This will end with an explanation of how I nearly caught caused (well, started) a kitchen fire with the microwave and ruined a perfectly good pair of underwear and our trash basket. You can guess. It's going to be pretty anticlimactic, as I already giggled about it all day the day it happened and have pretty much lost the steam to tell it. But here goes:
I met my friend for coffee yesterday and he looked down at my feet and remarked that the combination of my flip flops and bike clips reminded him "of that Train song." Kind of an embarrassing reference for him to make, but I did get it, howling, "she only drinks coffee at midnight... but I drink coffee ALL DAY!" Nerds. Anyway, I don't get it. I never have. It's not a chosen aloofness, a rejection of the norms of style and behavior, I just genuinely can't function in that way. Those girls that you see shivering outside of the bar in December in their tiny clothes-- I would totally be them. I didn't have a moment ever where I looked at hot chicks and said, "well, that looks stupid," it's just so unnatural and foreign to me that I can't even conceive of operating my life like that.
When I was younger, my mom bought us (my siblings and me) a giant trampoline for Christmas one year. My parent's were not wealthy, but Christmas was always a big holiday for us.
So, before I tell you about the beautiful porcelain doll that my grandmother gave me one year (she lost her eyelash, and I was just so upset), let me just wrap up my pleasant trip down memory lane and say that I rarely jumped on that giant trampoline. I was too self conscious to jump on the trampoline. The neighbors could see me, people walking down the street could see me. I didn't want anyone to see me jumping and think I looked stupid.
I'm not sure why that happened. I remember changing schools in 5th grade and going from being a happy little weirdo to being very shy and self conscious. I remember having a clear thought that I needed to change who I had been. I was 10 years old! Anyway, I don't know anything about child psychology, but I'm sure that kind of thing happens. Well, I hope it does. So I spent about a decade being painfully embarrassed at just existing (my description of adolescence) and afraid to do fun, harmless things like jumping on trampolines in my own back yard.
Well now, I often feel like I could very easily be the butt of a joke, but rather than it causing me to shut down I try to embrace it. Or I'm an attention whore. I do like it when people like me, so of course if this story caused people to actively dislike me rather than find me slightly ridiculous I might not share it:
I was getting ready for work. I had not had the time to do laundry for about a week. Even though I suspect there was clean underwear somewhere in the giant heap of clean laundry that permanently rests at the foot of my mattress, I couldn't find any. So I decided to hand wash some and microwave it dry. I totally have microwaved my clothes before (totally. this is totally normal), when I worked at a coffee shop and I didn't realize my work shirt wasn't clean before my shift. So I took the damp underwear, wrapped it in a paper towel (to be considerate of my housemates) and microwaved it for about a minute. They were still damp, so I put the underwear back in the microwave and unthinkingly went upstairs. When I came back downstairs, it was clear that my underwear were ruined. The paper towels looked singed and brown. So I tossed the underwear in the (empty)trash basket and went to brush my teeth. I came back into the kitchen to find smoke coming up from under the sink. The downstairs smelled like burning plastic. My housemates were still asleep, so I had to alert them of the fact that I nearly started a kitchen fire them via text message as I rode the train to work.
I texted my mom what happened and she replied, "you're just like your grandmother!" alluding to the time that my maternal grandmother almost burned down their apartment by putting her girdle in the oven. I told Ish and he called it "some crackhead-ass shit" and I reminded him that my nana had made a similar mistake some thirty years ago, and he maintained that "some crackhead-ass shit" runs in my family.
And that's the story. I really do fear the day when I am no longer young. I suspect that this sort of behavior doesn't age well.
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