Flying with freaks

Things were looking good for my flight from LA to Cleveland. And by that I mean, no one was sitting in the middle seat of my row, providing a nice buffer between me and Mr. Aisle Seat. I was also relieved for the nonexistent middle passenger because Aisle Seat was a pretty girthy gentleman, and anyone sitting next to him would certainly have had their seat space encroached upon, thereby forcing them to lean right and encroach upon my space. Actually, I guess that's just me being happy for my own selfish reasons. Whatever.

But as it was, Aisle Seat posed no real threat to me. He didn't try to engage me in chit chat and that's really all I ask of a seatmate. Good old comfortable silence.

The woman sitting directly behind me, on the other hand, was a different story. As soon as she got settled into her seat, she was yapping away on her phone. And she wasn't using her indoor plane voice. Oh no. And it also sounded like she was giving the person at her credit card company some serious sassitude.

After finishing her credit card business, she called a friend to talk about something that, from what I gathered, was "unbelievable." Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Aisle Seat shooting frequent irritated looks backward, in the direction of Row 11 Phone Talker.

Several minutes went by and at this point, the plane was fully boarded. When the plane started to move, I heard her say, "Oh, I think I have to go." Before she could wrap up the call, though, a flight attendant walked by, and Mr. Aisle Seat stopped her and said in an urgent hushed voice "Hey, that lady's on her phone." The flight attendant told the woman she needed to turn off her phone and Aisle Seat looked pretty pleased with himself.

Aisle Seat! I am shocked by your behavior! What kind of grown person tattles on someone? And just to be perfectly clear - Aisle Seat did not appear to be 8 years old.

Now I wonder if his tattling is limited to airplanes or if he also lurks near the express lane in the grocery store, just waiting for someone who dares to walk up with 13 items. Or perhaps he hangs out at the local gym, keeping an eye out for someone who spends more than 30 minutes on the cardio equipment during peak times. I might support his cause if he were doing something useful like blowing the whistle on restaurant employees that don't wash their hands after using the lavatory, but I think this was a classic example of a wasted tattle. The flight attendant surely would have noticed if the woman continued to talk. See, I believe that you get a finite number of tattles in a lifetime, and, well, Aisle Seat, I think you should choose them more wisely from here on out.

You tell me

I've been consuming more caffeine than my body is used to for the last few days, so this might just be the drugs talking. But doesn't this cartoon person kind of look like me?

Ignore the fact that it says "fertility aid" on the package. I don't want you reading anything into that. Besides, I'm probably barren because I eat a lot of Teflon. I just like to smell these aromatherapy inhalers and the fertility one happened to be on sale. (I also bought one called "smoke less" and seeing as I don't smoke at all, it's going to be pretty tough.) Anyways, I just like the aroma of clary sage, geranium, and fennel. Nothing weird about that.

But see how they stole my face?




No? Just me?

Dream Job

I was doing my normal search for jobs, hoping to find one that might allow me to stay at home in my sweatpants, when I came across this gem: Editorial Assistant at Tiger Beat magazine.

Here's the cover letter I wrote. I think I'm a shoe-in.

To the Editor of Tiger Beat :

I learned of the Editorial Assistant position at Tiger Beat through what I can only imagine to be divine intervention. There I was, halfheartedly searching for jobs that I might apply for only to put them on my unemployment claim form, when there it was - a glimmering beacon of hope in my otherwise grey and dreary existence.

To say that this is a dream job is something of an understatement. My dreams normally consist of horrible brutal violence against close friends, family members, and the occasional minor celebrity. But working for Tiger Beat magazine is so much more than a dream. It's the dream of every girl I've ever known. (Except for maybe the lesbians.) Ever since I was a little girl, Tiger Beat has been my ultimate news source. I vividly remember playing in my friend Jaime's bedroom in first grade, ripping pages out of your magazine and taping them to her walls. I also remember that Jaime liked to "play house" which usually involved a good deal of spanking. But that's neither here nor there. What I mainly remember is the magazine.

Where would I be today without those clean girlhood fantasies of Jonathon Taylor Thomas? Well, first, I might be attracted to real men, but so what?

I think that I am the ideal candidate for this job. Not only do I understand the psyche of tween girls, but I understand what it is to LOVE tween boys, as well as much older men that portray tween boys on television.

Sincerely,

Bean Quincy Adams

What was going on in the late 90's?

I've recently discovered the joys of streaming Netflix. This is a big step into the right millenium, as I live in a household without things like Tivo or even old-fashioned cable tv. I feel that now it is my civic duty to watch as many movies and tv shows as I possibly can. Fortunately, I don't have a job or anything standing in the way of my civic duty.

But oh the decisions! I think I've spent more time browsing my options than I have actually watching anything. There are so many categories - do I want to watch a suspenseful comedy? A cerebral horror movie? Netflix seems to think that I do, but I'm not so sure. I am crippled by the sheer magnitude of choices laid out before me.

Speaking of crippled, I ended up first settling on a PBS documentary about FDR. After which, I decided to change it up. Somehow, the movie 10 Things I Hate About You popped up in my recommendations and I went for it.

In case you're not familiar with this title, it's a late 90's teen movie. Now, despite me actually being a teen in the late 90's, I had not yet seen this movie. In fact, I can only think of one teen movie that I saw as a teen, and that was the classic not-really-ugly-ugly-duckling tale, She's All That.

So now, after watching 10 Things, I have seen a total of 2 90's teen movies, so I'm something of an expert on the subject. And I can't help but notice a trend. In She's All That, there is a bet placed among high school guys and one of them has to make this really ugly (attractive but glasses-and-overalls-wearing) girl into the prom queen or something. Apparently, he has nothing better to do. Or more realistically, he realizes that this girl is actually hot and she's just a bad dresser with low self-esteem so she will probably be easy.

In 10 Things I Hate About You, the main female character is an attractive yet sort of manly-voiced girl who NO ONE would EVER date because she's so mean and has such a large vocabulary. But her sister is cute and stupid, therefore very desirable. Their father has an extremely stupid rule that prohibits the girls from dating, but then he revises the rule to say that they can date, but only so long as they both date. Which by the way, if he's actually trying to prevent them from dating, I don't see the logic for this compromise.

Because high school boys have such high standards, the guy that wants to date the nice sister has to pay a dude money to take the other sister out.

I've heard that art imitates life, so this brings me to my question: Is this a common practice in high school? Or was it, say during the years of 1998-1999? It's weird because I was actually in high school during that period of time, and yet I was wholly unaware of any such transactions. But based on these teen movies, I am led to believe that there were a good number of bribe/bet-based relationships.

I wasn't really in the loop in high school, so I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities that I just missed this fad. But I do think it's kind of weird. I always assumed high school guys dated girls not for sport or money, but for the hope of procuring some poon.

Flashback Friday: Kindergarten Sucks

I find myself thinking about kindergarten a lot these days. My nephew started kindergarten this year, and every time I hear about him going to school, I just feel so bad for him. From what I understand, he actually enjoys it, but I don't really see how that could be possible. School is the worst. But kindergarten is the worst of the worst.

Preschool was all fun and games. I went for a few hours a day, a few times a week, maybe. Once, we even had a beach day where we got to wear our bathing suits inside and they filled little plastic swimming pools with sand and water. Fun, right?

Well there was none of that in kindergarten.

But it wasn't just the lack of indoor beach parties working against kindergarten. My teacher was also kind of a jerk. Her name was Mrs. Randolph. Upon getting my class assignment, I thought she sounded alright. Randolph reminded me a lot of Rudolph, and I liked reindeer well enough. They carry Santa for Pete's sake! Unfortunately, Mrs. Randolph did not seem to have any kind of relationship with Santa. I don't know if they ever met, but I suspect Santa would have found her a little salty for his liking.

Mrs. Randolph was old. I don't know exactly how old she was, but she had that short, old lady haircut. If I remember correctly, she also suffered from the flappy neck syndrome. I'm not saying I'd hold these things against an otherwise pleasant person, but they certainly didn't help. My point is this: she was scary and even the tautest of neck skin wasn't going to change that.

It wasn't a complete waste of a year. I learned some valuable things in kindergarten. Most notably, I remember learning to use chopsticks. Aside from the whole 'learning to read' thing, chopstick usage is pretty much the only skill I acquired in school that I still use on a somewhat regular basis. I eat with chopsticks far more often than I do long division. Or any division, really.


But mainly what I learned was the horrible injustice of life. I may have already mentioned this, but it was a pretty major event in my life. One day, while we were all working at our desks, Mrs. Randolph walked around the room, scrutinizing us, apparently looking for something to criticize. She stopped at my desk, and grabbed my hand. She held it up and announced to the class that I was holding my pencil "the wrong way." The way I see it, there is no "wrong" way to hold a pencil, assuming it is somewhere in your hand. Unless you don't have hands, and then I say do whatever you need to do, but don't let Mrs. Randolph see you.

But the injustice didn't end there. Another day were were drawing self portraits. I know I can't prove it, but mine was pretty awesome. You'll just have to take my word. I was doing a very detailed full-length portrait. I recall that I spent a lot of time on the hair. Chrissy, the girl sitting next to me, had pretty much just drawn a circle with eyes. It probably took all of 11 seconds. But during Mrs. Randolph's rounds, she made sure to loudly praise Chrissy for drawing such good eyes. The eyes, you see, were not perfectly round, but instead a little more almond-shaped. Big deal. Her person didn't even have a body! It was just a floating face! I mean, there wasn't even a neck. I'm pretty sure that Mrs. Randolph only complimented Chrissy to stick it to me.

And just when I thought kindergarten couldn't get any worse, we read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Sure, it sounds innocent enough, but Mrs. Randolph decided to select students to represent the characters as she told the story.

"Now who should be Goldilocks?" she wondered aloud. "Well, Jeanne has nice curly gold locks!"

Who me? It was true. My hair was a light golden brown, and it had some nice body, but I never imagined that Mrs. Randolph would favor me for anything, especially something as big as portraying Goldilocks!

But Mrs. Randolph changed her tune. "But Heather has such nice blond hair. Maybe she should be Goldilocks instead."

What?!

That's right. She dangled the carrot right in front of my face, only to yank it away and feed it to the girl who had blonder hair. Nice.

I guess it's all for the best. Perhaps without Mrs. Randolph's soul-crushing, I might have aspired to be an artist, or an actress, or a blond person. Instead I learned to hate at a very young age. But more importantly, I can eat rice with chopsticks.

New year, same old tales from the grocery store

So it's 2010. And to celebrate, I thought I'd talk about some of the hardships that I face at the grocery store.

Today, I went to Trader Joe's to buy milk. Crazy, I know, but I swear this is a true story. I was pretty excited, this being my first gallon of milk in the new year and all.

As I was preparing my credit card for swiping, I witnessed this scene, one line over:

Girl getting ready to check out: Oh my GOD! I forgot to get hummus! (To cashier) Can I go run and get some hummus??

Cashier: Sure.

This is one of those common grocery store occurrences that really puzzles me. The employee at Trader Joe's doesn't care that you forgot your hummus. Here's what you need to do:

Get out of line. Get your hummus. And now, get back in line. You don't even need to ask permission. It seems to me, that by asking if you can "run" and get it, you think that the line will cease to operate until you're back with your hummus and all is right with the world. I know you're trying to convey the speediness with which you can procure hummus, but no matter how fast you are, you are wasting people's time.

There was only one person in line behind her. So, naturally, as the girl was on her great hummus run, the cashier started ringing up the next person. And when she returned, I'm sure she was confused. "Wait? Why is this other person paying for their groceries? I was just running to get the hummus. I even asked if it was okay!"

I think the problem is that a large number of people in this country don't understand how a line works. I'm going to venture a guess that it's somewhere around 15 percent. Because this also happens all the time: I'm standing in a long line at the grocery store. A person gets in line behind me. Then they tap my shoulder and say, "Oh, could you save my spot? I'll be right back." They proceed to leave their cart or basket in the empty space behind me, while they presumably run to get some hummus or whatever.

Inevitably, the line begins to move (as lines often do). Now I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I shirk my responsibilities as spot-saver, or do I now have to also move their cart/basket as the line moves so that there's not that confusing gap in the line? I know that if I don't move it, someone else will come up to the line and say to me, "Is this yours?" And I'll have to say, "No...but, it's, I'm saving... this spot."

Once again, if everyone understood the complicated mechanics of a line, this wouldn't happen. First of all, a line works when people stand in it. You stand in it, and eventually, you get to the place you're trying to go. But if you get in it, and then you realize that you have to leave for some reason, you just get out. And then, when you're ready, you can get back in the line. But not where you once stood. No sir. You start over. You go to the end of the line. It's very simple. And if you are so bold as to ask for someone to save your spot, it would not be the person who's already in front of you. They have no interest in what happens behind them in line. You have to ask the person behind you. And if there is no person behind you, then you're not really losing much by getting out of the line, are you?

Good luck, my fellow Americans. If you have any further questions about standing in a line in the grocery store, I should be happy to answer them. I'm something of an expert on this matter.