I meant to do a post about Christmas, but that never happened. Sorry. I’ll try next year, I promise. This week was just a little hectic.
Not because of the normal “getting ready for Christmas” stuff, though I did have that, too. This week (and the beginning of next week) is Vacation Club for the Y After School Program. That means that all three programs in my town are in one elementary school. Granted, some kids don’t come at all, and most kids don’t come every day, so it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s not like the shit show it was on the 17th when it snowed and my town cancelled all after school activities, which meant none of the three programs could be at their regular school. They were all at the Y. The other times this happens are known in advance, and some kids don’t come (like the day before Thanksgiving, for instance). Not that day. That day, there were a billion kids and no one had more than two hours notice to pack up their program, figure out a plan with their staff, and reroute the buses and get all the necessary filed and such to the big Y. This was far better executed, but still not my idea of a super great time.
I’m not a morning person, and the program is open 7:30-5:45 all during vacation (except Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, when we’re opened till 2:00). I guess I lucked out, because I thought we’d all have to be there from open to close unless something epic came up, but I was wrong. I was in at 9:00 and off at 5:15 on Monday, had the good fortune to be off on Tuesday, and I was/am in at 8:30 and off at 5:00 the rest of vacation. 8:30 is hideously early for me to have myself together and be somewhere, but I’ve done it, and I haven’t been late.
The nice part is there are a bunch of teachers around, and usually the directors of all three programs are there. We also get a half hour break for lunch, and we don’t have to deal with kids! The kind of icky part was that they incorporated all the programs, so I have kindergartners like I usually do, but I had all the kindergartners in all three programs, so I only knew some of the kids, and the kids from different programs didn’t know each other (because kindergarten is the youngest you can be to be in the program). But now I’m going to miss the kids from the other two programs when I come back from residency at my Master’s program. Except for one, which I have mixed feelings about.
He apparently goes to a therapeutic school, because he can’t handle a regular school. What? What the hell does that mean? But I soon saw. He has major anger issues, as in if you tell him to stop playing with the foldaway wall and sit down, he tells you he is getting really mad, then runs away somewhere, lies down, and screams and thrashes on the floor. Or, if you’re really lucky, you’re in close enough proximity to him that he hurls himself at you, and you have to do your best to restrain him or he may do you and himself serious damage. The weird thing is, when he’s not mad, he’s really sweet. But he and his older brother can’t be together in the program, because about 90% of the time, they end up fighting each other. What the hell?
So the director of the program he’s in also told me that it’s known by both children that their father (who is not with the mother) only loves the kindergartner, not the other child, and so only sees my kid, not the other one. Excuse me? I don’t know how someone could even vocalize that to their ex spouse/partner/whatever kind of relationship the parents had, let alone the kids.
Ugh. So I do the best I can do, watching this kid out of the corner of my eye always, and trying to be as nice as I can so I don’t set him off. He’s decided he likes me (sometimes), and he’ll ask to sit on my lap or ask me to pick him up and hold him. Once I do that, it’s hard to remove him. Which is mostly okay, because I usually have another teacher with my group, so she can deal with things that I can’t right then.
Only yesterday was a little scary. My group had free choice, so some kids were playing dress up, I was playing UNO with a kid, another kid was playing with these magnetic building block things, and the others were playing a game with another teacher. There was a third teacher kind of surveying everything, but of course, when everyone’s eyes were off the dress up kids, the problem child punched a kid in the face. This poor kid comes out crying, and he had some pink around his eye, so I had no doubt he was telling the truth. I try to tell the problem child to put down what he’s playing with, and come out of the room to have a time out against the wall for a second.
He threatens to throw the phone at me. Now, this wasn’t a play phone. It was a legit phone that at one point had a cord running into the wall and people could call actual people on it. Absolutely not. And there were still other kids in the room. So I hustle over there, and he drops it. Good. He also starts to the thrashing thing. So I wrap my arms around him, and end up with my hands around his wrists somehow. All I know is, I can’t let him hurt the other kids or himself. I don’t really care about me, I’ve had worse things happen than a bear-hugged five year old trying to hurt me. So another teacher gets the other kids out of the room, and he’s still screaming and thrashing, and eventually it ends up with him on the floor kicking, and me trying to hold his legs down. Miraculously, he had kind of given up on his arms at that point, but before he was on the floor he managed to slap my collarbone good a few times, and get some little kid kicks in at my stomach. Lovely.
So two of the directors happen upon us (I can only imagine the racket we were making, and if they didn’t hear it, I’m sure one of the teachers with me flagged them down), and the director of my program takes over. But right before they arrive, he’s begging me to let him go, and I tell him I can’t, he might hurt himself or someone else and I can’t let that happen. I tell him it’s not okay to tell people you’ll throw things at them, or to kick and slap them. I tell him I don’t like being slapped. He mishears me and says it’s good that I like being slapped, because he wants to slap and kick me for trying to put him in time out. I correct him. Enter the two directors.
I had to write up an incident report, and the kid’s father got called and told he had to come pick him up. All three directors asked me if I needed a few minutes, but honestly I didn’t. If I sat by myself, I would have just gotten more and more angry that this kid thought he could freak out that badly over a time out, and equally angry at the adults in his life who hadn’t taught him better than that. Instead, I had gone back to playing UNO with a kid who sadly isn’t in my program, but many times that day told me he loved me, and earlier that day had told me I was the best teacher ever. That’s what I want to do after dealing with a kid filled with so much rage. I want to be near someone with that much positive feeling for me.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, and though I by and large love my job, I’m kind of dreading seeing that kid again. I am definitely not going to pick him up or let him sit in my lap until he apologizes to me, which I feel may never happen. I’ll miss the kids who aren’t in my program, but it will be a relief to not have to be so vigilant. Of course kids get into stuff they shouldn’t and push the envelope on what they can get away with, but no one in my program has rage problems like that, and it will be nice to have a break from that.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
New job, yay!
I somehow let a whole month go by without updating..tsk tsk. To be fair, I had a lot going on. I had to finish up my third semester of grad school, and I also started a new job, which is what we’ll focus on today, boys and girls.
Yes indeed, I quit my minimum wage job at Dollar Tree and now make slightly above minimum wage as an Assistant Group Leader for the after school program run by the YMCA. The Y has six programs, three in my town (which is where the Y is also located), two in an adjacent town, and one in a second adjacent town. My program is run in the cafeteria and surrounding hallway of the middle school I myself attended from 1999-2002. It’s the same building, only the caf has a garish mural of anime students eating assorted pieces of lunch. I mean like a sandwich with no plate and no visible drink or even lunch box the sandwich presumably came from. I don’t really remember, but I think the underneath coat of paint is the same color. The most vivid memories I have are of when it was dimly lit, anyway (ie a dance).
So in this program, there are somewhere in the vicinity of forty kids. My group is made up of mostly kindergartners (the youngest students allowed in the program). I have a first grader or two and a second grader also. I’m glad I have them and not the older kids, though sometimes the simplicity of projects frustrates me, as does the fact that most of the kids need help with these projects. But they’re so darn cute.
What we basically do in the program is show up at two o’clock and start wheeling stuff from the “back room” to the caf. The “back room” is just that - it’s a creepy hallway-looking thing in the back of the closest classroom to the caf, which happens to be a Special Ed room at the moment. Most of the time there are students in the room, and they always seem to be dicking around. To be fair, the bell rings at 2:15, but really? I don’t recall having fifteen minutes at the end of the day to just sit around when I was in middle school. But what do I know?
So we wheel stuff out. Yes, you read that correctly. Every kid has a laundry basket with their name in it, and we line them all up along the walls. These laundry baskets are stacked on these little things with wheels that come to about 6" high. The name of them is escaping me right now and I’m going to feel really stupid when someone points it out. They’re like skateboards, but square? Whatever. So we have those laundry baskets, and we have a small bookshelf with wheels, on which we also keep a mat and pillows, and that becomes the library corner. Inside the baskets, we keep tri-fold posters, one of which has info parents might be interested in, one has lists of which kids are in which group accompanied by stars with teachers’ names (just not mine :( ), and a third one has anti-bullying messages on it. We’ll soon have a fourth which will always be season-specific. We also have a first aid kit (yes!), and a prize box for when kids are good.
Speaking of, we have this awesome chart. It’s blue at the top, then green, then yellow, then red. Each kid’s name is on a clothespin that gets attached to green (or “ready to go”) to start out with. If a kid is good, they stay on green. If they’re super good, they go up to blue, or “outstanding.” If they act up, they go on yellow, or “warning,” and if they keep being insufferable or else do something really bad, they go on red, or “parent contact.” We have little charts with animals on them, and the kids get one crossed off for finishing the day on green and two crossed off for finishing on blue. When the card is full, they get a prize from the prize box. So far so good.
We also have two fairly conspicuous chests in the caf. One of these contains board games, Legos, a toy grocery store, and the like. The other contains art supplies, from which we daily have to fill little containers with markers, colored pencils, and crayons to be put out at activity and arts and crafts tables. Usually one of them needs glue sticks and scissors.
The kids are bussed in from two elementary schools, and of course the junior high kids are already there. Once the elementary kids are all there, we do circle, where we read a book or do an ice-breaker like activity, then discuss the projects we’ll be doing that day. Then, the kids wash their hands and have snack. The teachers get to have snack too, which is (usually) awesome. We get these cute mini-milk cartons of either apple, fruit, or orange juice on any given day, and some sort of cracker/chip thing (like reduced fat Doritos, which we had today). I don’t like OJ and so far the only snacks I haven’t like are the bagel (but I kind of already knew that) and the Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos (fucking spicy).
After snack, we do some sort of physical activity, which thankfully for the time being no longer involves going outside. Today we played a cool game with the younger kids where they sat in a circle and one sat in the middle. That kid had their eyes closed while the others passed a key around behind their backs as music played. When the music stopped, the kid in the middle opened their eyes and got two guesses as to who had the key. Then, the person who had the key was in the middle. It was pretty cool. After the physical activity, the kids whose parents have filled out a contract saying they want their homework done at the program do their homework, and the others either go to the coloring table or the library corner (the older kids are doing other stuff, I only really interact with my group and the group right above them age-wise).
Next, we do activities that reinforce what they’re learning in school (so I’m told). I found some of the activities for December myself, on Pinterest and Google. I really didn’t want to get a Pinterest, but whatever. It’s for the greater good, I guess? After activity time, they do arts and crafts, and if they really don’t want to do the craft, they can, again, color or go to the library corner. Only this time, the game chest is also open, and they can use stuff from there.
All the kids in the program have to be picked up by six, and there always have to be at least two teachers. In the three weeks I’ve been here, the latest a kid got picked up was 6:10, which isn’t so bad. All the stuff is cleaned up and put away by then. Probably half the kids are gone by the time we get to arts and crafts, sometimes even by activity time. So we just sort of pounce when kids wander away from a table, and put all the stuff on it away. So when that little girl left, we could just throw on our coats and leave, too.
The only sucky part about my job is that we’re open long on half days, and really long on vacation days. We were open 11:30-6 the day before Thanksgiving, and 12:15-6 on the random half day they had last week. During vacations and snow days, we’re open 7:30-6, and on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve we’re open 7:30-2. Here’s hoping we don’t have any snow days this year. Or we only have delays, because we don’t open for delays. We do open early if school is dismissed for inclement weather, though. Gross. We’re also open in the summer, from 7:30-6. It’s my understanding that you don’t have to work the full 10 ½ hours daily in the summer if you don’t want to, and I’m hoping I don’t have to do it over vacation either. The other thing about “weird” days is that we’re not at the middle school. For the day before Thanksgiving we were at the Y, and that’s where we’ll be Christmas and New Year’s Eve as well. During vacations or on snow days, we’re at an elementary school in my town that also has a program. That’s where the summer program will be, except for the last two weeks, which will be at the Y.
The uniform for this job is pretty chill. I have to wear black, navy, or khaki pants, close-toed shoes, and a Y t-shirt and nametag. Hoodies are cool, any color of shoes is cool, my pink hair is cool, my tattoos are cool, my lip piercing is cool. And, for the moment, I have no Y t-shirt (or nametag), so I get to wear my own clothes. I’ve been putting a lot more effort into my appearance than I did at Dollar Tree. I put on eye makeup every day (which is all I ever put on), and I’ve broken out my hair clip collection. I’ve also been reveling in wearing funky earrings, because at Dollar Tree I wasn’t supposed to wear dangly earrings, so I usually just wore black and white studs. The best part is, the kids love my earrings and hair clips. There are a bunch of girls who run up to me and ask to see my earrings and hair clip. If I can, I make my shirt match (because I’m just that good), and they get a kick out of it.
I don’t really have any complaints about this job. No to say I never will, but this is the life. In two months, I’ll be promoted from Assistant Group Leader to Group Leader (which I suspect does not come with a raise, but what can ya do?), which is cool. I’m hoping this experience will help when I start applying for jobs at day cares and pre-schools, and who knows, if a kindergarten classroom is looking for a teacher’s aid, maybe that, too. The hours aren’t bad, two to six Monday-Friday, and I actually get to leave around five on Thursdays. My first paycheck this past Friday was really exciting. I got a lot more money than I did in Dollar Tree checks. At Dollar Tree, I had between twelve and sixteen hours a week, and I’ll routinely have nineteen here, in addition to getting more money per hour. But this whole getting-experience thing has kind of spurred me to maybe get my Associate’s in Child Care, and I think if I transfer the credits from the community college I went to before U Mass Lowell to a community college closer to home, I’d only have one field placement left, and if I can somehow make it okay for my field placement to be where I work (wherever that may be), I could get the degree in January (assuming I start this placement in September). I might not even need to get it officially, since technically the MFA I’ll get in July will be a teaching degree. And if I’m never head teacher (which I don’t want to be), schools might not care. I would also have to check with this potential community college to see how intense their placements are, because the reason I didn’t complete the program at the other college was the intensity. I don’t want to be a head teacher, and that program made you work like one, even though you couldn’t be one with an Associate’s degree.
Back to the original subject. I really like my new job, and I love my kids. I just got a new one today, he transferred from the next group up because I had a twelve year old Autistic girl in my group (by her choice), and she decided she wanted to be in a different group. Why, I’m not sure. But I adored this kid before he was in my group, and he made my day by telling me he was happy to be in my group (which is called the Bumblebees). I feel like I’m doing something good, and I’m making a difference in these kids’ lives. Not like a real teacher, of course, but it’s cool to think I’ll be remembered fondly (though also probably vaguely) when these kids are older. This is in stark contrast to pretty much every job I’ve ever had, especially Dollar Tree. I was constantly stressing about customers and the schedule was always put out later than it was supposed to be, and definitely later than it should have been. It’s also very different from the few weeks I had no job (because this job didn’t start as early as I thought it would), where I was worrying that they wouldn’t call me after all. I haven’t really felt stressed about this, except in preparation for the day before Thanksgiving, which didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would. The only thing I have to do now is learn how to buckle the fuck down so I get everything done that I need to get done this upcoming semester.
Yes indeed, I quit my minimum wage job at Dollar Tree and now make slightly above minimum wage as an Assistant Group Leader for the after school program run by the YMCA. The Y has six programs, three in my town (which is where the Y is also located), two in an adjacent town, and one in a second adjacent town. My program is run in the cafeteria and surrounding hallway of the middle school I myself attended from 1999-2002. It’s the same building, only the caf has a garish mural of anime students eating assorted pieces of lunch. I mean like a sandwich with no plate and no visible drink or even lunch box the sandwich presumably came from. I don’t really remember, but I think the underneath coat of paint is the same color. The most vivid memories I have are of when it was dimly lit, anyway (ie a dance).
So in this program, there are somewhere in the vicinity of forty kids. My group is made up of mostly kindergartners (the youngest students allowed in the program). I have a first grader or two and a second grader also. I’m glad I have them and not the older kids, though sometimes the simplicity of projects frustrates me, as does the fact that most of the kids need help with these projects. But they’re so darn cute.
What we basically do in the program is show up at two o’clock and start wheeling stuff from the “back room” to the caf. The “back room” is just that - it’s a creepy hallway-looking thing in the back of the closest classroom to the caf, which happens to be a Special Ed room at the moment. Most of the time there are students in the room, and they always seem to be dicking around. To be fair, the bell rings at 2:15, but really? I don’t recall having fifteen minutes at the end of the day to just sit around when I was in middle school. But what do I know?
So we wheel stuff out. Yes, you read that correctly. Every kid has a laundry basket with their name in it, and we line them all up along the walls. These laundry baskets are stacked on these little things with wheels that come to about 6" high. The name of them is escaping me right now and I’m going to feel really stupid when someone points it out. They’re like skateboards, but square? Whatever. So we have those laundry baskets, and we have a small bookshelf with wheels, on which we also keep a mat and pillows, and that becomes the library corner. Inside the baskets, we keep tri-fold posters, one of which has info parents might be interested in, one has lists of which kids are in which group accompanied by stars with teachers’ names (just not mine :( ), and a third one has anti-bullying messages on it. We’ll soon have a fourth which will always be season-specific. We also have a first aid kit (yes!), and a prize box for when kids are good.
Speaking of, we have this awesome chart. It’s blue at the top, then green, then yellow, then red. Each kid’s name is on a clothespin that gets attached to green (or “ready to go”) to start out with. If a kid is good, they stay on green. If they’re super good, they go up to blue, or “outstanding.” If they act up, they go on yellow, or “warning,” and if they keep being insufferable or else do something really bad, they go on red, or “parent contact.” We have little charts with animals on them, and the kids get one crossed off for finishing the day on green and two crossed off for finishing on blue. When the card is full, they get a prize from the prize box. So far so good.
We also have two fairly conspicuous chests in the caf. One of these contains board games, Legos, a toy grocery store, and the like. The other contains art supplies, from which we daily have to fill little containers with markers, colored pencils, and crayons to be put out at activity and arts and crafts tables. Usually one of them needs glue sticks and scissors.
The kids are bussed in from two elementary schools, and of course the junior high kids are already there. Once the elementary kids are all there, we do circle, where we read a book or do an ice-breaker like activity, then discuss the projects we’ll be doing that day. Then, the kids wash their hands and have snack. The teachers get to have snack too, which is (usually) awesome. We get these cute mini-milk cartons of either apple, fruit, or orange juice on any given day, and some sort of cracker/chip thing (like reduced fat Doritos, which we had today). I don’t like OJ and so far the only snacks I haven’t like are the bagel (but I kind of already knew that) and the Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos (fucking spicy).
After snack, we do some sort of physical activity, which thankfully for the time being no longer involves going outside. Today we played a cool game with the younger kids where they sat in a circle and one sat in the middle. That kid had their eyes closed while the others passed a key around behind their backs as music played. When the music stopped, the kid in the middle opened their eyes and got two guesses as to who had the key. Then, the person who had the key was in the middle. It was pretty cool. After the physical activity, the kids whose parents have filled out a contract saying they want their homework done at the program do their homework, and the others either go to the coloring table or the library corner (the older kids are doing other stuff, I only really interact with my group and the group right above them age-wise).
Next, we do activities that reinforce what they’re learning in school (so I’m told). I found some of the activities for December myself, on Pinterest and Google. I really didn’t want to get a Pinterest, but whatever. It’s for the greater good, I guess? After activity time, they do arts and crafts, and if they really don’t want to do the craft, they can, again, color or go to the library corner. Only this time, the game chest is also open, and they can use stuff from there.
All the kids in the program have to be picked up by six, and there always have to be at least two teachers. In the three weeks I’ve been here, the latest a kid got picked up was 6:10, which isn’t so bad. All the stuff is cleaned up and put away by then. Probably half the kids are gone by the time we get to arts and crafts, sometimes even by activity time. So we just sort of pounce when kids wander away from a table, and put all the stuff on it away. So when that little girl left, we could just throw on our coats and leave, too.
The only sucky part about my job is that we’re open long on half days, and really long on vacation days. We were open 11:30-6 the day before Thanksgiving, and 12:15-6 on the random half day they had last week. During vacations and snow days, we’re open 7:30-6, and on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve we’re open 7:30-2. Here’s hoping we don’t have any snow days this year. Or we only have delays, because we don’t open for delays. We do open early if school is dismissed for inclement weather, though. Gross. We’re also open in the summer, from 7:30-6. It’s my understanding that you don’t have to work the full 10 ½ hours daily in the summer if you don’t want to, and I’m hoping I don’t have to do it over vacation either. The other thing about “weird” days is that we’re not at the middle school. For the day before Thanksgiving we were at the Y, and that’s where we’ll be Christmas and New Year’s Eve as well. During vacations or on snow days, we’re at an elementary school in my town that also has a program. That’s where the summer program will be, except for the last two weeks, which will be at the Y.
The uniform for this job is pretty chill. I have to wear black, navy, or khaki pants, close-toed shoes, and a Y t-shirt and nametag. Hoodies are cool, any color of shoes is cool, my pink hair is cool, my tattoos are cool, my lip piercing is cool. And, for the moment, I have no Y t-shirt (or nametag), so I get to wear my own clothes. I’ve been putting a lot more effort into my appearance than I did at Dollar Tree. I put on eye makeup every day (which is all I ever put on), and I’ve broken out my hair clip collection. I’ve also been reveling in wearing funky earrings, because at Dollar Tree I wasn’t supposed to wear dangly earrings, so I usually just wore black and white studs. The best part is, the kids love my earrings and hair clips. There are a bunch of girls who run up to me and ask to see my earrings and hair clip. If I can, I make my shirt match (because I’m just that good), and they get a kick out of it.
I don’t really have any complaints about this job. No to say I never will, but this is the life. In two months, I’ll be promoted from Assistant Group Leader to Group Leader (which I suspect does not come with a raise, but what can ya do?), which is cool. I’m hoping this experience will help when I start applying for jobs at day cares and pre-schools, and who knows, if a kindergarten classroom is looking for a teacher’s aid, maybe that, too. The hours aren’t bad, two to six Monday-Friday, and I actually get to leave around five on Thursdays. My first paycheck this past Friday was really exciting. I got a lot more money than I did in Dollar Tree checks. At Dollar Tree, I had between twelve and sixteen hours a week, and I’ll routinely have nineteen here, in addition to getting more money per hour. But this whole getting-experience thing has kind of spurred me to maybe get my Associate’s in Child Care, and I think if I transfer the credits from the community college I went to before U Mass Lowell to a community college closer to home, I’d only have one field placement left, and if I can somehow make it okay for my field placement to be where I work (wherever that may be), I could get the degree in January (assuming I start this placement in September). I might not even need to get it officially, since technically the MFA I’ll get in July will be a teaching degree. And if I’m never head teacher (which I don’t want to be), schools might not care. I would also have to check with this potential community college to see how intense their placements are, because the reason I didn’t complete the program at the other college was the intensity. I don’t want to be a head teacher, and that program made you work like one, even though you couldn’t be one with an Associate’s degree.
Back to the original subject. I really like my new job, and I love my kids. I just got a new one today, he transferred from the next group up because I had a twelve year old Autistic girl in my group (by her choice), and she decided she wanted to be in a different group. Why, I’m not sure. But I adored this kid before he was in my group, and he made my day by telling me he was happy to be in my group (which is called the Bumblebees). I feel like I’m doing something good, and I’m making a difference in these kids’ lives. Not like a real teacher, of course, but it’s cool to think I’ll be remembered fondly (though also probably vaguely) when these kids are older. This is in stark contrast to pretty much every job I’ve ever had, especially Dollar Tree. I was constantly stressing about customers and the schedule was always put out later than it was supposed to be, and definitely later than it should have been. It’s also very different from the few weeks I had no job (because this job didn’t start as early as I thought it would), where I was worrying that they wouldn’t call me after all. I haven’t really felt stressed about this, except in preparation for the day before Thanksgiving, which didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would. The only thing I have to do now is learn how to buckle the fuck down so I get everything done that I need to get done this upcoming semester.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Thor: The Dark World (spoiler alert)
So I saw Thor: The Dark World last night. I love going to those cool early shows. I love it even more now that most of them are at like ten o’clock instead of midnight. I’m such an old lady that way. This one happened to be at 8:30. Well, the 2D one was at 8:30. There were 3D ones at eight and nine, but I’m cheap and I’ve never really liked 3D, so we weren’t gonna do that. Luckily, my brother’s a pretty good sport. Or he doesn’t care about 3D either, I can’t tell.
A note about the environment: I like going to these kinds of movies with my brother. He doesn’t read comics or anything, but he has a general knowledge of comics and superheroes that most people have. But he is really into mythology, and probably knows about most of the stuff Thor and Odin and them talked about. He gets pretty excited about these things, and it’s nice to go to the movies with someone who’s excited to be there. I’d like to state, for the record, that my ex, who was a huge comic book nerd, was never anywhere near as excited as my brother when we went to see comic book movies. Lame-o.
So I’ve seen Thor and Marvel’s The Avengers and the other movies tied into it. I was pretty excited for this one, mainly because I love Loki. And though I don’t typically like muscly guys, I like Thor. And I like the incest jokes people keep making. And I like the bromance that the actors have in real life. But I love Loki.
Admittedly, I’ve never read any Thor comics. Sadly, I’ve been so freaking poor that I haven’t read any comics in almost six months. But I never really read superhero comics, I don’t know why. I like them and the concept of them perfectly fine. Whatever, not the point. The point is, I don’t know how well they honored the storyline that I assume this is based on. I also don’t know much about Norse mythology, but what I do know lines up with what the movie projects. Namely that Thor is a superhero. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Norse predicted that their god of thunder would someday grace the pages of comic books and help their masked and differently abled heroes save the world. Pretty insightful, if I do say so myself. But no really. I know that Thor is the god of thunder, Odin is his father and the kind of king thing, Iggdrasil is the world tree, Loki is the god of mischief.
I hope the filmmakers didn’t make some huge mistakes I should be embarrassed for liking, because I fucking loved this movie. I’m so not one for action-y movies, but for some reason I <3 Thor.
Spoiler alert time. So the bad guys in this movie are dark elves, who were the first beings in to exist, and the love evil and darkness and they made this thing that helps their evilness and is also evil on its own called the Aether. There’s also this thing that happens every 5,000 years or so called the convergence, where the boundaries between the nine realms (all connected through Iggdrasil) blur and weird shit happens. The dark elves were vanquished before by Odin’s father, and presumed dead. Don’t do that. You know what they say when you presume. Your equal but oppositely hot sons will team up and stuff and my ovaries will explode. I will also make squeals that cause my brother to laugh really, really hard.
But really. Not even listening to other people when they ask if you’re sure your father’s terrible enemy is all dead? Not wise. Leaving your wife along with the girl exhibiting strange bodily things? Also not wise. Adopting a baby frost giant, getting rid of his frost, and not putting him in therapy? Super unwise.
I remembered halfway through the film that Joss Whedon said during an interview that Loki wouldn’t be up to his usual tricks in Avengers 2 because he “wouldn’t be there.” I can’t believe I forgot this! Well, to my great dismay, Loki does die. I cried. Seriously. I almost left the theater. Tom Hiddleston when he has Loki’s hair and clothes is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life. He is just...awesome. I have no complaints. And I think the weird I-love-you-because-you’re-my-brother-but-I-have-some-serious-reservations-about-you thing that Thor and Loki have going is so great because they love each other in real life.
Super spoiler alert: Loki doesn’t die! At the end of the movie, Thor is telling Odin he can’t rule Asgard because he wants to be able to be with Jane, and focus on her instead of ruling. He also feels he doesn’t have the stomach to do as much killing as he thinks will be necessary as king. He leaves the throne room, and Odin turns into my future husband, the god of mischief, Loki himself. Cue the squeal that was too silly for my brother to handle.
As per usual, there was an Easter Egg in the credits. Lady Sif and Volstagg (the redhead guy) are bringing the Aether to someone called the Collector. I read a little bit about him and I’m intrigued. You should hang in after that though, because there’s another really cute scene all the way at the end of the credits.
This was the crappiest review ever, but suffice it to say I’m happy with it and I definitely want to see it again. I’m interested to see if it gets mentioned in other movies of the franchise, and I was happy that Jane mentioned seeing Thor on TV when he was in New York, and as we all know from the trailer, she slapped Loki in retaliation for what he did in New York. I hope I’m not making myself look stupid by liking something that the filmmakers secretly butchered, but whatever. I loved this movie, and everyone should see it. :)
A note about the environment: I like going to these kinds of movies with my brother. He doesn’t read comics or anything, but he has a general knowledge of comics and superheroes that most people have. But he is really into mythology, and probably knows about most of the stuff Thor and Odin and them talked about. He gets pretty excited about these things, and it’s nice to go to the movies with someone who’s excited to be there. I’d like to state, for the record, that my ex, who was a huge comic book nerd, was never anywhere near as excited as my brother when we went to see comic book movies. Lame-o.
So I’ve seen Thor and Marvel’s The Avengers and the other movies tied into it. I was pretty excited for this one, mainly because I love Loki. And though I don’t typically like muscly guys, I like Thor. And I like the incest jokes people keep making. And I like the bromance that the actors have in real life. But I love Loki.
Admittedly, I’ve never read any Thor comics. Sadly, I’ve been so freaking poor that I haven’t read any comics in almost six months. But I never really read superhero comics, I don’t know why. I like them and the concept of them perfectly fine. Whatever, not the point. The point is, I don’t know how well they honored the storyline that I assume this is based on. I also don’t know much about Norse mythology, but what I do know lines up with what the movie projects. Namely that Thor is a superhero. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Norse predicted that their god of thunder would someday grace the pages of comic books and help their masked and differently abled heroes save the world. Pretty insightful, if I do say so myself. But no really. I know that Thor is the god of thunder, Odin is his father and the kind of king thing, Iggdrasil is the world tree, Loki is the god of mischief.
I hope the filmmakers didn’t make some huge mistakes I should be embarrassed for liking, because I fucking loved this movie. I’m so not one for action-y movies, but for some reason I <3 Thor.
Spoiler alert time. So the bad guys in this movie are dark elves, who were the first beings in to exist, and the love evil and darkness and they made this thing that helps their evilness and is also evil on its own called the Aether. There’s also this thing that happens every 5,000 years or so called the convergence, where the boundaries between the nine realms (all connected through Iggdrasil) blur and weird shit happens. The dark elves were vanquished before by Odin’s father, and presumed dead. Don’t do that. You know what they say when you presume. Your equal but oppositely hot sons will team up and stuff and my ovaries will explode. I will also make squeals that cause my brother to laugh really, really hard.
But really. Not even listening to other people when they ask if you’re sure your father’s terrible enemy is all dead? Not wise. Leaving your wife along with the girl exhibiting strange bodily things? Also not wise. Adopting a baby frost giant, getting rid of his frost, and not putting him in therapy? Super unwise.
I remembered halfway through the film that Joss Whedon said during an interview that Loki wouldn’t be up to his usual tricks in Avengers 2 because he “wouldn’t be there.” I can’t believe I forgot this! Well, to my great dismay, Loki does die. I cried. Seriously. I almost left the theater. Tom Hiddleston when he has Loki’s hair and clothes is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life. He is just...awesome. I have no complaints. And I think the weird I-love-you-because-you’re-my-brother-but-I-have-some-serious-reservations-about-you thing that Thor and Loki have going is so great because they love each other in real life.
Super spoiler alert: Loki doesn’t die! At the end of the movie, Thor is telling Odin he can’t rule Asgard because he wants to be able to be with Jane, and focus on her instead of ruling. He also feels he doesn’t have the stomach to do as much killing as he thinks will be necessary as king. He leaves the throne room, and Odin turns into my future husband, the god of mischief, Loki himself. Cue the squeal that was too silly for my brother to handle.
As per usual, there was an Easter Egg in the credits. Lady Sif and Volstagg (the redhead guy) are bringing the Aether to someone called the Collector. I read a little bit about him and I’m intrigued. You should hang in after that though, because there’s another really cute scene all the way at the end of the credits.
This was the crappiest review ever, but suffice it to say I’m happy with it and I definitely want to see it again. I’m interested to see if it gets mentioned in other movies of the franchise, and I was happy that Jane mentioned seeing Thor on TV when he was in New York, and as we all know from the trailer, she slapped Loki in retaliation for what he did in New York. I hope I’m not making myself look stupid by liking something that the filmmakers secretly butchered, but whatever. I loved this movie, and everyone should see it. :)
Monday, November 4, 2013
These Kids Make Me Afraid To Have Kids
So I went trick or treating with some kids on Halloween. Not my kids, but a family friend’s kids and their neighbor’s kids. The family friend was my brother’s teacher about fifteen years ago, and one of the kids is my mom’s goddaughter. Her kids are all girls, and the neighbors kids are all boys. I’m going to say right up front that I don’t care too much about the boys. We’re just not as close with their family.
So the girls. It’s sad, but for the last year of my relationship with my ex, I had more meaningful conversations with the now almost 4 year old twins than I did with him. They’re little, so obviously the conversations weren’t too deep, but they are just so cute. They know what they like, and luckily no one has told them they’re wrong yet. What do I mean? I mean one of the twins loves blue. Seriously, when we color, she only colors things blue. No joke. She says all the time how much she loves blue. There’s just no question about it. I’m glad no one has told her it’s “not a girl color” or anything like that, because first of all it’s bullshit that colors (and most other things) have a gender attached to them, and second of all, even if it’s not, who cares? Who the fuck cares? Her twin, on the other hand, loves purple and pink.
They both love princesses, and so do I, which is where these awesome conversations stem from about half the time. I’m glad no one has told them they can’t like princesses because it fits into an outdated mold of femininity (obviously in different words), because I think that’s bullshit, too. I think the only outdated mold of femininity is being the victim in an abusive relationship. There are a lot of definitions of abusive, and no one should be the victim (or the aggressor) in any of them. I don’t think loving Disney Princesses (or other princesses - is Sofia the First Disney or not?) is “bad” for girls. Their mother was originally afraid to let them get into princesses, but she let up. She was afraid it would teach them to wait around for men, but I don’t think it has. It didn’t teach me that, and you should have seen the Exorcism-like vomit of Disney princess paraphernalia in my room when I was a kid. As far as I can tell, they don’t care much about the boys. They don’t even know half their names. As far as I can tell, they think the different personality traits the princesses exhibit (aside from sitting around and waiting for a guy) are cool. We talk about Ariel swimming and Belle reading and Pocahontas dancing. They don’t know Jasmine or Mulan yet, which is fine because really, Mulan never is and never was a princess, so I take issue with her being on that list. I also take issue with Alice, Megara, and Wendy Darling being on that list. But anyway. We talk about Merida “shoot the arrow,” we talk about Aurora talking to animals, we talk about Tiana cooking, we talk about Rapunzel painting (she does in the movie). I don’t think they’ve actually seen Snow White, but they do know she exists. They talk about Cinderella cleaning, and they understand that her stepmother and stepsisters shouldn’t be treating her that way. I love the conversations, because while the princesses may fit into a damsel in distress pigeon hole, they do have good qualities that little girls can emulate (maybe not archery just yet, though...).
Back to Halloween. The two of them and their 6 year old sister dressed up as princesses, so when I knew I’d be able to trick or treating with them, I decided to dress up as one, too. The two of them were Cinderella and Tiana, and their older sister was Pocahontas. I suspect the Cinderella costume was chosen because it’s blue. I decided to be Belle, which I also dressed up as at the Renaissance Faire. Belle in the blue dress of course, before the widely talked about Stockholm Syndrome has taken root. I made this book purse for the Ren faire, which was way more work than the directions indicated, and I decided to bring it with my trick or treating. I figured I could carry some essentials without carrying my whole dang Hello Kitty purse along with me.
I have to say that I’m one of those people (and I was when I was little) who would dress up as something awesome that most people wouldn’t get. Attention, old neighbors: a Ghostbuster is not a carpet cleaner. A rock lobster is also not a devil. I think part of it is my slight OCD: if I get the idea in my head and then do something else, my brain feels funny. So I’m kind of used to people thinking I’m something other than what I really am when I dress up. (Except that time I was the Joker, and my co-workers didn’t know it was me under the make-up.) But when the girls arrived at the boys’ house (where we were all meeting to eat before we went out), they all ran up to me and screamed, “Hi Belle!” “You Belle!” and similar things. They knew who I was! Granted, I had shown them pictures of me at the faire, but they knew who I was then, too. Cinderella came up to me a few minutes later and asked, “Belle, where’s you book?” (Usually bad grammar bothers me, but on little kids it’s so fucking cute.) My book was lying flat on the table, which was a little too high for her to see, so I pulled it down and showed her. Her eyes lit up like I had just told her magic was real or something. It was great. It was also great that that’s what she associated with Belle, not, “Where’s the Beast?” or “Where’s the yellow dress?” To her, it was perfectly fine to be provincial, bookish Belle. Awesome.
Tiana ended up being my trick or treat buddy, and she thought it was the balls that I called her and her sister by their chosen princess rather than her name. She also told me, “Eileen, I like that you match me and my sisters. We all princesses.” All of the feels. Seriously, all of the feels.
Which leads me to the title of this entry. These girls, the twins in particular, make me afraid to have kids. Not because of the reason you originally thought, which is what that sentence usually means. These girls are so adorable and full of love and so totally themselves. They love me (I know they do, they tell me, and tell me they’ll miss me when I have to go home), and I love them, too. Their combined twin greatness makes me afraid that I won’t love any other child as much as I love them, even if that child grows inside my very own body. The twins for me are kind of the way you feel when you meet your soul mate. You just knew that the love you felt in every relationship before was a diet version of the real thing, because now you feel the real thing. I feel like that with the twins (platonically, of course). I’ve known other kids and babysat other kids, but I haven’t loved any of them as much as I love these girls. They are perfect, and I’m just afraid no other kid will measure up.
So the girls. It’s sad, but for the last year of my relationship with my ex, I had more meaningful conversations with the now almost 4 year old twins than I did with him. They’re little, so obviously the conversations weren’t too deep, but they are just so cute. They know what they like, and luckily no one has told them they’re wrong yet. What do I mean? I mean one of the twins loves blue. Seriously, when we color, she only colors things blue. No joke. She says all the time how much she loves blue. There’s just no question about it. I’m glad no one has told her it’s “not a girl color” or anything like that, because first of all it’s bullshit that colors (and most other things) have a gender attached to them, and second of all, even if it’s not, who cares? Who the fuck cares? Her twin, on the other hand, loves purple and pink.
They both love princesses, and so do I, which is where these awesome conversations stem from about half the time. I’m glad no one has told them they can’t like princesses because it fits into an outdated mold of femininity (obviously in different words), because I think that’s bullshit, too. I think the only outdated mold of femininity is being the victim in an abusive relationship. There are a lot of definitions of abusive, and no one should be the victim (or the aggressor) in any of them. I don’t think loving Disney Princesses (or other princesses - is Sofia the First Disney or not?) is “bad” for girls. Their mother was originally afraid to let them get into princesses, but she let up. She was afraid it would teach them to wait around for men, but I don’t think it has. It didn’t teach me that, and you should have seen the Exorcism-like vomit of Disney princess paraphernalia in my room when I was a kid. As far as I can tell, they don’t care much about the boys. They don’t even know half their names. As far as I can tell, they think the different personality traits the princesses exhibit (aside from sitting around and waiting for a guy) are cool. We talk about Ariel swimming and Belle reading and Pocahontas dancing. They don’t know Jasmine or Mulan yet, which is fine because really, Mulan never is and never was a princess, so I take issue with her being on that list. I also take issue with Alice, Megara, and Wendy Darling being on that list. But anyway. We talk about Merida “shoot the arrow,” we talk about Aurora talking to animals, we talk about Tiana cooking, we talk about Rapunzel painting (she does in the movie). I don’t think they’ve actually seen Snow White, but they do know she exists. They talk about Cinderella cleaning, and they understand that her stepmother and stepsisters shouldn’t be treating her that way. I love the conversations, because while the princesses may fit into a damsel in distress pigeon hole, they do have good qualities that little girls can emulate (maybe not archery just yet, though...).
Back to Halloween. The two of them and their 6 year old sister dressed up as princesses, so when I knew I’d be able to trick or treating with them, I decided to dress up as one, too. The two of them were Cinderella and Tiana, and their older sister was Pocahontas. I suspect the Cinderella costume was chosen because it’s blue. I decided to be Belle, which I also dressed up as at the Renaissance Faire. Belle in the blue dress of course, before the widely talked about Stockholm Syndrome has taken root. I made this book purse for the Ren faire, which was way more work than the directions indicated, and I decided to bring it with my trick or treating. I figured I could carry some essentials without carrying my whole dang Hello Kitty purse along with me.
I have to say that I’m one of those people (and I was when I was little) who would dress up as something awesome that most people wouldn’t get. Attention, old neighbors: a Ghostbuster is not a carpet cleaner. A rock lobster is also not a devil. I think part of it is my slight OCD: if I get the idea in my head and then do something else, my brain feels funny. So I’m kind of used to people thinking I’m something other than what I really am when I dress up. (Except that time I was the Joker, and my co-workers didn’t know it was me under the make-up.) But when the girls arrived at the boys’ house (where we were all meeting to eat before we went out), they all ran up to me and screamed, “Hi Belle!” “You Belle!” and similar things. They knew who I was! Granted, I had shown them pictures of me at the faire, but they knew who I was then, too. Cinderella came up to me a few minutes later and asked, “Belle, where’s you book?” (Usually bad grammar bothers me, but on little kids it’s so fucking cute.) My book was lying flat on the table, which was a little too high for her to see, so I pulled it down and showed her. Her eyes lit up like I had just told her magic was real or something. It was great. It was also great that that’s what she associated with Belle, not, “Where’s the Beast?” or “Where’s the yellow dress?” To her, it was perfectly fine to be provincial, bookish Belle. Awesome.
Tiana ended up being my trick or treat buddy, and she thought it was the balls that I called her and her sister by their chosen princess rather than her name. She also told me, “Eileen, I like that you match me and my sisters. We all princesses.” All of the feels. Seriously, all of the feels.
Which leads me to the title of this entry. These girls, the twins in particular, make me afraid to have kids. Not because of the reason you originally thought, which is what that sentence usually means. These girls are so adorable and full of love and so totally themselves. They love me (I know they do, they tell me, and tell me they’ll miss me when I have to go home), and I love them, too. Their combined twin greatness makes me afraid that I won’t love any other child as much as I love them, even if that child grows inside my very own body. The twins for me are kind of the way you feel when you meet your soul mate. You just knew that the love you felt in every relationship before was a diet version of the real thing, because now you feel the real thing. I feel like that with the twins (platonically, of course). I’ve known other kids and babysat other kids, but I haven’t loved any of them as much as I love these girls. They are perfect, and I’m just afraid no other kid will measure up.
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Nine Years Ago Today
Nine years ago today, my hymen died. Well, it probably died a few years earlier when I got kicked in the pool at summer camp, but nine years ago today I lost my virginity. It’s weird to think that it was so long ago, because there’s a story from it that I tell all the time. A “fan favorite” I call it. My ex says he tells it all the time too, for the same reason. But there are other parts of that night that I had mostly forgotten about, until I realized that today was the anniversary.
I had been dating my boyfriend a little over a month, and he told me later that he hadn’t given much thought to whether or not he was “ready,” but was more focused on the fact that a girl wanted to let him do that. So yeah, I was the one who suggested it. Begged for it, really. I thought being a virgin was lame, and that I was kind of old at sixteen (and a half) to still be one. Knowing what I know now, it would have been better if we’d waited a little longer, but I’m glad it was him.
We decided the weekend before that it would be that next weekend, and it turned out we hung out on a Saturday. I wore jeans, a black shirt with tiny sleeves and lace at the top, and black lace undies. I guess 10 Things I Hate About You had a bigger impact on me than I thought. So anyway, he brings me up to his room, and after he locks the door I turn around and see a bunch of tea lights aflame on his night stand. I’ve always been a nervous person, and fire makes me really nervous. He was trying to be romantic, but I made him put them out.
I mentioned to him before that I wanted music to be playing, and as someone who had pretty much only been exposed to pop, sadly I pictured N Sync or something. I know, I know, how did the classic rock my parents listened to not get through to me? I don’t have a good answer for that. He obviously didn’t own an N Sync CD, and before he out on the one he chose, he turned to me and said, “Oh sorry, you wanted nice music, didn’t you?” Not exactly what a girl wants to hear, but I kind of wanted to get the show on the road, so I said, “I don’t care. What did you pick anyway?”
“Symphony X,” he said. I don’t remember any of the songs, but I’m 90% sure he put on the self-titled album. What girl doesn’t want her first time to be have a prog metal score? Like I said, it ultimately didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was finally going to get rid of something that embarrassed me, and that I thought I shouldn’t have.
I remember he didn’t want me to watch him put on a condom. He later admitted this wasn’t smart, when he had to show me how to put one on another time and wasn’t feeling patient. After that, countless attempts were made, and finally the show was on the road. The painful, ripping-feeling show. I thought this was supposed to be good? When was the feeling good going to happen? Part of that is what happens to everyone, but part of it is on me. I didn’t know my own body, so my body didn’t know how to react to anything. (“But you dated a girl,” you say. “Didn’t she teach you anything?” No. This girl knew things and held out on me, and after I learned how much I had not known with her, I felt stupid for thinking I had any idea what I was doing then.)
So after a while of not feeling good, and everyone asking how everyone was and everyone saying something along the lines of, “ok,” we decided to switch. Since we were super experienced people, both of us (it was his first time, too), we decided we didn’t need to disengage before switching places. This is the “fan favorite” part of the story. So we try to flip over, both of us forgetting that his bed has tiny wheels on it. The bed goes one way, and we go the other, crashing to the floor. With the blanket tangled up with us, since in late October it’s too dang cold to lose your virginity without a blanket. I start laughing, because this is a funny situation, and in between fits of giggles I say, “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get it back in, we should just call it a night.”
He says nothing. I look. He groans. “I hit my head on the radiator,” he says. “I think I’m gonna pass out.” All humor was gone from the situation.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, and I can feel my blood baking my face from the inside. “Are you sure? Can I do something for you?” No way in hell am I going downstairs to tell his parents that their son is passed out naked on the floor of his bedroom with a condom on his penis. Because the condom part was the worst part, for sure. No way they would have been able to figure out what we were doing otherwise. Bare penis = anything may have happened, condomed penis = SEX! I sat, partially on the blanket, partially on the floor, and stared at him.
He shook his head. “I think I’m ok,” he said. “But you’re right, there’s no way it’s going back in tonight.” We got dressed and cleaned up the bed, and I don’t remember what we did after that. I went home, but I don’t remember if it was his parents or mine that took me. The funniest thing about that night, though, was that I got my driver’s license that morning, so everyone was congratulating me, and not for anything specific, because what else could have happened that day?
“Congratulations,” they said. “You’re all grown up now,” they said. “How does it feel?” They said. “Was it hard?” they said. It was all I could do to contain my laughter.
I had been dating my boyfriend a little over a month, and he told me later that he hadn’t given much thought to whether or not he was “ready,” but was more focused on the fact that a girl wanted to let him do that. So yeah, I was the one who suggested it. Begged for it, really. I thought being a virgin was lame, and that I was kind of old at sixteen (and a half) to still be one. Knowing what I know now, it would have been better if we’d waited a little longer, but I’m glad it was him.
We decided the weekend before that it would be that next weekend, and it turned out we hung out on a Saturday. I wore jeans, a black shirt with tiny sleeves and lace at the top, and black lace undies. I guess 10 Things I Hate About You had a bigger impact on me than I thought. So anyway, he brings me up to his room, and after he locks the door I turn around and see a bunch of tea lights aflame on his night stand. I’ve always been a nervous person, and fire makes me really nervous. He was trying to be romantic, but I made him put them out.
I mentioned to him before that I wanted music to be playing, and as someone who had pretty much only been exposed to pop, sadly I pictured N Sync or something. I know, I know, how did the classic rock my parents listened to not get through to me? I don’t have a good answer for that. He obviously didn’t own an N Sync CD, and before he out on the one he chose, he turned to me and said, “Oh sorry, you wanted nice music, didn’t you?” Not exactly what a girl wants to hear, but I kind of wanted to get the show on the road, so I said, “I don’t care. What did you pick anyway?”
“Symphony X,” he said. I don’t remember any of the songs, but I’m 90% sure he put on the self-titled album. What girl doesn’t want her first time to be have a prog metal score? Like I said, it ultimately didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was finally going to get rid of something that embarrassed me, and that I thought I shouldn’t have.
I remember he didn’t want me to watch him put on a condom. He later admitted this wasn’t smart, when he had to show me how to put one on another time and wasn’t feeling patient. After that, countless attempts were made, and finally the show was on the road. The painful, ripping-feeling show. I thought this was supposed to be good? When was the feeling good going to happen? Part of that is what happens to everyone, but part of it is on me. I didn’t know my own body, so my body didn’t know how to react to anything. (“But you dated a girl,” you say. “Didn’t she teach you anything?” No. This girl knew things and held out on me, and after I learned how much I had not known with her, I felt stupid for thinking I had any idea what I was doing then.)
So after a while of not feeling good, and everyone asking how everyone was and everyone saying something along the lines of, “ok,” we decided to switch. Since we were super experienced people, both of us (it was his first time, too), we decided we didn’t need to disengage before switching places. This is the “fan favorite” part of the story. So we try to flip over, both of us forgetting that his bed has tiny wheels on it. The bed goes one way, and we go the other, crashing to the floor. With the blanket tangled up with us, since in late October it’s too dang cold to lose your virginity without a blanket. I start laughing, because this is a funny situation, and in between fits of giggles I say, “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get it back in, we should just call it a night.”
He says nothing. I look. He groans. “I hit my head on the radiator,” he says. “I think I’m gonna pass out.” All humor was gone from the situation.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, and I can feel my blood baking my face from the inside. “Are you sure? Can I do something for you?” No way in hell am I going downstairs to tell his parents that their son is passed out naked on the floor of his bedroom with a condom on his penis. Because the condom part was the worst part, for sure. No way they would have been able to figure out what we were doing otherwise. Bare penis = anything may have happened, condomed penis = SEX! I sat, partially on the blanket, partially on the floor, and stared at him.
He shook his head. “I think I’m ok,” he said. “But you’re right, there’s no way it’s going back in tonight.” We got dressed and cleaned up the bed, and I don’t remember what we did after that. I went home, but I don’t remember if it was his parents or mine that took me. The funniest thing about that night, though, was that I got my driver’s license that morning, so everyone was congratulating me, and not for anything specific, because what else could have happened that day?
“Congratulations,” they said. “You’re all grown up now,” they said. “How does it feel?” They said. “Was it hard?” they said. It was all I could do to contain my laughter.
Friday, October 18, 2013
First Post Ever
It makes sense, I think, to talk about Fall in my first post, since it is Fall. Three of the five important romantic relationships in my life started in the Fall, which has to do with school. And here end the conversation about Fall specifically. I think.
I love Meat Loaf, and I did when I was fifteen, too. The boy I started dating did not like Meat Loaf, and I should have known then that I was making a mistake. Haha, just kidding...no, really. I’m not kidding at all. It sounds silly, but who doesn’t like Meat Loaf? This kid, that’s who. I don’t speak to him, or know anyone who speaks to him, so I’ll tell you his first name: Paul.
Paul was one of the first examples of the group-incest my friends and I would engage in throughout high school. Sure, there was the example of my best friend and I dating for a minute there, and then her starting to date the kid I had a crush on, but seriously, there was some strong incest going on. I went to an all-girls high school, and there were a bunch of girls who had all gone to middle school together, and who were friends with boys from said middle school. All these boys went to an all-boys high school, and it seemed like we all just dated each other. Opposite sex dating, with the exception of my friend and I. Paul and I were one of the first of these couples, and that relationship caused me so much grief.
How, you ask, could young love be grief-inducing? Well. One of my friends had a crush on Paul, and I decided I should IM him (on AIM...God I feel old) to see if he was good enough for her. He seemed to be, and we became friends. I forget exactly how, but we told each other we liked each other, and we started going out. I wanted to just not tell my friend, because she wasn’t outgoing and the fact that she liked someone was a big deal, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Paul would have none of it, and very unceremoniously told my friend we were dating. Thus began the bullying.
She got most of my friends to stop talking to me. What I did wasn’t nice, but I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that it was that bad. I mean, who has lifelong relationships that begin at fifteen? Not anyone I know. So I’m now eating lunch with the least favorite of my friends, the only one who will still talk to me. Including the girl I dated. They all just blindly followed this other girl. For a little while, it was just them ignoring me. Then it morphed into this girl convincing another girl to “accidentally” spill chocolate milk on me at lunch. Yes, folks, even the unpopular girls can do awful things like pretend to make up with you and ask you to sit with them at lunch so they can do awful things to you in a public place. This of course was on my uniform, of which I only had one skirt and one sweater, so I had to go home and clean them. If this had only happened once, it would have been bad enough. Without skipping a beat, this girl “spilled” milk on me every day that week, even when I wasn’t sitting at her table. And let me tell you, back milk is no picnic. I probably overreacted a bit, starting to get migraines the period before lunch in anticipation of getting chocolate milk spilled on me. That happened for a week or two before it suddenly stopped, and never happened again. They still didn’t speak to me though.
It seemed like a price worth paying though, because Paul was great. I honestly don’t remember what was great about him, but I know we talked on the phone and IM’ed a lot, and we hung out most Saturdays. And it just hit me that this was happening a whole ten years ago - and now I really feel old, because in my head I’m about eighteen or nineteen, not twenty-five.
Our relationship ambled along, with the requisite frenzied make-out sessions and the raging erections on his part that never got any attention from me. Hey, it’s not my fault, I didn’t know what to do, and it’s not like he was giving me any advice.
We had decided to lose our virginity to each other - and I thank the stars every day that it didn’t happen. We picked a day, the day when the length record of my previous relationship (in which no touching of any sort happened, and I was thirteen years old) would be broken. We hadn’t gotten around to planning where this would take place, and thinking back there is nowhere it could have taken place, because we were never alone and had no way to be alone. Anyhow, in the middle of March, after not seeing him for two-ish weeks because of snow, I think, we have a snow day and I go to IM him only to have him break up with me. On IM. Classy, eh? We can argue about the classiness of some of my romantic decisions later, but this was a low blow to me. I was devastated. Because oh – I can’t believe I forgot to mention this – we were engaged. I got a cute little silver ring with teeny purple and white stones in it for Christmas, but it was super secret from everyone. (And it turns out he got it at Macy's, and hadn't exactly paid for it, so that speaks to its quality.) You know it’s a solid relationship when you can’t tell anyone you’re engaged. My friends, the few who spoke to me, figured it out, though. I mean, who wears a ring on that finger “just cuz” when they have no other rings on any other fingers? So anyway, he broke up with me over IM, and I was shattered because we were supposed to get married.
On the plus side though, the girl who liked him at the beginning of the year apologized to me, and we were civil to each other again. By that point, I kind of wished she was dead, but it was nice to have all my other friends talk to me again. In an amazing show of balls on my part (because I was even more of a doormat then than I am now), I point blank asked my best friend why she felt the need to go along with not talking to me when I had done nothing to her, and she said she got caught up in the “mob mentality.” Lame excuse. Things between she and I would head south later, but that’s a different story.
For a while, I was a real mess, or as much of a mess as I had ever been in my young life, and I felt like I had failed at life. I mean, I had it all in my hands, a plan for the future, a love for the future, and it was gone with no explanation. I still have no explanation, but I’m past the point of caring and I’m just happy that him leaving opened up new paths for me. Despite my sadness over losing him, I was all patched up by the time school started the next Fall, and I happened upon someone who did like Meat Loaf. He and I lived out enough stories for about a thousand posts, so I’ll save that for later.
I love Meat Loaf, and I did when I was fifteen, too. The boy I started dating did not like Meat Loaf, and I should have known then that I was making a mistake. Haha, just kidding...no, really. I’m not kidding at all. It sounds silly, but who doesn’t like Meat Loaf? This kid, that’s who. I don’t speak to him, or know anyone who speaks to him, so I’ll tell you his first name: Paul.
Paul was one of the first examples of the group-incest my friends and I would engage in throughout high school. Sure, there was the example of my best friend and I dating for a minute there, and then her starting to date the kid I had a crush on, but seriously, there was some strong incest going on. I went to an all-girls high school, and there were a bunch of girls who had all gone to middle school together, and who were friends with boys from said middle school. All these boys went to an all-boys high school, and it seemed like we all just dated each other. Opposite sex dating, with the exception of my friend and I. Paul and I were one of the first of these couples, and that relationship caused me so much grief.
How, you ask, could young love be grief-inducing? Well. One of my friends had a crush on Paul, and I decided I should IM him (on AIM...God I feel old) to see if he was good enough for her. He seemed to be, and we became friends. I forget exactly how, but we told each other we liked each other, and we started going out. I wanted to just not tell my friend, because she wasn’t outgoing and the fact that she liked someone was a big deal, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Paul would have none of it, and very unceremoniously told my friend we were dating. Thus began the bullying.
She got most of my friends to stop talking to me. What I did wasn’t nice, but I didn’t think then and I don’t think now that it was that bad. I mean, who has lifelong relationships that begin at fifteen? Not anyone I know. So I’m now eating lunch with the least favorite of my friends, the only one who will still talk to me. Including the girl I dated. They all just blindly followed this other girl. For a little while, it was just them ignoring me. Then it morphed into this girl convincing another girl to “accidentally” spill chocolate milk on me at lunch. Yes, folks, even the unpopular girls can do awful things like pretend to make up with you and ask you to sit with them at lunch so they can do awful things to you in a public place. This of course was on my uniform, of which I only had one skirt and one sweater, so I had to go home and clean them. If this had only happened once, it would have been bad enough. Without skipping a beat, this girl “spilled” milk on me every day that week, even when I wasn’t sitting at her table. And let me tell you, back milk is no picnic. I probably overreacted a bit, starting to get migraines the period before lunch in anticipation of getting chocolate milk spilled on me. That happened for a week or two before it suddenly stopped, and never happened again. They still didn’t speak to me though.
It seemed like a price worth paying though, because Paul was great. I honestly don’t remember what was great about him, but I know we talked on the phone and IM’ed a lot, and we hung out most Saturdays. And it just hit me that this was happening a whole ten years ago - and now I really feel old, because in my head I’m about eighteen or nineteen, not twenty-five.
Our relationship ambled along, with the requisite frenzied make-out sessions and the raging erections on his part that never got any attention from me. Hey, it’s not my fault, I didn’t know what to do, and it’s not like he was giving me any advice.
We had decided to lose our virginity to each other - and I thank the stars every day that it didn’t happen. We picked a day, the day when the length record of my previous relationship (in which no touching of any sort happened, and I was thirteen years old) would be broken. We hadn’t gotten around to planning where this would take place, and thinking back there is nowhere it could have taken place, because we were never alone and had no way to be alone. Anyhow, in the middle of March, after not seeing him for two-ish weeks because of snow, I think, we have a snow day and I go to IM him only to have him break up with me. On IM. Classy, eh? We can argue about the classiness of some of my romantic decisions later, but this was a low blow to me. I was devastated. Because oh – I can’t believe I forgot to mention this – we were engaged. I got a cute little silver ring with teeny purple and white stones in it for Christmas, but it was super secret from everyone. (And it turns out he got it at Macy's, and hadn't exactly paid for it, so that speaks to its quality.) You know it’s a solid relationship when you can’t tell anyone you’re engaged. My friends, the few who spoke to me, figured it out, though. I mean, who wears a ring on that finger “just cuz” when they have no other rings on any other fingers? So anyway, he broke up with me over IM, and I was shattered because we were supposed to get married.
On the plus side though, the girl who liked him at the beginning of the year apologized to me, and we were civil to each other again. By that point, I kind of wished she was dead, but it was nice to have all my other friends talk to me again. In an amazing show of balls on my part (because I was even more of a doormat then than I am now), I point blank asked my best friend why she felt the need to go along with not talking to me when I had done nothing to her, and she said she got caught up in the “mob mentality.” Lame excuse. Things between she and I would head south later, but that’s a different story.
For a while, I was a real mess, or as much of a mess as I had ever been in my young life, and I felt like I had failed at life. I mean, I had it all in my hands, a plan for the future, a love for the future, and it was gone with no explanation. I still have no explanation, but I’m past the point of caring and I’m just happy that him leaving opened up new paths for me. Despite my sadness over losing him, I was all patched up by the time school started the next Fall, and I happened upon someone who did like Meat Loaf. He and I lived out enough stories for about a thousand posts, so I’ll save that for later.
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