Category: Uncategorized

It’s the 1990’s. I’m 5-9 years old, and my parents are trying to drag me to church. Again.

There were a million things not to like about church. The sticky pews, the priest that rambled on about a Jesus character (who at that time was no competition for my Ken doll), the fact that I always ended up sitting behind a pole or having to look at the rear end of a father in front of me. 

I loved God, I loved him with all my belligerent soul. But I hated church.

So I did what us stubborn folk do best: I made things difficult. While Mom was putting on her floral skirt and dad his plaid shirt, I stayed in bed boycotting the idea of giving God an hour of my “BUSY” afternoon. I mean, Christ! That’s a whole hour I could be counting my Beanie Babies! 

But I knew they’d march in at 10:58 like clockwork, demanding that I put my church jumper on for 11:00 a.m. Mass.

“You’re going.”

“NO I’M NOT!!!!”

“You’re GOING.”

“NOOO I’MMM NOTTTTT!!”

I’ll admit, my behavior got a little ridiculous. Even my younger sister gave in, crawling out of bed and getting gussied up in her best jumper. And it was only to my disadvantage, because her and I had to dress alike and whatever jumper she chose, I had to wear that day, too. 

“Are they twins?” family acquaintances would ask. In hindsight I wish I would have responded with some sort of satirical, “Yes. The zygote was wearing a plaid jumper when it divided, the two embryos each got a piece, and bam! Jenny and Heidi, identical twins. NO, dum-dum, we’re sisters. Can’t you see? I’ve got a mushroom cut and she’s got a mullet. Plus, I hate this jumper. She likes hers.”

We never made it to church on time, in fact we were infamous for marching in 10 to 17 minutes late. I can only imagine how disheveled I looked with my weird mushroom cut, flat on the side I was sleeping on (but still mushroomy on the side I wasn’t) and the jumper that my dad wrestled me into (or just verbally, by means of some “If you don’t…then…” statement). By that point there was hardly a pew open that would fit seven, with the exception of the pew that was tacitly “Our Pew.” No one touched this pew, I suspect, because they’d seen, Sunday after Sunday, all of the greasy children sitting on it, and they didn’t even want to mess with the bacillus it held.

It was always my luck that I had a runny nose during church. This was like nails on a chalkboard to my mother, who sat with her songbook and watched five children with two eyes. She despised that sniffling sound with much fervor, and any child of hers that was going to make it was sorely mistaken. As my luck would (further) have it, my parents always carried tissues on them—but they were never clean. The good Lord dictated that it wasn’t bad enough to have to sniff my brains in to hold back what was trying to creep out my nose, and ergo sent me the saving grace of my father’s well-worn, pre-used, warm Kleenex to alleviate my symptoms. Praise be!

There was nary a way to keep me to sit still during those interminable 70 minutes of holy blather. I must have asked 6-8 times per Mass if I could go use the bathroom. Somehow my mom knew I would stay in there for 20 minutes and play with my frilly socks, and rarely let me out of “Our Pew.” When I look around the church nowadays and see couples with young children eating Cheerios and coloring, I wonder why on earth my parents didn’t utilize these cheats. Honestly, I would have been in my jumper in .02 seconds and sitting awfully restrained if they would have let me bring along a box of markers and a friggin’ coloring book. Heck, I might have even drawn Jesus a picture!

Then there was the dreaded Sign of Peace. Not dreaded for my family, but for the families surrounding us that had to shake the hands of greasy small children. (I would say five greasy small children, but my oldest sister always had her ducks in a row.) We were always overly-eager for this part, as it was an opportunity to TALK REALLY LOUD and touch other people with permission from the Lord.

As the years progressed, the choir director heard through some pious grapevine that I played the trumpet. I knew two or three songs at the time, something along the lines of “Hot Crossed Buns”, “Yankee Doodle”, and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” This was skill enough to get into the church band, and I was elated to be handed a novel binder of sheet music to “practice.” It was only a matter of time before said choir director realized that “On Eagles Wings” wasn’t going to fly. Nuh-uh. I resorted back to “Our Pew” and sulked in the presence of my heavy nasal-breathing father and songbird mother.

Meanwhile, my mom proceeded to push singing on the kids. As the only woman in the entire parish that carried a songbook up to Communion and sang every chord save the thirty seconds that the holy Eucharist disintegrated in her mouth, it was expected that her children do the same. She’d “subtly” thrust her songbook under our noses with hopes we’d belt out some sort of Hallelujah, to no prevail. This subsisted until the year I was rejected from the Western Plains Children’s Choir (sore subject), then continued once more when she thought I was “over it” (I never was). Her and I both knew that my younger sister, Heidi, was the better songstress, having displayed such ambitions of becoming the “next Celine Dion.” We frequently practiced “I Will Always Love You” on Saturday nights, Heidi on the vocals and me pushing the “PLAY” button on the stereo. This was probably the reason why I didn’t want to get up for church in the morning—I was just too worn out from our jam sessions. 

Not to say that going to church didn’t have its occasional advantages. Every once in a great while we’d go out to The Donut Hole afterward and I’d get the most righteous maple long john as a reward for all of my rigamaroo. This, of course, is where I got my sturdy physique from. (An entirely different story ending with my older brother comparing me to Igor and imitating my voice with creepy deep breathing noises. Another sore subject.)

I’m not too interesting during church these days. I don’t play my trumpet, or sing in the choir. I don’t even try to go to the bathroom anymore, and when my nose is runny—I make sure I have something to take care of it with.

I’m nearly 21, and I wear “jumpers” on my own accord. The Donut Hole has long since closed, my sister gave up on her musical career…

…and I am still stubborn, sensitive and grieving over my rejection from the Western Plains Children’s Choir. Like I said, a little ridiculous.

Amen.

Pedicure

Orange chocolate

Apple RAM

Haircut. Hair color.

A nice glass of wine.

A massage—a long massage.

Dulce de Leche

and

Something to give me a good, hard laugh.

Why do I love Genius? Like the Segway or Oops I Crapped My Pants, it’s just another thing that encourages laziness. 

It was about time they invented something like this to put together a playlist. With my Brobdingnagian collection of tasteless and refined music (my iTunes library is proof that Aqua, Ludacris, and Beethoven DO have a place together), I was getting a little exhausted. I mean, I had to set aside an entire day to make a playlist for a long car ride. Genius lets me choose one song, then finds other songs like it. So if I want to listen to, say, Aqua—Genius will say, “Cool, you want to listen to more songs from NOW 3!!” and get me some Cherry Poppin’ Daddies  and Marcy Playground.

It’s, well…genius. 

1. You will eat food off of the floor

ii. You are not aware what kind of germs are on your cell phone

c. You like hearing about the facts of life (and I’m not talking about babies)

4. You can stomach the off-putting truth about your local friendly comfort stations.

Cheers,

jc

Jesus Moses anyhow, the thing’s been stuffed up for well over a month and it’s half-inch coating of toothpaste and saliva proved it. I hate to resort to these details, but it was pretty terrible. Five minutes for a sink to drain is just not right.

My roommate and I (but mostly just my roommate) had put in repeated work orders, and gone to the main desk to reiterate our pleas about the bathroom sink with an identity crisis. They didn’t seem to care that we were clogged. It wasn’t their hair corking up our pipes. “Bathroom sink clogged. It’s really gross!!!!” my roommate wrote on the most recent work order she’d submitted. Well true, it was really gross—but mostly because we’d made it REALLY gross.

So I spit out my toothpaste and reached for the 409, then sprayed the living porcelain out of our sink. I was satisfied when I saw my reflection, and even more so when not 20 minutes later, I heard a knock at the door.

There he was. Mr. Maintenance in his work hat, a young fellow with his tool kit n’ all. 

“You’ve…got a clogged sink that’s…REALLY GROSS?” he questioned, hoping that he was in the right place, and not—God forbid—at the apartment with the clogged sink that wasn’t REALLY GROSS. That would just be too easy.

“Sure do. Come in!”

I directed him to the freshly-sparkling indisposed waterhole. Before he de-gunged our sink, I was sure to tell him how lucky he was that I’d just cleaned it, listing off the illnesses he could possibly have contracted during the job.

“Syphilis, AIDS, scurvy, West Nile, mad cow, polio…”

The man was friendly enough, but you can never be to sure what strangers are doing in your home. So I went to the kitchen and started making an epic pita for lunch, listening to every tinker and hiss coming from the bathroom.

Suddenly I heard the toilet flush.

The toilet?! What’s he doing messing with the toilet?! I said SINK! Come on man, I didn’t get around to cleaning that! My mind shifted to the last time it’d been cleaned. Oh…NO.

I continued to frantically build my pita, I continued to listen, confused.

The shower turned on.

OH NOT THE SHOWER. NOT the SHOWER. He is not seeing inside my shower right now. I remembered seeing a hairball nestled in a corner earlier that morning. DAMMIT! He is going to KNOW!

If this said “Mr. Maintenance” had, in fact been a female, none of this would have mattered. But I am a woman, and I know that we occasionally take pride in being “civilized,” living up to our stereotype as divine creatures that possess skin of ivory, breathe ideality and smell like roses. And we make certain that men know this, or at least know that we are good at faking it. 

The last thing I wanted was the plumber to know what my bathroom fixtures looked like—and I lost.

When he emerged from the bathroom, I had just begun stuffing a handful of alfalfa sprouts onto my pita. And all I could see in his head was one giant math equation, something like (food) + (digestion) = your disgusting bathroom.

This man knew that women do not smell like roses, and I did not like that. I felt that I’d broken the unsung code of womankind, the female alliance that states no male shall know of our faults. Ladies, I’m sorry—I’ve let us down.

“Your sink had a lot of hair in it. Oh, and I fixed your toilet and shower, too,” he said with a smile, and I responded with an apology.

“No!” he quickly countered, “It’s my job, you keep me busy. Keep…shedding!” He wished me a good day before wandering out the door.

And I knew he wouldn’t tell a soul. 

That was the number one duty on my cut list tonight at work. The bathrooms—their details—I was in charge. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to clean a public bathroom before, but let me tell you something: GOOD LORD. We are ANIMALS. There is no aiming and zero sympathy. There is just shit (sometimes literally) ev-ery-where.

The only time you wish that male and female bathrooms were consolidated is when you have to clean both of them. This is the case at Huhot, when after I finish scrubbing down the ladies’ muck, I get to barge into the M-E-N’s room. Then I get in there, and I know I shouldn’t be in there because I’m not a dude, and it clearly says M-E-N on the door, and I feel cool. It’s the worst kind of special feeling you’ll ever have.

Then I see what I have to deal with. Shit.

I’m not trying to pass off men as being barbaric, but let me break this down for you:

Now you see what I’m working with here. 

So this evening, I’m cleaning the details of the men’s bathroom, feeling cool because I know I shouldn’t be in the men’s bathroom. And I get interrupted by a man.

I saw him enter and looked up from the mirror I was cleaning. “Oh! I’ll leave—” I started to say as he marched toward the urinal. After all, I was on his turf.

“Oh, no! That’s alright! I’ve just gotta pee.”

And I saw the horror unfold before my eyes, so quickly, and so disgusting. I made a beeline for the door before you could say “detail clean bathrooms.”

I was disgusted to think that I’d have to go back in, finish the job and retrieve my supplies. Five minutes later I moseyed back to the M-E-N’s room, vowing to make it quick.

Quick! Hurry! I commanded myself, but it was too late. Billy the new line filler had to GO.

“I’ll leave!” I told him when I saw him waiting at the door, his eyes googly with constipation. 

“I gotta GO!” 

Fearing that I might relive the same incident that had occurred five minutes prior, I grabbed everything and dashed out the door. Go, Billy, go.

I was done detail cleaning the bathrooms, no matter how unclean the details where. There was no way I was going to scrub another bowl or watch someone whip it out again tonight. No way.

But that Billy, bless his soul. He came up to me shortly after to thank me for leaving so he could use the john, claiming that “I’d saved his underwear.”

Well, shit. Ain’t that special.

I mean, think about it. You work at a hardware store and all you see is men looking for drill bits and chainsaws. You work at Hollister and you see 15-year old girls looking for XXXSmalls. But when you work at the grocery store—you see everybody. Not everyone needs hardware or teenie bopper garb, but everybody needs food.

What does this mean? The grocery store is prime people-watching ground.

I’ll admit, I’m a people-watcher. I don’t watch people to make fun of them, but to guess what their lives are like outside of the place I’m seeing them, or what they’ve been doing all day. At the grocery store, I can gather both of these things AND what they’re going to be eating for dinner. It’s a phenomenon. 

I haven’t yet calculated the exact demographics of the grocery store, but I do know there are a staggering amount of elderly folk, most in brightly-patterned polyester and head scarves. A lot of these people only come out of their homes several times a year: six times to grocery shop, and once on Christmas Eve. Some of the elders examine the meat, poking at the fat and hand-weighing it. Some check for harmful ingredients in the frozen vegetable medley. Others stroll around on electro-scooters and nearly collide with anything in their path (which today, was me). The grocery store is an interesting…dangerous place.

Then there are people like my sister who could care less about anything that costs more than a dime, and head straight for the free samples. Near the bakery there’s a generous tray of semi-soft cookies and/or sugar-coated donuts. I’m not one for donuts (too healthy for me), but my sister usually takes a few and shoves a couple more into her pockets. She would. She so would.

The donut corner is popular with the husbands, by and large the older gentleman that Edith or Thelma pried from their recliner parked in front of the TV. These men are grumpy, and with reason. I mean, I would be royally irked if my spouse ripped me away from 60 Minutes to buy a block of cheese and a couple cans of beans. I feel their pain.

By far the best sight I’ve ever seen at the donut corner occurred several months ago. Two gentlemen, golden-aged and spry, strolled through the store. It appeared as if their wives were out of town (or otherwise), and they could buy whatever. Whatever. Whatever they wanted.

Buying whatever you want at the grocery store is exciting for two groups: The very young, and the very old. Young people, when given sway over the grocery selection, will spring for sugary cereals, fatty pizzas, and high fructose corn syrup-coated high fructose corn syrup. Does it have sugar in it? Yes? In the cart. Now.

(Note: College students do not get excited about buying whatever groceries they want because this is all they get to eat…ever.)

Old people are the same way, and these men were no exception. Clearly fed up with Dorothy and Judith’s cabbage soup and meat pie, they breezed over to donut corner and, much like my sister, grabbed a dozen. Then they perused the pastries for a while, and from the glorious self-serve case, each selected a donut of their liking. They disappeared from my view for a while, and when I ran into one standing behind me in the checkout line, it was clear what his diet would be for the next couple of days (or forever): powdered sugar donuts and chocolate milk.

I would go to the grocery store every day to watch people, if I had enough pluck to do so. Unfortunately the designated and self-proclaimed “people-watching bench” near the entrance/exit is more often than not crowded with husbands that opted not to go to donut corner…

…and instead watch me load my cart with beans and cheese, sugary cereals and high fructose corn syrup. Because hey, if you can’t beat them…watch them.

Love.

It was the dawning of a new adolescent, of awkwardness, and apparently, probably, ugliness.

The best part about this age is also the worst part. You’re too young and into your Beanie Babies and sticker collection to realize you smell like garbage, and so continue your blissfully ignorant ways. Then 2009 rolls around and you unearth that dreaded 8 x 10. You know which one I’m talking about. That’s the worst. Your friends love that moment.

I wouldn’t say I was a “babe” (that title was reserved for girls that wore tech vests and french braids) but closer to an ogre. “Confused” is a safe adjective, for lack of a softer word for “fugly.” My mom frequently had to drop hints for me to clean myself up. “Your hair…eh…might need…” It was pride that kept me a tomboy, and with gusto I deemed myself the best girl at kickball, the one advantage of my rugged sturdy legs.

Then there was the snaggle tooth. 

The snaggle tooth, like sturdy legs and the semi-Dumbo ear, is another trait you’d rather not acquire from your father. My siblings, I presume, carry a secret resentment that I scored all three traits, the covetous “trifecta” of Christen attributes. My dad and I had nearly identical snaggle teeth, but his hid pretty well behind his upper lip. I was always flashing mine during a kickball match, and in hindsight, it probably instilled more fear in my opponent than I could ever imagine.

The snaggle tooth had many friends, most living across the street on my bottom jaw. Together they were a twisted and crooked pack of incisors and bicuspids, radically heinous toward the Shake and Bake and Fruit Rollups they often encountered. It was all image, gold rims and confused hair held up by sturdy legs. Surly beauty.

These things can only scare people for so long before they need to be corrected. My parents decided to start with the snaggle tooth. The day the metal was glued into my mouth, the snaggle started what was a slow decline. “What colors?” I can remember the orthodontist’s assistant asking me the first time I chose my rubber bands. I pointed to the purple and teal. “These two.” There was no other way.

At the time, braces were somewhat archaic. The glory of headgear had faded and tinsel was last season’s trend. I showed up to class, the only “brace-face” in the room (didn’t get the memo). I can vividly recall trying to eat a granola bar that afternoon at lunch, one of the most vexing experiences of my life. It honestly would have been easier to solve a Rubik’s Cube with my tongue.

“How am I supposed to eat?” I said to the other girls at the table, who looked on blankly, then continued to eat their sandwiches. They’d be sorry when I starved to death!!!

Well, I lived after I learned to eat the granola bar, graduated 6th grade and moved on to what were the most wistful and ugly years of my life. Two years down the road, in the heat of *Junior High* (OH-em-GEE), the bands were removed to reveal a straight smile. Snaggle teeth cleaned up well!

It was that day in 2001 when the orthodontist superglued more contraptions into my mouth, “post-braces braces” or somesuch. These wires’ duties were to keep the snaggle away. I was 13 at the time, and can remember him telling me that the wires would be removed “in my 20’s.”

Long after my sparkly purple butterfly retainer found it’s place in a neglected bathroom cubboard, the wires remain, waiting for me to rip them out with a Whatchamacallit bar (sidenote: Whatchamacallit registers with spell check!), or peanut brittle, or molasses—or just rip them out.

And therein my braces experience, I find room for analogy. For just as these wires have been holding each tooth in it’s place for the past eight years, acting as fixtures to ward off a crooked flood, so, too, is a day of life. What has taken years to gain, be it acceptance, respect, or simply straight teeth—one snap of a wire and it will shift all the same.

So I carry on, warding off the crooked flood.

new

is 

good.

Holly:

Please review for next Finer Things Club meeting. You’re in charge of the Henry’s, I’ll be discussing contrasts and social order of 18th century England.

Also, ensure that Sparkling Cold Duck is well-chilled, spreadable cheese is spreadable, and cheap crackers of choice pass as “classy.”

See you soon!

Jenny