Don't Even Look at Me, Peyton Manning

Today, for the first time in my existence, I got invited to join a fantasy football league. Sure, it was a pretty glorious moment, but in the same breath, it was a moment filled with complete and utter anxiety because I do not follow professional sports at all. I keep up with the SEC because it's part of the contract I signed as a Tennessee resident 23 years ago, but other than that, I don't really dabble in the sports community. There's a whole lot of suppressed memories that remind me that's not the world that I belong in, and I'm okay with that--it's similar to how I feel about not being welcomed in Anacostia, or most restaurants with vegan options. When asked by my roommate about how competitive I was going to be about it, I explained that I really didn't care if I won or I lost because I was mostly in it because of a heightened sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and the prospect of delicious hot wings. But obviously, I was going to need some help getting started.
I asked my friend Mark who invited me if he could offer some assistance, and he pretty much told me that this is not an aspect of life where people help each other: this is a part of life where people win. I respect that, but I also respect my dad, Wendell's, advice that he gave to me a long time ago, "If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at." So, I pretty much gave up on it immediately. I don't care enough to actually learn about the players... that would cut in to the amount of time I have looking up Jennifer Lawrence GIFs and inside information about the 10th season of Grey's Anatomy (speaking of, let's all take a moment of silence for Sandra Oh's departure in nine very short months). I had no interest in learning, let alone mastering, the art of fake football--if I were going to do that, I would have just played. People throughout my life always said, "I'm kind of surprised you didn't play football," which is a nice way of saying, "Hey, I think you're kind of fat, but in a useful way." In fact, I played a couple of sports growing up, but none ever panned out: too many yellow cards in soccer for running into people as hard as I could, never placed on the actual volleyball team because I threw volleyballs really hard at practice, and constant benching in softball because I got bored and sat down in the outfield. Some people would say that it all comes down to the fact that I'm not patient or disciplined enough to be an athlete, but I think what, or whom, it actually comes down to is Peyton Manning.
One day in first grade, it was announced that we would have a special guest coming to class... a friend of one of our classmate's families. Mrs. Ellis could barely get the name out without shuddering in his woven-knit UT orange teacher vest. Peyton Manning would be making an appearance, and most everyone in class continued to pick their noses or playing with their toys, but I remember being so excited. As someone who ingested as much culture as he could from an early age, I knew who Peyton was. So, I went home and told my parents--my dad said UT football was stupid, and the whole thing was rigged, which also reflected his opinion on every Presidential election leading back to Reagan, and the outcome of any given season of American Idol. But my mom understood where I was coming from, so we drove down to Wal-Mart so that I could pick myself up a disposable camera. There was going to be picture evidence of how good of friends Peyton and I would be. I imagined that he would teach me about football, give me piggy back rides, and eventually, we'd go hang out in Neyland Stadium... I could hardly sleep the night before, I was so excited.
But the day came, and naturally some overbearing parents who caught wind of the Peyton-sighting showed up to class. Finally, the time was approaching for me to meet Peyton, aka MAH BEST FRIEND, aka my future personal-Judas. I stepped up to the desk he was sitting at with shaky hands, unsure of what I should do with the camera and the piece of paper and all the emotion. He didn't look as big as I imagined, which is probably because I envisioned him to be a giant. He didn't say hi, he just reached and got my paper and signed it. I stood there nervously and asked if he would take a picture with me, and all I heard was "No." Mrs. Ellis, in her totally baffled state, ushered me away from the table.
I took the autograph to the back of the room by me and stood with a giant knot in my throat. Peyton, why had you forsaken me? I couldn't even bare to be in the same room, which should have been a tell tell sign that I would go on to have a lot of resentment and boundary issues in my life. I didn't want to look at him because he had betrayed me. We were supposed to be best friends. He was going to be like the big brother I never had, notwithstanding the older brother I already had. I looked down at the signature, which proved that he had taken absolutely NO time to practice cursive in elementary school, and I ripped it up. I threw it in the garbage, and I never looked back. I went home that night and threw the camera on the couch, and said I wanted nothing more to do with Peyton Manning or football, which was not too much of a stretch because I didn't have a lot to do with it before. I refused to root for him, and when they won the title in 1998, I made a conscious decision not to eat Tostitos for a solid chunk of time. (Okay, probably for like, two weeks, but I really love salsa. Get off my back).
Many-a-Peyton-fan along the way has tried to make excuses for him: he was probably just flustered or he wasn't allowed to take pictures or maybe I'm just telling the story wrong. Regardless, Kathy bought me a five dollar disposable camera, and he really didn't have to be such a twat waffle about the whole situation. I'm sure he has no recollection of me--though we may never know exactly how (other than reputable athletic ability and an unprecedented presence at the University of Tennessee), he's seemed to make a career out of the sport and has probably met too many people to count. But when people watch his Saturday Night Live skit of him working with United Way and a bunch of children, only to physically and verbally abuse them, people giggle because they think, Oh Peyton, you would never talk to children that way. Well guys... Peyton would... Peyton did.
So, I eventually decided to do the fantasy football league. My team's name is "Peyton Manning Sucks," and I plan on filling the necessary positions with people that have really cool names. But most of all, I want this fantasy league to be vindication. I do care about winning... not over the other participants, but over Peyton and the ghost of that seven year old who was totally screwed over by one of the most inflated egos to ever grace the beautiful green grass of Neyland Stadium. I wanted a hero, and I got Mr. Manning. I would have even taken that alcoholic, Tyler Bray as a class visitor before Peyton Manning. From that point on, I focused on heroes that exemplified the skills that I wanted to emulate, like Tina Wesson from Survivor (I will tell you the much more gracious, heartwarming story about meeting her later), or David Sedaris.

The Taking of WMATA 123

I just wanted to go home.

I could see them eyeing me from across the car, one of the most unfortunate times to be a bigger guy. I was a meal--a Thanksgiving feast to all these drunkards, and in the midst of all their McDonalds munchies, I looked like a combination Big Mac, Supersize Fry, 20 piece nugget, Diet Coke smorgasbord. The white people were, officially, out of control. I had always wondered what it would be like to be in this moment--the day that people reverted back to their animalistic ways. And all I could do was sit there and think, How did I get here? What led me to this moment? Let me tell you.

***

About six hours earlier, my roommate and I decided to go into the city for a Beerlympics competition. Sure, it seemed a little college-y, but I'm an addict for competition. Shortly after we arrived, we were sorted into teams, and the games began. After a handful of beers, we decided to go and meet some friends in another part of the city. After navigating the crowded floor of Cafe Citron via a combination of walking/salsa-ing to Jennifer Lopez hits, we finally found our group. As a classic group of 20-somethings, we danced awkwardly in a circle for approximately 20 minutes, fist pumped, and then decided to leave. No one was inebriated beyond help or anything, but it was obvious that we wouldn't be driving--there were only a couple options left and, sadly, one of those was taking the metro back toward home.

The Saturday night metro isn't really a place that you ever want to be because it's a completely mixed bag. Sometimes people throw up; sometimes people are making out; sometimes you don't even want to know what happens. So before we got on the metro, I called our other roommate, our last hope, before we got on the train headed toward our apartment. Normally, I would have given up after one call, but the mixture of competition and low-grade beer made me more optimistic than usual. Five calls later, there was finally an answer: a groggy roommate who was not going to pick us up. The moment had come to face what would be the most absurd and slightly dangerous Saturday night metro yet. Most of the time, if you just keep to yourself everything turns out fine. I mean, sure, you might get awkwardly approached by someone, but it's a relatively painless process because the metro runs on a timetable, or at least that's what we like to believe. We transferred over from the red line over to the orange, and it seemed as if the ride was going to be relatively patient, until the next to the last stop. On the way to the station we needed to get off at, the train came to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, and we were stranded in the car with a train full of people and a faulty speaker.

Whenever the train stops in the tunnel, I immediately imagine that we're under the Potomac, even if we're not. I imagine that the walls are going to cave in, and then I'm going to have to swim out of the tunnel Fear Factor style--and then I immediately regret smoking because I'm going to lose and then there's not going to be any trained swimmers to save me. And then something happened on the metro, as if everyone else was also thinking that the walls might cave in to. Essentially, everyone went bat shit crazy. It all started when two large women got up from their seats and addressed the young men who kept staring at them. They had green and purple tubes coming out of their hair, kind of like The Hunger Games, but without any regard to trying to look glamorous. This only caused the guys to egg them on more, which caused the one with green tubes and suspenders to get up and start grinding on the pole, which in turn caused everyone to pull out their cameras and start videoing the entire thing. I, too, pulled out my camera because I knew that if I made it out of that godforsaken train car, I wanted to write about it--our fear and our pain. 

My friend Samantha sat their, her eyes full of worry. We've gotten close, but none of us wanted to go out like this, and under the influence of alcohol, it seemed all too real that this could really be it. Suddenly, one of the guys next to us announced, "Maybe we need to start voting people out." This seemed like my moment, so I began working with the gay guy and his overbearing friend next to us. If I've learned anything this summer from watching Big Brother, it's that America LOVES the gays, so that's a good addition to my alliance. We also decided to include the girl who was passed out in the seat in front of them because, well, God only knows what would happen to her if we didn't... but it was at that moment that we heard screams from the other side of the metro, and we looked down  the car to see that the two large women were pulling away from each other and saying, "We'll give you something to take pictures of!!" and then they started making out again. The guy they were with who was wearing a Juggalo shirt stood propped up against the door nodding his head, and someone screamed, "Let's eat someone! Let's eat someone!"

It was at that moment that I realized that we weren't on Big Brother, nor were we in a metro car anymore... this was Lord of the Flies kind of stuff. Over the course of 20 minutes, we had progressed from a normal, semi-unstable Saturday night metro train to an island full of one-time-young-professionals contemplating who to kill for food. I worried first and foremost about the girl who was passed out. Being a young female passed out in an urban setting is already dangerous enough, but being in this urban setting only made the situation more pressing. I knew the obvious choice was probably the outlandish lesbians, but I couldn't help to feel paranoid: I was one of the meatiest options. I would provide the most nutrition--I could sustain at least half the car for at least thirty minutes. I thought about the future and what it could have been, and I began to actually wonder if that train car was where it would all end. In the mean time, everyone was screaming, begging the metro car to start moving, and the speaker would occasionally erupt into a loud noise that mostly sounded like, "Passengers...time...sorry...thanks."

And then the train surged forward. All the lesbians, alliances, and Juggalos couldn't keep me from the excitement I had in my heart. It was as if I had been saved, and once the doors opened, I hugged Samantha goodbye and ran out the doors with my roommate. One young man stopped to tell a metro worker that he was an "inbred piece of..." well, you get the idea, and in a last moment attempt to restore civility to the world, I yelled, "Everyone has lost their damn minds. Go home. Everyone go home," and people started moving toward the escalators. You never know what the future holds, but when you're stuck on a metro of potential-cannibals, you do learn to appreciate whatever is ahead. Again, I survived the Saturday night metro, but as for the next one... you can never be sure.

The Art of Rabbit Hunting

When I was younger, I used to go rabbit hunting with my dad. It was one of my favorite of all the hunting genres because it didn't require you to be quiet, and you got to walk around and do what you want for the most part. We would also bring along all of our hunting beagles (Andy, Alison, Gunner, Jimmy, Ed, and Coleen... the WIVK on-air staff) and they'd run around and bark and sniff things and when dad wasn't looking I would pet them or try to feed them leaves... you know... because it's funny to watch dogs eat leaves, especially when you're bored. But it wasn't until I got older that I realized how much I learned from going on these trips with my dad. Though I never got the itch for going out and shooting things, my love for stretching metaphors and meaningful life experiences ended up making the hunting trips way more applicable than I thought they would be.

The lessons would always come up in the most unpredictable of ways, and it was senior year of college that I realized exactly what it meant to be a good rabbit hunter. When it come to running around with a gun in the woods, I was always a little overly cautious--I always had a fear of shooting my dad in the face, or more likely, shooting one of the dogs. Once I actually shot a rabbit, I told my dad I was done; I kind of considered it more of a feat that I shot a rabbit and nothing else, and that's kind of the way that I went about the rest of my life. Get in, get out, call it a day.

And that's the exact approach that I took to my last Cinco de Mayo. My senior year was winding down quickly and after thesis and comprehensive exams were over, there wasn't really anything to do but show up to class and then celebrate with people in our spare time. The drink of choice at Maryville College is arguably a toss-up between boxed wine or margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant and considering that it was Cinco de Mayo (and a Saturday, mind you), margaritas were the obvious choice. I had decided that because it was too predictable for seniors to get drunk and make bad decisions, I would tread lightly in Margaritaville, but it didn't take too many margaritas for all of us to start reminiscing about the three years that had gone by. Then, someone inevitably said that we were all probably never going to be in the same place again at the same time, and that's when we all ordered more margaritas and ended up posing "Last Supper" style.

But after the initial margaritas, I had decided that tonight was the night: the night to go rabbit hunting. I was fresh out of a relationship and had been eyeing someone in particular for some time. I knew the follow up party that I needed to go to, and I knew that this would probably be my last chance to even solidify a decent conversation, let alone anything further than that, so I set off for the chase. Once the party had started, I wasn't sure how I would accomplish my goal, and like most of the hunts that I went on with my dad, I was pretty much ready to give up and go home after thirty unsuccessful minutes. Even as a senior, chasing after a freshman rabbit, I didn't have much confidence, and I didn't believe in my hunting skills. After all, this wasn't just a rabbit. This was a pretty rabbit who was transferring to a college in New York; everyone wanted to shoot this rabbit, metaphorically of course. (Disclaimer: I neither condone, nor encourage, anyone to shoot another person. Maybe I should lay off the metaphor for a bit.)

So as the night continued and the bottle of tequila grew less and less full, I committed to my cause. The funny part about guys is that we're stupid when we're interested in someone. We do things and say things that we would never have otherwise, so of course, I made sure that we were interested in all the same things. And I guess, in a way, the same logic applies to hunting. There's a specific way that you walk when you're in the woods, even if you're rabbit hunting. You tread lightly, and you try not to make yourself too obvious because you don't want the rabbits to run before you get within eyesight of them. And there's two types of hunting: the kind where you sit and wait, and the kind where you're constantly moving, and of course, last Cinco de Mayo, I was constantly moving.

After the conversation had run out, I was running around the party trying to entertain in any way possible to keep my rabbit's attention, but nothing seemed to be sealing the deal. When the rabbit suggested that we should jump into a pool with all of our clothes on, I went for it. And when the pool was only three feet deep and I scraped my knees on the concrete pool bottom, I just kept going because it seemed like that's what you're supposed to do. But then, toward the end of the night, I had noticed that the rabbit had disappeared, and there were only two explanations as to what could have happened: the rabbit had left the party or someone else had shot the rabbit.

Disappointed, I went from room to room looking/sulking for the rabbit when I knocked on one of my friend's doors. He barely opened the door and put his face in the crack and asked what I wanted. Don't get me wrong, everyone deserves to get with whomever they want, but there's an ethical code to every hunt, and my dad's words suddenly shot back into my head: Justin, you should never shoot a sitting rabbit: no matter what. There could be something wrong with it, like wobbles. (Just in case you don't know, "huntchat.com" explains that wobbles are actually warbles, and warbles are parasites that cause white lumps in squirrels and rabbits. If they have warbles, you can apparently die. Congrats, you learned something today.) So when he barely had the door open, I had this gut feeling, almost like a mother's intuition, to push the door open farther.

When I pushed the door, I saw a pair of feet laying on his bed; they didn't look like normal feet though--it was more like, Hey, I don't know the floor from the ceiling, I think I'm just going to pass out now feet. And when he gave me the "get out of here, I have a job to do eyes," I channeled my dad the best I knew how and said, You know, my dad told me you should never shoot a sitting rabbit. There could be something wrong with it. I decided not to include the part about the wobbles because it didn't seem applicable. My friend just kind of stared at me confused, and as he did, I forced myself a little farther into the room to see the girl passed out on the bed, and I repeated myself, It's not ethical for a hunter to shoot a sitting rabbit. It's unfair because something might be wrong with it. I looked back over at the girl, You just can't shoot a sitting rabbit. And just like that, it was like saying "rabbit" three times awoke her from the dead, and she awoke from her slumber and excused herself from the room. I could tell that my friend was about to kill me, so I decided to excuse myself as well, but in the midst of my own hunt, it meant more for me to stop and make sure that we weren't going around shooting rabbits with wobbles... sure, we were in college and we all know what's on everyone's minds, but there's always a moment when you have to pull back and ask yourself, At what cost am I doing this?

So, I had given up on my own plans for the night, and I was getting my stuff ready to leave when I looked up and saw the rabbit again... my rabbit, that is. I had spent the evening doing shots and taking pictures so that the rabbit could put them on Instagram and talking about things I didn't care about just so that I could impress someone who ultimately, was just another person. I had set myself up to believe that this was the moment, and after all of that, I didn't even get to have a truly meaningful conversation, so as I saw the rabbit go into a room alone, I walked in, and announced I've been following you around all night doing shots and talking about stupid shit, when all I wanted to do was kiss you. I had caught the rabbit off guard. Look at my knees. This is stupid. I'm going to have scabs on my knees. Why? Because I'm not the person that's just going to come up and kiss somebody. I jump in pools after people--shallow pools. And then the rabbit asked, So, why didn't you kiss me? All of a sudden, I began to feel like the rabbit instead, gun pointed at me and everything. 

My dad always used to ask me why I never shot at more rabbits, and in the end, it was because I was scared... scared of shooting him or the dogs or just missing all the way around. I thought that maybe if I didn't shoot at all then it wouldn't be a failure. If you don't shoot at anything, you can't miss. But in the same respect, you can't take anything home. So in one of the bravest moments of my life, I closed the door, and I went in for the kiss. I. Shot. The. Rabbit. And it was the best fifteen second ending to a hunt in the history of all the hunts I've made.

So, in the end, the rabbit ended up deleting me off of Facebook, I went to DC, and the rabbit went to New York. I don't think my dad's intended lesson was to draw metaphorical comparisons between shooting a 4x10 and trying to kiss people, but that's just kind of how life works out I guess. I doubt I'll ever see that rabbit again, and I'm kind of cool with that because that night of hunting can teach a person a lot. There's always a code to go by. You can't just go around chasing anyone you want, especially if they're unconscious, but on the other hand, for hunters like me... you have to be willing to take the shot. You may not hit the target every time, and even if you do, the target may delete you off of Facebook, but you can't be afraid of pulling the trigger. After all, you don't know exactly how many hunts you're going to have in your life.

The Legend of "Ass and Cats" and Friends

When I decided to go to a private liberal arts college, it seemed as if it was going to be a haven for smart, intellectuals who liked to sip coffee and talking about the political happenings in Egypt, and while that was the case to some extent, it really was more of a haven for weird people. And I don't say that as a condescending proclamation. It takes a truly weird person to be able to identify other weird people, but I like to believe that my freak flag is one that is a little more appropriate to fly in public. On the up and up, successful people at Maryville College were commonly people who were too busy in academia to be successful in high school. We were not particularly well bred for social interaction, and in the safe bubble of campus, we didn't have a lot of help with that. And because of our core classes, we were given the opportunity to dabble in subjects across the board, exposing us to the different kinds of weird that dominated each major. I settled in the English department, my favorite collection of freaks: we spent our times wrapped up in words, too busy to acknowledge that we only spoke to each other in metaphors and anecdotes, and too pompous to even consider that there could be another major better than us.
But the best thing about being in the English department is that I could always rely on someone being a little more weird than me. For the longest time, I always depended on the guy who consistently wore cargo shorts to class and would relate every piece of feminist literature to being raised by his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt. It was like waiting on the whitest version of The Secret Life of Bees every single class. I didn't come into college as an English major, but rather stumbled on to it by accident. I was originally going to be pre-med, but after a lack of witty Grey's-like banter and a lot of really intense peers, I decided that I didn't want to do that after all. Discovering that I enjoyed the witty banter more, I doubled up with Communications and English, instead. I spent my days listening to how my peers were scorned by the over-feminization of their childhoods and countless tales about how the despair of being fifteen led them to be an English major. I always just kind of liked words, so I was left out of all the perils and angst that most English kids took to get there.
Our senior year, we had to take comprehensive exams, a test that can cover any material in any class, which is a literature major's worst nightmare considering that very few of us actually read most of the material that we covered in class. We were all focused the week before, when we were asking one of our professors how many people have failed the test, a feat that could land you in an unwelcomed fifth year of college. None of us had been sleeping, so we were all on edge. As our professor was answering our question, one girl screamed out from the back of the room and started crying. She ran out of the room and disappeared into the hallway; between her screams and my lack of sleep, I almost passed out, and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.
She came back into the room and announced that she had seen a wasp, when I turned my head around Exorcist style and barked back, What the hell is your problem? Sit your ass down. My professor told me to calm down, but in all fairness, I wasn't the one that exploded in fear over a wasp. I've never dealt well with people who have such strong reactions to such small events--kind of like the girls who would scream when someone would turn the lights off in elementary school. Why? What are we achieving? Nothing, but so is the problems with a class full of strung-out, sleepless weirdos.
But no one tops the young man I shared my World Cultures: Islam class with. We affectionately came to know him as "Ass and Cats," after a couple of close calls my friend had with him in class. I was never an expert at getting to class early, nor really good at getting to class on time. As I was casually strolling out of my dorm at 9:27 to get to my 9:30, I got a text that said Get to class now. Ass and cats is trying to sit next to me. I need you to get here, stat. When I got to class, I asked her who Ass and Cats was, and she pointed to him. I asked her why his name was Ass and Cats and she very stated, Because he smells like ass. And cats. Ass and cats. We kept Ass and Cats our secret, as if we had just discovered that Bruce Wayne was Batman. We protected each other from the prospect of Ass and Cats who was generally known for going full blown Chopin on his keyboard in the middle of class.
One day, he was going exceptionally hard in the keyboard paint when he announced in the middle of one of our professor's lectures Shut up. I was hoping that maybe I was the only one who had heard it, but the entire class turned around to catch a glance at the young man. Our professor didn't miss a beat. A couple minutes later, the typing grew increasingly louder when he yelled out, SHUT UP. Our professor stopped in the middle of the lecture and finally addressed him, Excuse me? He casually said, Oh, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to my computer. Ass and Cats must have felt my sympathetic vibes because we've all been in that place where we've awkwardly been mistaken for yelling at our professor before... okay, maybe not the exact situation, but I know what it's like to feel awkward, so I felt bad.
After class, I noticed that he tailed me very closely as I walked out the door. He only stayed a couple steps behind me, and though I didn't keep tabs, I could feel his presence behind me. Knowing that I was being followed, I took a couple of wrong turns to obscure parts of campus to see if I could lose him. No luck. Eventually, I went into the campus chapel and turned around to see him standing face to face with me. He looked at me and announced, Why are you following me? And just like that, in his own world, I had become the awkward one. In some very topsy-turvy parallel world, the tables had turned, and I was the weird liberal arts kid that I had so desperately tried to avoid. And then it hit me... maybe I was the awkward one.
The only way that anyone is awkward is through the perspective of another person, and though I wasn't raised in a non-prostituting brothel nor had a panic attack over an insect nor yelled at my professor, that didn't fully rule me out of being the awkward liberal arts kid. For all I know, I could be the Ass and Cats of my DC life, going around smelling like an obscure combination of feces and felines. So I try to consider what the repercussions of judging others is, and what it's like to potentially being the off one of the group. None of us are exempt, even the public school graduates. The world is unforgiving, and we're all only one nickname away from being an awkward urban legend of yesteryear.

The Art of Being Livid

I knew when I woke up this morning that it was going to be a bad day. You just get that feeling when you roll over and realize that your apartment is the temperature of your standard winter tundra. I stared at my phone knowing that even contemplating resetting my alarm was just postponing the inevitable: Tuesday, or Hell as I have come to affectionately call it… but I’ll explain that pet name later. I got out of bed, cut off the parts of my leg deadened by frostbite, and got into the car.

On the way to work, I subconsciously decided to take a route that I’ve never taken before, twenty minutes away from the metro stop that I actually intended to drive toward. And when you take twenty minutes to drive in the opposite direction, it gives you a long time to consider all of the things that are really pissing you off in the world. I thought about how PBS might be cancelled by this time next year. I thought about how those Chinese girls in the Beijing Olympics were obviously too young to compete. I thought about how Glee is on hiatus until November. (Oh, you didn’t know? Welcome to my day.) By the time that I actually got to the metro, I was locked and loaded. I was the conductor of the train headed to Worst Day Everville.

As I stood on the metro searching for a glimmer of hope to grab on to, I was distracted by the man breathing heavily down my back… so close, that I could feel his breath condensate on my small neck hairs. And as I heard him wheeze, I asked the spirit of Helga Petacki from Hey Arnold! for forgiveness, because I mistook her violent actions toward Brainy as unnecessary lashing out. In reality, her rage was completely appropriate and justified.

And just like a narrative, a day is broken into paragraphs. Getting out of bed, driving to the metro, riding on the metro, going into work. Each event represents an ultimately separate event from the rest… however, all of those paragraphs make a story and one bad paragraph has the ability to make that story a tainted one. Call me a commitment lover, but as I got off the metro, I committed myself to a bad day. I actively chose to pursue the very worst parts of my day, and when you make a decision like that, it’s the beginning of a terrible chain of events. You commit to a bad day, then you victimize yourself in regard to all of those around you. You follow that with exclusivity to everyone else, and in your loneliness, you dredge up things from the past… and that’s the art to becoming livid.

One of the most important parts of becoming livid is choosing a single ally to have for the rest of the day: everyone else is garbage in your eyes. You can’t believe that they didn’t let you walk out of the elevator first, and if you had your way, you would have them spend an eternity in Hell for it. And luckily they will, because Tuesdays are what we like to call Hell. Mondays have such a bad reputation for being the worst day, when it reality, Monday is where hope dies.

Monday is still fresh enough out of the weekend that you remember what it was like getting hammered on Saturday and then making out with that girl in the bathroom… how did you even get in the bathroom? And that’s why Tuesday is Hell because all those sinful memories that died once you remember that the work week does in fact continue after Monday are banished to Tuesday Hell. Shame on you for being such a weekend heathen; you have been rewarded with the most hopeless day of the week, and its sky will be painted with the color of hopelessness. If Crayola made it a crayon, I imagine it would be called “Kill Myself Gray.”

Throughout the day, you find reasons that you could possibly find joy, but let’s be honest. You have a whole drawer full of “Kill Myself Gray” colored crayons, and you just aren’t ready to throw those out. So in my case, I equated everything that I had to do today to climbing Mount Everest, and when I messed it up, it was obviously not my fault because I was up against insurmountable circumstances.

And as the day goes on, there’s only one thing to do… capitalize. You start listing all the things that have gone wrong about your day, down to the most minute of circumstances. Sometimes, if you haven’t had enough go wrong, it’s completely permissible to draw on things from the past and pretend that they happened to you on the Tuesday in question. But today, I made a grave error in my execution of the horrible day. I had identified my ally, a fellow intern named Nicole. We shared our disgust for the day, down to how much of an injustice that it was that I didn’t wear my peacoat to work. And in vain, I made a selfish, careless error. I attempted to enlist a second ally.

So, when I came home, I turned to my roommate Andrew with too high of expectations. Some would argue that he had no dog in this fight (author’s note: I do not support Michael Vick or his preference for dog fighting), but in my world, he should have known everything. And we’ve been sentimental lately in true bromance fashion, so I could only assume that if there were a set of arms available to run into, it would surely be his. But the fact of the matter is that the whole evening was quite the opposite. Moments like these are your opportunity to implement “the livid.” Opportunities like these are like the devil’s cherry atop the Hell sundae that Tuesdays are.

Implementing the livid is a three-step process, and I will teach you through example. (1) I walked into my apartment looking as disheveled as I could, as if I had planned it when I woke up that morning.  The look on my face reflected a possible death of a pet or a recent viewing of Hotel Rwanda. And to finish, I cavalierly threw my bag onto the couch and announced I had a horrible day. For added effect, I gave a bulleted list of everything that had gone wrong. His response was I watched Avengers today. An ignorant, yet perfect, response if I’ve heard one. This is the classic error that lends itself perfectly to building on the next two steps. Responses like this allow you to assert the feeling that you’ve been devalued.

Don’t let yourself stop there. This is the moment that you have to bring the spotlight back to… you guessed it… yourself. (2) Knowing that we were obviously not going to discuss, let alone exchange empathy, about the terrible day, I decided that I wanted to voice another, more solvable issue. I’m tired of just coming home from work and not doing anything. What are you doing later this week? He responds, I’m going out on Thursday, and then I’m going to Happy Hour on Friday. And only a writer or a very hormonal woman (I'm arguably both) would pick up on the underlying issue of that sentence: pronoun use. And with that, you have all the ammunition you need because you have just been offered what society likes to call “the pity invite.” I immediately responded, Oh, I think we were going to Happ… am I not invited? And like magic, he provided me with another perfect response. You are now! Don’t stop yet… you haven’t justified yourself in a completely self-deprecating way… I responded, No, I’m not going to crash something I wasn’t invited to. At that point, you’ve positioned yourself perfectly for one of my favorite life roles: the victim.

I excused myself for an impromptu trip outside without saying a word, and I smoked a cigarette in my socks in the same tundra like weather that was in my room that morning. And when I came back in, I finished strong. (3) As I walked in, he asked me Hey! How ya doing? And if you are so lucky to have such an opportunity, you respond like I did: I’m fine. That’s all you need to say, and if you’re ambitious like me, you go to a remote location, and you wait for someone to come to you. Fine is a terribly loaded word full of hate and anger and desperation. And the only thing that can trigger “fine” into full-blown livid is when it’s the end of your story. I waited in my room for thirty minutes for someone to come ask what was wrong, and I heard our front door close twice. And once I walked into the living room to confirm my suspicion, the livid was allowed to rear its ugly head.

Everyone had left, and that’s when I went “ape shit.” I quickly announced Oh hell no! and from there, I decided to run into things, throw things, slam things… akin to a seven year old, or a dog with rabies. You see, livid has no boundaries. Livid is allowed to do whatever the hell it wants because you… yes, you. You have committed an entire day to get to this point, and you deserve to do whatever your irrationally enraged heart desires. And as I walked out the door, I slammed it so hard that it echoed up the stairwell, and there’s a 72% chance that it broke. I didn’t really go back to check because that’s not what livid does. Livid takes no prisoners, at least when the victim is something that you don’t have to say goodnight to.

Slapbags and Buttholes: A Guide to Orifices and Consumables

Today, I found out about an unfortunate situation that happened just minutes down the road from my home in Tennessee. Apparently in an alleged fraternity hazing stint**, a University of Tennessee student was given what the media has referred to as an "alcohol enema." Forewarned, if you're not the Merriam-Webster type, this is probably not the post for you because I'm afraid that this topic is going to call for a lot of definition. From what I gather, an "alcohol enema" is essentially someone taking a bag of wine and inserting said wine into another person's anus. I'm honestly baffled by the prospect of putting anything up a butt because some days, when I use the bathroom, that process hurts on its own. Though I've often heard that there is a pleasurable experience... never-mind, let's just say it: it's dangerous putting things up your butt.
So essentially, these guys took a slapbag (A slapbag is the large bag of wine taken from inside a box of Franzia, Black Box, etc. The term originates from taking a drink out of the bag, then slapping the bag to produce a funny noise) and put some portion of it up this man's anus resulting in a BAC (blood alcohol content) of over .4. For those of you who struggle with math, that translates to .40% of your blood contains ethanol. And though the first thought was that I hope that this young man is okay, I find myself absolutely baffled at the prospect that people put things like boxed wine (or wine in general) and anus(es) together. It's as fascinating to me as when people wear black slacks and brown shoes. As a generation, we are getting completely out of hand. You bring me your Lady Gaga business with her "right track baby, you were born this way," kind of mentality, and I accept it. But when you completely disregard the function of one your most important internal organs, I feel the need to address some of the most absurd combinations I've ever heard of in my life.
As mentioned in a previous post, on a recent date I was informed that sometimes people like to lick each other's armpits. I used my sarcasm senses to try and determine if this person was merely playing a disgusting verbal joke or if this was a recreational activity that people actually did. Sadly, it was the latter. Apparently, there are select people of the world who enjoy licking and/or receiving the lickage (act of licking) of armpits. I'm sure there's some weird body sensor that experiences joy or pleasure in the armpit region, but considering my tragic history with tickling, I'm fairly confident that I'm not one of those people. Call me a prude, but 6 out of 7 days of the week (because sometimes I'm busy and I forget), I put deodorant/antiperspirant on in hopes of preventing moisture from collecting in or around my armpits. So, I don't understand the idea of inviting someone's mouth, or face in general, toward my armpit. The idea makes me nervous, and it's just another extraneous factor that I consider when I'm deciding whether or not I want to kiss people.

Unsanitary.

So with all of this new age thought about what we should and should not do with our orifices, I find it my duty to explain what you should not put in or around your orifices. I'm not going to cover the basics because the Kama Sutra has done too much irreparable damage for me to try and fix that. I am going to cover some basic food groups and some common household objects. First, I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you dismiss any temptation to put any food product up your butt. Leave what meddling needs to be done down there to your physician. And to build off of that, I think we all learned from that tragic, tragic scene on Slumdog Millionaire to take special precaution to keep spicy substances from any and all orifices. In terms of your mouth, I understand that it's really dealer's choice here, but I would like to remind you that we are not cats. I will leave you to make your choices on this one, but I would recommend staying away from areas that collect sweat easily or germs in general. Don't put your fingers near my mouth and don't even discuss the prospect of feet with me. Unlike most of the other categories, this is, however, where I encourage you to put food... specifically, wine.
And maybe I'm preaching to the choir here. Maybe this is more of an outlier thing, and the rest of us have already mastered how to conduct ourselves when it comes to our body and the places where things can go in or out. But, as a public relations hopeful that wants to focus on social marketing, I find it my duty to put out a PSA when I think that societal habit calls for it. Johnny Knoxville made it okay for us to put alcohol up our butts via Jackass, and I want to use this blog to explain how it's not okay. I want you to look around the room, and I want you to understand that there's most likely not a thing around that is acceptable to put inside your body. Protect yourself and set an example for everyone else around you. Sure, it's Yom Kippur, but that doesn't have to be the only new start in the air. Make this the day that you promise to treat your body respectfully and take notice of where you put things.

**correction: According to the KPD, this may have not been a hazing situation... which means someone just chose to do this. Just trying to get the deets right.

Butterfly Pin, etc.

The grieving process is different for everyone. Some people cry for days on end and some people completely ignore the issue all together. I've even seen some people take up entirely new hobbies, exerting all of their energy into pottery or collecting Precious Moments figurines. It's a mystery as to how the human brain works and how very different we are from each other in our coping mechanisms. Actually, some would even say that my love for writing come out of my own grieving process when my mamaw died. At five years old, I took to pen and paper trying to imitate my Aunt Wanda who wrote a poem about mamaw's death. I started writing poetry, continued on to fiction writing, all the way up until today when I write about otherwise uneventful stories through an overzealous perspective. But when I think about what I took from mamaw's death, it isn't the writing. It's something else entirely.

Death was never explained to me... dying was more like being
chosen for a reality show and less about, you know, actually
being sick or old.

In thinking about my obsessive compulsive disorder which was initially loosely diagnosed by a doctor in eighth grade, I began wondering what were the first signals that I might have it. All of the weird impulses that I had growing up had seemed normal, so it took work to think about all of the oddities as anything other than a healthy habit. But, it had to be mamaw's death. If you talk to someone with legitimate obsessive compulsive disorder (which means not someone who likes to have their pencils sharpened or the counter clean), you'll find out that there's this weird necessity in doing whatever action is being done. Because no one ever explained death to me any more complexly than "a time when God decided you are ready to join his army," I automatically considered death like a lottery system. When your number is called, you're up on the front lines; none of it had to do with being old or possibly having a debilitating disease... it was more about, you know, just the Lord being like Come on down, you're the next contestant for Heaven and then you would run up toward Heaven clapping wearing an enthusiastic tee shirt saying "I Want to Be a Barker Beauty!"
So, as a naturally superstitious person, I decided that the best way to ward off death from my family was to wear the butterfly pin that my mamaw bought me before she died. Why did my mamaw buy me a butterfly pin? That's an excellent question; I'll be more than happy to answer it when I figure out why she always called me Lucy. (I'm inclined to think that maybe she wanted a granddaughter). I would wear it to first grade everyday, and then, when that wasn't enough, I would spend the entire day imagining my mom was going to die on the way to work. Nothing could exhaust my worry that everyone in my life was going to die, so then, my mom made the error of turning the tables back on the entity that I was absolutely terrified of: God. She would start brining be bracelets home that she would buy at the gas station: WWJD bracelets. She told me to wear them, and when I got worried, I should look down at them and pray to God that He would take care of her, which seemed counterproductive because it was my understanding that God was the one grabbing up people like an arcade claw machine.
Eventually, the WWJD bracelets lost their charm, so I began some of the more obvious tics that come along with OCD. The first one I can remember was stretching my lips out, which included repeating an expression that one Jenna Marbles might have made famous. Something that I'm sure Jenna Marbles is not aware of is that if you do that face every four minutes (exactly) like I did as an 8 year old, you will acquire sores on the corners of your lips. When picture day came in second grade, I am one of what I'm assuming is probably twelve second graders in the entire world that could have convincingly made people believe he had oral herpes. There I was, skinny as a rail because I threw up all the time, sporting an oversized polo with seven WWJD bracelets on my arm, a purple butterfly fixed over my heart, and two giant sores on either side of my face. The first time I heard the f-bomb was when I took home the proofs from my pictures. My mom showed my dad, and I remember him saying "Oh f--- this. This has got to stop." But no matter how ridiculous I may have looked, I obviously had not accurately expressed the urgency of my bracelet wearing/pin adorning/lip stretching ways. I seemed to be the only one in the world that understood that if I didn't do these things... someone would die.
Eventually, I would move on to bigger and better tics than the lip stretching, mostly because it took weeks for my lips to heal appropriately. If I had continued the lip stretching, I can only imagine I would have ended up looking like The Joker from The Dark Knight, which would have made my dating life even more difficult than it already is. For a while, I moved into blinking, but that seemed to make people uncomfortable, too. I would approach my teachers and blink upwards of fifteen or twenty times until they would just force me to spit out whatever question I had or just bluntly walk away, neither of which I could blame them for. As a naturally self-conscious person, I knew that I was kind of weirding people out with the odd things I did; I had to come up with a way to protect the lives of everyone I loved without it being so obvious; the whole thing became a secret mission for me.
However, that only lasted for so long. Eventually, I would start incorporating numbers and colors into the mix with every single digit numeral representing a color. And that's become the basis for just about every compulsion that happens to this day. While talking to a friend, I said, You know, I think that my compulsions have gotten better since I've been older, and then immediately found myself leaning back in my chair, and counting the corners in the room. I don't know what it is, but there's something comforting about counting corners, and I always do it when I'm nervous. Sitting in job interviews, I count the corners waiting for the interviewer to come in, praying that there's not some kind of camera detailing the pre-interviewee's behavior. Then when they come in, I have to coach myself mentally Justin, keep eye contact. The last thing you need to do is lose it in the middle of your explanation of your skill set and pull an Exorcist and start glancing from corner to corner. It makes people uncomfortable, and then they just want to get away from me.
And that's something I've had to learn from watching people's reactions, because in my mind, what I do is perfectly logical. You obviously need to rub the entire corner of that cabinet to ensure that this entire building doesn't blow up. God, if these people only understood how many times you save their lives daily. Psych! Now you need to rub it four times for good measure. It's a complicated one because it's something I've just come to know as a normal thing. As for the present, I'm not sure if the people in my life have just come to accept that the edges of objects need to be caressed or if I've just mastered the art of being subtle to an extraordinary level. Occasionally, I forget to keep myself in check when I'm in public, as I caught myself rubbing the back of someone's chair while serving tonight. As the man finally turned around, I caught myself and said to him, Don't know who put that weird scuff on the back of your chair, but we can't have you sitting in that, can we? There was obviously no scuff, just some weird 22 year old massaging the back of his chair for sport. But if I don't buff out the imaginary scuffs in his chair, then who will?
I have a weird feeling that these impulsions that started to try and save the people in my life could very well be the death of me. It would be ironic, wouldn't it? One of my personal favorites is driving down the road and I feel it: Justin, the obviously solution to your roadside anxiety is to run your hand along the steering wheel ten times; oh, someone else is in the car? They'll love it. And it's very obvious they don't, because they usually catch on around lap three or four, and by lap nine, I can see their eyes widen as if they're trying to silently communicate If your hand catches the wheel one time, we're going to fly off this overpass. And you know what? I can't say I haven't thought the same thing myself... four times, consecutively.

Appa Bahp

If I've ever been good at anything, it's talking. All my elementary school teachers told me so. I guess I was also good at taking a compliment because when Mrs. Henderson would shoot me eyes across the classroom and say, "You're getting a little too good at talking," I would immediately become filled with pride and consider my communication skills superior to the other second graders around me. It wasn't until I set an unprecedented record for yellow lights (an even split between talking excessively and my inability to stop crying) that I determined that my gift for gab may not be the best thing in the entire world.
However, coming from Tennessee, I never considered that my voice was any different from anyone else's. Sure, I talk a little louder than other people, but that's because so many people ignored my very important things I wanted to contribute to conversation as a child. Naturally, I spoke louder so that they could hear me. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that the way I say things may not be the way that other people say them. What I have never understood is the reaction that people have when there is a communication barrier. It's the same kind of lapse in judgment that people have when there's a bad connection on a cell phone; walking around a circle with a three feet radius repeating Can you hear me? is not going to give your phone any more bars than it had before. Holding it up fourteen inches above your ear won't do anything either.
When I visited a high school teacher after graduation, we sat down for dinner and began to talk about how life was in college. I told her and her husband about joining a fraternity, making Dean's List... all the basic things that people recap when you talk about your college life. She told me about things that were happening at school and all the things privvy to everyone except the students that actually go there. As we approached the end of the night, I collected my pea coat from the closet, fixed my scarf around my neck and said the fatal word: Goodnight.
In unison, they responded: Good knot?
I retorted: Goodnight.
Again: Good knot?
This literally went on for at least forty-five seconds. I explained how, for some reason, my teachers had not beaten the Southern accent out of me as a child, and when I use certain vowels, the drawl comes out a little more than it would regularly. As if I hadn't picked up on the hint, they went on to explain to me how odd my accent was. It sounded so... rustic, which is a politically correct way of saying podunk. Then it usually follows with someone saying how endearing my voice is, which is a politically correct way of saying, Hey, I'm really entertained by your voice. Let's draw some attention to it. It's a burden and a curse I suppose, but I've never really been bothered by it. That is... until appa bahp.
Last summer, a couple of friends and I decided to escape campus for a while and go grab a bite to eat. Smokey Mountain Brewery was a new restaurant in the area, so naturally, it seemed like a good option. We had decided that with it being a brewery and restaurant that focused specifically on Southern favorites, it only made sense to order something that would be specifically Southern. When our waitress approached the table she seemed nice enough: young, pregnant, and without a wedding ring... something not too uncommon for a waitress in the greater East Tennessee area. I find myself immediately attracted to people like this. She said she would have married her boyfriend, but she hadn't seen him since she told him that she was pregnant. She asked us for our drink orders, and I thought we had a connection. I thought she cared. I thought she wasn't obnoxious, but when I said that I wanted the "Apple Pie Moonshine," she put her hands on her hips and announced "APPA BAHP?!" Like I usually do, I repeated myself Um, the apple pie moonshine. And like clockwork, she responded APPA BAHP?! My friends couldn't get enough; what a funny joke it must have been. Completely unamused, I responded I don't understand. Like someone who can't quite find appropriate things humorous or who just has to tell everyone the last black joke they heard, she responded yet again APPA BAHP?! It literally went on and on for three minutes, the longest that I've ever seen anyone choose to be so blissfully obnoxious. I wasn't sure what to do because it seemed as if I was at that point in Mario where you don't really care enough to actually go into the green PVC pipe that takes you to the next level... you'd rather just throw your controller out the window. I didn't even want to get a drink anymore; I just wanted her to deliver the baby inside of her so I could shamelessly toss her through the window, then steal the baby and raise it as my own so that it would have a chance for an okay life.

Oh Meredith, what have you
done with your hair?

And I guess that my voice is no Dan Rather, but calling upon the distinctness of someone's voice, particularly someone from the South that could be deemed as "stupid," is kind of unfruitful if you make yourself sound like an idiot in the process. Unless you're in a debate with strategic facts and figures in between your statements, repeating yourself is something that kind of makes you look like a, well... a dumbass. To this day my vowels haunt me; some would say that it's my Achilles Heel--my weakness and my strength. My hope was to come to DC and use my accent as a distraction, making any "competitors" think that I am some dumb hillbilly and then skating past them when they're not looking. I think the plan has worked halfway so far, but without any opportunities to skate yet, it's more just people thinking I'm kind of dumb.
But at the end of the day, you should be proud of who you are and where you come from. Everyone in the world is so plain, so ordinary, so uninspiring. That's why Meredith's mom on Grey's Anatomy never loved her enough. She doesn't have an accent, her scrubs are never ironed, and she has a frumpy haircut. And that's a frustrating thing to see in your child, let alone another person. You honestly need something to make you distinctive from everyone else in the world because who wants to go through the world being just another person with a non-distinct personality/accent/face/haircut? Look at Matthew McConaughey; he can't act or do anything helpful for the human race, but he still gets hired for movies because of his voice... or his body. Whatevs. Surely you can't be that worthless; imagine the possibilities.

Confessions of an Extrovert

My brother Casey was diagnosed with autism at three years old. As a family, we decided not to tell him in hopes that it would never be something that he would ever let define him... if he happened to find out, so be it, but we weren't going to go out of the way to tell him. No point. He was always going to be the same Casey. One day after watching an episode of Dr. Phil, Casey came into the living room and made an announcement to us: You know guys, I was watching an episode of Dr. Phil and there were these autistic people on there, and after thinking about it, I might be autistic. We all just kind of sat there, looking at one another wondering who was going to step up with the obligatory "ding ding." Casey had figured it out on his own, and I wasn't really sure how learning something so pivotal would feel... until today.
I'm sure that a lot of factors went into my big discovery today: the immediate homesickness, the desperate need to keep my cell phone alive so to have directions to get to the apartment I'm staying at, the lack of sleep that I got in anticipation of this drive, but at the end of the day, regardless of the factors that led me to it, I have something I have to admit: I'm. an. extrovert. Much like the way that I used to say that I had secrets that I kept from people, and that I was super mysterious, I also liked to believe that I was an introvert... or at least someone who could be at peace with himself for eight to ten hours to make a car ride up the coast. But as the day went on, I couldn't take it. I began talking to myself more and more, laughing at my own jokes to fill the void of the usual laughter that follows me witty banter. I would befriend people in cars: people that looked like my dad or people my age, possibly an old woman who looked kind of lonely. They would never make eye contact with me, but I'd follow them and keep watch on their cars. I'd hope that maybe they were secretly doing it to me as well. But if that wasn't evidence enough of my extroversion, stopping at the Wendy's in Fisherville, Virginia definitely was.
I walked in and they were everywhere: humans. I wanted to talk to them all; I wanted to hug them and invade their personal space. I wanted us to talk about all the things we had in common and the couple things we didn't, and then I would prematurely add them on Facebook, secretly doubting whether I had sent them a request too soon, but convincing myself otherwise. We would talk occasionally online, sometimes reminding one another of how we met or the one time I ordered the Asiago Chicken Club, and it would all seem important again. Once I sat down, I felt distanced again... nervous, even. I didn't want to be alone. I had convinced myself in a matter of seven minutes that Fisherville might just be the city for me to live in. No need to travel for three more hours; there were people here, and they would suffice just fine.
And as I sat there, holding back tears until the gray haired man with a small ponytail held together with a red rubber band sat down next to me (it took everything in my body to not say, hey girl, I like your weave.), it hit me... you love people way too much. As if someone had sat the social sorting hat on my head, I knew at that point, if I had ever fought the idea of it before that I was... indeed... an extrovert. And then all of my past, selfish mistakes came rushing in. For some reason, maybe because Rory Gilmore was and I wanted to be too, I thought I could at least pretend to be an introvert. I would purposefully go after introverted friends and introverted relationships. It made all the sense in the world; all the times that these people that were so like me would tell me that they needed their time to just be by themselves or think, I would completely freak out. There must be something wrong with me; my funny is obviously broken. Why couldn't I constantly entertain them?! Why were they so weird. They weren't introverted like me. They were nothing like me at all.
And in my own version of a Dr. Phil show, the illusion came crashing down on me today. I've never been close to an introvert; I couldn't be if I wanted. And I suppose this is as good as time as ever to just go ahead and apologize for all the years of deception and loosely veiled attempts at being an introvert. I'm sorry when you said you needed "some alone time" that I interpreted that as "you should come along with me for some alone time." I apologize for all the times that I thought that "I don't want to talk about it" meant "Just keep asking me; I'm just trying really hard to make you work for it." Apparently, I never really understood what it meant to be an introvert because I wasn't ever really comprehending the concept of maybe not wanting to talk to people. I don't understand your people, just like you don't understand mine. But if I can promise you one thing, it's that the claw marks on my driver's side window don't lie... I long for people; I suppose it's the curse of an introvert.

Jesus Loves You, Charlotte Howard

Sometimes, I look back on my time as a child and ask myself, How the hell did you get to this point in your life without being murderer for being such a little jerk? In my defense, I was the butt of a lot of jokes, a lot of which have been covered in previous stories, but like most stories, there's always another side to the coin. There are a lot of responses that a kid can have to being bullied, but one of the more ridiculous ones was one that I once gave a shot: bullying other people back. However, as the communication savvy young man I've always been, I made sure that I had a getaway, and what better getaway can you have other than the word of Jesus Christ? I mean, people have used him for years to do super shiesty things: all the way from the Crusades to Chick-Fil-A investments. And how am I to judge any of those people, when I, myself, have used the Lord as a weapon of destruction.

Eighth grade is hard; I was at the peak of my wind breaker phase, and my self-esteem was at an all time low. Other than having an exceptionally close relationship with my teachers, a weekly appointment with the guidance counselor to talk about my acute depression, and an anchor role on "Cherokee Television," I didn't really have a lot going for me. I didn't have a claim to fame for anything other than being the face for "Homeroom Feud" and having exceptionally thick lensed glasses.

When asked if I could go back to any point in my life, which part would it be, I responded, "I don't know, but it wouldn't be middle school." Middle schoolers are mean, mean people that have just started to understand some of the diversities and differences of the world. We've graduated into the internet and the dangerous things we can do with instant messaging and Myspace, and we loved nothing more than tearing each other down, so when presented with the opportunity to do the tearing, as opposed to being the one torn upon, I jumped on it. I wasn't apart of any of the official planning, but when approached in the hallway by the local preacher's daughter, who was also one of the more popular girls, I followed. That's just what you do as a middle schooler: you follow the "powerful." She pointed out our [literal] target: Charlotte Howard.

I had known Charlotte Howard since kindergarten. She had always been the straight laced girl pressed upon way to heavily by her parents. No Rugrats because Angelica was mean; she was allowed to watch Veggie Tales and Wishbone for their religious and intellectual potential, respectively. Looking back on the situation as a twenty-two year old, I probably would have thrown up a middle finger to everything I had known, too. Middle school welcomed a whole new lifestyle for Charlotte: to quote one, Jay-Z, she had "black cards, black cars, all black everything." She had denounced God and befriended our school's token Atheist from California. Yeah, California. Essentially, Charlotte had seemingly overnight become the middle school bully's dream. And in an attempt to alleviate a little pressure off my overweight, nerdy, completely uncool self, I joined in.

Emily handed me a pencil, a light blue piece of unsharpened wood adorned with a Bible verse I can't seem to recall, and told me the plan. Once she walked out of class, we would set it all into action, and we would end it by taking our weapons and pummeling the demons right out of her. She came around the corner, and I looked down at the pencil, and it was as if future Justin was speaking to pathetic, tiny 8th grade Justin, Dude, look at what you're doing. Are you seriously going to d-- It was too late. The pencil went flying, and we followed with a total mockery of the very thing we were supposedly representing, Jesus, loves you Charlotte! What. had. I. done.

The next day, we were all called to the principal, completely ignorant that we would be called in for something other than an award or accomplishment... especially considering that we were all called in together. So it was quite the surprise that we were all up for pending sanctions for religious harassment, which fell under the Zero Tolerance policy. If it hadn't been for Charlotte, we would have all been suspended. And the irony of it all, is that her "attackers" are now a bisexual, two known lesbians, a college drop out, and a retail worker. God, the actual merciful one... not the one that we supposedly represented, only knows what kind of hell we were all going through at the time that we decided to do it, because I will stand by the idea that we only exhibit hate toward others because of the insecurities and doubts that we have in ourselves.

When thinking back on the whole charade, I'm sure that it reads as something with a little bit of humor, and even to Charlotte, the story tends to bring a smile to her face, but for me, it's probably one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done. After eighth grade, I never went back to another youth group, and I found the God that I worship on my own terms. Charlotte and I just graduated from college together, and somehow along the way, we kind of met in the middle of the Christian/Satanic continuum, if you will. But to quote Saved!, "The Bible is not a weapon!" I just wish that more young, enthusiastic Christians had been sent into Sherry Hensely's office to shed a little light on the differences between witnessing and full blown alienation.

Did You Fart On My Pillow?

As a resident assistant for three years, I never had to turn in a single situation revolving around alcohol, which is seemingly the most obvious offense that an RA would have to deal with. In every college party gone awry, there is some jerk who shows up with a badge and a clip board and busts the party up because "freshman Kelly" knew some of the soccer guys and she was really cute and she only drink Smirnoff... blah, blah, blah. That never happened to me. As long as I could look up at the building and not see anyone hanging completely out the window with a bottle of Jager in their hands (you have to have both because I saw plenty of people just normally hanging out the window), then I didn't really care all that much to bust people. I only had two issues that normally came up in my building: people wanting to harm themselves or poop. Out of respect and class, we'll focus on the poop (which is the only time I'll ever be able to fashion that sentence in my life).

This child would NEVER have had pink eye.

I should have known that poop would be a common factor in my college experience, as I seemed to be constantly surrounded by it from the time I got there. As an elementary school student, I was never one of those children that ended up with lice or pink eye. We shunned those students and commonly talked about how their parents must make them sleep on the ground whilst washing themselves in the same bath water over and over. There had to be something wrong with those children's home lives. If you wanted to be decently respected as an elementary school success story, you better never have lice or pink eye, and if you did, it didn't hurt if you brought your Lite Brite to school so other kids could play with it and eventually forgive you. So, naturally, I was devastated to find out as a nineteen year old college student that I had... pink eye.
When I went to the nurse, I was practically berated with a slew of uncomfortable and accusatory questions: Have you found yourself in the company of a lot of smoke? I can't remember my last Def Leppard concert, but I'm going to go with no. Do you not wash your hands after going to the bathroom and then touch your face? No, I do not wipe my butt then take my contact out. Has anyone had any sexual contact with your eye? Are you serious right now? I actually had to pause when answering this question to interpret how someone could feasibly have sexual contact with my eye, and furthermore to contemplate who in the world would attempt the ludicrous things that my mind was coming up with. After some soul searching, I had determined: no. No one had had sexual contact with my eye.
The doctor went on to explain that somehow, some kind of bacteria had crept its way into my eye and made home, kind of like when you move into a new apartment and have a "nesting ritual." This was not the allergy related type of pink eye that people could justify by coming up with a convenient reaction to grass or mold. This was the nasty kind; essentially the STD of the ocular world. I had, by some measure, been eye raped.
I wore my dark rimmed glasses to cover up the shame, but it was no use. People would ask me about my eye and what had happened. Without any warning or lying ability, I would tell them of my infectious disease and they would look at me like a nasty animal. I was the equivalent of a malnourished cat with little eye crusties on the edge of its eyelids. I was an ophthalmological pity case. Some thief in the night was responsible for this; I knew it. I was too clean, too careful for this kind of thing to happen to me. I washed my pillowcases bimonthly. I wasn't the type of person who got pink eye. I felt like the Hester Prynne of the visual world, with my puffed up eye being the letter A I would carry around to proclaim my shame to the world, and in my ignorance of how pink eye was spread, I began to wonder how much other people knew. What if they went around chattering among each other, I can't believe he let someone do that to his eye! I didn't know he was into that freaky stuff... It was too much. There had to be an answer.
So when I was talking to my freshman roommate about the whole ordeal, he said, Maybe Zak did something. I looked at him and said, What do you mean 'maybe Zak did something?' He then began to tell me, with that impossibly smug smile on his face that at one point the week before, he let a guy into our room that had something for me. Then when he was leaving the room, he said that the guy was pulling his pants up. I was livid. Who forgets to tell someone when someone was coming to leave your roommate something then leaves pulling his pants up? How is that a detail that you forget to mention to someone. Sure, I accidentally ate your last pack of Ramen; sorry I didn't mention it, or I meant to tell you that someone called your phone while you were in the bathroom, but if there's one thing I wouldn't forget to mention it's Someone came to leave you something in our room, and they left pulling up their pants.
I immediately starting asking around, trying to pick up any clues that anyone would have. Most people knew nothing, but for those who obviously did, it was like watching an excerpt out of a college version of Winter's Bone. I expected one of them to pull me aside with a Dale Dickey voice and say, I told you to listen. You should have listened. I wanted finality for this crime, but no one would offer me any information to help me solve it. Just a smile and a shrug followed by, I don't know what you're talking about. It's not like I was speaking in a foreign language or asking about international relations between Guam and Peru; I was asking if anyone knew if Zak had air shat on my pillow. No one would answer; no one cared... not like I did.
And the mystery would go on to be ultimately unsolved. Sometimes people would talk about that one guy that got pink eye from the guy who farted on his pillow, but no one would ever mention names. They're secrets were safe in the bonds of idle chit chat and gossip, and when I was around, the conversation would stop. But I know, I always know. And it's a terrible prank, nothing like putting someone's fingers in water to see if they'll pee the bed or seran wrapping a toilet seat. No, this is a dangerous game that requires antibiotics and strips the victim of their innocence and clear vision. The night after graduation, a group of us collected in the parlor of Carnegie. Zak was there as well, and I couldn't help myself. Because it was the last time most of us would see one another (and probably partly due to the half a box of wine I had drank), I had confidence I had never felt before. I asked him, in front of everyone, Zak, be real with me for a second. Did you fart on my pillow and give me pink eye? The room fell silent; we all knew exactly what I was talking about--a grudge that had never fully been let go.  As thoughtfully as he could, he looked at me and said, Dude. No. I didn't fart on your pillow. I would admit to it if I did. But the problem is, once someone flatuates on your pillow, you never really come to trust anyone again fully. Even your best friends, and to this day, I have promised myself two things: 1) I will never again leave my pillows unattended. 2) I will find who gave me pink eye, even if it takes cutting off their hands in the middle of a lake.

Gas Station Nancy

As I prepare to pack up and move to D.C. this week, I've been doing my best to try and say goodbye to the people that have come to mean the most to me. I picked up my friend in Maryville a couple nights ago, and as we were driving back, I announced, We have to stop by and see Nancy. She didn't understand, Who is Nancy? I was almost disgusted by her forgetfulness. Anna, we have to see Nancy. At the EZ Stop. Nancy with the frosted tips. Anna and I had befriended Nancy sometime last year, as we made entirely too many trips to get cigarettes after midnight. She usually works the late shift, so I was confident we would run into her during our 1:00am excursion. As we pulled up to the store, no one was behind the counter. Nothing new: Nancy is usually out smoking or literally hiding in the bathroom or back in the gas station office. As Anna perfectly imitated, she always appears out of some place random and yells out, "Oh! I was just cleaning," as if she ever had to give us a reason for being misplaced. But she really wasn't there this time; we saw the door to the Gatorade open and immediately knew it wasn't her. Nancy does a lot of things at the gas station, but the one thing she does not do is work, let alone stock the Gatorades. As I left, I began to consider the people that I befriend; most 22 year old men do not befriend 60 something year old gas station workers, especially the ones with frosted tips.

Nancy and me, the night before my graduation.

But I have all these very interesting, very odd friends that I'm not particularly sure how I ended up befriending. I have this weird ability to reach out to just about anyone I meet and find some kind of commonality. Nancy and I met over a pack of cigarettes, and eventually we found common ground on the fact that most of our extended family has been in jail for one thing or another. She told me I reminded her a lot of her son, though from the picture I saw, I would never be caught dead in a white suit, but that's beside the point; Nancy and I had something special, and even if it was originally a running joke, I find ways to connect to people in the oddest circumstances.

But it's really no surprise; I always connect with the people that others are most unlikely to connect to. I can't say it's always a productive thing, as I probably take chances on people that I shouldn't. Before we even started college, members of our class starting friending one another on Facebook. I thought it was a pretty normal thing, so I played along. Anyone that sent me a friend request was accepted, and I didn't find that to be a problem until we started living on campus.

After a couple days, I was sitting in the dining hall eating a bowl of cereal when a girl appeared behind me. I didn't see her, but I heard her, kind of in the same fashion that Helga from Hey Arnold always heard that one kid with the glasses breathing behind her. I turned around and there she was, inches away from my body. I looked up and said hello, and she responded, You're the boy that lives in my computer. It was the exact kind of moment when you want as many people to be around as possible, as the chance that the next action could end with you getting knifed or chloroformed, but alas, it was just the two of us. I didn't know what to say, so in desperation, I asked her if she wanted to sit down. That was all that was said, and she spent the rest of breakfast staring at me as I finished my bowl of cereal. And that's the trouble with befriending anyone and everyone... you have some hits and misses, and then sometimes, you have people that just stare at you the entire way through your otherwise normal breakfast.
But if there's one job that someone like myself should probably never have, it's waiting. I've had the opportunity to meet entirely too many people this summer, and when I really like them, I want to take them home with me like a dollar on the ground or a lost kitten. And the problem is that most of the people that I feel this way about are people that are most definitely not acceptable in social situations. As a couple of old ladies walked into Big Mike's this summer, Marsha looked around at me and said, Stay away from them. Those are the whores of Seymour. I glanced to confirm who I'd seen; yep, they were easily in their late 60s, probably 70s. If I didn't already love them just from seeing them, knowing they were the neighborhood whores only made me love them more. I immediately grabbed their table, hoping for some conversational diamonds in the rough. They asked me if I had graduated high school yet, which from anyone else would have been offensive. I explained that I was going to graduate school in the fall and one of them told me that I should just stay and date her, an offer that I would have gladly accepted because I love me some cougars.
Soon, they began asking me about school and where I would go. I told them that I would be moving to DC to go to Georgetown and a grim look came over both of their faces. The oldest one turned to me and practically yelled out, You know there's colored people all over the place up there. A sweet boy like you's gonna be walkin' around all sweetly up there and one of those black people's gonna come up and knock the shit out of you. Leave you right there on the street, bleedin'. I am very rarely stunned beyond words, but I didn't know what to say. The other one chimed in, It's a damn shame. You're such a nice boy. I wasn't sure if I should have been more offended that they used "colored" in context as if that's just a normal thing to say or if I should be more afraid that they've already written me off for dead. It was like I told them that I had been drawn at the reaping to go into The Hunger Games. I could just imagine them saying, He was such a nice tribute, but he's no career. I started wondering if maybe Marsha was looking out for my best interest; maybe it was best to stay away from the whores of Seymour, even if they did leave me a five dollar tip for bringing them out pie.
Regardless, I refuse to give up on my search for out of the box awkward friends because in the mass of breakfast creepers and racist old women, there's a Nancy hiding in there somewhere. And maybe it is a bad quality, going around and befriending strangers, but there's something about the obscurity of it that draws me in every time. And even when they're super racist old ladies, there's something charming in the fact that they look out for my best interest by warning me of my unofficial race-related death. If you don't talk to people, you never get the chance to get to know them, and even if you don't get to know them, you miss out on the opportunity to hear the absurd and sometimes creepy things that people say. It's weird that as I'm about to leave, Nancy is one of the people that pops into my head to tell goodbye, but aren't we supposed to have an impact in as many lives as we can? Life is too short to ignore people that you don't think you have time to get to know. If you happen to find yourself in the Maryville area and desperately in search for overpriced gas, stop in at the EZ Stop and tell Nancy I said hello; she'll know who you're talking about.