Sometimes I hate being 23

As a twenty-something, I’m simultaneously expected to know nothing and have everything figured out. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten unsolicited advice on everything from how to cook dinner to what kind of career to choose. In this respect, I’m nothing but a child, trying desperately to boil water and subsist on mom and dad’s monthly subsistence check (allowance).

At the same time, I’m supposed to know what I want to do with my life. All throughout my college career, I had to defend my English and music majors, saying that I wanted to learn, that they prepared me to think. They did and I don’t regret my decision to pursue these majors at all. But it makes me heartsick to think about how many people only study accounting or something so practical it makes my creative brain ache only because of society telling them that they need to get a job.

But living this way in a kind of half-kid/need-to-be-an-adult stage makes me tired. I know what I’m doing in some respects, but I need advice in others. I hate to ask people for advice because I feel like they think I’m behaving like a child. Shouldn’t you know this already? they seem to wonder when I ask about gold as a commodity on the stock market. Perhaps this is why people are so isolated in our society—they are taught to never ask for help for fear of being labeled weak or young.

Ironically, now that I’ve chosen what I want to do, I feel that I’m too young to actually go out and do it. My fellow twenty-somethings treat any career-focused decision as traitorous. They're agonizing about their own careers—most of them are wasting their days doing jobs that they hate—but they don’t feel like they are “world-wise” enough to actually make a decision on what to seriously pursue. I hate to break it to them, but that damn epiphany isn’t going to come when they stumble across that sage homeless man on the side of the road or whatever they're expecting to make them "world-wise." We are twenty-somethings; we aren’t morons. We have enough sense to weigh our options and make some sort of attempt at doing what we want at this point in our lives.

In this respect, I kind of wish that I was 30, an age where you’re respected and perceived as a real adult. I don’t like playing this game where I never can guess how adult people or other twenty-somethings are going to receive me or expect me to behave. Professors want me to call them by their first names, but I’m still getting advice on how to sign up for health insurance. I can make enough money to support myself on my own, but my mother is still looking for doctors with whom I can make an appointment.

This in-between adult and kid stage might not befall everyone. And maybe it’s my own fault for not taking more agency to assure people that I’m an adult and capable of handling the rights and responsibilities of an adult person. Maybe this isn’t what I really want, anyway, because I’m too scared and still feel like I should be a kid who can dress and talk like an adult. All I know is that I feel crammed in between 21 and 30, but who and what is really keeping me here?

More to come...

 

How I Was Supposed to Be

I was pretty well liked by my teachers in high school. I wasn’t a particularly zealous student then—you’d never hear me spouting off about Virginia Woolf or expounding on the atrocities of the Iraq War. My teachers liked me, I think, because they thought I was destined for a different path than my banking/lawyering/doctoring peers (I went to an expensive private school) because I liked to sing and wore eccentric printed dresses on days when we didn’t have to wear our uniforms.

The strangest thing about all of this was that my teachers formed opinions of me when I was very young. I went to the same school from third grade until I graduated high school. There, it was easy to receive and hold on to a reputation. The math nerd was dubbed as such when he memorized his times tables more quickly than anyone else in the third grade. The sports whiz was given that title when she won the game for the home team on the junior high varsity league. And I was told I was a good singer in the seventh grade.

In the seventh grade, I was cast as Marian, the lead in The Music Man. The male lead, Howard Hill, was given to a boy who was good at math and science. Because he was a boy, he was never given the distinction of only being a talented musician; instead, he was a well-rounded individual. Musicals, in consideration of his reputation, were meant to be a hobby for him, like golf or poker, rather than a potential career path. He’s graduated from MIT now.

But after I sang "Goodnight My Someone", I was given the distinction of being a good musician, a title that stuck. And I never tried to shirk it. It fit me well and, dubbed a creative type, allowed me to flaunt my eccentricities in a way that I never would have been able if I had been expected to be a serious person. I wanted to become a musician; sincerely, I think, but it made me create an identity based around a career path that I didn’t even have yet.

My teachers thought of me as the singer and that was very sweet. My Spanish teacher called me a “musical genius” after I got a B on one of his tests. My math teacher complimented me on a musical performance, helping me not to care that I wasn’t in the fast-track math class. My English teacher, who I respect more than I respect most people, never thought that my writing was the best in the class, but that was fine because I had a lovely voice.

I never really gave all this attention a second thought. I’m embarrassed to say it now, but I think that was one of the only reasons I pursued a music degree in college. Even though I liked practicing alone on the piano in my house, I only did it imagining the audiences that would one day await me. I became a musician because that was who I thought I was, but, regardless of that was true or not then, it’s not who I have become.

An Ode to the Schnoz

In all kinds of popular culture, our senses are inundated with color and sound—lush representations of what we’re supposed to feel and think and how we should behave when we’re presented with these kinds of sensual situations. So thanks, socialization, for teaching us how to behave when we’re presented with an image or a noise. I couldn't have done that on my own.

Smell-o-vision scratch-and-sniff cards in the 1960’s tried to present us with the same kind of automatic response to smell, but it didn’t work. Smell is such a poignant and, thanks to an inability to really mass produce scents in the way we mass produce other sensory things, an unadulterated way of sensing the world. Why don’t we put more value in it?

Smell can’t really be represented in any medium. People in movies sometimes sniff and say, “Smells great!” or “Honey, what’s cooking?” but smell isn’t usually very much part of a the movie’s plot. Even books can’t accurately describe the sense.

Aimee Bender’s wonderful The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake exquisitely described taste sensations, but I’ve never read any written words that describe a smell without comparing it to something else. “She smelled like trees” or “She smelled like her grandmother’s pot roast” would work adequately in a short story or novel, but it’s not really saying anything. The only communal possibilities of smell are relating them to shared experiences and even then, generalizing isn’t really possible.

Sure, you can say that “she smelled like her grandmother’s pot roast,” and that probably leads to situational rememberance—not a smell remeberance. For the most part, smells cannot be brought up again with just a thought. You have to tangibly smell that smell to bring back the linked memory. That’s why we can only describe smells with memories—and even then all we’re conjuring up in our minds is the memory of the event hypothetically linked to the smell.

That’s why when I think about smell I think about something pure. Unlike sight or sound, what tricks can smell play with us? We are taught from our earliest childhood that our eyes play tricks on us—that bus you see in the distance is really just the trees and the setting sun. Sound, too, is rife with misguidance. The evil laughter in the night may be created by a creaky house, wind and an active imagination.

But smell is pure and, in most cases, cannot lead us astray. I think of the time when I liked someone in my freshman year and searched for her perfume in all of the stores in the city. I never found it and now—and even then—I couldn’t tell you what it smelled like. Store-bought gravy could never mimicthe way the smell of my grandmother's gravy hung heavy and still in the air. Even now, I remember Thanksgivings at her house, but I'll never smell that smell exactly again. Not that I can recall what I'm missing.

Smell memory is acute with sense recreation. You know when a smell is wrong more easily than you can recall each small detail in a memory. Your mother could tell you that yes, yes, you wore a blue dress on the day of your baptism and you’d incorporate that image into your baptismal memory. But if she added a couple of pinches of pepper to your grandmother’s well-loved gravy recipe and you smelled it, you’d know it was different this time.

Happy Families are All Alike

The house stands on a bluff high above the street. It stares out at the street with its two plate glass eyes. Evergreen trees and dark purple bushes hide parts of the windows, making the eyes look half open, like a sleepy child’s. Whirligigs and birdhouses swarmed by tiny, noisy birds spin on thin strings from the ceiling of the porch. Its benches are covered with potted plants with waxy, large leaves. The swing is tethered by a rubber cord now, but still frets on its clanking metal hangings when the wind blows. Down in the ravine in front of the house, the tree leaves are turning orange and red, their outlines sharpening against the bright sky. The air is crisp and pungent—Halloweens and fresh Number 2 pencils are here in this smell of new possibility.

Ben, my mother’s boyfriend, carries his squash-a-role casserole, a dish made with pecans, yellow squash, and ricotta cheese, covered with aluminum foil. He wears a sweater over his button-down. My mom and I wear dress slacks and blouses underneath fall coats. I leave my Sand County Almanac in the car and we walk up the steep steps to the house. We walk inside.

My grandparents’ black cat named Blackie sits in wait for us when my grandma opens the door. The cat flicks her shiny tail back and forth like a serpent waiting for its prey. She will pounce; she’s done it before. My mom most often is her attack of choice, but, like a cop with more of affinity for donuts than for law, my grandma says they are only love bites.

My grandma gives us hugs as she ushers us into the house. She is a painfully thin woman, her shoulder blades dart like daggers against my hands.

The grandfather clock in the living room dings twelve times in its deep alto. The military clock running out of batteries in the kitchen rings noon a few second later with a warped rendition of the “Marines’ Hymn” on synthesized bugle. A chirping bird clock follows a few seconds after that. The chatter of the clocks every hour is in contrast with the deep quiet of the rest of the house. A gold brocade couch sits solidly in the living room. Thick green carpet muffles thudding footsteps. Dark wood paneled walls and built-in carpentry sucks in noise from old record players and radios. My grandparents’ knickknack taste is also in contrast with their house—Gregblehead golfers wobble in the front room, blown glass cat figurines glow in the light of the dining room, and stacks of Martha Stewart Living and TV Guide line the staircase in the kitchen.

“Everything’s just about ready,” my grandmother assures us, taking Ben’s squash-a-role from him.

“Can we do anything?” my mother asks.

“No, no,” she says like an admonishment. She is excessively self-reliant.

“Is Greg carving the turkey?” Ben asks. Ben has been my mother’s boyfriend for over ten years now. Her traditional parents see him as a relative with a title floating somewhere close to husband and son-in-law. His thinning hair is combed today and he looks like the CFO he once was before he retired.

“Yes,” my grandmother says, raising her eyebrows, and pursing her lips. We all remember the Thanksgiving many years ago when my grandpa sliced open his finger aggressively carving the bird and had to be rushed to the emergency room.

“Does he need any help?”

“No, no, just sit down.”

Ben sits. A turkey with a fold-out orange paper tail sits on top of a waxy tablecloth with pilgrim hats on it. My mom and I help bring out the food. A medium-sized bird with crispy pieces of skin. Green bean casserole brought out by my grandmother with her mother’s oven mitts. “Real” cranberries and the canned-sauce with its molded can shape and ridges for me. We dish up, say grace, and begin to eat—a routine we’ve learned at countless holidays and Sunday dinners.

My grandpa and Ben start in about golf. They talk about Tiger Woods winning this championship and that classic. He wins them all, it seems. This is the standard conversation starter--they are men and this is sport. As a retiree, Ben likes golf and bars.

“So, how is school going?” my grandmother asks. She went to nurse’s training in 1950 after high school. She wore a little white cap with a red ribbon and white apron dress over a striped shirt. She learned to care for people.

“Great,” I say, more interested in the cranberry sauce than in elaborating.

“How’s your roommate…Alice?... Edna?... Amanda?” my grandpa asks.

“Allison, Greg,” my grandma scolds him with a quick slap on his wrist and a pursed little smile.

“She’s fine,” I speak up loudly. He’s currently refusing a hearing aid. An outdoorsman all his life, he refuses aspects of old age. Getting a hearing aids, giving up bawdy jokes (his prize turkey feet on the back porch have their middle fingers pointed up), and slowing down don’t interest him. He’s given up some things. His old hunting dog died and he never got another. But mushrooms still sprout, ice still has fish under it, and manicured lawns still have eighteen holes.

“You like her?”

“She’s kind of high maintenance,” I lean in so he can hear me better.

“Oh really?” he asks, confused about the phrase’s connotation, but pretending he understands. He has extras of his favorite pairs of navy blue Velcro tennis shoes in the back room closet.

“Well, she’s from California, isn’t she?” my grandma asks.

My mom and I smirk. We all dig in, inducing food intoxication sans talking, intent on passing the hot things, and shoveling in mashed potatoes and meat. When we are through,

we settle our bloated stomachs into the backs of the chairs.

“We miss coming to see you in things,” my grandma says. They were in the audience since my first dance recital to my senior year graduation song. I am their only granddaughter and their prime entertainment. I feel the need to tap dance.

“I know,” I say. “It’s hard not having you there.”

And it is. My grandpa can’t wave to the audience, his Iowa Hawkeyes baseball cap at his feet, so I can’t blush and wave with a lowered hand back at him. Now, my grandma sends me clips about loans and opera along with letters about her day in the mail. She used to hand me an overstuffed envelope every time I saw her, as well as flowers from her garden wrapped in a wet paper towel and covered with a plastic bag and a rubber band.

“But you like it there? A lot?” asks Ben.

“I do. Really,” I say. How can I elaborate? Plato and music theory I can’t understand myself. Awkward encounters with new people are too embarrassing to think of. Friends from Boston and Chicago, places where they think the people are fast, loose, and slick, are very far from here.

Blackie comes and attacks my mother’s foot. Ben asks if she’s okay, but it’s just that love sometimes bites.

Hope for Twenty-somethings: You Know What's Wrong with Kids Today?

I’ve been thinking about being a twenty-something a lot lately. Not that I ever really stopped. I’m 23 and I have 20-something friends, as is to be expected. I worry a lot about what the media and our parents and society in general think we should be. But what are we?

When I was a freshman in college, a wise professor defined the word “liminal” in a welcome speech he gave to new freshmen. Microsoft Word’s spell check doesn’t even know that word, but it means in between stages—in that case, our liminal phase was that we were between high school students and comfortable college kids. We used “liminal” as a joke around campus—the sidewalk between our dorms and the cafeteria was a liminal space between sleep and breakfast—but it’s such a resonant word to me now. Like a lot of people in their early 20s, I feel liminal, in between being a college student and an adult.

Ever since my early years in college, young twenty-somethings were told that we weren’t going to get jobs. If you thought you could get a great job after graduating from an undergraduate program, you were definitely in the minority. We were told that the jobs we wanted probably weren’t even going to exist when we finished college and if they did, they would still be occupied by the baby boomers who would never retire.

Contrast that with what our parents told us, the first “I am the best generation,” our entire lives. We were on the best soccer teams or choirs or studying in the best schools, regardless of if we sorely lost our tournaments or school rankings told us differently. Even if we got mediocre grades, our parents told us that we could still do whatever we wanted. They complained to administrators if we got what they knew was an unfair B+ or when we weren't given enough time to throw our pudgy frames around the dance stage.

So where has that gotten us? A lot of my friends went to graduate school immediately following college. Some of them needed advanced degrees and others wanted to put off the uncomfortable cling of the real world. A lot of them followed their passions, letting that—rather than the prospect of impending financial instability—make their decisions.

Other friends are scared to move forward, nostalgic for college, wondering where the lives they expected would come so easily have gone. I may be a little bit like that. Friends recognize that their passions will need side jobs, waiting tables, teaching. We see that we want to enter such un-enterable professions that we’ve decided to give them up entirely.

But I have hope. I  hope that all this turnover in the job market will create a generation that follows its passions, rather than what it thinks will be the most lucrative profession ten years down the line. If our job uncertainty is so absolute, what’s the point of even thinking ten years down the line? I hope that young people take the opportunity to open up new and innovative businesses, rather than waiting for their parents to retire. I hope we don’t give up. Because I know there’s something amazing waiting for us. We just have to recognize that we’re not going to be handed whatever that may be. 

Streetcar Named Desire: An America Theater Original

The movie A Streetcar Named Desire came out 60 years ago this year. Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece tells the story of the dysfunctional family of Blanche, Stella, and Stanley. Williams, gaining inspiration through the works of Chekhov and others, created a truly innovative play that shocked audition and changed theater forever. Perhaps this is why theater critics deemed A Streetcar Named Desire the best play of the 20th century.

Williams’ play, full of violence and madness, is a modern day classic. It tells the story of Southern belle Blanche who goes to visit her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley. Throughout the show, Blanche teeters on the verge of insanity. She finally falls over the edge when Stanley, convinced Blanche was trying to swindle he and his wife, rapes her. Williams didn’t romanticize any of the characters in the show. All of his blue collar characters are true to life. They are people with a lot of things to think about.

The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947. After the play finished, the audience didn’t know how to react. First, they sat in silence. Then, they gave it a standing ovation for a full thirty minutes.A thirty minute standing ovation was an amazing reaction to such a revolutionary play. Like his earlier works, such as The Glass Menagerie, Williams employed nontraditional theater techniques such as unique lighting and music to portray the character’s inner turmoil or memories. Blanche’s descent into madness was illustrated onstage by polka music, jungle sounds, and shadows.  

The frankness of the way Williams presented Blanche’s rape and sexuality in general shocked and thrilled audiences. Never in theater or on-screen had sexuality been presented so frankly. Some were thrilled by this. Others, like the Catholic Legion of Decency, wanted to condemn the eventual film version if sexual scenes weren’t removed.

The scandal surrounding the Broadway version soon created a movie version of the play. Many of the same actors, such as Kim Hunter as Stella and Marlon Brando as Stanley, returned to reprise their roles onscreen. Jessica Tandy, Broadway’s Blanche, was replaced by Vivien Leigh, who eventually went on to win an Oscar for the role.

Many historians and Williams’ own brother believe Williams wrote Blanche and Stanley to represent his own life. Historians believe Williams modeled Stanley off of his lover at the time, Pancho Rodriguez Gonzalez. Williams’ brother Dakin said Blanche reminded him of Tennessee.

Tennessee Williams was truly a Southern American original. He drew inspiration from Anton Chekhov, who, like Williams, presented lonely characters and an intertwining of humor and tragedy. Williams was also influenced by D.H. Lawrence who presented the theory that sexuality was an important force in life. Even though he drew inspiration from sources outside of America, William’s characters and settings are truly American.

Williams worked a long time on A Streetcar Named Desire. He made many revisions. The show’s title went from The Moth, to Blanche’s Chair on the Moon, to The Poker Night, and finally to A Streetcar Named Desire. William’s was eventually rewarded for his hard work with New York’s Critic Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

 

 

Stubborn as a mule

Throughout my childhood, I always had the mistaken idea I wanted to grow up and not be stubborn like my mother and grandmother. They always seemed so argumentative. My grandma hated to take any sort of suggestion she didn’t come up with herself. It seemed my mother and grandmother were always disagreeing and it took us way longer to make decisions than other families because they always had to be so stubborn about their own sides. I decided I wanted not to be stubborn at all.

I remember the fights that we usually had during Christmas and birthdays at my grandparents’ house when I was growing up.  This is how it went down:

“No, I do not need any help with the gravy. I want you to sit down,” my grandmother said.  She doesn’t need help with anyone.

“Now, mother, we came to help as well as to eat,” said my mom, who I could tell was getting exasperated, a voice ensured of its righteousness.

“I think we should open presents before we eat because I can’t wait,” says a younger more excited voice, equally ensured of its righteousness.

“No,” says the first exasperated voice, “we are not going to open presents and you are not going to help me.”

“Now Mother—,”

“C’mon, I wanna--”

“Nooooooooooooooo.”

I guess that some families have a gene for red hair or a gene for brown eyes. In my family there is a gene for stubbornness. I am certain it’s hereditary. We all have it:

My grandma will never get on a plane. She won’t wear shorts. Rush Limbaugh is always right and NPR is the station for liberal whackos. She says she absolutely is not stubborn.

My mom always says “I don’t know who is more stubborn you or your grandma.” She never includes herself. NPR has no political leanings, they simply have the best news stories. Her way is always best.

Turns out, my childhood wish didn’t come true. I am more stubborn than either my mother or my grandmother. At least I’ll admit it. Growing up, I discovered not wanting to be stubborn was just plan wrong. I think my stubbornness can often be my strength. I can prevail if I’m stubborn enough to believe in my convictions. Now, for the most part, I want to preserve my stubbornness.

Being stubborn gives me more confidence. I am slower to evaluate criticism, so it allows me to preserve some sort of confidence.  I like to discuss things. I recognize that I like routines and sticking to them. I think sometimes that my youthful stubbornness has turned into a solid system of values and convictions. I feel like I’ve made up my life for myself.

But sometimes plain old stubbornness gets in my way.  People say I refuse to listen to them.  I’ve gotten into plenty of fights with significant others who think that their way is the best way and absolutely will not back down.  Even if their way is the best way. Often, I can’t stand being proven wrong.   

They say that you can’t help turning into your mother.  My mother has turned into my grandmother.  And, as I near the old age of 24, I think I’ve done the same.

A Day in the Life of a Medical Records File Clerk

One summer I had the most boring job that I could imagine. I was a medical records clerk, working the departments of podiatry and dermatology at a university hospital. This was before medical records were digitized, so our office was in a tiny room stacked with rows of medical records.  They were crammed in so tight that sometimes they would fall on the floor overnight.

I would sit at my little desk and stare up at the fluorescent light above. After about three minutes of this entertainment, I would start piling up all the little peels of eraser shreds into a tiny pile with the magenta and neon refractions of the light still dancing in my eyes. Refraction makes eraser shreds much more interesting, I thought. Then I would push all the paper clips back into the center of the desk so I could re-sort them. The longer, more bluish paper clips with the ribbing in one pile. The small shiny silver paper clips in another.

Here's a day in my life as a medical records clerk:

I pick up one of the silver paper clips. I put it close to my face and examine it. Then, because I am becoming ungodly bored, I bounce it on the table-top like a heroine about to be run over by a train in one of those old silent movies.

"Help me, help me,” I whisper as Chipper Clippy, a newspaper-reporter heiress by day, the secret love of an evil genius who is about to ravage her by night.

The Stealthy and Sinister Sammy Stapler moves closer and closer to poor, helpless Chipper. His jaws are dripping with saliva for his impending kill and he is laughing his menacing guffaw.

Just in the nick of time, Powerful Petey Paperclip jumps into view. “I’ll save you,” Petey says quietly so his co-workers won’t hear and springs into action. Petey and Sammy fight to the death. Sammy dies because I prefer good to evil and paperclips to staples anyday, and I throw the Sammy to the floor in the heat of the moment.

What are you doing?” a porky man in ill-fitting corduroys and one of those strange polos with the Native-American prints is standing by desk, holding a stack of papers.

“I, uh,” I have to think of something extremely clever and witty so that I won’t have to explain about my paper clip/ stapler war, “There was a bug on the floor.”

Brilliant.

I could tell my boss had already moved on from his question long before he heard my answer because he didn’t even looked surprised I killed bugs with staplers instead of RAID. He is one of those people who asks a question just as an introduction so they can start to talk about themselves. People like that never listen to you and usually space off thinking about the next thing they will say while you are speaking.

My boss starts talking about what he wants for dinner. I stare hard at the plastic nose-strap between his red plastic glasses and while my vision goes in an out of focus. He has a really very odd shaped nose. I nod and pepper his story with “mmm’s” and “That’s sounds really good.” I am tempted to say something like “Have you ever tried marsupials from the zoo marinated in lime juice?” just to see if he actually listens to anything anyone else says, but I refrain. While broasting pig cutlets with onion and carrots, grilling bratwurst on the outdoor grill and letting the juices sink into bread, and marinating chicken to make tortillas is fascinating, I would really prefer to get back to work, uh, stapler/paper clip wars.

After what seems like an eternity, my boss hands me what he came by to drop off. A stack of files that I am supposed to put pages in and then put back on the shelves.

That was my job then. It's a good reminder that now life is better.

Poe's "The Raven" with a fat man, dark-haired girl and bacon

Here is a postmodern summarization of Edgar Allen Poe's seminal work, "The Raven," with the forced words replaced.  I will replace the narrator with a large man in dark sunglasses and a douchey, curled mustache. Lenore will be replaced by a dark haired girl the large man was pissed about because he didn't get her number. The raven will be replaced by a talking slab of bacon.  Finally, the repetition of the word "Nevermore" will be replaced by the phrase "99 cents."  Now, an exercise in ruining Poe's beautiful work:

The scene was midnight on a dark night in the large man in dark sunglasses and a douchey, curled mustache's study. In the first stanza, he was reading quietly when he heard a “tapping at his chamber door.” The large man in dark sunglasses and a douchey, curled mustache convinced himself the tapping was only a visitor.

Soon, the reader learns why the large man in dark sunglasses and a douchey, curled mustache was afraid of the tapping on his window. In a December past, the large man couldn't get a beautiful dark-haired girl's number, no matter how hard he tried. Ever since that night, the large man buried his sorrows in reading. He was afraid that the dark-haired girl the large man was pissed about because he didn't get her number! was haunting him in his chamber. The “rustling of each purple curtain” scared him to death. He had to convince himself the tapping was a visitor and not a ghost.

In the next stanza, the large man in dark sunglasses and a douchey, curled mustache gathered his courage and opened the door, apologizing for not opening it sooner. The space outside the door was empty. He became very frightened then. He was sure the dark haired girl the large man was pissed about because he didn't get her number’s! memory tapped on the door, and he called what he thought was her name was (Julie? Sarah?) in the darkness.

The large man was scared out of his wits. When he retreated back into his room, he heard the tapping again. He tried to convince himself it was a tree branch blowing in the wind. He threw open the window to see if it was true.

In flew a talking slab of bacon. The meat product was stately. It landed on a bust of Pallas, or Athena, without apology. The narrator asked the bacon what its name was in the underworld where it came from. The bacon only answered, “99 cents.”

Even though the narrator thought the bacon spoke nonsense, he was interested that the bacon could talk. He counted himself lucky of meeting such a meat product, especially a slab that was called “99 cents.”

The slab of bacon wouldn’t say anything else besides 99 cents. The large man was pleased to have something to distract him from thoughts of the dark haired girl, but he was sad because the bacon would fry away and leave him alone like his friends and hopes had done.

In the next stanza, the large man realized that bacon was sent to help him forget his loneliness. The bacon agreed, saying that the dark-haired girl would never have answered the phone when he'd called anyway so the narrator should forget her.

In anger, the narrator shouted the bacon should leave him. He didn’t want to forget the dark-haired girl and he didn’t want to remember the bacon. The bacon said the large man would never be free of him.

In the last stanza, the reader finds out what the bacon symbolized: bacon is really good and really cheap. But if you eat a lot of bacon, then you'll never get number from any pretty, dark-haired girls in bars.  Even if you can remember their names.

 

THE END.

Peer Pressure in Junior High

We all did it.

My best friend in the sixth grade was named Juliet. Juliet was one of the lucky ones. Her parents bought her matching Ralph Lauren ensembles and she started the trends- body glitter and butterfly hairclips- all the other sixth graders followed. Boys wanted to hold her hand behind the chapel and she got her first kiss, with a seventh grader no less, before anybody else did. Juliet was everything I wanted to be-pretty!, popular!, and perky!-and I figured the best way to achieve that was to be emulate Juliet exactly.

Juliet had that power to control others some people are blessed with. The kind that politicians and cult leaders have.  Juliet used her power to hurt people. I never knew why, but it seemed that she could get away with it. When Juliet didn’t like somebody, none of her friends, including me, were allowed to like that person either. One day, Juliet decided she didn’t like somebody.

“She’s wearing my shirt,” Juliet whispered. Her shirt. Like Karen had snuck into Juliet’s room in a black ski mask and stolen it.

There Karen sat, armed only with silverware, wearing her shirt-the cute one with the brand name printed in pink. Karen had been my best friend until Juliet decided I wouldn't hang out with her. Still, I wished that we didn’t have to do what I knew we were going to do.

I felt sick. Not the kind of sick that if I didn’t find a toilet soon I would throw up all over the floor. The kind of sick that ties a knot in the center of your stomach and makes your hands as damp and clammy as the old, metal sink we had to wash our hands and faces in after P.E.

But I was exhilarated too. Not the kind of exhilaration I got from getting a good test score and making my mother proud. That’s the kind of exhilaration you don’t feel guilty about the next day. I had the kind of exhilaration that makes your head fly from your body like a balloon and circle around the room. The kind of exhilaration that once it it’s over, the balloon pops and makes you feel as low as we would make her feel.

Juliet and I stood haughtily and put on matching, disdainful smirks.  Then we walked over to the table where Karen was sitting.

“Nice shirt,” Juliet sneered as she walked by Karen.

“Yeah, um, you too,” Karen muttered back, staring down into her lasagna. I could see she wished she could be wearing the food, wearing the milk carton, wearing anything else but that shirt.

I giggled on cue, pointing and whispering to Juliet about Karen and her shirt as Karen sat there, trying not to cry. 

When I went home that night, I felt disgusting. I had followed Juliet down into the lowest depths of sixth grade meanness. I was not an automaton controlled by a switch Juliet held, I had my own free will and I choose to follow Juliet.  Juliet and I had made little girls, with their tremulous confidence, cry in the bathroom. We had made little boys, with their easily broken egos, embarrassed in front of their friends.

My days of wanting to be her-popular!, pretty! and perky!-ended then. I wanted to be me. I decided I’d rather figure out who I was than figure out how to be her.

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