adventures.

[ :" not quite young anymore, but not old either; a little breathless, very beautiful, maybe a little stupid, maybe a lot smarter than she seemed. and she was looking for something--i think she wanted to be good. she was funny and sexy--and she was vulnerable too she was like [everybody]."
--page four hundred and thirty]

if i can claim to have a way with anyone, i think its with late-night donut men. for the i-think-third time in like 3 months i have gotten free donuts from the man at the store late at night. this time it was sortof funny cause my sister and i are driving back and its late so we see the donuts and we decide to stop and go to the bathroom and strech and get donuts before we resume on our merry little way. so we go inside and go to the bathroom so we didnt have to manage that with our hands full of donuts [we were taught this very specific order of things about public bathrooms. i dont actually even like to use them that much. but it was unavoidable, you know.] so anyway, we walk out and apparently in the time we got in there and used the bathroom was the 3 minutes that he decided to close the store, but he didnt check the bathrooms or anything so we walked out and he was very surprised. i think he jumped. he told us we had to drive through cause he was closed [since we were there already?!] i smiled at him anyway. i get to the drive through and he just gives me the whole bundle of donuts. we are happy. i think this is a good skill to possess.
also: i think it works with gas station boys. i managed to finally run out of gas somewhere that was not a gas station [it was more like the near middle of an intersection sortof but not really close to the gas station in the darkest night.] so two sweet men helped push me into the nearest parking lot and then i gathered up my nerve to walk to the nearest ghetto gas station and there i find 2 hispanic men who spoke english only moderately well and i put on my best im-a-girl-and-i-dont-know-what-im-doing face [i wonder what it says about me that i am perfectly willing and able to pull out and use that at least semi-effectively when the need arises. hmmm.] and so they explain to me all this stuff about what i need to do now. so me and the mexican boys figure it out. it was ghettofabulous, but i smelled like gasoline for the rest of the night pretty much, which was less than fabulous, ghetto or not.
and: canoe-ing is the muchlyest fun thing ever, mostly. im a big fan. and while my mother and sister and i were all in this canoe, and i was steering, there was this airshow going on so we got to see all these army men in the airplanes do all these superawesome things like go upside down a lot, and twirl around and come really close to our heads. we talked my sister into watching it too. well, mostly i did cause i was the steering person and i got more say in the matter just by that alone. she was just the head person who helped sometimes, and mom was the sit-in-the-middle-and-try-to-not-fall-out-of-the-boat person. she was very handy to have around, let me tell you. we did a bunch of other fun things when we were gone too, but i dont remember them right now, so they probably arent that exciting anyway.

i had to buy a swimsuit before we left. my old one was gross, and i disliked it very much. now, buying a swimsuit is a trying task. if you dont know why, go ask a girl. but after a while if its a good swimsuit, you wont really notice it anymore, thats what i decided. [i did find a decentish one, by the way.] but the same is true with a shirt, or shoes, i think. i really like the way that after about half an hour or so, if you are wearing a really good shirt anyway--if you are wearing a bad shirt then this never happens: you are constantly fidgiting with it and pulling it up or down or whatever--, i love the way the shirt just settles into you. you like all of a sudden meld with the shirt, and that makes it nice for wearing.

anyway: i was wondering about those people who never ever seem to meld with, well, anyone else really. or even themselves. i wonder if people who have worked at perkins for 14 years straight know that its highly possible and even highly likely that they have just wasted their last 14 years by getting drunk everynight and then waitressing all morning and having a few kids here and there and then doing it all again? do the girls obsessed with highlighting hair and the proper shoes for any one skirt and losing 4 pounds and the boys worried about looking cool and macho and whatever such nonsense gets into their heads that they dont realize that there is more to do? their shirts, so to speak, never meld. [not that there is anything wrong with waitressing and having proper shoes and such, but there is more.] maybe i am this sad reality myself, and i just dont know it, which is sadder still. they remind me of those stupid freshman i manage to get stuck with, those ones who cant even write a sentence properly. but! they think they make perfect sense. and when i say "hey: listen to this sentence outloud and tell me if it makes any sense to you whatsoever and i read them something that says: the store crazy, because it was so busy, with people; was closing as they, did every night, and workers, they wore blue shirts with kakhi pants or skirts on bottom, ran around helping the people, they were their from morning to close. it is then that they become aware that it may be a little confusing, but are blissfully ignorant as to why. they have no idea its because there is subject/verb disagreement, and comma splices, not to mention general punctuation misuse. there is wordiness, and unnecessary information, and its a run-on and half of the verbs have no discernable subjects and half the subjects have no discernable verbs, and there is misspelled, etc. but they have no idea. no idea. and they wonder why they get Cs and such.
i wonder if these people know that they feel somewhat unaccessable, and that they probably are missing out. [the other option is that everyone is similar in these regards; it is basic to humanity, and its only personality differences, etc. which make it difficult to tell.]
while we were gone, we heard a missionary speak about his mission and the great need in africa. and while i cant particularly say that this presentation of the great need there moved me any more than any other presentation on that same subject [yes, i am coldhearted, i know it.], he did present some rather staggering statistics. i cant even reproduce them for you, and im making all of this up, but like 2/3 of everyone has AIDS, and 3/4 of them cant read at all, and 91% of them will die before they reach 45 years of age. and it was all a war-zone and all of this stuff. and everything. it was staggering, unmoved or not. and frankly, the guy sounded scared as crap of the job that was facing him when he went back to africa to begin work again among these people. i dont blame him; i would be far scareder then he sounded. but the thing that stuck me was the fact that afterward, in all the milling about, people kept murmering all around me, and 4 or 5 people actually told me that they were surprised how scared he sounded. well! what did they expect!?!?! did they think he would be excited about the possibility of getting arrested by the muslims and getting some african disease and so on and so forth? would they manage to be any less scared? i highly doubt it. maybe we are unused to fear, or at least expressed fear. i am unused to it, and to feeling afraid. but there it is.
i said it once, but it can stand to be said again [it has been established: i say a lot of things a few times over each. sorry.]: my favorites are the ones who have the nearly instant possibility of becoming a best friend, of sorts--a kindred spirit, if you will. [there are two types of best friends, you know: ones that you hardly ever fight with, and the ones you argue with all the time, in some manner or other. both are fine with me. the people that are hardest to be friends with are those with whom you would argue with only some, and the rest of the time remain apathetic to. although: it is perplexing why sometimes you dont become any sort of best friends even with those who have the potential to become best friends with. but anyway.
i like afraid people, i like interesting people, i like people who have ideas, people who remember. i like real. i want to be literate; i like a well-developed sense of poetic justice. [how stupid of me to want to be literate merely because i like that in someone else, but i have a hard time doing things like loving because i was loved. boo.] i like things that have the potential to enlarge my world [i am lately of the opinion that most things should do this, though]. my mind is far too small.
and i dont want to be perfect, of course. i want to be growing--"i want to be unique and messy and junky and all of these things, because a perfect woman isnt a real woman, is she?" process more valuable than product, at least until we have a finished product cause then it wont even matter [and its all-finished--and still not finished-- already. think of it.[!]]

i wore lucy ricardo shoes today;
i might possibly be gettting around to being comfortable in my own skin.

Posted 7/25/2005 1:16 AM