A Letter to a Smoker on Seventh Avenue

24 Mar

Dear Smoking Man,*

Hello, remember me?  I actually ate dinner at your house about 5 years ago with my then-boyfriend.  And about a month and a half ago I served you a drink.  I thought about reminding you of that long-past meal we shared but decided that perhaps that would be too much.  It was only that one time, after all, and I don’t even remember your name, your wife’s name, or the undoubtedly pleasant, yet slightly bizarre, dinner conversation.

Here we are now, another chance encounter.  You walking, in a light trench coat, me running up to the park.  You smoking your cigarette, me breathing in air too cold for mid-March.  The fact that you smoke doesn’t bother me, it’s your right and besides, it can’t be any worse for me than the exhaust fumes I suck into my lungs mile after mile.  You take one final drag and, as I approach, you fling your cigarette to the right using your thumb and forefinger as a sort of butt-launcher, missing my by inches.

I imagine you are someone who does not simply discard his empty coffee cups on the side of the road rather than wait for the appearance of a trash can.  I think it likely that you bring your own reusable bags to the supermarket.  Maybe I’ve got you all wrong but, I have to ask, why is it that people who are otherwise responsible inhabitants of an overly shared space feel it is okay to drop their cigarette butts on the ground?  Why is this one form of litter still acceptable?  But even more importantly than that, can you do us all a favor and at least look before you flick a still burning object through the air?  Because, you know, I don’t care if you smoke, I don’t mind breathing the smoke in, but I don’t really care to be burned by your cigarette.

I’m glad we had this little chat, Smoking Man.  And, honestly, it was lovely seeing you again.  Maybe next time I will even say hello.

To future encounters

Rebekah

*The one smoking on Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, not the creepy one from The X-Files.  By the way did I ever tell you guys I have limited edition Mulder and Skully Barbie and Ken dolls?  Well, I do.  But I won’t tell you where they live for fear you will try and steal them.

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Don’t You Wish You Were Cool Like Us?

22 Mar

I know that a while back I wrote a blog post about how much I love my friends.  Maybe some of you think that one post on such a topic would be enough but I disagree.  My friends are just really super awesome.  By the end of this post you are (a) going to think me and my friends are all incredibly weird and you’ll thank your lucky stars that you only read about our antics on the interweb, (b) you will want to come hang out with us all the time because we’re funny (c) you will oscillate between those two things, which is normal, but eventually will you come to the dark side AKA the side where you are friends with us or (d) you will be totally grossed out and never read my blog again.  Anyway, here is why my friends are awesome:

So yesterday I spent the day sort of rewriting an article for a magazine I occasionally contribute to.  (You can read my past article here!  It’s about consent!)  I had to rewrite it because my editor was, shall we say, displeased that the direction my article took was only (in my estimation) 70% related to the proposal I had sent her back in January.  Apparently when you write for other people you can’t just write about what you’re interested in at that exact moment, you have to somehow get back to what you were interested in months prior.  Live and learn, right?  Anyway, so I had to do some fine-tuning so that the article I wrote better reflected the approved topic.  I spent the better part of the morning/early afternoon working on that and then I decided to take a stroll to visit my friend Heather at work.  She is nice and fun and you should all love her.  Also, she is apparently gifted in the art of cleaning eyeglasses.  I digress.  On my walk to visit Heather I texted one of my friends to see how her second week of work at her new job went and I received the following reply:

“Things are getting busier and making more sense…. (smiley face)… best part of farting in my own office is that I can open my own window.”

I replied that having my own window that I could open at my leisure, but especially after farting, was my new goal in life.  Not in so many words but she got the point because she, like, gets me.  Anyway, no more than a half hour later, and out of nowhere, I received a g-chat from a different friend that led to the following conversation:

Friend: can you remind me tomorrow that I ate beets today?
Me: Yes.
Friend: Thank you! (You understand.)
Me: I had beets on Wednesday night and set myself a phone alarm for Thursday morning.

If you don’t understand why that last conversation was funny then you don’t pay even nearly enough attention to your bowel movements which, in my personal opinion, is ill-advised.  Also, you clearly don’t talk to your friends enough about poop which is unfortunate.  I have this sort of friend-o-meter whereby I know that I am really, truly friends with someone when we can talk about poop together.  And not just like, me telling stories about my own poop but us having a real and honest exchange about it.  I have a lot of poop stories.  I think talking about the embarrassing bathroom things that happen really sort of demystifies the whole thing.  Let me tell you a story about what happened to me recently (you might never look at me the same again or touch my left hand, FYI).

So recently I was in Peru for a trip with one of my friends.  And we were at this cafe and I had to use the bathroom because I pretty much always have to use the bathroom. I inherited my dad’s stomach, something I am not in the least bit thankful for.  Anyway, I went up into the little art/book/miscellany store above the cafe to use the bathroom and realized, too late as it turned out, that there was no toilet paper.  Not only was there no toilet paper, but there also were no paper towels.  Catastrophe!  So I did what any well-traveled individual would do:  I wiped my ass with my left hand.  So there I was, wet and clean butt, wet and unclean hand, pants down, standing in this teeny tiny little bathroom above a cafe on a random street in Lima.  What to do now?  Obviously, I had to wash my hands but here was the little trick: I somehow had to dry my ass without using any paper products because there weren’t any.  Luckily, I had managed to keep my right hand both clean AND dry and there was the leftover cardboard tube from the paper towels sitting to the right of the sink.  Oh, happy day.  So I, by turning the tube inside-out, managed to semi-dry my ass with that and my dry right hand (more absorbent than you might suspect!) and then use my right elbow to turn the water on as hot as it could go to wash my hands about 12 million times.  I then went downstairs, looked at my friend and said:

“You might want to bring napkins up there when you go.  There was an…incident.” I think looked meaningfully at my left hand.

She understood immediately.  And that is why my friends are awesome.  (And also why journalists really need to not complain about the fact that they had to, GASP!, throw their toilet paper away in a garbage can next to the toilet instead of in the toilet while covering the Sochi Olympics.  I think probably they have done worse and that there were more pressing social issues surrounding those games than plumbing that can’t handle an influx of paper.  Just sayin’.)  Oh! And this one other thing.  Sometimes my dad tells jokes and my one friend does this with them.  Don’t you wish you were cool like us?

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And the Army Fails Another Victim of Sexual Violence

20 Mar

Seriously you guys, when are we going to get this right?  When are we going to figure out how to deal with sexual violence within the justice system, the military, colleges, our society?  Just now I was sitting at the computer, catching up on training videos for the upcoming Jesolo gymnastics meet when my phone made a little chirping noise.  I got all excited, thinking it was a text message or someone emailing me to offer me The Most Awesome Job Ever on the Face of the Planet but no.  It was neither of those things.  What it was was the following headline from The New York Times:

“General Accused of Sexual Assault Receives Minor Punishment, No Jail.”

So here’s the deal.  Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair “pleaded guilty to charges that included mistreating his mistress, adultery and requesting explicit photographs from female Army officers” and instead of any sort of punishment he was ordered to pay $5,000 of his salary for the next four months.  That’s it.  He keeps his pension.  No jail time.  Just a measly $20,000.  What a bargain for assaulting someone.  Here is the meat of the article:

“The sentencing ends a two-year prosecution that highlighted sexual misconduct at even senior ranks of the military at a time when Congress was demanding that the Army crack down on the problem, but which came apart after military lawyers concluded that their chief witness may have lied at a hearing and the judge ruled that political considerations may have improperly influenced the case.”

In the words of my good friend Carrie: MUTHER FUCKING FUCK OF A FUCKING FUCK

So maybe some of you readers don’t think this is as big a deal as Carrie and I do.  Let’s just take a moment to learn a little bit more about this case, shall we?

According to a Los Angeles Times article published yesterday, General Sinclair “pleaded guilty Monday to mistreating the captain. He also pleaded guilty to twice misusing his government charge card to pursue the affair, disobeying an order not to contact his mistress, and making derogatory comments about other female officers.

“A week earlier, Sinclair pleaded guilty to adultery; impeding an investigation by deleting sexually explicit emails to and from a civilian woman; possessing pornography in a war zone; conducting inappropriate relationships with two other female officers; and improperly asking a female lieutenant for a date.”

I like how the article sort of glosses over the situation with the army captain as simple “mistreatment” but we will talk about what that word means in a minute.  What is interesting to me here is that you have this guy, a general, a man of power, who uses this power to ask women out on dates.  That is bad enough in and of itself.  The real problem arises when you realize that he is operating within a system that not only has a very well-defined power structure, but also has a very clear and documented history of not taking cases of sexual misconduct and instances of sexual violence seriously in the least bit.  He asked women out on a date within an environment in which they understandably could have felt that turning the general down could result in unfavorable treatment and that if such a thing occurred, they would have absolutely no recourse because the army does not give a shit about sexual misconduct and intimidation and violence within its ranks.  It is institutionalized.  Given this reality, and the fact that the military is claiming to make moves towards addressing its embarrassing record on punishing actions of sexual misconduct, the fact that his asking women out is not seen as hugely problematic and possibly symptomatic of a larger issue is insane to me.

The original charges, the “mistreatment,” were actually charges of sexual assault and making death threats against a woman with whom he had a three year affair as well as her family.  Sexual assault. Death threats.  All dropped.  And this guy has the nerve to break down in tears in front of a judge, talking about how his family shouldn’t be denied his military benefits because of his adulterous affair.  What about her family and what they endured?  Okay, if that were actually the case I would feel for his family. An entire family shouldn’t be punished because this dude can’t seem to keep it in his pants.  But in the same tearful outburst, he also apologized to his accuser and to the two officer’s whom he pressured to send nude photos of themselves.  Again, a man in power within the context of the US military abuses an army captain and also uses his power to pressure his subordinates into sending him nude photographs of themselves and all he gets is a $20,000 fine?! Give me a fucking break.  I mean, I know that’s some money.  I wouldn’t mind having an extra twenty grand lying around right about now.  But what kind of a deterrent is that?  He is one of a very small number of generals to be court marshaled and, given the information we have about the depth of sexual misconduct within the armed forces, it seems unlikely that that small number accurately reflects the real number of generals who have misused their power to coerce subordinates to perform sexual acts.  It seems like the risk of getting caught are simply not high enough to stop anyone from misusing power for sexual gain if that is what they’re into.

What this is is another example of how we simply do not take sexual violence seriously in this country.  This man is a predator.  Easy as that.  And why shouldn’t he be one?  I mean, take the morals and the ethics out of the equation here.  The existence of a legal framework to try and punish those who commit crimes of a sexual nature against others would be a deterrent if that system actually fucking existed.  And I am not even talking about within the context of the army here.  I am talking about in the wider context of everything.  We simply do not think of sexual violence as being a scourge on our society.  We do not see sexual violence for what it is.  We blame those who are the victims and we, as a society, put up every single possible road block in order to keep people from getting justice for their abuse.  You need look no further than the thousands upon thousands of untested rape kits sitting in storage units across the country.  There is evidence of serial rapists who have gone unpunished because the kits containing evidence of their crime sit in storage units gathering dust.  To think that women and men who are raped and then go to the police to then have an invasive evidence-gathering procedure conducted in hopes that their assailant will be caught and they will have some justice went through all of that for nothing is absolutely sickening.  Thousands of victims.  Thousands of assailants who are told that their crime is not actually a crime, who are essentially, through state inaction, given permission to attack again.  Oh yea, and then there’s the statute of limitations which is up on so many of these kits.  Victims who have to live with their attack for the rest of their lives with no hope of any sort of punishment for their attackers.  What the fuck is that.

And then there are the college campuses.  Read the story of Sasha Menu Courey.  Time and time again we hear about colleges trying to handle sexual assault cases themselves, resulting in the revictimization of the victim and a slap on the wrist for the attacker, if that.  That is if we read about these cases at all.  Most of the time when we hear anything about them it is because the victim comes forward to try and hold their university accountable for improper handling of cases, inaction, or the fostering of an environment that does not address the issue of rape culture.  It is everywhere.

It is everywhere and I think it starts in casual conversation.  This shit is so ingrained in our culture it is amazing.  The number of times I have tried to stand up for myself in public or at my work when someone has made an inappropriate comment to me and I have been told to “relax” is unreal.  I should not have to ignore poor behavior because me calling someone out might hurt their feelings.  You know what?  You calling me baby, telling me to smile, and whispering “God bless you” in my ear as you walk by didn’t exactly make me feel good.  We should be able to stand up for ourselves.  We should not be made to feel as though we are overreacting.  We should not have to justify our anger and hurt and fear.  This case with the general is so upsetting because it is simply another example of people not being held accountable for sexual misconduct.  It is another example of women being second guessed and doubted and told that their bodies are not protected.  Not on the streets, not in college and not in the armed forces.  It is fucked up and it simply has to stop.  When are we going to treat sexual violence, threats, assault, misconduct with the seriousness that it deserves?

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Change is A’Comin

16 Mar

I have been doing quite a bit of thinking over the past few weeks.  My life has been in a certain amount of upheaval, in a good way I think.  It’s funny the way that we almost predict things before they happen.  I remember sitting with one of my best friends, a massively important part of my chosen family really, and saying to her that I felt like I was waking up day after day and not getting anywhere.  Like, I could go to sleep 30 and wake up 26, look around and things would look more or less the same.  I mean, obviously that’s not exactly the truth.  A lot has happened in the past 4 years.  I have met a lot of people, gotten my Master’s degree, started this blog, gotten into a serious relationship.  But in many ways I felt as though I had been running in place.  People would ask me what was new and I felt I could just shrug my shoulders and, to me, that felt like a pretty accurate representation of what had been happening since whenever it was that we last spoke.  But then I went ahead and I burned the whole thing down.

A few weeks ago I was thinking back to what a bad ass I was in high school.  I was so fucking principled and like, I just didn’t give a fuck.  I mean, not that I would hurt people without thinking twice about it, but I always sort of felt like when I was right I was right and authority could suck it.  I didn’t speak my mind for the sake of it, because I thought it was fun or something.  I would say something when I thought, for whatever reason, that it needed saying.  Like the time I got kicked out of homeroom for refusing to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance because I didn’t understand why I should be forced to acknowledge the existence of a god I didn’t know I believed in.  Or the time I got my chemistry teacher fired for reading our grades out loud in class and throwing a chair, not all on the same day.  Or the time I marched myself into the principal’s office, slammed down my AP scores and chastised him for having the nerve to disallow students from challenging themselves because he was afraid of how anything less than a 5 on those AP tests would effect our school’s ranking on some bullshit list of the best public schools in the country.  Seriously, what’s education if your educators tell you you’re too stupid to try something that might be hard?  I mean, these were all sort of silly little things I got all upset about for whatever reason but I got upset and then I said something.  Over the years though I have become slightly more pragmatic, thinking about the long term effects of saying something versus the importance of standing up for something you believe in.  Although that might be a good thing some times, it made me lose sight of myself a little and now, at 30, I want a little piece of my 16-year-old self back.

At some point over the past however many years I decided that my own feelings about things were sort of irrelevant, as long as other people felt good.  I would sort of tie myself in knots in an ill-fated effort to make sure everyone around me felt happy and supported.  The thing about it though is that you simply cannot make everyone happy all the time and if you try, well then you are just a fool.  There are people that will just keep taking and never return the favor.  There are red flags that shoot up in certain relationships that just cannot be ignored forever because those people will turn their backs on you when you finally need something in return.  And then there are those people, some of whom have been there all along and some who come out of nowhere, that step up to fill in the gaps.  I don’t know, people are surprising.

So here is what I have realized.  Putting everyone before yourself is stupid because it leaves you completely hallowed out and incapable of asking for anything in return.  I think that keeping this blog has really been an exercise in reteaching myself that lesson.  I sit at my computer and write about my experiences in the most accurate way possible.  I try and be kind, unless of course I am recounting some story about someone being an asshole in which case kindness is really an afterthought. Honestly, I believe when people are cruel they should be held accountable.  Anyway, then I publish it and let people read it on their own.  I like to think that my going through life, trying to be as decent a person as I can be is enough information for people to understand that my motives in writing are never to be mean or hurtful.  The reality that I need to remind myself of is that just as I bring my own experiences to the table when I write what I do, other people bring their own experiences when they read it.  I cannot expect people to interpret my words the way I want them to.  When I put my words out there, it is entirely out of my hands.  People are going to take from it what they take from it and I have to be okay with that.  Sometimes people are going to feel hurt, even if I do everything in my power to keep that from happening.  It is, unfortunately, inevitable. And so I have to stop beating myself up about it and just realize I cannot be in control of how people see me and think of me.  All I can do is go through life trying to be as good as I can without compromising myself in the process.

So here’s what I am going to do.  I am going to go back to the version of me that didn’t get anxious about people being upset with me all the time.  I’m going to stand up for myself in my relationships more than I have over the past few years.  I am not going to just sit idly by while my life just sort of happens.  If something isn’t working for me, I am going to change it.  And all the while I will try and write about it here.  So, wish me luck and hopefully you’ll all still like me.  If not?  Well, I don’t know.  I guess we will cross that bridge when and if we come to it.

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To the jerk who wrote an “inspirational” letter on Facebook

13 Mar

You know what I am really good at?  Blogging as a procrastination technique.  Seriously.  I haven’t much felt like blogging recently because my life is slightly, shall we say, out of sorts.  Right now, however, when I have an article to write for a website that is not my own (and no I am not getting paid for it because, seriously, who needs money?) seems like a wonderful time to post something here.  Where, by the way, I am also not getting paid.  So, okay, let’s do this.

A few days ago, someone I went to high school with but haven’t spoken to since then (and, in fact, I am not entirely sure I ever spoke to her then either…social media is so weird) posted a link to an article called “To the fatty running on the track this afternoon.”  It was a link to some status message written by an anonymous Facebook user and then posted on a website called “Closer” which I have never read and, if this is a sample of the sorts of things this website has to offer I will never read again.  Anyway, the introduction to the post was as follows:

“The message begins in a typically condescending manner. It accuses the overweight runner of ‘footslogging in the wrong direction’, calls them out for wanting to ‘stop twice a lap’ and points out the ‘sweat’ that ‘drenches’ their body.

“But then, all of a sudden, the tone changes – and we find ourselves confronted with a seriously inspirational messages for all the would-be runners out there.”

So it leaves you thinking, how in the world could someone turn a post entitled “To the fatty running on the track this afternoon” into something even moderately supportive and encouraging?  The short answer is that they can’t.  Here is the full text of the original Facebook post:

“To the fatty running on the Westview track this afternoon:

You, whose feet barely lift off the ground as you trudge around the track.  You, who keeps to the outside lane, footslogging in the wrong direction.  You, who stops for water breaks every lap, and who would probably stop twice a lap if there were bleachers on both sides.  You, whose gaze drops to your feet every time we pass.  You, whose sweat drenches your body after your leave, completing only a single, 20-minute mile.

There’s something you should know:  You fucking rock.

Every shallow step you take, you carry the weight of more than two of me, clinging to your bones, begging to be shaken off.  Each lap you run, you’re paying off the debt of another midnight snack, another dessert, another beer.  It’s 20 degrees outside, but you haven’t let that stop your regimen. This isn’t your first day out here, and it certainly won’t be your last.  You’ve started a journey that lasts a lifetime, and you’ve started at least 12 days before your New Year’s resolution kicks in.  You run without music and I can only imagine the mantras running through your mind as you heave your ever-shrinking mass around the next lap.  Let’s go, feet.  Shut up, legs.  Fuck off, fat.  If you’d only look up from your feet the next time we pass, you’d see my gaze has no condescension in it.

I have nothing but respect for you.  You’ve got this.”

Oh god, where to start.  I am a runner.  I am a runner because it feels good, it makes me happy, it clears my head, and it is inclusive of just about anyone.*  I am a runner who is constantly impressed by the kindness and support shown by runners to runners and that is why this ridiculous “inspirational” message really made me mad.  Here’s what I want to say to the person who wrote that note:

The person to whom you wrote this does not need your approval or permission to do what they are already doing.  The person to whom you wrote this does not need you to tell them that their fat does not bother you because clearly, it does.  What you consider inspirational, drips with disapproval, judgement and, yes, condescension.  It is your attitude, and attitudes like yours, that make people ashamed of their bodies and afraid to start running, afraid to start doing many things.  Who cares if this runner stops for water breaks every lap? I do that.  And you know what?  Sometimes I also wish there were bleachers on both sides of the track.  You know why?  Because running is hard.  It is hard and it is tiring.  And yet I don’t see you writing a letter to me.  Ask yourself why.

Why is it that you feel the need to calculate how many times you would fit under this other runner’s skin?  Why do you feel the need to judge this person for how long it takes them to run a mile?  How dare you assume that this person is somehow paying off a debt for calories consumed.  How dare you assign mantras to someone else and assume to know what motivates them.  I said this before and I will say it again, it is people like you, and attitudes like yours, that make people ashamed of their bodies.  This is not inspirational.  This is called fat shaming.

Let me share with you something that is actually inspirational.  I wish I could find the direct quote but a summary will just have to do.  A few years ago I was reading the interviews of some of the elite athletes following the New York City Marathon.  A reporter sat down with one of the men who finished on the podium and said something along the lines of “you run so fast.  You are just such an inspiration.”  The runner, a man who was at the top of his field in an incredibly difficult and punishing sport said the following:

“I am not inspirational.  I am only out there on my feet for a little over 2 hours.  It is the people that are pounding away for 3, 4, 5, 6 or more hours that are the real inspiration.”

This runner did not need to point out how much more talented he is than the rest of the field, how much faster, thinner, more athletic.  This is a man who just achieved an incredible goal, and instead of making the moment about himself, he deflected it to include everyone who completed the race that day.  That is called grace. That is something that made me want to lace my running shoes up right then and there. It made me feel like what I do day after day, what so many of us do no matter how fast or slow we do it, is amazing.

Listen, I know the sentiment of this letter was not malicious but what came through was insanely unkind.  I am glad that you feel proud of yourself for being the bigger person and supporting a “fatty.”  I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself.  But you know what?  You sound like a dick.  I hope you take a step back and really think about what your letter says about you and about the way our society treats people who are deemed to be “footslogging” their “mass” around the world, a constant reminder of the “debt” accrued from years of what you seem to think of as irresponsible overindulgence.  This is a person you are writing this letter to, a person who is deserving of respect and not judgement.  This letter is a perfect example of the fucked up way we think about bodies and what we consider supportive within the realm of fitness.  I don’t know.

It is things like this that make me doubt the way I feel about the running community as a whole.  For me, it is not about being better than others, faster than them, thinner.  It is about all of us being out there, propelling ourselves forward using only our bodies.  That’s an incredible thing.  We are all out there, we are all working, and we are all deserving of support.  Just hold the judgement.

Update:  My friend Julie just shared with me a blog written by a man speaking on behalf of the person to whom the Facebook message was directed.  His name is Tony Posnanski and he is awesome.  Read his blog.  It is WAY better than mine.  Keep on loggin’ those miles and sharing your journey, man.

*I know there are issues of safety, access and serious injury that do bar some people from enjoying the sport.  But by and large, I think that just about anyone who wants to do it, can do it.

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A Letter to my Dad on his Birthday

9 Mar

Sorry my blog has been so quiet as of late. It’s been a stressful few weeks and also I just got back from a week long trip in Peru!  It was so fun.  Stay tuned for some adventure stories but for now, I have someone important to write about.  My dad.  Today is my dad’s birthday, AKA the second best day of the year (the first best obviously being my birthday which, in case you were wondering when to send gifts, is on July 19th), and so I figured I would write him a letter.  So, here goes.

Dear Daaaaad,

First thing first: happy, happy, happy birthday.  Since you are not having a big birthday party this year and I therefore don’t get the chance to bail you out of a botched speech with my own impromptu genius, I figured the next best thing would be to write you a letter.  You, Dad, are one of my favorite people in the world.  I’m sure there were times growing up when I was mad at you or when we got in fights or maybe when, in the heat of the moment, I told you that I hated you, something which all children do at some point I think, but sitting here at my computer right now I cannot conjure a single negative memory.  There are plenty of things that I do remember, however.  I remember us watching PeeWee together and am still sad I couldn’t get us tickets to his one man show on Broadway.  I remember us going to the car dealership to buy something moderately practical for a family of five and ending up returning home with a Mercedes convertible with only two seats.  I remember us, year after year, going shopping for mom’s presents at the last possible moment and always coming back with something awesome.  I remember watching that episode of Ren and Stimpy where there is a fire in the building and this woman is throwing all these things out of the window – an elephant, her huge baby, a walrus, herself – and laughing so hard that we cried.  I remember the countless pep talks you have given me over the years when I have had a hard time and doubted myself.  I remember sock puppet which, I believe, is still stuck in the pocket of one of your jackets, just waiting to make another appearance or brag about another trip to the Bahamas.  I remember us sneaking off in Disney World and going to eat sushi, coming up with the genius code word “the booths” so Mom and Lucy wouldn’t know where we were.  I remember your swordfish license plate.  I remember labeling all my leftovers “Dad: Do Not Eat!” so I wouldn’t come home with expectations of delicious food and find, well, nothing.  More than anything else, I just remember laughing.

I know that there are other dads in the world who are great, but I think Lucy, Aaron, Claire and I really got the best one.  There are so many people who didn’t have fathers, who didn’t or don’t have good relationships with theirs, and I really cannot imagine what that must have been like for them, what that continues to be like.  I just feel so god damn lucky.  When I think about the things that I have done and the person who I am, a person that I am proud to be, I really think that so much of the credit for all of that has to go to you and to Mom.  You guys created such a loving and supportive household, a place I am still so happy to return to.  You guys created an environment where, as long as I was trying and as long as I was kind, you would always be proud.  I know, no matter what I do in life I will always have the two of you in my corner cheering me on when things are great and cheering me up when they aren’t.

So, thank you, Dad. I know you know how much I love you, but sometimes it is just nice to have it in writing.  You are the best Dad, and one of the best people, in the entire world.  So happy birthday, Dad.  Here’s to so many more years of laughter.

Love always

Bekaaaaaah

PS  King Triton doesn’t have shit on you.

PPS  Where is that star tie I gave you for your birthday in the 2nd grade?  Best tie ever.

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A Piece of Advice: Don’t Mace Yourself in the Face.

28 Feb

So tomorrow I am leaving for a week long trip to Peru with my friend Carrie.  I decided that now, the day before I leave, would probably be the right time to start packing for my trip.  So, I burrowed into the closet and found my backpacking bag and pulled it out only to discover that I never actually fully unpacked the bag from my trip to India…a trip I took in the summer of 2011. In case you were wondering, that trip occurred approximately 2.5 years ago.  So, you know, clearly I am a responsible and reasonable adult.  Anyway do you know what I found in there??  Aside from my Chaco sandals and a pair of super old running shoes I discovered mace in a pink leather holster sort of thing gifted to me by my awesome and hilarious friend Kendra.  So now let us take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

Kendra gifted me my stylish mace one night when we were out having a drink.  Or maybe she gave it to me and then I went and had a drink.  I guess it really isn’t important.  The important part of the story is that I walked to my house 10 blocks from the F and G stop with my mace, slightly inebriated, all the while wondering what I would do if someone were to approach me in an intimidating manner.  I decided that when I got home the first order of business was to make sure my mace worked and figure out how to spray a possible assailant quickly and efficiently.

Fast forward about 10 minutes.

I could hardly contain my excitement!  I got home, took the mace out of its cute little pink house, and looked at the instruction booklet.  It said not to spray the mace into the wind because it would be blown right back into your own face.  Not ideal.  It was a little windy and I didn’t trust myself, in that state, to figure out the direction the wind was coming from.  So, sadly, I put my mace back in its house and moped my way up the stairs.  But I had to know if it worked!  I just had to!  So you know what I did?  I went into the bathroom and sprayed the mace into the sink.

So you know something about sinks?  They are bowled which means that if you spray an aerosol thing into them the spray just sort of bounces off the sink and, you guessed it, goes directly into your face.  Do you know what hurts?  Getting maced in the face.  Do you know what makes you an idiot?  Macing yourself in the face in the bathroom.

So, just let that sink in (no pun intended) and remember:  I did this so you don’t have to.

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#TBT to April 2002

27 Feb

You guys!  I wrote this in college!  When I was 21 years old! Man was it tough to be me back then.  I did a pinch of editing to make a few things more clear but this is HILARIOUS.  Also, incredibly dated.

Harsh Realities of Theft Jade Trinity Students
April 16, 2002 <—- I feel so old now!!

In my high school, as well as all other high schools across the nation, we had fire drills once every other month to make sure the students could exit the building quickly and to ensure that all the alarms and lights were in proper order. After the tragic events at Columbine High School, my school even had a few bomb threats by sick students who wanted a laugh at everyone else’s expense. Whether we were out on the football field for 2 minutes or 2 hours, the actions by the students were always the same. Instead of worrying about our own safety and quickly fleeing the “burning” building, every one of us opened our backpacks and grabbed our expensive TI-83 calculators and whatever pricey items we happened to be carrying with us. The “leave everything behind” rule just didn’t apply.This may seem silly to people reading this, but in my graduating class we were lucky enough to have a few “businessmen” who came up with the ingenious idea of stealing people’s calculators and posting them on E-bay. It was pretty much guaranteed that if your calculator was suddenly missing, you could go online the next day and locate it and, in effect, buy it back for about half of what you originally paid. So, coming from a town where your belongings weren’t safe during fire drills, I was pretty much used to the idea of people stealing.

When I decided to come to Trinity, my father gave me a few helpful pieces of advice. He told me to never walk alone, never talk to strangers, don’t take drinks from people I don’t know, and never leave anything of value unattended. I rolled my eyes, as daughters normally do in situations such as these, and disregarded the entire conversation with a quick smile and the ever popular response, “whatever, Dad.” I should have known that, as I have been told my entire life, my father is always right.

Up until a few days ago, I had kept track of virtually everything I arrived with, save a few t-shirts and socks that mysteriously disappeared in the black hole that is the Little laundry room.

Unfortunately for me, everything changed one day this spring. During the half hour break from my 3 hour long design class, me and a couple of friends wandered over to the Bistro to rest our eyes from the tedious work of gluing pieces of wood together or hanging paper clips from a piece of masking tape. Not wanting to return to the shack that houses our classroom, we hung out in the Bistro for a few minutes longer.

When we finally returned to our classroom, I opened my backpack to get my discman and CD’s. To my utter dismay, they were nowhere to be found. It appeared as though someone had forgotten to lock the door to the class and a person, either a resident of Hartford or a student at Trinity had come in off Vernon Street and snatched my discman, all my CD’s, a wallet, and smashed an art project.

I stared in disbelief for a few minutes and then ran over to my friend and asked her if I was blind or if my belongings actually were gone.  Unfortunately, my eyesight was as good as ever. After standing silently for a few minutes, I, with another member of the class, went over to Campus Safety and reported the incident. By the sound of their voices there seemed to be nothing they could do to help me. I talked to my teacher and gained permission to leave class early to call my parents and grieve the loss of my belongings.

After an hour or so of sitting in my room fuming, I decided the only thing I could do to relax was to run off all my aggressions at the gym. I quickly changed into my work-out clothes, grabbed a water, and, forgetting the reason I was going to the gym, looked over at my desk for my discman. It obviously wasn’t there. Reminded of the horrible events of that afternoon, I stormed over to the gym and jumped onto one of the free treadmills. As I was running, I thought about the days when I would grab for my calculator before leaving for a fire drill and wished, sadly enough, that I trusted the people of Hartford (or Trinity) as little as I did the kids in my high school graduating class.

And then the words dreaded by all teen-agers popped into my head: “If only I had listened to my father.”

I guess the moral of this article is that as much as you think it can never happen to you, it can. Your belongings might not be sold on E-bay, but nothing will stop someone from taking what isn’t theirs.  So, until we come up with another penal colony somewhere, keep an eye on your belongings, even if that means grabbing them during a fire drill.

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Something About Me

16 Feb

You guys?  I like the opera.  It’s true!  I have gone to the opera twice in the last year or so and I liked it both times!  If I had told my 15-year-old self, or even my 25-year-old self, this bit of information both of those selves, and all the selves in between, probably would have laughed and said something along the lines of

“Why in the world would you want to sit in a room and listen to people yodel for 4 hours?”

Here’s the thing.  Opera singers, as it turns out, do not yodel.  To be fair, I don’t think I ever thought they actually yodeled, I think it was just my way of being a dismissive asshole.  Kids, you know?  (Also maybe 25-year-olds?)

Anyway so last night my friend Dee took me to see Rusalka at The Metropolitan Opera and it was really great.  Here are some facts:

–> Rusalka, by Antonin Dvorak,* is one of the most successful Czech operas.

–> The story-line was written by the poet Jaroslav Kvapil based on fairy tales by Karel Jaromir Erben and Bozena Nemcova.

–> As if we didn’t all know this already, fairy tales are deeply disturbing.

–>A ‘Rusalka,’ in Slavic mythology, is a water sprite who most often lives in a lake or a river.

As one might assume, the character Rusalka in Rusalka is a water nymph and a lot of the staging takes place in and around a neat little lake thing.  Set designers are really unbelievable.  I think maybe I will be a set designer in my next life.  The basic story is that Rusalka, stuck in the depths of the lake, falls in love with a human and goes to the witch Jezibaba to be turned into a human so that she can experience the love of her prince.  Jezibaba says that in return Rusalka must give up her voice.  Obviously I was having flashbacks to The Little Mermaid through the entire opera which kind of made me feel like a bad person and also very deeply American.  (I know it was written by Hans Christian Anderson [a Dutchman!] but all I can think of is Walt Disney.)  I kept imagining Jezibaba with 8 arms.  Sadly, or happily maybe, she only had two and that did not change at any point during the performance.  There was scandal!  There was cheating!  There was heartbreak!  There was serious repetition of the words ‘alas’ and ‘woe.’  I’m not going to give away the particularities of the ending just in case you want to see it, but if you want a clue just imagine what would have happened had The Little Mermaid taken an incredibly tragic turn and someone died.  It really had to happen that way because, as far as I can tell, a good opera has a very drawn-out death scene.  It’s not an opera unless someone lies crumpled on the ground, vocal cords exhausted, when the final curtain falls.

Unlike The Little Mermaid, Rusalka was 4 hours long with two intermissions.  Dee and I got “seats” in the Family Circle which basically meant we were relegated to standing at the tippy top of the theater leaning on carpeted platforms that had the little translation screens embedded in them.  (Note to anyone who decides to go see it: be careful that you don’t hit the button to the right of the screen with your elbow and spend the first 10 minutes of the performance trying to decipher the songs sung in Russian using German subtitles.  There are English subtitles.  I went through this so you don’t have to.)  You might think “ugh, how awful!  What a waste of money!”  Well, you would be wrong!  It is true, we couldn’t make out facial expressions or the details of the sets or costumes, but what we could do was hear the voices which, in opera, do not use any sort of amplification other than what is provided by the architecture of the theater itself.  We were standing SO HIGH and yet we could hear the performers’ voices over all the hundreds of people and seats and over all the instruments in the pit. And let me tell you there were a lot of instruments in there.  To think about it is really awe inspiring.

As a feminist there were parts of the story that I found problematic.  In modern parlance I would say that there was quite a bit of slut shaming throughout.  But the thing was written in the late 1890s so I really have to forgive it that.  It is interesting, though, to really think about how long the history of gender inequality is and how deeply our cultural understanding of the role of men and women really runs.  It makes people’s preconceived notions much more understandable, even though they are based in antiquated ideas and therefore should be challenged.  That particular problem aside, I thought the opera was lovely.  And I was impressed by the diversity of the crowd.  And I was very thankful that, at an institution as incredible and beautiful as The Met, I was able to go out for a magical and affordable night with one of my best girlfriends.  Let’s hope that great art always finds a way to be affordable for as many people as possible, even if it means 4 hours of standing.

So, yea, if you’re in New York, give the opera a whirl.  You won’t be disappointed.  Even if you find it’s not your thing, just bask in the incredible possibility of human talent and hard work.  It’ll take your breath away.

*I don’t know how to make all the appropriate accents and pronunciation marks over his name.  I am not good at technology.  Sorry, Dvorak.

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Happy Bloody Valentine’s Day, Folks.

14 Feb

It’s Valentine’s Day which, as far as I can tell, is just as good a day as any to get my blog rolling again.  So, here we go.  I have no plan (except to stir up zero controversy) so let’s just see where this takes us, shall we?

Things have been stressful around here recently but, never fear, while all of the stress has been raining (snowing?) down on my head, embarrassing things have not stopped happening to me.  I don’t know if you have noticed but embarrassing things happen to me often.  And I find that I become less embarrassed if, rather than skulking around feeling like an ass, I broadcast my embarrassment to all who feel compelled to read about it.

Before I continue I should probably let you know I am about to write about my period.  For those of you who are weird and don’t like reading about such things, you should maybe just stop reading now and then go in the other room and grow up a little.  Then come back and try again.  You’ll get there eventually.  I believe in you.  (Dad, maybe you get a free pass on this one.)

This past Tuesday I returned from my annual friends-visiting trip to New Orleans.  My period always comes on vacation.  Always.  No matter what time of the month I go, no matter when my last period was, it always always always comes.  I know this and yet I never pack accordingly.  It’s like a game of chicken I insist on playing and my period always wins.  Every single time.  When I was packing I even thought to myself, “Self, you should probably pack some tampons. Nah. There is no way it’ll come.” Stupid.  I was just like willing it to arrive.  Taunting it.  You know what periods don’t like?  Being taunted.  Take my word for it.  So there I was, on Monday morning, realizing that perhaps it was coming.  But did I do anything about it?  No, of course I didn’t.  I just went about my day, casually passing all manner of store, not stopping in to buy the appropriate gear.  I made it through Monday unscathed and then Tuesday came.  All morning I was good to go.  I decided that it would probably be in my best interest to buy a box of just-in-case tampons.  But I was on a time crunch so instead of walking to where I knew there was a pharmacy with all kinds of choices, I went to a little store in the Quarter to buy a box of “regular” tampons which, when I am in the midst of my flow, are utterly useless.  But did I think about that?  No.  And did I think about the impending danger when I put one, yes one, useless little tampon in my shoulder bag and the rest of the box in my bag that was checked under the plane?  No, if course I didn’t.  Because I am a smart and reasonable human being.  I bet you can guess what happened next.  But in case you can’t, I will tell you all about it.

Cue dramatic music.

It was exactly halfway through the flight when I decided to stretch my legs and take a walk down to the bathroom.  I stuck the one solitary tampon in my pocket and moseyed on down the aisle.  I got into the bathroom and wouldn’t you know it, blood everywhere.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is my worst nightmare.  Being on an airplane in a teeny tiny bathroom with a toilet that I am always afraid is going to suck me in and spit me out into the open air, impossible to use sinks, no maneuvering room, clothes packed up and locked under the plane, and one stupid ass tampon with the absorbancy of a fucking cotton ball.  Obviously I had a mini panic attack.  And of course there were like three dudes waiting to get into the bathroom when I emerged after trying, in vain, to blot all the blood away.  And to bring the trio of terrible home, there was only one female flight attendant and she was without supplies.  I took a stack of napkins to sit on for the rest of the flight in an effort to not run the upholstery.  She looked on in pity and said “we’ve all been there.”  I don’t know if we’ve all sat in a pool of our own blood on the plane for over an hour, but I appreciated the sentiment.

And then the plane landed. Hurrah!  I felt lucky that I had worn my darkest pair of jeans but sad that my sense of style did not allow me the foresight to wear a long enough top to cover my ass.  I also cursed the vanity that simply would not allow me to tie my sweatshirt around my waist.  I figured if I walked really fast to the bathroom people would be none the wiser.  Only do you know what they no longer have in the bathrooms at John F Kennedy International Airport?  Tampon and pad vending machine things.  Do they think only bionic and pre and post-menopausal women travel by air?!  Clearly yes.  Obviously all of the women in the bathroom fit into the latter category.  As I ran to the door to go to my flight’s assigned carrousel to check and see if my bag had miraculously not been the last one to emerge from the depths of the plane, a woman appeared, as if from heaven itself, and handed me a pad.  Oh, happy day!  Of course I was wearing a (ruined) thong which meant that when I stuck the pad to my underwear and walked around it just burrowed further and further up my ass.  Not terribly comfortable but better than blood dripping down my legs, am I right?

Anyway, I retrieved my bag, got in a cab, got home, threw my underwear out, used that shout stain guard stuff that works pretty well and also gets this song stuck in my head for days (still singing it!), and took a shower.  I haven’t had the guts to look at my pants to see whether or not they are ruined foreva.  They probably are.  And that, my friends, is what happens when you taunt Aunt Flo.  She eats you alive.

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