When this is over…

I’m going to lower myself to a sitting position on the ground then stand up. Repeatedly. I’m going to pick up everything I can possibly carry-books, the remote, laptop, coffee, camera, folders, the paper, jars filled with buttons-at the same time. Carry them from room to room and deposit them in a random fashion. I’m going to set things down one at a time. Maybe I’ll pick up something new while I’m at it. Simply because I can.

I’m going to go to the grocery store, by myself, and push a cart. I’m going to pick items off the shelf and examine them closely. I will scrutinize details and be picky, take my time. I’m going to take a bath.

I’m going to drive my car, my car with a stick shift. I’m going to push in the clutch with my left foot. I’m going to drive all over in my car that I have not been able to drive for months because I miss it. I’m going to dance. Alot.

I’m not going to be afraid to walk in the snow. In fact, I’m going to LOVE snow. I’m not going to be afraid to walk in general. I’m going to have a snowball fight, make a snow angel. I’ll enjoy winter instead of being held captive by it.

I’m never going to sit in a wheelchair again. Unless of course, I need to. I’ll never use the handicap stall even if I’m the only one in the restroom. It’s a sacred place intended for those belonging to a sacred club. One I’m dying to be out of.

I’m going to run. Everywhere. Walking is cool but running is better. I’ll run through town. Miles and miles of just me running. I’m going to pick up a sport, something good like base jumping. I’m going to clean the bathroom.

I’m going to go to the store and park at the far end of the parking lot. I’m going to find the parking space furthest from where I want to be and park in it. Then I’ll walk across the lot to take care of my business and savor every step.

I’ll live

I was thrust into this world unwillingly, as we all are, and without warning. One minute I was walking around on two legs, minding my own business, the next I was lying on the bathroom floor cursing myself for not being able to put one foot in front of the other without collapsing. It happened in a second. In a bone-crushing second when, ironically, I was supposed to be having fun.

I twisted my ankle, or so I thought. The emergency room told me something different. It’s a fracture. What’s the difference between a fracture and a break? Nothing. I was given the boot, the cold, shiny crutches, an excuse from work, vicodin. None of that really prepares you for the next 6-8 weeks.

You’re young, you’re healthy, you can’t do a damn thing on your own. Cooking is hard. Taking a shower is hard. Picking up the pen you dropped is hard. Cleaning, hard. Carrying a book, impossible. Reminding yourself it could be so much worse, that you are actually lucky, really really hard. I can’t wait to feel an itch on my nose and scratch it while I keep walking. Scratching and walking at the same time. Brilliant. As for now, anything that requires the use of hands must be done in a stationary position. Multitasking? Out the window.

The worst is other people. Strangers mostly. The way they unabashedly stare at your defect, like you got some explaining to do. Wheelchairs have become a relief. They give my arms a break. But then they stare even more. As if they haven’t seen a 23-year-old being pushed around the grocery store in a wheelchair before. I want to motion them in, like I have a secret to divulge, get them real close. Then spit in their face, punch their skull. Punish them for having no shame, for somehow resisting socialization so magnificently.

It hasn’t been all bad. You are excused from pleasantries. You don’t have to apologize for anything, even if you are at fault. Most people apologize to you. They don’t expect much from a broken person. And the guy at the checkout in the wheelchair, obviously for good. There is no healing for him, this is it. His life on wheels. He smiles at me like I’m on the inside of something, like even if for this moment I understand. Because I think I really do. I’ll never look at him the same again.

Oxymoron

They are asking me to write a brief intellectual autobiography.

Then, could you quickly roast a turkey? We’d also like you to grow a forest by next week. And while you’re at it, just go ahead and figure out the meaning of life.

Who am I kidding. Who spends over $20,000 a year to go learn how to be a pretentious, whiny, no-name word-peddler who can only be considered talented while existing in a terrarium of equally under-skilled “writers.”

I can do that here. For free.

But no. Not only do I choose this career path, if you can call it that, but I choose to go into extreme debt for it. I am determined to end up in the poor house. One way or another.

So I sit, racking my brain for the most unique, yet professional, exciting, yet acceptable way to say that I have little to show for my academic endeavors and I want to continue riding that fine line know as mediocrity at your esteemed institution.

Hmm. I may be on to something.

Martin Luther King Jr. vs Me

Enter two 15-year-old girls each with a 13-year-old amount of eyeliner on. They are holding hands out of spite for society and its confinements. They don’t know yet how much they need it. Without any boundaries to spit on, they would be just like everyone else. Sheep is a term they would probably use.

They approach the counter and order their drinks. Someone should have told them not to order smoothies. They get their drinks and look slightly relieved that they now have something else to do with their hands. They are each others first (and last) girlfriend.

I’m glad these sea monkey lesbians are subjected to the same bullshit Matchbox Twenty cover rendition that I am. The same rambling, incoherent “poetry” curiously strung along with no discernible point. We all clap because if you didn’t get it, it must be genius.

Pretension (prē ten′suh un) noun:

1. attitude of superiority regarding oneself

2. constructed insanity in the name of art (“My insanity is genius. Here, read it for yourself.”)

3. self-proclaimed creative writers and their classes

I want to go back to a time when art meant something. When there was such a thing as a stupid question. When coffee was hot and dykes were butch. Is it possible to miss an era you never knew?

A girl can dream.

The Last First Day

A montage played in my head as I walked to school today. Every seemingly minute or mundane moment of my college career interwoven with the victorious and devastating ones flashed through my mind like a lifetime coming to an end. I saw my freshman self sitting in pit classes with an eagerness only freshmen can have; my sophomore self doodling on my lab partner and running late into class; my junior self in the library eating wheat thins and texting to avoid whatever I was doing. And my current self doing all that but just a lot better. I saw myself, face-painted, in the athletic stands rooting my school’s team on to playoff victory. My sorority sisters and I chugging beer in mini skirts. Okay, so some of these images didn’t exactly happen. Everything is always so much more iconic in memory.

These images were set to some incredibly cheesy farewell anthem like Green Day’s ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).’ You know the one. That song that has been every graduating class’ theme since 2000. That song from the Seinfeld finale. That song that makes you want to be deaf. I was being nostalgic. Emotions weaken common sense and good taste.

Today was my last first day as a college undergrad. In fourteen weeks, I will have completed my degree, my credit requirements, my goal, and will ceremoniously take yet another walk across a stage that somehow concludes and remunerates four years of intellectual toil. In fourteen weeks, I will no longer have the convenient excuse for anything and everything:

Why don’t you have any money? “I’m a student.”

Why don’t you have a real job? “I’m a student.”

Why do you dress like a lesbian hobo? “I’m a student.”

Suddenly my insufficient funds and wardrobe are going to need a new reason for their wackness. They are going to need to stand on their own and not rely on the comforting, familiar defenses supplied by a life of academia. No longer can I shove my inadequacies off onto my lack of an education. With a degree comes expectations. I will need to come up with something new. But “I’m a recent college grad thrust into a post-Bushian economy *cough* pity me *cough*” just doesn’t sound as good.  

Not to mention, its taken me four years to locate the perfect bathroom on campus, out of the way and rarely visited by others, and just when I do they expect me to pack it up and move on? I’m gonna use that bathroom every day for the next fourteen weeks.

Gotta make all this worth it.

So I don’t have to spit in your drink

I work at a restaurant where those little novelty drink umbrellas are required ornamentation but there is not one recycling bin in sight. We have free helium on tap but a crappy little smoothie is $6. You must be paying for the name. The drinks have names like “Costa Rican Cutie” and “Blonde Bombshell.” The drinks are more attractive than your date. Apparently. I have yet to serve a “Gold-digger.”

There are so many pictures on the wall you can’t tell what color the paint is. Movie posters, still frames, works of art brought out of obscurity into the bittersweet light of corporate notoriety. Some of the pictures are hung, strategically, upside-down. I wonder how many people were in charge of deciding which pictures would be hung in such orchestrated defiance.

“No, no. Not that one. This one. The one of the kittens in the paint cans. Put this one upside-down.”

We are just too zany. Too zany for our own damn good.

We are required encouraged to have fun at this restaurant. As long as every food item is out of the kitchen in eight minutes, there is not one empty glass in the house, there is absolutely no dirt or garbage ANYWHERE, every table is bussed, and every guest is completely satisfied. Then every remaining moment is dedicated to fun. The most fun happens when people order.  

“I’ll have this,” a woman says as she points to an item on the menu because hell, it’s Friday, and she’s been reading and talking all week. The weekend is all about cavemanish hand signals. Everyone knows that.

But really, she doesn’t want that. She wants nothing to do with that.

“Can you hold the mayo? And I don’t want any tomatoes, onions, or lettuce either. But I would like a side of ranch and instead of the fries can I just get some bacon?”

Then she will proceed to order something equally ridiculous for her baby who will just mash whatever it happens to be into the carpet with his fat, grubby, baby fingers. Yes, carpet. I work in a carpeted restaurant. I often wonder what brainiac made that call. Probably the same person who decided on the upside-down picture hangings.

If only I could be assured hell was like it was in mythology where punishments truly fit the crime. This person would spend all eternity on his/her hands and knees picking dried macaroni and cheese out of carpet fibers.

And then make fun a priority.