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.
We made almost enough during last month’s Yard Sale to pay for the cost of the therapy sessions I will need to fully recover from having that Yard Sale. There is something about digging old junk out of the closet and scattering it across the driveway that causes one’s dignity to evaporate swifter than the morning dew off an old coffee maker that is missing a sieve but still works fine; only $2.
Several times during the course of the sale I attempted to disguise myself as a customer, a mere browser; wandering aimlessly among stacks of water stained self-help books, pausing every once in awhile to inspect a plastic baggie full of mismatched Mr. Potato Head parts, and shaking my head in feigned disgust as I stood over a pile of gnawed wooden children’s puzzles. This little charade was generally ruined by a poor, unsuspecting customer whose examination of an electronic chessboard would prompt me to sidle up to him, lean over his shoulder and hiss something along the lines of, “Still works. Only $4. Not bad, huh?”
It didn’t take me long to discover that, as far as my junk was concerned, my system of values did not match that of my neighbors. “What do you mean, $35 is too much for an old wooden rocking-horse with matted gray dreadlocks? I rode that rocking horse when I was five years old! I was so innocent then, so sweet. Look at me now!” I’d yell, backing a hapless stranger up against his parked car. Of course, at the other end were the sad souls who were willing to pay top dollar for what was, in my opinion clearly junk. “Can you believe the woman who paid $5 for the mute, one-eyed Furby?” I whispered to my sister. “I didn’t even want to take her money, frankly. How can she live, knowing she could have used that $5 to feed a hungry child, or adopt a highway, or at least buy a sieveless coffee-maker?”
Oh the highs, the lows, the insane roller coaster of ecstasy, grief and vanity that is the hallmark of The Yard Sale. One moment you’re on top of the world, having gotten rid of those bath towels monogrammed with the initials P.U. to the tune of $6; the next minute you’re bartering with a woman who refuses to part with more than fifteen cents for a toy umbrella. “But the asking price is only twenty-five cents,” you say. “Can’t you go the extra ten cents?” Evidently there are those who do not feel they have truly gotten a Yard Sale bargain unless they can make a purchase for less than the cost of the gasoline it took them to back their car onto your lawn.
The strangest part about this particular yard sale was its utter failure to dampen my enthusiasm toward frequenting the yard sales of others. Really, you never know what you’re going to find. And then there’s always the chance that maybe I can buy back some of the things that I got rid of in the heat of the moment at my own yard sale and perhaps shouldn’t have sold. After all, most yard sales are probably made up largely of items purchased long ago at other yard sales. It’s a beautiful cycle. I should have charged more for that rocking horse.
I never really experienced fall until I came to Bard. As a child growing up in New York City, I noted the changing seasons in unique ways. In spring the pansies in the small flower beds surrounding the trees on my block were in magnificent bloom. As summer arrived, subway cars became air conditioned, the sidewalks began to smell of baked garbage, and the dreadlocked man outside the Job Lot on Broadway would once again be wearing cowboy boots with spurs and red hot pants. I could always tell winter was approaching because it would be nearly dark when I came up out of the subway station on my way home from school. And in fall the air seemed crisper, sweeter, laden with the scent of store employees rushing around with skeleton decorations and orange crepe paper. But I never really noticed the leaves changing until I got to Bard, when they were all I could look at, until they were gone. And then they were all I could jump on, until I found a boyfriend. After four years on cross-country, I also began to equate fall with pain, running, more pain and getting up early on Saturday mornings. But all in all, I enjoyed spending it at school in the Hudson Valley.
I am having a little trouble figuring out what to think of fall now that I am a college graduate. Last spring I worried that I was going to have a hard time adjusting to life after college. Then, over the summer, I naively congratulated myself on a separation well done. “I don’t miss school one bit,” I thought, well-adjustedly. “Look at me. I’m doing great. Ha, ha, wee!” Of course, nobody else was in school either at that point, but that somehow didn’t seem important. And then, around mid-August, I began noticing store posters showing children with gleaming teeth and striped shirts reminding me it was almost time to go “Back to School.” I couldn’t walk through a drug store without staring wistfully down aisles crammed with three-ring-binders and shiny folders decorated with anonymous, unaffiliated robot action heroes and candy-colored unicorns. I stood in line, wishing I was buying a new Trapper Keeper, and flipped through teen magazines with headlines that read, “Seven hot new back-to-school outfits that will make everyone forget how no one liked you last year.” And then, come September, everyone went back to school, and I…went back to work, at my summer job, which had suddenly turned into a fall job, also known as a job.
I promise this column isn’t going to turn into a forum in which I whine about how I miss college. At least, not until I run out of money, at which point this may become a forum for me to whine about how hungry I am. But for now at least, I’m trying to give life-after-college a chance. After all, the last time I wasn’t enrolled in any sort of school system, I was two feet tall and thought the Pillsbury Dough Boy lived under my parents’ bed. Now I’m 5’4”, and think there might be money in publishing.
I Heard Tell 