Confessions: Past, Present, and Future

I'm a compulsive liar. I figured I could use my blog to disclose my many falsehoods and ease this crushing guilt. 

As a teenager, I would pretend to like bands I'd never even heard of before. 

I no longer do that. Now, I just lie about movies I haven't seen.

In my 30's, I plan to be classy and lie about books I've never read.

Tales from the Projects: Failed Business Ventures

I grew up in the projects, so correct me if I'm wrong, but lemonade stands don't work. They are never profitable, and parents only foot the bill because it's adorable. In the summer of 1998, I was finally old enough to realize this. I couldn't have been more jealous of the property manager's daughter who was operating a booming Beanie Baby business out of the front office. Even rich ladies started coming in droves when they got wind of the killer deals that could be found in the hood.

Competing with her was a lost cause. Her father was the property manager; she lived in the projects, but she was not of the projects. She had the advantage of start-up cash and a sweet location.

All I had was SPUNK.

Part 1: Tadpolier than Thou

There was a creepy clearing in a nearby forest that contained a trashy, water-damaged, outdoor living room. Someone obviously dragged their old furniture out there for parties, but as a child the only explanations that made sense involved ghosts, forest demons, or aliens. 

The only other attraction the clearing had to offer was a pond full of frogs. In order to have a successful business, I knew that I needed to find the next hot commodity. I decided that after everyone was over Beanie Babies, they would all want tadpoles. You could put them in your kiddie pool and watch them grow legs! Science! Plus, why would anyone brave the forest or the creepy alien furniture when they could just buy their tadpoles directly from me or one of my associates? 

Here's a mock-up of my successful enterprise's future billboard.
There are a million more "tadlines" where that came from.

I caught five tadpoles in five separate Solo cups which my friends and I carried back through the forest. We were almost home when one of them tripped on a root and spilled the contents of her Solo cup on the ground. I should note that we probably could have saved the tadpole's life, but it freaked us out too much to touch it.

And then there were four.

We did not have much luck unloading our product. Either tadpoles were not the next big thing, or people realized that they could just get them for free with minimal effort. One of my associates set her cup down on the sidewalk while I was trying to make a sale. She then accidentally knocked it over with her hand.

And then there were three.

The evening progressed with nothing but bitter disappointment and two dead tadpoles. Believe it or not, but there was somehow another trip and fall. The details are fuzzy, but in this MS Paint drawing it's implied that my associate tripped on a skateboard. Let's go with that.

And then there were two.

My other friend bailed because I was being a jerk.

And then there was one.

I figured that since my ambition had destroyed my tadpole's family, the least I could do was return him to the pond. My dreams were shattered. I lost my business, my friends, and my tadpoles.

And then there were none.

Part 2: The Greatest Balloon Animal Artist of All Time

I absolutely hate it when people ask me what I like to do for fun. I always tell them that I don't have fun. It's true, I really don't. I used to, though. I used to be a great balloon animal artist. I sold out and started making balloons for profit because it was the perfect solo project. I wouldn't have anyone else's feelings to consider. Also, my friends all still kind of hated me for turning into a tadpole dictator. I outfitted my bike with all the components needed to turn it into a mobile storefront.

Get rich or die trying

At first, my business was pretty successful. Consumers wanted balloon animals, and they were willing to pay. Even the cop assigned to make the rounds through the projects was impressed when he drove by my line of people and awesome bike set-up.

He gave me a thumbs up!

The business only started to falter because it got too big, too fast. The line was very long and people started to abandon it. This enterprise had the exact opposite problem as the tadpole business but, like every business venture of mine, was also doomed to fail.

My first problem is that it took forever to pump each balloon. My mobile storefront had a crappy beginner pump taped to the handlebar. Perhaps if everyone hadn't hated me, I could have hired an associate to pump while I twisted. But everyone did hate me. My other problem was a direct result of my crazy. I kept leaving my bike to pick up pieces of popped balloons. 

When I started to dabble in clowning, my mother felt that it was her duty to sit me down and explain what she believes automatically happens when a small child sees a balloon fragment on the ground:

1. They will be drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
2. They will assume it's candy and swallow it.
3. The piece will expand inside their throat until they suffocate
4. The Heimlich maneuver will be completely useless.
5. If you are the one responsible for the balloon, you will be just as guilty as if you had put a gun to their head.

There really was a kid in a wheelchair. He probably wasn't going to eat the balloon.

Ham Sandwich

At some point between the release of the Nintendo 64 and the day I became a Vegetarian, one of my mom's friends was babysitting me. I asked her if I could have a Q-tip for some sort of arts and crafts kidtivity. I repeat, it was not an ear-based need. She gave me two Q-tips and told me that I could use one for each ear. Even as a child of either 6, 7, or 8, I knew that didn't make any sense.

GOODNIGHT

I told her that the ham sandwich she made for lunch looked gross and that I wouldn't eat it. She told me that I had to stay at the table until I finished it. According to television, this kind of thing happens all the time. Perhaps my two readers are rolling their eyes because they had to deal with this every day of their lives. I didn't have any rules as a child, so I was not equipped to deal with this situation. I tore up the sandwich and sank each piece to the bottom of my glass of milk. I then handed her the empty plate and glass of sandwich/milk to be washed. Because I'm an idiot.

I hope I was 6 and not 8 when I did this

Obviously she discovered the sandwich and called me back to the kitchen. She made me stand at the sink and eat the soapy milky ham sandwich. I looked up defiantly and said with a full mouth that it tasted better that way. I'm kind of a brat.

Fashion Post: How to Dress for Bad Posture

For those of you who don't know, Seventeen Magazine has a section where they provide examples of flattering outfits for different body types. As a teenager, I was never able to figure out what my body type was. That section was just as useless to me as the one about dating (oh snap).

I've decided to occasionally use my blog to give helpful fashion advice to the young women who fall through the cracks.

TEENAGE GIRLS WITH WEIRD BODIES: The rest of this post is for you!

We'll get to that later, past-me! Today I want to talk about bad posture.

For those of you who know me in real life, it will come as no shock that I have terrible posture. I don't really have an excuse. I'm 5'3, and there isn't anything technically wrong with my spine.

How I usually look

Teenagers, don't let bad posture ruin your life! You just need to take your fashion cues from the Skeksis. If anyone knows how to dress for bad posture, it's them.

You can no longer tell that I have horrible posture, right? Visual trickery!

Confederacy

Summers spent in Philadelphia with my father were usually bizarre. When I was ten, we flat-out wasted the limited time we had together with our attempts to get a particularly dedicated employee at a living history museum to break character. My father enjoyed the challenge, and it's not like he had anything better to do. Meanwhile, I had somehow deluded myself into thinking that I actually had a shot with the Confederate prisoner we were trying to break.

If you asked a museum employee for directions to the gift shop, they would play dumb about the existence of said gift shop unless you first asked them to remove their hat (or bonnet). All of the employees would happily remove their magical hat when asked...except one. The sole Confederate prisoner was the most dedicated of all the actors and the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He looked like a young Johnny Depp, and he was not interested in playing the museum's little hat games. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to break character, every annoying pre-teen boy tried to yank the hat off his head. None would succeed. He was either very passionate about preserving the magic, or he had suffered brain damage and actually thought it was 1863.

This would have been a perfect situation for the museum since a brain-damaged actor wouldn't be asking for a paycheck.

He could have been anyone under that hat, and the mystery made him even hotter. Luckily for me, I would be seeing a lot of him that summer. In my 10-year-old mind, it kind of did start to feel like we were dating.

Our multiple visits helped us learn his routine pretty well. He spent all day hanging out alone in prison where he would do the following things in no particular order:

• Complain about how bored he was
• Reminisce about his idyllic childhood in the Old South
• Have PTSD episodes 
• Make us tell him whether or not we supported the Confederacy - We were in Pennsylvania, so everyone would look around and slowly admit to him that we supported the Union. Then he would yell at us for a while about states' rights. It would sometimes become pretty heated. While everyone else was yelling about history, race, and American ideals, I was busy naming our future hypothetical children.

Dadegy: My Dad's Strategy

My dad's plan was to befriend him first and then ask him to take off the hat. My dad is missing some body parts so he acted like he lost them in the war. They bonded over the noble Confederacy.

?uestlove: My Strategy

At first I tried to trip him up by asking him "difficult" questions about his fake backstory. I was ten so I didn't really come up with anything that good. I asked him about about his love life and if he had ever killed anyone. I shouldn't have underestimated his dedication. Obviously he had already crafted an elaborate backstory.

?uestlove 2: My Similar Strategy

I hoped that if I started asking him questions about modern life that I would stumble upon a topic he couldn't resist. I asked him about the Summer Olympics and Bush/Gore. I asked whether he had seen X-Men or The Nutty Professor 2. Okay, I'm definitely lying about that since I hadn't seen either of them. I probably asked him about The In Crowd but does anyone else even remember that movie? I think I also asked him if the only reason he was wearing the hat was because his head was freakishly deformed.

A head deformity would be the next best thing to brain damage from the museum's perspective. They wouldn't ever have to worry about losing their best employee. How many acting jobs can someone with a misshapen head land?

I made the mistake of thinking that he liked me when actually he just liked my dad. More than ever, I felt that I needed to learn the truth about the man behind the hat.

That crazy soldier really brought the whole family together. My mom picked up my sister and I but we wanted to visit the museum once more. I remember being somewhat wary since the last time my parents had spent an extended amount of time together my dad had spit in my mom's face and jumped out of a moving car. Everyone got along that day, though. My dad even introduced the soldier to his ex-wife. I think both of us had given up on breaking him that summer. As we were leaving, my dad asked if anyone had ever told him that he looked like Johnny Depp. Apparently that was all it took because the soldier finally relented. He walked out of the prison and took off his hat.

They then proceeded to have a bro-fest where presumably they bonded over divorce and not having real jobs. I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe that he actually took off his hat! His true identity was revealed, and the barriers between us were broken. Surprisingly, I wasn't thinking about how he was just a modern man...a struggling Yankee actor/divorcé who didn't even care that much about states' rights. The only thing I could think during that moment was

Suburban Horses

I once went to a Star Trek convention in New Jersey and from this experience learned the following things:

• Leonard Nimoy's thoughts on Universal healthcare
• The Brownstone from the Real Housewives of New Jersey is actually in the middle of the ghetto next to a broken down 711
• Captain Janeway will get pissed at you if she is reminded of her own mortality
• In other words, maybe don't shout about how she was your childhood role model
• Every stereotype about the state of New Jersey (and Star Trek fandom) is true.

The reason I bring up stereotyping is because I have been asked to share my initial observations on Provo, Utah. If my blog had a theme (which it doesn't), it would probably be about stereotypes that aren't yet stereotypes. For those of you keeping score, my blog has been almost exclusively about being poor white trash (it's kind of my wheelhouse). I enjoy making the necessary connections to create a stereotype before Jeff Foxworthy or someone equally unfunny does. So yeah, any observations made on Provo are going to be about what isn't even a stereotype yet. I've found that most of the crazy things I had heard about Utah are rooted in reality, but why should I bother rehashing what's already been established?

There's no need to beat a dead...horse.

Buh-dum, ching.

Yeah, that joke doesn't work because a.) it wasn't funny, and b.) I spent too much time talking about Star Trek and haven't actually reached my main point yet. The point being that people in Provo randomly keep horses in their suburban backyards. I don't have any constructive hobbies, so I've taken to idling in front of houses to take pictures of them.

Last but not least/I can't believe this is real life: suburban miniature horses

You're welcome

ON BLAST; subcategory: People Who Have Made Me Cry; subcategory: Strangers; subcategory: Sidewalks

I am one of those terrible people who suddenly take up running every few months and proceed to give it up just as quickly. Against all reason, I regularly find myself buying into the hype. The truth is, I hate running, and I'm hilariously bad at it. I am not putting running on blast today though. Its time will come.

2005: I went running around my neighborhood after school and passed a house I had passed many times before. Some faceless jerk from within yelled, "RUN, FATTY! RUN!" out of his window.

I cried all the way home/the entire afternoon. As we previously discussed, I was bound to give up running at some point, and this was just the push I needed.

2012 Update: As time has passed, I find myself less convinced that this incident actually happened. I think it may have been a combination of the wind and my own self-loathing playing tricks on me. 

EVIDENCE:

It was windy

I was obviously not hot but I was not fat either

I was a 15-year-old girl

Who does that? Seriously?

It would have to be some kind of soulless wraith who spends their days waiting at the window to ruin the lives of passing joggers.

The next painful memory involving both sidewalks and strangers really did happen; there was physical proof.

2004: I was walking home from school on the Friday after the first week of freshmen year. I had a spring in my step because I had sort of been making friends! This year was going to be different! I was going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes! 2012 Update: Yeah...that didn't happen. Prepare to eat lunch in the bathroom, Future/past-me.

I passed a couple of girls on the sidewalk that were in my grade but whom I only knew by sight. One of them was eating Doritios straight out of the bag. As we passed, I did that obligatory smile-in-acknowledgement thing. In return, she threw a handful of Doritos in my face, and the two of them walked away laughing.

I couldn't decide on just one crappy ms paint (or equivalent) rendition of this painful memory, so here are four.

What did I do to deserve this?

This is me as a disgusting snowman. Yes, I stuck a chip in a neighbor kid's snowman.

Pidgey is standing in for the the Dorito-thrower because Pidgey is the worst.

This bag is full of stuff that almost killed me.

I cried all the way home/the entire afternoon. To be fair, it was partially because I had Dorito dust in my eyes.



*I made them cool ranch for the sake of comedy. As I recall from shaking chip shards out of my bra later that afternoon, they were nacho cheese.