When I mention the fact that I went to a girls’ school for high school, I get a full range of responses, varying from an “Oh, really?” that means, “So that explains it” to an “Oh, really?” that means, “I pity you.” While I was still young and inexperienced, these responses bothered me. I would hide in my room, rock in my chair and cry to my cats. But my high school soon taught me to stand proud. Now when someone implies that there’s anything wrong with single-sex education, I shout “NO!” at the person loudly and forcefully, knee them in the groin, then crush his or her instep with my heel and run away. Nobody can tell me my four years at an all-girls’ school didn’t fully prepare me to deal with the real world.
It isn’t as though I spent four years looking around and wondering, “Where are the boys?” (Although I did that at the prom.) On the contrary, I liked the fact that I could sit at a table full of girlfriends at lunch every day and not be afraid to say what was on my mind for fear that I would be mocked, ignored, or asked on a date. I could walk the halls without fear of having my looks or figure judged; just my clothes and shoes.
It’s a magical experience when a teenage girl realizes that she, along with a pack of malicious, giggling friends, can make life a living hell for a young, nervous, twenty-three year old male graduate student who is trying to teach them history. Looking back, Mr. Capazzola, I feel your pain. Sitting in a small, dark, enclosed space with a class of fourteen-year-old girls who are watching a documentary film on the Vietnam War and hooting at the shirtless soldiers, is enough to bring out the fight-or-flight response in anyone. The things we did to our teachers may have been obnoxious and cruel, but they were always subtle, which made them worse. It is one thing to turn all the chairs in the classroom to face the wrong way, but it is quite another to say to a teacher in the middle of class, “What are those little patterns on your socks supposed to be?”
It wasn’t always fun and games, though. I would read Seventeen magazine articles that advised cozying up to “that hottie who sits next to you in English class,” and sigh mournfully. Worse still were the “Is He Right for you?” quizzes which I took dutifully despite my utter ineligibility, chewing my pencil thoughtfully and making up a composite boyfriend.
What I disliked the most about the entire experience were the opportunities to mingle with the opposite sex that were forced upon us by the administration once or twice a year. These happened on designated “Special Days”, in which half the population of our ‘brother’ school came to my school, and half the population of our school went to theirs for an afternoon of mixed classes, fun and unspeakable awkwardness. I can’t imagine what kind of incestuous values our school was promoting by calling the boys’ school across town our ‘brother’ school-since the relations between students at the two schools were often much more than familial.
I didn’t find it a difficult transition from high school to college. It only took me a few weeks to stop pointing and giggling. I’m truly grateful for those boy-free four years that allowed me to devote myself to my studies and to put my education first. And now that I’m in college, I can put all of that learning stuff behind me and focus on what really matters in life: catching a man.
I’ve spent many hours theorizing about procrastination. Some people always appear to have their priorities in order and their work in on time. However, a good many others are reading this column only because they’re trying to put off starting a twenty-page paper that’s due tomorrow. You know who you are. The salt-art you leave on the tabletops in Kline gives you away.
Are some people genetically more inclined to procrastinate? If procrastination were an inherited trait, it seems as though it should have been weeded out long ago as counterproductive and undesirable. I can’t help but assume that the cavemen who went ahead and diligently discovered fire had a higher rate of survival than those who said, “Eh, I’ve got all weekend.” When plagues descended on villages, the inhabitants who didn’t leave town right away because they just couldn’t get around to packing up all their stuff probably didn’t do too well in the long run.
So why is this habit still around? It could be said that some good does come out of procrastination. If students went straight to their studies without allowing themselves several hours (or days, or months, depending on the circumstances) of puttering around beforehand, picture the CD’s that would remain un-alphabetized, their liner notes un-perused. Tumbleweeds would roll through Historic Diners, which would eventually go bankrupt. Plants would go un-watered. Thank-you notes would never, ever be written. Thousands of cartons of Smack Ramen would sit uneaten. How many friendships have been saved because one or the other of you had a twenty-page final to work on but decided they simply had to pick up the phone and catch up?
Procrastination is the only thing I can think of that you are doing just by talking about it. And it’s so much fun to talk about! Discussing your procrastination habits is like gossiping about yourself. I loaf around after a meal bragging about how much reading I have or how many encyclopedic papers I have to write as though that makes me some kind of bad-ass. And maybe it does, because people often try to wrestle the crown title of “Most Amount of Work to Do Tonight” away from one another. The battles are often bloody. Sometimes I think people lie about the amount of work they have. I don’t think they should do that. It wrecks the curve for the rest of us. Then the people who really have less than twelve hours in which to write a research paper that counts as the only grade for an entire course don’t get the sympathy they have rightly earned, and that’s just not fair. Don’t believe the senior who tells you he’s still being pressured to turn in a freshman seminar paper. He just wants attention.
My biology class recently discussed the idea that a trait is considered evolutionarily successful only if it increases an organism’s chances of reproduction. Maybe that’s the sneaky way in which the procrastination assures its continuance in the human race. What is reproduction, after all, but a great way to procrastinate? Procrastinators, instead of doing something they really should be doing, are going off and populating the world with people who will eventually blow off their term papers until the last minute, too.
It’s no easy thing to record an answering machine message, especially when you start to think about it too much. When else in your life are you asked to create a verbal persona in fifteen seconds or less that reflects who you are and will be divulged indiscriminately to friends and strangers? It boggles the mind. Or, at least, the mind that is supposed to be doing reserve readings. Or the mind that is waiting for a certain someone to call and wonders if they have already but didn’t leave a message because the mind’s answering machine makes them sound too needy.
How should you sound on your message? Fun-loving? Easy? A combination of both? I think less is more. Getting too fancy is bound to get you into trouble eventually. If your message is in poor taste, you are almost guaranteed to receive a call from the person whom you would least want it played for. If you leave a message that says “This is Molly; leave a message–unless you’re Bill, who is ugly and eats cat food,” Bill is going to call you, even if you haven’t heard from him in years and he lives across the ocean now. And with your luck, he was probably calling to leave you money. Try not to be too blasé about it, either, with: “I’m out and I don’t know when I’ll be back. You can leave a message but there’s no guarantee I’ll get it. My life is dizzy and wonderful and full of excitement.” This person is trying too hard. Somewhere between that last message and one that implies that you sit with the phone in your lap waiting for people to call you, lies compromise.
All you push-button voicemail junkies out there, I don’t know how your little system works and I don’t reckon I ever will. In my room I’ve got an ancient, tacky little black box of an answering machine sitting on top of a sagging cardboard dresser and that’s the way I likes it. Sometimes, though, I find myself wishing that my happiness and sense of self-worth didn’t hinge on a little red light that blinks when times are good and messages plentiful, and stares up at me with a sullen, red glow when no one cares.
Coming home late at night and being confronted by the hateful, unblinking red light of an answering machine with no messages on it can really make you want to rob a liquor store. (Note to authorities: Not a binding statement.)
I wish my answering machine had a function that made it blink permanently with the promise of a message. When I didn’t have a message (as happens oh so occasionally), my pressing “Play” would make the answering machine say something nice to me, like: “You have no messages, you sexy, sexy piece of ass. Man, if I weren’t an answering machine….” Or even something reassuring, like “He must have lost your number. I’ll bet he’s kicking himself.” Maybe someday that technology will be available. The future is now.
I drag myself from my bed at one-thirty in the afternoon and crawl to the computer. “Must…work on…English paper.” Exhausted from the effort, I loll in my chair and soon fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. When I awake it is twilight. Feebly, I scoot across the room and into the kitchen in my rolley-chair. I consume half my body-weight in anything I come across that’s in either a Chinese take-out carton or a box with a Nutrition Facts label on the side. With my last remaining strength, I propel myself back to the living room in my rolley-chair by kicking off of sturdy pieces of furniture. How I adore thee, rolley-chair. Although the one in my house is large and awkward, when I’m in it I roll it every place I can to avoid getting out and walking somewhere with my boring legs. By now I have honed my rolling craft. Onlookers are dazzled by my range and dexterity. Several have remarked that it is as if the chair is an extension of my own body.
In case you’re wondering, No, I didn’t do anything much over vacation.
I only went home. However, home was enough. For some reason I always feel very vulnerable whenever I come home after having been at Bard for an extended period of time. Little things, like the traffic noise outside my window and Mtv, leave me feeling overwhelmed and frightened. The many blank walls in my apartment unnerve me. Where are the flyers advertising bands and selling used cars? How am I supposed to know where and when the next Roving Poetry Reading is taking place? Gradually, I grow accustomed to life at home. I stop camping out in front of the television for hours before my favorite show is on so I don’t have to dispute my right to pick the channel. When I take a bag of chips from the kitchen, I no longer hide it under my jacket.
Spring break: A time that for many means traveling with three or four wild, attractive friends to someplace warm where there are sandy beaches and camera crews to stick your studded-tongues out at and to take your tops off in front of. Or so I have gathered from watching Cable. But for me, Spring Break is a time for reflection. A time to sit back and ask myself where I am at this point in my life, and what are my plans for the future, and how long have I been wearing these pajamas? It is a time to realize while watching Conan O’Brien that I haven’t left the apartment that day. It’s a time to eat ice cream out of the carton and wonder if certain events happened recently, or if you just dreamed them. It is the sort of vacation that you figure is either really good for you, or really bad for you.
I find it hard to understand when people complain about their siblings and how much they hate them. It seems ill-advised to be on bad terms with someone who is essentially a permanent roommate for the first seventeen or so years of your life—which doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Sharing a room with my little sister has taught me how to compromise in difficult living situations. It has also taught me the subtle art of passive-aggression (“Where’s my new sweater?” “I don’t know. Maybe it fell in the toilet?”). These valuable skills have served me well thus far in college.
However, unlike in college, you and your siblings aren’t matched up from questionnaires, and you can’t request a room change in a cramped Manhattan apartment because your sister plays the Pixies at an ungodly volume day and night.
If you’re lucky or spoiled, you won’t have to share a room with a sibling, but even if you don’t, she’ll still be there every morning, giving you dirty looks and shooting Cap’n Crunch at you across the breakfast table. It’s best to make peace with her as early as possible. I suggest you find some common ground. Show a little interest in her hobbies, spend a little time getting to know her, and you will be amply rewarded one day in the future when she is a wealthy accountant and you are out trying to get a job with your degree in Medieval Poetry.
My only-child friends often ask me what it was like to grow up with a little sister. I always mumble something inane about how it must have been nice growing up without one. Actually, I’m surprised at the number of friends I have who are only-children. I think I’ve always been drawn to them, especially when I was little. Only-children were the bossy, demanding, dynamic kids whom I followed blindly everywhere even though they always made me take the broken swing and be the dog when we played Family. I don’t believe that children grow up the same with or without siblings. Not being able to get into the bathroom nine out of ten weekday mornings because your little sister locks herself in to blow-dry her hair for forty-five minutes even though she’s dressed and can damn well move over and let you in to brush your teeth for ten seconds, has an enormous effect on the developing psyche of a young individual.
Then there’s the fun of getting to see all the good genes your parents had to offer turn up in your sibling. She got the straight teeth, the thick hair, and the perfect eyesight. I got the asthma and the glasses at ten. I tell you, it isn’t fair.
The best part about having a sibling is knowing that someone else out there shares my background. Although we haven’t had the same experiences outside of the family, when it comes to life at home, my sister and I are on the same page. It’s validating to know that I’m not the only one who thinks my family is crazy. There’s safety in numbers.
When I was younger, I looked forward to Halloween with all of the eagerness of a shy, awkward kid whose insecurities vanished for one night a year behind a cat-mask. For several years my costume was a hot pink, leopard-print body suit with a pendulous black tail pinned to the rear. In my mind’s eye, I looked fantastic, sleek and mysterious, though the effect was somewhat lessened by my Velcro sneakers. Pictures of me in that costume, however, have not well withstood the passage of time—in fact, I wish there weren’t any. I would much rather remember that costume the way I saw it through the round feline eyes of its pink cardboard mask which made my face sweat and my breath echo in my ears. The feeling of anonymity that costume gave me was a drug more potent than Hershey’s. When I was decked out in full pink leopard regalia no one knew that I was the only person in my class who still couldn’t tie her shoes without making two bows (thus the Velcro). The fact that my sister was three years younger than me yet always got to be the Barbie who didn’t have a homemade haircut, became immaterial. Nothing could touch pink-leopard me.Unfortunately, my Halloween spirit has waned through the years. Perhaps this is because dressing up when you are young is more than dressing up; you assume another identity, and, rather than telling you that you just can’t wear your sequined tutu to school, for one evening every adult around you only encourages your fantasy. I believe the low point of my Halloween enthusiasm occurred during my freshman year at Bard, when I wore an orange shirt to a party and claimed to be a carrot. The shirt had writing on it, but I hadn’t bothered to turn it inside out. Several friends eyed me skeptically when I told them what I was, and asked why I hadn’t at least said I was dressed as a pumpkin. I lowered my head. That hadn’t even occurred to me.I can accept the fact that my indifference toward Halloween as of late is mainly because it is a holiday geared toward younger children and petty felons. However, it can also be argued that my decreased interest in dressing up coincided with my enrollment in a college where many choose to do so every day of the year.
In high school, my friend Karen, who now goes to Yale (which may or may not be relevant), once told me as we approached the subway station that they had raised the price of a token from $2 to $2.50 “I’ll buy your token,” she said, as I spluttered with the indignant outrage appropriate to an occasion when the price of standard transportation has been raised by fifty cents in a single day with no warning. I gave her the money, she bought my token, and as we stood waiting for the train, she gave me my fifty cents back in disgust. She said she couldn’t keep the money because it reminded her that she was friends with someone like me.
My prank-prone friends quickly learn that they have no need to concoct elaborate schemes in order to fool me into believing ridiculous lies. Why go to the trouble of enlisting others to help persuade me that you have an identical twin when you can fool me just as easily by pointing to a photo of yourself and saying, “And that’s Lisa”?
It seems my extreme gullibility dates back to not-so-early childhood, when I believed in the Tooth Fairy, possibly the least interesting and most blatantly phoned-in of all childhood myths. Even my parents’ obvious lack of enthusiasm in discussing the Tooth Fairy’s sordid and slightly creepy pursuits failed to dampen my spirits. Possibly, on a certain level, they were disappointed in me for believing their story, and I can’t blame them. I, however, gleefully counted the rest of my baby teeth, pondering the profits they would bring in one day and considering my mouth to be a sort of trust fund. I decided that a fairy who gave money for teeth would be a valuable ally to have on my side, and went about befriending her in the only way I could think of. My next lost tooth went under my pillow with a note that said: “Tooth Fairy, do you want to be my friend? Check one box for yes or no.” At the bottom were the two corresponding boxes. The chance that this note still exists curtails the possibility of my ever going into public office. To add insult to idiocy, the tooth fairy did not check either box. Perhaps this is a large part of why, even now, I suffer from a crippling fear of rejection.
I would like to think that being gullible is not something to be ashamed of. It suggests a kind of innocence that not everyone is proud to admit to. A willingness to take others at their word, to trust them when they tell you that ‘lite’ beer is called so because it has less alcohol, or that there’s a salad bar in the basement of the public library. I’m hoping it has raw spinach.
I Heard Tell 