emlocke

Category: Ridiculous

  • Between the Eyes

    One of my greatest New York pleasures is window shopping after happy hour. The heady combination of a few cheap cocktails cruising with my hemoglobin and the natural high that comes with aspirational browsing the twinkly-lit store displays is delicious. My toes feel so good, it’s as if they are imagining what it would be like to settle down in those emerald velvet ballet flats. And while the alcohol inhibits income bemoaning, the plate glass inhibits my hand-to-wallet coordination. It’s pure delight. It’s all fun and games.

    Until someone gets hurt.

    More specifically, me.

    I leaned in a little too close to peer at a very ornate bath caddy –one of those baskets that extends across the tub to hold the razors and scented scrubs and TV dinners of people with bathtubs big enough to accommodate a whole person. I was looking because I’ve always thought those things were silly. I ended up looking pretty silly myself, all watery and a little purple between the eyes after the bridge of my nose – the crooked bump that I hate – made direct and aggressive contact with the very plate glass meant to protect me from the merchandise.

    For the record, tearing up after a nose injury doesn’t count as crying. It’s an innate physiological reflex response to pain in the nose, which is served by the same cranial nerve as the eyes. I’m not purple anymore, just a little tender, so I don’t think my nose is broken. I guess I can’t use my window shopping accident as an excuse for re-constructive surgery.

  • No Vacancy

    An hour earlier, when I’d pointed at a rest stop and said “Hey, there’s a rest stop,” my mom told me to hold it.

    Twelve minutes from the hotel, my brother’s girlfriend had to pee. I only grazed my head against the window as the family mini-van lurched into the first fast-food parking lot on our right. We hopped out of the car. Roxy looked like she was ready for a catalog photo shoot. I looked like an unmade bed. Against all better judgement and obsessive compulsions, I yearned for the refuge of the single-stall restroom. I hovered beside the cement door while I waited my turn.

    Through my mom’s open car window, I heard my parents discussing the handful of national landmarks that were visible on the horizon. The capital building, which I’d pointed out only moments ago to insistent hushing, looked two-dimensional against the grey sky.

    “Where’s the Washington Monument?”

    “Right here in my jeans, honey.” An unattractive dirty blonde – the dirty kind of dirty – in a greasy french fry uniform was leaning against the back of the restaurant, where the pair of public bathrooms were concealed from the highway. I rolled my eyes away from him, but not quickly enough to miss the grin he flashed at me, one full of teeth the same color as his hair.

    I don’t understand men. Or they don’t understand me. Or both. What is it going to take for all the skeeves in the world to finally learn: I AM NOT HOT. I’m cute. Like a pet. I’m sweet, when I feel like it. I’m pretty, in one of those unconventional ways, and only when I try. Yes, these jeans are snug. That means there’s only room for one in here.

  • Don’t Sink. Float.

    Once, I was in the throes of a panic attack induced by the crowds and the lines at an end-of-season sale at the Gap and a little too much caffiene and the frustrating fact that I’d spent the night in a huge hotel bed with three guys, none of whom had responded to my moves. As I retreated to the car with my two shopping companions, I tried to breathe evenly and wrangle my anxiety to a controllable level.

    “It’s just anxiety, it’s not going to kill you,” I told myself, hating the stupid set of self-help tapes in which my mother had invested more than that gem of a rehearsal phrase was worth, even as I dutifully repeated it in my head.

    “Okay, at least this can’t get any freaking worse,” was my next attempt to calm myself down. “Well,” I reasoned, silently, “it can’t get any freaking worse, unless some idiot dressed as a cartoon character tries to give me a balloon or something.”

    That put things into perspective. Composing myself for the last two blocks between me and the parking lot, I squared my shoulders and focused my gaze straight ahead.

    Straight ahead, where I saw an enormous foam Sponge Bob Squarepants standing on the corner with a handful of yellow balloons.

    Next thing you know, I’ve collapsed onto the far edge of a bench with my head between my knees. “Sponge Bob Squarepants,” I moaned once, pitifully, as if the porous, angular-pants-wearing personality had just wrung dirty dish water all over me.

    It’s in tragic and ridiculous moments like these, when you are reduced to a quivering heap of frantic, humiliated energy, when you discover the true devotion of your friends. Some of them will laugh at you, under the guise of laughing with you.

    Some of them will flirt their way out of the parking fee and use the last of the cash had between the lot of you to buy you an ice cream cone.

  • Wine and Manifesto

    On Friday, I decided that I wouldn’t consider myself officially unemployed until Monday.  Practically everyone is unemployed over the weekend.  That was my reasoning.  That’s how I found myself eating dry ramen on the couch at 12:34 on Monday morning while I stare at the cover letters and thank you notes that I started to compose last week.

    But I think I produced my best work during the Summer Publishing Institute’s closing luncheon on Friday.  After three glasses of Chilean chardonnay, I started pulling old receipts out of my wallet and scribbling thoughts down on the back.  When I woke up from my wine-induced nap hours later, I pulled them out of my bag and read my personal manifesto, loosely based on whatever inspiring words our program director was rambling off at the time, for what might as well have been the first time.  It’s pretty moving, or at least, the room seemed to be while I was writing.

    I seem to appreciate myself quite a bit after a little wine.  I must have used the word ‘brave’ at least five times.  I may tend to repeat myself, but my punctuation is on point.  At times, the following is pretty sassy.  On the other hand, it’s certainly not untrue.

    Emily,

    You have made passages that you have chosen on your own.  You have made your own brave choices.  You have made your own brave leaps and you are courageous enough to make more.

    Love, Emily

    1. Transition: you are in a transition during which you will learn, and decide and change.  You are transitioning, but you will always be you.

    2. Change:  You have made changes.  You have made changes that no one else has understood or believed in and you made them anyway because you decided – you chose – what was best for you and you went after it, caught it, and it was brave.  You could have stayed put, but you took action.  You learned to stop settling and start reaching, start demanding, start insisting that you knew – and you do know – what is right for you.  You are a strong, creative and capable woman and you can achieve whatever you choose to chase.

    Look at yourself.  The people you allow to see you love, trust and admire what they see.  It is normal to doubt yourself.  It is healthy to temper that doubt with faith and confidence, because that is what people will see in you – yes, you – when you enter a room, complete a project, or walk out with everyone checking out your adorable ass.

    Why don’t you believe in your own staggering presence…well, I guess I can’t say that I don’t understand that because I am you; I have lived through everything with you that has left you that way.  I hope that now, you – and I – will be able to look at the future and what we mean in the world ahead of us.  We are capable, beautiful, smart, and brave.

    Some years ago, you worked at a dance store where you got the job because your Girl Scout leader owned the place.  But one evening, your mom came to pick you up and while you clocked out, she told the manager who she was and the manager said, “Oh, Emily, of course!  She’s going to take on the world.”  Dance accessories, Emily, you could change the world with dance accessories.

    You can change the world with words or passion or hard work, or with love.  You love hard.

    I’m trying to choose a favorite part.  It’s either the line about my adorable ass or the part where I realize that I’m writing to myself and using first-person plural pronouns.

  • Worshipping the God on Porcelain

    Yesterday, I walked into a restroom where I make frequent pit stops between classes. There are two stalls, both decorated with torn out magazine pages featuring very outdated celebrity gossip. I usually hit the one on the right because George Clooney appears on the back of the stall door and really, really, truly, I’m never not interested in looking at George Clooney. Even in the bathroom. Is nothing sacred? What can I say? The man is a looker.

    I peeked under the door and saw no feet, but when I pressed on the door, it seemed to be locked. Was it stuck? I pushed a little harder. That’s weird. I started to go for the other stall but I’m just not that into Matthew McConaughey! So I nudged the door again. This time, a tiny little voice said something that sounded like “sorry.” I bent down to look under the door again. No feet. I bent down again. Really, really, truly no feet.

    “Oh, sorry, I couldn’t tell if someone was in there.” No response.

    I went into the other stall and as I tried to avoid looking at Matthew’s picture, I studied the strange shadow being cast on the floor within the next stall. A person-crouched-on-a-toilet-seat-shaped shadow. I didn’t know whether that reminded me of middle school, when I would hide in a carefully plotted and timed series of restrooms to escape science lab, or if it reminded me of a story my aunt tells about a Japanese friend of hers who didn’t know how to use an American toilet the first time she traveled to the States, so she climbed on top of it.

    Not another sound emanated from that stall while I washed and dried my hands and fussed with my hair. I thought about asking if she was okay. Maybe I should have. Or maybe it was better that I didn’t interrupt her ritual worship of George Clooney.

  • Party Tricks for the Hearing Impaired

    This entry on deaf-in-one-ear-ness is dedicated to someone I really, really like!

    Some people dance on tables or perform crystal glass symphonies or guess astrological signs. I plug in my new alarm clock and set it for a minute ahead, and then the whole room waits the fifty-nine seconds it takes for the show to start.

    The star performer is my new Wake’n’SHAKE alarm clock. Features include: large red display (bright, but miraculously not so ‘glowy’ that it illuminates the whole room and keeps me awake), volume and tone control for the beeping sound, a flashing strobe light and a vibrating attachment that goes under a pillow or mattress to shake you awake. All together, it puts on quite a display.

    The archetype of a twenty-first birthday present might be alcohol, novelty barware, designer leather goods, lavish jewels or scandalous gag gifts. Something a little bit sinful. I don’t know what most twenty-two year olds get, but the twenty-second birthday doesn’t feel quite as naughty as the twenty-first.

    I don’t know if it’s so un-naughty that the leap is made from sinful to senile, but let me just say that my mom could have ordered my birthday present from a geriatric website, one that also sells wheelchairs and ear trumpets (okay, she really got it with a Costco discount, but it could have been a geriatric store.)

    I demonstrated my alarm clock tricks at my tea party on Tuesday to an audience of hysterical friends as if it was a flashy gadget or toy, but it has already changed my life for the better. I had been losing a lot of sleep, lying awake at night and trying not to let myself roll on to my right side (and my good ear), worrying not about if I would wake up, but when I would wake up if I didn’t hear my alarm. I have slept through or nearly slept through enough classes, appointments, early morning meetings, and even a midterm to need to try something new.

    At first, I resisted switching to this fancy device because I didn’t want the shaking to give me a heart attack every morning. It is sort of startling, but it’s worth it to wake up feeling like I’ve actually been asleep. In fact, I don’t even have to turn the sound on because the vibrations are so powerful. Actually, that does sound a little naughty.

    Maybe I’ll ask for a walker next year.

  • Skincare Regime

    “You smell good, are you wearing a different perfume?”

    “No, hand lotion tester.” Mom sticks out her hand for me to smell.

    “Mmm, nice.”

    “Your father will smell the same.” Sticks out his hand for me to smell.

    “Was that one of those sample sizes that’s more than a single serving?” Mom nods. Dad realizes that he’s been given the leftovers of a beauty product tester. “That’s funny because when I first smelled it on Mom, I also smelled beer, but I usually associate that with Dad.”

    “Why’s that funny?”

    “It’s nothing, it’s just the lotion smell, it’s a little feminine.” Dad considers this.  Mom tries to distract.
    “Well, it’s great lotion. I put it on before I went to the store and after shopping and making dinner and everything, my hands are still soft!” Sticks out her hand for me to touch.

    “Yeah, it’s really amazing how it stays on. I’ve watched through two football games!”

  • Classes Are Over

    I just had the most surreal moment. My cell phone rang and woke me up. I was at my desk, but I didn’t realize that I’d been sleeping, sprawled down over my notebooks, one arm flopped over my keyboard and one dangling at my side. I have no idea when I passed out.

    I had been waiting for a professor from last fall, Anna, to call about writing a recommendation for me. My caller ID was flashing Anna, so I tried to pull myself together, sound not-so-much like the semi-concious student. I answered and was surprised to hear my old professor inviting me to a party. Then it clicked that I definitely didn’t have her number in my cell. My friend Anna was on the phone, inviting me to a pre-finals party.

    When I hung up, I rubbed my eyes and tried to figure out how long I had been sleeping. I remembered working on my Brit Lit final, but I couldn’t remember my last sentence. The TV was on behind me; What Not to Wear was over and a documentary about narcolepsy had come on.

  • I’m Too Busy Checking Myself Out

    One of the things you have to brace yourself for if you’re going to be actively losing weight at an all-women’s college is that people will assume that you are obsessed with it, you have set your eyes on the prize and the prize is having ‘thin’ become the sole basis of your identity and, worst of all, you’ve been motivated into your delusional health and fitness mania by, wait for it, images of women in the media. Not even the Dove billboards could break you from your diet-induced trance because every publicized female figure from the anonymous chick on the cover of your first issue of Seventeen to the girl with the perky pout in the newest Clean and Clear commercial has skewed your perception of the feminine form. Every time you weigh yourself you are propogating the exploitation of slender women in the media. You’ve been brainwashed.

    I would like to offer some evidence to the point that I am not tacking magazine clippings of ladies up around my mirror and flipping through commercials just to rate the spokesmodels on waifishness.

    In elementary school, usually once in the fall and again in the spring, my class took a field trip out into a swamp or down to the Norwalk River or across the street to a farm – anything to expose us to the outdoors for a period at least a little longer than the walk to and from the bus stop. The standard dress-code for these events involved light layers, a wind-breaker tied unflatteringly around the waist, a cap with a flat-brim (if you were me and never wore athletic attire unless it was strapped onto my body by my mother) and tube socks – oh, the humanity – rolled up over the cuffs of our pants. I loathed this fashion injustice so fiercely that I would resist until the moment before we disembarked the bus at our destination and almost broke my own ankles yanking my socks down when we boarded the bus again at the end of the day.

    If I’d been so susceptible to the images of other girls around me, or images in the media, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much to tuck the cuffs of my jeans into my socks. You know, some people could have pulled a fashion statement out of this look. Not me. I knew my pants looked ridiculous. I knew my socks looked ridiculous. I knew I looked ridiculous in my ridiculous pants and my ridiculous socks. Regardless of how ridiculous every other scrunchie-wearing girl in my class looked right alongside me, I was too busy pouting about my own apparel misfortune to notice.

    Something else you have to brace yourself for at an all-women’s college is that people are generally critical when you show signs of self-absorbtion.

  • A Thanksgiving Easter Egg

    My worst habit is my incessant need to highlight and de-highlight text as I read at the computer. It started when I tried to catch up on seasons of missed ER episodes by reading the lengthy Television Without Pity descriptions, all on white background, and my eyes started to burn. The highlighted text had a blue background that went easier on my exhausted retinas. Ever since then, whenever I’m reading something on the Internet, I highlight sections at a time, sometimes drawing shapes, sometimes to a rhythm. I can’t control it.

    I tried to put a stop to it before I came back to school junior year because I knew all the mouse-clicking would drive my roommate crazy. She would say, “you’re highlighting again!” as I stared at pages of The Electronic Canterbury Tales, my face bathed in LCD-glow for hours at a time. Eventually I managed to wear myself down to only doing it on the silent touchpad mouse, but she would still laugh at me. It is a really ridiculous habit.

    But if I wasn’t constantly dancing the cursor around, I would miss stuff like this: click on the left question mark above techinical difficulties turkey’s head at the end of the Thanksgiving 2005 Homestar Runner cartoon.

    STRONG MAD: CAN I KEEP IT? (Bubs’ concession stand, which he is wearing)
    STRONG BAD: No, you can’t keep it, now go put that thing back.
    STRONG MAD: IT FOLLOWED ME HOME! (He ‘absconded’ it and wore is through the Thanksgiving Parade.)
    STRONG BAD: Uh, yeah, that’s not true.

    That’s called an Easter Egg, celebrated all year ’round. Nothing says Happy Holidays like a Homestar Runner cartoon of mockery.