Despite having the world's most encouraging parents, I have always been most inspired when people tell me that I'd be terrible at something. The most unfortunate turn of events to precipitate from such a statement was the saga of how I became a cheerleader in high school. I hate it when people describe what kind of person they were in high school so I'll try my hardest to refrain - we all know that you are editing reality so don't try. But one thing of which I can assure you with complete certainty is that I was not at all the type of person that should have become a cheerleader. I was not needlessly happy, I woke up at noon on most days and school spirit was only celebrated when I could dress up as something hilarious at school or show up profoundly drunk or stoned to football games. Spirit assemblies were only good excuses to get out of class. And on top of that, I had no idea what the rules of football were. Cheerleading (the computer is telling me that this is not a real word and I tend to agree) was not my shit... at least it shouldn't have been.
I hung out with two different groups of people, generally. First, there was the type who were apt to become cheerleaders and seemed to like me anyway. Then there were my friends Tom and Julia. Thy were, and still are, the type of people who like music that you have never hard of. They dress impeccably everywhere they go and have never seen a Will Ferrell movie. While the rest of us were listening to Ja Rule and Aaron Carter and drinking Mike's Hard Lemonade like water, they were busying themselves with seeing people like Pearl Jam and Radiohead live and drinking Bombay Sapphire. We ate lunch together every day in the Spanish portable with a girl who, for some reason, thought that we liked her. Her name was Jacqui. She was big, she was incredibly mean, and she was generally very unpleasant. I was joking about following my friend Ellery to cheer try outs. Ellery seriously bled blue and gold during our entire tenure in high school and was definitely the cheerleading type. Jacqui pipes up and says "You'd make the world's shittiest cheerleader." Tom and Julia, knowing my "fuck you, I do what I want" nature, must have been making that certain throat slashing motion behind my back that is the international signal for "Shut up, you dumb bitch, you'll make her do it!" And I did just that.
I remember my mom, ever the optimist, telling me that I'd make a great cheerleader and that I should go for it; while my slightly more realistic father shot food out his nose laughing and gasping. "You can't be serious! Ohhh... you're funny kiddo. That's tooooo funny. Wait til your aunts hear about this..." As he wiped the laughter induced tears from his eyes and hooted loudly, I became even more determined.
I showed up for try outs every morning at 6am in my black eyeliner and snarky screen-print t-shirts and did an Oscar-worthy job of making it look like I wanted to be there - all because I had to prove stupid Jacqui wrong. The early mornings knocked Ellery out of the race within a few weeks and strangely enough it was me and her lesbian sister Essex who ended up, to my horror, making the squad. I have always been fairly certain that Essex tried out under similar circumstances to my own, but we've never discussed it. It's like 'Nam to us. Her reaction to seeing her name on the roster must have been similar to mine "Oh shit... they actually thought we were serious." But ever the determined, snot-nosed little brats that we still are, we decided to see it though cheer camp.
Incidentally, and not in the way you'd imagine, cheer camp was host to one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. Our bus was halted half-way through the trip and we were informed that someone left a bag back at the place the bus picked us up and we had to wait for someone's mom to catch up with us and deliver the bag. (I'm pretty sure you can see where this is going.) I happily joined in with everyone else who was clowning on whoever it was whose mom had to come rescue them... and just then, my mom jogged up along side the bus to deliver my retainer case... I love my mom and she is pretty much wicked awesome, but I could have died seeing her that day... because I was of course, running my mouth the loudest speculating about what kind of loser needs their mom to run out their luggage to the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere.
My reward for not dying of embarrassment, heat exhaustion and general annoyance with chanting was a full week of "cheerobics" at 6am every god-forsaken morning in the sweltering central-Washington summer and systematically dropping every girl in our squad on her head during pyramids. At 135 pounds I was one of the two largest girls on the squad and was politely passed over as a choice to participate in the "flying" layer of these Clinics in Abject Failure. After sharing bunks with most of these girls, I wanted to feel bad about their inevitable concussions at my own hands, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was starving, sunburnt, overstimulated and completely out of my element. I feared that this was actually a glimpse of Hell and it kept me from committing constipation-induced homicide, in which I would brain everyone in my sight. That wasn't worth suffering this shit again.
My reward for surviving THAT was of course more summer practices. These were at least more entertaining because my boyfriend would come pick me up. He was 15 and had prison tattoos. He was just the "fuck you" I needed to separate me from the pack. "I'm not like YOU people with your jock boyfriends... MY boyfriend has been to juvie and knows how to make a bong out of an apple. Fuuuuuuck you guys." This was but a small consolation when sports season started and I had to actually get legit.
We performed during games and assemblies. Everyone else saw these events as a chance to prove to people that our routines didn't actually look like 3-minute long games of grab-ass set to music like "I Like It When You Call Me Big Papa" by Notorious BIG. I'm not kidding. You don't know how much I wish that I was. We had PRACTICED. We were DEDICATED. We had spirit... yes we did... It was always a hot load of fresh Fail. We were terrible. It didn't help that Essex and I were on JV, which was basically the worst of the worst. Had I actually cared, I might have wanted to go home and drink bleach, but luckily once basketball season started, the tides were starting to turn. I was having trouble keeping up the charade. Morning practices made my soul bend toward the violent. The dark twisted corners of my mind where all my terrible thoughts go to live was becoming my mental playhouse. I didn't have my super-ironic boyfriend anymore. The football players actually started to look attractive to me. And worst of all, Varsity was exercising what little authority they had to point out what a bunch of idiots we looked like. I was about to get benched for not showing up to practices.
Here's how that "high school hindsight" would like you to believe my last practice as a cheerleader went down: I'd had enough of those varsity clowns and turned into a wolverine in the middle of practice. Yeah, a real fucking wolverine. In my pom-pom fueled rage I was somehow able to bellow through my pointed, blood soaked teeth that I was quitting this bitch and that every one of those fucking assholes could eat my shit and die in a fiery inferno. I then ate them all, went to their houses and ate all their pets and then shat them out in their lockers. But in the end, I just threw down my pompoms, stormed out of the gym, and cried some of those really desperate angry tears that you cry when a fat, ugly, mean girl was right about you in the first place.
Later that day, I won an award for passing all 4 parts of the WASL test and I did it in my cheer uniform. I was the only person up there in a cheer uniform and it made me feel vindicated. "Yeeeah... this academic award right here... that's why I can't be a cheerleader. I'm too SMART." I didn't look back. I didn't go to any more assemblies or games that year and I let my boyfriends brother wear my cheer uniform for spirit day. This was a huge no-no, but they had no power over me now, those empty shells of whore. HAAAAAAHHAHA!
However there were people on the squad, that I'm glad to still know, who can talk shit with me. There is of course Essex who is available to reminisce with me when she's not busy convincing girls who play roller derby to let her touch their boobs. There's Jill, my fellow "pyramid bottom" with the Invader Zim tattoo that seemed like as much of an outsider as I did. And Kristen, who I usually forget was a cheerleader because she's a decent person who has a job and waited until she was 24 to have a baby.
It was worth it, however, just to see the look of shock on people's faces when I tell them I was a cheerleader in high school. I take it as a compliment. I can watch them paint a little picture of high school Cait as a blonde, peppy team player with an eating disorder that has since been cured and then some. "Wow," they must think, "she really seems to have become grown up and normal against all odds!" But I get even more satisfaction from knowing that I was the same cynical bitch then that I am now... just with more determination and a better tolerance for the fake broads in short skirts. And a better stomach for "Devil-Hour:30" physical activity. If someone tried to wake me up at 6am these days to do anything but pee I would probably find a way to place a pox upon their entire family.
Now I just wish that Jacqui would have told me I would make a shitty pediatrician or astronaut or something...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
I like Twilight - and no my mother didn't drop me on my head as a child.
Since Twilight seems to be the new trendy thing to talk about, let’s discuss. And hell, I’ve seen the newest one 2 times in the past 48 hours (yes I know it’s not the weekend yet!) so it’s already on my mind.
When you tell someone that you are a Twilight fan, they look at you as though you have just mentioned that you live on an ancient Indian burial ground. Unfortunate home placement, like a fondness for Twilight, of course happens to people but not to people you know. It’s not like they had a choicein the matter. And of course if you’re willing to admit it, there’s an assumption that you’re in the process of fixing it. You’re moving into a transitional apartment and hiring an exorcist, right? You’re going to burn all your Twilight books and memorabilia in front of me now, aren’t you? Admitting to being a fan of Twilight is seen as the first step in a 12 step process that will end in you reading Ernest Hemingway, getting an actual job and eventually celebrating your 13th birthday. However, looking at the disturbing amount of grown women who worship this crap will tell you that’s clearly untrue. Even educated, levelheaded women like this stuff for goodness sake! Two straight guys shushed me in the theater yesterday for making a penis joke during a particularly intense scene! The obsession doesn't know gender, sexual preference, age or most notably body mass index.
I’ll just put this out there: I love corny stuff. My mood generally ranges from your regular store-brand anger to sarcastic vitriol on most days, and then just oscillates between the two until halfway through each month when the rest of the emotions bombard me for no reason for 5 days. So when it comes to movies, music and television I need the medium to do my emotional work for me. I like it to just hit me over the head. John Hughes movies are great for this. Journey’s Greatest Hits will usually do the trick. Just go ahead and blatantly manipulate my emotions because breaking me out of my general skepticism is going to take some work. OK, add some vampires, but they’d better be pretty.
Being a Twilight fan seems no more or less stupid to me than people who let their lives revolve around Shark Week. So I suppose I see where these people are coming from. When someone tells me that they’re saving their vacation time for Shark Week, part of me wants to ask them if they like other non-sensical, boring shit too.“But sharks are fascinating creatures and the shows they air are educational.” I see your educational value and raise you Robert Pattinson’s amazing bone structure… since we’re clearly not committed to making any sense whatsoever. Investigating the inner workings of my dishwasher would probably be educational too, but why would I actually choose to spend my time doing it? The inner judging you do when I tell you I spent my evening watching Twilight is the feeling I get when you admit to liking Shark Week, U2, Kevin Costner, The New York Yankees or hiking. I assume that you’re trying to either be cool, a non-conformist, a person who gets off on shock value or the child of parents who were not yet aware of the dangers of painting a crib in lead paint. And admitting to liking something shitty leads people to suspect other things."Oh, you're a Yankee's fan," I think to myself "You probably also like cheaply made lawn chairs, blue nail polish and drinking wine coolers too." But I'm willing to let go of this notion if you quit assuming that because I like Twilight I also like Justin Bieber, High School Musical and American Idol. Just because I have been heard saying "Twilight is totally Robert Pattinson's 21 Jump Street, he's destined for a great career just like Johnny Depp" doesn't mean I have NO taste whatsoever. ....Right?
That said, I recently came to own a life-sized Edward Cullen cardboard cut out. Now don’t go assuming that I was planning on placing it in my room and letting him watch me sleep… The goal was to scare the living shit out of as many of my coworkers as I possibly could before word spread of his presence. First he lurked in my office shower to scare my boss. Then he made a stop in the medical records office, the supply closet, the HR department and finally the CEO’s office. Not only did Edward himself make it into our CEO’s desk area but photocopies of his face made it into his closet, his mini-fridge and under his desk. When the crowd that had gathered to laugh at him dispersed, he asked me “So, there aren’t any more in here right?” …To which I shrugged and turned back down the hall giggling conspicuously. I then watched from his window as he turned over every chair, looked under every flat surface and scoured his closet for an Edward that he would never find. Somehow I still have a job.
A coworker of mine was frantically emptying her purse in my office this morning looking for her keys and she inadvertently left behind a tampon on the floor. My boss had figured I was making a vampire joke and had left the tampon at Edward’s feet as an offering and congratulated me on my joke. Sadly I couldn't take the credit. Edward has aparently learned to play jokes on his own. He sent my coworker an email from my computer thanking her for the teabag and that he’d never seen them in “plain” flavor before. ...OK I helped him.
Edward the Cutout has been an agent for pants-pissing shock, tampon jokes, giggly picture taking, frozen-faced brooding under any condition and general hilarity. But after watching Eclipse, I felt bad for not taking him seriously. Maybe we really should have been swooning at his feet and wishing that he would really come to life to grace us with his melancholy obsessive tendencies. You spend two hours watching a living version of your office prank defending the girl he loves, ripping other vampires to shreds and showing a pretty decent emotional range for once… and then you feel as though maybe he’s worth a bit more than your laughter.
In conclusion, I'm ready to admit that the true value of Twilight probably lies somewhere between "cardboard cutout tampon jokes" and "legitimate". It does disturb me that Stephanie Meyer can write an entire paragraph in which a vampire tells you what prostitute blood tastes like but keeps all romance completely G-rated. At least she has her priorities straight. Thanks, Mormons.
When you tell someone that you are a Twilight fan, they look at you as though you have just mentioned that you live on an ancient Indian burial ground. Unfortunate home placement, like a fondness for Twilight, of course happens to people but not to people you know. It’s not like they had a choicein the matter. And of course if you’re willing to admit it, there’s an assumption that you’re in the process of fixing it. You’re moving into a transitional apartment and hiring an exorcist, right? You’re going to burn all your Twilight books and memorabilia in front of me now, aren’t you? Admitting to being a fan of Twilight is seen as the first step in a 12 step process that will end in you reading Ernest Hemingway, getting an actual job and eventually celebrating your 13th birthday. However, looking at the disturbing amount of grown women who worship this crap will tell you that’s clearly untrue. Even educated, levelheaded women like this stuff for goodness sake! Two straight guys shushed me in the theater yesterday for making a penis joke during a particularly intense scene! The obsession doesn't know gender, sexual preference, age or most notably body mass index.
I’ll just put this out there: I love corny stuff. My mood generally ranges from your regular store-brand anger to sarcastic vitriol on most days, and then just oscillates between the two until halfway through each month when the rest of the emotions bombard me for no reason for 5 days. So when it comes to movies, music and television I need the medium to do my emotional work for me. I like it to just hit me over the head. John Hughes movies are great for this. Journey’s Greatest Hits will usually do the trick. Just go ahead and blatantly manipulate my emotions because breaking me out of my general skepticism is going to take some work. OK, add some vampires, but they’d better be pretty.
Being a Twilight fan seems no more or less stupid to me than people who let their lives revolve around Shark Week. So I suppose I see where these people are coming from. When someone tells me that they’re saving their vacation time for Shark Week, part of me wants to ask them if they like other non-sensical, boring shit too.“But sharks are fascinating creatures and the shows they air are educational.” I see your educational value and raise you Robert Pattinson’s amazing bone structure… since we’re clearly not committed to making any sense whatsoever. Investigating the inner workings of my dishwasher would probably be educational too, but why would I actually choose to spend my time doing it? The inner judging you do when I tell you I spent my evening watching Twilight is the feeling I get when you admit to liking Shark Week, U2, Kevin Costner, The New York Yankees or hiking. I assume that you’re trying to either be cool, a non-conformist, a person who gets off on shock value or the child of parents who were not yet aware of the dangers of painting a crib in lead paint. And admitting to liking something shitty leads people to suspect other things."Oh, you're a Yankee's fan," I think to myself "You probably also like cheaply made lawn chairs, blue nail polish and drinking wine coolers too." But I'm willing to let go of this notion if you quit assuming that because I like Twilight I also like Justin Bieber, High School Musical and American Idol. Just because I have been heard saying "Twilight is totally Robert Pattinson's 21 Jump Street, he's destined for a great career just like Johnny Depp" doesn't mean I have NO taste whatsoever. ....Right?
That said, I recently came to own a life-sized Edward Cullen cardboard cut out. Now don’t go assuming that I was planning on placing it in my room and letting him watch me sleep… The goal was to scare the living shit out of as many of my coworkers as I possibly could before word spread of his presence. First he lurked in my office shower to scare my boss. Then he made a stop in the medical records office, the supply closet, the HR department and finally the CEO’s office. Not only did Edward himself make it into our CEO’s desk area but photocopies of his face made it into his closet, his mini-fridge and under his desk. When the crowd that had gathered to laugh at him dispersed, he asked me “So, there aren’t any more in here right?” …To which I shrugged and turned back down the hall giggling conspicuously. I then watched from his window as he turned over every chair, looked under every flat surface and scoured his closet for an Edward that he would never find. Somehow I still have a job.
A coworker of mine was frantically emptying her purse in my office this morning looking for her keys and she inadvertently left behind a tampon on the floor. My boss had figured I was making a vampire joke and had left the tampon at Edward’s feet as an offering and congratulated me on my joke. Sadly I couldn't take the credit. Edward has aparently learned to play jokes on his own. He sent my coworker an email from my computer thanking her for the teabag and that he’d never seen them in “plain” flavor before. ...OK I helped him.
Edward the Cutout has been an agent for pants-pissing shock, tampon jokes, giggly picture taking, frozen-faced brooding under any condition and general hilarity. But after watching Eclipse, I felt bad for not taking him seriously. Maybe we really should have been swooning at his feet and wishing that he would really come to life to grace us with his melancholy obsessive tendencies. You spend two hours watching a living version of your office prank defending the girl he loves, ripping other vampires to shreds and showing a pretty decent emotional range for once… and then you feel as though maybe he’s worth a bit more than your laughter.
In conclusion, I'm ready to admit that the true value of Twilight probably lies somewhere between "cardboard cutout tampon jokes" and "legitimate". It does disturb me that Stephanie Meyer can write an entire paragraph in which a vampire tells you what prostitute blood tastes like but keeps all romance completely G-rated. At least she has her priorities straight. Thanks, Mormons.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Fishing Makes Me Feel Like An Idiot
So, in celebration of our 6 year anniversary of dating, my boyfriend decided we should go fishing. Go ahead and wrap your mind around that because that's the LEAST crazy part of this blog post.
Mind you, he's been trying to get me to go fishing with him for YEARS now and I decided to give in this time because we always do girly (read: normal) shit for our anniversaries and I figure he'd done his time.
This started with my genius plan to get out of going fishing for the rest of forever. I told him I would only go if he found me pink waders. No fishing outfitter worth it's weight in testosterone would manufacture something like that, let alone sell it. I figured he'd stop short of surfing that land of ridiculous purchases known as Amazon.com and call it quits. ...He called my bluff. Before I knew it I was in the middle of Outdoor Emporium trying on pink waders made for breast cancer awareness month - thanks a fucking lot October!
I hear Garren talk about his fishing adventures all the time and unless it involves a fistfight with some random asshole (it happens) I use this as "me time". I zone out, I think about jewelry, I think about work, I think about what outfit I want to wear tomorrow. It's all over my head, so I just turn on the brain static and nod and smile. Before you start thinking this is the most fucked up thing ever, we've gone on this way for 6 years, assholes.
I knew my day would involve being out in the boonies, probably seeing a fish get whapped over the head with a club and game wardens who dress like Dudley Do-Right. What I wasn't prepared for was how backwoods this fishing area was. Shortly before getting to our fishing spot, we passed a roadside stand proudly selling "rebel flags", a business selling "tomatoe" and horse tied to a tree. I've never seen Deliverance, but the entire environment made my butthole pucker.
My waders were to say the least a bit snug and I waddled down to the river with the worst case of camel toe any female has ever lived through. Walking around all day with neoprene in your crotch is exhilarating. We spent the better part of the afternoon trying to outsmart an animal with a brain the size of a lima bean and didn't succeed. I sunburned one side of my face. And I became a little racist temporarily.
What I didn't exactly prepare myself for was the fish gutting. Of course we didn't catch one, but the guy next to us did. Let me just say, putting the bait on your hook, casting your line and standing around on a rock in the water is very peaceful. You feel at one with the earth, hearkening back to a simpler time and feeling like you know what Davy Crockett felt like. Normal Rockwell would be inspired. THEN, someone clubs a fish over the head and guts it before its heart stops beating and you suddenly want to move to a landlocked country. Any landlocked country. I'd consider communism. Knowing that my boyfriend does this made me feel betrayed. I felt like I had been living with a teddy bear for 5 years. A teddy bear who talks lovingly to our cats, does laundry like a pro and giggles at poop jokes. And then you imagine said teddy bear going Ted Bundy on a fish... it's disheartening.
I also love situations where my stereotypes are confirmed and today was no exception. I always think of fisherman as cliquey, opinionated, speech-slurring elitists. And today there was an overweight gentleman standing on his rock soap box name dropping the people he talks to on gamefishing.com forums, berating "arm-chair fishermen" and drawling on and on about he knows all the tricks for finding fish. I want to say his name was Jimbo. I never came CLOSE to knowing anything about him of that nature, but the rest of the stereotype was there so I'm going to take poetic justice here and just say it was.
I don't suppose I'll hang up my fishing pole yet though. Overall it was just too entertaining not to go back.
Mind you, he's been trying to get me to go fishing with him for YEARS now and I decided to give in this time because we always do girly (read: normal) shit for our anniversaries and I figure he'd done his time.
This started with my genius plan to get out of going fishing for the rest of forever. I told him I would only go if he found me pink waders. No fishing outfitter worth it's weight in testosterone would manufacture something like that, let alone sell it. I figured he'd stop short of surfing that land of ridiculous purchases known as Amazon.com and call it quits. ...He called my bluff. Before I knew it I was in the middle of Outdoor Emporium trying on pink waders made for breast cancer awareness month - thanks a fucking lot October!
I hear Garren talk about his fishing adventures all the time and unless it involves a fistfight with some random asshole (it happens) I use this as "me time". I zone out, I think about jewelry, I think about work, I think about what outfit I want to wear tomorrow. It's all over my head, so I just turn on the brain static and nod and smile. Before you start thinking this is the most fucked up thing ever, we've gone on this way for 6 years, assholes.
I knew my day would involve being out in the boonies, probably seeing a fish get whapped over the head with a club and game wardens who dress like Dudley Do-Right. What I wasn't prepared for was how backwoods this fishing area was. Shortly before getting to our fishing spot, we passed a roadside stand proudly selling "rebel flags", a business selling "tomatoe" and horse tied to a tree. I've never seen Deliverance, but the entire environment made my butthole pucker.
My waders were to say the least a bit snug and I waddled down to the river with the worst case of camel toe any female has ever lived through. Walking around all day with neoprene in your crotch is exhilarating. We spent the better part of the afternoon trying to outsmart an animal with a brain the size of a lima bean and didn't succeed. I sunburned one side of my face. And I became a little racist temporarily.
What I didn't exactly prepare myself for was the fish gutting. Of course we didn't catch one, but the guy next to us did. Let me just say, putting the bait on your hook, casting your line and standing around on a rock in the water is very peaceful. You feel at one with the earth, hearkening back to a simpler time and feeling like you know what Davy Crockett felt like. Normal Rockwell would be inspired. THEN, someone clubs a fish over the head and guts it before its heart stops beating and you suddenly want to move to a landlocked country. Any landlocked country. I'd consider communism. Knowing that my boyfriend does this made me feel betrayed. I felt like I had been living with a teddy bear for 5 years. A teddy bear who talks lovingly to our cats, does laundry like a pro and giggles at poop jokes. And then you imagine said teddy bear going Ted Bundy on a fish... it's disheartening.
I also love situations where my stereotypes are confirmed and today was no exception. I always think of fisherman as cliquey, opinionated, speech-slurring elitists. And today there was an overweight gentleman standing on his rock soap box name dropping the people he talks to on gamefishing.com forums, berating "arm-chair fishermen" and drawling on and on about he knows all the tricks for finding fish. I want to say his name was Jimbo. I never came CLOSE to knowing anything about him of that nature, but the rest of the stereotype was there so I'm going to take poetic justice here and just say it was.
I don't suppose I'll hang up my fishing pole yet though. Overall it was just too entertaining not to go back.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Backseat: Where Curry Goes To Die
So, Dad opted not to go to the Fremont Fair as the weather was crap (thank yoooou Seattle!) so, instead, we opted for brunch, a tour around the cemetery and reconnaissance mission in my car for something that smelled like death.
First of all, don't act like you've never let a smell go too long in the back of your car. In all seriousness I had a 14 year old hooker stay in my car for a night, smoke a Marlboro and leave her clothing there and the only reason I noticed was that the pants in the passenger seat were far too small to be mine. I live in a strange neighborhood and it was a 1990 Toyota Camry. Locking the door isn't even worth it.
I told Dad that I didn't want to drive because something smelled like rotten pickle in my car and I was planning on leaving the task of finding the offending object/food product until that evening... at the earliest. After a lovely day he dropped me off and, as I feared, we pulled into a parking spot and he insisted that we look through my backseat for whatever could be back there that smelled like pure evil.
First of all, let's not pretend that none of us know how this game works:
Day 1 - you leave your leftover lunch in the back seat of your car because "Well, I'm going to Target later, I'll take it out then" or "well it's not THAT warm out here so it's basically the same as refrigerating it, right?" Then you promptly forget because it gets too dark and you don't want to run into your neighbor that drives the Trans Am and has a molestache. Or it's too cold and late and you don't want to go outside in your pajamas causing said neighbor to judge your clothing choices. You decide it can wait until tomorrow.
Day 2 - you have blissfully forgotten about your leftover lunch and you get in the car in the morning sensing nothing amiss. In fact - you car kinda smells like lunch from yesterday... very strange. You return to your car after work and wonder what that strange-ish odor is. You don't remember smelling anything before.
Day 3 - Hmmm... you don't remember it smelling bad in here yesterday and suddenly today there's something strange smelling in the air. Oh well. Maybe it's nothing. Hopefully you just stepped on something. I mean, the trunk leaks, right? Of course it'll smell funny. Let's leave it until tomorrow when we're going back to Target to buy that thing that we intended to get but didn't get because you got distracted looking at clothing, buying cosmetics and playing with the children's toys for an hour. Yes, we'll take care of it this evening.
Day 4 - You forgot to go to Target. It's too late. Something is seriously wrong here. What could it be?! It doesn't smell like food (anymore) and the source is completely untraceable. But you don't have the heart to turn around and discard your garbage. It won't stink any less later. That afternoon you go out to your car and check your backseat. You check it, not because your best friend Molly instilled in you a deep-seated fear that every vacant car back seat is harboring a rapist with a knife, but because you are afraid to check if whatever stinks has grown teeth and a tail and has started to chew on your leather interior.
Days 5 - 10 - Just drive with the windows down. Tell everyone your car is out of gas, your check engine light is on, anything to keep people out of it. Whatever it is will mold over and stop stinking in just a few days. Just wait it out. It will fossilize, you'll dig it up later and you'll be an archaeological hero.
Day 11 - Dad-shame. He bought you that car for graduation. From college. Where you should have learned responsibility and cleanliness. How did Felisha put up with you Freshman year without killing you or suffocating on errant garbage... The object is found and disposed of by dad. Try not to notice that it's liquified curry... just let him walk it to the dumpster... promise yourself that you'll never leave food in the car again.
This is much better than coming very close to getting a baby mole lost in your engine, but I'll tell that story next time.
First of all, don't act like you've never let a smell go too long in the back of your car. In all seriousness I had a 14 year old hooker stay in my car for a night, smoke a Marlboro and leave her clothing there and the only reason I noticed was that the pants in the passenger seat were far too small to be mine. I live in a strange neighborhood and it was a 1990 Toyota Camry. Locking the door isn't even worth it.
I told Dad that I didn't want to drive because something smelled like rotten pickle in my car and I was planning on leaving the task of finding the offending object/food product until that evening... at the earliest. After a lovely day he dropped me off and, as I feared, we pulled into a parking spot and he insisted that we look through my backseat for whatever could be back there that smelled like pure evil.
First of all, let's not pretend that none of us know how this game works:
Day 1 - you leave your leftover lunch in the back seat of your car because "Well, I'm going to Target later, I'll take it out then" or "well it's not THAT warm out here so it's basically the same as refrigerating it, right?" Then you promptly forget because it gets too dark and you don't want to run into your neighbor that drives the Trans Am and has a molestache. Or it's too cold and late and you don't want to go outside in your pajamas causing said neighbor to judge your clothing choices. You decide it can wait until tomorrow.
Day 2 - you have blissfully forgotten about your leftover lunch and you get in the car in the morning sensing nothing amiss. In fact - you car kinda smells like lunch from yesterday... very strange. You return to your car after work and wonder what that strange-ish odor is. You don't remember smelling anything before.
Day 3 - Hmmm... you don't remember it smelling bad in here yesterday and suddenly today there's something strange smelling in the air. Oh well. Maybe it's nothing. Hopefully you just stepped on something. I mean, the trunk leaks, right? Of course it'll smell funny. Let's leave it until tomorrow when we're going back to Target to buy that thing that we intended to get but didn't get because you got distracted looking at clothing, buying cosmetics and playing with the children's toys for an hour. Yes, we'll take care of it this evening.
Day 4 - You forgot to go to Target. It's too late. Something is seriously wrong here. What could it be?! It doesn't smell like food (anymore) and the source is completely untraceable. But you don't have the heart to turn around and discard your garbage. It won't stink any less later. That afternoon you go out to your car and check your backseat. You check it, not because your best friend Molly instilled in you a deep-seated fear that every vacant car back seat is harboring a rapist with a knife, but because you are afraid to check if whatever stinks has grown teeth and a tail and has started to chew on your leather interior.
Days 5 - 10 - Just drive with the windows down. Tell everyone your car is out of gas, your check engine light is on, anything to keep people out of it. Whatever it is will mold over and stop stinking in just a few days. Just wait it out. It will fossilize, you'll dig it up later and you'll be an archaeological hero.
Day 11 - Dad-shame. He bought you that car for graduation. From college. Where you should have learned responsibility and cleanliness. How did Felisha put up with you Freshman year without killing you or suffocating on errant garbage... The object is found and disposed of by dad. Try not to notice that it's liquified curry... just let him walk it to the dumpster... promise yourself that you'll never leave food in the car again.
This is much better than coming very close to getting a baby mole lost in your engine, but I'll tell that story next time.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Mentally Preparing to Witness Naked Cyclists with my Dad Tomorrow
Because you'll learn enough about me later on I'll start you off with this little tidbit. I live in Seattle. Famous for many things but foremost in my mind - The Naked Bicyclists of Fremont. This weekend is the fair that their sagging testicles and bike chains fear all year - the Solstice Fair.
I should preface this by saying that this event was traumatizing for me and I haven't been since I was about 7. I got lost there and basically let my mind wander to a place where I'd spend the rest of my day lost at the Fremont Fair where my friend's mother would never come looking for me and I'd be taken in by a family of hippies who would raise me to eat flax seed and granola and live in a treehouse not just in the summer when it would be awesome but in the fucking winter and I started crying. Someone took pity on me and helped me find my friend and her mom. They pacified me with an elephant ear, but my opinion of the Fremont district and it's hippie gatherings had been sullied for life.
So what does dad want to do for Father's Day tomorrow? Go to brunch (yay pancakes/omelets/hashbrowns/random lunch foods/apple juice!) and then to the Fremont Fair (nooo hippies/hemp jewelry/flaxseed cookies/testicles and/in bike chains.) Dad is busy doing grown up adult things most of the time so I'm not sure that he's aware of what we're going to be witness to tomorrow. Instead of saying "No Dad, there will be naked people... like people you don't want to see naked... on bicycles tomorrow." So I'm winging it.
Since I don't own a calendar and made plans with Dad on mothers day, I spent my entire day with my mom today. We got ourselves caffeined up and went to go see Date Night (I know we're really late on this one, but I'm sure as hell not going to watch Letters to Juliet.) I now understand where I get my juvenile sense of humor because anytime someone said "vagina" during the movie (which is A LOT!!!) we would both dissolve laughing. We both have them. Why was it so damn funny?! I don't know but I just spent 90 full seconds typing this sentence because I was thinking about vagina.
Tomorrow will likely involve a post about what happens when a 65 year old man with testicles like oranges in a tube sock gets said testicles stuck in a bike chain and you witness this in the presence of your father.
So, an entire post about genitalia related incidents and my parents. I can't guarantee it will get better from here.
I should preface this by saying that this event was traumatizing for me and I haven't been since I was about 7. I got lost there and basically let my mind wander to a place where I'd spend the rest of my day lost at the Fremont Fair where my friend's mother would never come looking for me and I'd be taken in by a family of hippies who would raise me to eat flax seed and granola and live in a treehouse not just in the summer when it would be awesome but in the fucking winter and I started crying. Someone took pity on me and helped me find my friend and her mom. They pacified me with an elephant ear, but my opinion of the Fremont district and it's hippie gatherings had been sullied for life.
So what does dad want to do for Father's Day tomorrow? Go to brunch (yay pancakes/omelets/hashbrowns/random lunch foods/apple juice!) and then to the Fremont Fair (nooo hippies/hemp jewelry/flaxseed cookies/testicles and/in bike chains.) Dad is busy doing grown up adult things most of the time so I'm not sure that he's aware of what we're going to be witness to tomorrow. Instead of saying "No Dad, there will be naked people... like people you don't want to see naked... on bicycles tomorrow." So I'm winging it.
Since I don't own a calendar and made plans with Dad on mothers day, I spent my entire day with my mom today. We got ourselves caffeined up and went to go see Date Night (I know we're really late on this one, but I'm sure as hell not going to watch Letters to Juliet.) I now understand where I get my juvenile sense of humor because anytime someone said "vagina" during the movie (which is A LOT!!!) we would both dissolve laughing. We both have them. Why was it so damn funny?! I don't know but I just spent 90 full seconds typing this sentence because I was thinking about vagina.
Tomorrow will likely involve a post about what happens when a 65 year old man with testicles like oranges in a tube sock gets said testicles stuck in a bike chain and you witness this in the presence of your father.
So, an entire post about genitalia related incidents and my parents. I can't guarantee it will get better from here.
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