Death: How to Make It Work For You, On the Job
I've been thinking about mortality a lot lately, not on account of any illnesses I might have (though I could have loads; it's been ages since I went to the doc), but because I read a really good book about the subject by Julian Barnes (Metroland). The book is called Nothing to Be Frightened Of. He basically presents the idea of death as the be-all-end-all and how terrifying that can be, but also how oddly reassuring the thought is that, well, this is it, better make the best of it.
I suppose the idea of mortality comes up more often in my mind now because I'm much older than I ever thought I might be, if not in terms of chronology than in terms of years of experience, without having experienced some basic human needs in the course of my life (thus, if I died tomorrow, I'd feel more than a little cheated, all things considered). When I was younger and stupidly fixated on the idea of "dying young" but not before "blessing the world with a masterpiece," the idea of much good coming after thirty would have been suspect to my mind. Then again, the heroic early death of literary or cinematic or musical heroes often leaves out the very important fact that you're fucked after you die, because all the posthumous mythologizing can't raise you from your tomb.
Which is why you never see the zombie Ian Curtis or a reanimated JD Salinger running around these days.
One of the basic arguments of the book has to do with the afterlife, and whether or not it exists. Barnes is of the opinion that it doesn't, and I can see his logic for it (wouldn't it be egotistical of us to suppose that, just because we had the run of things on this side of the mortal coin, we could have even longer stays of execution on the other?). But there's enough of the Southern Baptist faith of which I was brought up in and for a large part rejected still left to make me fearful of the idea that nothing exists beyond the void. Pretty heady stuff, and all this after having a new niece born into my life that I look forward to seeing grow up and imparting my wisdom to, provided I don't get lucky in the genetic race to continue propagating the species and never mate myself (I mean, mate with another person besides myself, not that I can mate with myself...bloody hell).
Lighter Topics
Spring is here...is it? Just around the corner?...well, something resembling it seems to be lollygagging around, and in the interim my allergies are starting their return to full and annoying life. I look forward to the first dusting of pollen, because that will be the sign that I was wise to save so many coins for possible trips to the car wash.
Ay dios mio...
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
As often happens lately, something truly horrifying has happened in the world. I'm not just talking about the NFL labor agreement kerfuffle (though that is bad), I mean the earthquake, tsunami, and now explosion at a nuclear plant in Japan, all within the span of forty-eight hours. I wrote up something about that for a website I contribute to regularly (by "regularly" I mean "infrequently"), so I won't go into detail here. I just want to send out a thought or two for the Japanese people, I'm not a praying person much so it feels wrong to say "praying" for them but I reckon it's about right.
It seems like some people want to say this is a "sign of the apocalypse". Those people are idiots and jerks.
Anyway, I got to hold the baby again last night, she went to sleep in my arms and I almost fell asleep myself (I'd been up since six in the morning, on account of work). Did I mention how cute she is?
Shout out to my first follower, who I'm betting based on his comment is my cousin Brandon. If this is correct, he will quote a Morrissey solo (not the Smiths) lyric in the comments section of this post. The ball is in your court, sir...;-p
It seems like some people want to say this is a "sign of the apocalypse". Those people are idiots and jerks.
Anyway, I got to hold the baby again last night, she went to sleep in my arms and I almost fell asleep myself (I'd been up since six in the morning, on account of work). Did I mention how cute she is?
Shout out to my first follower, who I'm betting based on his comment is my cousin Brandon. If this is correct, he will quote a Morrissey solo (not the Smiths) lyric in the comments section of this post. The ball is in your court, sir...;-p
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Uncle Trevordomus
I had been predicting the birth of my niece, Dusty Sade, for some time now, but I was wrong every time. She came into the world this past Tuesday, February 22, so now I don't have to constantly ask my sister "have you had your baby yet?" I'm sure that's the least of her worries.
It's hard to describe just what's going on in me right now, other than the monster case of indigestion or whatever it was that almost kept me up all night and may or may not be related to the questionable nature of the hamburger steak that was served for dinner (the less you know about this, the better). In regards to my niece, I mean, it's odd because she went from being this abstract concept (i.e., there's a baby in my sister's belly) to a real, live, screaming and crying thing. I've held her twice now, and each time she stretches and squirms and makes horrible faces like she's about to cry, and I can't help but badger perfect strangers with the picture I now have on my cell phone when I first open it up, of her looking at me like I'm nuts. I love the little stinker.
And yes, I have indeed shown off the picture I took of her, she's just about the cutest thing I've seen. It's different than, say, when a cousin or uncle of mine has a kid (as has happened over the past six years now), I mean, those babies are cute and all, but this is different. My sister, whom I can still recall as a bald-headed little stinker, has her own now, covered in hair and sporting some tiny, tiny hands and feet. It feels like I'm closer to this one than to my cousins or whatnot.
In the past, I've wondered what it might be like to have a family of my own, kids that look like me but hopefully have better luck in social situations in which they have to talk to girls. Not being sexually active in high school did mean that I avoided the pitfall of having a kid right before graduation that could, in turn, derail my chances to have fun away at college, but then I didn't have much fun in college, either. Also, there was the whole "not being sexually active" part, which was not by choice. Anyway, I would like to think I'd be a good dad, perhaps because I'm something of an okay babysitter (who else would let his three-year-old cousin "ground and pound" him for her amusement while tears streamed down his face from all the pain she was inflicting with her surprisingly muscular fists?). Time will tell if I can land a girlfriend, much less a baby mama. But for the time being, I will try to be the best uncle I can to little Vanity T'Pau.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Arcade Fire Can Also Win Best Album
My sister is still, as of this writing, swollen with pregnancy, but I reckon she'll pop at some point soon because...okay, I just jinxed it, she's now going to carry the baby into March. Sorry, sis.
Anyway, before the birth of Jermajesty Beyonce, I will say that the past few weeks of waiting for her to arrive have caused me to wonder about my own fitness as a parent, should I be lucky enough to con a woman into loving me. I'm great with the cousins and half-cousins who have come through my grandparents' abode over the years for babysitting (that's not me saying that, I have testimonials that me taking a whiffle bat to the crotch kept Lil Satan entertained enough to allow the grands some much-needed bickering time), but the thought of my own kid, a little copy of me, somehow being born onto this planet and then asking me to clean up his or her shit, well, that's just a little unnerving.
You see, my experiences with women have been of the disappointing kind, sometimes I was the instigator of it or she was, but the result was usually the same; something that started off kinda nice devolved because one or both of us was too insecure to really think this might last.
So god forbid that I bring a child into that equation. Also, it doesn't help that, of the various couplings within my family (marriage-wise, I mean; no incest that I know of), only a couple are of the "romantic, isn't it?" variety. What I mean is, marriage and family are not conducive to happiness amongst my family, or if it is, it's aided by the abuse and misuse of alcohol and/or drugs. Depression seems to run in the family, as well as "playful" ball-busting that, for someone as sensitive as me, has sometimes come off as more mean than meaningful (see my thoughts on Thanksgiving).
But I always had an "out": my father's side of the family. Granted, I know next to nothing about them, but that's the point: I can come up with all sorts of identities for the man and his kinfolks. He could have been a hero, and his father before him, and they never spent any major holiday sitting around the table eying each other with mutual suspicion and ill-concieved contempt for some imagined past wrong. Not that my family is Swedish malaise personified, but let's just say Ingmar Bergman could have a field day with them (I've only seen a couple of Bergman films, but really, you see one and you get the idea. Plus, I read both of his autobiographies). But my father's side, the family I didn't know...they could be just about anything.
To this day, my efforts to construct what my father was really like, assuming he's not around anymore (I don't even know if that's the case or not) have failed, or I just haven't pursued them to the best of my ability. It's this lack of closure, maybe, that has something to do with my lack to be the kind of guy I could see having a family, and being there. Maybe, deep down, I fear I'd run away at the first sign of trouble (say, the part where my future girlfriend or wife says "we need to talk" and indicates that yes, my sperm is powerful enough to propogate the species), or I'd just plain suck at it. Maybe I should quit being such a scaredy cat.
Anyway, not to extend all this to my as-yet unborn niece, but I hope she gets none of the weird shit that the rest of my family has; I know I'll try my best to be Uncle Trevor for her, and not "weird Uncle Trevor who lives in the basement and never talks to women." I'll love her no matter when she's born, but I hope for my sister's sake it's before St Patty's day.
Trevor
Anyway, before the birth of Jermajesty Beyonce, I will say that the past few weeks of waiting for her to arrive have caused me to wonder about my own fitness as a parent, should I be lucky enough to con a woman into loving me. I'm great with the cousins and half-cousins who have come through my grandparents' abode over the years for babysitting (that's not me saying that, I have testimonials that me taking a whiffle bat to the crotch kept Lil Satan entertained enough to allow the grands some much-needed bickering time), but the thought of my own kid, a little copy of me, somehow being born onto this planet and then asking me to clean up his or her shit, well, that's just a little unnerving.
You see, my experiences with women have been of the disappointing kind, sometimes I was the instigator of it or she was, but the result was usually the same; something that started off kinda nice devolved because one or both of us was too insecure to really think this might last.
So god forbid that I bring a child into that equation. Also, it doesn't help that, of the various couplings within my family (marriage-wise, I mean; no incest that I know of), only a couple are of the "romantic, isn't it?" variety. What I mean is, marriage and family are not conducive to happiness amongst my family, or if it is, it's aided by the abuse and misuse of alcohol and/or drugs. Depression seems to run in the family, as well as "playful" ball-busting that, for someone as sensitive as me, has sometimes come off as more mean than meaningful (see my thoughts on Thanksgiving).
But I always had an "out": my father's side of the family. Granted, I know next to nothing about them, but that's the point: I can come up with all sorts of identities for the man and his kinfolks. He could have been a hero, and his father before him, and they never spent any major holiday sitting around the table eying each other with mutual suspicion and ill-concieved contempt for some imagined past wrong. Not that my family is Swedish malaise personified, but let's just say Ingmar Bergman could have a field day with them (I've only seen a couple of Bergman films, but really, you see one and you get the idea. Plus, I read both of his autobiographies). But my father's side, the family I didn't know...they could be just about anything.
To this day, my efforts to construct what my father was really like, assuming he's not around anymore (I don't even know if that's the case or not) have failed, or I just haven't pursued them to the best of my ability. It's this lack of closure, maybe, that has something to do with my lack to be the kind of guy I could see having a family, and being there. Maybe, deep down, I fear I'd run away at the first sign of trouble (say, the part where my future girlfriend or wife says "we need to talk" and indicates that yes, my sperm is powerful enough to propogate the species), or I'd just plain suck at it. Maybe I should quit being such a scaredy cat.
Anyway, not to extend all this to my as-yet unborn niece, but I hope she gets none of the weird shit that the rest of my family has; I know I'll try my best to be Uncle Trevor for her, and not "weird Uncle Trevor who lives in the basement and never talks to women." I'll love her no matter when she's born, but I hope for my sister's sake it's before St Patty's day.
Trevor
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Rapists Never Win...Except in the NBA
Wait, did I say that? Too soon?
Anyway, life has been moving along for yours truly, sister is still preggers though her due date is closing in (I'm ready to meet my new niece, Kajagoogoo Wham! Stewart; she doesn't know it yet, but my sister is naming her child after an Eighties pop music princess of the mall circuit so, to protect her identity, I'll refer to her as such here, varying the one-hit wonder or established Eighties act with each update until I become sick of such shenanigans).
Just now, I took the online Jeopardy test, nailing a few ("Camus," "McCall Smith" for the "author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency") and whiffing on a few ("raining cats and dogs?" Gotta hate the slap-to-the-forehead-after-the-fact realization). This is the fourth year in a row I've taken the test, and I'm missing Glee for this (though to be fair, the recent season arc has been "you gotta be fucking kidding me" in terms of plot consistancy and/or development).
Things are certainly different from the first few times I took it; gone is the arrogant, "I totally got this" of my callow youth, though the rib-kicking I took emotionally and financially last year might have more to do with that than any general lack of information retrieval on my part. I gotta be honest, "Jeopardy" money is and always has been my "realistic plan to pay off student loans" since I started taking this test. Cats and Dogs will be haunting me in my sleep, even if somehow I manage to get through the gauntlet.
But that's the perks of being a smart guy, book-wise; you can't always apply that to the real world. In fact, it's safe to say that, in many ways, an education can be more of a hinderance than a help, considering what kind of education you're talking about. I know all about the French New Wave, the Beatles, the presidents of this here United States (like the author of "Decision Points," George W. Bush...the one and only time I'm glad I know that, thanks again Jeopardy), but applying that to the real world seems harder than I thought. In preperation for the Jeopardy test, I read the Ken Jennings book about his time on the show, and he made some very observant points while also writing a very entertaining book: knowing trivia doesn't necessarily translate as intelligence, though it can.
But hey, I tried, and that's more than I can say for a lot of people. Whether I get anywhere with it this year or the next (because, oh yes, I will try again next year), the fact is I took a chance on something that I might be good at. I'm gonna have to keep that in mind if a job opens up for which I am somehow qualified via my degree, because it's awfully easy to say "nah, they wouldn't give me the job anyway."
Okay, back to home and to catch the last little bit of Glee...though I predict that it will suck.
Anyway, life has been moving along for yours truly, sister is still preggers though her due date is closing in (I'm ready to meet my new niece, Kajagoogoo Wham! Stewart; she doesn't know it yet, but my sister is naming her child after an Eighties pop music princess of the mall circuit so, to protect her identity, I'll refer to her as such here, varying the one-hit wonder or established Eighties act with each update until I become sick of such shenanigans).
Just now, I took the online Jeopardy test, nailing a few ("Camus," "McCall Smith" for the "author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency") and whiffing on a few ("raining cats and dogs?" Gotta hate the slap-to-the-forehead-after-the-fact realization). This is the fourth year in a row I've taken the test, and I'm missing Glee for this (though to be fair, the recent season arc has been "you gotta be fucking kidding me" in terms of plot consistancy and/or development).
Things are certainly different from the first few times I took it; gone is the arrogant, "I totally got this" of my callow youth, though the rib-kicking I took emotionally and financially last year might have more to do with that than any general lack of information retrieval on my part. I gotta be honest, "Jeopardy" money is and always has been my "realistic plan to pay off student loans" since I started taking this test. Cats and Dogs will be haunting me in my sleep, even if somehow I manage to get through the gauntlet.
But that's the perks of being a smart guy, book-wise; you can't always apply that to the real world. In fact, it's safe to say that, in many ways, an education can be more of a hinderance than a help, considering what kind of education you're talking about. I know all about the French New Wave, the Beatles, the presidents of this here United States (like the author of "Decision Points," George W. Bush...the one and only time I'm glad I know that, thanks again Jeopardy), but applying that to the real world seems harder than I thought. In preperation for the Jeopardy test, I read the Ken Jennings book about his time on the show, and he made some very observant points while also writing a very entertaining book: knowing trivia doesn't necessarily translate as intelligence, though it can.
But hey, I tried, and that's more than I can say for a lot of people. Whether I get anywhere with it this year or the next (because, oh yes, I will try again next year), the fact is I took a chance on something that I might be good at. I'm gonna have to keep that in mind if a job opens up for which I am somehow qualified via my degree, because it's awfully easy to say "nah, they wouldn't give me the job anyway."
Okay, back to home and to catch the last little bit of Glee...though I predict that it will suck.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Something Wicked Hard This Way Comes
Snow, snow, snow...it's all you hear about in these parts lately. Bet the folks in Antartica think we're being a little paranoid about it, inbetween times when they ask themselves "why am I in Antartica?"
Yes, it's been a snowy season in the Deep South this year, further proof (if you're a Republican) that Obama is sending this country straight to socialist hell or (if you're a Democrat) that the GOP is hellbent on turning everything to shit.
No wonder some nutjob in Arizona goes on a shooting spree...
I'm not here to say that the GOP is to blame, though God knows they do their fair share to stir up the hornet's nest of crazy mofos in this country. The Dems, much as I love 'em, are screwing the pooch.
Though to be fair, Sarah Palin puts a gunsight on your district and then you get shot? Got to be hard to ignore.
Anyway, on personal terms this has been a long month. I left my job at the hotel, then the snow storm and subsequent absence of hours at my other job left me thinking "hmm, perhaps I was a bit hasty to jump off that boat." I am available for weekend work, if any potential employers stumble across this, but I hope I'm making something out of nothing.
The fact that I went for a simple oil job yesterday and let myself be talked into spending $100 more on a new battery for my car even though, in retrospect, I didn't notice anything wrong with the other one...yeah, that doesn't play into my fears regarding my income at all.
Last summer, when I went so long between paychecks that I was begging and pleading for extensions on payments past due, I felt like I never wanted to be anywhere near this position again. So far, I've been lucky enough to not feel quite so pressured...until the loss of work due to the snow left me just a little aware of that feeling creeping back up.
So yeah, time to start working the pole again. My stripper name? "Misty Rainz"
I will continue to fight on, of course, sending off stories or essays until one gets published (one did, on OverthinkingIt.com, all about possible presidential candidates for Hollywood to make movies off of. Robot president, anyone?). God knows my good looks won't pay my bills unless people who judge these things suddenly get myopic.
Though, for the record, I am one sexy beast. :-p
Trev
Yes, it's been a snowy season in the Deep South this year, further proof (if you're a Republican) that Obama is sending this country straight to socialist hell or (if you're a Democrat) that the GOP is hellbent on turning everything to shit.
No wonder some nutjob in Arizona goes on a shooting spree...
I'm not here to say that the GOP is to blame, though God knows they do their fair share to stir up the hornet's nest of crazy mofos in this country. The Dems, much as I love 'em, are screwing the pooch.
Though to be fair, Sarah Palin puts a gunsight on your district and then you get shot? Got to be hard to ignore.
Anyway, on personal terms this has been a long month. I left my job at the hotel, then the snow storm and subsequent absence of hours at my other job left me thinking "hmm, perhaps I was a bit hasty to jump off that boat." I am available for weekend work, if any potential employers stumble across this, but I hope I'm making something out of nothing.
The fact that I went for a simple oil job yesterday and let myself be talked into spending $100 more on a new battery for my car even though, in retrospect, I didn't notice anything wrong with the other one...yeah, that doesn't play into my fears regarding my income at all.
Last summer, when I went so long between paychecks that I was begging and pleading for extensions on payments past due, I felt like I never wanted to be anywhere near this position again. So far, I've been lucky enough to not feel quite so pressured...until the loss of work due to the snow left me just a little aware of that feeling creeping back up.
So yeah, time to start working the pole again. My stripper name? "Misty Rainz"
I will continue to fight on, of course, sending off stories or essays until one gets published (one did, on OverthinkingIt.com, all about possible presidential candidates for Hollywood to make movies off of. Robot president, anyone?). God knows my good looks won't pay my bills unless people who judge these things suddenly get myopic.
Though, for the record, I am one sexy beast. :-p
Trev
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Duck's Arse Part One
I can distinctly recall the worst haircut I ever got, without necessarily recalling the specific year. I know it was in the summer time, I might have been between middle and high school or maybe just middle school terms (it was definitely after my sixth-grade year, because I was now wearing the glasses that I'd gotten that previous birthday pretty regularly. Before, I'd tried to conceal my glasses by only wearing them when I sat at the back of a classroom, unable to see the board otherwise. The little grooves on the sides of my nose gave me away). Anyway, it was definitely at a point before I got into the Beatles and decided that I liked having long hair. Prior to this, if a strand fell onto my lower neck, I panicked and rushed to the nearest barbershop.
My stepdad took me, my sis, and little brother to this place in downtown Clemson, an older-than-dirt barbershop where the guy running the place was an ex-Marine (you could tell by the infinite pictures of him in uniform, standing on some battleship deck with his platoon, ready to fight the infernal Japs or something). My little brother was up first, and he got what my stepdad wanted him to get: a flat-top. I laughed at my brother as his hair came buzzing off. Then it was my turn.
Like I said, I was wearing glasses at this point, I was blind as a bat without them (still am, matter of fact) and I had no idea what was going on. The snickers of my sister and freshly-shorn brother were an indication that, whatever was going on, it wasn't my usual "short back and sides and top and front, sideburns half what they are now". It wasn't until I got to put my glasses back on and missed the usual tug of hair on the side enveloping the ear pieces that I saw what had happened.
A fucking flat-top.
I'd never been a hat person much before, but the entirity of that ride home was spent with me encased in a baseball cap and refusing to take it off for my a-hole siblings, who enjoyed this a little too much. Thankfully it was the summer, which meant I didn't have to be seen in school like this. I did, however, have to be seen in Sunday school like this; having not quite acquired the ability to lay out of church that would later serve me so well (being unable to find a clean shirt, perhaps, or taking my sweet time showering only to find at the last minute that I was running behind and gosh, why don't I just stay here while you guys go?), I went into the little gym behind the main church anxious about being seen. For an adolescent boy, appearance matters as much as it does to the opposite sex; we live and die by what our peers think of us, and it's all about surface appearance. I already had two strikes against me, as puberty had not been kind when it doled out my ration of zits and pimples and I also had the new insult of eyeglasses with heavy lenses and old-school frames. Now I looked like a pimply GI Joe, the one dubbed "Sacrificial Man" who appears at the bottom of the toy rack and usually fulfills the role on a mission of being the one guy that COBRA soldiers can shoot at accurately and kill.
The first Sunday after my haircut, I went into the gym and made a beeline for the bathroom, to see if my hair (or absence of hair) was as bad as I thought. No, it was not...it was worse. Dressed up in a button-up shirt and jeans, I looked awful. I resolved to stay in there until Sunday school was over; I could avoid the taunting and jeers of my peers if I stayed put and played a little trash-can basketball for thirty minutes. A few more Sundays of that, and I got good at trashcan basketball, though judging from the reactions of my fellow Sunday schoolers who saw me hanging out in the men's room the entire time class was in session, I may have acquired a reputation as gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, except in the adolescent hierarchy of summer-time church-ordained school activities in which "Bible Jeopardy" trumps the secular, real-life variety (What is a Godless athiest that will burn in hell, Alex?).
Anyway, I bring all this up because when I was younger, I didn't have much control over my body. I had no say in when my zits would go away, or what methods my grandmother would use to hasten their exit from my face (think "medieval Spanish torture chamber" and you're on the right track, at least according to my memory), but I could control my hair. I thought I could, anyway, by showering at night before going to bed and thus avoiding the hassle of showering in the morning (because the water was cold or I was sensitive or something). This lead to years of me looking slightly greasy until (I'm ashamed to say it) college, when it hit me to reverse the time of day during which I washed my hair.
I will muse on this some more at a later date...
My stepdad took me, my sis, and little brother to this place in downtown Clemson, an older-than-dirt barbershop where the guy running the place was an ex-Marine (you could tell by the infinite pictures of him in uniform, standing on some battleship deck with his platoon, ready to fight the infernal Japs or something). My little brother was up first, and he got what my stepdad wanted him to get: a flat-top. I laughed at my brother as his hair came buzzing off. Then it was my turn.
Like I said, I was wearing glasses at this point, I was blind as a bat without them (still am, matter of fact) and I had no idea what was going on. The snickers of my sister and freshly-shorn brother were an indication that, whatever was going on, it wasn't my usual "short back and sides and top and front, sideburns half what they are now". It wasn't until I got to put my glasses back on and missed the usual tug of hair on the side enveloping the ear pieces that I saw what had happened.
A fucking flat-top.
I'd never been a hat person much before, but the entirity of that ride home was spent with me encased in a baseball cap and refusing to take it off for my a-hole siblings, who enjoyed this a little too much. Thankfully it was the summer, which meant I didn't have to be seen in school like this. I did, however, have to be seen in Sunday school like this; having not quite acquired the ability to lay out of church that would later serve me so well (being unable to find a clean shirt, perhaps, or taking my sweet time showering only to find at the last minute that I was running behind and gosh, why don't I just stay here while you guys go?), I went into the little gym behind the main church anxious about being seen. For an adolescent boy, appearance matters as much as it does to the opposite sex; we live and die by what our peers think of us, and it's all about surface appearance. I already had two strikes against me, as puberty had not been kind when it doled out my ration of zits and pimples and I also had the new insult of eyeglasses with heavy lenses and old-school frames. Now I looked like a pimply GI Joe, the one dubbed "Sacrificial Man" who appears at the bottom of the toy rack and usually fulfills the role on a mission of being the one guy that COBRA soldiers can shoot at accurately and kill.
The first Sunday after my haircut, I went into the gym and made a beeline for the bathroom, to see if my hair (or absence of hair) was as bad as I thought. No, it was not...it was worse. Dressed up in a button-up shirt and jeans, I looked awful. I resolved to stay in there until Sunday school was over; I could avoid the taunting and jeers of my peers if I stayed put and played a little trash-can basketball for thirty minutes. A few more Sundays of that, and I got good at trashcan basketball, though judging from the reactions of my fellow Sunday schoolers who saw me hanging out in the men's room the entire time class was in session, I may have acquired a reputation as gay.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, except in the adolescent hierarchy of summer-time church-ordained school activities in which "Bible Jeopardy" trumps the secular, real-life variety (What is a Godless athiest that will burn in hell, Alex?).
Anyway, I bring all this up because when I was younger, I didn't have much control over my body. I had no say in when my zits would go away, or what methods my grandmother would use to hasten their exit from my face (think "medieval Spanish torture chamber" and you're on the right track, at least according to my memory), but I could control my hair. I thought I could, anyway, by showering at night before going to bed and thus avoiding the hassle of showering in the morning (because the water was cold or I was sensitive or something). This lead to years of me looking slightly greasy until (I'm ashamed to say it) college, when it hit me to reverse the time of day during which I washed my hair.
I will muse on this some more at a later date...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)