The Secret Lives of Coffee Cups
So I'm sitting in the morning meeting, listening to a man drone on and on and on about how chemistry safety is kind of like Kosher meat preparation (not as interesting a topic as it sounds, at least the way he presented it), and staring at my coworker's gaudy coffee cup that features a long, graceful giraffe neck stuck off the side and cuved down to make a handle. It is staring at me in return. I decide it is waiting for me to look away so it can do one of the following:
I should mention...
He got me back.
Mike did.
My parents had some visitors in from Holland who were staying in a borrowed RV in our driveway. It was the first time for most of them to visit the U.S.A. and they had been driving around the local state park system, marveling at the vast stretches of uninhabited land (this for some reason is ALWAYS what the Dutch comment most about - how strange it is that we have land nobody lives on).
One morning they came in to breakfast a little shaken, looking at me askance and whispering between each other timidly. Finally the mother approached me and put a comforting hand on my back. She leaned in, as if sharing a painful secret, and said, "Your car is... plastic." I was driving a 1981 Chevy Sprint at the time, and thought that maybe she was trying to tell me something about the manufacturing. I went outside anyways, just to see what was up, and beheld a many-layered vaguely car-shaped bubble of Saran Wrap where my car used to be. The Dutch visitors were greatly relieved when I started laughing and began to try and figure out how to free my car from its cocoon. We ended up cutting it with garden shears, like a cast.
I found out that Mike and AM (oh yes, she played both sides) had snuck in under the cover of darkness and used up two whole Cosco-sized (roughly 1 foot in diameter, 3 feet wide) rolls of Saran Wrap on my car. It was to the point where you couldn't even tell what color the car used to be. Mike was a little bitter since he used his sweatshirt to cover our motion-detector lamp and it had burned a hole in the fabric. I had a hard time feeling a lot of sympathy for the guy.
So then Mike and I decided to turn the tide of revenge towards AM (his reason was the sweatshirt, I had no reason to speak of) and we Saran-Wrapped every individual item in her boyfriend's bedroom. It took some time, I spent about three hours on his desk alone and made each pencil and random desk implement into a huge plastic lump. His stapler was beach-ball sized when I was through with it.
(We didn't really have too much by way of entertainment in my home town, in case you were wondering.
Plenty of Saran Wrap, though.)
The Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired
It all started when my friend Mike responded to a compliment on his shirt with “Thanks, but my Mom bought it for me. I didn’t pick it out.” My friend AM jokingly asked him if his mom picked out ALL of his clothes. He blushed deeply. His friend Justin broke in and stood up for Mike, saying that his mom picked out HIS clothing too and Mike shouldn’t be ashamed. We decided they should both be ashamed.
This was our senior year in high school, and AM and I had spent four years specializing in the retraining of the nerdy and socialization of the socially inept. Justin and Mike were two of our best friends and two of what we thought were our most well-adjusted pupils, until we discovered that they still meekly allowed their mothers to dress them (and not well, unless you really go for dockers and polo shirts and colors so neutral as to be near-invisible). This could not stand. AM and I immediately founded the secret society of the Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired, and took it upon ourselves to get the boys a little style.
We started out with suspenders, bright red with a pattern of fire engines and rowdily striped for the second pair (hey, it was the early ‘90’s) (that's actually no excuse. We were/are dorks.), and snuck them into their mailboxes with crude packaging and labels identifying the givers as the Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired. The boys were of course highly suspicious of AM and me since this was hardly the first prank we pulled on them, but couldn’t conclusively prove that we had left the gifts since our tracks were covered admirably (nighttime delivery, cars parked a couple cow fields over, minimal giggling). We also had carte blanche from their families to do what we wanted with them, after they realized that we were the sole reason Mike and Justin could now make eye contact with girls.
AM and I were in the same typing class (dear god I’m old) and devised a smokescreen – many of the students used a class page on the computer system to pass electronic notes to each other during class. We created freshmen personalities and started chatting to each other about how clever we had been with the suspenders and how cuuuuuute the boys were. It was art, we captured the speech patterns perfectly and the boys bought it hook line and sinker (how could they not believe that someone had noticed their hotness?). They apologized to our straight faces about thinking that we would prank them and started asking our opinions about various frosh girls and if we thought they were the Guardian Angels.
Then we bought them socks (classic cars and ones with individual toes) and boxers (lobster patterned and lipstick patterned) and worked out ways to leave them on window ledges and tucked in lockers. We started upping the ante with our electronic crushes, getting to a semi-groupie status and beginning to frighten the boys. We discussed setting up a meeting with them only dressed in lingerie (red for AM, black for me). The boys flipped and ran to us scared out of their minds that some hideous freshman girls were going to attack them and smother them with satin and lace. They were both extremely shy and conservative, and the idea of a strange woman approaching them half-dressed was probably a recurring nightmare instead of a fantasy. AM and I played it perfectly, we started picking out the scariest girls and pointing them out, saying “ooh, I know it’s HER! She’s going to be in her panties and TACKLE YOU!!” They were paranoid, clutching their wild accessories in a sad attempt to shield themselves from the imagined freshman lust.
Our last package was delivered during the school day, as we were sitting eating lunch with them and discussing the coming attack (AM and I had a million contacts, we got the boxes mailed to the school secretary and had her come out and hand deliver). They got the boxes and the blood immediately drained from their faces at seeing the familiar chunky handwriting. AM and I played dumb, tried to steal the packages before the boys could whisk them off in to their bags or lockers, and forced them to open them at the table. Once they got to the lace, all the blood returned in a rush and Mike looked like he was going to faint. But we had wrapped lace around bow ties (clever little minxes, weren’t we) and merely included a formal invitation to meet them at Shari’s Restaurant the following weekend, wearing all that we had given them.
We got my little brother to videotape the meeting and fashioned halos out of wire and aluminum foil. I wore a black dress and AM wore a red one. As we walked in the door of the restaurant at the appointed time, both of their heads simultaneously met their palms and the SMACK resounded and drew stares from across the room. They immediately claimed to have known all along and to have been humoring us the whole time. Mmm-hmm. That’s why they had been sitting there in a mix of dread and curiosity, wearing mismatched suspenders and bowties and socks and boxers. Right.
From my recently rediscovered high school diary (age 17)
(written on the back cover in pink pen)
Characteristics I like in a guy:
#1 - SENSE O' HUMOR!!!
Loyalty
Honesty
Friendliness (Buddy rating)
Outgoing
Differnt
Cuddly
Has eyes that crinkle when he laughs
Not TOO stubborn
Respects my views & thoughts
Treats all women as equals
Non-prejudiced
Lets me open my OWN doors!! (unless it would be rude not to)
Characteristics I despise in anyone:
Egotistical
Bigot
Chauvinist
Rude
Insensitive
Fake
Hates Monty Python
Likes Rush LimBAA
Characteristics I like in a parakeet:
Feathered
Embalmed
Not stinky
Not loud
Nailed to the perch
Characteristics I loathe in a fish:
Stinks up the bowl
Bubbles
Swims
Eats algae or worms or anything flaky
Characteristics I like in a dog:
Same as guy but infinitely more hairy
Confession
I used to read the obituaries for entertainment.
Never was a goth, never saw the glass as half-empty, never donned the uniform of melancholy and sulked it with pride. I was much more the type who’d wear pajamas in public without a care, swinging my ponytail and wondering why more people weren't wearing flannel pants. But during college I would sneak my newspaper into class and dive into the stories on the back page told with frozen fuzzy photographs and entire lives summed up in a small paragraph of tiny type. I’ve always loved a good story, reveled in them, and the lure of a personal history packaged so completely and efficiently was too good to pass up. The impersonal summation of lives been lived, both brief and overlong, fascinated me in the details of accomplishments and organizations and titles and children and all of the myriad levels of implied love and loss and adventure.
The ones with the pictures were the best. Their faces held endless levels of what seemed to be surprise, masked behind lines and stern expressions or pasted grainy smiles. I created worlds for them not at all based on these images and texts chosen by the ones they loved. I expounded, wove epic tales of unwritten plot twists and secret foreign lives unknown to even his faithful wife of 48 years, Doris. They came back to life in ways their family and friends could never have imagined, sometimes even cavorting with the cute biddy in the second column, second from the top, and eschewing their Elks membership for a chance to run naked through Paris simply because they felt a little warm from all that red wine. I somehow knew that their souls were not content with the content of their tiny, boxed remains.
This is an odd habit to admit, I realize. Strange, perhaps, to focus such personal attention on such a private matter. But you would be wrong to think me unfeeling or unsympathetic to the process of death and honoring of the deceased – it is in fact the exact opposite. My temporary gift to each poorly-focused image and blurb is another chance at becoming the stuff of legend, of being a part of something fantastic and believing them capable of acts that transcend what can be written on the back of a newspaper in 8-point type.
When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, I found myself sitting in his funeral service fixated on the horrible wan photo that was printed in the program, right next to the words for “The Old Rugged Cross”. His final years were spent bent weakly, shuffling through a tiny one-bedroom apartment that had one window and smelled like cigarettes to offer us frostbitten, five-year-old Fudgesicles that continually populated his freezer. My siblings and I always accepted with an almost believable show of gratitude, only to leave the pigeons outside baffled by our shrine of spotted icicles and crystal-covered sticks. The end of his life was characterized by crippling diabetes and a deep misery that left him stealing other people’s breakfast syrup and drinking it out of desperation. He didn’t recognize any of us, didn’t barely even speak.
(But not anymore)
The Times I Almost Died (Part Two)
Firefighting is glamorous, dangerous, and full of situations where normal people (like you and me!) can step forward and save the world, or at least that really big tree over there. I remember times where we would drive across the mountains to a project fire (one over 10,000 acres in size) and as we approached the whole horizon would be an unsettling shade of orange and the smoke column could be seen for hundreds of miles. Fires that size create their own weather patterns, they change the environment for years to come. They make you reel, dizzy with the knowledge of their power and seemingly unstoppable might.
And then after the unstoppable is stopped (usually by rain, which kind of deflates the whole fireman/hero concept) or has moved on, there are days, sometimes weeks, where you get to mop up the bastard. Mop up is a long process involving walking around with a shovel and axe, looking for places that are still hot or burning. The fire itself is long gone, fizzled out or blazing over on the next ridge being fought bravely by people who are standing on ridge tops striking poses backlit with wind whipping through their hair. Those on mop up duty are hunched over, tired, and covered with soot, trudging through acres of burnt-over moon landscape poking at holes with the tip of their shovels, praying that no smoke will come out. Because if it does... Stump-holes are the worst. Picture a tree root system, with roots diving many feet under the ground and spreading around the perimeter of the main trunk. Now imagine the roots being replaced by air because they have been burned away by a bad, bad ol' fire. Not a very stable walking surface, plus most stump-holes still have burning pieces of root at the bottom of each suddenly empty root hole. I can't count how many of these my heavy-booted foot has plunged into, making me fall awkwardly to the side and curse heartily as the boot heated to an immediate boil. Gnats also love mop up sites, congregating around warm spots and welcoming weary firefighters by enthusiastically swarming around their heads. Overall, not the best task and one usually assigned to those too weary for front-line duty or who have had more than their share of active fire action during the season.
My team fell into the second category. I was the engine leader, and poor Jason was my crew. Jason was 19 and had been married over a year to the most shrewish woman I'd ever encountered. He was absolutely whipped, and then had the relative misfortune of being placed on the only engine in the district with a female boss. I felt for the guy and tried to be fairly equitable with our chores, training him and letting him do the showy stuff on occasion so the other guys wouldn't tease him so much. I had also gotten another team member for the fire, a man from the administrative side of the office who, while he had his fire training, had not been on many fires (I was often used to train admin. people in the way of the flames, since I spoke their language and was not as apt to mock them as the others). We were stuck doing mop up on a fire in Eastern Washington, in a part of the state full of dramatic valleys and steep mountainous terrain. Great for views, horrible for hiking over unstable ground.
(Side note: Also horrible for hiding when helicopters carrying retardant flew overhead. The terrain was not rocky enough to feature the large formations I would normally use for impromptu bathrooms and of course had recently been liberated by its covering of trees (the only reason I'd ever want to be a boy is to PEE STANDING UP - so much easier to do spontaneously and without need of leaning material). I was also wearing a bright blue shirt and a bright white hard hat that didn't even do me the courtesy of retaining any of the camouflaging soot. I stood out like a beacon in that grey/black barren world. Every time I would think myself in the clear and start to hunker down, a "whump-whump-whump" sound would come from nowhere and I'd rush to pull up my jeans and look innocent when the helicopter swung by. I think they were targeting me, feeding me insane amounts of water and Gatorade and then making it impossible to pee without an audience. grr.)
We had been assigned to mop up one side of a very steep gully. I parked the engine at the top and fed a hose line down a steep ex-deer path we had found, for fire support and for use in climbing (it was STEEP). As we were throwing hose down the abyss, a Forest Service Hot Shot crew pulled up in their van and introduced themselves (Hot Shots are supposedly their creme de la creme, though I've never been that impressed by what I've seen). By some oversight, they were assigned to mop up much of the same area. Their leader and I consulted our maps and ended up dividing the gully between our crews, letting mine take the bottom half since it looked to have the majority of the hot spots (more trees, more hiding spots for heat) and theirs take the top. I reminded him to not work over the top of where my team was working, since there were many large rocks around that could pose a danger. We traded radio frequencies and then went our separate ways.
Fast forward a half-day or so. My team hasn't found very much at the bottom of the gulf, we've been using a little water and foam in sections but most of it is pretty burnt out. We are deep in the midst of a discussion (about? who knows. We'd talk about everything and anything during mop up, having hours to kill and only holes in the ground to poke) when I heard a rustling coming down from the slope above. We all looked up, trying to find the source of the commotion, and a medium-sized boulder (8" or so) tumbled off the slope and slammed into the ground next to Jason. Our eyes got huge, we ran further down the slope as more rustlings started to become apparent overhead. The Hot Shots were working directly above us and causing boulders to loosen and come down the gully. I radioed their boss angrily and tried to chew him out, but he wasn't answering. We decided that we had to get out of there, our hose was in danger of being torn by the rocks (they were coming harder how) and our heads were in even greater danger. We hiked back up the gully to our deer trail, carefully dragging our hose out of the soot, dodging the tell-tale rustles and crashes the whole time. When we got to the base of the trail, we were worried. It was a steep trail that had been worn into the side of the mountain, and climbing it with our tools and hose would make us very vulnerable to anything coming down the hill. I volunteered to go first, just to get us out of there. I left the hose at the base to pull up later, and started to climb using my shovel in one hand and axe in the other. The guys below didn't dare start up until after I had reached the top, I told them to stand clear in case I personally dislodged anything in my ascent.
I kept an eye on the trail above me, since being a clear swath it didn't offer the luxury of rustling foliage to announce a tumbling rock. When it finally came, I was about halfway up the trail and on a particularly treacherous curve. I didn't hear it as much as feel a trembling in the ground (and a sudden sinking feeling in my chest). Without thinking, I threw my axe and shovel one way while I threw myself the other direction, barely missing the easily 2-foot-diameter boulder that flew merrily down the trail, enjoying the lack of arboreal resistance and rearranging the terrain as it went. I almost wet myself. The boys below radioed frantically, thinking that I had been flattened. It took me a few minutes to say anything decipherable to them. The incident filled me with resolve, nay, HATRED for the crew above that propelled me with amazing speed up the rest of the trail. I am not proud of the speech I gave their crew leader. I believe HE almost wet himself. It got the point across, though, and my crew made it up the trail with no incidents and away from the fire very soon after. And they gave me extra candy bars for the trip home. Yaaay, candy.
The Purple One
I went to see Prince a couple nights ago, and am still reeling from the pure joy of seeing such an icon (sometimes, literally an icon) of modern music. Even if my seats were a little far back and he looked approximately an inch tall. He had more costume changes than J.Lo, danced like James Brown, and was more than gracious when he discovered through the invitation of many young ladies onstage that Seattle women can NOT dance (or manage to clap on the 2 and 4). Except for the blond girl, who whipped her hair around like a stripper and was wearing hot pink vinyl and a boa (but even SHE couldn't keep the beat). And Maceo Parker was in the band! The Musicology Tour is wonderful, I highly recommend it to anyone within the tour range - over two hours of pure Prince and the band, playing new and old and even a couple funk/r&b covers.
And he invents new uses for the English language. Example: In the most recent Prince-speak, there is a replacement for the ever-popular "Represent!"
(common usage: "Human Resources Department, represent!")
His version? "ANOINT!"
(Prince usage: "You guys hear this band? Anoint!")
Learn it, love it, spread the strangeness
Another great bizarre thing Prince did during last night's concert was to riff during his acoustic guitar-playing section about some "rules" he wanted to tell us ladies. He instructed the men that if they wanted us ladies to listen, all they had to do was "pour a little sugar" on the instructions and we'd follow along (sugar of course was characterized by blazing guitar work and a few strategically raised eyebrows).
The rules were:
1) Learn how to work the toilet seat (a.k.a. put it down)
2) Sunday afternoons (after church) are for sports, don't try and take the men shopping (this was followed by a howling song about not wanting to go shopping)("I DON'T WANT TO GOOOOO-OOOO")
3) If you have a headache for more than 17 months, go see a doctor because something is wrong with you ("Men, you know what I mean")
4) "Yes" and "No" are perfectly good answers to any question
5) If you want your problem fixed, talk to the man. If you want sympathy, talk to "one of yah BIG-MOUTHED girlfriens" (he seemed legitimately pissy when saying this, then quickly switched back to sugar mode)
6) Only talk to men during commercials
I think there may have been more, all mixed in with solos and adorable smirks towards whichever of the 20 cameras were pointing his direction, but I was laughing too hard to catch the whole list. Then he capped off his Maxim advice column by admitting that he was probably going to sleep on the couch that night, but it was okay 'cause "I just pretend I'm camping".
He wears 3" flamenco heels and more makeup than three normal women.
PRINCE DOES NOT CAMP.
A fine romance
Once upon a time, two young ladies decided that their lives needed a touch of spice to help counteract the grey Seattle drizzle. With pounding hearts and much trepidation, they leapt into the latin dance scene and braved clubs full of enthusiastic wolf packs that followed their every move and forced the ladies to learn such Spanish phrases as "I have a boyfriend, he is very big and scary." Soon they found one club that stood apart from the others, a club where there was room to dance and where molestation was rare. They enrolled in lessons, and began to go twice a week to the club and made many lovely friends.
Then, one night, one of the ladies met a man. She was dating another man at the time in a very halfhearted fashion and immediately reanalyzed and ended that relationship once this new man had set her heart to pounding. His effect on her was unprecedented, particularly since they only saw each other for a few hours that night and were barely able to talk. Her friend was suspicious at first, since she had liked the other man (they had bonded over knowing obscure Janet Jackson lyrics, though he was emphatically NOT GAY) (mm-hmm), but when the lady and the new man started e-mailing every day and maintaining constant letters and phone calls for three months straight without any sign of a slowdown, she had to concede that maybe her friend was in love. He was, however, in Mexico.
So one night, out of the blue, the lady in love asked her friend to come with her to Mexico City to see if this relationship had any sort of a chance. And who can turn down a free plane ticket?
I (being not in love) was chosen to be the chaperone of the trip and took my job very seriously. Though K was not prone to flights of emotion, I feared that she was going too far overboard for a man that she had only really ever seen once. I was skeptical, logical, and channeling a schoolmarm with tiny spectacles and a sharp, sharp ruler.
When we arrived in Mexico City, J (the dude) met her with such enthusiasm that I thought she would be ground into a fine powder by his hug. He was excited, loud, joking, and almost overwhelming after the long flight. I was a bit stunned, K seemed quiet to me and I immediately thought that we had made a huge mistake. But she is often quiet and not very demonstrative, so I held back from dragging us onto a returning flight and we went to our hotel.
This bears mentioning - Mexico City in April is beautiful and the weather is perfect. It is also NOT tourist season, and K and I were the only whities that we saw for over a week. We were the recipients of endless catcalls, and my wardrobe of shorts and tank tops gained layer upon layer to try to avoid the attention (but then I gave up the fight. I didn't want to go that far south in the hot sun and end up wearing a full-body wrap). There were car horns that played every tacky song imaginable, but my favorites were the alarm tones that mimicked the stereotypical "whhooooOOOT-WHooooo" cat-call whistle. After a while we didn't even notice them (though J was always apologizing).
We hiked the pyramids nearby, took a gorgeous boat ride down some canals and were part of a parade, toured the cathedrals of the city, saw a ballet, rode the subway... it was a lovely trip, and I almost forgot that we were there on business (except for the fact that J came along with us everywhere and they started holding hands). K became very silent and more and more introspective as the trip went on, I caught her staring off into space often and finally on the fourth day of the trip broke her down and got the scoop.
First I have to back up a little - on the third night we decided to find a local salsa dance club, in memory of how the two of them met. We found a cheesy little bar that was pumping distorted salsa music, and danced for most of the night (they with each other, me with a rotating cast of interesting people that included a guy from New York who wanted to financially support me after one dance and his friend, who looked like a stereotypical mafia thug but moved surprisingly well on the dance floor for someone so big and loaded down with weaponry). At one point I was on the dance floor with a smooth talker and looked back to our table to try and get some sympathy (and maybe a cut in from J), and was shocked by what I saw. K and J, who had been getting increasingly affectionate, were sitting on the opposite ends of the table looking away from each other with traumatized expressions on both of their faces. I was stuck on the dance floor and unable to see what had happened for two more dances. My mind whirled - had they fought? Broken up? Was there a serious problem with either of them? I couldn't get any info from either party, it was a very quiet cab ride back to the hotel and K fell asleep immediately (or pretended to).
Here's what I found out the next day: When I looked over at them in the club, it was just a second or two after he had out of the blue proposed marriage to her! He hadn't really been intending to, and certainly not that soon, but he had somehow. Her shocked look was because she had accepted his proposal, and hadn't been intending to so soon (but had). Even though it was unexpected in both question and answer, neither one wanted to take it back, and were rocked to the core by the implications of what had just occurred. There were differences in location, language, religion, culture... plus the fact that they had been in each other's presence a grand total of four days. K and I talked a lot that night, and the rest of the trip. She looked at it from every angle, analyzing her suddenly impulsive nature, and came to the same conclusion - that she wanted to marry him and probably knew it from the first day they had met. They wed in Seattle and moved back to Mexico for a while, and now are back in town with their bilingual baby boy. Bridging the two (or more) cultures hasn't been easy (he's originally from Colombia), but their commitment to each other and willingness to sacrifice has been wonderful to see.
So if anyone wants a chaperone to bring to a tropical locale and interview a potential honey, I'm totally 1 for 1 and available anytime.
