Saturday, May 28, 2005

Spandex and rubber

Wouldn’t it be great to be a superhero? These are the kinds of things I think about when nursing a sever caffeine deficiency and my harmless insanity. I would just like to know what it would be like to be the hero coming to the rescue. I don’t mean one that’s established like Wonder Woman, I mean if that *you* were a superhero. Whatever your greatest strengths are would be your superhero powers.

Let me give you an example: I would be Captain Cynicism. I’d wear vintage T-shirts with smartass sayings, loose jeans, and steel toed boots. If asked why I wasn’t wearing spandex or a ridiculously short skirt; you’d receive a lengthily diatribe about how that’s just another way to make women fall short of meeting society’s impossible expectations while holding them back as if they were nothing more than a mere sexual object. I would have a procrastination ray gun that I’d use to incapacitate would be criminals by making them continuously put off making plans to rule the world in favor of a bag of chips and the TV remote. I could blind them with my horrible dancing of doom, or bring them to their knees with my super screech like singing. I could confuse them with my losing laser that would hide their keys and make them unable to find the bank they were going to rob. If all else fails, I could tempt them with my cooking that would bring death faster than Poison Ivy’s kiss. Look out evil doers, Captain Cynicism is on duty.

These ludicrous thoughts were running through my mind as I waited on the side of the road with a flat tire. More people than I care to think about refused to stop. Now me being a liberated woman, I know *how* to change a tire. My problem was the Hulk couldn’t have moved the tire lock. My cell phone was so helpfully out of juice, and most people didn’t even look at the girl on the side of the road twice. This gave me all the time in the world as I contemplated who to call collect. Oh, did I mention that I had no change seeing as though I used it for gas, and my wallet was probably under my bed where it does me the most good?

So, just as I was about to head to the nearest convenience store, that wasn’t so convenient as it was about a mile away, a car stopped. An older man in a three piece suit stepped out of the car. He walked over to where I was. I was overjoyed, here was my help. However he said nothing to me, dumped out his old coffee from a travel mug on the side of the road, and got back in his car. Are you kidding me? I was starting to wonder if I was invisible, or perhaps he didn’t notice me standing not 50 feet from him, next to a car that had its hazard lights on. Stranger things have happened. Though, these thoughts didn’t stop me from cursing him as he drove off. Clearly those lessons in etiquette that my mother gave me were tossed right out the window sometime near puberty.

Just as I was about to cry, yes frustration can do that to a girl, a minivan stopped. A frazzled mother of two got out of the drivers seat and walked towards me. She had a stain on her shirt and looked like she hadn’t slept in the last decade. I could understand why judging by the wail I heard from young lungs in her van. She offered me a smile, her cell phone, and even a pop. Then she offered to wait with me until help arrived. She clearly wasn’t having the best day herself, yet she stopped to help me improve mine. Today, this harried mother with wild hair and exhaustion in her eyes was my hero.

Yes, today a woman was my hero and she didn’t even need any superpowers. She just needed kindness and the ability to think of someone else. Of all the people that could have stopped, she probably had the most reason not to. She probably would have been better off with a nap or getting her kids to the babysitter faster, but she chose to stop. She made a choice to use her compassion to help another in the real world. What kind of superhero would you be?

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.” -- Benjamin Disraeli

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Mutterings

I wish sometimes I remembered how to ask. Somewhere along the line I must have forgotten how to say the words I needed to. Just because you know what you want doesn’t necessarily mean that you will even ask for it.

I want you to tell me a story, your story. A story that makes me understand a side of you I have never seen. But I don’t know how to ask. I want you to tell me that the world isn’t a cold place and I will always be warm walking along side of you. But I haven’t the words. I want you to say that the dark shadow that haunts my nightmares can’t harm me while you are around. That seeing him wouldn’t send me reeling into memories best forgotten. But the words never come. I want to ask you to give me your friendship as well as your shoulder, to let me burden you with my chaotic thoughts. But I haven’t the heart to ask. I want to ask you to wipe away my memory and regret. To glue the broken pieces back together seamlessly. But I wouldn’t know where to begin. I even want to ask you to laugh with me, to enjoy my moments of joy. But I’ve forgotten how to speak.

Where would I start? It’s been so long since I bothered to ask anyone for anything. Someone asked me whose shoulder I had to cry on. The thing is I know those people are there. They are waving their arms at me as if they were tying to land a chopper. I know who “you” is. “You” is everyone I care about, who I know haven’t forgotten what it is to open themselves up to another. But I don’t remember how to ask. It isn’t that I need them right now or that I am falling apart. I just want to remember how. To ask is to open up a part of yourself, a part that I closed long ago in an effort to move on.

There’s no need to comment here, these are just my random mutterings. All I need is some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a good book. That and to appreciate that I do have those people there... regardless of if I ask or not.

“I'm just trying to look at something without blinking.” -- Toni Morrison

Friday, May 20, 2005

Say it ain't so

There is a moment in everyone’s life when all their fears about the future come to a head. We dread this day. It lurks in the back of our mind as the worst case scenario. Yesterday was just that moment for me. Yes, that’s right... yesterday I found out I was turning into my parents. Oh sweet god say it isn’t so! Really, there's nothing more frightening than when you catch yourself doing something that one or both of your parents did that drives you insane.

Yesterday I was sitting there trying to figure out how to fix something that I broke. The fact that I broke something is nothing new, but I caught myself saying my dad’s patented phrase, “Oh no I’ll fix it, all we need is a can of WD-40 and some duct tape”. When my ears heard me say this I knew this was the beginning of the end. Soon I will be asking the bag boy at the store if he can bag every cold item separately like my mother does (I have no idea why maybe they contaminate each other or something, there's no logic to be found here), or I could really fall and end up asking people around me when they’re going to tackle step 39 of a project that is only at step 6. But I won’t just ask them once. No, I’ll ask them once an hour... just to be sure. Oy.

I think some of this explains why I’m as insane as I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the psycho kind of insane that you'd have to worry about picking through your garbage in order to better stalk you with. I’m just that little bit of insane that makes people in my life shake their head. For example, I am physically incapable of replacing the roll of toilet paper. I'll always bring out a fresh roll, but somehow that sucker never seems to make it on the little roller thingy. When I get flustered the only word that leaves my lips sounds like a cross between a “what” and a “huh”. I play little games in my head as I watch people at the grocery store. I am always looking in their cart all nosey like in hopes that my mind can come up with the reason they are there and the story of their life. I don’t make it a normal life either. Oh no. I can’t tell you the number of ex CIA assassins and members of the mob that have gone underground I’ve met trolling the frozen food aisle.

I guess I was just realizing how much of my time lately I seem to spend in my head. I wouldn’t really say I was hiding from life, although that’s how I think this all started, but I would say that I am living there more than I did several years ago. I don’t blame my parents for my craziness; I just think their genetics helped it along a little. Life gave me my craziness. I wonder if that is why I like being online? Maybe the fact that I can live here but still reside for the most part in my head is what attracts me to this place. Or maybe I have found a new high-tech way to hide under my bed from the world at large.

“I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.” -- Maya Angelou