Your Face/Voice Makes Me Want to Kill Something. Preferably You.

Some people just get on my nerves. It could be that their face just makes my brain think, "I HATE YOU FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON," or it could be that their voice makes me think, "IF YOU KEEP TALKING I WILL STAB YOU IN THE FACE WITH SPORKS UNTIL YOU DIE." Whatever the reason, some people just shouldn't be around me for their own safety. After all, you can find a spork pretty much anywhere.

One boy in my chemistry class junior year was a prime example of the first reason for immediate, uncontrollable hatred and rage. It's not that he was ugly, or had a lazy eye, or anything distinctly hate-able about his face. But every time I looked at this kid's face, I wanted to a) scream, b) stab him in the face with sporks, c) look away and sneer condescendingly, or d) all of the above. His name was Brandon, but he got on my nerves so much that I decided to call him Beatrice. As a fairly insecure male, he felt emasculated by this, even though he should have been honored. Ten points to Slytherin.

Eventually, his personality proved to be just as irritating. Even though I said horrid things to him that probably shouldn't be said to anyone for fear of making them suicidal, he insisted on speaking to me. He also insisted on trying to hit on me. No matter how many times I told him that he was beneath my notice and I had no desire to date a girl, he KEPT. ON. ASKING.

Thankfully, the class ended and I never had to see him again. I've heard, though, that a variety of other people also call him Beatrice, and that when called such, he twitches. Perhaps I've given him a psychological disorder. That would make me feel really accomplished. Plus, after I finish this introductory psychology course, I'll be able to cure him.

The epitome of the second reason for homicidal tendencies can be found in Jennifer. She went to my high school, and GUESS WHAT? She's also in my introductory psych class. Every time she opens her mouth (which is approximately every .0000001 seconds), I get the urge to find a spork. Or a flame thrower. Or a rabid dog. Or all three. Possibly a hybrid.

In high school, she wasn't popular. At all. People would form a blockade in the hallway just to stop her from going to class, or trip her, or snicker meanly behind her back. I felt bad for her. No one deserves that, I thought. And then I met her. She wouldn't shut up.  With a voice like hers, all you want to do is pull your own ears off just to make it stop. Jennifer kind of sounds like a French person with a severe speech impediment and no knowledge of how loud she is or how much her voice makes people want to murder her. To make things just so much more fun, she's also one of those people who has to comment on EVERYTHING.

So the moral of the story: if you have a face that makes people hate you upon sight, or your voice makes baby birds and fairies die upon you opening your mouth, STAY AWAY FROM ME. I cannot be held responsible for what I do or say.

Lost. As Usual.

My sense of direction = a dying moose on crack. Which translated means: I wander around wondering what the hell is going on and how in the WORLD did I end up here. And this is in my own city/town/neighborhood. I've been this way for as long as I can remember.

And yet my parents insist on me NOT using a GPS. I have to learn how to find my way in COMPLETELY unfamiliar territory armed with only a set of MapQuest directions and my own brain. Needless to say, every single time, I get lost. Eventually I find my way home, but by that point I have tears and snot dripping down my face because I just KNOW that my car is going to break down and then I'll be eaten/raped/killed (in that order) by some psychopath in the woods. Even if there aren't woods nearby.

It's not like I'm asking for much. All I need is a GPS, so that when I get lost I can find an alternate route instead of trying to turn around and drive 5 bajillion miles trying to find my way back onto the road I'm supposed to be on. I wouldn't even use it that much, just when I'm trying to go somewhere that I've only been once. But no. Apparently I'm supposed to go to a place once, and just KNOW how to get there from then on out. Not possible. It took me a year to learn how to walk around my neighborhood.

That's true, too. It took me a YEAR. Granted, I was four and didn't know how to get my way out of a cardboard box, but STILL. I'd start walking around the block, decide it was taking too long so I must be lost, and then I'd sit down on the sidewalk and cry. Hours later my mother would drive up, with a "WTF is wrong with my child?" look on her face. Then we'd go home, and I'd forget it ever happened. Until the next time. And the next. And the next.

Once, I got a guy lost going to my house. I had babysat for him, and as he was about to drive me home, his wife said, "Here, take these directions." His response was, "No thanks, we'll be fine, Hattie knows the way."

I was far too nervous to tell him that I, in fact, did NOT know the way. If I did that, he might not pay me. Or worse, he'd laugh at me and let me get eaten/raped/killed by a psychopath in the woods. So I just bit my lip and nodded.

We headed out, and he knew the general direction to my house. We got to a road that I SHOULD have been able to get us home from. Alas, I couldn't. I ended up taking him to the middle school, because I thought I could find my way home from there. And I could. If I walked. So then we drove past the Portsmouth YMCA, which was the opposite direction of where we wanted to go.

Eventually we ended up in my neighborhood. Except that it was 11 at night by then, and I hadn't been in this part before, and I had no clue it was part of my neighborhood. So we called home. Imagine my mother's surprise at finding out just how mentally handicapped her daughter is when it comes to directions. You would have thought she'd have known after the going-around-the-block-or-lack-thereof fiasco.

I got home, though, and ever since I've not been allowed to live it down. Personally, I'm just hoping to become rich enough to have a chauffeur, that way I don't have to know the way, or even drive. Or at least I could use a husband with a great sense of direction and a love of driving me anywhere I want to go.

Masks Really Shouldn't be Allowed Near Children

I'm not scared of many things. In fact, I can really only think of one thing that truly terrifies me, and only one other thing that makes me nervous. Neither one shall be mentioned here, because I don't trust you people to be nice about it.

As a child however, I had a horrible, paralyzing fear of masks. Not just scary ones, either. Any mask could send me spiraling into a gibbering, wide-eyed black hole of terror. On Halloween, if I saw someone down the street in a mask, I would run into my house and hide under the table. I never dropped my candy, though, because even a four-year-old realizes that some things have priority over fear.

One boy I grew up with knew of my fear, and thought it was a hoot and a half. Jason would chase me around his house, wearing the scariest mask he could find. I never thought about turning around and punching him, but now I wish I had. He was very rude.

Perhaps the worst experience came the first Halloween after we moved to our new house. I was four. The mask fear still ran strong, and it took my mother thirty minutes to coax me out of the house. Finally we started doing the rounds, and I finally relaxed. Mayhaps the people in this neighborhood didn't let people walk around in masks! This truly made my night.

Of course all that joy was destroyed. On the end of the street sat a large-ish house, and the family there put on shows every Halloween. This time it happened to be Frankenstein. The wife played Dr. Frankenstein while her husband was the monster. At first the show didn't bother me. The monster remained under a white sheet, so for all I knew he was just a regular guy. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The monster emerged from the sheet. He had a green mask on. Slowly he trudged among the crowd, handing out candy to the other children. I quivered from terror, finally giving up all semblance of dignity and literally climbing up my mother to perch on her head. From there, I screamed. And screamed. And screamed. The man tried to calm me down by taking off his mask. It was the wrong thing to do.

Now, not only did he have a grotesque green face, but HE COULD REMOVE IT. Underneath he wore a human facade that I just KNEW meant that he was trying to take over the planet. For all I knew, everyone was part of this master race of face-removers. Only my mother was safe, and so I remained on her head. And kept screaming.

People had one of two reactions: laughter at the poor, deranged child, or sympathy. My mother had to walk home with me on her head, and when we got home I immediately scurried under the table. It took her two hours to get me out, and the next year I refused to go trick-or-treating. Good thing, too. I heard that year's show was something involving werewolves.

Now, I am quite fine with masks. They don't frighten me. Except those potato sack ones. Something about those just freaks me out. I don't know why. But when I watched The Strangers, I ended up under the table again. Potato sack masks are just unnatural.

UPDATE: This is a picture of Jason, that evil, evil boy who traumitized me.



I will get you back. One day, Jason, when you least expect it, I will leap onto your head and screech like a velociraptor. It does not matter that I haven't seen you in who-knows-how-long. It will happen. And when it does, you will be very, very sorry.

The Most Brilliant Ideas in the World

You know how you get these strange, amazing ideas that if you actually followed through with them you would make millions (probably billions in my case, but I'm not judging your *inferior* ideas)? My best friend/soul twin and I have quite a few. Some people (*cough* Mother, this means you) call us crazy. But honestly, these ideas are golden. You're going to want to steal them, but you can't because we came up with them first and now we have proof right here with this blog.

Idea Number One: an old folks' home! You're probably thinking, "But that's been done before!" And you're right. There are tons, possibly even dozens of retirement homes where people who have rotting organs can go. But none are like the Extreme Life Retirement Home.

You see, there are two separate parts to this home for the elderly. The first is normal - nurses, pre-chewed food, etc. The other is EXTREME! They have to build their own shelter, hunt down their own food, and live off the land. I'm sure you're wondering about these EXTREME old people's medicine. But no worries! They have to hunt down specific deer with special tags, and the medicine waits safely tucked inside the creature. It's ingenious, really. Costs are cut, and we're helping to keep them fit!

Idea Number Two (and perhaps the best): Stepping for Jesus. We shall start an exercise program for the devout. No more shall the old Baptist ladies in the Bible Belt be morbidly obese like in that episode of Wife Swap! And for those of other religions there will be similar videos including, but not limited to: Stepping for Muhammad, Stepping for Buddha, and Stepping for Lucifer. All of this shall be under the Stepping for Religion Enterprises.

Obviously Krystal and I will be gajillionaires by the time we're thirty. After all, we all know that there will always be horrible relatives willing to make poor, paraplegic Grandma hunt for her own dinner. And no one can deny that those people who claim to be "God warriors" or something similar will adore the idea of getting fit for their deity. What god wants a calorically challenged follower anyway? Not a god that wants to win a Religion War.

I'm sure we have more ideas that are just as good, if not better. At the moment, however, I cannot recall any others. No worries, though. As soon as I remember, or come up with more, there will be a part two.

Cougar

This is not a quaint little story about a mountain lion, or puma, or whatever the hell else you want to call the big cat stalking on mountains and other such terrain. So that must mean that we are going to be speaking of that horrid creation also known as a cradle-robber. You know what I'm talking about. Those women who are way past their prime and yet insist on going after men half their age. But this cougar is not your average cougar.

This cougar is a high school teacher. For a very long time, she taught at my school. Generations of students have been scarred by her. Also known as Ms. Williams, or Mrs. Jory, or perhaps any of the other last names from her various husbands, she goes out of her way to cause misery and strife for all who dare to enter her room.

Let us begin with how I met this woman. While I had had limited exposure to her due to my work on the literary magazine at our school, I didn't have a class with her until my junior year. Ms. Williams became the AP English Language and Composition teacher, the first one since anyone could remember the school opening. She'd never taught AP before, but she probably figured it would be pie.

We students had other plans. While she expected us to be diligent, intelligent, and basically perfect, we were nothing of the sort. Most of us were lazy, horrible procrastinators, and pretty much hated school. She didn't realize this until it was too late, and she couldn't renege on the position.

That first week, we all learned very quickly that while Ms. Williams liked to harp on about feminism, she was horribly sexist. Toward girls. The boys in her class received special treatment (at least at first). One boy, who pretty much copied one of my essays word for word, got a higher score than I did. He became her personal favourite, for which I pity him greatly. The only two girls in the class who got any sort of recognition were exactly the sort of students she expected the rest of us to be.

I clearly remember the only comment she wrote on my first essay in that class. "Ostentatious". Let's see. My paper was about King Arthur. In describing Mortimor, his scheming, horrid son, I used the term "filial perfidy". Apparently that was far too advanced for even Advanced Placement students, and I was told to "dumb down" my vocabulary. Right.

And yet. We haven't even gotten to her cougar-like tendancies. She absolutely adored touching the boys' shoulders, arms, and even faces. That poor boy who copied off me had to endure her caresses so much that I absolutely forgive him for being such an ass. Honestly, nothing terrified us more than the thought that she would come up behind us while we were writing and begin putting her long, clicky fingers on our backs.

Halfway through the year, we decided to do something about her. We became the most horrid students in the history of schooldom. Nothing was considered going too far. When she asked us what we thought of her (which she did fairly often, for whatever inane reason), we told her the truth. Or rather, one boy did for the rest of us. It came to the point where Ms. Williams was crying at least once a week.

Other students of hers from other classes voiced their concern that we were going too far. But they could afford mercy; they only had her for a semester. We had her for an entire year. So when Ms. Williams announced her retirement, we cheered. Loudly. Then our class clown brought a cardboard sword to class, and we took turns attacking each other. Thus ended the reign of the Cougar. Some say she it still teaching, but at another school. According to rumours, she isn't teaching English anymore. She's teaching French. I guess we ruined her.

The Real College Dilemma

Facebook, you have upset me. What with your decision to show me posts of people talking about college, and how excited they are, and OH LOOK, I DON'T LIVE AT HOME ANYMORE comments. It's very rude. As we all know that I'm not getting to leave home, nor am I excited.

Community college does not feel like college. True, I haven't gone to my first class yet (that's tomorrow). But staying at home and going to class in the morning isn't very much the same in my mind as going off to a real campus, living with strangers, and going to class at varying times of the day. I'll still have to do chores, and listen to my parents comment on my decisions. All in all, not very college-like.

And yet. There is still the fact that, should I get some scholarship money, next year I will transfer to a big-kid college. I will get to pack my bags and make my mother cry because her baby is leaving. It will be wonderful and fulfilling, and no longer will I have to listen to, "You need to do this and this and this."

So I will put forth a valiant effort in community college. I will be the best in the class (though hopefully without studying much). And maybe, just maybe, I'll be proven wrong. Perhaps my arrogance regarding this part of my life will be totally unfounded.

Psh. As if.