adventures in independence: a place for everything and everything in its place.

In all my worries about finding a place to live, packing, and then moving, I never worried about unpacking. That would be the fun part, you know? Finding where each little piece of me lived in this new home and putting it there. Making the place mine.

It's just that I'm not so certain every single thing I have has a place there. Some things were easy; their new home just screamed out at me. Other things were not quite as obvious, but once I wandered around the apartment with the homeless item in my hands for a while, I found their place. But then there are a few boxes of things that I'm just not sure what to do with.

My goal is to break down at least one cardboard box a day. Sometimes that means just emptying out two halves of different boxes and consolidating to make my quota. Sometimes I go above and beyond. But it's getting harder to meet my own unpacking goal. I've already put a few things into a shoe box of odds and ends that I just can't bear to part with, but also can't find a place for.

And where did all these t-shirts come from?

I'm having trouble placing my posters. Some of them, okay, most of them, don't seem to fit in. The Muppets, Charlie Brown, Sesame Street, they all don't seem to go here. This is an adult's apartment. Adults decorate with things that go in frames and don't appear on cereal boxes. I don't even have any frames. Am I an adult now? I hope not.

Of the things that do have a place, I still have problems. I'm also not used to the fact that I do have a whole space just for me. My hair dryer sat in my bedroom for a good few days before I realized that the bathroom was solely mine, and I could put my hair dryer in there if I wanted to. I didn't have to keep light bulbs in my nightstand, and my purse can be casually thrown on the table when I come in. This does pose a new problem, though, in that I now have about five million new places to hide my keys from myself.

I realized at some point that my idea of how a kitchen should be set up comes mostly from my mother's kitchen. (I suppose it would be more politically correct to say "my parents' kitchen," but who are we kidding here?) Silverware goes in this drawer, measuring cups go in this drawer, mixing bowls go under here, and naturally pitchers go up here. If I were more the rebellious type, I would purposefully change all these things to some new way that is my own and in no way my mother's. And maybe I am a bit the rebellious type, but I am more the logical type, and, darnit, my mother's way makes sense.

I really have nothing to complain about. It's all slowly coming together. Last night I was able to clear off my new-to-me couch sufficiently so that I could take a nap on it. (Of course, after about a half hour, I gave up and went and took a nap on my bed, which is much more comfortable.) I set up a very pleasing workstation, and I hung up my many clocks. I'm planning on hanging my posters that aren't grown-up enough for the living room in the extra bedroom once I get some thumbtacks. It's starting to look like home. A little bit like my mother's home, but home nonetheless.

The Harlot.

Easily my favorite "feature" of our old apartment was The Harlot. Not that our apartment came with its very own lady of the night that we could conveniently fold up and keep under the couch. The Harlot was a label, left there by some creative person who took advantage of circumstance.

In the kitchen, there is a series of pipes that provide plumbing service to both us and the apartment above us. We can hear them taking a shower, flushing the toilet, and doing whatever water-related activities they might do. The pipes rattle, they shake, but we got used to it.

One of the pipes ran diagonally right above the sink. Around one end of it was tied a little red bow out of a small piece of ribbon. It was the kind of little red bow you might expect to see on the end of a blonde braid, not on a length of pipe. Although, I'm not really sure what kind of ribbon you would expect to see on a length of pipe.

The ribbon was charming in a bizarre kind of way. But about a foot away from the bow was the real deal, The Harlot.

Apparently, these pipes were made in the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. Or maybe the company that made them was based there. Or maybe the owner of the company just really liked that book about the spider. Whatever. In any case, the word "CHARLOTTE" was printed on the pipe. All of the pipes had been painted that lovely bland color of antique white that graced the walls and ceiling and anything else that wasn't quite boring enough in the apartment. And so you could read "CHARLOTTE", but only because the letters were raised.

Some time before we moved in, someone happened to notice the amusing possibilities of the word "CHARLOTTE". They took a quarter or a key or their fingernail, and they scratched the paint off along some of the middle letters, leaving the word "HARLOT" standing out in dark gray letters amid a sea of antique white.

Brilliance. Like graffiti for the inventive.

I like to imagine that it was a handyman, maybe the guy that painted the pipe. Like maybe this guy wants to be a writer, he's obviously meant for something more than house painting. This is how he breaks the monotony of his job. I wonder what other words he scratches into apartments.

A few months ago, the pipe above The Harlot started leaking, and our maintenance man came in and worked on them. He had to bring in some paint to get rid of the water stains that were left by the leaks, and he painted over The Harlot. It was a sad day.

This weekend, I said goodbye to my first apartment, that hidden hole. I took the little blue key off my chain and set it down on the counter. I took a final look around the kitchen and I saw "CHARLOTTE", and I hated her.

So I took one of my remaining keys, stood on the tips of my toes and carefully scratched out H-A-R-L-O-T. Because it's funny, it's goofy, and somehow it fits right in to that ridiculous place I lived for two years. The apartment would not be the same without The Harlot with her little red bow. I surveyed my work, which was not quite as tidily done as before, but still good, and then walked out the door for the last time.

adventures in independence: the dishwasher.

There has been a dishwasher in my parents' house for as long as I can remember. However, I don't think I ever knew what it was until my teens, on account of the fact that it was not in working condition for probably a decade or more. It was finally fixed not too long before I graduated high school and left home.

Moral of the story: I don't know how to use a dishwasher.

One of the perks of my new apartment is that it also has one of these marvels of sanitation technology. And, seeing as I am probably paying extra rent for the right to use my dishwasher, I decided I was going to use it. As soon as I learn how.

I asked Casey. He didn't seem interested in educating me, I suspect from his own lack of dishwasher knowledge. So I just decided to figure it out for myself. I'm in college, I'm of reasonable intelligence, right?

I spent a good five minutes in the detergent aisle of my local grocery store, weighing the merits of liquid versus powder. This was a difficult task, since I knew the merits of neither one. I went with powder; it was on sale.

I brought my lemon fresh with power action crystals detergent home and opened up the washer. Luckily, I was practiced in the art of loading the dishwasher, and quickly got to that. Once that was completed, I poured some detergent into the little compartment labeled "MAIN WASH". I decided to ignore the compartment with the "PRE-WASH" sign since I didn't really know what to make of it and it didn't even have a lid anyway.

Looking at the control panel, I began to think that I was making a bigger deal out of this situation than it was, and that I was not after all going to be able to write a long drawn out entry about my domestic incompetance after all. I pushed a couple of buttons that seemed appropriate, and turned the little knob. Silence for a couple of seconds, and then my dishwasher roared to life.

I felt like a real woman.

A couple of hours later, after the loud whirring noises had stopped, I dared to peek at the dishes that were once dirty, but should now be sparkling and lemon-scented. Funny, they still looked pretty dirty. They didn't look any cleaner at all. The experiment had failed.

I felt like a real little girl.

I was in dispair. I imagined myself slaving away over the sink, standing right next to the dishwasher. I imagined a picture much like all those years in my childhood where we washed our dishes by hand and used the dishwasher as only a microwave stand.

Determined, I tried it again, turning the knobs, letting it run a while and then cutting it off to look inside. I found very hot, very dirty dishes. I did the same process again, this time even listening to the side of the machine for sounds of I'm not sure what. Again very hot, very dirty dishes.

I would like the reader to note that I did not say "very hot, very wet, very dirty dishes".

So apparently, you have to hook the dishwasher up to the sink. Also, you have to turn the water on. They should put this kind of information in the leases of dishwasher-endowed apartments.

My dishes came out very hot, very wet, very clean, and I was redeemed. I was once again a real woman, and there was nothing I could not do.

Except get the diswasher attachment off of the faucet.

excused.

Dear Reader,

Please excuse Sandra from posting regular journal entries until further notice. She has been suffering for several days from a lack of internet access due to the trauma of her recent change of address. We all hope that Sandra can resume her regular misuse of time via the internet very soon. She will continue to write using more traditional methods such as pencil and paper until she can once again connect to the rest of the world. Hopefully, her absence will be a short one, and will not be a hindrance to your daily happiness.
Thank you.

Sincerely,
Sandra's Mother

2:32 am.

It's nights like this that I cannot sleep. I don't know how this night is different from any other night or how I am different from the way that I am on any other night. The only way I even know that this is one of those nights that I can't sleep is from the undeniable fact that I cannot sleep. No one can argue with evidence like that.

I blame my mind, my overactive, still awake mind. It thinks about things that have no relevance. It creates instances of other people and these instances, be it my mother, a random admirer of my work, or a future employer, all ask me questions. It's an interview where I pick the questions, and I pick them because I know the answers.

The answers are always thoughtful, amusing, provocative in all the right ways. I congratulate myself on my eloquence, then roll over and groan because of my eloquence and therefore consciousness.

Sometimes I think about you. What our kids will look like, how they'll play games with you and fall down and you'll make them stop crying and start laughing. I think about how they'll have your hair and my lips, your nose and my eyesight, your stubbornness and my stubbornness. I think about being in the North Carolina section of a local bookstore and seeing something I've written. I think about having enough money to buy Edy's ice cream all the time. I think about how cute we'll look when we're old, when we'll have been together so long we look alike. I think about winning a Nobel Prize, or at least one of my children doing it and letting me hold it for a while. I think about garlic mashed potatoes with lumps in them.

I think too much.

Eventually, I'll realize that I really need to sleep. Of course, I knew that all along, but sometimes it hits harder than others. And I start counting, because I'll never fall asleep thinking about you or books or mashed potatoes. Sometimes it's sheep, sometimes just numbers flash in my head because it seems more boring. Sometimes I get into the forties or fifties and forget where I was. Then I know it's working and I start back at 1. Sometimes I make it to a hundred, and I know it's not working and I start back at 1. Sometimes my mind wanders back to the other things somewhere past 25.

I try different positions side, side, back, stomach. Sometimes I take off my clothes one at a time. It seems to help, maybe because I feel constricted. First go the shorts, followed by the t-shirt and whatever in my own private strip-tease. It is the only strip-tease performed to make the audience fall asleep.

Between the counting and the positions and the stripping, I usually get to sleep. And then there are some nights, where I just end up unclothed and awake. I try not to think about the hours until I have to get up. That kind of counting never helps.

This is one of those nights.

messing up the story.

I took an Old Testament class a couple of years ago to fulfill my humanities requirement. I don't get to take a lot of humanities, on account of the fact that only four are required for my major and I'd like to graduate within a reasonable amount of time. And I love humanities, so I am not free and easy with the classes I take. I pick things I really want to take.

My idea was that this Old Testament class was going to be in-depth and very scholarly. We'd go through some books verse by verse almost, talking about what each part means, the historical significance, the present significance. And that is exactly what I had, on the one day another professor substituted for my regular professor. The rest of the class was a wash.

My professor took a different approach. Rather than cover less material more thoroughly, we covered a whole lot of material by just glancing over it. And I suppose that's a valid way of doing it, but it wasn't what I wanted.

My professor was a former prison chaplain named Mr. Herbert Hash. His middle initial might have been 'H' as well. He made a lot of bad jokes about his last name, including burnt hash, canned hash, and hash pipe. He made a lot of bad jokes in general. He was a part time professor, which is why he wasn't Dr. Hash.

Though the class was a disappointment to the Sandra that actually likes to learn, the lazy Sandra was quite satisfied in that the course was tremendously easy. And it wasn't too awfully boring, what with the bad jokes thrown in. However, Mr. Hash's annoying habit of stopping and looking around for a reaction after every bad joke bothered me. I prefer the more dry form of bad humor, like you didn't even notice you said something that is kinda funny but not really.

But the thing that bothered me the most about Mr. Hash was the way he treated the Bible. The Bible is a book of faith, and in believing some or all of it, one must take some leaps of faith. Fine. The Bible is something that has been translated and distorted over thousands of years and probably isn't as accurate as it used to be, say when it was written. Again, fine. I have no problem with either of those things. I have a problem with the way Mr. Hash handled them.

Whenever someone asked a question that sort of challenged something within the Old Testament, be it a method of God's or perhaps what seemed like an inconsistency of a story, the only think Mr. Hash would say was, "You're messing up the story." It was sort of a joke, but it was the only explanation he ever really gave for any question we asked. And it bugged me. That's the answer you give to a little kid who has figured out that Little Red Riding Hood probably would've caught on to that whole wolf in drag thing. The Bible is not some silly little book.

You know, I would have been fine if he had just said he didn't know. Or if he said he would do a little research on it and came back the next time with some theories he found. Or if maybe he had actually given the reading more thought than just figuring out his lesson plan and told us what occurred to him as the question was asked. Anything but this.

I guess I realize now that Mr. Hash was just a man of faith, but not necessarily a scholar. He definitely wasn't a bad guy, just not what I wanted in an Old Testament professor. I have to kind of wonder what kind of chaplain he was, particularly if he always treated the Bible like it was a children's story. I guess inmates don't ask challenging questions.

I even seriously considered taking the New Testament class and specifically getting the professor that substituted for Mr. Hash that one glorious day of learning about twenty verses in Genesis. But I didn't remember his name, and was afraid of having another bad experience. Besides, I didn't want to waste my humanities.

disclaimer.

This is my disclaimer. I am afflicted with a terrible condition, commonly known as a poor memory. It's a very specialized condition, and only affects the portion of my brain that remembers the stories I've told, more specifically the people I've told them to. As a consequence of this, I often tell the same story to the same person multiple times.

I see it as a device of balance, that God gave it to me to keep me back a little bit after giving me so many other great gifts, such as stunning beauty, amazing intellect, and incredible modesty. God did this to me for the rest of you, like that old Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron" (If you've not read it, perhaps you should. Not because you won't be able to keep up otherwise, but just because it's good). However, He also did it to the rest of you, because you're the ones who have to hear the same stories over and over, while I sit by and think that I am terribly clever.

God did it to me via my mother. I think perhaps the gene is somehow connected to the large thighs God also burdened the women of my family with. My mother has the condition, and I gotta tell you, it appears to only get worse with age. I will tell a repeated story to someone within a few weeks or months of the first telling. Mama tells it the second time within ten or fifteen minutes of the first. She does look awfully cute when she does it.

But this entry was not written for the purpose of telling how cute my mother is. It was written to warn you and apologize ahead of time if I sometimes post the same entry twice. Not that I go back in my archives and copy and paste the same entry, but that I write about the same incident or topic. The second telling may be somewhat different, but not much, because the writer is the same.

Anyway, that's your warning. It's no longer my fault if problems arise due to repeated readings of the same story, even if in different words. Blame it on my mother, or if you're really brave, God. But I wouldn't recommend that.

down with the letter 'i!'

I was thinking about Colyn today. No, that's a lie, and with a little html trickery, I could make it a bold-faced lie. I was thinking about Colyn a couple of days ago, but if I hadn't told you, you'd never be the wiser.

So anyway, Colyn's real name was Colin, but he changed it because 'y' is a much more rebellious and hip letter, I suppose. It was a trendy thing to do then. Down with the letter 'i!' I suppose it was nothing personal, just that the i-to-y change was the only one that could be made without changing the pronunciation of your name. Colyn was betrayed by the monogram on his L.L. Bean bookbag, where he had taken the trouble of unstitching the 'i' and writing 'y' in magic marker, but you could still see that stubborn lowercase 'i.' I think I even jokingly complained one day that I could not change my name because I have not even one letter 'i.' Colyn told me that I could just add an 's' or five to the front, and called me SSSSSandra from that day forward. I hated that.

Colyn was a fish ponder, one of a group of oddballs that hung around this fish pond that had no actual fish, but looked like it should. There were female fish ponders, and I think Colyn had a list of them somewhere where he would mark the girls off as he hit on them and was subsequently rejected. I could tell the day it was my turn, because he gave me extra attention, and at one point, he pat me on the head. I doubt I made too much of an effort to hide my grimace. Colyn was not the most hygienic person.

Somehow, Colyn got lucky one day, when he dared to hit on Joie. With long flowing hair and adorable freckles, Joie was a gorgeous and incredibly annoying trumpet player who made a lot of pirate noises around people who weren't in on the pirate noise joke. The only reason I can figure that Joie ever looked twice at Colyn was that she was trying to rebel herself. She didn't change a letter in her name, rather she re-invented herself as French and dated a weird angry guy. The first day, she introduced herself to me, and her name sounded like "Joey". The second day, she was suddenly someone else, a pronounciation I won't even try to reproduce here.

I can only assume Joie had ulterior motives for liking Colyn because I suppose I can't imagine someone like her actually, you know, liking him. I figure she just wanted to be someone else for a while and a summer away from home really is the perfect time for that kind of personal experimentation.

But while Colyn and Joie made out, thoroughly disgusting everyone else, another girl watched with envy. That would be Amber. She was a little strange, but the weirdest thing I ever saw her do was absolutely worship Colyn. She followed him around, did all these little favors for him, and was completely ignored in return.

I remember the day Colyn went into a rage, something about getting coffee for someone and then the someone didn't even stick around to receive said coffee. He overreacted. He yelled and screamed, ripped off his headphones and slammed his Discman to the ground in a symbolic gesture of his pain. I think the Discman turned out to be okay, but the impact of the slam broke the Tool CD inside. He picked up the Discman, threw the pieces of the CD down, and stomped off in righteous indignation.

The next day, that Tool CD was reincarnated as something else entirely. Amber had taken it, and using only a lighter and her love and inspiration, had created art. The CD was now a little statue, with the biggest piece being the base, and the rest kind of sticking up together like the teepee of a Native American who has had too much peyote. It really was pretty cool, if odd, and she gave it to Colyn like a little kid gives a homemade card to a Dad. Colyn kind of looked at it, and then just set it down. When he walked away later, he didn't carry it with him. It sat at the fish pond for the rest of the day. I don't know who finally picked it up.

I really don't know that Amber actually ever wanted to be with Colyn in a romantic relationship. I think she just wanted to be his friend. Whatever she wanted, she didn't get it, unless by chance she wanted his completely indifference.

But that's just what I was thinking about, today or a few days ago or whenever. I don't think about him too much, though the recollection of him calling me "SSSSSandra" and patting my head still gives me chills. I wonder what he's doing now, if he still hates God and his parents and people who don't stick around for their coffee. Whatever he's up to, I wish him luck, because he got on my nerves, but I certainly didn't hate him.

Unless he's reading this journal. I wish him no luck in that department. Otherwise, I am screwed.

lovely.

See I had this date with this hot chick today. Let me tell you, she's quite the vixen. I've been seeing her every once a while, taking in dinner and a movie and sometimes a post-flick cup of joe. Nothing serious. Our relationship is real low-maintenance.

Hint: This is Sandra code for saying "I went out by myself tonight."

Some people cannot do this. Not go out with me, a lot of people cannot do that, for entirely different reasons. Some people cannot go out alone. Obviously, it's not a problem for me.

I used to do it a lot when I worked at the restaurant. I spent all day long talking to people, yapping all day long to strangers, so much that when I got home I didn't want to talk to anyone. So I took myself out, had someone wait on me for a change and then caught a film at the buck-fifty theatre.

These entirely self-involved and frivolous evenings of mine would not be possible without the buck-fifty theatre. The good thing about a theatre like that is that the movies don't have to be great. They just have to be a dollar and a half good, which is a whole lot less than seven dollars good.

And most of the time, I don't have to even jump in the Toyota to enjoy these evenings. The theatre? Two blocks away. My favorite coffeeshop? One block away. Four or five tasty restaurants geared toward the college budget? Three blocks away or less. One of the things I will miss most about this old apartment is the central location of downtown. Everything is just right here. Half a dozen times I've decided to take in a movie five minutes before the constant seven o'clock showing time, thrown on some shoes, put my hair up, and made it into a seat somewhere in the middle in time for the previews.

It's a pleasant way to spend two or three hours, being entertained and fed without having to say much more than "A medium vanilla latte. Decaf, please," because the evening is wearing on, and sometimes I do drink coffee for the taste and the warmth of it. Sometimes I bring a book or a notebook, but most of the time I just observe all the people, content to quietly take it all in.

I don't have to keep up any conversation, I don't have to impress anyone or be funny all the time, because the only person paying any attention is me, and I think I'm a riot. I don't even have to look all that good, just good enough to meet my own standards, and they're quite low. However, this evening, a gentleman in his thirties said to me in the coffeeshop, "Well, you're lovely," before stumbling off to continue his drunkenness elsewhere. I did shower before I came.
And she, my date, was lovely. The whole lovely evening was lovely. We should do it again sometime.

all the stuff.

From the looks of the place, you'd think we were starting a fruit stand.

That's from the boxes, of course, the many boxes stamped "Dole Bananas" obtained from the very nice lady in the produce department of Lowe's Foods. Mixed in with the banana boxes are boxes for hair products (Haircut 101), knives (Army/Navy Surplus), and lawnmowers (Lowe's Hardware). So either we're running a very bizarre kind of store here, or we're moving.

I guess you know the correct answer.

I'd forgotten how discouraging moving is. You pack and pack, pulling things off shelves and out of drawers, and the room doesn't look any different. It's like you didn't do a thing until that furniture is out. And so even though my room looks pretty much the same as it did before, I swear I've already taken carloads of stuff away.

Carloads. I have way too much stuff.

I don't even know what I have. We sorted out the kitchen stuff today, and held up pot after pan after plate, asking each other, "Is this yours?" Today I realized that I had three extra plates and two extra bowls that I didn't know were mine. (Incidently, I had been breaking the Tenth Commandment by coveting my roommate's plates for the past year, not realizing the whole time that they had been given to me by said roommate.) I found pots I hadn't seen since I bought them (or in some cases, found them in the dumpster). It was like Christmas in a year that Santa felt like emphasizing the domestic arts. We actually found an old George Foreman grill that we think belongs to Anna, whom we haven't lived with in two years.

I don't actually move for another week and a half. So I have the dilemma of trying to pack things that I won't need during the next week and a half. I shuttled over half my clothes, mostly winter things, and prayed that the Boone forecast would at least try to obey the seasons. I cleaned out my desk today. The only thing left in it are: one Sharpie, one pencil, one pen, a roll of tape, and a pair of scissors. I'll be living the minimalist life until next Wednesday.

Some stuff will never make it to the new place. The green couch has served me well, but it's time to move on to furniture without scratch marks all over it. Several white blouses held over from my waitressing days will go back into the thrift store cycle of life. A few things will move into a new apartment, but it'll be Ashley's or Krystal's instead of mine.

I'm not sure how I got so much stuff. That's a lie, I know exactly how. I got so much stuff by being the youngest of six children, by having five older siblings who are generous with the hand-me-downs. I got so much stuff by going to yard sales and thrift stores and seeing how little of my money would buy a thing that I didn't exactly need. I got so much stuff by never knowing when to let something go. So much stuff.

But it's okay. Because now I have more space, more places to put all this stuff. I have a brand new empty space to make mine by adorning it with my things until it screams "SANDRA!"

And scream it will.

the BLOODHOUND.

The boredom was tangible. All my dreams of having nothing to do and no pressing deadlines came crashing to reality when I realized that I actually had nothing to do. There's only so much packing you can do two weeks before you move.

So I went on the thrift store circuit just to break the monotony of sitting around and watching TV. I headed down 105 to Foscoe to hit the two stores there, with no real aim other than to kill as much time as possible.

I passed by the Christian Church of Foscoe, where the sign read "Blood Drive Thurs May 13". And sure enough, there was a big bus in the parking lot that said "BLOODHOUND" in block red letters, solidifying my suspicion that today was the 13th. I filed the thought away as a possible way to kill a couple hours between 3 and 7 pm.

I got home and messaged Amy, because I knew she was bored and could be easily persuaded to do unpleasant but rewarding activities. And I was right.

So at 3:30, I pulled into the parking lot of the Christian Church of Foscoe with Amy sitting next to me. The church doors were right open, and the bloodmobile sitting by, running. We walked into the empty church.

Yeah, that's right. The empty one.

There was no one in sight. The doors were open, the lights were out, and not a soul or sign of the Red Cross was around. We walked back outside, looking confused.

It was then we realized the blood drive was actually on the bus. The BLOODHOUND. A blood bus. A driving food stand for vampires. Yeah, it was a weird idea.

Inside was an entire blood drive, down to the tiny canteen in the back. We started at the front of the bus on a tiny seat where we sat and read the book about mad cow disease and tattoos and living in Equatorial Guinea.

We were led into little booths where we sat down and had our blood pressure and pulse taken. Then we answered questions about mad cow disease and tattoos and living in Equatorial Guinea. Satisfied that our answers and therefore our bodily fluids, were acceptable, we were led to the main part of the bus, where the little beds were.

The little beds were orange, three on the right for left arms bleeders, two on the left for right arm bleeders. I thought this poor planning, as most people are right arm bleeders.

I'm a right arm bleeder. The lady, Nancy it was, asked to see my arms and I told her that. She wanted to look anyway, even though I told her that I wasn't even sure my left arm got any blood. After a little poking at my elbows, she seemed satisfied that I was a right arm bleeder.

I laid down on one of the orange beds on the left side and patiently sat and squeezed the little plastic thing they gave me while they coated the inside of my right elbow with iodine and some other brown cold fluid. And then it was time.

I hate this part.

I think Nancy could sense that I hated this part, because she told me to turn my head before the needle was even out. But I was afraid that I might be able to see the reflection of the needle going into my arm in the window of the BLOODHOUND, so I just shut my eyes tight.

I'm twenty-one years old, have had all my shots, have given blood half a dozen times, and I cannot watch a needle go into my body.

But then it was in and covered up and I could face the direction of my right arm again. Amy was a right arm bleeder, too, so she had to wait for the lady in front of me to finish before she could go. It was sitting there with a needle in my arm and a right arm bleeder waiting that I made my theories about the beds on the bus.

In theory, giving blood is easy. You sit there, you bleed. If they could just cut me a little and put a bucket under my arm, that would be different.

Actually, I was fine. I usually get faint or dizzy and have to call someone to point a fan towards me while I continue to allow my life fluids to drip out of me. But I drank a lot of water before I came, and the only discomfort I felt was the pressing need to urinate.

And then it was all over, and I sat in the canteen, or rather a seat in the back next to a counter with crackers on it, and waited while Amy went through it. And then I waited some more while she sat in the canteen. Finally, I waited one last time while Amy went back to the orange beds to lay down so she didn't pass out. I sat next to her and told her jokes.

While I waited, I read a chart or two about blood and blood donation. One of the charts stressed how important it was for people with type O blood to donate. I didn't mind the blood discrimination so much, as I am type O, but it did sound like they didn't want everyone else's blood. They don't even give anything besides O blood to newborns. I was feeling pretty proud of my blood and its life-saving possibilities then, as if I actually had anything to do with my blood type.

Nancy the efficient nurse lectured Amy about weighing herself with her clothes off. Apparently Nancy thought Amy was having problems with the blood donation process because Amy did not actually weigh the required 110 pounds. Whenever I almost pass out, they lecture me about drinking fluids. Those Red Cross people are jerks.

But anyway, we left the BLOODHOUND once Amy got to feeling like she could stand up without falling over, a pint of blood lighter. I took the bandaid off my finger (where they poke you to test your iron) just so I could type this out. I took my bright red bandage off my arm an hour before I was supposed to. But I do not intend to do any heavy lifting or work. I don't have to.

I have a doctor's note.

better than nothing.

It was more of a gathering.

The people I knew were ones I knew from way back, or at least as far back as high school which is as far back as I'm willing to go. The people I had seen around were science majors who shared a building with my major. And the people I had never seen before, well, they just stayed on the patio and smoked all night long.

I spent the night talking to the people I knew rather than turn the people I didn't know into ones I did. My friend talked to me in a scandalous whisper about his love life, or at least he thought he did. What with the volume level, he was really talking at more of a scandalous yell. No matter.

The gathering was at a log cabin, or at least the closest thing to it in suburbia. It was set back from the road with a field beside it where all the people with Jeeps parked. I parked in the driveway because I drive a sedan.

The log cabin had been remodeled to turn each of its floors into single apartments. The hosts of the gathering lived in the bottom half, and so the gathering was there also. I was not there long before I decided that I could not afford to live there. Everything was very nice and clean and modern, and had none of the trademark characteristics of cheap housing. In fact, there was only one quirk that I could see.

The kitchen had two dishwashers.

I asked one of the hosts about the double dishwasher situation, and he explained that putting in a dishwasher was cheaper than putting in extra cabinets. And so they kept the clean dishes in one washer and the dirty ones in another. And they rotated. I think I'd just rather have cabinets.

We left the log cabin with two dishwashers early, because everyone else was leaving and it seemed the thing to do. We left the same people as we arrived, because nothing had happened there; it wasn't even a party.

It was more of a gathering.

the start of a bad evening.

I'm not sure, at the beginning, what marks the start of a good evening versus a bad one. Do the good ones start with a particular sign, like someone invites you in for a drink and it's not too cold and not too hot but just right for a drink? Do the bad ones start with you wanting to go somewhere but can't for no good reason but a reason nonetheless?

She said the music was awful, like it was the music who made it chilly outside or the people bland and uninteresting or the dog pee on the carpet. The music was just one more thing. Just one more idiotic guy saying one more idiotic line that has some sort of clever overused rhyme in it that he heard on TV, just one more group of people that I don't belong in, just one more person begging me to loosen up.

I don't care to loosen up, thanks. I'm wound this tight because I want to be. Losing control is an escape for you and a fall for me, one long endless plummet into no one knows what. Bitter? Whatever. I'm as happy as I need to be.

Their voices blend together outside my window, one big happy tipsy voice growing into a drunken tumultuous roar. Inside my window is me, one somber sober voice that doesn't say anything at all.

multi-lingual.

So this writing thing I do, I would probably call it more than just a hobby. It's important to me, and eventually I'd like to pursue it to a more professional level. And that's why I'm majoring in Computer Science.

Okay, not really.

But I'm not a sellout. I know I'm supposed to be living the good life, working all day waiting tables to come home to my mildewed apartment in a poverty-stricken neighborhood and write all night long because I'm just that inspired. I'm not supposed to have a real job, particularly one that would put me anywhere near that awful middle class. I'm supposed to sacrifice the comforts of a decent paycheck for doing what I love.

Here's the thing. I love computer science.

I can't help that what I love can also be pretty lucrative. I can't help it that there are a million computer scientists out there. Let me tell you, there are a million writers out there, too. And just like the writers, not all of those million computer scientists are good at what they do.

This evening I will be submitting the finished product of four months of work, the most dreaded project of the CS program here at ASU: SPECI (pronounced speck-ee). It's a simulator of the PDP-11, a computer from the stone age that reads programs written in base-8 numbers. And for four months, Ashley and I have labored over this project, trying to make something that will read PDP-11 programs and give back the appropriate output. And that is exactly what it does. It's a beautiful thing.

Let me try to explain the appeal of coding to you. Do you like algebra? No, of course not, otherwise you would understand without me having to explain. Do you like jigsaw puzzles? I love them. I love working on something, taking a whole bunch of pieces that mean nothing right now and turning them into something really cool. That's computer science to me. I attack a problem with my coding language and all the little tricks I've learned, my jigsaw pieces, and I put them together in some way to make something that works, something useful.

It's really not all that different from writing. Code can be eloquent and pithy and clever in all the ways writing can. Good writers get their point across in one statement instead of six. Good programmers do too. Good writers know when to use a metaphor and when to go for a simile. Good programmers know when to use a stack and when an array would be better. C++ and Java and Perl and all the rest are called languages for a reason.

I'm probably not convincing anyone that Computer Science is anything like literature or that software constitutes as art. Persuasive writing has never been my strong point. But that's okay.

I write excellent code.

a happy ending.

I don't know about you guys, but I have a place to live.

I don't mean to gloat over the homeless or anything. Of course, if you live on the street, but have a computer and an internet connection, maybe your priorities just aren't in order.

The apartment search is officially over, as Wednesday night I signed my name to a six-page, very thorough lease that my new landlords, the Hartleys, had borrowed from a lawyer friend of theirs. Actually, I signed my name twice, once for each copy of the lease. I did read the whole thing, because that's what big girls who are going to live by themselves do. I agreed to pay my rent on time every month (or pay a 10% late fee), to report all problems immediately, to not use an inordinate amount of toilet paper, and to have "No Beer Keg Parties". Then I signed my name again, this time on a big fat check covering the security deposit and the first month's rent. It was a big day for my John Hancock.

The Hartleys are very nice people, very southern, traditional people. She's a retired school teacher and works now in the antique store downtown. He's a surveyor. Their son, who was my liaison for finding and seeing the property, is a contractor. The Hartleys are expecting a grandbaby soon. I know a lot about them, because like southerners, we sat around talked for an hour even though we came for a specific task and had never previously met.

I saw the ad in the paper about two weeks ago: 2 bedroom, dishwasher, $425 a month. That's a good deal. So I gave the number a call and made an appointment to see the place. Ashley and I followed the directions the day before to make sure I could find it, as it seemed a little out of the way. It was about ten minutes out of town, but the drive was gorgeous. The trees were starting to bloom, the grass was green, and the sky was as sky blue as a sky can be. Mother Nature wanted me to like this place.

We passed the farm, the Choose-n-Cut, the gun club. The reason people from around here measure distance in how long it takes to get there is because a number of miles won't tell you anything. It was four and a half miles from the last stoplight in Boone, but those curves slow you down. We pulled in the dirt road that ran alongside a tiny stream and into the driveway by a few big trees.

Admittedly, the house looks a little weather-beaten from the outside. The paint is peeling and the stairs creak, but those are things I can live with. I'll be on the inside most of the time anyway. It was a two-story duplex, and the top was the part being advertised. Of course it was locked, but we dared to peek in the windows, the multitude of windows that made our hearts pitter patter, hearts that had been living in a basement apartment for two years now.

The kitchen and living room were all we could see, but it was a lot to take in. The kitchen was wide and open, with tons of cabinets and counter-space, almost new appliances, an antique china cabinet and lovely new faucets. The living room had real carpet, not the stuff you find in high schools, other institutions, libraries, and basement apartments that our feet had been walking on for the the past two years. Glory be, I would have to get a vacuum cleaner! The ceiling was tilted up along with the slant of the roof, with a ceiling fan and a chandelier. The ceiling itself was like the inside of a log cabin, covered in finished boards. It was the first time I had been actually impressed with a place since I'd seen the apartments for poor people that I couldn't live in.

I had to bring some references to the meeting. Well, the ad in the paper had said they were required, though he had said they would be "helpful" on the phone. I'd never really made a list of references before, so I did the best I could. I typed it up all pretty, with my name and two phone numbers on it. I put down references for everything I could think of: personal references, employment, credit, rental (although I was a little hesitant on putting down my current landlord, as I'm not quite sure how he feels about me). I figured any other applicants were probably college students as well, and hoped I they would all just have a couple of smudgy phone numbers on a cocktail napkin if anything.

I was excited the next day when I arrived promptly at 1 pm for my appointment to see the inside. I tried really hard not to be too excited, as there might still be something wrong with the place. It was hard to stay calm. It was again a gorgeous day, and I drove with my windows down, singing as loud and as off-key as I could. It was hard not to feel good. I pulled into the driveway and sent a little woodchuck scampering off into the woods. I got out, took a seat on the truck of my car, and waited.

And waited.

Look, a cardinal.

Waited.

It sure is quiet out here. Nothing like in town.

Hmm, wonder where he is?

Guess I'll just sit on this stoop.

Hope he hasn't gotten into a car accident or anything.

Every pickup truck that passed by caused me to perk my head up and then slouch down again when it continued without stopping. Somehow, I just knew he was a pickup truck kind of guy. Several cars passed, and every single person waved at me. I wanted to be their new neighbor; they all seemed so nice. But no one stopped.

To demonstrate how badly I wanted to see the inside of this place, I waited an hour. I called his cell phone three times (noting that I did get limited cell phone reception out here) and left three very friendly, but confused messages. I still didn't want to get on his bad side. I took one last look through the window and headed back to town, deflated. I turned the radio up loud and tried to sing to improve my mood, but I just wasn't in the mood anymore. I thought of the different reasons he might not have shown. Maybe he forgot. Maybe he had seen me peeking through the window yesterday and decided I was too crazy to live there. Maybe he had already found a renter and was blowing me off.

I decided to just forget about it, and then promptly did not. I thought about it all the next week, until Thursday when I decided, just for kicks, to see if the ad was still in the paper. It was. Dare I call?

Oh yeah. I dare.

He apologized up and down. He had forgotten and said he had lost my number. That was crap, because I left my cell phone number on each of the three messages I had left for him in the hour I sat outside the apartment I could see but could not have. Whatever, just let me inside! We made yet another appointment, this time in just a few hours. I figured he wouldn't have time to forget. I even skipped class.

The drive was becoming familiar now, and I rejoiced as I saw a heavy-duty red pickup pull into one of the parking spaces next to the house. We shook hands and again he apologized. For a cheap two bedroom, I decided I could forgive him. Maybe now I had some leverage.

Inside, the kitchen and living area were just as nice as I had hoped. The two little bedrooms were very odd. They were perfectly square and had no closets. One of them was directly connected to the bathroom, which after sharing a bathroom with two or three other people, was delightful. They were odd, but clean and nice and nothing I couldn't handle. And if they were a little small, it didn't matter. After all, I had two of them. The only downside I saw was the shower. It was a stall, and I'm a fan of the bathtub. I had already rejected several places with shower stalls because the rest of the apartment hadn't been nice enough to make up for it. This one was.

I asked a few basic questions about utilities, if the roads were scraped, etc., etc., and so forth. I told him I was very impressed, but hadn't decided officially quite yet. I'm not big on making big decisions. I like to hesitate a while. I was as decided to live here as I was going to be until I was forced to decide. I gave him my references (he looked impressed), assured him that I had a job (thank goodness for the computer lab!), and said that my parents would be willing to co-sign the lease if that would make them feel more comfortable. He said he'd check on my references, which I doubted. I wouldn't put them down if I didn't think they would have good things to say. He just needed to know that there existed people who would say nice things about me without payment.

I was actually looking at ads for other places when he called the next day. I didn't want to snatch this place up too hastily, as if looking at apartments for the past four months would have been hasty. He said he'd had a lot of calls and wanted to know if I had decided. I thought he might be exaggerating on the number of calls, but I wanted the place anyway and signed myself up.

I've wanted to write this out so many times in the past week, but since the story didn't really end until Wednesday night, I waited. Last night I signed the lease, and last night the story was given a happy ending. I talked to the Hartleys for a long time about the price of progress and how good blueberries taste off the bushes, just because we're nice southern people and that's what we do.

And now I can write no more entries about apartment searching. It really was excellent literary fodder, and I didn't even write about half the weird stuff I could have written about. Despite my loss of quick and easy inspiration, I'm glad it's over, that I don't have to worry about having a place to live anymore. Not that I would have been out on the street, lugging around a futon and a desktop computer, but I would have faced a fate far worse than that.

Moving back into my parents' house.

five inches short.

The duplex was cheap, suspiciously so. And though through all this wild apartment chase I had secretly been hoping for a charming little place that cost $5.00 a month, I'd been through enough to know that cheap rent means something, and it's never something good. But I was curious, and more than a little part of me hoped that whatever was keeping the rent so cheap was an inconvenience I could live with.

I made an appointment to meet the guy at 12:30 last Thursday, and I was late. It was 12:37 when I pulled into the parking lot of Sagebrush, our scheduled meeting place. He waved me over and told me the place was unlocked and directions to get there. I pretended to listen. I knew where it was, because I had scoped it out the night before. I've never been the patient type. I was listening when he told me that if I paid rent by the first of the month, he'd reduce the rate by $20.

$300 a month for a two bedroom two miles outside of town. Something was definitely wrong.

So I guided my Toyota down the road, two miles out of town to the gravel driveway with the green duplex at the top. I let myself in, and took my first look. Still, I didn't know what was wrong. The living room was modest, but clean and not cramped by any means. There was a tilted ladder that led up to the loft where the bedrooms were, and beyond that the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen was cute, even had a little bar and a view of the woods. The appliances looked a little dated, but still nothing I hadn't already seen in apartments priced over $400 a month. The bathroom was surprisingly big, with lots of closet space and a full tub. I was already picturing where my stuff would go at this point.

Finally, I headed up the ladder to get a look at the two bedrooms. And I saw the problem. Rather, I ran my head smack into it. The ceilings upstairs were no more than five and a half feet above the floor. That's about five inches short of what I need to stand up straight. And I just started laughing.

Who built this thing? What were they thinking? Did the builders just miscalculate? I couldn't imagine what would possess someone to maim a house like this on purpose.

Despite the bedrooms apparently made for two of the seven dwarves, I gave the apartment serious thought. It was $300/month and that's dirt cheap. I thought about just living downstairs and using the upstairs for storage. Not that I could get much up there, considering it would have to go up a ladder. But still, I gave it a little thought. Just how much did standing erect mean to me? Sure, our neanderthal forefathers came a long way to develop those straight backs, but wasn't it just a little bit overrated?

And then I realized that I am not that poor, and I left that crazy place behind.

oblivion.

Originally written August 31, 2003

There were many people at the Cabaret that did not belong there. I should know, I was one of them. But no one succeeded in not belonging so well as David. He so completely did not fit in that he didn't even realize it.

David was a very nice man. A very strange and nice man. He talked to me about my life plan in very loud tones since it was hard to hear over the Cher remixes. I still don't really understand what he said, more because it made no actual sense than because of the music. But I smiled and nodded and laughed where I thought appropriate and he seemed satisfied that I was a very nice girl.

David was there with his girlfriend, who was there to see her son. Her son is a drag queen, a friend of Casey's and mine. We were all there to watch him shimmy in a pink fringe dress while he did lip sync. I wondered how I would feel about coming to see my son shimmy in a pink dress while he did lip sync. Not too well, I decided.

When the drag queens weren't shimmying, the masses were. Actually, the masses gyrated more than shimmied. I gyrated up there with them a little bit. A very little bit. I've determined that being able to succeed at dancing in a club is all a matter of confidence. I don't have that confidence, so I merely manage to succeed looking kinda goofy and out of place on the dance floor.

David liked to dance. His girlfriend told him he probably shouldn't dance, and we all found out the reason for that soon enough. Despite the warnings, David took to the floor, a middle-aged straight man moving erratically on the edge of the dance floor at the gay club.

Erratically is the right word here. David may have been dancing to music, but it wasn't music that was playing that night or even music that I had ever heard. His limbs were all dancing individually to something different. His right hand not only didn't know what the left was doing, it wasn't even too sure of its own movements.

Casey and I watched from the safe sidelines of our table like onlookers of a car wreck. Then Casey suggested that I go dance with David, saying that David had almost asked me to dance earlier. I think it was because I was the only female he knew who was willing to throw herself into the dark and strange pit that is the dance floor.

With a sigh, a deep deep sigh, I got up and headed back to the dance floor to dance with David, the very nice and strange man that did not dance well. Luckily, dancing with someone at a club basically means that you dance in that person's general vicinity, facing them. This I could handle. And I had to admit that I must have looked like the very image of excellent and confident club dancing next to him.

He was having such a good time. Maybe he knew he looked a little silly and maybe he didn't. He didn't seem to care either way. We danced that way for several songs (those stupid remixes go on for next to forever) before I pleaded fatigue and we sat back down. He thanked me, twice, for dancing with him.

I flatter myself by thinking that I made him happy, that he felt pretty good about having a young girl dancing with him. And I had a good time, too, just following his lead and letting myself have a good time without worrying about the confidence I wasn't exuding.

Maybe dancing isn't always about confidence. There are people with confidence who are still bad dancers, at which point confidence crosses into obnoxious arrogance for those of us watching on the sidelines. Sometimes, it's about oblivion.

And having a good partner.

battles with the demon mouse.

The first thing I noticed was that my monitor was showing my computer desktop. That fact alone is not unusual, as typically, that's what monitors are supposed to do. But this was right when I got home after being in the computer lab for a couple of hours. The monitor should have been off, as it's set to shut down after about twenty minutes of inactivity. Not only was it on, it had windows up of tasks I hadn't started. But most suspicious of all was the cursor.

It was moving. Independently of the mouse which supposedly controls it.

I stared, fascinated at the phenomena. My cursor was moving around the screen, checking boxes, clicking around at things that were not there. The movement was deliberate, the kind of movement you'd see with normal mouse use, not just random jerks here and there. I feared somehow that I had a Trojan horse on my computer, a program that allows someone to control the computer of someone else. I immediately tried to start my ant-virus and spyware detection programs, but found that every time I tried to select a program in the start menu, my possessed mouse would click somewhere else and I'd have to start all over again.

So I started trying to use the keyboard. Navigating with the keyboard is a lost art, and I was having a hard time finding it again. Even if I did manage to get something selected, again the mouse would click somewhere else and screw it all up. It was time to pull the plug.

Unplugging the mouse solved the problem of the moving and clicking I wasn't controlling, but it didn't make it any easier to start and manage programs using the keyboard. I tried to find the option where you can control the mouse cursor with the numeric keypad, but oddly enough, it wasn't under mouse options. (I later found it under "Accessability" with the assistance of someone else.)

Running the spyware and anti-virus programs revealed nothing. My computer was clean. Restarting the computer, the eternal answer to any computer problem, didn't help either. Plugging the mouse back in, but removing the batteries still gave me the same problem. I even changed the batteries. I was frustrated and confused. I thought of searching the web for some clue on how to exorcise a mouse, but navigating through a website with only the keyboard is a nightmare I did not want to endure.

Finally, I looked at my mouse, now lifeless beside me, and the solution came. My mouse has no tail, i.e. it's wireless. I have a sensor hooked up to the computer. What if someone close by had the same kind of mouse and was using it, but my sensor was also detecting it? It was a thought worth pondering. I pondered the fact that someone had just moved in upstairs as well.

I dug out my old mouse, my old, wired, non-optical mouse and plugged her in. It worked. No demon possession, no erratic movement, nothing but what I was doing. I both hated and loved this result, as it solved the problem, but meant going back to my old mouse. I figure I'll have to use it at least until I move, in which case whatever demon is controlling my wireless mouse will not be packed up in a box and moving with me. I considered trying to use it anyway, with the idea that whoever else had the other mouse would pick up my movement as well. Maybe I could make them back down by not letting them get anything down either. But then I looked at my WWJD bracelet and realized that there was no guarantee that sort of plan would work.

So now she sits on my desk, her double A entrails sticking out of her body. I miss her. I miss the freedom of using something that isn't on a leash.

What does not kill us makes us stronger.

inside my flannel shell.

The bed means warmth to me, and I think of myself as a turtle, with only my head sticking out of my shell made of flannel. My predators are cold and light, and they make me squeeze myself into a little ball, pulling as far as I can into my shell while still allowing myself to be able to breathe.

I remember one time waking up in the middle of the night and being freezing cold. I only had a light sheet and I could barely control my shivering. I knew the solution; to get up and get another blanket. But I was too cold, and I pictured the floor around my bed as a sheet of ice. I must've laid there shivering for half an hour before I finally got up. Turns out I had the flu.

But the bed is warmth, and I hate getting up from it. I hate getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (although the consequences of not getting up to use the bathroom far outweigh the advantages), and I always try to pull the covers over the bed so as to keep the heat in. I like to think it works.

The days I have to get up for something, I have my alarm set way before the actual time when I absolutely have to get up. I'll forego the shower, the breakfast, all for that extra eight minutes of warmth inside my flannel shell. And the days when I don't have to get up by any particular time? I'll wake up at some point, but stay in bed for a good while longer, just because it feels so good in there.

So I'm a turtle that stays in my shell not because the outside is scary, but just because it's so nice inside. I'm in my comfort zone, and I'm not ready to get out yet.

Just eight more minutes...

what kind of orange juice do you drink?

Tara calls us collect because she doesn't have any money. Instead she has a baby and a questionable relationship with the father of said baby. Apparently that takes most of her money and doesn't leave much for a long-distance service plan. She doesn't expect us to pick up the charges, so she calls us collect, we don't accept the charges, and then tell Ashley to call her back on her cell phone with expendable minutes.

Tara and Ashley were best friends in elementary school, before they were old enough to realize that they were destined for different lives, before they could distinguish between the social and economic classes, before it mattered who went to college and who didn't finish high school. And now they are still friends, because they have always been friends, and because they have nothing in common anymore, but don't want to not be friends.

It's depressing when Tara calls, because her news is never happy. It seems like she's always trying to work things out with her boyfriend, or the baby is sick, or who knows what else. She's a sad case, and Ashley is probably the only friend she has that isn't in the same sort of situation or worse.

I have had my share of Taras in my life, though I don't communicate with any of them now. Friendships like that kinda fizzled out when I hit middle school, when the classes that the rest of society knew about all along finally hit kids. It's not that we all suddenly started discriminating that we weren't going to be friends with certain people, but that we all fell into place naturally into social groups that we would stay in through high school, maybe through life.

My Tara wasn't Tara at all, but Alisha. I spent the night a few times with Alisha, and in the course of those sleepovers, I saw an 'R'-rated movie, set a bowl of paper on fire, and almost smoked my first cigarette before I chickened out. Alisha lived with her mother and grandmother, and her mother sometimes went out at night and wasn't home the next morning when we woke up. When we ate breakfast, Alisha offered me orange juice that turned out to be Sunny Delight (Ashley says that Tara's family's orange juice was also called Sunkist). Alisha wanted to be a hippie when she grew up. Things like this struck me as odd then, but they hit me now as obvious indications that a friendship like Alisha's and mine was doomed from the start.

We stopped being close in the sixth grade, and I doubt I ever even talked to her after then. At some point, I heard that her grandmother died, or maybe it was her mother; I don't remember. I remember wondering what she was going to do.

Actually, I did talk to her once, when she was my cashier at K-Mart. She may have called me by name, but we didn't say anything besides the regular communication between a cashier and a customer. Nothing that indicated we had ever been more than strangers, that we used to go to each other's birthday parties, that we'd talked about when we would get our periods, that we had once taken a bath together.

Thinking about Alisha depresses me. She was always pretty, and she wasn't a stupid girl, but by the time she was eleven, she was already doomed to her life. I didn't do anything special but be born into a different family, with two well-adjusted parents and orange juice that came from oranges. It was only a matter of circumstance that made her who she was and is and me who I was and am.

I don't even really meet people like Alisha anymore. I work with college students, and I go to school with them. Even if I did, would I have enough in common with them to be friends? Or is that something that goes with childhood, the ability to not know any better than to make friends with the people that you simply like, no matter what kind of orange juice they drink at home?