Notes From Corporate America

Since I started my super fancy, corporate internship in October, I've had people ask me, What's it like to work at a super cool, nifty public relations firm in the heart of our nation? Actually, no one has ever asked me that, and if we're talking geographically, most would argue that the heart of our nation is somewhere in the Midwest, but that's neither here nor there. But, if anyone is interested, I'm ready to talk about what it's like to work for a company like I do. Most of the time, I'm busy and diligently working, but occasionally, on days like today, we have staff meetings. Since this was my first time interacting with the entire company in one room, I came prepared with a notebook and pen to take notes down.
I soon after found out that no one takes notes at these things, and usually, people start drifting waywardly around the "Finance" section. But, I had the notebook and pen and imagination, so I took notes anyway. Some would call them more of a documentation of my inner dialogue, but I think we all know that when I'm at work... it's work only. Rome wasn't built in a day, but when I'm in charge of it, you can bet it will be done in two. Here's my notes:

1:59pm: Intern Nicole has abandoned me to sit with the Brand team. When I asked if it was okay if I sat with them she said, You can't sit with us! so I took a page out of Gretchen Wieners notebook and sat elsewhere. I felt awkward at the prospect of sitting with the boy interns, so I'm kind of sitting with the Social Marketing division... oh yeah, and Destiney--Destiney is my girl.

2:02pm: I'm feeling unwarranted resentment toward JJ, the Online Strategy intern. I don't know why.

2:04pm: 90 minute meeting has been reduced to 60. The aura in the room went from an orangey-red to a blue. Much better vibes. Much better.

2:05pm: Sudden paranoia has set in. I thought my phone was going to go off... checked it... it's on vibrate. Thank God.

2:08pm: Mother's intuiton was correct. Someone is calling me. Whomever you are, may you burn in the depths of corporate intern hell.

2:18pm: My boss Erica just waved at me from the back row. Hey, girl!

2:22pm: I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of inside corporate jokes. I should have been here longer before I had to come to one of these. Also, Destiney just told me that she likes my socks. They're not special, but it means a lot.

2:26pm: The inside jokes are getting out of hand, and I'm uncomfortable. Not in the "sue the company because this is inappropriate" way, just uncomfortable in general.

2:30pm: Fun fact: I've been wearing these socks for almost three days. #sorrynotsorry

2:37pm: The head of my division just arrived. This is going to be great. Game on.

2:38pm: I feel like we say "sexy" a lot in the Social Marketing division, yet again, not in the "sue the company" kind of way.

2:40pm: In front of the entire company, the head of my division just said, The spirit of the holiday is when you enjoy the misfortune of others. 10-4.

2:42pm: I finally realize why my chair won't lean back any further... it's because I'm pushing against a man's leg. My bad.

2:44pm: The head of my division (aka, super boss) is the most entertaining of all the super bosses.

2:45pm: We have officially hit the Finance section. Money on someone from Brand falling out of their chair.

2:48 pm: My mouth just made a super awkward popping noise, but it wasn't nearly as awkward as the length of time I spent pointing at my mouth afterward. I don't know if anyone saw, but if they did, I'm never going to get a job offer... actually, let's be honest... those chances are looking pretty slim anyway.

2:51pm: Yawn so hard, that yawn cray--ain't is J? Oops. Just got a message from OKCupid on my phone. Note to self: Tell no one at work that I have an OKCupid. Second note to self: See if I can find anyone at work on OKCupid; use it as leverage.

2:58pm: There are literally chapters in this meeting, one of them being a E! True Hollywood Story (literally) chronicling one employees path from college to graduate to her new promotion. Snaps for Dana.

3:03pm: Now a woman is reciting a haiku about an employees promotion... wait. The last line had six syllables. She was like, This is a haiku! and I was secretly like, No, it's not.

3:07pm: Oh good. There's my face on a giant screen. Welcome to the company, Justin. They asked me to stand up, and I think I did something akin to a curtsy. I can hear the keys typing up an ad to replace my position as we speak.

3:08pm: Oh, look it's Intern Liz! But it's awkward because she's not here. Snaps for Liz! I wonder what's she's doing... JJ's on his phone... they're probably texting. (more unwarranted resentment)

3:10pm: They're giving away a Kindle!? I want a Kindle.

3:13pm: Obligatory announcement of birthdays and anniversaries. So much clapping. So much.

3:17pm: In true PR fashion, the president of the company lied... but not completely. The meeting was 77 minutes--not 90, but definitely not 60.

Drug Searched at the Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn

This past year, all of my friends went to this cultural phenomenon called "Dayglow." I don't know if you've heard of it, but essentially the gist is that a whole bunch of meandering twenty year olds end up in a collective area. They play this thing called "house music." I am still not sure what that means or what it sounds like, but whatever. Then, everyone wears white (which in my neighborhood, that was not something that you did in a public forum) and bumps into each other a lot. Throughout the night, the ceiling spews paint down on top of you, and from what I hear, it's pretty awesome. As I've stated in the past, I don't like bodily fluids, my contacts tend to dry out rather quickly, and I spend enough time bumping into people I don't want to see--this obviously was not the event for me.

Ecstasy is like a mix of those little
tablets you use to dye Easter eggs and
Smarties.

But my friends bought their tickets weeks in advance, waiting for the day that they would go play in paint and experience "young adulthood." Maybe I'm missing the point of young adulthood, but I was on RA duty that night so I just went back to my room and watched Enough with Jennifer Lopez. Apparently the only way the night of paint and sweat could be any more amazing is if you took this little substance called "Molly." If you're a hood-ass gansta like myself, you may know it by it's other aliases: Mandy, ecstasy, X, or MDMA (and yes, I had to wikipedia half of those). After talking to a friend who explained how it released all this dopamine and serotonin, it really didn't sound all that bad. But then she told me about this phenomenon called "Suicide Tuesday" that happens after, which is this depressed, hopeless state you fall into because your body has literally had all the happiness sucked out of it. As a fairly emotional person anyway, it didn't make much sense to purposefully send myself into euphoria and/or depression. I did that on a daily basis anyway. At the end of the day, I stuck with my dad's tried and true saying, Don't take that shit if it didn't come straight out of the ground. Affirmative, Wendell.
So needless to say, I don't dabble in drugs; if I were to ever appear on COPS, it may be for gang violence or domestic assault, but definitely not drugs. After watching cousin after cousin dip their toes in the (heroin, LSD, hydrocodone) water, it just didn't seem like a logical route to take. Call me a hipster, but drugs seemed so mainstream to me. That didn't keep me from straying off the tracks a bit though. After my sophomore year, I took one summer to be a wild child. I made out with a lot of girls, called into work sick sometimes, and occasionally stole meat that was left in an abandoned cooler outside of a restaurant next to campus. Needless to say, I was pretty out of control. I ended the summer by taking the stereotypical step to rebellion: I got a mohawk.

An unfortunate time for everyone.

After I got the mohawk, it was pretty much over. I didn't care about doing anything crazy anymore because A) where do you go once you've hit the top and B) I was bored with it. But speaking on a first hand basis, leaving the scandalous lifestyle I was leading is kind of like quitting a gang: you don't do it. A couple weeks into my junior year, a group of us decided to go to the fraternity party happening off campus. There were too many of us for one car, so we split up: four in mine, two in the other. I'm a bit of an aggressive driver, so I was setting the pace for the rest of the traffic when an officer shot in behind me and turned on his lights. I'm not sure about everyone else, but the two minutes it takes me to get pulled over when a cop gets in behind me is seriously the worst two minutes of driving I will ever do in my life. Naturally, I was in the fast lane, so there's that awkward struggle of getting pulled over and then knowing where the right place is to stop: on this night, it happened to be at the Holiday Inn.
The officer shined a light in my car and asked for everyone's identification and then asked me why I was drag racing with the truck next to me. First and foremost, if it were a drag race, I would have won. Secondly, I wasn't even aware that I was drag racing him, but I suppose it made sense because the truck pulled over with us had a "piss on Ford" sticker and a proud, valiant Dale Earnhardt number 3 in his back window. Dale (three to the sky) and Teresa would have given him mad props. After sticking his head halfway in my window, the officer asked if he could search my vehicle. To my knowledge, all that was in there was at least three Zaxby's bags, enough aluminum Coke cans to power a third world country, and a half dumped container of powder laundry detergent that could have been misconstrued as cocaine if it weren't for the revitalizing blue crystals that make your clothes smell fantastic. Without knowledge that you have the right to decline a drug search of your car, I just accepted it.
All of that rebellion was soon out the window. At first, it all seemed to be just a routine procedure, but three cop cars, half the Texas Roadhouse, a solid number of occupants at the Holiday Inn, and a drug dog later, everything was starting to get out of control. We had all been removed from the car, and the truck we were drag racing with was gone. It wasn't until I was straddled with my hands placed on the hood of the cop car that I really started to fall apart. I looked over at the officer who had just got done frisking me and said, I was valedictorian of my high school. He looked at me half-puzzled, half-knowingly as I continued, I've been on Dean's List every semester... I mean, I'm Vice-President of the Student Body... people like me don't get drug searched. I don't even do drugs. He did his best to ignore my comments, but I continued, and there are people over there taking pictures... and they're only getting me from the side. I look horrible. He knew it. I knew it. Justin was broken. The officer was quite a portly man himself, and what I said must have hit home because he immediately responded, Ah, you don't look bad. You're not even that big! We had a moment, right there in the joint Holiday Inn/Texas Roadhouse parking lot. As the girl in the backseat was being threatened with jail time for having migraine medicine on her person without a prescription, I turned to the officer and said, Really? and he said, Really. I understand.

The german shepherd that arrived on scene was digging through my backseat, which was so messy that it was reminiscent of the final challenge on Double Dare 2000, and all I could do was stand there and talk to my new officer friend until the whole charade was over. The entire escapade lasted about an hour and a half... during which the officer never found in necessary to turn off his flashing lights. If I had been there five more minutes, I probably would have gone into an epileptic seizure. Other than some prescription migraine medicine (which is obviously what all the kids are getting off on these days), there was nothing in my car. By the time we were able to get going to the party, we were sure that freshmen had already crashed the event, which means the more pedophilic upperclassmen were grinding about in a cramped living room while everyone else had vacated. We just decided to go to a friend's house.
But from every situation, there is some kind of takeaway lesson, even if it is a really shitty one: in this case, trying to emulate Nancy Reagan and "just saying no" doesn't always work because the only justification that the officer had for searching my car was that it smelled wanky. Because he was from Alcoa, I decided that the best place to find the definition of wanky was on UrbanDictionary.

Wanky (wah-aye-enn-key): adj. Word used to describe moments of great sexual attraction and sexual tension.

It didn't seem to fit the description that I had in mind. But I think the bigger take away here is that drugs are everywhere, even in places that their not. On this Halloween, I'm reminded of all the times my parents would take my Halloween candy and spread it out on the table inspecting it for drugs, and as a candy-giver-outter myself these days, I suppose that it's very possible. I still suspect that it was no coincidence that all the drug-laden candy just happened to be the Butterfingers and Reeses, but parents that actually love their children and respect the hard door to door plight that is trick or treating probably should search their kid's candy for drugs because you never know when a Smartie will turn up to be a hard hit of ecstasy.

A Little More Competition

As I played my roommates in Scrabble this evening, I realized that I didn't start enjoying the game until I had secured a solid thirty point lead over second place. Until that point, I just kind of sat there with animosity churning in my heart. I always liked the motto that I grew up with, If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at. And you know, as anti-team-player and non-traditional as that sounds, I think that ultimately it's an excellent motto. If you're not good at something, and you don't really enjoy being not good at it, then get your self together and move on to something else. And there have only been a few times that I've thought back on that motto with regret, because I'm confident that with some training, I could be an excellent football player now. Even with soccer, I was pretty decent, but I just kind of gave up on both because I wasn't the best. I moved on to things that I could dominate at because, let's be honest, being the best is so much cooler than not being the best.
I'm sure you think that the mentality is disgusting, but it's not as if I quit everything I'm not good at... and if I start something, I will definitely fulfill the obligation that I've signed myself up for. However, if it comes for signing up for it again, I will definitely decline. That's why I don't play 21 with my roommates anymore, and it's why I go to bars and clubs to drink and dance as opposed to pick up women. I know what I'm good at, and I know what I'm not. While you go and compete with all the other "bros in da club," I'm going to stand over here with my shot of tequila. I'm fantastic at tequila... like, you don't even know.
But if there's a chance that I may rise to the top, I will fight like it's my job to ensure that I've given everything I can. In high school, I gave up having friends (partly because I wasn't too popular, partly because I loved me some school) and focused primarily on getting the highest GPA possible. That's why when it was miscalculated, I marched my Walmart polo and jeans combo into the vice principals office and demanded a recount... essentially, I was the Al Gore of the South-Doyle High School 2008 graduating class. People wonder why it is that I take competition so seriously, especially when it comes to things as simple as calling shotgun or a game of Scrabble, and what I don't think people understand is that this comes from a deep-rooted, dark psychological place that I like to call: Daddy Issues. Let's recap.
As a small six-year-old, Wendell instilled the competition bug in me early on. In the wake of my grandmother's death, my parents bought me a Beta fish. His name, may he rest in peace, was George. I loved George and took care of him as if he were my own child. I would look at him, early and often every day. My dad must have been threatened by my love of George so he acquired his own fish... a small freshwater catfish. You can only imagine my surprise when I walked in and found the bottom half of George lingering at the top of the aquarium as the small catfish nipped at his remains. Much like the Titanic until the mid-nineties, the top half of George could not be found. I was devastated, and couldn't put my anguish into words. I ran up to my dad and said, George is dead! George is dead! Your catfish ate George! and he responded with only two words, Catfish. Domination. and he held his hands over his head in a way that would haunt me for years to come. Wendell never allowed me to live a subpar life, so I knew that I had to live mine to surpass all expectations... for me and for George.

And the "domestic competition abuse" didn't stop at any specific point. When we would have family game night, Dad always requested that we play Monopoly, and I would instantly get a knot in my throat. I knew how it would end... Dad would have Park Place and Boardwalk WITH hotels, and I'd just being sitting over there across the table with Reading Railroad and friggin Marvin's Gardens, counting how many white one dollar bills I had. He would offer to give me "a loan" to tease me along, and sometimes I wondered if he did the same thing to animals out in the wild... shot them in some terribly sad place just to let them bleed out in front of him. One time, I went so far to hit the table and mess up the board, after which I was given a speech on being a good sport. I wanted to give my dad (and pretty much any athlete I've ever interacted with) the "how to not be a assface when you're competing with someone obviously under your level." So, after a while, I honed in on my skills. I put together what I knew I was good at, how I liked to play, and what I was confident in and merged those things together to make a list of things that I liked to excel at. Over the years, I decided that I didn't do well at:

• team things
• movement that involved the cooperation of a group
• any social interaction that depended on confidence in my appearance
• anything that had to do with manliness or my sexuality
• actually, anything involving my own sex
• activities involving money, fake or real

But. That left me with my stronghold... books, pop culture, ironic and fast-paced wit, words and writing, and sports that only involved me or one other person (archery, shooting guns at things, fake gymnastics, ballroom dancing, and occasional tennis matches). And once I found the things I was good at, I found that I was a much happier person overall. No, I haven't sat down across from my father with a Monopoly board in years, but I like him a lot better this way than I did when I was in those crucial preschool years.
And maybe there's something deep-rooted in this competition bug; it could explain my absolute ferocious driving style and the reason I carry a metal pipe in the front seat... but that's a different blog for a different day. For me competition was so much more than someone being better or worse than you at something... my experience with competition was always a way to be belittled. If you weren't the best, you weren't privvy to the conversations and words that others had to say to and/or about you. Competition was the last thing I wanted to be apart of when I was younger, and in a way, that's why I try to avoid it today at all costs. At the end of the day, you have to sit down with yourself and say some words that I believe Confucius said first, Haters gonna hate. When I walked into the living room and found the Scrabble board on the coffee table assembled ever so carefully with a not so nice message, I found it reminiscent of my time in middle and high school, but I did not allow myself to go there... this Justin was not one who had gotten out first in dodgeball or awkwardly stood at the edge of the party with no one to talk to... no, this was a Justin with a steady lead in Scrabble and a command of words barely ever used in the English language, and that is a Justin to be proud of.

If Sandy Gets Friskier Than Expected

If you've been watching the news, you know that there is a little mess called Hurricane Sandy headed up the East Coast; if you're really into meteorology, then you know there's also a cold front busting in from the West. Essentially, what's supposed to happen is those things are supposed to meet up, and in about four days time, yours truly will be playing the part of Jake Gyllenhaal in a remake of The Day After Tomorrow. Essentially, it's supposed to be a hurricane with winter-like conditions which has me boggled as to whether I should purchase a parka or board up my windows.
As an English and Writing major in undergrad, I'm staunchly opposed to burning books, so once we run out of wooden things to burn in the apartment, we're pretty much done for. And as for food, I'm down to a box of Strawberry Frosted Flakes, 9 mini bags of Doritos, some pesto, pretzels and hummus, and some Disney Princess Spaghetti-Os that is dented on the side. Knowing myself on a hungry day, those perishables will be gone in approximately 4-8 hours. I'm not eating Andrew because I theorize that he tastes like cardboard and long-standing disappointment, and I'm not eating Ben because sometimes he growls at me when we're not in a crisis. So that leaves me with a laptop to catalog my dying thoughts, however many Schweppes ginger ales I can acquire between now and Saturday, and all those pictures I have on my wall. After that, I suspect it will be pretty grim, but I will do everything in my power to maintain as much humor and handsomeness as Leonardo DiCaprio did when he froze to death/drowned back in 1998. And hell... I might be so resourceful in this whole mess that I could survive to see another hurricane.
So with all that being said, I want to get some things out there that I may not get the chance to later, but I think they're important. This is a moment where I'm going to be so honest with you that it may hurt, but I need you to remember that once Wednesday comes all you'll have of me is memories and whatever you can find of my frozen-Jello-Puddin-Pop body. Turn to these stories and think of me fondly. Laugh at and/or with me, and if anyone can ever figure out my Gmail password, I encourage you to continue telling my scandalous stories as a ghost writer... but do it well, because if you don't, I will haunt your ass and give "ghost writer" a whole new meaning.
First and foremost, if things don't go so well, don't look at my search history on Google. Actually, don't touch my computer at all... just throw it away, preferably in a recyclable and safe area so that otters don't choke on it or that its chemical contents don't taint the drinking water of future children. It's not so much for the standard "don't look at my computer" reasons, but more so because I think that some of the search queries in there (without proper explanation) have the ability to defame my reputation for years to come. Some examples: how to make meth,   Columbine and other school shootings, Ryan Gosling, "kitten cannon," and one of the most atrocious "Who is Kim Kardashian dating?" My computer is my fortress for all the knowledge that I'd like to gain without actually having to ask other people. It's full of my utmost personal writing, letters that I've written to people but refuse to send, blackmail pictures of people I don't like, and too many screenshots of Kittens Inspired By Kittens to count. As my dear friend Bridget once said in regard to anal sex, Don't touch it. Don't look at it. Don't even think about it.

If in fact the worst does happen, I respectfully ask that my tombstone is engraved with the message He Went Down Hand Jivin', which I find to be completely appropriate considering that I will have met my demise via a storm named "Sandy." Sure, there will be some people who believe that the entire thing was done in poor taste, but those who know me best will understand just how poignant and fitting it is. I love to dance, specifically things that already have a set rhythm and form. It wasn't but just two weeks ago after two Long Island Teas and some wine that I felt it completely necessary to only ballroom dance at the bar that my friends and I went to. Yes, it embarrassed them (and me, both) once it was all said in done, but if you could have seen my frame when attempting to waltz to David Guetta's "Without You," you would understand.
And over the next couple days, when you think of me as you're sitting in your non-East-coastal homes in the luxury of windows that are not blown out and floors that have not become the lining of a makeshift kiddie pool, understand that this is exactly what I've been hoping for since the inception of Grey's Anatomy and every other TV drama I've watched since circa 2004. If all goes as planned, I will survive because in my mind, this hurricane Sandy business is just the November sweeps episode of this season of my life. Something big has to happen to get the ratings up, and sure, I may overdramatize the next couple days... and yes, my roommates may find me laying in the floor, completely uninjured as I'm listening to an Ingrid Michaelson song, but that's just kind of who I am. They'll leave me there, as I imagine that I have a broken leg or that I'm drowning, but in my mind, that's just the character arc that I need to go through while we're out of power for the next couple days.
In essence, the next couple days may be difficult, but I'm going to go ahead and take a guess and say I'll survive. There will be a lot of wine consumed and probably a lot of time spent reading. When I found out today that I got off of work and school, it was really exciting until I realized that there was no other place to go. So, if you don't hear from me for a while, the power has probably gone out and you can rest assured that I'm just sitting in the living room, staring at my roommates. But in the case of my untimely death, follow the two simple rules listed above, as well as these:

• Give my brother, Casey, full rights to all those Beanie Babies in my closet at home. Most of them were his anyway.
• Make a fan page for me on Facebook. Don't stop promoting it until I have 500 likes.
• Work on getting an annual holiday for me at Maryville College. I would say it shouldn't be hard, but let's be honest... there's like 1,000 hoops you're going to have to jump through.
• Sprinkle my ashes at Dollywood, preferably off Daredevil Falls.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Wish me luck.

Lies on Lies on Lies

I have always prided myself on being an excellent liar; it's something that I worked on for years and years, and some would even say that it came innately. To an extent, I feel like I owe it to genealogy or maybe even my trusting blue eyes. People love to believe what I say because I guess I just appear to be someone that you can trust. It started pretty early on, and the first lie I can remember is when I almost killed my brother via glass light cover. We were sitting in our joint bedroom (in my defense, the bedroom that he kicked me out of when we were nine because he felt like he deserved his own room... I'm not bitter) playing the "throw the Play-Doh and make it hit the ceiling" game. Eventually, my obvious lack of athletic ability reared its ugly head and I smashed a giant wad of purple Play-Doh into the glass light cover. Thanks to my cat-like reflexes, I dodged the shards of glass as they rained down from above, but Casey wasn't so lucky. I'm still reminded of my indiscretions every time I see the vertical scar on his right shoulder. When my parents first stormed the room, I wanted nothing more than to tell them the truth, but like most proclamations I tried to make as a six year old, no one listened... even after the excitement was over. So in my six year old mind, I crafted a genius story: Casey threw the Play-Doh up and it hit the ceiling beside the light cover, and it must have shaken the roof enough that it knocked the light cover down... why no one ever questioned that story is still beyond me, but it wasn't until about 8 years later that the truth came out, and as Ashley Judd taught us, you can't be tried for the same crime twice.
I lied my way through most of my public school career, creating all of these elaborate yarns that I would convince people were actual [events, people, etc] in my life. I would make sure that they were interesting enough that people would listen to them, but realistic enough that people wouldn't think I was making them up. For the most part, people loved everything I had to say, and that's all that mattered. Yes, of course I have a horse. I actually have three. They live on a farm about 20 miles away, and my family goes and rides them on the weekends. Did I mention that my dad knows how to lasso? No. He can't show you. All of the lies made sense in my mind, and at times, I think I may have believed them all myself. I think that could actually be a psychological disorder, but I'm not going to take the time to look it up. I'm pretty sure I have a laundry list of other psychological disorders much more relevant to my life.
The older I got, my ability to lie became less focused on myself and more on the common good of others. My first official night as a resident assistant, two other RAs invited me to go out into the college woods with them. They had a six pack of Red Stripe, and it seemed like the most rebellious thing I could have ever done in my life. I mean, I was just a young, impressionable 19 year old, lured by the temptation of pseudo-import beer. Sadly, I was confined to the walls of my dorm because it was my "duty night." I watched them lurk into the woods with a satchel full of beer. Looking back on it, I don't know what was so charming about the situation. Like most beers, I didn't care so much to drink the Red Stripe or even be in the woods. I used a string of lies between the ages of 10-16 to avoid staying out of the woods as much as I could. I just wanted to be included in the scandalous activity of drinking two beers in the woods.
About two hours later, I got a phone call from Ellison. It was all Blair Witch Style; he was breathing heavily through the phone: Justin, we're caught. We're going to get caught. I had no idea what was going on, partly because it had the making of a cult classic that I still don't understand, partly because I had just woken up. We're trying to get back to Copeland. The dogs are coming. I have to go. Click. That was it. I sprung out of bed, contemplating what my next move would be. Eventually they escaped the dogs and made it back, sans satchel and beer. They immediately began to panic because John had left his ID in the bag. "Lie Justin" wiped the sleep from his eyes and focused up. My ultimate plan was genius: Ellison was to go back to Gamble, and John back to his room. Once the bag was found, the story was that John had left his door unlocked and bag by the door. Freshmen had broken in and stole the bag, which contained objects that we would later dispose of. Yes, John's ID was in the bag, but when he woke up, the bag was missing. Simple.
They decided instead to tell the truth, and in a surprising turn of events, Maryville PD and campus police let the entire situation go. John and Ellison went to Waffle House to celebrate their near brush with a county misdemeanor, and I just... went back to sleep. Soon after, I began to see that my desire to lie had waned. I didn't seem to be gaining much from a life of compulsive lying, no matter how airtight the lies were.
And all that leads me to now. Looking back on the past 10 months of 2012, I think this might have been my most truthful year to date... kind of. It's easy to tell the truth when you're leaving a place because you don't have to deal with the repercussions of what may happen if you stuck around. So, as I left Maryville, I came clean about a giant heap of information that I had kept quiet about for months or even years. A good deal of those things can be found within this blog. The issue that makes me question the validity of this year is "lying by omission." A decent portion of my life has consisted of lies by omission because... well, I'm a sneaky kid. Namely, I think of all the times that I skipped class in high school and just kind of drove places because I was able to check myself out when I was "sick." I think about the duty night my junior year of college that I just kind of blew off so I could go get the new Taylor Swift CD. But the lies that bother me most are the quiet lies that I've kept to myself to protect other people. As I sit in my ethics class, I find that public relations is a hard place to find a definite set of morals because you wouldn't tell a company's secrets if there's no absolute reason that you have to... but you have to wonder, what exactly would happen if you just told everything about your life without any regard for who it may affect or what repercussions may follow.
The exemptions we make for ourselves are interesting. I can't remember the last blatant lie I told, but I can't count how many lies by omission I've told. I mean, I have binders full of them. The question is: can you really say that it's a lie if you're the only one who knows it's not true?

Any Which Way But Home

To be completely honest, I didn't really care that much to come home, and as I watch the Washington Memorial start to disappear out the window, I still have my doubts. It's not that I didn't want to see my family... I want to see them every day. If I could have them there with me, I would, but in all honesty, I'm exhausted. The prospect of getting on a bus at eleven o'clock at night and hoping that maybe there weren't any children or nine hour marathons of Golden Girls was too much for me. Before I had even approached the bus, I unloaded two Benadryl from my bag and bought an outrageously priced 2.00 Cherry Coke. The plan was to drug myself into an allergy medicine coma until I reached the daylight of Knoxville's downtown bus station.
But then what do I do? I get picked up and then I pretend like my life hasn't changed for four days, and then I get back on a bus to do it all over again? The closer it got, the more the concept of going back home troubled me. I kind of feel like I was forced out of Knoxville being my home. I haven't seen anything Knoxville related in over two months now, and I started noticing that when it came to people from home, my phone had a lot of outgoing calls, but not many that were incoming. So after a period of mourning a life that really wasn't mine, I was determined to let it die. I would write about my past in this blog, but as far as I was concerned, the future belonged to D.C.
I have started putting this life together up here, choosing family members with their own stories. I like the idea that after a day or so, people might even miss me. The thing about DC is that most people come alone, and no one really knows what's going on... and I'm not even talking about the political side. So, in a weird, mismatched, completely non-methodical way, I chose these people to share my life with, and I became okay with the idea that they could replace what I've come from. I didn't need what I left because people either didn't understand why I left, didn't believe I could, or simply forgot to remember me once I had gone. Or at least that's the way I saw it.
But as I walked up to the bus stop, I decided to take a seat and check my Facebook, Twitter, blog, and all three of my email accounts. A man next to me was obviously talking to his spouse, telling them how much he couldn't wait to see them. He loved them. He'd talk to them soon. I couldn't tell if he was coming or going, but I knew that wherever he was going, there was very distinctly a home that he had in his mind. I thought to myself, I wish I had that certainty. That assurance that he has in his voice to call one thing home over anything else. In recent weeks, I had no idea what I would call home because I wasn't sure myself anymore.
And then there was this woman. If I had to guess, I would say it's in the upper 50s in Washington, but she walked up in a full blown coat, scarf, and toboggan. She was obviously ready for an elderly installment of Cool Runnings. Naturally, she decided to sit down next to me, as all the most interesting people do. She tried to talk to the man who was on the phone, but he was quite obviously not entertained by what she had to say. So she turned to me. Look at our bus driver. Well doesn't she look fresh as a daisy. We quickly deduced that we would be on the same bus going home to Tennessee. Then, surprisingly enough, we found out that we've both lived off of Chapman Highway. We started exchanging stories about our lives, but I really didn't have anything in comparison. Somehow, in the span of thirty minutes, we covered topics from politics to health care to religion, to which she had to say, My daughter married a Pentecostal. I don't think I have to say anymore... she came up to me one day and said, "Mama, I'm so sorry, but I think you're going to hell." The Pentecostals are like that... and I said, "Well, I'm more worried about you going around and judging people like that." And I remember the conversation so well because I was literally writing down her words verbatim as she sat in front of me.
She began to tell me that none of us were all that different from one another, even when it came to religion. We all worship something greater than us, and none of us have ever been able to prove it, but it's human nature to want something that you can't understand. At times, I wondered if maybe she was just bat shit crazy, or if maybe, there was a slight possibility that she knew something I didn't. She did however say that anybody who studies philosophy and takes it seriously as a subject is a "plain out waste of time," and I couldn't help but giggle. People who study philosophy can't tell you nearly as much about life as I can. While they were studying life, I was living it.
But then she went back to Tennessee, telling me how she had lived there for 7 years, but then she had moved to Florida. Later, she would move to Ohio, then Syracuse (which was her least favorite), then New Hampshire, and finally settle in at her current location of Boston. I started asking her just how many places she had lived, and she responded, I've lived too many places to count. I call them all home, whether I liked them or not. Of course, I would find myself sitting next to the seemingly whack job bag lady capable of offering up wise life lessons that I couldn't even fathom. She spoke of life and death like it was a science... not one that she had studied, but rather lived first hand, having lost her daughter to cancer five years ago on her birthday. Soon after, I asked her if maybe we should get in line and then the sneaky old skank said that she put her bags at the front of the line early on, but if I wanted to get on the bus, I better go take my place... about thirty people back.
I nodded to the man sitting next to us, the one who was on his phone, and it all kind of hit me suddenly. The man didn't have a particular place in mind when he was thinking about home. Home was whoever was on the other side of that phone call. Yeah, they may live in a house in a specific city, but it was obvious that the phone call being made was not because of a house or some patch of property. That love and definite feeling of home belonged to a person, which kind of explains my debacle. I want to go home, but I don't want to leave... because I'm lucky enough to call two places home. And I suppose that maybe the reason no one ever called to make sure I was doing okay is because I didn't really give anyone the opportunity to be unsure of my situation. I talk to people everyday, letting them know about walking across the street or blowing my nose or about a new television show. So, I would still say the situation is hard... leaving to go back to Tennessee, but it's not because I don't know what home is; it's because I have to leave home to go home.
So after a ten hour day at work and a dinner alone and four hours of sleep to make that all happen on, I'm going to pop the safety Benadryl and go pass out, and when I wake up, I imagine I will be seeing the sunlight shine across a different home than I went to sleep to.

Update: I kept running into Evelyn, or Meggie as she introduced herself. In between medicinal comatose, we'd stop at rest stops. At our most recent 5:00am stop somewhere in Southern Virginia, she offered to buy me a coffee, seeing that in reality... she was much more weather-appropriately dressed. She is easily one of the most caring, thoughtful people I've ever met, and I hope that one day, I can be a fraction of the human that she has become.

Eight Reasons That I Don't Want To Get Married Right Now

I love marriage. It's precious and beautiful and all those other really sweet words that people like to put in their vows. I look forward to the day that I find someone to spend the rest of my life with because isn't that all what we're looking for in the long run? We want that person that will stick with us through everything because the idea itself is a marvel, and I don't mean that sarcastically. There are days that I wake up and don't like myself, so to know that there could be someone out there that wakes up beside me and regularly sees something inside of me that I don't even see myself... that's amazing.
But, for now, I'd just like that in the "living in sin" sense. Give me someone to wake up with, sure, but I'm not interested in making it official quite yet. This past summer was full of marriages, and let me tell you... the horse is dead. You all killed it; you beat it with a stick, stuck it in a photo booth with a fedora, fake mustache, and glasses with no lenses, pulled it out, made it do the cha cha slide for an unprecedented four times, shoved red velvet cake in its face, then turned it to glue so that you could finish your latest Pinterest project. That poor, poor horse.

8. None of my friends can afford to get me the wedding presents I want.
I've seen you people. Everybody wants to go out, but no one wants to drive because we don't have any gas. And I can see it... I'll be asking for a flatscreen TV or something equally awesome, and your ass is going to roll up at my wedding with a set of coasters. I don't want your coasters right now because you'll be able to say Oh, well. You know things are tight for me right now. I want to wait until you have a good job with a lot of moneys... then I want to hear your excuses. The longer I wait, the nicer the presents I will get. In my opinion, weddings are not about solidifying my love for someone in front of all of my friends. If I haven't done that on a daily basis, then I have no business getting married. Weddings are for presents. The end.

7. I don't have any neat ideas for hipster wedding pictures.
I'm just going to go ahead and get it out there: I'm not on Pinterest. I like the idea of being super crafty, but I'm still cleaning up a glue gun mess from when I was seven. So for the safety of everyone in my life, it's really best if I don't try getting creative at my own hand. But that leaves me with everyone else's ideas. Cropped pictures in sepia of a girl walking around in casual clothing inside of a barn or pastoral setting. That's pretty much where I grew up, and to me, there's not really any unique, quaint sentiment that comes along with it. So, I'm going to wait until something else becomes popular... preferably painted family portraits. Put that in the newspaper and on your save the date. Paint me acrylic or paint me single.

6. You don't have to be married to have babies.
As many of you probably saw on Facebook, I'm expecting. It's true. After giving it some thought and realizing that I've become pretty good at feeding myself, Andrew and I have decided to bring another animal besides Ben into our home. If I have my way, it will be a little boy named Chico. He's four months old, and he's been caged for about a week now. I will walk around with him and refer to myself as "the man." If I can take care of a cat for at least a year without killing it, then maybe I'll entertain the idea of welcoming a human into my home. From what I hear, people that get married get bored after awhile... and when the sex gets predictable, they have kids. Even if I get bored in my twenties, I'm assuming that it's pretty easy to get a baby. People leave them at the park down the road from my apartment all the time. You don't need a spouse to have a baby when you have a nursery next to the basketball court.

5. I haven't had a successful relationship in... oh yeah. Awkward.
My longest relationship that I've had last six years, and now she's married, so that's over. Thanks, Kasi. But even when we were Bo and Hope from Days of Our Lives, our entire relationship was a roller coaster and a half. The last relationship I was in was nursed by too many indie record songs to count. I'm just not too good at making these things last too long, and that's frustrating, so I'm going to assume that without some further practice, I'm probably going to crash and burn... but with a license and a family attorney. I don't have a super athletic-like day then sign up for a 5K... the same theory applies.

4. I haven't met anyone with a super cool last name.
I know, I know. I'm a boy. But listen to me for a minute. You should never pass up an opportunity to upgrade if given the opportunity to, so I'm going to keep my options open. I have a pretty hard last name to beat. Not only is Kirkland a pretty strong name, but it also is the name of a pretty cool furniture store, and it allows me to have my initials be JK. I have a pretty sweet deal, but that doesn't mean there isn't a sweeter deal out there. Don't waste what really conservative folks say is the only marriage you'll ever have by getting a shitty last name or keeping the shitty last name you have. Don't waste an excellent opportunity to improve your drivers license by careless 20-something mistakes.

3. In 44 states, I'm limited to only a 50% selection of who I can marry.
I like my options. If I go to Burger King, I expect to be able to get chicken or a burger. And yeah, it's nice that I have the option, but what happens when someone who can't eat beef shows up and all the chicken is gone. It's stupid and wrong and an ugly, ugly idea to even consider. So, if everyone isn't allowed to get married, then I don't really care to get married either. Getting married seems like purposefully overdressing for a party...  I get it. You have nice clothes, but there's people here who don't. I guess for me, marriage doesn't make a lot of sense if it's only available for a certain group of people. And it's not like it's a crazy assertion to let two consenting adults pay their taxes together and have power of attorney... it's not like I'm trying to marry Chico (which would be a double hit, because he's a cat and a dude). If I find a dude and hit it off, and he doesn't want to watch sports when Grey's Anatomy is one then (gay)me on.

2. Even if it's without consent, I have someone to snuggle with anytime I want.
I forgot to put that I do this in my online roommate profile, but Andrew has quickly found out that more times than not, I'm going to corner him and then nuzzle against him for about thirty seconds or so until I get my physical-interaction-fix. I agree that it's important to have a physical interaction with someone, but I'm going to get a little liberal and say... you don't need a ring on your finger to do that. And I'm lucky because he doesn't try and escape me that often. And when I'm done, he listens to me complain and celebrate my life. Maybe it's a little too I Love You, Man for your taste, but I don't think it's particularly important to solidify a spouse early on as a source of love and support. Call me lucky, but I have a pretty great support system that I never have feel obligated to buy dinner for, and having him around is practice so that I can see what drives people so crazy that they don't want to be around me anymore.

1. I just recently realized that I have no idea who the $&#^ I am.
I mean, yes, there's a base. All of the stories I've written on this blog are evidence of that. But when you're 22 years old and move away from home and know not a single person, you really start having to look really hard at yourself. I came out of eighteen years of living with my parents followed by four years of living on a college campus. Then, you're thrust out into the world and you start proving to yourself who you really can be. And I guess you could argue that you're going to be changing forever, and I suppose you're right. I'm going to maybe be self-absorbed in saying this, but I think that right now is our time. This is your chance to figure out why you are you. And people say, we can grow together, but I want to share my life with someone... not forge it into one. My biggest fear is to look at someone that I love one day and realize that I didn't give them the time to become their own person and know that we have grown apart.