emlocke

Category: Undergrad Stories

  • Syndicated television will unite the masses

    When I stay at work so late that the cleaning service bustles through, I never know what to say to the woman who collects our trash and dusts over the office. Her name ends with “-rina,” I think, but starts with something I couldn’t understand when she told me one evening last year. After she discovered me at my desk after hours a few nights in a row when I introduced myself officially.

    Now, we have the same rudimentary small talk whenever we meet. “How was your weekend?” “It’s so hot.” “Your desk, it’s clear! And the floor! I will vacuum!” “No, no! It’s Friday! Let’s both get out of here!” We often
    exchange fatigued sighs and empathetic grins.

    “It’s been one of those days,” I told her tonight, blotting perspiration from my temple, an effect of the heat as much as of the long day itself. She chuckled and said, “for me, too. What a day.” She snapped open a fresh garbage bag and her bangs puffed up in the air it expelled.

    Gloria was the housekeeper in my dorm my senior year at Mount Holyoke. She put a name tag and a collage on the door of the supply closet on the first floor, the same we tacked photos and postcards outside our rooms. She had pictures of kittens torn out of a calendar, macaroni art by her daughter, a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign.

    We used to watch ER re-runs on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings. The show started at 10, so I usually got back from my 8:30 class as the opening credits were rolling. Gloria took her break in the common room, watching Luka (I liked the Dr. Ross episodes) and eating Ritz crackers and peanut butter out of an insulated lunch bag. I invited myself to join her a few weeks into the semester. While we watched, I’d finish my second cup of coffee and skim my Indian Art reading. During commercials, she would dust here and there or make a phone call.

    Except for a stray remark about an absurd medical condition and the occasional question about the plot or “wait, what did she say?” we didn’t speak much. She knew where I grew up and what I majored in. She told me a few basic biographical facts about her daughter and showed me a picture from her First Communion.

    I wish I’d thought to leave a picture of Goran Visnjic on Gloria’s door at the end of the semester—when I came back to school in the spring, my class schedule interfered with ER in syndication. And I wish “-rina” could take an ER break with me.

  • 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.

  • insomaniac

    this just doesn’t happen to me. i’m the girl who can fall asleep in record time on public transportation, on the beach, in the common room with an hour between classes, or in the staff lounge at camp while people play ps2 wrestling, fight over the computer and spin gossip all around me. i’m the girl who gets out of bed with ten minutes before class and gets tangled up and stuck in her pajamas b/c she’s so rushed. i am not the girl who wakes up before 6:30 and channel surfs through the morning news for pre-work entertainment. but i really just can’t sleep.

    jen and i finally had a knitting lesson last night! we met at starbucks in town and got through three lessons: 1) the slipknot 2) casting on and 3) not knitting too tightly. lauren watched and peanut galleried. after starbucks kicked us out, lauren and i went back to her house so i could watch and peanut gallery while she packed for udel. that turned into “let’s talk a lot until 12:30 am and not get anything accomplished.” but she did show me her dress-up suitcase and it was fun.

    em drove back to bucknell on monday morning, so we held a final redezvous, the starbucks finale, complete with an impromptu fireworks display. the night before that, it was jess’ house for wrap-up analysis and a flip through the j.crew catologue before she went back to colby.

    so after lek leaves tomorrow, i will be the sole survivor of summer 2004. on my own again, i’m planning on a beach day with rach and a few work days back with the cass boys. charlene called me last night to say that the babysitter they’d lined up for the fall backed out already and she needs some last minute help for the first week of school. coincidentally, i need some last minute cash. and i’m curious to see how larry and brian handle the coupe’s backseat.

    quote of the day: “i’ll drive faster, you hold tighter, i’ll get wild, you get wilder” – kasey chambers

  • thirty days ’til my skirty craze

    thirty days until classes start. thirty days until syllabi, textbooks, lecture notes, writing conferences and all the other abc’s of fall semester. i wish i could go back for the beginning part, with fresh notebooks and the autumn snap in the air – actually, i wish i had a pleated plaid skirt to wear across the green. but then i’ll come home when all the leaves have fallen and i lose my highlighter, when four flights of stairs aren’t a novel workout anymore, when the spiral in my notebook gets bent out of shape and people start disappearing into the library for consecutive days at a time.

    truman capote’s breakfast at tiffany’s, which i’ve never read, is this week’s selection for the times‘ ‘great summer read’ series. i took the first chapter to the gym this afternoon. but i still read glamour in the chaise lounge while i ate lunch, so don’t get all concerned, i’m not overextending myself during my intellectual summer vacation. i like tiffany’s. i think late 50’s novels tend to attract me; on the road was published in 1957, the year before breakfast at tiffany’s. which reminds me, with only thirty days, when will i finish all the other books i’ve started this summer?

    maybe right after i find that pleated skirt.

    quote of the day: “the summer’s all in bloom, the summer is ending soon. it’s all right, and it’s nice not to be so alone, but i hold on to your secrets, in white houses” – vanessa carlton

  • miss emily

    this morning i had to go clean the books and cds and clothes and garbage out of my car before it gets towed to the junkyard. my dad swooped in wearing a superfather cape to dis-install my cd player. when i saw it, captive behind the eight-foot fence wearing a barbed wire crown, i took back every bad thing i ever said about my loyal taurus wagon. larry and brian and i were lucky to be in that ford tanker when we got rear ended on the way to karate.

    speaking of larry and brian, today is my last day with them! i taught brian to play spit yesterday, so we played a few rounds, during which i caught him cursing under his breath twice! i said, “what did you just say?” and he tried to cover with, “’darn it!’ i said ‘darn it.’ that’s what I say sometimes.” right, right, that’s what i’d say too. we’ll see what mom has to say about that one. we went to see garfield in wilton and they both saved me a pink starburst. the movie was a minefield of product placement, but it was cute.

    when i got this job, i never could have imagined getting so involved in their lives. at first, they were difficult and mischievous and somewhat bland. now it’s hard to remember life before afternoons with larry and brian. i know they’re quirks and their faces and i can practically predict their moves, although there are always a few shockers, just to keep me on my toes. i will miss being miss emily!

    quote of the day: “grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” – the little prince

  • very funny poker

    through a savvy and invincible combination of aggression (how do you call? bluffing?) veiled by characteristic girlish charm, lauren graham dominated bravo’s celebrity poker showdown table tonight, beating my former love matthew perry and chris masterson, who looks like a gorgeous cross between justin timberlake and doogie howser. she inspired me to a) wear shiny green clothing and b) learn to play poker.

    luckily, i’m spending three full days next week with an equally savvy and charming (but far less girlish) ace. who is seven years old. let’s hope i don’t blow all the cash i’ll make working those extra hours by falling for brian’s bluffs! it’s my last week with the boys and i will miss them when it’s over! but i will have a new “very funny” tbs campaign to remind me of brian. that’s what he always says when he knows i’m bluffing.

    quote of the day: “even the best fall down sometimes, even the stars refuse to shine. out of the back you fall in time, i somehow find, you and i collide” – howie day

  • reading in the sun

    i’ve been reading outside (wearing spf, of course) for most of the afternoon and now the sun has sidled off the deck and into the yard and i have come inside where it’s chilly and the shadows trick my eyes because my skin looks darker than it ever will be. my dad finished mowing the lawn and the scent of cut grass mixed with motor fuel and the rumbling and humming that played white noise on my ears while i finished my book is fading and i’m wondering where the summer came from. suddenly everyone is home from school and the library is closed on sundays and the bedroom doors blow open and shut all night when the breeze comes through the upstairs windows. and posts dated in february are still recent in my index because i’ve had nothing to write about!

    i just finished blessings, which had such a good flow that i read it all in three days, but i feel like i skipped through it too quickly. i don’t have a very good picture of the characters in my mind, like i sketched them together without paying attention. but i have three more books to get to, since amazon rocks and my super saver shipping order arrived six days before it was scheduled to be shipped! next i’m starting reading lolita in tehran, which happens to be the common reading for mount holyoke‘s class of 2008. i don’t know if that makes me want to read it more or less.

    last night everyone went out to dinner and to see troy in norwalk for lindsay’s birthday, which is officially on monday. i missed out on the dinner/movie sector of the evening because i was working until 7, of course, but i went to the gym and met up with lauren, emily and jess at the birthday girl’s house around 11. i stayed for an hour and a half and we compared and contrasted schools and talked about “breathign with positions” and then i came home and crashed so hard i don’t even remember putting my pajamas on.

    quote of the day: “sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep” the smiths

  • oh, it was just a dream

    sometimes, i check my own blog for updated wit and muse. once i felt quite surprised to read the old headline. then i realized that i dreamt about writing a new entry and my subconscious had me so thoroughly convinced that i believed it had really happened (but not thoroughly enough to recall what my figmental topic was.)

    i think this happens to me more often than most people. it’s not unusual for me to start a conversation with, “we may have already discussed this, but i can’t remember if that was real or not,” or “did i already [insert verb here] or was i just dreaming?” people generally think i’m kidding, but really, it’s sincere wakeful confusion! i’ve even reminded myself to do something, fallen asleep and dreamed that i did it, and woken up with a false sense of efficiency.

    this is an external sign of my inherently vivid subliminal imagination. on frequent mornings after, i have been notably disappointed to wake up and find that my wardrobe has not been entirely revamped, that i’m not finished with a final paper, or it’s not my birthday. most disappointing was realizing that, two weeks before my senior prom, i had neither the gorgeous and charming date nor the black strapless taffeta gown i had conjured in the night!

    last night, i dreamt that i tried a new hair salon and the stylist turned my head into a trendy, floofy nightmare. waking up to find my curly strawberry blonde ponytail intact was certainly not a disappointment.

    quote of the day: “the difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.” – albert einstein

  • bon voyage, mi amor

    i’m leaving for the airport in an hour, and what do i take the time to do? blog it. but what else did you expect? i had to say farewell to my computer.

    i’ve been practicing my spanish so i can ask for directions to my hotel when i arrive in puerto montt tomorrow afternoon. “con permiso, puede usted ayudarme a encontrar el hotel o’grimm, por favor?” i know if am polite and charming i will find someone kind enough to help me out. but very honestly, i’m nervous that i’ll be too afraid to explore the city on my own and i won’t take advantage of the twenty four hours between my arrival and the beginning of my trip. but rach said, “be adventurous,” and i will try my hardest.

    but once i meet up with everyone and we finally get started, i’ll be fine. i’m so excited to see the mountains, be out in the sun, on the water, sleeping and breathing the fresh air and drinking pure water. the southern hemisphere features a completely different assortment of stars and constellations. i’m looking forward to the sunset and the stars.

    quote of the day: “but then why shouldn’t you? it was such a beautiful thing to do.” – ani difranco

  • this is a pulp free zone

    it must be because i just turned twenty. i am a real live grown-up. do you want proof? i have learned to love big girl orange juice. no more sugary, flourescent orange powdered drinks intended for outer space. give me one of those striped straws and i’ll punch it through an authentic piece of fruit. but, let’s keep this milestone pulp free please.

    today is maggie‘s sixth birthday! it was also my first day off after fourteen consecutive days of either nanny-ing or receptionist-ing. it has been a long two weeks! i spent the whole morning watching tv in bed and the rest of the day in my bathrobe. i guess i will put on spandex and a t-shirt to go to the gym in a minute, but i don’t think that really counts.

    congratulations to jessy, who got accepted at kent state! hearing her talk about how excited she is even inspired a twinge of excitement in me. i really am looking forward to next semester back at mount holyoke. as jessy phrased it, “college is fun again!”

    quote of the day: “it’s so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn’t it?” – l.m. montgomery