Monday, January 26, 2009
Since my goals are worthless, I decided to put a twist on this tagging-of-one's-friends trend: I am only tagging people I have ostensibly Facebook befriended, but whom I actually despise. I hold my friends close, but my enemies closer. And rather than life goals or fun facts, I am posting a much-abridged list of the things that account for the more bizarre aspects of my personality development. If you've been tagged (think of it more as "jabbed"), you have to come up with your own list of sorrows, traumatizations, and unhappy memories.
1. When I was five or six, I wrote on some bureaucratic form or other, under "Race:", that I was "apricot" (this being the only crayon in the box that appoximated any part of my flesh). The teacher told me that was wrong, and that I am "white".
2. At some point in elementary school, I was told that the British spelling of any English word is incorrect. So I make it a point to write "flavour", "colour", and "storey" in all formal compositions.
3. I cannot rollerblade, because when we were little, my mother wouldn't let my siblings or me own rollerblades. We could have fallen and cracked our skulls open. The same reason accounts for why I have never attempted to skateboard, shoot a gun, climb trees, scuba dive, or have sex. I'd fall and crack my skull open.
4. One morning in junior high, I refused to attend church anymore. My dad threatened to beat me if I didn't go, so I locked myself in the master bathroom until it was safe to emerge. Now, whenever someone suggests taking me to a religious function, my heart rate increases, and I feel the need to urinate.
5. I never used to talk to people, because I could not come up with anything to discuss that wasn't vain. Now I simply proffer the most shallow of matters at the beginning of all conversations, to be rid of that anxiety. Sometimes the problem arises therefrom, of people trying to fill my vacuous mind with their bullshit. No matter. It all leaks out my ears eventually.
6. I spend so much time discussing all the things I would like to do that I wind up doing nothing but complaining about not getting to do all of the things I seem not to have time to do.
7. I did not ride off merrily down the street the very first time someone (my grandma) tried teaching me how to ride a bicycle (my older sister and a couple of cousins were there taunting me), so I quit trying, not teaching myself until I was about ten. Since my parents didn't let me cross the street until I was fifteen, I rarely rode a bike until college. Even after the regular use of a bicycle for about three years, I still feel nervous riding them (and I imagine everyone laughs inwardly if not outwardly at me as I pedal by, because I must look goofy).
8. When I was six or seven and she eight or nine, my older sister announced to everyone in her class at lunch or at the playground one afternoon that I was a bedwetter. Someday I am going to kill her.
9. I took clarinet in band in sixth grade, using the one my mom had used from elementary school onward. After she died (when I was thirteen), I kept the clarinet, even though I stopped playing. Every time I look at the dusty green case, which I always shove in some corner of the room I occupy, I think about all the things I could have been, but am not and never will be.
10. I did not cry when Bambi's mother died.
Labels: anxiety, bathrom, beating, bedwetting, clarinet, death, Facebook, father, friends, mother, sorrow, tagging, trauma
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 8:06 PM]
To Watch The Stork Squirm
Friday, September 26, 2008
In elementary school music classes, the material taught her students by Mrs. Marsha Usher fell broadly into two categories: the art of reading, listening to, interpreting, and performing music; and the art of listening to and interpreting stories and anecdotes Mrs. Usher related when stimulated by something or other, or when she felt she needed to fill twenty minutes with something other than a twenty-seven-person chorus making twenty-seven distinctly off-key renditions of "Let It Snow".
Specifically called to mind this evening, as I sat at home reading excerpts written by a play critic: Mrs. Usher once related the tale of her hamburger traumatization. She grew up on a farm, or at least in a house with some extended property, and could on that account raise a calf. 'Twould seem she went away one summer for a week or two- or perhaps a month or two- and returned home to be told her pet calf had run away. The evening of her return, Mrs. Usher's father (who presumably at that time never addressed his daughter as "Mrs. Usher") barbecued burgers, an event in itself not likely considered extraordinary to little Marsha not-yet-Usher. But this evening dinner held a curiosity: her brother, perhaps called "Bobby" or "Greg", kept giggling at her as he scarfed down his meal. When realization dawned on the victim of this cruel prank, she burst into tears, and has not eaten a burger since.
I love cheeseburgers.
Labels: anecdote, brother, burgers, calf, elementary school, farm, father, hamburger, Let It Snow, music, pet, prank, teacher, trauma
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 3:50 PM]