The severe astigmatism prevents you from joining the force in the capacity you had hoped for (knocking down boarded doors, heavy boots, tear gas), but the city council shrugs and signs the paper when you beg to at least be a school crossing guard. You get the perks (uniform, swagger) without the drawbacks (wet-nosed drug dealers). The kids gape at you with licorice mouths and obey quietly. Your favorite part is the heat of mid-morning, before the lunch rush, when you can hook your heels on the curb and watch the traffic lights smear across the sky like finger paints.
Archive for March, 2009
You pee your pants only four times in your adult life, which is actually pretty reasonable when compared to the national average (eight). The first time is at the bathroom in the El Pollo Loco in Santa Monica: a simple case of extra large Pepsi + waiting too long + five-button fly. The second time is three years later, about seven feet from the stage at a Wilco concert (you couldn’t miss the encore). The third and fourth times are while laughing with your friends (once at home during board game night; once in the car, struggling with the GPS).
The only problem with being a Confucian scholar is the hotels they put you in when they invite you to speak at the conference. Freudian experts usually get Doubletree, Aristotelians enjoy Radissons, even two out of three Marxists will get to stay in a Hilton. But Confucian scholars, in an unexplainable yet widespread phenomenon, always get assigned to the Days Inn. The breakfast buffet at the Days Inn is always limited to a handful of muffins. And they never have hair dryers, which is why most Confucianists give their keynote talks while hungry, under a loft of slightly frizzy hair.
Monday night is Cheap Date night at the bowling alley: two entrees, a bottle of wine, and an hour at the lane for $25. Tuesday is happy hour at the local bar, where they serve two-buck beers and free pool. Wednesdays are Lost, and Saturday afternoon is half-price Bingo. Christmases are in New York, Thanksgivings at home, and every other summer there’s the cabin with the screened-in porch and mosquitoes in New Hampshire. Every morning requires twenty push-ups and a half-mile run before a pause in front of the mirror to check that everything is how it should be.
You are booted from Dancing with the Stars–yes, “booted,” that’s the word the blogs used—and it’s awful, simply the most humiliating moment of your entire life, worst day ever, and you did not even want to go on Dancing with the Stars in the first place, but your manager said it was crucial that you put yourself back in a wholesome light after the whole puppy mill scandal, and the only reason you agreed to it was because you were a shoo-in to win; after all, you had six years of tap and seven jazz growing up in Kentucky.
Write a novel. And then be all like, “This is the best novel ever, I’m a f$#%ing genius.” And show it to people who matter. And be all like, “Why don’t you publish my novel?” And listen to what they say.
Then do this: fall in love, get a puppy, go to the beach and spend hours just squishing sand between your toes, bet on horse races, re-upholster your own sofa, fall out of love, count your own freckles, read poetry, swim, spin, see your puppy grow old and weary and grey-chinned and curl up and die. Try again.
A vow of silence is hard to explain to your friends. You’ll have to email them. They are going to want to know why, and wtf, and dude, are you serious. Take the questions in stride. When you go out to bars with them, you are the only one who just smiles and nods during chicken-wing-punctuated anecdotes. At first they’ll be pissed. But after awhile, they’ll notice you’re also the only one who’s actually listening to their theories on Morrissey vs. The Cure without distractedly preparing a rebuttal of your own. And they’ll buy you a beer and nod back.
Congratulations! You are one of the lucky few in life who finds $14,000 in rolled-up one hundred-dollar bills inside a rusty lunch box next to the garbage dumpster outside the veterinary clinic; a lunch box so carelessly placed that you actually trip over it as you pace the parking lot during Muffy’s neutering, puffing a cigarette and worrying and wondering just what sorts of suspicious things might be inside a veterinarian’s garbage dumpster. Fourteen thousand dollars is exactly enough money to relocate you and Muffy to Berlin, where you’ve always wanted to visit but never found a cheap enough ticket.
The thing about the dissertation is, you get stuck in it. You teach and you scribble notes and you press your nose against the square pane of the window until suddenly it’s been five years, seven, and people no longer say Hello, they say How much longer? And you twist your wine glass between your fingers, squint and say, Almost done. Any day now.
Maybe the best thing to do is just take a walk sometime, every other night even, to cool your mind, down by the lake. You never expected to live in Vermont. How did it all happen?
If you do decide to go to culinary school, and become a baker, you’ll have to make a choice which of the two great schools of wedding cake thought you belong to. The older, more conservative cake-decorating philosophy calls for the dessert item to remain pure of inedible items; all nuptial ornamentation must be sculpted from sugar, fondant, or—in a pinch—licorice. The more progressive generation of cake-decorators disagree, and feel that inedible dressings add a touch of whimsy to an otherwise outmoded sweet. This camp uses anything they can find to dress a cake: ribbon, sparklers, Barbie doll heads.
