We've all seen at least one viral picture of a woman in public with her dress stuck in her underwear, completely unaware she is being photographed. The online sharing and snickers will continue for hours on social media until the cute seven-year-old is caught on video wiping his booger on a stranger's jacket while the stranger stares at a van Gogh in the Met (true story by the way). I have seen these pictures thinking, "If this ever happens to me, I will be mortified!"
Today, I was that woman. My dress wasn't actually stuck in my underwear; the right side was tucked under my backpack for the full seven minutes it took me to walk from the parking deck to my office. I only noticed six minutes into the commute when a young guy passed me in a hurry, and I felt a slight breeze on the back of my right leg. I reached back, felt skin and whispered, "Shiiiiiiitttttttt" to myself. I pulled my dress down and continued to walk like it didn't even happen.
I am sharing this story because I realized something about myself, something important. I did not care. I'm not just saying I didn't care; I honestly did not care. I did not die. I did not hyperventilate. I don't think I even blushed (anywhere). I only continued to walk to work like it didn't even happen. I did not care that at least fifteen strangers saw more of me than I would have liked (though I am glad I have been training for a half marathon) but it was just a thing. One more thing in a whole string of things that happen to us while we breathe.
Now having said all of that, I will say that Girl Code was broken because there were two women behind me the entire trek down the sidewalk and they said NOTHING to me or assisted in helping me out. I would never let a woman, or man, go through that! I will let that go this time because I am in a cool place with me right now.
Throw back Thursday picture I found a few weeks ago that my friend snapped in 1996 while we were waiting for two other friends. On our way to see RENT at the Nederlander in NYC. What a great time and even greater memories.
Finding the picture made me want to rummage through some stuff to find the playbill and ticket stub (I always keep those things), and I did! I want to mention the coat I'm wearing in the photo. I bought that coat for $1 in 1987 at a thrift store. I still have that coat and wear it on occasion (it is too large for me and the lining looks like a spiderweb, but I wear it anyway). I just pulled it out of the closet, and it's serving as the backdrop in the playbill/ticket stub photo.
Beautiful memories: Wonderful play, good friends, cheap coat.
Saturday night, Poseidon and I got our aging rockster on at Cat's Cradle to see an old school local band, The Pressure Boys, playing their second of a 2-night concert benefiting the Be Loud! Sophie Foundation.
I was new to the area during the heyday of The Pressure Boys, but I was a huge fan of their post P-Boys incarnation, Sex Police, in my early 20s. My friends and I traveled all around the Triangle to hear their "loopy" brand of ska during the early 90s, so I was excited to see my first Pressure Boys show Saturday, and I wasn't disappointed.
Poseidon and I attend local shows frequently, and sometimes we find ourselves on the older side of the crowd (but music lovers are music lovers are music lovers). We aren't bothered by this, but last night was a rare treat. We were younger than many (Poseidon and I are pleasantly surprised to see how well we're aging) of our fellow lovers of music, which was super, but I mainly noticed that aging hipsters still love and appreciate their local music, and that powerful observation made the night spectacular!
Old School:
Be Loud! 2014, Saturday (I caught of glimpse of Poseidon and I in this video):
1990. I'm the second from the right, next to "Jambo Jim." The yellow line at our feet is the equator. One foot in the Northern Hemisphere, and the other in the Southern Hemisphere. I was very lucky to have visited Kenya back then.
My mom has of photograph of herself in a bikini in the 1960s, standing in front a picnic table on a bright day. It was one of those 'full coverage' bikinis, with ruffles. When I think of summer, I see that picture in my head. The ruffle bikini and huge honking sunglasses (don't worry Mom, I don't have the picture, so I can't post it) and a big smile on her face. 48.5 hours until our first beach vacation of the year. Man, there is nothing like summer.
Yellow. When I was five, I felt some imagined pressure to choose a favorite color. My sister liked red and my little brother liked blue. I had to like something different, right? I mean, I couldn't copy my twin sister. I couldn't copy my brother. I picked yellow because my reading book at school had a picture of a big yellow balloon on the cover. It was in my head. The big yellow balloon.
Yellow has always been my go-to color. "What's your favorite color?" "Yellow." Always my answer. I don't even like yellow.
Somewhere down the road, I must have given that vanilla answer to Poseidon, because he recently mentioned my favorite color being yellow and all, and I told him I hate yellow. He was appalled. How could I lie to him about my favorite color? I tried explaining that it wasn't really a lie. Declaring yellow as my favorite color was a by default situation, and now it's simply a habit I'm unwilling or unable to break, and not a lie.
I should clarify. By fell, I mean, jumped, with deliberate force, off the Diet Coke wagon. My plan for bashing my D.C. addiction, I thought, was a good one. I would buy the small 7.5 oz. mini cans (or as I like to call them, "baby Diet Cokes") and trick my brain into thinking, by holding onto the cold aluminum can, that I was drinking the normal 12 oz can of garbage and, therefore, I would consume less.
That isn't exactly how this mess played out. I just drank more baby Diet Cokes. I actually drank more than before! I did. I can't help but wonder if the Coca-Cola Corporation anticipated this happening and kicked me off the wagon before I could travel out of my own driveway? I feel better having confessed that my Diet Coke habit is still a habit. I'm trying again, and right now, I'm waiting for the wagon to circle back around and pick me the hell up, but I'm adorably disappointed in myself.
And...because Poseidon refers to Diet Coke as "Devil Juice," and I asked him to add D.C. to the grocery list, this is what I found waiting for me in the kitchen yesterday evening:
This may be one of those tl;dr posts, but I designated tonight a "writing night" so I had pressure to produce. This was an essay I wrote a few years ago based on an old journal entry of mine from 1997. Oh, and just to be clear, I'm glad it didn't work out with my friend back then, or I wouldn't have met my Poseidon.
Here it is: The red crayon.
I had the greatest best friend in
the world for a while in my mid-twenties.
He was a co-worker I met when I moved to Philadelphia
from Raleigh and we became instant best pals. We
were inseparable. Max (that is what I’ll
call him) and I loved the city and made it our duty to try every restaurant and
bar in Philadelphia,
and I think we actually did. We were
such good friends that I even helped him paint the outside of his house (I’d
never painted a house before, and I can promise you, I won’t
ever do it again) when he was trying to sell it. The temperature was in the upper 90s with
heavy humidity, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I got a terrible case of poison
ivy by pulling weeds away from the house to keep them from getting into the wet
paint. I needed 2 shots of cortisone from
my dermatologist to get rid of it.
Why did I put myself through that
agony? Because he was my best friend and
he needed help. Max had gotten divorced
three years before and he felt he needed to move on by selling his house and
starting over. The weekend after we
painted his house, I had a great idea on how I could help him move on. I told him we should have a yard sale and
sell everything in his house. At first, he wanted
nothing to do with my plan, but reluctantly agreed to let me have the yard sale
as long has he didn’t have to do anything. I took charge and put
up signs and I believe I even ran an ad in the paper. The night before the yard sale, I stayed over
at his house and we went through everything he owned, deciding what was junk,
what we could sell, and what he would keep.
The next morning, we got up around 6
am and started carrying furniture outside, followed by clothes, dishes, games,
junk, books, records, television sets, knick knacks and things I can’t even
put into a specific category. I asked
him to help me price things, and he said he didn’t care what we charged, so I
priced everything to sell! I’m not
joking. I put a $10 price tag on an
antique dresser. He wanted rid of
everything. We had a steady stream of
bargain hunters starting around 7 am.
One of the shoppers wanted to buy all of the old board games we had
outside, including the original Mousetrap.
This shopper was a little odd because while money was changing hands, he
began telling us that he was buying the board games for his son. He was trying to gain custody of his son, but
his past mental health records were being brought into the mix. Strangers and the stuff they feel compelled to share.
By mid-afternoon, I had sold all of
Max’s belongings and memories for a grand total of $155.25. He shook his head at the sadness of the fact
that his entire household was worth less than $200.00. We decided to take the money and go out to
dinner and a concert. We had a
blast. That was one of the best nights I
had ever had. Little did I know that this
friendship would not last.
Our fun ended because Max felt we
should date. He wasn’t satisfied being
just my best friend anymore. I told him
it wouldn’t work. We were meant to be
great friends, and nothing more. We went
along as if we had not had the dating discussion, and it seemed to be fine, at
least to me. I put his ideas of dating
and love out of my head and thought he had done the same, but he secretly
carried a torch for me and brought it up a few more times. I really didn’t think much about it anymore
until one day he told me he found someone he was interested in dating. I was so happy for him! Finally, we could still be good friends and I
wouldn’t have to worry that I was hurting him.
The irony here is that I was the one who began hurting. I started out being excited for him, but
within days, things didn’t seem so cut and dry.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if I finally realized that maybe
I did have feelings for him, or if I felt like I was now going to lose my best
friend to another woman. Of course, it was the latter.
I was very depressed for a while
after he began dating his new love because she of course replaced me. I tried to be happy for him
and remain cheerful, and we made plans to hang out a few times, but it never
happened, and I saw Max no more.
One beautiful Sunday morning,
during my deepest depression after my ‘break up’ with Max, I walked around Old City
to enjoy the day and do some people watching.
As I walked down 2nd
Street, something caught my eye. I saw a new, never-before-used red
crayon. As soon as I saw it, looking so perfect,
lying in the crack in the sidewalk, I felt happy. Maybe I felt happy because spring was coming,
making the air calm and beautiful. I
don’t know. I only know that perfect red
crayon took my soul to a new place, a wonderful place. I plucked the crayon from its hiding spot and
took it home. Its newness became a
symbol of spring and health to me. I
think that crayon saved my life. Who
knew that one silly little red beacon of hope could help me move on? I still have the crayon today, tucked safely
in my jewelry box and every time I see it, I get such a warm deep feeling in my
soul and a smile on my face that cannot be contained.
I really wanted those
socks. They came in a pack of three,
assorted colors. When one grows up poor,
getting anything from a department
store felt like Christmas, even if it wasjust
footwear. Hell, stepping foot inside of a department store was a treat
beyond words.
Each aisle in the store was indeed
like buried treasure. I was in the
first grade at the time, and soaking in all I my brain could take, and I was
thrilled when my mom told my dad that my sister and I needed some new
socks. Oh my God, oh my God, I was going
to get something new! I was ecstatic.
The rest of the shopping trip was a
blur, but I do remember a few other things being tossed in the cart, probably
things my dad needed for work. I didn’t
pay much attention because I only gave a damn about my socks, and the feeling
in my stomach was like a swarm of butterflies…migrating. I thought my stomach might shoot through the
roof of my mouth, through my skull, and up into the sky. There was no containing my excitement over
having something new. I made the mistake
of letting my guard down.
As my parents began taking our
items out of the cart and placing them on the cashier’s conveyor belt, a loud
crashing sound boomed just outside of the store, and the thunder and lightning,
created a symphony so scary that had I known the word apocalyptic at the time, I would have used it. Just as my little
three-pack bundle of socks
was making the slow journey to the cashier’s hand, the power in the store went
out. Then the thunder sarcastically clapped
again. The noise scared me of course,
not just because it was earth shattering, but because it was the foreshadowing
of continued disappointment to come.
The power was not restored after 15
minutes or so, and the store manager decided they would need to close up shop
for the day. NO! I was in tears, not to mention shock. Why can’t we just pay for our things without
the power being on? We just write them a
check. There was still enough afternoon light to see to write a check. I was in a panic. I didn’t understand what was happening, and
my heart was now in my throat, my stomach back down from the sky, and an anger
and confusion that I cannot explain. Why
God, why can’t I have just one little thing, one small thing that belongs to
me? It was only a package of socks. Socks with ruffles.
