Reckless, Abandonment

I've slept with the same pillow since I was six years old. When my mamaw died, my mom asked me if I wanted any of her things, so I chose her pillow--made of goose down and covered with a light brown pattern that had been further browned with age and the occasional snuff stain. The pillow protected me when I was younger when I would take trips away from my parents. Though she was only a total of 90 pounds, the pillow meant my mamaw was there, and I once believed that she could defend me against any monster, bully, or pain that the world had to offer. And the pillow became this thing that helped to nurse whatever I was feeling in my life, and over the years, the color was browned more and more with time. I replace the pillow case often, but underneath, I know that it's still there: the protection.
In recent years, the pillow is what I have fallen asleep with at night. I held it tightly against my chest in place of whomever I wanted to imagine it would be. Most nights, it's not so much a longing as much as it is habit. I hold on to whomever's identity I instruct the pillow to be, until the identity fades or is replaced by the next. But recently, I put the pillow away and stashed it in my closet because the dependency, even if just habitual, is unhealthy. I had grown tired of replacing identities because it seemed hopeless: an interest in someone who took it for granted.
The optimist in me believes in the pillow, and the realist inside me looks at it like Desdemona would: a means of suffocation. The pillow, something I love, is ultimately what kills me most.
And it's more than just a love thing. Sure, it plays an important part in most people's lives, but it really comes down to the general make up of human interaction, the give and take and whatnot. The reason that we find ourselves holding these pillows and writing this poetry and scrolling through our phones looking for a name we're comfortable enough to call is because we're missing something. We love the idea of knowing that someone is there, but when we have found that we're empty handed, or even worse... betrayed, we have to do something to compensate and deal with the loneliness. And you'd think that if we would take a moment to address why we're feeling the way we do--why we so desperately cling to the pillow--instead of trying to fix it, we might be able to accomplish a lot. We're a smart species, but we struggle so much identifying the cycle of our loneliness: someone was reckless with our heart, and we abandoned them. Those two words: reckless and abandonment.
These spoiled relationships are comprised of these two qualities, and they're two aspects that define human nature at it's most basic form. When we get comfortable, we become reckless with what we've been provided. It's a pattern that has repeated itself over and over throughout the course of human history, and with all the things we've destroyed, we still have not come to understand the power that we have. And with all the things we're capable of being reckless with, we are the only resource that has the ability to give feedback. Conversely, the other quality is one that any living creature can understand. When a person isn't feeling loved or a dog is getting beaten or a flower has been placed in the shade... all of those things attempt to abandon the situation. We need to feel nourished; we long to feel loved.
So, I've given you all these metaphors: the pillow, Desdemona, the flower in the shade. What does it mean? Well, to scale back and make it personal again, I've always been horrible at the cycle. Not so much the reckless part, even though we've all been at fault of being reckless with someone's feelings. It's more the abandonment. I like to believe that I'm pretty intrepid; if I find someone that I've ever deemed worthy of my time and compassion, I'll stick with them as long as I possibly can. That kind of dedication has proven to be dangerous in the past. With best friends and love interests, it always seems like only good can come from good intentions, but I've too often found myself in a situation where I care too much. And I push forward until I have nothing left to push with, and that's when I abandon ship. In my mind, I like to believe that a lesson can be learned from that, but ultimately those abandoned just find other people--people who similarly don't understand how to show they care, or potentially worse... can care as little as they do.
And as I've gotten older, like most things, it's hard to hold on to that hope. After a relationship gone awry and friendships gone astray and attempting to do that whole "coming of age" thing where you pick up this new life and try to hold on to the best things about being a child, I've become a little less apt to believe in the goodness of people and their intentions. We're so careless with each other's feelings because they're not tangible. We don't believe in their ability to scar and fray and tatter, and when they do, we surprise ourselves with the damage we refuse to take responsibility for. I was talking to my roommate who was, at the time, dating a girl he was admittedly not terribly interested in. It wasn't that he didn't like her... he just didn't like her enough. I tried to explain to him that the person who cares the least is the one with the most power. It's hard to explain the power that we can possess over one another.
In the face of all of that, I guess I had developed somewhat of a wall. I remember talking to people who just wouldn't let anyone in, and I pitied them for that. I was sad that they felt so alienated that they had finally just given up on the personal relationships they could potentially develop with people, but after the past year, I found that I had gotten to that point, too. I find myself struggling to trust people, and I've come to a place that when I've been burned, I can't find a reason to go back. I've come to a terribly sad place where I'm waiting on people to fail.
But, like most transitions in my life, it comes at a horrible time. I went home for a little over a week to collect my thoughts and emotions and try to put the pieces back together. I had decided that when I came back to my life in DC, I would rely less on those around me. I would not put weight in people because people lie and people leave. Even those at home are going to move on without you, and maybe it's just best to turn off that love you have for people. And in just over a week's time, I've already met new people and had people from before try and restore faith in our friendship, and I've had to ask myself Is it worth it? Because as many times as people may be reckless with you, you can't go through life abandoning the world. Life is too short, too fleeting for that.
And in my mind, a place I spend most of my free time, I tell myself that it's not worth it. People who have proven to not be trusted, should not be trusted. And in a way, people you haven't met shouldn't be given your trust to begin with. But last night, I spotted that pillow, the down pillow that has browned over the years. I put it up in my closet sometime in early December when I had just gotten to a point where I was over everything. And that's where my heart came in, because as many times as my mom asked me to throw that pillow away, I clung to it because I knew that it was worth more to me than what seemed logical. And sure, there are people and situations that are toxic--it's inevitable. But what I think is hardest is getting your mind and your heart to meet in the middle and determine what people and situations are actually worth it. It's a struggle I face everyday.
I pulled the pillow down and slept with it last night. I had no one in mind when I did because I don't think that's what the pillow is about. It's what I made the pillow become over the years, but when I think back to six years old and why I wanted it to begin with, it's because it reminded me of something familiar. It's small designs reminded me of the painted gold frame of my mamaw's bed, and the smell of tobacco reminded me of how often she would hug me. The pillow represents the love that another person can give another, and to abandon it... well, it would almost be reckless in itself.

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.

A Dusting on New Year's

Well, congratulations, we did it. Unless you did something really bad, really fast, you've made it to 2013. It's a feat that we all kind of considered unlikely in the back of our heads (oh you tricky, Mayans), but in the face of apocalyptic threats and the other unfortunate things we've done up to this year, we've happened upon a year that wasn't supposed to be. For those of us who never really worried about the future, this New Year's doesn't mean that much, but for those of us who did things in the face of a potential world ending, you're responsible for correcting those boo boos and actually planning for a long term future.

New Year's has always had this vague importance in the back of my head because I love the idea of a fresh start. After you graduate, you don't get "new semesters" anymore, so you're left reaching for as many fresh starts as life will allow you. You can make these resolutions that probably will not be fulfilled, but it's cool because at least you took the time to realize there is something that can be improved upon. In my case, I always made big goals that ultimately went completely ignored about 17 hours into New Year's: massive weight loss, the dismissal of red meat, no sexual interaction with anyone at all. That is until recently when I decided to tackle resolutions that were more attainable, which includes but is not limited to: learning the Nicki Minaj part to "Bottoms Up," and watching every episode of Will and Grace.
But my greatest superstition surrounding New Year's is that the way you spend your New Year's Eve is representative of how the following year will play out. In my case, the superstition has always proven to be somewhat true, especially in the last couple of years. Last year, for instance, I spent the better part of my New Year's Eve at a fraternity party watching a freshman down an entire bottle of Jaegermeister, while I casually sipped on a couple of beers. In the final thirty minutes, I rushed home with a friend so that I watch the New Year's ball drop on television with my family. In return, I watched a decent number of people, including myself at times, party senior year away. Then, I entered the chaos of post-grad life, and just in the final moments of 2012, I have settled down enough to catch my breath.
But New Year's Eve has not always been so docile, and it's usually reflected in the year that followed it. My sophomore year of college, I went to a party at my friend's house; it was my first year I had ever spent New Year's away from my parents and brother. I was intoxicated with the idea of running into a cute girl, talking by the beer cooler, and possibly... just maybe... getting that New Year's kiss that I had so desperately longed for ever since I found out that was what people do. My friend's attendees were not people that I was used to though considering that I was apt to get tipsy off the small amount of mouthwash I didn't spit out after brushing my teeth. I was the valedictorian of my graduating class and not well-versed on social decorum, so I immediately felt out of the loop. In between moments of Zak introducing me to his cohorts, I sat on the couch, channeling Dick Clark (may he rest in peace) and trying to hear the musical performances. I remember partially making a breakthrough after accidentally making a joke about Natty Light. When someone pulled it out of the cooler, I casually announced, Hey! That's what my Mamaw drinks all the time. It wasn't until I joined a fraternity that I understood the humor in the joke. Other than that, the night seemed to drag on.
Zak would always introduce me to his friends as "our valedictorian," then go on to tell people how smart I was and how I would go on one day to be a lawyer, which in essence was a complete lie, but whatevs. People seemed to be impressed until a stronger alcohol or cute girl came by, so I embraced it. By eleven o'clock, I had met just about everyone at the party, and I needed to go to the bathroom. I walked in and two people were in there... I know what you're thinking... you thought they were having sex, right?? Nah, just cocaine. The guy turned around from the bathroom counter and asked me if I wanted to do some blow, and without having the educational lyrics of Kesha (or Ke$ha, if you prefer the stylized version), I had no idea what to say. I quickly backed out of the door, falling over a bucket on my way out.
Soon after, I found Zak and told him that I was leaving without trying to explain my run-in with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in the bathroom. I just wanted to escape quickly before the cops came and busted the snort-sesh happening just a couple rooms away. My dear acquaintance/pusher who really seemed to like me about ten minutes before came out of the bathroom, and I told him that I was leaving. Apparently, what you're not supposed to do is act sketchy or deny people who offer you cocaine. When I told him goodbye, he flipped out saying "Dude, you come up in here thinking your f*$&ing better than us?!" Then he lunged at me as if he were going to hit me. Zak immediately dove between us, and all I could think about was that I had somehow stumbled into a scene from The O.C. I had always considered myself the Marissa-type, but I just wasn't jiving with the idea of doing cocaine, or fighting someone who was doing it, for that matter. Eventually I escaped, but the year that followed proved to be as tumultuous as the night that ended the year before.
The night did teach me a lot. One time, my roommate in college did cocaine, and I remember what would happen if I tried to fight him on it, so when he came in rubbing his gums and announced that he had done coke in the back of a club in the Old City of Knoxville, I just kind of high fived him and told him it was cool. I Wikipedia-ed cocaine to make sure he wasn't going to die, then I made him watch Blow the next day as I spread pixie sticks all over our coffee table. But moreover, I learned that sometimes New Year's is best spent in doors.
People asked me what I would do with my first New Year's in DC, and what eventually happened is that I stayed in with my roommate, watched Carson Daly (oh how the times have changed), called my mom at midnight, then forced a neck nuzzle upon Andrew at midnight because I still haven't gotten that New Year's kiss. Eventually, I dominated an entire bottle of champagne, then I went to bed. No, I didn't party it up in DC, and I don't know what that night spells out for the rest of my year. From the sounds of it, it sounds like I'm just going to be chillin with one dude for the year, occasionally making trips to the gas station, and end the year drinking a lot by myself... but then again, the final night of the year has never been a literal translation, so there's still hope. No matter what, it's nice to know that this year contained a little less illicit drugs and a little more of my norm: friendship and wine.

Because You Left

On Christmas Eve and/or Christmas day, it's always a crapshoot as to who is actually going to show up for the festivities. Because of an unfortunate string of events involving beanie weenies (see Reasons I Elected to Find a New Mamaw), a verbal altercation between my Aunt Susie and Dad, and a continual shunning of me and my brother because we read books, we no longer visit the Kirkland side of my family on any holiday other than the occasional Flag Day. As for my mom's side, there's still no set-in-stone plan, but every five years or so, the majority of us end up at once house or another and we celebrate Christmas as if nothing has ever changed.
I guess it had been a while since we had all found ourselves under the same roof because as everyone filed in, I scanned the room and realized that I hadn't seen, or just didn't know, at least a handful of people that were in the room. I was sitting at our kitchen counter, surveying the room of all these people trying to recount names and faces, when my mom asked me Do you know who that girl in the corner is? And I said, Yeah, I have no idea. I think that's Josh's girlfriend? I really have no idea what's going on. Eventually, the poor girl asked my mom if she could get a drink, to which my mom responded, Sure. First, who are you? Well, it was my cousin, Kasi. None of us had seen her in years, and I imagined that maybe she was sailing around Peru or had pulled an Elizabeth Smart on us and was living some veiled life somewhere in Utah. Once we had identified who everyone was in the room, it kind of hit me that it had been years, literal years, since I had seen some of my relatives.
I went to college relatively close, but the distance started once we had all began to grow up, I guess. People started having babies and moving to different states; we never really knew who was doing what except for that I was apparently the constant: I was in school somewhere doing something in relation to academia. Other than that, it was a free for all. The difference between then and now is that at one point, I was close enough to know what was going on. I would catch wind of family happenings on my weekend visits home, and even though I never particularly saw these people, I had the comfort of knowing they were less than an hour away if I really wanted to visit them.
But this year, I had to explain exactly why it was I had disappeared into the depths of the Atlantic seaboard. Apparently, in my rushed state, I had not reminded my immediate family to let anyone else know where I had gone or what I was doing, similarly to when they kept switching out Beckys on Roseanne. When I was explaining what I'm getting my degree in, and what I was doing, they kept asking me Why are you doing that? I thought you were doing journalism. My life had become this mystery, and when there were these cavalier bombs dropped throughout the evening about how people had changed or who they were dating, I was shocked and immediately asked for a recap. Every explanation was ended with the sentiment, oh yeah, you wouldn't know that because you left. No one ever meant anything by it, but there was this tinge of separation, as if there were some perforated edge between me and the rest of the family. I wasn't sure what it meant, but it's like in a matter of minutes, everyone had grown up and made children and/or ended up in jail or stopped believing in the celebration of Christmas.
But it wasn't minutes, and it wasn't the happenstance of six months away from Knoxville; I had left years before that, and it really didn't hit me. Everyone grew up really quickly in my family because of one decision or the other. One misuse of a condom or drunken night behind the wheel forced you to turn over your childhood card because those choices are matters that don't allow you the opportunity to go back and play with Lincoln Logs again. Me, I just happened to pursue multiple degrees and forego sex all together. We weren't the family that often played with each other, and in a way, Christmas was our only time to catch up on each other's lives. Instead of fighting to keep us together, I willingly let go of them and never considered that there would be any regret involved in that.
As the night came to an end, I stepped outside and caught Kasi, the mystery cousin, smoking a cigarette. She's sixteen. The seven year old inside of me immediately felt compelled to run inside and tell someone, but considering that she's pretty much the end of the line for my generation, it seemed kind of useless. Someone had to buy her the cigarettes anyways, so I did the cool, wise, older cousin thing and lit up with her. I apologized for my entire family's inability to identify her (in our defense: the excessive face piercings and multi-colored hair didn't help too much), and I tried to catch up on her life in the seven minutes it takes to casually smoke a cigarette. And no, you can't make up that amount of time in the course of one cigarette, but as we get older, we don't know when the next scandalous cigarette break is going to take place. So I used the moment to do what I had avoided for years because I didn't see a point in it: I tried. She walked inside because she finished her cigarette first and she was too angsty to stay outside to finish the conversation... oh to be sixteen again... but if I could have really told her one thing, it would be Please don't smoke. And don't hate everyone so much. Dress like you're sixteen and not twenty-six, and quit acting like no one understands you. We believed that no one understood us at sixteen, when in fact, we were just hoping that our lives were complicated enough to not be understood. You are much too young to be this old.
But I didn't, because I guess you have to learn all of that stuff in your own time. And I guess we've all learned it (or are still learning it) in our ways, too. My cousins have been faced with surprise children and drugs and alcohol and all these other things that I'm sure seem very dangerous and worthy of an A&E special, and maybe it is. But then there's me, who hasn't dabbled in any of those things (though I do love a Long Island Tea), but I learned the same lesson. And all it took was being away, not by distance but by priority, to teach me that anything and everything can change in an instant.

A Reevaluation of People I've Met in DC via The Hunger Games

As I am just days away from returning to The Capital, it's no surprise to anyone that I was crowned victor of the first semester of The Hunger Games: DC. In true, Katniss fashion, I did not win alone--partially because I kind of like some of the people I was around, partially because I have a distaste for blood. Yes, there were some casualties along the way, but sometimes, that's what you need to do in the face of good spirit of the game. Let's take a moment to reevaluate some of the past tributes that will not be returning for the second reaping.
If you recall some of the highlighted tributes from the first installment of The People I've Met in DC via The Hunger Games, you will remember spirited characters such as "Fish Sandwich, Fish Sandwich Boy" and "The Girl I Called Fugly Slut After Too Many Tequila Shots," both lost to the stress and turmoil of the last DC Hunger Games. I imagine that the McDonalds threw to boy out of the restaurant for loitering too long, and our chain smoking friend met her own demise as the result of her own secondhand smoke. But the games must go on, so I will evaluate the new and returning tributes based on their abilities and potential to win, based on the same scale of 1-12. May the odds be ever in our favor.

My OKCupid Match That Called Me Stupid on the Second Date
Haymitch said it best when he discussed "the careers;" sometimes it is more dangerous to be arrogant than it is to be humble. If you've never been on the OKCupid before, it's a quaint dating website that shallowly matches you with people based on questions about political beliefs, cleanliness, and the level of your sexual prowess. Eventually, you talk to someone long enough that you decide that you can't stand to be around them for more than thirty minutes, and you go on a date. Our first date was in a bar, so naturally, the majority I had to go off of was appearance. I tried to live tweet the date, but with volume being limited, I felt as if I should pay attention. The key words I got from the date were: law school, brothers, New York, country music. With that in mind, I decided on a second date. After a mile long trek around the DC monuments, a brief discussion about my move from the South, and an acute case of face molestation, the night ended with me being called stupid because I had never noticed the carousel on the National Lawn. The audacity did not earn a third date, but it could serve in the arena... at least for a time.
Training score: 6

My Cat, Batman
In a twist to this installment, one animal will be introduced into the game. I adopted him from a seemingly overjoyous family, but after a couple weeks, I have realized why they were so overjoyed: it was because they were getting rid of the cat. Batman will remind you a lot of Foxface from the 74th Hunger Games--he's fast and has a knack for really screwing things up. He's already eluded certain murder in my apartment at least four times and has a knack for hiding for days at a time. If you don't hear the cannon, you really can't assume he's died.
Training score: 11

Roommate Andrew
My personal Peeta sustained a lot of damage in the last Hunger Games, so we can only expect for him to follow the same fate as Peeta in Catching Fire. In the first Hunger Games, there was a lot of collateral damage because of Roommate Andrew, and in round two, his baking skills and agile nature with a soccer ball with serve him less faithfully than his faithful attentiveness to the show Dexter. The competitors in this arena will be much less gentle and much more skilled, but his newly displayed ability to consume a much higher volume of alcohol should benefit him. Like Catching Fire (spoiler alert!), it is assumed that myself and Roommate Andrew will still be a forced to be reckoned with. The first games made him much edgier, but then again, didn't it do that to all of us?
Training score: 8

The VP Who Always Tells Me My Clothes are Fabulous!
Okay, so maybe this is a comparison better drawn to Caesar Flickerman than to an actual tribute, but it's my games, and I do what I want. Yes, I have found him to challenge me fashionably in ways I never expected to be, but he's proven himself to be quite the sharp witted competitor. His evaluation of my daily outfits (the vest put me on the "hot" list, my risque use of Chuck Taylors put me on the "not" list), not only intimidated me, but also pushed me to think in ways I hadn't before. If he applies that kind of analysis to his competitors, he should have no problem taking out at least a couple players. However, if the arena's conditions happen to compromise the pleat in his pants, he could be gone before you can say "cornucopia."
Training score: 4

"Too Hungover To Make The Brunch Date We Had Arranged" Girl
Was still too hungover to make it to the Hunger Games. She was killed immediately by the Capital.
Training score: 1

Skinny, Skinny Nora
"Skinny Skinny Nora" who believes obese children should be informed of their obesity is obviously one of the careers in these games. She once endured the scrutiny of frat boys drawing on her cellulite with markers. Because careers always seem to last at least halfway through the book (or movie, if you're totes lazy), I expect that her beauty will push her forward. However, her inability to relate to many people on the unhealthy end of the BMI chart will surely come to hurt her--hopefully not in the same way that Clove or Glimmer went out. Sadly, she will eventually go to that big apple in the sky, which means she has a fashion internship in New York where no one can ever be skinny enough. Le sigh.
Training score: 5

The Man Who Gave Me a Cigarette in the Bar Bathroom
On a night that involved two Long Island Teas, a bottle of wine, and at least three beers, I wasn't looking my best... consider it that moment when Katniss got burned really bad by the fireballs in the woods. In a semi-inebriated stupor, I queried a man in the bathroom for a cigarette, and he gladly gave me one. He asked if I had any change in return, but alas, I only had my Burt's Bees... which I tried to give him. He politely declined. In a way, he was my Rue. Though we were only together for a short time, I will always remember that kindly black man in the bathroom, and I will forever treasure that Newport that he gave me out of the kindness of his heart. He will inevitably meet the same fate as Rue, and I can only hope I'll see him in that big bar bathroom in the sky.
Training score: 9 (just cause he was really great, you know?)

"Rides of Whales" Kelli
Inevitably, in every second installment there has to be a Finnick. A suave, alluring specimen with the ability to charm the pants off the competition and/or drink from anyone's drink in the bar who has an abandoned straw to offer. Kelli proved her strength as the likable tribute, making friends with any and every tribute she encountered. Her personality is only matched by her brute strength to ingest many McNuggets with the conviction only a previous victor can. A career in a different way than "Skinny, Skinny Nora," Kelli has the proven ability to last for days in the arena, but may find difficulty when it comes to befriending fellow tributes.
Training score: 10

All The Pretty Girls

Today, about thirty minutes before I was supposed to go on a date, I got a text message from the girl saying that she was going to have to cancel, for an unprecedented second time... in three days. The first time that she cancelled, she said that she was too hungover from the night before to be able to meet up with me, and then after asking her on a second date, she accepted and then backed out in a frame of only 18 hours... a personal best for me. Ironically, I did not go into the thankful nature that I probably should have... as far as I know, I could have avoided a tumultuous relationship of flakiness and alcoholism. She could have been one of those girls who visits the club a little too often, which is a high possibility considering that in the week we've been texting, most of the texts have been exchanged in a drunken state. But that's not what crossed my mind. What crossed my mind is that she was trying to escape a date with me; it became all about looks and insecurity, and I was transported back to sixth grade... back to Courtney.
Courtney Everett was the first girl that I ever cared more about than her Fruit Roll-ups. She poked be in the back with a pencil during homeroom, and in the most He's Just Not That Into You kind of way, I was confident that meant that she liked me. I used to imagine, as a 12 year old, what our life would be like together in the future, and eventually I wanted to ask her out. After weeks and weeks, I mustered up the courage to ask her to be mine forever, and she told me that she didn't want a boyfriend. A week later, she was dating Jonathan Mitchell. I was devastated.
I was always kind of surprised how part of sexual education, which was more of a course in abstinence and scary pictures of chlamydia, was geared toward (a) telling girls that they were important and attractive and they should defend their bodies and (b) telling boys to not stick it in whatever is walking by. I'm not suggesting that boys should do that, but I can't tell you how many times I stood in front of the mirror as a thirteen year old, inspecting my body, evaluating my lips and nose and eyes, trying to figure out why it was that I found myself so unattractive. That insecurity is a problem that has continued forward, and even though the thought of it was one of the most emasculating things a boy could speak of, I felt like I couldn't be the only person feeling that way.  And even if I was the only guy in the world that had ever felt that way, surely the person I was inside could offset the way I felt about myself on the outside.
I held on to that thought, while realizing that attraction played a huge part in the dating world. I began to watch the attractive people I was around to try and understand how they worked and who they really were... without the skin and the hair and the facial symmetry. As we were rounding out junior year, one girl in my class began talking about the kind of people that graduated from our high school. She's pretty in that obvious kind of way. She went on to say, The problem with our community is that there are so many poor people. How can you expect them to have children that succeed, when they don't even care if they succeed themselves? I was nervous because you don't want to take on the beautiful, but I turned around and said, You know, Lindsay. You're pretty. You're probably going to marry a gorgeous guy and have gorgeous children and live in a gorgeous house... but you have an ugly heart. And your kids will hate you, and your husband will cheat on you, and while you're rich and successful, you'll be asking why you hate your life so much. She was stunned, and it was the first moment in my life that I had genuinely considered that maybe attractiveness is not what rules the world.

Flash forward six years, and I'm graduated from college and living in this brand new city and hadn't been so shaken by looks in some time. I had grown into my skin (and my weight) to some extent and had a better grasp on who I am as a person, but when you're thrown into this new world with new people, you can't help to be nervous and doubtful. It had never resurfaced me until everyone in my apartment had started this online dating stint, a venture I had been apart of for months before either of them, and then all of a sudden you feel like you're in this weird competition measuring yourself against the people you're living with. And no matter how shallow it may be, you want to win. You want to be the Regina.
One of my roommates began receiving visits to his profile and emails from the website telling him that since he has been rated so highly by so many users, he was considered one of the most attractive people on the site. Eventually, he started asking us how many profile views we had gotten, and it became evident that there was this invisible hierarchy in the apartment. I began to feel like less of a person, and all that I could see in the mirror were the blemishes--the same ones I identified at thirteen years old. In the course of a week or so, I had forgotten everything I had come to believe about intrinsic value. At best, the numbers told me that I was unattractive and undesirable. I wasn't getting those stats, so I began a new account, answering questions and inputting information from scratch.
I talked with my friend Jane, an absolutely beautiful girl, about how I had been feeling. She told me that she understood, and I couldn't help but be confused. How could someone that looks like she does ever not feel good enough? She showed me her friends, and it looked like a catalogue of Barbie and Ken dolls, each with perfect hair and the perfect feminine features and/or a jawline that could cut a diamond. I didn't know that people like that existed, and as she scanned through the pictures, I wondered who they were--is that all that they are, or is there something else inside of those people?
Today, the attractive roommate went out with a girl that I had sent a message that eventually went ignored. She resembles a Taylor Swift wannabe with the standard online dating profile interests: loves to travel, sarcastic, and really loves Bon Iver. At the end of this horrible day of rejection and dejection and all the other -ections, I was completely exhausted. I was tried of being lied to and put off and ignored by people that I had very shallowly deemed "better than me:" the girls online, my roommate, Jane's friend who I had never met. Their worth had become greater than mine just because someone else, or them in some circumstances, had decided that attractiveness meant more than personality and intrinsic value. That's not to say that an attractive person can't be a wholesome individual as well, but at the end of the day, it was me that allowed myself to feel like less of a person because I had come to value attraction more than honesty, humor, and compassion less than someone's appearance.
At the end of the conversation, he told me how much that girl and I actually had in common, and that he thought we'd get along really well. I was too mad to even consider the possibility. She ignored my message, so why even entertain the idea? And then I stepped inside my apartment and my phone buzzed because I got an email. It was the dating website, telling me that my new profile had been rated so highly by so many people that I was considered one of the most attractive people on the website... in four days. Everything kind of hit me all at once, and I was reminded of everything I had started learning way back in high school. Honestly, there's no way in four days that the website had assessed I was one of the most attractive members on the site. But once I saw that email and put the pieces together, it didn't matter... because even if you are one of the most attractive people out there, does it matter if you're missing something greater on the inside?

Riding in Cars with Boys

My mom always told me to never get into the car with strangers, but honestly, the older I've gotten, I've always had a habit of bending the rules that my mom set forth for me way back when. I have a love for strangers, especially weird ones. Luckily I never had too much of an affinity for candy, otherwise I would have ended up in the wrong Astrovan a long time ago, and then I would have ended up being the Elizabeth Smart of the East Tennessee community. Regardless, I've managed to make it twenty-two years based on the kindness of strangers, and it's honestly a mystery as to how I have managed to not be murdered.
I guess it probably dials back to the fact that I love people, no matter who they are because everyone has an interesting story to tell. I've never really cared what someone looked like or how dangerous they looked... I always cared more about how they got there and if they were willing to tell me about it. I don't have many regrets in life, but one of the moments that stands out to me most distinctly was during my sophomore year of college. My parents had asked me to meet them at a car dealership because my mom was getting a new car (little did I know, we were actually trading in my clunker Jeep [may he rest in peace] for a car for me). As I turned off the interstate, there was an old man with a Duck Dynasty type beard walking down the road with his thumb out. I was immediately stopped at a red light because the Knoxville infrastructure somehow legitimized putting a stoplight on the off ramp from I-40 to Emory Road. Even from a distance, we locked eyes for just a moment. I smiled and nodded at him, and he returned the favor. I'm sure most people would have summed it up as just another vagrant looking for money or a free ride, but I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to go back and pick him up. From then on out, I had a stronger itch than ever to collect strangers on the road and put them in my car, kind of like a collection of hitchhikers.
So, after a couple years of waiting, I got my opportunity. The evening after my friend Dixie took me on one of the most painful hikes I've ever been on, we were completely exhausted on the way back toward campus. As we were navigating the Smoky Mountains tourist traffic, we came upon a young man with a giant pack on his back loaded down with all sorts of goodies hanging off of it. I looked at Dixie and asked if we go pick him up, as if he were some kind of stray kitten lost on the side of the road. Either way, I saw it as an opportunity because first and foremost, we had an opportunity to help another human being... and on the off chance that he was a crazed lunatic, I finally had an opportunity to test my self-protective skills with the metal pipe I carry in my car. We took about a mile deliberating the options before I made the executive decision to go pick him up.
He told us about hiking the Appalachian Trail and how his trail name was Leaf, as his walking stick was stabbing me in the neck from the backseat.  He was asking us questions about our lives, but not in the simple "everybody talks like this" kind of way, but more like if Ralph Waldo Emerson hopped in your backseat after a couple weeks alone in the woods. We ended up letting Leaf out of the car about two thirds a mile down the road, so we weren't actually that helpful at all in getting him where he was going. I had (kind of) helped a hitch hiker though, and I didn't get stabbed, so I considered an overarching victory.
Since then, I hadn't found myself in a vehicle with someone I didn't know up until just recently. DC is a bustling place where no one ever really knows each other because people move in and out so quickly that by the time you've introduced yourself, they're closing the door on a UHaul. But this week at work, I was asked to take a taxi from our office across town to deliver some materials to a client. I tried not to show my nervousness, but I didn't have any knowledge as to how you make this work. I mean, I had a couple of movie references, but most of the time, nothing in real life is like the movies. My plan of action was to go to the edge of the street and hold out my hand, but if they didn't seem to be slowing down, I would leap onto the hood until they came to a red light, then hop off and quickly dive in the back door. Luckily, the first one I saw stopped.
The ride was fantastic: a nice greeting once I got in, simple address request, light classical music on the way there. I was exhausted this week, so I took the twenty minute ride to collect my thoughts and just reflect on the week. My mind hasn't stopped lately, as I've been trying to get a handle on all of my 20-something thoughts. I've been thinking about how I want to approach my career and finals, and how being single during Christmastime is a total buzzkill. I wondered if I'd ever get married, and then I wondered what shade of leather I would make all the furniture in my "man room," when I was a fifty year old bachelor. It was so great that I was even looking forward to the ride back. But when I got in the taxi on the way back, there was no classical music. I didn't have time to begin my in depth life-changing contemplations/start planning the interior decorating for my bachelor pad because the taxi driver was too busy telling me how to hail a taxi properly. Apparently what I did wasn't hailing a taxi, as much as it was waving at cars going by, as if I knew the driver or if it was a parade. I knew it was going to be a very long taxi ride back.

About two minutes into the drive, he asked me if I smoked. Nervous, I answered, Yeah, I'm sorry because, you know, I'm obligated to apologize for each of my life decisions. He told me, Oh, it's fine. It's your body and your decision... at first, I thought that was it, which would have been a refreshing turn of events, but he followed up with, you know that smoking will kill you, right? which was a hard sentence to comprehend through his Dominican accent. It makes you die a slow painful death. That's why you've coughed so much since you've gotten in. It's already happening. I don't have any addictions in the world, except for women. I'm 58 years old, and I sleep with too many women. It wouldn't be a problem if I weren't married. Cue his extremely loud laughter and my nervous hiccups in the back. It all made sense to me: my mom didn't warn against me riding in the car with strangers because it was dangerous... she warned against it because people are really friggin' weird and kind of annoying sometimes. He went on to ask me if I had a girlfriend, and then told me that if I didn't get on it soon, I was going to be 50 looking around... wondering why I was still alone. I took his advice pretty hard until I reminded myself that he's married and sleeps around with all kinds of people. Guessing that I had become uncomfortable, due to my nervous texting and constant shifting closer to the door, he told me that he would leave me alone.
I felt bad because as weird as the conversation was, I felt like my body language was saying, Hey Dominican cab driver. I don't like your or your extramarital affairs. Stop talking, when it reality, all I was trying to say was, Hey Dominican cab driver, stop talking. After about three minutes of silence, he chimed in with, I can make excellent empanadas. There was no segue or any previous indicator that we had talked about empanadas, but because I was afraid I had already hurt his feelings, I took the bait. He went on to tell me about how he tried to contact Starbucks' corporate office to market his empanadas, but they didn't want his recipe. Eventually, they would pay. He was going to open up his own empanada business, and if I was interested, I could join him. He fries them instead of baking them. I think the latter half of the conversation was in Spanish because I couldn't understand what he was saying anymore. Eventually, things got quiet again.
At this point, we had hit dead stop traffic, and I was paying to sit in a cab and listen to him talk about empanadas. After about two minutes, he told me that people that smoke have to carry tanks of oxygen around and wear masks. As the meter kept rolling, I knew I had to make a quick getaway. This man had painted my future as a 50 year old, empanada-businessman, who was lonely but actually died around 34 from smoking. I asked, Hey, I can get off here, if that's cool. He said, your destination is still five blocks away. Desperately trying to escape the car, I said, Oh, that's fine. I like to walk, and I can get Starbucks on my way back to the office. Shit. He hates Starbucks, Justin. I quickly handed him the money and leapt out of the backseat in the same way that I thought I would have to leap in.
In the end, maybe it isn't such a good idea to ride around with strangers. I know that one day, I'll tell my children about the perils of riding in cars with strangers, but I won't scare them out of it with ambiguous stories of men in van with candy and ill-intentions. I'll tell them about how sometimes strangers do psychedelic drugs and talk over your head in that annoying, transcendental way. I'll tell them about how sometimes they criticize your way of life and then implore about why you don't have a sex life. And most of all, I'll take them to Starbucks to have that conversation, and we will most certainly not be ordering empanadas.