Infancy was the Most Productive Time in My Life

20 something is a rough stage. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and a great emphasis on contributing to society. My friends and I are all grappling with grad school, jobs, relationships, and dreams deferred. We are quickly learning that the old adage that “you can be anything you want to be, if you really try,” might just be as false as the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and all those other stories adults tell kids to keep them in line.

When I’m are up to my eyeballs in to-do lists, it is tough to know if I’m really making progress. Exhausted by looking forward, I decided to try looking back.

The 80s were a good time for me. I know I was productive then. I was born right smack in the middle of ’85, and I’m pretty sure that from then until the same time in ’86 I was a highly accomplished individual. Yes, there were a lot of personal firsts in that short year. Every step I took or word I said was regarded as brilliant. Even if I bit, spit on, or screamed at an authority figure, everyone still had strong faith that I would still go on to achieve greatness. I grew tremendously, sprouting hair and teeth, gaining inches and pounds. I was really in touch with my needs, both emotionally and physically, in a way that I don’t think I could ever be again. What I did during that time made me who I am today, but it all happened so effortlessly, so naturally. Considering I had no previous experience in anything, such productivity is really pretty impressive. I don’t think I have accomplished as much since.

The Yogurt Angel

It is not everyday that some stranger risks her life for your groceries.

Coming home from the grocery store one day, I had not only my shopping bags, but also my luggage too. I had just gotten back from a trip, and since the supermarket was right off the Metro, I thought I’d swing by and get food for the week before I headed home.

It wasn’t just multitasking that i couldn’t resist, but also the sale on yogurt in the store. It anything is on sale, I’ll buy it in bulk. Sure, you might pick on me at me for hauling it up hill back home in the heat, but I’ll have the last laugh when the zombie apocalypse hits and I am still going strong on my stockpile of 40 cent canned tomatoes and lifetime supply of dried lentils. Just you wait.

Coming up the street, I felt big marbles of sweat roll over my brow as I struggled with my bags. As I crossed the final intersection, the bag of yogurt containers broke, and the little plastic cups began to roll out on to the street. I felt helpless as the walk signal began to count down. Do I leave the groceries? Do I abandon my luggage?

I chose to keep wheeling my suitcases on, but then another bag broke, and more yogurts joined their brothers in front of traffic. I felt hot breath coming off the grills of the cars. Their motors were growling, waiting to pounce. I moved to the curb, defeated.

For reasons I can’t explain I turned in exasperation to the woman next to me.

“My groceries are in the street,”

I’m not sure what I expected to come of that, but what she did surprised me. The woman went out in the traffic.

“No, no! It’s not worth getting hit for!” I shouted to her, and exchanged bewildered glances with the pedestrian who stood beside me, also in shock.

The woman stood in the street serenely, while cars whizzed by, as if she wore a protective bubble around her. She coolly and confidently picked up my yogurt and brought them over to me. I thanked her, trying to be as gracious with my words as possible.

“Wow. Oh, my goodness. You are just so sweet!” I told her. She simply grunted and crossed back over the street, disappearing behind the blaze of traffic.

Why did she help me? Was it because I looked so pathetic and had passive aggressively solicited for help? Had she ever loved and lost large amounts of really cheep yogurt in rush hour traffic, and had since vowed to save others from the same fate? Had she been appointed to protect endangered cultures and had just taken the job description too far?

The explanation for the random act of kindness may never be revealed. The possibility I like best is the idea of her being a heavenly intervention. Granted that I don’t brand myself to be particularly religious, but I think she must have been a Yogurt Angel. Somewhere in the world, protected plant species were being mowed, rare butterflies being sucked into jet engines, and maybe even penguins being kicked (but not by me, mind you), but divine providence saw fit to to save my dairy products. It was (w)hol(e)y yogurt, and it had been truly saved.

Looking at the rescued yogurts lined up in my fridge, I felt slightly awed by their chosen status. I was also slightly worried that if I tried to eat them, I might get struck by lightening.

The Kiwi Story

I was at a buffet with my friend, and her boyfriend. My friend got a kiwi from the fruit basket in the buffet line, and sat down at the table with the fuzzy brown fruit on a plate. Just before she could cut it, she got caught in a fit of giggles.

“Justin,” she says to her boyfriend, “tell the kiwi story.”

“What are you talking about?” he says, face blank and confused.

“Oh, c’mon. It’s really funny. Don’t you remember the kiwi story? About the time…with the kiwi?”

He assured he that he doesn’t.

“What’s the kiwi story?” I asked.

My friend’s giggles were welling up tears in her eyes.

“Please, Justin, you tell it. I can’t tell stories.”

“I swear, I don’t know it. You tell it,” he replied.

“No, no” she insisted, wiping her eyes,” it’s really stupid.”

“C’mon,” both Justin and I pleaded.

Nearly on the verge of a second wave of laughter, she wheezed, “I just can’t tell it,”

“Well, now you have to tell it,” I urged.

“Ok, ok. You really want to hear it?” she asked again.

I told her that I have to now, after all the suspense. Her face straightened up, she swallowed some water, and gave us the information we had been waiting for:

“It was rotten.”

They Sure Start ‘Em Early

Never mind the bad lighting and awful music at the gym. Ignore the molding locker room smell. It isn’t the huge, shiny roaches that I take issue with; it is the maggots.

These kids come with their pencil thin mothers or foreign nannies. The people that come for swimming lessons are The Breeders and Their Spawn. The children have pretentious last names for first names, like Adison, Madison, McKensy, or Kensington. I want to name one Smith, just to spite them all. Their little Gymboree outfits probably cost more than my year’s worth of rent, and their screaming and rat-like constant scurrying makes my skin crawl. They swarm the locker room, scaling the walls, slamming door, and crawling under stalls and benches. They wail, whine, and warble, and I’m convinced the sound draws out the others that live in the walls. More and more come in from the pool or the hall, racing in from all directions. Don’t get me wrong, I love little kids. Just not these.

I am no prude, but I don’t want to change in front of them. I am trying to save them from emotional scaring. Some of them are no higher than my hip, and I can imagine that angle just isn’t flattering. Everyone remembers that first naked adult they saw, the one whose flesh haunts them forever. I don’t want to be that for them. This is my service to the future of humanity. Though it is their innocence I’m trying to maintain, I’m the one who has suffered emotional damage.

Coming back from working out one day, I waded my way through the Spawn to my locker, where I intended to grab my clothes and towel and change in the bathroom. As I’m working my lock, I feel someone watching me. He couldn’t have been more than 2 years old at the most, with big blue eyes and gummy smile. He was leaning from the waist over the bench and grinning at me. I waved at him and smiled back.

“Gloria!” he screams at me, pointing, “Gloria! Gloria!”

“She does look like Gloria, doesn’t she, mijo?” His Spanish-accented nanny says to him. Her back is to me while she is helping the maybe 4 years old sister change.

The boy grins the same plastic grin, still staring at me hard “Gloria!” He points a chubby little finger at me.

The nanny could have taken this one of 2 ways: A) She could have made small talk with me and explained who Gloria was, or B) Told the little boy “Now, now honey, it is not nice to stare,”

Instead, something weirder happened.

The woman continued to address the little boy as if I was not capable of hearing or interacting with them.

“You like to watch Gloria get undressed don’t you?” she says to him. “You always watch her,”

Both she and the baby looked up at me expectantly.

I gave a confused “excuse me,” smile, and side stepped my way to the bathroom stalls. I don’t give free shows, thanks.

You know, when most families higher “entertainers” for their children, I’d imagine that would be along the line of magicians or clowns, or maybe someone who holds the rope for Shetland pony rides at birthday parties. Apparently, that’s not the case in DC. Who knew politicians started with strippers at such a young age?

Please, Don’t Kick the Penguins

At a New Year’s party, I got stuck talking to a friend of a friend’s boyfriend. We were having that kind of conversation where both parties cling awkwardly to their drinks, as if they were shields. In those situations, people ask each other meaningless questions, even though they don’t really care about the answer and just to fill the thick, empty silence.

“So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a tree-hugger would you say you are?” he asked me.

“I’m fairly tree-hugging,” I told him. I figured it was true. I do my part to recycle, buy organic and local when I can afford it, and turn off lights when I leave a room. In thinking about my fabric grocery bags and vegetarian habits, I decided I had a little wiggle room to say something ironic.

“But I still do like to kick penguins,” I added and sipped my drink.

The man gasped.

His face turned red under his lumberjack beard.

“Have you ever worked at a zoo?” He asked me with a tight jaw, as if he was holding back spitting bullets. “You wouldnt say that if you’d actually held one. I worked with them, and they are the sweetest, cutest…”

He choked on the end of his sentence, and even turned his face slightly away from me. In his eyes, I was a horrible, horrible aquatic life-torturing monster.

“I’m kidding!” I stammered. “I mean, I just thought that ‘clubbing baby seals’ was over used, so I thought I’d be more creative and kick penguins. I don’t. Seriously, I don’t.”

He hasn’t having it. He held up his protective beer glass shield and turned around to the guys behind him, so he could pretend to be in their conversation.

Let this be a lesson to you all: Never kick the penguins.

You’ve Become One of Them?

Blogging is pretty trendy right now. It seems that just about everyone has one that they update as they sit sipping coffee at a Starbucks, meanwhile the blue screen light reflects in their hipster plastic glasses. Let me explain to those who know and love me why I am bothering with this anyway. It is not about joining the masses, rather staying true to myself. I never have a shortage of stories and silly ideas. At the urging of some of my closest friends, I decided to give writing for an audience a try. It is good practice for me, given that the general business of young adulthood has gotten in the way of having hobbies. I also am just curious about new media in general, and decided that professionally it might be a good idea to experiment with CCS and what HTML I know.

What I ask of you, dear reader, is that you read and give feedback. My goal here is to entertain. Please let me know what posts you like/don’t like. I’m hoping to stay loyal and average about a post (of some kind) per week.

In this blog you’ll probably find random stories, descriptions, half-baked thoughts in essay form, and maybe original images and video. It will never become a journal. This is the stage, not the dressing room.

If you promise to read, I promise to post. You stay true, and so will I