A Mid-Semester Afternoon's Nightmare

During my sophomore year in college, I started pining away for a scruffy little poet who had pursued me during the previous semester’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While we were in the play together, I'd been flattered by his attention, but it was kind of freaking me out, so I let him know in no uncertain terms that Snug the Carpenter and Mote the Fairy were not meant to be.

But a year after the production, I was boyfriendless, spending Saturday nights holed up in my dorm room playing Tetris and eating powdered Tang. The poet and I had an English class together, and he was growing more and more attractive. How could I have failed to notice his smashing good looks, humor, sensitivity, and wit?

I decided that he was The One.

My love was all consuming - I could think of nothing other than the day when we would finally be together. To this end, I positioned myself in all the right places at all the right times, the better for him to notice me on his way to class.

Nothing happened.

I made made sure to eat my cafeteria dinner at the same time my soul mate would be there with his friends.

Nada, except the occasional friendly nod in my direction.

I attended his poetry reading at the local coffee shop, but still my love did not approach me.

I did not wish to postpone our union any longer. Fate was fate, but I would have to give it a little nudge.

My best friend and I were sitting in our French for Business class, waiting for the perpetually late Madame Le Fevre to make her appearance when I decided that the time was ripe to make my move.

I donned my thrift store army coat, applied some lipstick, gathered my books and, with my best friend’s words of encouragement still ringing in my ears (“Are you sure you want to do this, Rim?”), vacated my desk and made for my beloved's dorm, carpe diem style. In this state of mind, could anyone be expected to compose, en francais, a letter inquiring as to the availability of the rental property in Cannes?

His window faced the quad and movement could be seen within. Without a moment’s hesitation, I launched a barrage of ill-constructed snowballs towards it and shouted my beloved's name until he popped his head outside.

“Oh, hey Rima. What’s up?”

“Can I come up for a second? I need to talk to you.”

My love threw down his keys and five minutes later, I arrived panting and sweating at his door with no use for small talk.

”So, I’ve been thinking a lot about last year, Midsummer Night’s Dream, all that stuff? And I think it was really stupid of me not to go out with you then, you know what I mean? So I was actually wondering, you know, if there's, like, any way you would give me a second chance?”

No sooner had the words escaped my lips than I realized the enormity of my mistake. My beloved stood before me wearing a look that was at once uncomfortable and unmistakably amused.

"Wow, that's, um . . . really sweet, Rima, but I . . . uh . . . have a girlfriend now."

"Oh! Shit. . . . .So, it's a "no," then?"

"Sorry things never worked out between us."

"Me too. Shit."

"I guess I'll see you around" he said to my quickly retreating back.

In retrospect, I'm not sure just what kind of response it was that I expected. It seems obvious that even if he wasn't already taken, no self-respecting guy would have played out the script I had written in my head. ("So glad you stopped by! I was just thinking about how I've never stopped loving you.")

But whether it's a testament to my healthy ego and spectacular naïveté or a cautionary tale about the futility of impromptu declarations of undying love, it ranks pretty high on the list of my most embarrassing moments.


"Mote, the Stalker Fairy"

This post was my contribution to Mrs. Flinger's Write-Of-Passage challenge. Today's assignment was to write about your most embarassing moment. You can read the other entries here:

When Science And Life Collide

I came home from choir rehearsal last night to find the P-Dawg beside himself with glee.

"WE ARE NOT CHIMPANZEES!!!!" he announced as I knuckle-walked through the door.

I immediately put down my banana, stood upright, and joined him in the family room, where P-Dawg breathlessly informed me of the discovery of Ardipithecus Ramdus or "Ardi", the fossil that has usurped Lucy's claim to fame as mother of humankind. It's the sort of news that has many scientists drooling over their pocket protectors, and the P-Dawg even more so because one of the members of the research team that discovered Ardi just happens to be a former professor of his.

I immediately went online and read all about this long lost biped cousin. It turns out she stood about five feet tall, weighed 110 pounds, and was in desperate need of a properly fitting bra.

In other words, she's me, only furrier.

A Burning Question

I have a lot of thotz on a regular basis, but can rarely call them forth when I sit down to post.

Last week I bought myself a snazzy little notebook for the sole purpose of jotting down incoming observations. It is red with gilded trim and has a magnetic clasp that causes it to snap shut in a very satisfactory way. Very satisfactory.

However, seven days into the great note taking experiment, the only thing written in my little red notebook is this:

When somebody offers you a breath mint or a piece of gum, are they just being polite because they were going to have one themselves, or are they trying to tell you that you have bad breath?

I don't think I can eke a post out of it, but I am curious. I would honestly like to know: What is up with the gratuitous distribution of breath savers, readers?

My personal preference on this matter would be that you save me the anxiety by not offering the gum/mint unless I actually have bad breath. If I want your gum, I'll ask you for a piece.

But if I don't have bad breath and you offer me a mint just to be polite, I'll spend the rest of the day breathing into my hand, secretly sniffing my armpits (which is neither here nor there), and generally obsessing about the horrifying possibility of body odor.

And even if you say "Jesus, Rima, I was just offering you a piece of gum", I will never believe you.

So let's just settle on a rule of thumb here and now, shall we? Can we all agree not to offer each other gum unless the person being offered the gum, like, really needs it, and also have an open understanding that if someone wants a piece of gum or a breath mint, they will simply ask for it?

This concludes my post for Wednesday, July 30th. Let's just hope the little red notebook sees some action tomorrow.

Coiff-o-Rama

A Hair Retrospective

It all started innocently enough with a little flip 'do . . .




And a bad home hair cut courtesy of the Mom Salon could always be covered up with Lithuanian folk regalia . . .




But wait! What's this?



Could it be the beginning of the "awkward phase?" I appear to have been blinded by the reflection from my satin Members Only jacket. It's also caused my left eye to swell up and I think I lost a couple of teeth, too. Thank God I'm wearing my lucky unicorn tee shirt and there's a rainbow behind me.


Sadly, the comb-over and fugly glasses are not much of an improvement:


"No photos, pleez."


My only saving grace at age thirteen was that I was allowed to get contacts.


Who is the dog in this picture?


Oh, hai, spiral perm:





"I don't need no stinkin' hairdo. Pass me another Rolling Rock."

That's better.



Hello, nineties.



"Halp! I had a baby and I'm skeert."


All's well that ends well.

(Except that I'm starting to Feel Bad About My Neck)

This post was brought to you as the result of a gauntlet that was laid down by my bloggy friend, Janet. Go check out her stellar hair retrospective here. And while you're at it, hop over to JCK's, as well. All the cool kids are doing it, and you should, too.

Unfortunately, I did not have photos of my modified mullet or mall bangs at my disposal for this post. If and when I come across those pictures, I will be sure to post them to the interwebs, because isn't that why Al Gore invented this technology, after all?

See Me Later

My big ‘ole secret?

I tried to leave my body for a little stroll around the cosmos once.

Just temporarily, of course.

The hippy dippies call it an OBE (out-of-body-experience), but I call it a virtual smoke break for the stay-at-home-mommy set.

A book about this intriguing phenomenon caught my eye at Half Price Books, where I was browsing the New Age section for info on mental telepathy after becoming convinced I had psychic powers (I don’t).

Astral Projection and Psychic Empowerment outlined a simple 24-step process by which one could exit one’s shell, so to speak, and wander about on the astral plane.

Holy sweet bejesus! Sign me up!

What could be better? I would simply pop in a Wiggles DVD, hand each child a cookie, lie down on the couch, and disappear.

And as long as my essence hung around the house, I could keep a cosmic eye on the kids while floating around the atmosphere in a state of peaceful bliss.

Kids were napping, phone was off the hook, and Yanni was playing quietly in the background.

I was ready to depart.

I began the deep breathing exercises and started relaxing my muscle groups, one-by-one.

After three or four interruptions which required that I run upstairs screaming What in God’s name are you DOING? If I have to come up here again, you can forget about Clifford the Big Red Dog this afternoon and that’s a promise! I was able to get down to bidness.

The next step was visualization. I chose the elevator metaphor. It goes like this: as you ascend the Elevator of the Mind, you gradually release yourself from the albatross that is your body so that, by the time you get up to the top floor, you are ready to perform the remaining twenty-two steps that will buy you a ticket to the astral plane.

The mind is a powerful muscle, but still.

I kept having to reference the post-it where I had scribbled the formula. Try as I might, unfettered astral roaming and psychic empowerment was just out of my grasp. I was concentrating so hard that I was getting cross-eyed, but still the blasted elevator always stopped short of the top floor.

I kept at it, though, until I was struck dumb by the following thought:

What if it’s a one-way ticket?

Sneaking a peek at the post-it, there was nary a word about how to get back in.

Well, shit.

Would I be destined to hover three feet above floor level forever, occasionally running the dishwasher just to let my loved ones know I’m there? Flicking the TV on and off to signal dinnertime? Or, God forbid, hurling small objects around the room at whim? (Because I'm proficient at that already.)

I was back in the here and now faster than you can say “doppelganger.”

Astral projection is not for me, but if any of you has done it, by all means let me know! I’m dying to find out what it’s like out there.



(This post was a response to Miss’s writing challenge on the Secret Awesome Group of Awesome Blogging Power.)

You can go there right now, body and soul!