would suffice: “Dear Mom, thanks for the birth. I put it on my bookshelf next to the Dr. Seuss books Aunt Linda gave me.” And if it’s better to give than to receive, should we all feel ashamed that we’ve received birth and that we are, in fact, alive? And should men feel even worse knowing that they aren’t capable of giving birth; that they can’t say, “here, I got you some birth for our anniversary”? I suppose the phrase “giving birth” seems so strange to me because it all just sounds a little too simple when you put it like that, like we can all just go to Big Lots and pick out some babies: “I’ll take two of the redheads.” There’s a lot of effort in actually giving birth. Never, at least in my experience, has giving anything been accompanied by screams of pain, a string of expletives and bloody…stuff. We should all really rethink the phrase “giving birth.” It’s a bit misleading.

The Boyfriend Patch

Choosing a boyfriend is a lot like going to a pumpkin patch. You spend so much time picking out the perfect one, but when you take it home, it turns out to be all rotten on the inside.

The Eight Dollar Request

A few weeks ago some friends and I were walking around the U District in Seattle when we were approached by a homeless man asking for money. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But as we all reached for our coin purses in anticipation of "can you spare a quarter?" the man asked us if we could spare eight dollars for dinner. EIGHT DOLLARS! I don't spend eight dollars on dinner for myself. I realize that inflation affects us all, but come on! I have to work an entire hour to even make eight dollars and even then, some of that goes to taxes. Needless to say his request was denied. Had he not been so greedy, he probably would have gotten at least a couple of dollars out of us, but we were afraid that if we gave him a dollar he would look at us and say "where's the rest of my money?!?" And we were not up for a fight with a homeless man that day. We seldom are.

It's All a Blur

Ever notice how when a movie is out of focus at the theater everyone will complain about it, but no one will ever go tell anyone to fix it? We all just sit there annoyed, occasionally throwing popcorn at the screen instead of leaving to fix the problem. It's a little like a staring contest. Who can go the longest without getting up. It gets a little tense as we wait for someone, anyone, get up. Our attention is diverted from the movie as we throw shifty glances around the room wondering why no one is doing anything about the fuzzy picture. It's as if we all assume there is one designated movie focuser in the crowd and we are pissed that he or she is not fulfilling his or her very important responsibility. We have an attitude of "I paid for this. I shouldn't have to get up," like we're all so worried about missing 3 minutes of a blurry film. The guy who finally gets up to tell someone about the problem usually gets applause. I always wanted to date that guy.

What I Thought About Today

I am entirely convinced that the only way to solve a Rubik's Cube is to peel off the colored stickers and replace them on the correct sides.

I once knew a woman named Dee Day.

We have a stray cat that comes around and barfs on our back porch. We call him Ralph.

A part of the sun exploded on the day I was born.

The guy who works in the deli next to my work calls everyone from the Museum, Heather. This secretly makes me feel good.

I don't really know what toner does.

My father once knocked over a bowl of soy sauce at a sushi restaurant and it seeped into the white table cloth in the exact shape of Africa (Madagascar and all).