When I was nine I moved to Texas. At school I was immediately embraced by everyone and the popularity was overwhelming.
I’m kidding. I was bullied. Relatable right?
Mistakenly I had befriended a very popular girl with very loyal/territorial friends who weren’t happy that we were spending so much time together.
At recess, each of her friends (single file) approached me and told me they hated me. Kids are so sweet.
Out of all the mean girls, there was, of course, the leader. Her name was Talon, as in a claw, especially one belonging to a bird of prey. Suitable, huh?
Well, one day as my dad and I passed the ol’ pigskin around (a football for those who don’t know… or at least I think that’s what it means… what if I’ve been wrong all these years and ol’ pigskin actually meant something horrid and not very vegan). He asked me how school was going and I told him about The Claw.
To this day I remember what he said. He said, “Don’t let anyone rent space in your head. You’re only giving them power over you”.
I remember this because it was so damn annoying. What bullied nine-year-old wants to hear that she is part of the problem?
But I took the advice and moved on. I made friends and learned a few jokes to distract bullies with, similar to throwing meat in the opposite direction and running. With less running. And not enough meat, frankly.
I’m still struggling with this though. Not bullies. That would be uncomfortable for two reasons.
Why am I still attending recess as a grown woman?
I recently took a self-defense class and I’m way too eager to use the moves
I’m struggling with not letting people rent space in my head. People say something harmless or purposely mean and I chew it over for days!
I’ve held grudges for years. Then I think about how that can’t be good for my skin long term, or my digestive system short term and then it makes me even angrier. The cycle is vicious.
I realized, my brain has just been a terrible landlord. It’s letting the tenants paint the walls a horrendous yellow and bringing in oversized dogs without a pet deposit.
This metaphor is getting lengthy.
I guess what I’m trying to say is enough is enough. Get the hell out of my head!
I figured I’d start where I always have when I’m facing anything scary. (Besides burying myself in rom-coms). Logic my way back.
Does it make sense that the librarian hates you because you’re a repeat offender of overdue books?
Possibly, librarians aren’t portrayed in movies as having a positive attitude. They like to shush people.
Has a real librarian ever shushed you?
No, they’ve asked me nicely to not walk them through the plot of the entire Twilight Saga.
After graduating with my BA, I have thought about the possibility of going back to school, but something has always held me back.
I have a weird history with teachers. Maybe if I put them down on paper you will see what I mean. I will not highlight all of them. That would take an entire book and crush my soul.
The first teacher I had when I moved to Texas was my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Barret, who I referred to as the Evil Carrot because I was nine and only had rhyming skills to hurt people’s feelings with. She would threaten to beat us with planks of wood she kept in her supply cabinet. That is all.
My attempt to learn Spanish was soon crushed with my freshmen year teacher. When I walked into class the first day I tried to explain that my schedule had been moved around and I was new to her class. She stared back and said, “It’s assigned seating”.
I again explained how my name wasn’t on the list and she told me to sit in a corner. I sat criss-cross-applesauce until she noticed me during her lecture and yelled at me to take an assigned seat based on the chart. I would then start the explanation all over again. By the next class, I knew well enough to just pick a seat.
Throughout the year she would randomly teach us French as if she had forgotten what class we were taking. She would also scream and hide under her desk while playing Shakira music videos. There was also the problem of her counting backward from ten to make the voices go away.
The next year we were told she had left teaching. Part of me worried for her, either way, it definitely made second-year Spanish quite difficult.
My sophomore World History teacher used a walking cane and threatened to beat anyone with it who referred to it as a “pimp stick”. Apparently, this was a touchy subject for him as he was incredibly worried someone would assume he enslaved young women for sex. A lot of his lectures had nothing to do with world history and everything to do with the life of a pimp.
A boy I had a crush on told me I had beautiful eyes, but the moment was ruined when my history teacher interrupted the moment to explain to him that a woman would prefer to be told, “You have cow eyes”. Have you seen the eyes of the cow? Beautiful. At 15 I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about my self-esteem that day.
My sophomore year I had two Chemistry teachers. The first semester the teacher decided to start the class by proving something about having a decent amount of budget for the STEM department. He demonstrated this by throwing glass test tubes across the classroom and watching them shatter.
A boy with a glass eye (from a similar incident) cringed with each toss, worried he would lose his other eye. We covered him with our textbooks and cardigans like good peers.
He continued to walk us through the procedures in case any of us spilled toxic chemicals on ourselves during a lab experiment.
“Take off all of your clothes and stand under this showerhead,” he said. “Don’t worry I will be here to hold up this blanket so no one will see you naked.”
He unrolled the blanket to reveal a giant hole cut from the middle.
“I’ll fix that! We have the budget for it!”
The second semester was a woman who was very insecure about her relationship with her girlfriend. I don’t blame her. Texas is a harsh place. However one day she came in with brownies and exclaimed that if we didn’t eat them then we hate bisexual people. The brownies felt hostile but tasted pretty damn good. That’s when I became a fan of bisexual brownies.
My physics teacher in Texas claimed to be Commanche but was just a white guy who grew out his hair. He told us how his dad used to beat him and never taught us physics because it was too important to teach us about life. I still don’t know what I learned from him, except the concept of cultural appropriation.
My second semester of junior year I was living in Arizona and had an equally interesting physics teacher. He was clearly on steroids and threw stools across the classroom in rage when he wasn’t participating in Iron Mans.
My government class was only one semester and our teacher made us draw our notes and then graded us on our artistic abilities rather than the content itself. You would think he was a very calm soul, but once made a girl with diabetes scrub each desk after class because she had to eat a snack. Great guy.
The other semester was economics, the teacher of which made us invest in stocks, and encouraged us to cheat on our tests. He would turn his chair around to face the whiteboard and tell us to take out our individual internets (our cell phones). There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
My senior year of high school I took a dual credit English class taught within the high school. I clarify this because my teacher forced us to refer to him as a professor when he clearly was not. On the first day of class, he made us watch him slowly eat a grape and described it as orgasmic. I learned so much.
When I finally started college my first year I took a political science class. On the first day, there was a slideshow playing photos of a teenage girl. The professor started class explaining that the girl in the photos was his daughter. And she was murdered two months prior. We then spent the rest of the class watching news clips.
I fell in love with creative writing and had a wonderful creative writing professor. When I googled her name I found out she was a disgraced journalist because she made up people for her columns. I guess you could say she found her place in fiction. I still love her.
As part of my degree, I had to take an internship class. As part of the curriculum, we had to attend a lecture held by a self-published author. He was the Boom-Boom guy, some form of an inspirational speaker. All I remember is someone in the audience answering one of his questions and then screaming as a t-shirt was thrown at her face while he yelled, “YOU’VE JUST GRADUATED FROM BOOM-BOOM UNIVERSITY!”. Poor girl.
And last, but not least, I received a mentor as part of a school organization I was a part of. He was a nice guy, but completely and totally sexist. Almost all of his sentences started with “You girls always…”. You know, the way people liked to be lumped together?
Anyways I had to invite a guest speaker to my professional program and I thought he’d be good to invite. He was an odd guy, but he worked in the industry. Bad mistake.
Immediately he started yelling at my peers to stand up and give him their elevator speech. No one knew what he wanted and one girl started panicking. After we calmed her down I escorted him out.
AND THESE WERE JUST THE HIGHLIGHTS! Every year my whole life I have had the strangest people teach me the basics. I wish I could say I wouldn’t change it for the world… but a shiny private school might’ve been nice.
Maybe fewer threats and more learning. That should be their tagline! Did anyone else have weird teachers? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway was one of the many, many self-help books I would stare down in my mother’s bookcase when I was a kid. This book eventually came with me to my college dorm where it would continue to torment me as a fresh adult.
Instead of accepting that books like this were not torture machines in the form of paper but in fact, actually were self-help books, I took them each as a personal challenge.
I was crippled by the fear of starting anything in case I failed. It wasn’t until a few months ago where my ego finally agreed that I fail all the time. Almost every day. So failure wasn’t even that special.
Miss my mouth while drinking = Fail
Follow the five-second rule = Fail (You are eating off the ground! You can do better.)
Ignore important email until it was way too late to respond = Fail
Tell myself today is going to be productive then watch hours of Netflix (and I mean hours) = Fail
These tiny failures did not lead to my imminent death. Neither did slightly bigger failures.
Receive a rejection letter from a magazine = Fail
Didn’t tell my mom happy mother’s day = Fail
Forgot my best friend’s birthday = Fail
Missed the deadline for a dream job application = Fail
I survived that too. Of course, there is guilt and possibly tears, over way larger failures but unless your failure was smoking 6 packs of cigarettes a day for 20 years or that you refused to wear your seatbelt because it wrinkled your freshly dry cleaned dress then most likely you won’t die from it.
But if you do die at least your dress was wrinkle-free and you looked like Snow White in your coffin. It’s the little things that truly matter.
I am terrified right now as I type this but I think I’m finally understanding some of those self-help books that used to haunt me. I am literally experiencing fear right now and doing it anyway.
The idea of starting this website and publishing very intimate details about myself onto the internet was both ill-advised by many (including that public speaker who would come to your high school and warn you that everything you post will come back and bite you in the ass and no one will hire you and you’ll live in your parent’s basement forever and no one will love you so don’t even think of updating your MySpace account, Jessica) and frightening to me but for some reason I did it anyway.
I am only two months into Girls Aren’t Funny and each month individually had over 100 unique visitors and close to 500 views of people possibly refreshing the page. Honestly, whether you think that is good news or not, personally that way exceeded my expectation. I legit assumed even my mom wouldn’t read it. So thank you, thank you so much.
Right now I am researching for Girls Aren’t Funny’s Modern Feminist Project podcast and it is just another layer of scary. My stomach lurches when I see famous women get trolled on Twitter and I want to hide under the covers. Why would I want to join the conversation if that’s literally the best thing that can happen to me?
Literally, the best thing would be if I became successful in my endeavor to answer some of life’s goddamn stupid questions as a woman who wants to do good by other women and then some loser named Trevor69 calls me fat.
And you know what? I’m excited. I’m fucking stoked. Bring it on, Trevor69!
Again, if you have any interest being interviewed on the podcast or have anything you’d like to share about your experience as a ladyfolk (oh god I regretted that immediately) please reach out through the comments, the contact form or via our gaf.submissions@gmail.com.
All this overcoming fear is making me hungry. I’m going to go eat Mexican food, bye.
I scanned my body. I still get ID’d at restaurants and bars. I don’t look old, do I? I mean I guess I could’ve had kids by now. I technically have had the capability for years.
“How about cats? Do you have any cats?”
I scanned myself again. Am I already at the point of no return? Where my option is either kid or cat? How do I explain to this woman I have neither and I still have a hard time taking care of just myself.
“No, just me,” I said but with a peppy voice to ensure I was not sad/lonely/pathetic because I’m not but it still made me strangely defensive.
“Oh okay, I just have a box of clown noses I’m trying to get rid of.”
She didn’t explain herself any further. I assumed it was originally a fundraiser. For clowns.
I said I’d take one for myself so she gave me two as if I have two noses or I was lying the whole time about the kid/cat I may or may not have.
I sat in the car with the clown nose but it made it hard to see while driving. And even worse than that it forced me to become a mouth-breather and no wants that. Especially my possible kid/cat.
On an unrelated note that I will forcefully mesh together: I had a flashback to when I was in kindergarten. Birthday kids had to lay down on a long roll of construction paper and then the teacher drew a line around the current birthday kid’s body. Like a crime scene.
Maybe it was to teach us about our own mortality. Maybe it was a therapy tool for our teacher.
Then the rest of the class would write nice things about the birthday kid inside the lines of the body. Because that’s what I wanted on my birthday. A bunch of sticky kindergartners writing adjectives all over a symbol of my body. Maybe this is how Jesus feels when people take communion. I probably just offended somebody.
Moving on.
I volunteered to cut the construction paper above the kid’s head. The last kid in charge of the scissors cut some hair in the process so I was watched intently.
My teacher spoke gently about how to hold the scissors and I rolled my eyes internally.
How old did she think I was? Four? Well, I was five, lady, and I was familiar with arts and crafts.
Right before the ceremony was to begin (I promise my mother assures me we weren’t in a cult and this wasn’t a school in a Lifetime movie) the child lay down on the crinkly paper and the teacher methodically drew around his body.
As the ink dried in between his fingers my arch nemesis (not really but it makes it more dramatic) chucked a marker at me. I was outraged. I was the scissor-carrier, the cutter, the one-that-released-the-paper-from-the-rest-of-the-paper. How dare he?!
So I threw the scissors at his head.
Ok, I threw a wooden block but the scissors would have been more thematic.
The block hit our teacher in the back of the head and the sound of marker against paper squiggled to a stop.
“Who did this?” she seethed with the block in her hand.
I stepped forward to apologize and be forgiven quickly because I was such a big person for admitting my mistake.
The scissors were taken away and I was sent to a corner to think about what I’d done.
I thought to myself, “I will never forgive any of them and I will remember for years the shame they have caused me. My children will one day know this story.”
Here I am almost two decades later with no kid or cat to share this tragic tale too.
So I offer to you my woes and an extra clown nose. You’re welcome.
Discussion questions:
Why are clown noses funny?
What happened in your childhood that you could turn into a Lifetime movie?
Don’t answer that second question unless you were in a cult. Lifetime only wants cults. Give up now.
Can you procrastinate when you don’t have anything to be truly responsible for? Well, either way I procrastinated today so instead of a full post I bless you with my very own awkward family photo.
That’s me in the bottom left at age 13. You can tell my age by the posture that says, “I have no self-esteem but I think the lace on this shirt makes me sexy”.
The photographer’s choice of sepia was the cherry on top to this masterpiece.
Of course none of us kids knew the collage we were signing ourselves up for. We were just told to look to the heavens. No one knew we were to be modge-podged into forced sibling adoration.
I needed a featured image for this post and when I searched “beautiful kidneys” no stock photos would appear. So I made my sister take a selfie with me. She’s too cool for me in her leather jacket and I just want her to love me. Also, the title of this post is going to rock my SEO game and possibly lead to an arrest.
When talking to children about their sickness symptoms always use extensive metaphors and personification.
For example, my sister’s kidneys were hurting. Usually, this would be cause for alarm. Possibly a kidney infection, etc.
Me: Your kidneys are just mad at you
Abigail: What are they mad at me for?
Me: You don’t pay them enough. They’re on strike.
Abigail: How do I pay them?
Me: Well, they’re just threatening you with the possibility of a strike. Really they’re just grumbling about their unfair pay. Eventually, they’ll get a raise but with a raise comes a higher workload. That’s just life.
Abigail: …
Me: To be honest I got lost in the middle of the metaphor. Drink some water. If that doesn’t work I’ll give you one of my own kidneys.
And this is why I didn’t become a doctor. It’s all about the lack of English composition skills.
And no I didn’t take her to the doctors because I believe in 19th-century medicine and covered her in leeches.
And no you can’t take her out of my custody because she wasn’t even mine in the first place so jokes on you Child Protective Services.
And yes you should ignore everything I said because we both realized she was just experiencing period cramps. Being a woman is new to her, she only hit puberty this year.
I think it may be against some kind of sister code to talk about her period on the internet.
I feel giddy with this much power. Everyone should talk about their sister’s period.
Sidenote (like total sidenote, like this is barely related to anything and you should probably turn around now): Today I realized I want to one day write a movie just so I can film one specific scene.
You know how in most* comedies there’s a scene where a guy’s penis is revealed. I’m hesitant to Google this for you because honestly, I’m scared of what will pop up on my screen in this busy coffee shop.
*I use the word ‘most’ loosely. Maybe not the majority of comedies result in a mail/male package being delivered.
Oh jesus, I typed in “comedies where a guy whips out his ween” into the search bar and this photo showed up.
These kids and their parents look way too eager. I hope it’s their parents.
Anyways that took a strange turn. I simply wanted to say that instead of Seth Rogen walking around in a way-too-small robe with his penis flying around for a few laughs, all I want out of life is to write a scene where a woman walks around with her cat hanging out with just a full bush. Is that too much to ask for?
I am amazed I could so easily find a picture of Seth Rogen in a kimono.
I asked my sister and she said it was way too much to ask for. Also to close my robe when I walk around her bedroom.
This picture is of the first day of ski school. Look at that naive son of a bitch smiling away without a care in the world. Let’s just say the last day of the program I found myself in a full-blown panic attack slowly making my way down a mountain with four very uncomfortable people. The trainer mistook my raspy breathing as asthma rather than anxiety. I thought I’d have to fight off CPR.
Unsubtle sports segue.
I am terrified of team sports. I think it has something to do with people expecting my height to somehow assist me in my coordination.
You’re probably thinking, “Oh no, now she is going to talk about how her long limbs got in the way of her athletic ability”. Or you are thinking, “Can I eat this Chinese food if it has been in my fridge for two weeks?” If the first question, you are wrong, I am an amazing athlete. If the second, yes you can eat it, I have already tested the theory for you. You’re welcome.
Soccer: When your parents don’t realize you’re American
At the ripe age of four, I was enrolled in soccer. Maybe if I was born literally anywhere else in the world I would enjoy this sport but… no.
Who didn’t have to go through this experience? Parents try to make sure their kid doesn’t get type II diabetes so they enroll them in shit like soccer and gymnastics.
(Pro tip: Thank god for childhood obesity because I can buy cheaper clothes in the plus-size section of Gap Kids.)
Well, did you have a dad who stood on the sidelines yelling at the coach’s lack of ability as a coach and as a man? This only started my career. At every game, my dad would stand farther down the field and give me opposite advice to what my coaches were saying.
“Melanie! Head back to defense!” yelled the coaches.
“Melanie! Don’t listen to them! They’ve never played a day of soccer in their life! Go for the ball! Aggression is key!” screamed my father.
Understandably, soccer games became a huge source of anxiety for me. So did tennis, kickball and for one summer, fencing. Naturally.
Over the years I racked up some pretty gruesome injuries. Including the time I injured my ankle, was strapped into a boot and then put in the goalie box to keep me safe, to be then injured by my own teammate. Oh did you want me to tell you that story? Don’t worry, here it goes.
My dad was really big on the concept of supporting your team no matter what, so with my new ankle boot I hobbled onto the soccer field to wish my team good luck before the game. We were missing our goalie and so in their desperation, they asked me to stand in goal. I learned two things from that moment:
1.) Never show up to anything injured or sick, because people will still find ways to put you to use when you don’t want to be, and 2.) Always negotiate for an extra snack when being asked to perform a dangerous service, especially when Sarah’s mom brings orange slices.
I accepted the new position and tugged on the neon, smelly vest that comes with the glory of the goalie. I planned to stay rooted in my safe little box until I realized I was actually standing in the target zone.
I wrapped my arms around the ball to look up and see two figures speeding towards me. I felt an intense pain and blacked out. My response is best told through my mother’s interpretation, “You were sprawled out on the ground and then you shot up with a scream of pain. It was kinda funny like when you giggle at a horror movie trailer.” Very relatable.
The arm I broke was on the same side of my body as my ankle boot so for weeks after the injury, I hobbled around with the right side of my body heavier than the other. The most flattering nickname I received was ‘bionic woman’, and that was from my dad. The least flattering was ‘cripple’, which was from my mom.
Good times. At least I can say I was allright!
Volleyball: Oh you’re tall? Get the fuck on this team
My mom encouraged me to try out for the volleyball team in eighth grade and when I say encouraged I actually mean she refused to pick me up after school until I called her sweaty and out of breath from the excitement of the experience. If I called her sweaty and out of breath for any other reason, it was just another day in middle school.
The last bell rang and I stayed seated on the locker room bench as a gang of girls came through to change into athletic gear. I tried some small talk like, “Hey! I have never played this sport before and it would be swell if you could explain every rule in the game and also never pass me the ball,” or some casual locker room banter such as, “No worries, I am no threat to you as I will not be making the team. Please just let me live through this.”
Some girls gave me weak smiles of pity, while others laughed as if I was joking. One, in particular, sprayed me with perfume and whispered to me, good luck. I took it as either a superstitious ritual or a hint that I needed to find my deodorant again. I trudged out onto the court where the volleyball net had already been erected.
The coach came up behind me and slapped me across the back, “I’m so glad you came, Whyte. We can finally put your height to good use.”
What does that mean? Did she think my height had been of no use so far for anything but the godly athleticism of volleyball?
“I can reach things on the top shelf,” I mumbled. She looked at me for a beat too long with a concerned look on her face.
The same look she gave me when I was put on the discus team for track and field, then realized I had no strength, moved me to the sprinters, realized I’m not fast, then moved me to long-distance running, where I perfected the technique of lifting your knees in an exaggerated motion so that from the other side of the track it looked like you were jogging in slow motion.
I’m not sure where I was going with this, but needless to say, I had a bad track record!
Basketball: If I was shorter would you still love me?
Eventually, I found basketball, where the shorts are baggy and the girls are… tall. Did you think I was going to say saggy? Because they are not. They wear sports bras.
I made my middle school basketball team and after the initial relief of accomplishing a tryout without injuring someone else, I realized I would actually have to play a game with people watching.
The crowd at my first game could be described as human, maybe with a few service dogs mixed in. I was sent out on the court with my white skin shiny under the gym’s fluorescent lights and my limbs swinging nervously by my side.
My coach screamed, “defense!” at me as I made small talk with the other team’s players. It was important to me that everyone liked me so this was the natural position for me to be in. In an effort to please the coach, I broke the girl’s nose.
Oh wait, I skipped some details.
As I was having a lovely conversation about how I don’t particularly enjoy being sweaty, the basketball bounced off the rim and ricocheted towards us.
In an effort to protect her (i.e. defense) I reached out to grab the ball and my elbow came crashing down on her fragile cartilage. I promised to be right back and made a shot for my team, but she didn’t want to exchange chat-room information after that.
You win some, you lose some. I say I won on several accounts, one of the bigger reasons being that I was diagnosed with scoliosis at the nurse’s the next day and no longer had to participate in team sports.
You know what they say, back surgery is a bitch but nothing is worse than enforced team spirit.
My kid sister* has been sick the last few days so we set up an appointment at the doctor’s office. My parents stuck their head into my room (my nana’s living room**) and asked if I’d take her that afternoon. Half-asleep I agreed. With ten years between us, I had always been seen as an understudy to my mother.
*The featured image was chosen for two reasons: it was a picture of my sister when she was still cute enough to get away with things and also because this story takes place in Ireland and for some reason, she looks like a leprechaun.
**I always have to clarify this but I’m only staying for a couple weeks before I continue my travels so I’m not couch surfing indefinitely. I clarify this for you and border control. They were mean and made me show them proof I plan to leave. Jokes on them, I’m actually an Irish citizen who made the mistake of traveling with her American passport instead of her EU passport so she could stay in line for customs with her sexy American boyfriend. The stupid shit you do for a guy to carry your luggage.
The neighborhood doctor has a tiny office attached to the side of his house down the street from Nana’s place. His daughter is also a doctor and they are a badass duo. (Why isn’t there a superhero who writes prescriptions?)
You could maybe fit two American-size fridges in their tiny waiting room. (That’s now how I scale things now.)
An older woman and I were bumping knees and I felt her staring at the side of my face. She’d hurumph and click her tongue in disapproval when I’d hand Abigail a tissue or push hair behind her ear (all motherly like). This is when I realized she thought I was her mother.***
***Abigail’s mother, not this woman’s mother, that would be time travel and I’m not that talented. Just talented enough to get pregnant before my first period. Call me Mary. That was a biblical reference. It was incorrect but it was a reference. (Apparently, I don’t know how to use footnotes.)
She was angry at me for possibly birthing a child as a teenager. I’m obviously not a teenager anymore. This means this woman was holding a grudge against me for something that may or may not have happened 12 years ago. When I was 10.
I actually found myself hiding my left hand because I didn’t have a ring on my finger! I was kicking myself for not wearing more rings. Should’ve put a ring on it. By the time the doctor came to get us I was humming Beyonce.
We sat down in her office and I immediately started sweating. I’m still not used to going to the doctor by myself, let alone another person. I’m so adult I wrote down a list of her symptoms and kept checking it when she looked away.
She had Abigail lay down so she can press all over her lower abdomen and do doctor things. When she sent Abigail to the bathroom for a urine sample I twiddled my thumbs in silence. I attempted doctor small talk.
“So what organs were you pressing?” I said.
“Organs?”
“Yeah, organs! Like what were you feeling her for?”
“Well uh, there’s bladders and tubes and the whole female reproductive system down there. You do know where babies form right?”
“Oh well yeah! I know how babies are made.”
Should’ve stayed silent.
“I’m just going to go check on Abigail.”
I banged on the bathroom door to hurry my sick sister and came back after counting 60 Mississippi’s.
“She’s fine! Should be with us shortly.”
Once she got back I continued to not know the answers necessary to confirm her medical history. I felt like it was exam day but if you fail so does your sister’s appendix. I’m not equipped for that kind of pressure, and neither was my deodorant. (Insert deodorant commercial that makes me rich and I buy robot doctors I can rent to third world countries for a fee because there’s no such thing as a free lunch!)
She asked who she should call in the morning to further discuss Abigail’s symptoms.
“If your mom is working who would be the best person to call [because you’re useless]?” she said.
“Oh just call Nana,” I said like a freaking three-year-old.
“Nana [you toddler in a woman’s body]? ”
“I mean, Adrienne. I mean her grandmother [jesus, let me off the hook and give me a lollipop].”
She nodded and wrote something down. I like to think she wrote down a reminder to splurge for the nice alcohol tonight because she has to deal with patients’ family members like me.
We left with the possibility Abigail either has a minor virus or appendicitis.
So as I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently in Dublin, Ireland, visiting my family. My sister is attending a Catholic school (as you do in Ireland) and she’s being fast-tracked through the process of becoming as holy as possible.
She asked me to be her sponsor for her confirmation (a ceremony for being “confirmed in the Catholic church”, it’s not as cult-like as it sounds) and I said, “Does that mean I have to give you money or something?” No one exactly explained what my role was other than show up for the ceremony but I didn’t have to write a check so I agreed.
As part of the ceremony being run by her school, they decided to take the opportunity to scare children away from drugs and alcohol. The whole family was invited down to the church to light a candle and listen to kids chant about not touching the good stuff until they’re at least 18.
We, of course, arrive about 20 minutes late in the middle of the sponsor’s oath. A decent amount of the crowd was standing but we didn’t understand whether we were to sit or stand so we bobbed up and down for about a minute in confusion with one hand up like we were boy scouts. I almost put my hand over my heart for the pledge of allegiance.
Once we settled into our seats a priest got up to tell us all a story.
“Now children, have you heard about American Indians? I mean Native Indians, I mean Native American Indians…”
It went on for a while until he settled on the most politically correct term he could muster.
“Well, do you know the happiest place in the world? I’ll give you a hint, it’s in Florida.”
Kids squirmed with excitement, “Disney World!” they said in unison.
“Exactly, well that beautiful theme park is sitting on what used to be the home of thousands of Indian Americans (he still didn’t understand the concept).”
Where was he going with this? Well, he proceeded to tell the story of how Disney basically stepped on the necks of Native Americans and how you can’t assume everything beautiful is without flaw. I think. I think that’s what his metaphor was. I got lost and couldn’t find my way back.
But that was only the first of three Native American metaphors. Apparently, it was a theme for the night.
Then he starts talking about a Native American paddling in a canoe down a river but he’s surrounded with plastic bottles but with one teardrop all the trash disappears. This may have been related to Earth Day but no one questioned him.
The last one he spoke of a Native American boy who climbed a mountain, met a rattlesnake who asked to be carried down the mountain because he was cold. The boy was like, no you’ll bite me and the snake was like, “Nah”. So he carried the snake down the mountain and it bit him. The boy was like, “Ah! You promised!” and the snake was like “Sorry kid, you saw what I was. You knew what you were getting into.”
The snake was a representation of drugs the whole time. Or maybe the boy was on drugs. I forgot the metaphor already.
The priest then listed out a bunch of alcohol brands, like almost all of them. Like, he sounded hella thirsty.
“Yeah, marijuana, speed, cocaine, all beautiful stuff. But not until you’re 18 okay?”
They then all chanted together not to touch this beautiful stuff and lit candles. The wax was dripping all over Abigail but it was in the name of God and meth so it was fine.
“OK, let’s wrap this thing up. If we leave now we can catch the second half of the game.”
First off, did anyone sing the title of this post to the tune of Fancy by Iggy Azalea? Because go back and do that.
It was the morning of my sister’s first communion. (I’m about to give all non-Catholics a crash course in this religious rite of passage.)
It’s basically an opportunity for seven-year-olds to get crazy rich. Imagine bar-mitzvahs but for Catholics. (I may be offending a lot of people.)
Basically, you eat a wafer that is supposed to symbolize the body of Christ and drink wine, that symbolizes the blood of Christ. It’s basically symbolic cannibalism. But not as creepy as that. I used to think of it as eating a wafer-size Jesus who takes care of your insides. (That’s also why I wasn’t selected for anyone’s team during Bible Bingo).
It’s a big deal in a Catholic family, especially an Irish Catholic family, and I was excited to be in Dublin to see my sister do her thang. It was a small affair because, like most families with their last kid, they don’t try as hard. So she missed her first communion with the other seven-year-olds but five years later she’s going to a Catholic school in Ireland and was put on the fast track through confession and communion.
The local priest agreed to squeeze her in before her Catholic school had their confirmation. (Wow, there is so much backstory here. Maybe this post is only for Catholics. I’ve decided to be uninclusive in the name of God.)
Look how the holy spirit blew through her hair. The hair I spent a decent amount of time styling.
FINALLY, we’re at the actual story of the day. I curled Abigail’s hair all pretty and she had on a lovely white dress and we realized this 12-year-old doesn’t own a strapless bra. (Neither do I, and I’m a grown woman).
I encouraged the no-bra, possible band-aid, technique but she wasn’t having it in front of a priest. So when my mom left the room we dug through her drawer to find an old bra we could cut the straps off.
We were running late to mass and everyone yelled for us to come down. Without scissors in sight, we used an Exacto-knife (she’s into crafts) to shred through. We emerged triumphant. Screw you, Victoria [Secret].
There was too many of us going to the church so we separated into two cars. My brother, my aunt, Nick and I took off ahead of them and arrived at the nearest church within minutes. Since we arrived early we used our time luxuriously. We chatted in the car, we strolled across the lawn, we even took our time finding a seat.
No one else was there.
Mass was starting soon and then it hit us all at once. We gathered our jackets and pride and ran past a confused usher.
“Where are you going?” he shouted at our retreating backs.
“We’re at the wrong church!”
Churchgoers watched us trip over ourselves back to the car.
I yelled back at them,”Sorry, we realized we’re Jewish!”
On the way to the right church, we listened to a radio host discuss a dating site for married people to cheat on their spouses. (Finally something relatable, right? Farmers Only has had its time in the sun.)
“You know, Dr. Seus cheated on his terminally ill wife,” my brother said as we sprinted from the parking spot.
“Stephen Hawking cheated on his wife too,” Nick said as we approached the doors.
“And he was the terminal one, the bastard,” I said as we walked directly into the front of the church.
Silence. The congregation stared at us.
I crossed myself and joined my family in the front row. I thought I would be slowly forgotten once the service started. I soon realized my family was in the front row because it was Abigail’s special day.
“Abigail’s sister is joining us today all the way from the states,” I waved meekly.
Then it was the big moment. We lined up behind Abigail as she swallowed a little bit of Jesus and we each took our own turn. When it was just the priest and I he said, “You’re definitely sisters”.
What was the emphasis for? Did Abigail also call a brilliant recently deceased physicist an illegitimate child in front of the whole congregation?
I had never spoken directly with a priest before, except through the small holes of a confession booth (another Catholic thing) and I panicked.
“I did her hair,” I stuttered and ran back to my pew like a good Catholic.
Thank god (no pun intended) the rest of the day all of the attention was on Abigail. People from the church flocked to her to wish her well.
Two little old ladies looked at her fondly and said, “You’ll never be as holy as you are on the day of your first communion.”
