83
" I usually enjoy setting up a new kitchen, but this has become a joyless and highly charged task. My mother and I each have our own set of kitchen boxes, which means that if there are two cheese graters between us, only one will make it into a cupboard. The other will be put back in a box or given to Goodwill. Each such little decision has the weight of a Middle East negotiation. While her kitchenware is serviceable, I’m a sucker for the high end: All-Clad saucepans and Emile Henry pie dishes. Before long, I’m shaking my head at pretty much everything my mother removes from her San Diego boxes. She takes each rejected item as a personal slight – which in fact it is. I begrudge her even her lightweight bowls, which she can lift easily with her injured hand. Here she is, a fragile old woman barely able to bend down as she peers into a low cupboard, looking for a place where she can share life with her grown daughter. At such a sight my heart should be big, but it’s small, so small that when I see her start stuffing her serving spoons into the same drawer as my own sturdy pieces, lovingly accumulated over the years, it makes me crazy. Suddenly I’m acting out decades of unvoiced anger about my mother’s parenting, which seems to be materializing in the form of her makeshift collection of kitchenware being unpacked into my drawers. When I became a mother myself, I developed a self-righteous sense of superiority to my mother: I was better than my mother, for having successfully picked myself up and dusted myself off, for never having lain in bed for days on end, too blotto to get my child off to school or even to know if it was a school day. By sheer force of will and strength of character, I believed, I had risen above all that she succumbed to and skirted all that I might have inherited. This, of course, is too obnoxiously smug to say in words. So I say it with flatware. "
88
" The odd sensation I had while cooking would often last through the meal, then dissolve as I climbed the stairs. I would enter my room and discover the homework books I had left on the bed had disappeared into my backpack. I’d look inside my books and be shocked to find that the homework had been done. Sometimes it had been done well, at others it was slapdash, the writing careless, my own handwriting but scrawled across the page.
As I read the work through, I would get the creepy feeling that someone was watching me. I would turn quickly, trying to catch them out, but the door would be closed. There was never anyone there. Just me. My throat would turn dry. My shoulders would feel numb. The tic in my neck would start dancing as if an insect was burrowing beneath the surface of the skin. The symptoms would intensify into migraines that lasted for days and did not respond to treatment or drugs. The attack would come like a sudden storm, blow itself out of its own accord or unexpectedly vanish.
Objects repeatedly went missing: a favourite pen, a cassette, money. They usually turned up, although once the money had gone it had gone for ever and I would find in the chest of drawers a T-shirt I didn’t remember buying, a Depeche Mode cassette I didn’t like, a box of sketching pencils, some Lego. "
― , Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
92
" -Now the paperwork – -What if I don’t want to do the Ultimate, right away? Maybe I want to ease into this thing gently.-No you don’t.-I might. I might just want to ease into the activity, the idea of it.-it’ll be fine, said Rebecca.-you will be fine, and no regrets, honestly. Jillian took me over to the desk.-No possible regrets, said Rebecca, just sign this, she handed me a sheaf of forms.-Jesus I don’t want to buy the place, I scanned the pages – 45 pages.-just fill in page 25 through28 and sign.-Pages 25 through 28, what is this?Rebecca took the pages of forms from my hand – look its simple stuff, here we’ll read it through. Jillian looked over her shoulder at the pages-weight?-what?- Say 110, Jillian said.-Height?-5’ 8’’, Jillian again.-Hair length?-What? Why?-Long, Jillian again.-Cup size?- O come on.- say C-how about say nothing, I was getting angry-Shaved or bikini or natural?-Fuck offRebecca ticked a box anyway – well she was at the waxing too. Why ask in fact?-Last menstrual cycle?- enough, enough, give me those papers-Yes ignore that, said Rebecca taking the pages away from my grasping hand-Tested? she said this to Jillian-Tested? What tested? What do you mean tested?-Yes, said Jillian, I forwarded a blood sample from the main island-You what!-You were sleeping.-Great now sign here, Rebecca handed me a page and a pen-Who has blood samples for a theme park?-Everyone-especially the staff, can’t have mi’lady getting STDsI took a breath-This is getting a bit weird guys are you sure? I mean, well this is a bit, weird.-We’re 100 and a million per cent sure, said Jillian- 100 million per cent, said Rebecca "
95
" It's not such a huge deal when this happens at a 7-Eleven. It's pretty huge, though, when you spend the entire job interview trying not to come across like a box of hair and you come across like a box of hair. "
― Augusten Burroughs , This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.
97
" Checking a box on a form for race—" Caucasian," " Hispanic," " African-American," " Native American," or " Asian-American" —is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, " American" is not a race, so labels such as " Asian-American" and " African-American" are still exhibits of our confusion of culture and race. For another thing, how far back does one go in history? Native Americans are really Asians, if you go back more than twenty or thirty thousand years to before they crossed the Bering land bridge between Asia and America. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace " Native American" with " African-Asian-Native American." Finally, if the Out of Africa (single racial origin) theory holds true, then all modern humans are from Africa. (Cavalli-Sforza now thinks this may have been as recently as seventy thousand years ago.) Even if that theory gives way to the Candelabra (multiple racial origins) theory, ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to " African-American. "
98
" In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested -- citing most often the offence of impossible proportions -- that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike for their Barbie dolls, with no other toy or brand name inspiring such a negative response from the children. The dolls " provoked rejection, hatred, and violence" and many girls preferred Barbie torture -- by cutting, burning, decapitating, or microwaving -- over other ways of playing with the doll. Reasons that the girls hated their Barbies included, somewhat poetically, the fact that they were 'plastic.' The researchers also noted that the girls never spoke of one single, special Barbie, but tended to talk about having a box full of anonymous Barbies. 'On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate,' one of the researchers remarked. 'She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture. "
99
" Dear Matt,
In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours!
You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you.
But you don’ t say anything.
Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy?
Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know?
No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did!
She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise.
Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always.
I’m going to find some red sea glass for you.
I miss you more than you could ever know.
Love,
Anna "
― Sarah Ockler , Twenty Boy Summer
