So you're a bit melancholy and one of your favorite childhood movies is on TV. SCORE. There is nothing more comforting than watching something that was last seen through eyes that lacked responsibility, reason, and bladder control. You snuggle up with a stuffed animal and other cozy things like tea and fire and get ready to tingle from head to toe with nostalgia. But wait...what's this? Your favorite childhood movie is about...no it can't be...NAZIS? RIDICULOUSLY SEXY MEN? CAPITALISM? THE SUFFRAGETTES?
I'm talking about The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. If you haven't taken a history class yet, please turn back now and enjoy your ignorant youth while you can. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let's move on. If children were rats (I've heard a lot of good points supporting this theory), Julie Andrews would be the pied piper. I was drawn to her voice like a moth to the flame (or a rat to the pipe, I guess?). Either way, I could not get enough of Maria or Mary, the creative singing babysitters. It's truly a shame that Julie Andrews blew up her voice with it's own awesomeness and can no longer serenade the world like old times. Her failed vocal surgery and subsequent limited-octave range undoubtedly caused most, if not all, of the natural disasters since 1997, but I digress (What else is new?).
Let's start with the Sound of Music, shall we? News flash: it wasn't just about children and singing and hills being filled with things. This movie revolved around the motherfucking Nazi invasion of Austria. Rolfe, Mr. "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" (Mr. Seventeen, for short), was a fucking Nazi tattletale douchebag. The wonderful concert held at the end? Do yourself a favor and rewatch that scene (I tried to find it on YouTube
I'm too sexy for World War 2.
for you but Julie Andrews hates sharing). Every member of the Von Trapp family is singing with sheer terror in their hearts to an audience of Führer-lovers. This is because they are all being held against their will and are desperately seeking a way out that ends in Captain Von Trapp maybe not becoming Captain Von Naziface. I guess he was so awesome in other wars as a captain that the the Nazi's wanted to recruit him? I don't know. It's not really clear. However, what is clear is how fucking FINE Captain Von Trapp is. My young mind never grasped this and thought he was just super mean and treated his children like dogs (which he does, but perhaps that can all be chalked up to PTSD and crippling loneliness). Also, raising six rats kids on your own has got to be a Goosebumps book or something. I would probably start using whistles and scare tactics to keep them in line too. Either way, I'd hit it like the fist of God.
Moving on, there's quite a lot of drama surrounding tuppence in Mary Poppins. Should it feed the birds? Should it be invested in a bank run by Dick Van Dyke in bad makeup? Obviously not the latter because the bank is a terrifying place filled with old, grouchy men and misery. These aforementioned grouchballs try to physically pry the tuppence out of young Michael's hand. I repeat: the bankers physically assault a child in order to make a profit. I translate: the bankers care only about financial gain and very little about the welfare of human beings. Sound familiar? I bet it does.
Not only that, the movie starts off with a wonderful song about the womens' rights movement. Have a listen:
I'm a soldier in a petticoat too, Mrs. Banks. But seriously, how fucking fierce is this bitch? I had no idea what this was even about when I was younger, let alone that there was a point in history where women weren't allowed to vote. Kudos, Mary Poppins, for being relevant to my interests regardless of what they are (dancing with exceedingly floppy cartoon penguins, disproportionate greed in the higher economic brackets, etc.) and no matter how old I am (I'm still interested in those penguins...).
This brings me to my final point, explain to your kids what is going on in these movies. Maybe times have changed and now that all children's movies are about riding adorable dragons and goofy talking Owen Wilsons cars, there really isn't any historical and political context for kids today to learn something from. HOWEVER, if you're plopping them down in front of a Julie Andrews' movie circa the mid-60s (and plenty other movies/time periods, I'm sure), then you owe it to them to be honest and upfront. If you leave it for them to discover on their own, you run the risk of raising a socially-unaware child who is furious with you in twenty years when they figure everything out themselves. I just wish I had someone to tell me how hot Captain Von Trapp was when I was seven.
I am officially a resident of Brooklyn, NY. Hooray! This is the third New York City borough that I've lived in, actually. Maybe I'll try out the Bronx someday. No amount of money can make me move to Staten Island though (and I'm pretty sure its existence is just a myth).
About two years ago I got this
baby for $80 on Craigslist. I'm a pro.
Sam and I have been buying all of our furniture off of Craigslist (except for our giant red IKEA Ektorp couch which, let's face it, was just an excuse to go to IKEA and stuff meatballs and lingonberries in our faces). I am a huge Craigslist enthusiast and have purchased most of my furniture from 20-somethings in the tri-state area who were moving on to bigger and better pastures. It was soon made crystal clear that Sam and I needed some furniture; we had a table-less dining room, blue IKEA tarp bags filled with books eagerly waiting to be shelved, piles of clothes that needed a home, and way more makeup than I ever use sitting on our bedroom floor. I'm kind of a huge decorating snob, so I wasn't about to just stroll into a IKEA again and buy the cheapest particle board furniture I could find. I knew how to do this. I'd done this a million times before. It was Craigslist time.
The scouring began and within a couple days, I had found a beautiful wooden dining room table for us. We went and picked it up a couple of blocks from our place and then carried it back. It was a bit heavy and we had to keep resting along the way because I have fragile, baby hands and noodles for arms. Soon after, I found a set of vintage-y purple chairs in Brooklyn Heights and we went and scooped them up. The seller ended up giving them to us for free. It was then that we were imbued with a false sense of Craigslist confidence. This was working and working WELL. We could find and buy anything on this little website.
Next came a gigantic oak bookcase. "Light and easy to carry" was how she described it on Craigslist. "Death and suffering that you can put your books on" is what she should have called it. Poor Sam carried the bookcase by himself for FIFTEEN BLOCKS while I struggled with just carrying the three shelves (remember: linguine arms). We should have seen the downhill pattern then, but when we found the perfect vanity table that was still in the box and a beautiful cherry wood armoire, we thought it would be a piece of cake. We scheduled a pick-up truck zipcar named "Tumwater" (our first zipcar was named "Mudget" and our Ikea-couch-carrying minivan was known as "Stillion").
Sam waited in the car, illegally parked, while I went into the first apartment to get the vanity. It was still in its box and very awkward to carry. Because of the aforementioned complete lack of upper body strength, I was forced to grab the lip of the cardboard box and drag it into the elevator and then out and into the lobby. I was building up a decent rhythm when I stumbled forward a bit and heard a sound from my ankle that no one should ever hear. It was somewhere in between popcorn and a chiropractic soundtrack composed by John Williams. Sam saw me struggling and came rushing in to help, but it was too late. My ankle was already screaming a big "Fuck you" to me, the vanity, and even Sam.
She looks so smug...
We dropped the vanity off at home and continued our journey to go and pick up the armoire. It retails at over $1,000, but we were getting it for $100. It was a steal. When we got to the apartment, the four-flight stair walk-up was a shock back to reality. Not even the dewy-eyed face of a happy Italian Greyhound could cheer us up. The armoire was in the living room waiting for us and it was even more beautiful in person. We pulled our britches high and, with the help of the girl selling it to us and neighbors along the way, were able to carry the 6'5" armoire down four flights of stairs and into the butt of Tumwater. "I didn't even think of how you would get it down. I had moving men bring it up and I'm not even sure how they did it!" said the girl. I wanted to sock her in the ovaries.
The worst part was over though, right? All we had to do was pull it out of the truck, roll it to our apartment door (thanks, Ethan Allen, for building your furniture on wheels), and tilt it into the doorway. We were worried about my being able to lift one end by myself, but when our neighbor saw us dragging it out of Tumwater's innards, he offered to help. We were golden.
No we were not fucking golden. The armoire did not, does not, will not fit through the front door of our stupid apartment (I love our apartment, this is just rage talking). Our neighbor was nice enough to let us bring it into his apartment and keep it there until we figure out our shit (he owns the whole brownstone), but the options are ridiculous and pretty grim. The armoire doesn't come apart (remember when I thanked you, Ethan Allen? I take it back). We either have to put it right back on Craigslist ( :'( ) or round up some people with gigantic, beefy arms and carry it from garden to garden and then into our kitchen door, where it will fit (we measured this time). It looks like we're going to try the latter option first, but HOW RIDICULOUS IS THIS?! I have to ask the neighbor between the guy who helped us and our apartment, whom I have never formally met, if I can carry my gigantic armoire through her garden. MADNESS. I would rather die.
We have nice friends though who are willing to come all the way the to Brooklyn tomorrow after work and lift shit for us (thanks Roy, Todd, and Aidan for your beefy arms and friendship), so maybe it won't be that bad. It's already pretty bad though so maybe my badness scale is really poorly calibrated at this point.
Consider this post my vow to never buy anything bigger than a chair off of Craigslist again. Also consider it a warning to always measure your effing doorways before being an impulsive, furniture-buying idiot. Craigslist, I do love you, but goddamnit are you a bitch sometimes. That all being said, is it weird to name the things you get off of Craigslist after the people you got them from? If not, we now have a table named "Jess," two chairs named "Lee 1" and "Lee 2," a vanity named "Bruce," and a fucking dick of an armoire named "Paloma."
On an entirely unrelated note: Anyone know how to get horrible scratches out of cherry wood? :(
I was out at dinner a couple of months ago with my father, aunt, uncle, and boyfriend, when it dawned on me to write something about my youth. We were sitting around the table, stuffing juicy steak into our faces, when my father decided to recount "episodes" from my childhood. Some of them, albeit hilarious, were not new to me. I distinctly remember how I was moved from preschool to kindergarten because I wouldn't stop biting this one kid named Eugene. I also kept sticking markers in his ears. Why? Because his name was Eugene. I would bite him and color his ears now if I saw him. His name sucked and so did he.
Babby "Hunger Games."
ANYWAY (Sorry, Eugenes of the world), my father then told us all a story of my poor behavior which quickly nestled its way into my heart and became my favorite story ever. Even better than Pan's Labyrinth. I will retell it to my kids as a bedtime story while flipping through the "Cat in the Hat." Sure, they'll wonder what the cat and the grumpy fish have to do with anything, but their reading comprehension will be so poor that they'll just accept what I'm saying to them and move along.
BACK TO THE POINT AGAIN, I was a Girl Scout (and a ballerina too, as most girls are forced to be). Let's be honest, the best parts about being a Girl Scout were the snazzy outfit and the COOKIES (Samoas 4 lyfe, bro). Your parents had to buy a shit-ton in order to appear supportive and make you look like a baller in front of your troupe. But where did those cookies eventually go? That's right, into your face hole. What were we supposed to learn from selling those cookies anyway? Was that supposed to be a lesson in business, sales, and consumerism? Thank God I didn't waste my cookies by setting up tables in front of old-school department stores like Caldor and Bradley's and selling them to strangers like some of my more entrepreneurial counterparts. Instead, I just marched up to my mom and dad and said "BUY THEM. BUY ALL THE COOKIES. >:( ," but I digress.
While enjoying his peaceful two hour break from his demon daughter while I was at my weekly Girl Scout meeting, my dad received an unexpected phone call. He got out of his lavender-scented bubble bath, took the cucumber slices off of his eyes, and set down his black truffle caviar to retrieve the phone (this is all speculation but EDUCATED speculation). The voice on the other end was my troupe leader, but she was not her usual, poised self. "What's wrong, Mrs. Troupeface (I don't remember her real name, but this is probably really close)?"
Violin: favorite weapon number two, second only to saliva.
"Mr. Blakin? You have to come and pick up your daughter."
"Why? Is she ok? Is something wrong? Is she hurt?"
"Nothing like that. She's just...she's spitting on all the other Girl Scouts."
"Oh..."
That was probably the moment when my father lost all faith in me as a youngin'. Good thing my parents were divorced and I still had my mom to shower with love in order to garner her good will and trust. The other week, while my mom was cleaning, she found a bunch of handmade cards from me. Here they are, in what I assume to be chronological order:
I love her more than chocholte. This surely won her over.
Note the strategic use of cats to lure her into a false sense of security.
At first glance, this card seems cute and friendly, BUT LOOK AGAIN. Twisters are dangerous and destructive. As depicted by my sketches, they wreck homes and put peoples' lives in danger. This isn't a silly card from a 12 year old, this is a death threat (and could the figure running and screaming "help" be my mother? possibly...possibly...)
My mom's name is Debra and as you can tell, this card means business. She must not have been taking the cards very seriously because this one is both insulting, aesthetically accurate (my mom always matches her socks to her shirt/cardigan numbers and talks to people smothered in feces), and terrifying.
I'm sure most of you spent many a day pondering silently to yourself and your pets, "I wonder if Taylor was this much of a asshole growing up..." The answer is yes, yes I was. So, if there's one thing you can learn from this post, it's that if you have kids or plan on having kids, make sure you give them all the Girl Scout cookies they want and take their natural disaster-related death threats seriously. Speaking of natural disasters: an earthquake AND a hurricane last week? I'm sure Ryan Gosling is on it but in the meantime, I hope everyone is safe and sound.
I first heard the word "testicle" from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. He exclaims "HOLY TESTICLE TUESDAY!" in response to the sexually-ambiguous Einhorn/Finkle entering a room. A couple of days later, after my dad hit a bump while pulling into an Exxon gas station, I shouted "HOLY TESTICLE TUESDAY!" as loud as I could from the passenger seat. I was seven years old.
This was one of about a hundred times that, looking back into my childhood, I have intensely embarrassed myself in front of my parents. Other awesome moments include listening to songs like If You Want It To Be Good Girl (Get Yourself A Bad Boy) by The Backstreet Boys and Give It To You by Jordan Knight alone in the car with my father. If you don't know what's wrong with this, please reference the below lyrics. I have taken the liberty to bold the important parts for you:
If You Want It To Be Good Girl (Get Yourself A Bad Boy by the Backstreet Boys
If you want it to be wild, gotta know just who to dial baby (And that's me). If you really like it hot get someone who hits the spot, Honey (oh yes).
Bridge
I found this when I Google-imaged "Backstreet Boys." Jury is still
out on whether or not it's real but either way, I LOVE IT.
And if you wanna get it done then you gotta get the one, the one who's got it goin' on.
Refrain If you wanna make it last gotta know just who to ask.
Baby's gotta be the best (and that's me).
Chorus If you want it to be good girl get yourself a... bad boy.
If you really want it good girl get yourself a... bad boy.
Get it like it could be (would be), yeah like it should be. If you want it to be good girl get yourself a...bad boy.
If you like it innovative better get someone creative, Honey (yes).
And if you want it to be jammin' gotta get somebody slammin', Baby (oh yes).
Now listen:
These are things your mama shouldn't know.
These are things I really wanna show.
These are things I wanna show you how.
So won't you let me show you right now.
Oohh baby...
Give It To You by Jordan Knight
You say its been too long since you had some. You say I turn you on, like a fire that's burning inside.
You think that I'm the one you see in your dreams.
I know what you mean yeah.
Refrain 1
It's creepin' around in your head: me holding you down in my bed.
You don't have to say a word.
I'm convinced you want this.
Chorus
Baby you know I can give it to you.
I can't deny you do it right.
Just let me know and I'll give it to you.
Just show me where, I'll take you there.
"Stingy" huh? Is he referring to how tight he is with money
or how the gonorrhea is making his balls burn.
Baby you know that I'll give it to you. Your body needs a man like me.
Anything goes when I give it to you.
You know without a doubt, I'll turn you out. I'll give it to you.
The feeling is fine, giving you everything of mine.
I'm the place to be and soon, you'll see.
I don't care who leads, as long as we move horizontally.
Anyone can make you sweat, but I,
Refrain 2
It's creepin' around in my head: me holding you down in my bed.
You don't have to say a word.
Just relax, I'll do the work. I can't wait to give you some.
I'm convinced you need one.
I want to satisfy your every wish and mine, baby.
I know just what you need, (you need) to get you off. No one could ever do you like I do you right baby.
There's nothing we can't do...
The feeling is fine giving you everything of mine.
Here I am, 12/13 years old, having NO CLUE what any of those lyrics meant, rocking my shit to these songs with my father sitting right next to me, and he is listening to every single, overly sexual innuendo-ed word. When I think about it too much, it feels like my butt is trying to migrate north and eat my lower jaw...whatever that means. It feels like when you accidentally scream "HOLY TESTICLE TUESDAY!" in the car with your father at age seven and you have to sit there and listen, unexpectedly, to your father describe man balls in graphic detail for 30 minutes.
If you haven't noticed yet, my father had primary custody of me so most of these stories involve him. Another awkward habit of mine was always leaving the room when Jack and Sally kissed at the end of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I did this every single time my dad and I watched the movie together and claimed that I just had to use the bathroom. Truth is, I couldn't handle watching anybody kiss in front of my father from ages 3-16, regardless of if they were made entirely out of clay or not. Watching a movie that I had never seen before with my father during those 13 years was always a huge gamble; Would someone kiss someone else? Would the F-bomb be dropped? Would a boob be palmed? I never knew and so, I went to the bathroom very frequently when any sort of heightened emotion was expressed in order to avoid the aforementioned. This might be why I have trouble expressing emotion today, come to think of it, but more on my fragile psyche at a later date!
For now, I'm heading out of work early for July 4th weekend. I NEVER get out of work early. Wrapping up this post in a graceful and polite manner is infinitely less important than my leaving this office right the fuck now to go home and eat my weight in Trader Joe's Edamame Hummus. Peace and Happy Independence Day to all my fellow, stupid Americans! Eat all the cheeseburgers you can fit in your mouth.
So in between getting my cervix biopsied (yum) and taking a business trip to the hot, steamy, armpit-esque Florida (sorry Floridians, but your state is not hair-friendly with its consistent 99.9% humidity), I haven't been able to update in a while. Sorry about that. I thought I'd mark my return to trolling the bowels of the internet with an anecdote about my childhood. Shall we?
Every summer since I can remember, my mom and I drove up to Quebec, Canada to visit my aunt and uncle (the ones who own the ostrich farm). It takes about nine hours to get there, but with my mom speeding like a maniac and getting at least one ticket each way, it took about seven or eight hours. On one particular trip, when I was about six years old, my mom decided to pack a dozen bagels and a big tub of butter so that we wouldn't have to stop for food and could get to our destination faster (What kind of behavior is that?). Since she was trying to save money on gas, my mom refused to use the AC for as long as she could stand it. Instead, we drove with the windows wide open on the highway so that we didn't melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the giant tub of butter from melting.
About halfway through our trip, I decided I was starving. My mom, not wanting to pull the car over and therefore "lose time," decided she would butter my bagel (this is not a sexual euphemism) while she drove. She reached into the back to grab the melted tub of butter, which was nestled in a pile of my bedding (we had to bring extra pillows and blankets to my aunt's house). After procuring the tub and stabilizing it on her lap, she reached back again to grab a bagel and a butter knife. Then, without taking her hands off of the wheel and instead, taking her eyes off of the road, my mother proceeded to butter a bagel for me while cruising up the highway.
As you can imagine, within about five seconds, we were skidding off the road at 70+ miles per hour and doing a life-threatening donut on the shoulder of the highway. The centripetal force of the car spinning in tight circles caused the entire contents of the butter tub to be dumped on my face. By the time the car finally stopped spinning, I was hysterically crying, drenched in liquid butter, and resembled a baby lobster at the mercy of Paula Deen.
Some people stopped to help us out, but overall, everything went better than expected. The car had a dent in the door from the sign post we had swerved into, but was otherwise in perfect, working condition. I wouldn't let my mom clean me up with my pillowcases because I didn't want to get them dirty, to which she responded, "Taylor Paige, you are covered. In. Liquid. Butter." The evidence she presented was irrefutable and I let her clean me off with my bedding while weeping full-force.
On the way back home from Canada, we picked up more bagels and butter for the way home. This time, the AC was on full blast and when I whined for a bagel, my mom pulled over to butter it.
After a recent conversation over dinner with my long-time friend Emily, I decided to right a post revolving around most 20-something's favorite past time: dranking. Don't get me wrong, I love the sizzurp (Am I using that wrong? Does sizzurp have to contain cough syrup?), I just think it's pretty hilarious how we spend most of our leisure time consuming something that we absolutely hate the taste of. I know what you're thinking, "But Taylor, I love beer. I'm a beer connoisseur." No, you're not. And for that matter, you're not a wine connoisseur either. You might have grown to tolerate the taste or even somewhat enjoy it through some sort of weird, semi-Pavlovian response (beer leads to fun drunk times, you like fun drunk times, therefore you now like beer). The truth is, when you put alcohol up against caramel apple lollipops, bacon cheeseburgers, or extra crispy french fries, which tastes better? Not the damn alcohol.
Think about it: we're constantly mixing booze with other things in order to make it taste less like a bitter, unwashed armpit. The only reason you put a lot of alcohol in your drink, or get excited at the bar when the drink is strong, is because you want to get fucked up. If you're like me, your father used to like to play tricks
Normal reaction to alcohol
on you involving alcohol when you were a wee babby; waiting for you to ask for a sip of his "Sprite" which he knew was gin and tonic. Remember that spicy, carbonated applejuice? That Diet Coke that tasted like bubbly nailpolish remover? That pitcher of what seemed like water in the fridge that you chugged when you were ten and then exclaimed, "WHY IS THERE GASOLINE IN THE FRIDGE?" (oddly specific)? These experiences were your first foray into drinking alcohol and man, they were brutal. Nothing much has changed since then, and the taste of alcohol certainly hasn't. What's changed is you. You now know the results of muscling down that fakey water pitcher is being able to appreciate techno music on a deeper, more wiggly level rather than standing there with your arms crossed, looking unimpressed. You are now old enough to recognize the effect that alcohol has on you and so you tolerate the fact that is tastes like spermicidal lubricant in order to get that tipsy buzz we all know and love.
You can lie about it all you want. You can tell the world your favorite drink ever is a greyhound or a car bomb. But the truth is, we all know it's chocolate milk or peppermint tea. Why? Because they taste yummy! We don't need to mix them with other things in order for them to classify as passable to our palates or put them in a 1 ounce glass and shoot them directly to the backs of our throats before our taste buds even know what's happening. Next time you go to a restaurant and someone wants to order a super-fancy bottle of wine, think about it first. It's going to taste like vinegar-soaked gym socks no matter how much it costs or what year it was made in. Unless someone else is paying, save yourself the money and buy a shitty bottle. This way, you don't have pretend it tastes superior to the other, less expensive, wine you've tried when you're really thinking "Yep! This still tastes like rotten grapes and fear!" You can scowl and make all the blehhreherghe faces you usually suppress while drinking and blame it on the fact that the wine you ordered is sub par.
All that being said, I'm getting my drank on tonight.
I remember being out with some friends a couple of weeks ago when we passed a young couple walking the opposite way on the sidewalk. As we passed them, they both smiled at all of us and said "You all have a wonderful night!" It was completely unprovoked and entirely refreshing in a city filled with rushing, over-crowded, scowly faces. As a group, we decided to pay those well wishes forward to the next person we saw. About a block up, we found an 300+ pound man alone on a stoop, sporting the grumpiest face I have ever seen. Simultaneously, we all shouted "You have a wonderful night!" to him. His face lit up like the 4th of July and he smiled at all of us, completely surprised, and said "You too!"
Example of how not to be.
Over the years, I have made it my personal objective to be a kinder person. I used to harbor extremely judgmental thoughts about other people, even if I didn't know them. I would verbally bring down complete strangers with a friend or two in order to feel better about myself. I'm honestly ashamed to admit this, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who used to do (or possibly still do) the same thing. I've grown up a lot since then. I've come to realize that different doesn't ever equate to bad and that if someone is happy with their self and their life, then who am I to say anything? Who am I to judge? Since learning this valuable lesson, I have been able to make new friends (and keep old ones) who are on a similar track. Many people have "toxic friends" who bring them down. I only have positive people who lift me up. Granted, sometimes you guys make me feel stabby, but you're still good people and I still love you. I don't think I would've been lucky enough to meet such an amazing, kind, open-hearted, caring boyfriend if I didn't learn to open up my own heart.
That's not to say I'm a rainbow candy unicorn to everyone in real life. I'm still sarcastic and goofy and will call you out for saying something ridiculous, like when you're drunk at the bar and think the name "Lily" has five L's in it (right Sam?). But I'll never talk you down to bring myself up. Sometimes I feel negative, judgmental thoughts creeping into my head at the end of a rough day, but I've learned to recognize them and then push them out full force. It doesn't matter to me anymore whether you're fat, thin, handicapped, black, white, deaf, big-haired, overly made-up, gay, straight, transgender, post-abortion, a jesus lover, schizophrenic; as long as you're happy and not hurting or policing anybody else, then keep doing your thing and don't let anybody bring you down.
Niceness breeds niceness. If one person does something nice for another, it can change their entire day for the better and increase their chances of doing something nice for someone else (or so I've experienced, this isn't scientific). If you can learn to quell your judgment and just be nice, you have learned more than most people have been able to grasp in their entire lifetime. One "Bless you!" (or "When you die, nothing happens," if you're an atheist) after a sneeze, two helping hands for a woman with a stroller and a toddler to help her down a flight a stairs, three extra seconds to hold a door for the person behind you, these little things make all the difference. If all of us could just be nice, just BE NICE, we could change a lot around this place, don't you think?
One leads to the other and for the past four or so years, I've been convinced that I have the latter. I told the following story on my Livejournal many moons ago and due to a recent influx in requests to retell it by my co-workers, I'm also going to retell it here.
Back in 2009, when I worked as a veterinary assistant/receptionist at a practice in Greenwich Village, I was told an interesting story by a patient of ours (or client I guess, since the patients are the animals and none of her pets were feeling especially anecdotal). She had come in for one of her cats' annual exams and I couldn't help but notice that she had lost about 30 pounds since I had last seen her. This was when I was at my heaviest, so of course, I had to know what her secret was. Here's where it gets creepy...
She had gotten extremely ill a couple of month earlier and it got to the point where she had to go to the emergency room because she couldn't stop vomiting. After a battery of tests at the hospital, the doctors decided that it would be best if they removed her gallbladder. Being very apprehensive about surgery (as most people should be) and big into holistic medicine (as most people should only somewhat be), she decided
All intestinal parasites look like
mini Beetlejuice sandworms, right?
to check into a cleansing facility and heal herself by removing whatever toxins were causing her to be ill. This facility started off the cleanse with a couple days of fasting. On her second or third day there, she went into the bathroom to do her business and when she got up, she discovered a long, white WORM in the toilet. Upon further investigation and explanation from the staff of the cleansing facility, she discovered that she pooped out a tapeworm and that it was quite a common event in that facility (can you imagine working in a place were tapeworms were the rule and not the exception?). According to them, when you don't eat anything, tapeworms often migrate down the digestive tract (closer to the colon) looking for food and will actually end up being passed with waste in search of said food. Horrified, she decided to go see a well-respected parasitologist stationed in New York City.
Upon further testing, it was determined that she had two different types of parasites in her body: one was the tapeworm which she had acquired on a recent vacation to Bora Bora and the other had been living in her body for 16 years. 16 FLIPPING YEARS. The worms were in her lungs and all throughout her body. They were causing her to be tired all of the time and, despite being an active person, hold onto 30+ pounds. They were also what was causing her to constantly vomit. She was given medication and once she finished her course and eliminated the worms from her system, she lost all of the weight in the blink of an eye. After her experience she referred three friends to the parasitologist to get tested (these friends weren't even showing any symptoms); two of them tested positive for different types of worms/parasites.
She then decided to pass some of the doctor's insight onto me and, along with the story she had already told me, scare me into a wormy panic for the rest of my natural-born life. The parasitologist estimated that over 60% of the population is hosting parasites and don't even know it. Think of all the things you touch without washing your hands, all of the food you buy from a questionable source, everything single thing you do! And there I was, having worked as a vet assistant for the past six or so months, where I rubbed puppies and kittens all over my face only to have their stool tests come back the following day positive for disgusting shit like giardia and coccidia. I was convinced that I was infected with a plethora of worms and parasites. I could actually feel them crawling around in my intestines at the very moment she finished telling me the story.
Around this time, I went on my first date with Sam. Much to his dismay, I'm sure, I gushed about how I was convinced my bowels were infested with worms over our sushi dinner (I have absolutely no internal filter). I guess he digs girls who are good hostesses (get it?!) because this coming Saturday, we've been together for a whole year. What is wrong with him?
Anyway, a couple of weeks later and after hours of online research, I ended up buying some strange black walnut and wormwood tincture that tasted like fresh butts and cement. It was rumored to be a natural dewormer and after I started taking it, every bowel movement was a terrifying gamble with fate. Was this the time I would look into the toilet and see a giant worm? Lucky for me (or unlucky for me) it never happened. At least if I would have seen a definitive worm, I would know that I didn't have them anymore. There were only two options: either I never had worms (less than a 40% chance of that!) or the tincture was ineffective. I guess the only way to know for sure is to hit up the parasitologist and explain my paranoid wormy thoughts to him. One day.
So since there was only one response to my last post, I'm assuming most of you must've made mental lists with your answers or even jotted them in a notebook at home. There is just no way a game THIS GOOD would go unplayed. So, without further bullshit ado, here are the answers:
1. I shoved a crayon so far up my nose that I had to go to the hospital to get it removed.
TRUE
To my mom's horror, she could not get the crayon out of my nose herself and had to bring me to the emergency room. Accordingly to her, I looked her square in the eyes as I slowly inserted the crayon deep into my nasal cavity. In the E.R., they had to strap me down with harnesses like something out of Girl Interrupted in order for me to stay still. They did manage to extract it though. No word on what color it was.
2. My father sneaked (I always thought the past tense of "sneak" was "snuck" but spell check is telling me NOPE) backstage at Woodstock.
TRUE
My father has always been quite the slippery eel when it comes to outmaneuvering people in order to do something awesome. This time, it was making it backstage at the greatest concert of all time. He noticed someone unloading equipment near the stage, picked up something that wasn't his, and wandered backstage saying he was with the crew. That never works right? Well, it did. It also worked for the friends he was with and all of them watched the entire show from the best seats in the house. That is, until one of his friends cut open his hand and had to get air-lifted by helicopter out of Woodstock.
3. I was born in Brooklyn, New York.
FALSE
My dad was born in Brooklyn, New York. I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I have dual citizenship yay!
4. I have never had the chicken pox or the chicken pox vaccine.
FALSE
I did have the chicken pox vaccine and fell into the .0000001% that develops pneumonia from the vaccine. I also fell into the percentage that develops chicken pox from the vaccine. As the cherry on the itchy sundae, I was also allergic to the pneumonia medication, Biaxin, and broke out in hives everywhere (including my fucking EYELIDS). I don't know how I survived my 12th year on Earth, to be honest. I have a strong memory of thinking I was healthy enough to eat, snarfing down a container of my father's roasted peanuts, and then vomiting extremely fresh, organic peanut butter into the bathtub less than 30 minutes later. Parents are saints.
5. My aunt and uncle used to own an ostrich farm.
TRUE
Yep! They had two breeding couples and would sell the eggs to a nearby restaurant and the shells to jewelry makers. I still have a hollowed-out shell that they gave me on top of my kitchen cabinets. They almost feel like porcelain. I wish I laid eggs. What am I talking about? Anyway, after a particularly harsh winter, one or two or all of the ostriches died and that was the end of that endeavor. I can say I learned three things from my visits with them during that time: ostriches do not stick their head in the ground/sand, if you put your ear up to their necks while they drink you can hear the water going down, and you never want to see ostriches breed up close and in real life. Trust me.
6. I can speak four languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
FALSE
Yea, right. Like I'm that wordly. I speak English, a bit of French (enough to get me a bathroom, a snack, a drink, and a friend if I were lost in France), and Pig Latin.
7. I used to weigh about 200 pounds.
TRUE
All those cheeseburgers and spoonfuls of Nutella eventually do catch up with you. At 5'7", I topped the scale at 196 pounds my senior year at NYU and my Wii Fit categorized me as right smack on the line between "Overweight" and "Obese," if I remember correctly. Due to my intense fear of the line tipping over into "Obese" and me hitting the 200 pound mark, I decided it was time to lose weight and start being healthier. I started counting my calories every day using one of the many websites available, eating lots of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and whole wheat carbohydrates, and eliminating snack foods such as french fries, candy, chips, chocolate and basically everything that I loved (don't get me wrong, I did let myself have these things sometimes, but I didn't make it a habit). I also used my Wii Fit for exercise in the beginning until I was in need of more of a challenge. At that point, I switched to running 2-3 miles daily and then when that got that old and it got cold, I switched to Jillian Michaels' 30-day shred. As of right now I weigh 135 pounds. I still eat the same way as I did when I started my "diet" but I don't need to input my calories into a website anymore (it's all tallied up in the ol' noodle). It was a lifestyle change for me, but not everyone would benefit from this. If you're 5'7" and 200 pounds and you feel happy and healthy, then more power to you! I didn't and so I had to make some changes. I still eat like a monster every now and then though.
8. My dad drummed for a Billboard Top 100, Number 2 song.
TRUE
My dad is a recording engineer and when he was sitting in on a session and ~learning the ropes~ from a more experienced engineer, the band's drummer didn't show up. Having played drums for most of his youth and dropped out of college to play drums in a band, my father was able to sit in and play for them on the recording. He's not credited for the track anywhere and we certainly do not get any royalties for it (IF ONLY), but you may know it:
9. I hate all bugs and immediately kill them when I find them in my apartment/personal space.
FALSE
I heart bugs and I never kill them when I find them in my apartment. Usually, I will place a cup or glass on the wall or floor that they're crawling on, slide a piece of paper over the top to trap them in the cup/glass, and release them safely outside.
10. I am half Chinese, a quarter Native American, and a quarter English.
FALSE
I am not one of those nationalities. My heritage can be summed up by the following drink:
White Russian
11. I have a scar on my upper thigh from riding my bike too slowly.
TRUE
Unfortunately for Sam, this is why I'm so unwilling to go on whimsical bearded hipster Brooklyn bike rides with him. That, and when my bangs blow back I look exactly like Joe Dirt. How does one get so severely injured from riding too slowly, you ask? Well, first of all, if anyone would, it would be me. Second of all, I just let the bike slowly tip over onto the ground and didn't dismount. I don't know if I was distracted by a Backstreet Boys song or something (I was 10) when it started to tip over, but when I hit the ground, some sharp, evil part of the bike went right into my leg and cut a hole (BONE DEEP) that required ten stitches. Yum.
12. My mom is a blonde republican.
FALSE
My dad is a salt and pepper republican. My mom is a blonde democrat (naturally a brunette democrat). Thank God one of my parents has some political sense.
So, who should win the prize of nothing? I hope everyone had fun learning a bit more about me and the nonsense that is my life. Maybe you already knew me but didn't know any of these things. Now you'll mention it in conversation next time I see you and I'll get all freaked out because you obviously creep me on the internet. Just kidding, I'll play it cool.
Everyone knows this game. It's on the list of silly icebreakers that you're forced to participate in when it's your first team meeting at a brand new job or you've just moved into your dorm and the whole floor decides to get together and go ice skating in Central Park where you clutch the hand rail for dear life the entire time and look like Bambi when he walks onto that frozen lake (oddly specific). I've decided to amp it up a bit so that my followers/readers/subscribers/whatever the fuck you guys are called can get to know me on a more intimate level. And what better way to do that than by lying to all of you? So, without further ado, can you guess which of the following facts about me, my family, and my life are true and which are false? The winner gets nothing!
1. I shoved a crayon so far up my nose that I had to go to the hospital to get it removed.
2. My father sneaked (I always thought the past tense of "sneak" was "snuck" but spell check is telling me NOPE) backstage at Woodstock.
3. I was born in Brooklyn,
New York.
4. I have never had the chicken pox or the chicken pox vaccine.
5. My aunt and uncle used to own an ostrich farm.
6. I can speak four languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
7. I used to weigh about 200 pounds.
8. My dad drummed for a Billboard Top 100, Number 2 song.
9. I hate all bugs and immediately kill them when I find them in my apartment/personal space.
10. I am half Chinese, a quarter Native American, and a quarter English.
11. I have a scar on my upper thigh from riding my bike too slowly.
12. My mom is a blonde republican.
So those are the fact (or are they?). Make your guesses now because tomorrow I will be revealing which of these are truths and which are lies. If you know me personally and I have told you one of these things (Sam, Aparna) or you are one of the people I'm talking about (hi, mom!), then keep your trap shut and don't ruin my life.
My father isn't a bad person. He's had some life struggles and a big chunk of his adolescence involved copious experimentation with a smorgasbord of drugs (I once asked him which drugs he hadn't tried, to which he respond, "Well, I never tried cocaine"). Sometimes I think that pieces of his brain disintegrated entirely somewhere between 1963 and 1978. In my childhood, I knew him as a lonely, bipolar alcoholic who, for obvious reasons, wasn't the best parent. But a lot has changed since I was a kid (such as being prescribed medication and kicking the sauce) and in the past couple of years, we've actually developed a somewhat friendly and stable relationship. Plus, he does one of the best Jerry Lewis impersonations I've ever seen.
Last night I went to dinner with my dad for the first time in a couple of months. We went to my favorite spot, Friend House, and he tried Pad See Ew for the first time in his life. We chatted about our jobs, my roommates (if you're reading this, you guys suck rule), our respective significant others (hi, Sam), and many other things. We even reminisced about that time I tried to add him as my father on Facebook and he rejected it twice and then, when I finally sent him a message asking him why, he responded with "Maybe I'm not." Dark, no? It wasn't until the topic switched over to politics that I was clutching my proverbial pearls.
And here's why:
♥ My dad is a tea-partier. I really don't need to expand on this.
♥ He thinks that the couple who recently decided to raise their children in a gender-free household should be sterilized, sent to jail, and have their kids taken away by Child Protective Services. These were his exact words.
♥ After ranting for a bit about how he believes that the government should have very little involvement in everything, I dared to ask him how he feels about abortion (my question was inspired by this Anthony Weiner video). First, he asked if his response could come with some sort rule set that he feels is morally accurate. I said absolutely not. By now you probably guessed that he did that anyway. My father's view on abortion is that he "is pro-choice as long as stupid girls don't repeatedly use if for birth control while places like Planned Parenthood pay for it free of charge with our tax money." I told him that this doesn't happen as often as he seems to think it does and that any instance of this is a reflection on the government's inability to provide proper sex education and resources to young women (especially in lower-income areas). You will
My dad: looks harmless, right?
see here and here, that no abortion at Planned Parenthood is free or paid for with taxes, but you probably already know that. I shared this with my father too. Unfortunately, it remained unabsorbed.
♥ Next, we decided to delve into gay marriage. What can I say? I needed to know. My dad thinks that committed homosexual couples should have the same rights as committed heterosexual couples but it should not be called "marriage." According to him, this is because "marriage" is defined as being between a man and a woman. I asked him if he meant that his argument was one about preserving sanctity. He said yes. I cited drunk, drive-through weddings in Las Vegas that get annulled the next day (think Britney Spears) as not preserving sanctity but still being legal. He said that that's just "goofing around." I asked him why we can't change the definition of marriage since our society is growing and changing from what it once was when these definitions were set in place. He said that if we change it to include LBGT people, what's next? Bestiality? Pedophilia? I told him that it was disgusting to even compare gay marriage to those things considering they are non-consenting and that by saying gay couples cannot call it "marriage" and cannot use the same terms as straight couples, is saying that they are unequal to straight couples. He said that these rules/definitions were founded upon Judeo-Christian morals and that everyone should respect these religions and follow their guidelines. I brought up the point that many Jewish movements support gay marriage and that other religions do not have to respect or follow any other religion's guidelines since this is a country that is supposed to separate church and state and uphold freedom of religion. He scoffed. For the record, my father isn't even religious.
♥ Finally, as the icing on the cake, he told me that he can't wait to stop working at his job because of how "ghetto" the students are. I would bet my life that what he meant to say was "black."
My co-worker, Scott, suggested that I should take his TV away from him. I concur. That, or I should just permanently block FOX News. I guess it just boggled my mind to actually know someone who believed, in earnest, all of these wackadoodle things I hear spouted from intolerant, right-wing mouths in the media. I wish there was a way to change my dad's mind and believe me, I've really tried to. You can't teach an old dog new tricks though, and 64 is REALLY old in dog years.
Just to set the scene, on Saturday and Sunday I went to Bombfest in Hartford, Connecticut. On Monday I went to the beach in CT, then go-karting, and then mini-golfing.
Me and Aparna: twins
♥ A single Mentos is a "Mento."
♥ If you're wearing the exact same outfit as someone, you're twins. For example: If I put the AA Skater Dress on myself and my friend Aparna, we are then twins. If I do the same with my cat, we are also twins.
♥ Connecticut is brotastic.
♥ Everything in life is better when there's a body of water nearby.
♥ Everything in life is better when there's pizza in my mouth.
♥ If you can't decide whether you are hungry or have to go to the bathroom, you should really make that decision before you enter the Porta Potty.
♥ Snoop Dogg is adorable.
♥ If you have longish hair with bangs, and you painted your whole face so that it had a mouth on it and then put a nose and a pair of eyes on top of your head, you'd look like a man with a huge, long mustache (e.g. Yosemite Sam).
♥ If someone is jokingly mocking you, and you think they're just being annoying so you start mocking them, you are mocking yourself.
♥ Children/young adults should not be present during most competitive sports or games. I have a foul mouth and cannot contain myself when I'm 18,047 over par in miniature golf.
♥ Sea glass is the shit.
♥ Go-karting is still awesome, but the "no bumping" rule makes me sad because I'm violent.
♥ Sock puppet handjob blowjob: if you give yourself a handjob with a sock puppet on, you are also getting a blowjob from a sock puppet.
♥ If you hold up three fingers on each hand and move slowly, you're a three-toed sloth.
♥ If you hold up two fingers on each hand and move slowly, you're a two-toed sloth.
♥ If you hold up one finger on each hand and move slowly, you're E.T.
♥ Pantomiming rubbing chapstick all over your body can get confusing.
♥ Coheed and Cambria sound like a hive of bees being smashed by a rock that sucks at music (this was Sam's addition, but I wholeheartedly agree).
♥ EDITED TO ADD: Seinfeld sucks and is just about white people in New York complaining about soup.
♥ Kazoos are stupid.
This may be edited later because I am currently so tired that I can't remember half of the things that happened this weekend. I do know for certain that I ate a lot of mini donuts though.
It's not uncommon in the U.S. to have braces. In fact, I've found that most of the people I know with reasonable teeth have donned some sort of headgear in their youth. I am no exception to this.
From the moment I was born, I found comfort in sucking on the pointer and middle finger of my left hand. This, coupled with mashing a filthy blanket I called shmata (Yiddish word for rag) into my closed eye, was pure bliss for me. Later, my shmata was butchered and cut into four smaller shmatas so that I could easily replace it when I lost it (which was frequently because I was a careless child). Finally, circa 1991, I lost my final shmata and consequently, my shit. My mom, being the best mother ever (and having a very low tolerance for whining, crying, and bullshit in general), immediately brought me to the nearest Toys "R" Us so that I could pick out the next thing to mush onto my face while sucking my fingers. My eyes lit up when I found a stuffed Siamese cat (we had a non-stuffed Siamese at the time but she was most unfriendly). I immediately started rubbing the tail under my nose and sucking on my two fingers and my mom knew that we had found the one.
Siamese Stuffy Number One lasted until I left him at my elementary school library about four years later and my poor mother had to soothe me that later night when I had a complete mental breakdown. Back to Toys "R" Us we went the next day and my saliva-soaked fingers were crossed that they still had the same Siamese cat stuffed animal for sale. No dice, but there was one tolerably similar. I decided to give this stuffy a proper name so that maybe I wouldn't lose him. Snowflake was born.
Nigel Thornberry: doppelganger of my youth.
Snowflake's tail wasn't sufficiently long enough for my finger-sucking affairs, so I migrated to using his forearm and rubbing it gently on my nose. The years went on and soon, it was 1997 and I was 10 years old. My dad knew that soon this finger-sucking thing wouldn't be socially acceptable and neither would my dopey, Nigel Thornberry-esque, buck teeth. He tried to sit me down and calmly explain why I should stop doing my favorite thing. I said no. When he commanded it "because he said so," I would steal away and suckle in secret. I felt like some sort of drool-covered fugitive and it made the experience even more pleasurable. My dad soon realized that I was fibbing about having quit my habit cold turkey and decided to bust out the WMDs: hot pepper-flavored, anti-finger-sucking nail polish. My father came in the night like some sort of ninja manicurist and painted all of my nails with the foul polish while I was unconscious. When I woke up, I was horrified by what I tasted but immediately knew what was going down. I decided to take one for the team (just Snowflake and me, I guess) and bite all of the nail polish off of my nails. Within 10 minutes, I was back in finger-sucking heaven.
My dad's efforts continued for the next year, but were unsuccessful. At 11 years old, I was now in 6th grade, and although I was playing it cool and rocking out the the Backstreet Boys during the day, by night I was sucking my fingers like a toddler. Some kids started making fun of me for my buck teeth and I distinctly remember one kid singing "fall into the Gap," except this time it wasn't about the retail store and was a diss aimed at my incisors. My father finally decided it was time for me to take a trip to the orthodontist and get fitted with braces. But how was he going to get me to stop sucking (my fingers!)?
Why is my middle finger shaped like a backwards 's?'
My orthodontist, Dr. Chan (located somewhere in the middle of New Jersey), took care of that for him with her giant book of deformed teeth AKA oral scare tactics. This book was filled with some of the gnarliest, snarliest teeth you've ever seen; they were black and decayed or protruding through closed mouths or growing out of foreheads or all of the above. One look through that book coupled with the phrase "this could be you if you don't stop sucking your fingers" was enough for me to quit for good. Two years, 21 changes in rubber band color theme, one clear, blue retainer with my name on it, and 43 gags from the taste of brace bracket cement later, I had straight teefs. I still have a permanent retainer wire fastened securely to the inside of my bottom front teeth and my pointer and middle finger on my left hand are eternally deformed and curve unnaturally (See Image 2). Other than the aforementioned physical maladies, all that remains of this ordeal is the emotional, tooth-related trauma I endured. Oh, and Snowflake still helps me fall asleep every night.
Vomit. Puke. Hurl. Losing your lunch. Tossing your cookies. A mouth volcano. Old unfaithful.
The serial spewer herself sporting her summer 'hawk.
I don't know about you guys, but my tolerance for the above has always been zilch. Just the sound, smell, sight, or mere suggestion of regurgitation sends my own stomach for a threatening loop. Even piles of my cat's barely-digested Purina cat food pebbles make me think twice about having eyes (and a cat). This issue has not only affected me, but can be seen taking its toll on sick, drunk friends without a hair tie, roommates with cat vomit-covered socks, and even helpless six-year-old girls with a bad stomach bug. The latter will be my subject for today.
Babysitting is the easiest thing in the world, which is why I spent most of my adolescent years and even college years sitting on babies as much as I could in my spare time. You get to be very silly for a couple of hours, maybe even sit on your ass and watch a Disney movie like you would be doing on a Saturday night anyway (just me?), and then you put the kid to bed (usually around 9:00pm or some other early-as-fuck bedtime) and watch your stories on the TV or troll the internet until the parents come home.
About two years ago in the West Village at around 9:00pm, I was doing just that. I had sang just about every Disney song in my repertoire (which is just about every Disney song in Disney's repertoire), tucked her into bed like a little Chipotle burrito, and placed her over-sized Dora the Explorer stuffed animal at the food of her bed. Then I sat in her room with her and proceeded to troll the internet from the comfort of a nearby chair.
About an hour later, and with absolutely no warning at all, she bolted up from bed and into a right angle and projectile vomited all over the end of her bed and Dora's face. I immediately picked her up by the armpits and carried her to the bathroom where she continued to toss her cookies into the more-deserving toilet. After managing to be somewhat comforting despite the fact that watching her made my insides want to be on the outside, I got her changed and brought her back into her bedroom. There I was met with the horrible realization that in order to put her back to bed, I would have to clean up all the throw up. There was no one there to save me and shirking responsibility would mean the parents coming home to a child who was sleeping in her own stomach contents. I looked down at my charge, who was holding my hand and looking very sleepy, and I knew that I had to just forget about my sensitivity to this mess and be a motherfucking adult.
A relevant coloring book illustration by Aparna and myself.
I went over to the bed with all of the paper towels I could find west of 6th Avenue and tried to scoop off what I could. The second I got within a foot of the bed, my gag reflex kicked in like I was getting x-rays done at the dentist, only worse, because at the dentist there is no giant, smiling Dora dripping with vomit. I could only conclude that before I came over to babysit, this little girl had entered a hot dog eating contest or consumed, at the very least, an entire pizza. I thought not being able to smell the disaster would help me be more efficient so I grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen and tied it around my face so that only my eyes were visible. I was the Upchuck Bandit.
Despite the fact that I could only smell dingy soap and assorted crumbs, my body would not allow me to clean up the mess. If I continued to force myself, it would only be a matter of time before the only thing adult in the room would be the size of the addition piles of puke on the bed. I took the entire comforter, including Dora (who, at this point, was definitely mocking me) and dumped it into the bathtub. Had this not been an NYC apartment and had there been a washer, I wouldn't have been so cruel about my placement of the bedding but hey, I didn't have much to work with. The bed was finally clean and I was relieved. I closed the bathroom door behind me and let myself forget that throw up ever happened that night. It wasn't until the parents came home that I let myself remember and recount what happened (I had called them earlier during the incident and left a message, but they didn't pick up or return my call). Her mom went straight to the bathroom and immediately started dealing with the barf-encrusted detritus. Not a single gag could be heard as she waded elbow-deep into the filthy remains of one of the worst nights of my life.
This was the moment that I realized that I might not ever be able to have children. If I do, they will either have to throw up alone and then promptly clean it up or watch as their mother retches along with them every step of the way. I guess I can only hope that my baby daddy has absolutely no gag reflex (that's what she said!).
