Purging

Hello!  I have adult bookshelves!  That’s not as dirty as it sounds, promise.  It just means that in my new fit of cleaning my room that’s happening this summer, I finally managed to clean off my bookshelves and store books that I haven’t cracked open in, oh, a good seven years or so.  Now my shelves are filled with things like my Shakespeare anthology, Jane Eyre, Dubliners, Atonement and other books for…adults, I guess?  My God, am I really an adult?  That doesn’t feel right.  I totally still feel 12, like all the time.  That’s why I kept Betsy-Tacy, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, and A Series of Unfortunate Events up on the bookcase.  Fun for all ages!  Right next to Crime and Punishment and Ethan Frome!  And hell, if Invisible fucking Man is going to get a spot on my bookshelves, you can damn well be sure that Caddie Woodlawn will too, seeing as how I spent way more time enjoying that than I ever did some Ralph Ellison shit.

Going through all my old books was still very fun, though.  I hadn’t cleaned off the shelves since the first time they were put up which was about, uh, four years ago?  And apparently at the time when I was a sophomore in high school, I still had the heart and soul of an eight year old, because there was shit up there like Amelia’s Notebook, all of the I Spy books, and some American Girl series.  As well as some books I had never read: Heart of a Dog, anyone?  Prehaps some Black Beauty?  Well, at least they’re all stored away in my closet with my books from when I was in kindergarten. 

And, as if all this trip down memory lane weren’t already enough, just as I was finishing up, “Stop This Train” came on and I seriously got all teary eyed, like “Yeah!  Stop!  Jesus!”  But this is basically how I feel every other day of my life, so I just rode it out and went on with my life.

I Guess That Just Makes It Richmond… Kentucky

    So I went to Kentucky this weekend to visit my sister, and had a lovely time there, despite the complete lack of proper wasted-ness incurred.  I met her lovely boyfriend, who is vdery much like her and a completely better fit than the last one, as well as being introduced to his son, who wins the award for being the most charming child I have ever met in my life.  Anyways, going to Kentucky meant a two and a half hour drive all by myself, which I actually looked forward to.  It meant two and a half hours of windows down, music up, no one rolling their eyes at my music selection or wanting to stop for a drink or a pee. 

    And I totally acquired a Highway Boyfriend on the way there.  A Highway Boyfriend is useful if you are like me and are a terrible highway driver.  I mean, I’m not doing 55 in the fast lane or anything.  I like to drive fast, and I’m generally pretty comfortable unless it’s raining, which is when I tend to melt down and stress out and dissolve into tears.  But with a sunny, beautiful day like Friday, I wanted to get on the highway and speed all the way to my sister, I just am bad at the whole “getting around the slow traffic” maneuvers.  I mean dudes, what if someone is totally going 65 in the fast lane?  Do you try to pass them in the middle lane?  Ride their ass til they move?  Sigh, scream, roll your eyes, and eventually just put up with it?  What to doooo?  This is where Highway Boyfriend comes in.  Highway Boyfriend likes to drive fast, and if he is stuck behind a slow car, he doesn’t just take that shit.  Highway Boyfriend will weave over to the slow lane, but have faith!  Highway Boyfriend always knows what he is about.  He will weave in and amongst the slower cars, urging you to follow him, until it’s just the two of you ahead of the caravan of slow traffic with the open highway before you.  My Highway Boyfriend did just this, multiple times, and I always trusted his crazy ideas, and he never led me astray.  My Highway Boyfriend drove a purply-gray Buick and was good and loyal and steadfast and true.  I missed him after I lost him in some slow traffic near Lexington, and I tried to get one on the way home, but no one ever measured up.

    However, in Kentucky, I spent the weekend hanging out with some delightful folks my sister knows, watching movies, playing video games, eating, drinking, joking, laughing.  In Kentucky, you learn to speak Kentucky, saying things like “Estill”, “Irvine”, and “Louisville” in proper Kentucky style.  In Kentucky, you eat things like Beer Cheeseburgers and Sweet Kentucky Browns, and it’s OK to eat at Frisch’s and pump gas in your bikini top.  You can even stop in Florence, Y’all and pay for a drink from McDonald’s in nickels and dimes.  Not that I did any of these things, oh no, not an Ohio lady like me!  Except for when I did.

    And apparently it was magic weekend because I didn’t hit any traffic from the Reds game on the way home like my dad predicted I would, I remembered to look for the anatomically correct Trader’s World horse and the giant Jesus who live right next door to each other, and I wasn’t even scared crossing the bridge back into Ohio because I was blasting “Coconut Skins” and singing at the top of my lungs.  And when I got home, I found that our camping plans for this weekend are solid, and a good drunk time will be had by all.  Or maybe just some.  But that some includes me, so yeah.  This should be good.

In Retrospect

Oh, so, hi!  It’s been a while, no?  I haven’t felt like writing since I got home from school because some part of me felt like the next post needed to be some sort of reflection on my first year or how I felt being home or a list of the coolest characters I encountered over the year, or about the trip to New York, which I swear to God I’ll get around to.  What is that bullshit?  I do what I want.

So let’s talk about today.  Today was a day like fashioned like many of my favorite days: no plans, too much time, sitting around and seeing what comes to me.  Here’s what came to me.  I sat at my computer and listened to my songs on shuffle while playing Mahjonng.  I then just happened to glance over at my bulletin board and noticed an old note hanging up from a girl I once knew.

Now.  This Girl I Once Knew (GIOK) first becamse my friend two and a half years ago.  Our friendship forming was crazy: it happened really fast, and I adored the girl.  We made each other laugh hysterically, had thousands of inside jokes, could talk for hours, and I trusted her and confided in her more easily than my oldest companions.  I know it sounds like I was falling in love, and in a way I sort of was, platonically.  I was falling in friend-love.  Around this same time, I was potentially getting something started with a Boy I Once Knew (BIOK).  So the GIOK and I were writing furiously to each other, passing notes in the halls of our high school like some grade school giggly girls about this boy I liked.  Anyway, the relationship with this GIOK ended on a really sour note; she ended up with the BIOK (and rejected) (juuuuuuuust saying) which was gross and weird to me on so many levels that I can’t begin to explain, not the least of which involved a 5 year, high-school-college age/maturity gap.  I haven’t spoken to either the BIOK or the GIOK in about two years.

I found all of our notes today, after noticing the one still hanging on my bulletin board which I must’ve just trained my eye to ignore because God forbid I lift a finger to throw it out, and re-read them.  Some parts made me smile and laugh and miss knowing and loving this girl; others made me laugh at how hypocritical or ironic her words were looking back.  Mostly, however, I kept thinking “I’m over this”.  I know I was really immature about the situation when the friendship ended (not to say that the other side wasn’t just as), and ever since, whenever I thought of the boy and girl, I rolled my eyes or got all superior, like, “I’m so sure they’re happy together”, or was basically just a heinous anus about the whole thing.  I was bitter and resentful.

Today, reading those notes, I got over it.  Seriously.  Just like that.  It was like magic.  I thought, yeah, they’re together, and you know what?  They went through some crazy stupid drama together and were often the only person the other one had to talk to about it, and that is probably what drew them to each other.  Perhaps they are happy now.  So?  Should that take away from my happiness in anyway?  What reason do I have, exactly, to resent the happiness of two people I don’t know or want to know anymore?  Damn girl, just let them be!  While the fact that they’re supposedly “engaged” with this girl juuuuuust out of high school still makes me severely roll my eyes, it’s not because I have some personal vendetta against the two of them; it’s because no 18 year old should be entrusted with making any momentous life decision about anything.  Ever.

So I went to my very best friend’s house and burnt all our notes in her back yard.  And then I went and laid on her floor under her ceiling fan and thought about the boy I like, which is such a better investment of my time than wasting space hating on people I can barely stoke up any powerful emotion about anymore.

Oh, heeeeey, nice to meet you, what’s your name?  Perspective?  Huh, maybe we should hang out sometime.