CRAZY! Get your CRAZY here!!!

(Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 7/21/04

Well, I’ve noticed traffic in our lovely little community has gone down quite a bit. I’ve become somewhat of a hermit of late. I’m well aware that I was probably not missed because I blended in with the hordes of other hermits so well, but please let me keep my illusion that I am loved on this site.

I am just here at work, wondering when I’m going to get enough gumption to actually quit. I’ve been working here at the homeless shelter for over a year now, and it’s killing me. At first it was fun and interesting. Now it’s tiring and annoying. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of people who can’t take care of themselves. I’ve become bitter. And what’s worse is that I spend so much time thinking about work, everything now relates back to it.

I got an email saying that an apple is more effective at making a person feel more awake than coffee is. All I could think about was what all the homeless people would do if the coffee jug were to be replaced by a bowl of apples in the morning. They would literally kill for their coffee… That is, if they could stay awake long enough to find an effective weapon without having had their caffeine fix. When all along, they could just eat their apples, find a nice dull butter knife, and continue on their merry way. Fools.

I frequently hang out with my friend Gwen, watching Court T.V. because that is her channel of choice, and all I can think about while viewing stories about murderers and psychos and various assorted crazy people is, “Hey, I know people who act like that. I know people who show those signs… In fact, I’m pretty sure that guy has stayed at the shelter at some point… Hmm… I guess I ought to be glad I’m not dead…”

I actually had a guy freak out on me because he forgot to buy cigarettes, and I wouldn’t let him break the rules to get some… And where, in that sentence, does one figure that everything is my fault? Somewhere between crazy and denial, I’m quite sure.

No, but in all seriousness, they say CRAZY’s not contagious, but I’m pretty sure I’ve caught some. Yep, I’ve definitely got a serious case of CRAZY, and if you don’t watch out, you might catch it, too.

Note: I stayed at this job for another 14 months after I wrote this... Glutton for punishment.

What Are You Waiting For?

(Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 4/19/2004, and to quote Hagrid, "It was dark times, Harry, dark times." :0p)

People like to say, “I can’t wait.” It was once one of my favorite things to say. As a baby I’m pretty sure I thought, I can’t wait for my mom to feed me. I can’t wait ’til these crazy ladies stop passing me around. I can’t wait ’til I can sit up, crawl, talk, walk.

As I child I thought, I can’t wait ’til school gets out so I can go play. I can’t wait ’til mom and dad get home; what is wrong with this babysitter? I can’t wait until my next birthday. Yeah! I can’t wait until I know everything.

In my early teen years, it was, I can’t wait ’til someone notices me. I can’t wait to go to my first dance. I can’t wait for my first niece to be born.
Then it was stuff like, I can’t wait to go on my first date… perform this play… graduate from High School…

All of these things have come to pass, yet I’m still waiting. Why?

Now I think stuff like, I can’t wait ’til this semester is over… to find someone… I can’t wait until summer… until I make enough money to actually do something fun and worth while… to have kids…

But the truth of the matter is, I have to wait. There is no can or can’t, there is only endure. There are some things I can do. But mostly I can just wait. And this is bad, because, as I said before, I am sick of waiting. I’m tired, I’m bored, and I’m burnt out.

This year has been the worst year of my life. Curses! And it’s not that everything that has been happening to me is bad, it’s that I feel bad about everything that happens to me. Why is that? I used to be so resilient. Now I’m succumbent. That needs to stop.

I guess since I’m stuck waiting, I should decide to start to like it. Perhaps waiting will only make me stronger. Yeah. I’ll just keep telling myself that. Waiting is good. It builds your resistence. It makes you tolerant and patient. Waiting makes you happy!!! See, I’m happy, I used exclamation marks!!! This is actually kind of convincing. Okay, I’ll be on my happy way then!

What am I waiting for?

Saying Goodbye

(Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 3/17/2004)

I have been sitting in this computer lab for the last ten minutes staring at the main page of sixmilevillage.com. I felt an incredible urge to write, and I suppressed it as long as I could. People across the table from me began to give me strange looks. I hadn’t moved at all, except for to blink or smooth my hair. I hadn’t touched the keyboard or mouse that rest in front of me.

I just had a terrible voice lesson. My teacher pissed me off, and I’m still on the verge of ripping his head off, which is why I’m not in class right now. He also happens to conduct choir.

But the thing that brought me to the point of needing to write something was triggered when I read Wendy’s writing about Anson. Although I didn’t know Anson, I still cried when I read about his murder. I’m the type of person who cries at a sad story. I can’t help it. I weep with those that weep, even if I don’t know who is weeping or why.

I recently lost the best friend I’ve ever had. The one person who knows everything about me. The person from whom I’ve kept nothing. The first boy I ever loved, the first guy to break my heart, and the first person to completely break my shell. And now he is gone. And the worst part of it is that he’s not dead. Not his body, anyway. The spirit of him, his true self, died some time ago. I’m not sure exactly when.

At some point, he turned into the person who would lie to me about where he was last night, turn things on me and make me feel like a horrible person, lie to my family, his friends, his family... steal my car. A person who would try to tell me that he lied for my own good, lie to himself about the things he had done, and then thank me from the bottom of his heart for being his friend.

And what did I do? I let him go. I had to. He was killing me. He was dragging me down. I was lost. I didn’t realize that the person I thought was my best friend would be the one person whose attack would be most effective. I suppose it makes sense, though. Once I finally let someone inside the fortress, he broke it down. Broke me. And then he ran away. Because he knew exactly what he had done. He knew precisely whom he had made his foe. And a formidable foe she is. For now the weak spots have been rebuilt, and the walls of the fortress are higher than ever. Walls of anger, barricades of pain.

And yet, somewhere inside this fortress there is still the little girl who chased him out of her backyard, found him asleep underneath her kitchen table when his parents thought he had been kidnapped, defended him against bullies from preschool to college.

In the highest tower, there is a teenager who told him he was a fool for being heart broken over his first girlfriend, laughed when he said his first swearword, scolded him when he took his first drink, and told him again that he was a fool--this time for being broken-hearted about his first boyfriend.

And somewhere, past hidden passages, drifting doorways, and ancient crypts, locked away in the deepest dungeon, lies the young woman who dreamed of his happiness, hoped for his future, treated him like a brother, and will love him to the end.

A Ponderance of Stupendous Proportions

(Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 3/10/04)

I’ve been pondering for a very long time upon a statement I said in a fit of annoyance a while back. After hearing news of many people who were coupling up, I turned to my friend and said, “I guess it’s easier for stupid people to fall in love.” And now I’m here to say that statement is true.

Granted, not everyone who is stupid is in love, and not everyone who is or has been in love is stupid. If that were true, then the world would be full of stupid people… wait a second…
No, but in all seriousness, I believe that’s true. Stupid people have an easier time going with their instincts about someone. They’ll meet someone, hang out, have fun, and then--fwah-BANG!, they’re in love.

Smart people will analyze every aspect of their relationships, and this goes doubly for girls because we’re natural worriers. A smart person thinks: Well, he/she talks to me, smiles at me, and makes me laugh. But what if they just want to be friends? What if I just want to be friends? Because if we ever dated, then it would be weird if we ever broke up. We couldn’t be friends.

What if he/she is thinking that I like him/her? What if he/she thinks that I think that he/she thinks that I like him/her? What if he/she thinks that I think that he/she thinks that I think that he/she thinks that I think that he/she likes me? But odds are, if I take the square root of the hypoteneuse with the cosine and the tangent of the three-sided geometric divided by the circumference of his/her heart, that I’ll end up in a love triangle. Maybe I shouldn’t love him/her, and just save me the trouble.

Thus begins the love struggle of a smart person. Smart people have a hard time taking a chance because smart people sit and weigh the consequences. “I’m less likely to get hurt if I don’t risk it at all.” But without the risk, there is no joy. Without the heart ache comes no exuberance. Okay, there might be a little.

It’s almost as if stupid people have a silent agreement that when they meet another stupid person, they’ll fall in love. “Oh, you failed science, too? Let’s get married and have stupid children that will fail high school, cuz we’re too dumb to help them!” What is that? Leave each other alone! Get out of the gene pool! Don’t make me come in there!

Meanwhile, there are billions of smart people who never get married or have kids, simply because they make themselves too afraid to try. So we never get any smart kids. Slowly, the world is becoming dumber and dumber, and it’s all because smart people are too stupid to give love a chance.

So all you smart people, go on some dates, put on a swimming suit, and come on in, the water’s fine!!! People with an IQ under 100 must be accompanied by an adult.

Working Girl... of Sorts

(originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 2/18/04)

I was getting ready for school this morning at work when it started again. “Wow, your hair sure is pretty. How do you get it so shiny?” a sixty-five year old man asks.
“I really don’t know,” I reply. Honest to goodness, I didn’t used to be so immune to compliments. It all started last June, when I started work at the local homeless shelter.

My first real problem was that the lady who was training me had it in for me. She wanted me dead. She hired a private detective to find out where I would be each hour of the day. Then she began stalking me. She bugged my phone, she put video cameras in my house, and she bribed my roommates to spy on me. Okay, she didn’t really do any of those things. She just wanted my job. (Can you blame me for wanting to spice the story up a little?)

Anyway, work was pretty easy at first. We had great clients during the summer. One that I like to call Grant was very sweet. He did anything he was asked, he always followed the rules, and he gave me a present when he left. Not that I need to be bought. It was a sentimental gift. Actually, it was a doll that reminded him of me.

Probably one of my biggest problems was a young man we’ll call Leo. Leo found it enjoyable to spout out poetry at the dinner table about how my hair was like “angel fire” and my eyes were like the “deep blue sea under a cloudy sky”. His second day in the shelter he came to my office and asked me if I wanted to run off and get married. When I turned him down, he persisted with, “Do you just want to run off?” He complimented my hair, my clothes, my eyes, my face, my skin… He said how he loved the little mole on the side of my nose. He thought it was sexy. He very much succeeded in making me blush, but after explaining to him several times that I’m just a girl trying to work my way through college and I didn’t need a distraction at work, it just became annoying. Leo became a perpetual thorn in my side until he left.

Then there was Steve. That’s just what I’ll call him. Steve liked to tell me his pot-smoking stories and always asked me why I didn’t share my drugs with him. You see, I have a slight problem with my pupils: they’re always dilated more than they should be. He took this to be a sign of drug use and would say, “Look at them eyes! Where you keeping your stash? Just tell me!” He tossed in his fair share of proposals.

And then there’s the one I call Mark. Every time his wife called, she was snippity with me. It turns out she thought we were having an affair. You see, she left him to live with two other men, so when he decided to go across the country on a road trip, she became understandably jealous. She asked him if we were sleeping together. I heard her because she was yelling. “Yeah,” he said. I hit him on the arm. “No,” he said, “but I wish we were.”

Sadly, this was not the end. A few months ago, a young man I’ll nick name Jack came to the shelter. He talked to me for a few minutes, I gave him a cup of coffee and some food, and he left. Then he came back to stay. He confessed his undying love for me and told me how he had dreamed about me all night and how he couldn’t stop thinking about me and he knew that I was the one that God had sent to this earth for him. Well, I like to think I have a pretty good relationship with God, and he told me no such thing. During the course of his stay, Jack wrote me three poems, one of which he turned into a song and performed for me. Finally he realized his wooing was amounting to nothing but a lot of heart ache for him, and he took his leave. But not until he wrote me a heart-breaking farewell love letter.

Now, it may seem like I am a cold-hearted beast, and maybe I am, but can you blame me?

Although, I do have to say that hearing a man that asked if he could have a bottom bunk because he’s afraid of heights ask, “Do you want me to get a ladder and change that lightbulb, pretty lady?” is highly rewarding.

And it gives me warm fuzzies to hear an Irish bloke who was drunk on the street a few days ago say, “Thanks for the apple juice, Love!”

And nothing makes me feel better at 7 a.m., after only four hours of sleep and twenty minutes of get ready time, than hearing a man who woke me up at two in the morning to ask for pain killers say, “Damn! You look fine!!!”

Sealed for Your Protection

Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 2/13/04)

I was in the ELC today when I was suddenly struck by the urgent need to use the restroom. I think this may have had something to do with the four glasses of water I drank at breakfast, but who really knows, it could be anything. As I rushed… err… walked calmly to the stall, I did my usual “pre-pee” examination of it.
No liquid on the seat… check!
No puddles on the floor… check!
No visible absorbent items aside from toilet paper… check!

Wait, what’s this? There is a sticker on the toilet paper dispenser that states, “sealed for your own protection”. Although I shudder to think where the sticker came from and how it ended up in the bathroom, it sends my imagination into a flurry to see this common sticker in such an uncommon place.

Now, you would expect to see it if you were opening an item of food or medicine or such things, but what if we could use this sticker in every day life?

If these stickers magically appeared when needed, it could save a lot of us from major distress.

What if there was a terrorist who went to the airport to board a flight, but as soon as he got throught one set of double doors, the airport was covered with “Sealed for your protection” stickers, so he couldn’t possibly get in or out of that little space between two sets of double doors?

Or say one day a toilet in the Library was going to explode. How fabulous would it be if a huge “Sealed for your protection” sticker appeared on the restroom door before it happened, sealing the door and saving hundreds upon thousands of books from rancid destruction and a plethora of SUU students from utter stench?

Or how about on the days when I wake up and I am ornery and prone to ripping people’s egos to shreds and saying things I’ll regret later, a lovely little sticker zips my lips shut and kindly says to every one, “SEALED FOR YOUR PROTECTION!!!”?

Confessions of a "Sweet" 19-Year-Old

(Originally posted on sixmilevillage.com 2/9/04)

Lately, as I go about town in my regular errands and everyday disturbances, my annoyance grows higher and higher. There are pink and red hearts everywhere. There are commercials on T.V. for diamonds and candies and, “Hey, why not buy your sweetheart everything in our electronics department, she’ll love it, or you get a 2% refund.” Bleck.
You would think that as a nineteen-year-old girl, I would be excited about the week of Valentine’s Day. But I’m not. I used to be.

Every year I had some fantasy about some knight in shining armor on a pretty black horse riding into the school and sweeping me up into his arms, and we would ride away to Scotland where he had a fabulous castle--with major technological advancements, of course.

As the years passed, he became a rich performing artist; then a handsome and mysterious semi-famous author; then the captain of the football team; then the star of the school play; then the computer geek who helped me with my homework. Each year as Valentine’s Day passed, I was still, as ever, alone.

And this was not only tradition on Valentine’s day, but on Christmas, Easter, the 4th of July, St. Patrick’s Day, Halloween; okay, so every day of every year of my life.

I’m confessing: I have never been kissed. And every time the “First Kiss” conversation comes up, I just sit there quietly. What am I supposed to say? Finally it comes around to me, and I say, “Well, there isn’t anything for me to tell in this department…”

As the term “Virgin Lips” or “VL” (dumbest phrase of all time) circles slowly around the table, I sit there, as bored as ever. “REALLY?” every one says, less a question than a statement of shock and astonishment. “Really.” I reply.
They look at me as if I am Rachel, the Goddess of Self Control. Really I’m Rachel, Goddess of the Lonely of Heart.