War and Pizza

Here is the attendance policy for my high school:

During any given quarter, a student may accrue up to five absences from any class before he/she will earn an administrative failure for that quarter.

a. Three tardies will be counted as equal to one absence.

b. Being more than 20 minutes late to class will be counted as equal to one absence.

Here is a fun fact about this policy:

It didn't go into effect until the year after I graduated.

Thanks to this fact, I didn't go to school much my senior year. I didn't like math or science, I had a ton of study periods throughout the day, and my first period French class was way too early for me to care about. What I did love though was my last class of the day. Senior Humanities Seminar was new for my senior year, and it was a two-period class that encompassed history and English, was taught by two teachers, and was fantastic. I nearly dropped it after the first day, because I hadn't done the summer reading, but the teachers gave me a chance:

"If we promise that not doing the summer reading will not cause you to fail, will you stay?"

Well, when put that way in front of my entire class, I couldn't very well leave. They might as well have said "If we promise you that we will kill this baby if you leave, will you stay?" So I stayed, and it was one of the best academic decisions I ever made. The class was very small, and it had a very intimate feel to it. The structure was very open, and heated discussion was not only allowed but encouraged. We had a lot of serious debate, but we also laughed a lot. We read and we read and we read, and we wrote and we wrote and we wrote. It was the class where I first read Hesse, and Kafka, and Tolstoy. Oh, sweet Tolstoy.

We read War and Peace as a class over the period of a month or two. I loved every sentence, but even still, I found it to be a bit much when added to the rest of my workload. (You know, the pile of uncompleted assignments that I wasn't working on because I preferred playing Final Fantasy IX.) The teachers were not oblivious to the fact that we were busy seniors - they knew that we all had our plates full, and so they decided to reward us for our efforts. It was announced that, at the end of our harrowing Russian literature experience, we would be granted a pizza party. A War and Pizza party.

It was simple. Basically, once the book was done, the teachers would somehow find a way to order pizza into the building. (We should have had it delivered. The class was just inside the back door of the school, that's what we should have done.) Each of us was responsible for bringing an extra dish, and we would spend the last two periods of the day eating and talking about battles and love and catty Russian women. What could be better?

The day crept ever closer, and all we could think about was how fun War and Pizza would be. I signed up to bring something simple - maybe cookies? - because I knew I couldn't be trusted to bring anything more substantial. Finally, the day arrived, and miraculously I was in school in the morning. A friend from Seminar saw me in the hall after first period and asked me if I was ready for the party. I smiled and said that I couldn't wait, but I think you know that of course I wasn't ready. I hadn't brought cookies to school, I'm never prepared for anything. So I did what I was good at. I forged a note with my mother's name that said I had a dentist appointment, and I brought it to the principal's office after second period. Protocol stated that I should have given the note to my homeroom teacher, and at that point I would have been given an early dismissal pass. However, high school students are forgetful, so the secretary gave me a pass to leave at the beginning of fourth period, and I was on my way.

I went to my third period class and instead of paying attention to my lazy-eyed chemistry teacher, I thought about how I didn't want to leave school alone. That would have been boring. Then I remembered that my sister had fourth period lunch, and I decided that I was going to make her come out with me. Jenny was not the type to skip classes, so when I walked into the cafeteria and presented her with her counterfeit note, I could suddenly smell fear on her. I explained that I would go to get the car while she took the note I had given her to the principal's office. She disagreed and insisted that if she was going to do it, I was going to have to go with her. So we walked back to the office where I had already told the secretary my "oops I forgot to give you this" story, and I told it again, but this time for my sister. For some reason, I thought it would be entirely believable that we would both have forgotten to hand over our notes on the very same day. The secretary eyed us up and down and said, "You girls aren't trying to skip class, are you?" I could hear Jenny behind me, fighting an audible whimper, so I loudly replied "What! No we're just forgetful it is hilarious!" No, that is not hilarious, I am terrible at lying. Miraculously though, she wrote Jenny's pass and sent us away with a bit of an evil eye, but I didn't care. We were free!

We walked to my car and Jenny didn't say a word. I tried to get her to admit that she was having a good time, but I think she was fighting off the urge to cry or vomit or physically abuse me. I tried to explain to her that she was only skipping lunch, but still that didn't seem to make her feel better. By the time we got to the supermarket, she was ready to have American-Gladiator-style pugil stick fights with me, throwing me to my metaphorical death (or slight discomfort) on the metaphorical padded mats metaphorically below. (This is a metaphor. There were no pugil sticks or mats or deaths.)

I went into the store, and while I felt bad that Jenny was upset, I felt great about the fact that I was not in math class. Math was bullshit, cookies were delicious, and sometimes you had to make your sister leave school without permission. In my eyes, it was the way of the world. So I paid for my tasty treats, I went back to the car, and I took my sister back to school. I had her back before her lunch even ended, and I sent her on her way. She walked down the hall to her next class, head down, defeated. I had destroyed her sense of moral fiber, her personal sense of righteousness. I had ruined her in the course of forty minutes.

Thankfully the cookies were delicious.

Happy Festivus or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Everyone Equally

Normally I blog about funny or touching stories from my past, but I need to step away from that for a minute to talk about something that's really been bothering me.

Last week, I saw a Facebook status that said:

"There are a lot of countries that don't say Merry Christmas, if you don't like saying, or hearing Merry Christmas, take your ass to one of those countries!! If you have balls, Re Post!! and MERRY CHRISTMAS AMERICA !!!!!!! Love it.....!!!!!"

By yesterday, the hate had been stepped up a notch:

"We Can't say 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' anymore,We Now Say 'HAPPY HOLIDAYS !'We Can't call it a 'CHRISTMAS TREE', We Now Call It a 'HOLIDAY TREE,Because it might offend someone! They call it 'CUSTOMS',We Call it 'TRADITIONS'.This is 'OUR COUNTRY!' If U Wanna Live & Work here have Some RESPECT! If U Dont like it, GO HOME! If u agree with this, PLEASE post as ur status. OH, By the way.. ☆°◦※◦°MERRY CHRISTMAS!°◦※◦°"

I don't understand what it is about this that people think is okay. Let me be perfectly clear. I completely understand why some people might be upset that it is no longer considered politically correct to say "Merry Christmas" - but that is also not what bothers me about these posts. Specifically, it is the implication that it is individuals from other countries that are causing "Happy Holidays" to become the standard December greeting.

Here are some facts:

• In the United States, according to a 2008 census, only 75% of people classify themselves as Christian (which is down from 87% in 1990). This means that one out of every four people in the United States would classify themselves otherwise - Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Scientologist, Jehovah's Witness - the list goes on. Also, a staggering 46% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 indicate that they have no religion at all. What is important to note here is that Christianity is declining in America, and the use of "Happy Holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas" is not meant to be demeaning or disrespectful - quite contrarily it is meant to be all-inclusive, showing respect for whatever beliefs an individual might hold.

• Here are some more statistics: 78% of Caucasian Americans identify themselves as Christians. Interestingly enough, 84% of Latino Americans and 85% of Black Americans classify themselves as Christians. So, judgmental Caucasians, look out. It's clear that you're not quite Christian enough. It's okay though - when the Latino Americans and Black Americans start telling you to "go home" for not being Christian enough, you can probably just hop a boat back to Ireland or Germany.

• Which other countries are we talking about specifically, I also wonder. Because here's a pretty good sized list of countries that celebrate Christmas: Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Greece, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Lichtenstein, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, The Netherlands, New Zeland, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scandinavia, Scotland, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Wales. In Pakistan, choirs go from house to house singing carols, and the family of the house invites the carolers in for Christmas treats. In Japan, gifts are left by the pillows of children, and Christmas cake with strawberries is common celebratory fare. In Colombia, candles and paper lanterns adorn streets, sidewalks, balconies, porches, driveways. The traditions might differ, but the holiday is the same - so suggesting that people "go home" makes no sense to me, when so many people in so many countries are already celebrating the holiday in question.

I'm not trying to debate whether or not it's right to say "Merry Christmas" - I never was, and I never would. As Americans, it is our right to say and do what we please (within the confines of the law, of course). That's what's great about being an American. So when you say "Say Merry Christmas or go home", that's actually one of the least American things you could say. Living in this country means that you have the freedom to believe what you like and the right to be granted respect from others regardless of if they agree with you. Just remember, there are Americans who celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice. When they wish you "Happy Holidays", it isn't because they're trying to demean or dismiss the importance of Christ in your life, but it is because they are trying to be gracious by recognizing that you might celebrate one of any number of things.

Lastly, and most importantly, is this. Christians, you do not own December. You just don't, it isn't yours. You have the right to celebrate Christmas, and every other person - in America and in the rest of the world - has exactly the same right to celebrate what they choose. Do not fault them for it.

So, on a personal level, say "Merry Christmas" if you want to. But if you work for a business that requires you to say "Happy Holidays", or if you receive a card this week that says "Season's Greetings", just accept it. As it turns out, the world is bigger than just you.

Love in the time of Procrastination

When I was in elementary and middle school (and, honestly, on into the rest of my life), I was easily the world's most gifted procrastinator. No matter how much I loved to read, or how well I tested, or how much teachers liked me, I still could not seem to grasp the concept of completing homework on time. Report cards constantly came home with "assignments missing" and "incomplete" and "your daughter isn't doing what she's supposed to do" all over them. It got to a point where, even though my grades were good, my mother had to start reprimanding me for not completing schoolwork on time.

Worksheets and textbook chapters and vocabulary were bothersome, but generally I found my way through them. I could whip through a phonics lesson in five minutes and receive 100%, but for some reason I could not ever bring myself to appropriately prep for long-term projects. You would think, given the fact that they were "long-term", that I would have been more likely to complete these projects in the time allotted - however, you would be hilariously incorrect. As it turned out, I was even less likely to complete these projects on time! This is because, as best as I can figure it, there was so much more to do, but I was equally uninterested in doing it.

And so, without further ado, I present to you three real-life examples of procrastination in girls: age ten.

#1.) When I hit the fifth grade, class structure suddenly changed. No longer did my day consist of eight hours in the same room with the same people and the same teacher. I now had eight separate classes each day, taught by eight different teachers. Enter: Dr. Rossi. This man was large and loud, and not only did I dislike him because of his undesirable personality traits, but he also taught science. Oh, how I loathed science. Imagine how I felt then, when this big, fat, awful man told me that I would be required to do a science project! Not only that, but I would be almost entirely required to complete it on my own time. Since my science class was now only 40 minutes long, it needed to be spent learning science. Well, fast forward to the day before this project is due. I estimate that I had had probably two weeks to work on this project, if not significantly longer. I say two weeks because that is the absolute shortest amount of time it would have been, and still, doesn't it seem like it should have been enough to research and complete a science project? Yes, it does. But, it wasn't. So I do what I am best at and I say to my mother,

"Mom, I need to go to the library. Today. To finish a project that is due tomorrow that I have not told you about until now."

Needless to say, my mother brought me to the library. (Thanks for not existing in my home yet, internet. I really appreciate it.) I remember spending at least an hour going through books of science projects, and the panic that was rushing through me as I realized that they were all really complicated! But then I found it. The most perfect science project of all. It was informative, it was educational, and most of all - it was easy. Here's what I needed: a string and a spoon.

I went home from the library with the certainty that this would be the best science project ever performed. I whipped up a quick paper about whatever the hell the project was supposed to be demonstrating (something about sound waves), and I gathered my spoon and rope (a jump rope, I remember. My mom said "Will that work?" I said "Sure, of course." She said "Do you want to test it?" I said "No, it will be fine!"), and I packed my bag and I went to bed.

The next day in class, I offered to go first. I hated when I had to speak in front of the class, and I just wanted it to be over and done with, so I walked to the front of the room with my report and props in hand, and I read to my classmates what I was about to present to them. Then, once I'd finished reading the paper, I asked for two volunteers. I asked one to hold one end of the string (jumprope) up to his ear, and the other to hold the other end up to hers. I then tried for what felt like an eternity to wrap the spoon up in the center of the jumprope. The purpose of this experiment was to show that the soundwaves would travel through the rope and up to the ears of the volunteers, but here is what you might not know: jumpropes are pretty thick. Good luck getting one to wrap tightly around a tiny metal kitchen spoon. So, the volunteers stood dumbly on either side of me while I dropped the spoon on the ground several hundred more times, and then I gave up and said I was done and it was over. Verdict: Good thing I wrote a great paper, because somehow I managed to pass that one.


#2.) That same year, in English class with Mrs. Masotta, the project was slightly less involved and slightly easier to plan for. You might think that this means that I was able to prepare better than I had for the science debacle. Hilariously enough, you would be so wrong! I was actually even less prepared! I know what you're thinking. How could I have been less prepared than a jumprope and a kitchen spoon at the last moment? Well, I will tell you.

The project was this: memorize a poem and recite it in front of the class. Bring some sort of prop with you that goes along with your poem. And that's it! Do you want to get a great grade on this project? Then recite Frost and bring a two way street sign. Want to pass, but don't give too much of a fuck about the thing? Then recite Poe and bring a stuffed bird (preferably black). Oh, if only I'd taken the Poe route! But no, I had to do things my way, which meant that I had to wait until the last possible second to create my plan of attack.

The poem that I chose was by a wonderful man named Shel Silverstein. It was called Eight Balloons, and it was a romantic tale of eight balloons escaping out into the world and popping while doing things they'd never been able to do before. It spoke of balloons adventuring to the sun, and of balloons falling in love with porcupines. It told of escapades involving crocodiles and sizzling bacon and playful children. It was full of prop-friendly imagery, and yet somehow I was not able to get my act together in time to take advantage of it.

Instead, I remembered that the project was due that day while I was on the bus on the way to school.

Well, of course I panicked. There was not any way in the world that I was going to be able to both whip up props and finish memorizing the poem before English. So obviously I set my focus on the poem itself. There was always an excuse to be found as to why I didn't have props with me - but there would be no getting out of it if I didn't even know a single, simple, rhyming sixteen lines. When I got to class, I sat quietly at my desk, paying attention, but not too much - trying with every fiber of my being to blend in and not be called up. If I could just get through class without presenting, I could go home and get everything I could ever need to get an A! I would come back to school the next day with a dozen balloons, a stuffed porcupine, several small babies - hell, if it meant I didn't have to recite my poem in the most unprepared manner possible, I would even bring a live pig to the school and slaughter it into bacon myself. I sat quietly thinking these things to myself, and then I heard my teacher say, "Alright class. We'll be doing today's presentations in alphabetical order, starting at the end of the alphabet."

Oh, guess what, that's me. So I guess that's it then. I got out of my seat, and I walked to the front of the classroom.

"Eight Balloons, by Shel Silverstein.

Eight balloons no one was buyin'

All broke loose one afternoon.

Eight balloons with strings a-flyin'

Free to do what they wanted to.

One flew up to touch the sun.

Pop! -"

At the word "pop", I swung what appeared to be my empty hand into the air. The poem continues in such a manner, with each individual balloon popping along the way. Each time I said "pop", I swung my hand out in front of me. I finished the poem, and I returned to my seat. I dreaded the sound of the bell, because I knew that my teacher would stop me on my way out to discuss my lack of preparation. The time came, and I gathered my things, and I was stopped on my way out the door. She said, "Cindy, you can't do a prop project without props." At that point, I sheepishly held out the earring that I had been holding in my hand throughout my presentation. (It was a troll earring. I remember the hair tickling the palm of my hand.) Verdict: Apparently my teacher was impressed with my ability to spout Silverstein, or she just felt bad for me, but somehow I passed this one, too.

#3.) Lastly, this time in sixth grade, I had to read a biography of my choice and do a book report. Then I had to dress as the person that I'd learned about and present the report in character. That was easy enough, I thought at the time. I loved reading, and any assignment that required writing was almost a guaranteed A, so all I had to do was make sure that I did my report on someone who was easily imitatable. For some reason, to a ten-year-old me, that meant: Marie Curie. I don't know if I was like, "Oh, let me pick someone really complicated to possibly impress my teacher and hopefully get an A with many pluses following it!" or what, but it must not have been too tricky, because the reading and the writing aren't particularly memorable to me. What I do remember (as though you haven't guessed) is getting up for school the morning of the presentation and realizing that I was in no way prepared to be Marie Curie.

I was running late that day, which meant that I missed the bus and my mother had to take me to school. Luckily, I remembered the report just before we pulled away from the house! Unluckily, I did not own a labcoat or any other scientific paraphernalia. My mother gave me five minutes to run into the house, find something acceptable, and get back to the car.

I ran into the kitchen in a hurry. Surely there must have been something beaker-esque that I could use to pull off this scientist charade. However, my time was running thin and I was rifling through my cabinets and coming up empty-handed. I decided I needed to take a different route, so I did the only thing left that I could think of. I ran into my mother's bedroom and I got her bathrobe. It was a white terrycloth robe that was pretty well worn and had existed in my home since I was a tiny baby. It was old and it was faded and it was oversized, even for my mother, so it nearly swallowed me whole. I wrapped this robe up into a ball, shoved it into a plastic bag, and ran back to the car. My mother asked me if I'd found everything I needed, and I told her I thought I would be okay, and then she offered me a pair of sunglasses before she started driving.

"If you can get the lenses out of these before we get to school, you can pretend they're glasses. Scientists wear glasses."

Thus was born my Marie Curie costume. I stood up in front of my class, enveloped in this enormous graying robe, wearing empty oversized lenses, and I talked about radiation and Nobel Prizes and other scientific phenomena. That time I even got applause, but I think that's because the teacher started it at the end of each presentation, and the class knew that they were meant to join in or else be sent to the principal's office. I was never spoken to about the awfulness of my costume for this project - I think I was just assumed to be a poor child, and therefore I had done the best I could, for which I received an A with at least six pluses.

The moral of the story, boys and girls, is that procrastination is not the answer. Get your work done on time, be prepared, and take pride in what you do. Or, if you're going to procrastinate, at least be really good at it.

Thank god I am really good at it.

Do not let your child read this.

There comes a day in your life when you will realize that, for a large majority of your childhood, adults were usually lying to you.

Here is an example.

When I was young - probably about eight years old - I used to draw all the time. I spent nearly every waking moment with a pencil in my hand, drawing at each and every opportunity that I could possibly find to fit it into my schedule. However, I wasn't the most imaginative child, so instead of creating monsters and princesses and kittens and dinosaurs from my mind, I would more often than not just copy them from somewhere else. I was particularly fond of drawing Ernie and the Tasmanian Devil. I would be so proud of myself when I finished one of these sketches, and I would find the closest parent and I would say "LOOK WHAT I DID." They would ooh and ahh over what was probably the 93rd Ernie they'd seen that week and they would say "Did you trace that? You traced that, didn't you?" and I would swell with pride when I could say to them "NO WAY BUCKO, I DREW THIS BAD BOY, TRACING IS FOR INFANTS." They would act as though I had blown their minds, and I would then be convinced that I was the best artist of all time.

Thinking back on those Ernies that I drew, I think: holy crap, those things had to have been garbage. I mean really. I was eight. Do a Google image search for "eight year old art" (no quotes. don't use quotes.) and you will be bombarded with photos of one specific young child (Keiron Williamson) - because to be a good artist at the age of eight is so unlikely a feat that, if you manage to achieve it, you will single-handedly monopolize the results of a Google query. I know what you're saying, though. "Cindy, Google didn't exist until you were fourteen! Surely you would have been the Keiron Williamson of your generation!" Well, I know that it's easy to think that I would have been that incredible of a child, but it sadly was not so.

So, instead, I spent a majority of my childhood drawing Ernies with molesty smiles and carefree stares, thinking that I was the eight-year-old, female van Gogh of Woburn, Massachusetts. I thought this because adults lied to me. Thanks, adults.

Another example.

My family used to vacation at my great aunt's house from time to time. Everyone would be there - my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We made a thing of it. One year, probably around the same time that I was drawing Ernies to prep for what I was sure would be my inevitable journey to Louvre school or something, my family took one of these vacations. The grown-ups would sit around and drink and sing and laugh late into the night, and, being the oldest grandchild, I was sometimes allowed to join. (I mean, I was allowed to join in the singing and laughing, not the drinking. My parents are awesome, but they weren't child-endangerment awesome.) On one of these nights where I was able to stay up, Bette Midler's The Wind Beneath My Wings was the song of choice. Beaches was only a year or two old at that point, and it was the only song anyone wanted to listen to. I remember that we had a cassette single of it, and it was my job to rewind it once it ended so that we could listen to it again. By the end of the night, I knew most of the words to the song, and I was singing along as loud as I could. Then, at the end of that night, my aunt gave me the tape. She told me that my singing was wonderful, and that if I could learn all of the words by the next time I saw her, we could record the song together. Holy crap, that was the coolest thing anyone had ever said to me.

So I took that tape home and I learned that song so well that I could sing it in my sleep. (Oh god, imagine sleep singing? Terrifying. I didn't do that.) I was certain that, during my summers off from MOMA-tech, I would be touring the country with my aunt as the world's first #1 aunt-niece Bette Midler cover duo. However, any time I tried to mention that I knew the song, I was brushed off. So now I was an artistic savant with unprecedented musical prowess, and yet still for some reason I just went to regular school and did not have a million dollars and was not famous. Again, hey adults, thanks.

Last example. And I think you all knew it was coming. (Seriously, if you are a child and you are reading this, stop right now.)

Santa. Dear mother of god, fucking Santa Claus. For some reason, I found out about Santa at almost exactly the same time as all of this other stuff. Eight was a pretty lie-filled year for me, I guess. One dreary afternoon, I sat with my younger sister Jenny playing video games. (Probably Mario, because what the hell else would it have been?) She told me that in school recently, someone had told her that Santa wasn't real. Well, I wasn't having any of that. I was eight years old, and Santa was real, and so help me god if some whiny asshole was going to tell me and my six year old sister any differently. So I paused the game and I looked at her and I said,

"Listen to me right now. Santa is real and that kid is stupid. Do not listen to him, he is an idiot, why would he even say that, holy crap."

Or something like that. But I remember getting very heated about it. My sister agreed, and once we were both satisfied that our lives were not destroyed because Santa Clause was of course real, we resumed our game. However, only moments later, my mother called into my bedroom for me. I left Jenny to play the game and went to find my mother. I found her in the bathroom waiting for me. She sat down on the edge of the tub to bring herself to my level, and she told me that she'd heard me telling Jenny that Santa was real. She told me that she thought that was very nice of me, and she asked me why it was that I was so sure that Santa existed.

Suddenly, I felt confused. I grasped in my head for reasons that I was certain that this large, fat man was letting himself into my home once a year to give me gifts. Every time I thought of one, I was instantly able to rationalize that it wasn't necessarily proof. There was that time that I heard him playing with the keyboard that I got - but I guess that could have just been my mom. But the cookies were always gone, and the reindeer carrot. Well, I mean, my dad knows how to eat food.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I started to think of things that actually worked against me in the case of Real Santa vs. Bullshit Santa. I didn't have a chimney, but even on snowy Christmases, there were no boot prints on the rug. I never heard anything on the roof, like in all of those songs and movies. And the trash. The year that I got my bike for Christmas, I found the bike box and instructions in the backyard. My parents told me that this just meant that Santa had assembled the bike for me before leaving. Dear god, I was an idiot.

The news hit me hard. My mother never had to say the words "Santa isn't real" to me - all she'd had to do was plant the seed of doubt in my mind. But then suddenly it all made sense. I remember crying. Quietly at first, but then loud, violent sobbing. I think that I even curled up in a ball on the ground at one point while my mother just told me over and over again that it would be okay. (In hindsight, big thanks to my mom for putting up with me as a child, I was pretty neurotic.) And then my brain just started unraveling.

"Wait, wait. Santa isn't real. Easter Bunny?"
"...no."
"Tooth Fairy?!"
"...no, not her either."

Eventually, I got up off of the floor. I took a deep breath, composed myself, and went back to play more Mario. When Jenny found out a couple of years later, I was there, and she took it incredibly well. She woke up in the middle of the night during a roadtrip to South Carolina for Easter. Somehow, she woke up wondering if the Easter Bunny was real, and my parents told her then that he was not. I told her that it was okay to cry - that I had - but instead she just shrugged it off and went back to sleep. Apparently she was slightly less neurotic than I was.

So there you have it. Three prime examples of how lying to children is an epidemic in the country. Shameful as it may be, we can at least find solace in the fact that the lying comes to an end once you reach adulthood.

Wait.

The End of the World

In August of 1991, I turned nine years old. I don't remember much about that birthday, but the week that followed is another story.

The news was on in my house constantly that week. There is a chance that something incredibly profound and newsworthy happened at that time in history, and there's a chance that nothing did. However, here is what did happen: Hurricane Bob.

How can you even feel threatened by a hurricane with such a friendly, happy-go-lucky sort of name? "Oh, Bob? He's a great guy. He gave me five dollars one time for no reason, and also he mows my lawn for me when I'm not feeling well. Also, he hugs orphans I heard." See? You cannot even be worried about a man with such a name, so there is definitely no fearing a windstorm named as such. However, people were crazy. It was my very first hurricane, and while everyone else in the city was in a panic, I was staring out the window - waiting, and excited.

I was excited for a hurricane? Of course! My life was so average, but here was an event that was sure to shake things up a bit! High winds? Thunderstorms? Power outages? Famine and looting? Sign me up! At nine years old, I could not have been more excited for the carnage and destruction that this storm promised to bring.

There were multiple trips for supplies that took place, and I made sure I was taken along each time. Mom went to the store to buy candles? I was there. Dad went to the store to buy batteries for the flashlights? Yes please, I will go to that. It didn't matter how mundane the task, I wanted to be a part of it. More than anything, I wanted to be out among the people who were preparing for what seemed like the end of the world. The vibe was intense, and it was like nothing I had ever felt before. I couldn't get enough of it.

The day of the hurricane's arrival, I wanted to hang up signs that said "Welcome, Hurricane Bob! Please destroy the hell out of things so that I can appreciate this panic a bit longer!" I wanted to craft some sort of machine that would intensify the storm, causing it to wreak more havoc than everyone was already certain it would. I didn't want people to die, nor did I want homes to be demolished - I just wanted things to be exciting.

My aunt was living with us at this time, and she said to me the most perfect thing anyone could ever have said.

"Cindy, I have to go to the store - do you want to come?"

Oh, dearest aunt. Do I want to come with you to the store in the middle of a hurricane? I think that you know that I do want that more than I have ever wanted anything in the world. So we left the house, climbed into the car, and drove to CVS. It was raining a bit as we drove along, and street lights swayed in the wind slightly, but I said to my aunt,

"This doesn't really seem very bad."

I feel like most adults would worry when sensing that their nine year old niece is disappointed with the lack of weather-related destruction, but my aunt was amazing. All she said to me was,

"Don't worry. This is just the calm before the storm."

Suddenly, I was reinvigorated! "Don't worry," she said! This day still had hope! The hurricane winds would come, and they would do what I wanted, and they would make everything worth it. So we went home, and I sat back, and I waited.

I wanted to sit near the window to watch the frenzy of weather in my back yard, but my parents were responsible and made sure that I stayed away from any dangerously breakable glass areas. And so, I stayed buried deep inside my house, listening for the wind, for the thunder, for the sound of trees crashing around me. But really, I didn't hear any of that. In fact, I didn't hear much of anything at all. I ended up going to bed, convincing myself that when I peeked out the windows in the morning, the destruction I'd been hoping for would be apparent.

Unfortunately, when I woke up the next day, I looked outside and everything was... normal. Yes, there were a few downed tree limbs, but our shed was still standing! Our cars had not flipped over in the night. There were no gaping holes in our roof from trees that had met their match. My bike hadn't even been knocked off the kickstand.

I'd hoped for a storm that would bend trees at ninety degree angles, with downpours of rain and thunder to shake the earth. Instead I got light rain, subpar winds, and trees that were sort of just irritated that they were being bothered.

We had the mess of the aftermath cleaned up in an afternoon, and just like that, it was as though Hurricane Bob had never even happened. Life returned to normal. People in stores were calm again, the news went back to being boring, and street lights stopped swaying. The destruction I had hoped for was never to be.

I guess that's what you get from a hurricane named Bob.

Dead Trees

When I was a little kid, I was weird. Like, I mean. Everyone thinks they were weird as a child, at least a little bit. But really, I was strange as hell. I did unusual, probably unhealthy things. For instance, I liked to play Suicide Barbie, which was a game that consisted of finding the most creative ways I could think of to bring Barbie to an early demise. (Family favorite was Barbie Corvette off the top bunk.) I liked to use the encyclopedia to draw states and their counties in full detail. Also, I once got in trouble for drawing a picture of a naked woman who was peeing, except her pee was going up a straight line into her own mouth.

But that's not what we're talking about here.

Anyhow, my family moved into a beautiful house when I was five years old, and we were lucky enough to live there until I was about twelve. The house had three bedrooms, an enormous kitchen, a playroom, and - most excitingly - an epic backyard complete with large and explorable wooded area. As soon as I was old enough, I was in those woods all the time. My sisters and I would play hide and seek, or tag, or we would use one of the fallen trees as a balance beam and play gymnasts.

However, those were not the best games of all. Oh no. The best woods game started in December, even though it was far too cold to play outside just yet.

Every Christmas, my family was lucky enough to celebrate in style with a real, live Christmas tree. We would stand it up in our living room and decorate it while we listened to holiday music and drank eggnog or cider. We would pile gifts underneath it, and my sisters and I would anxiously await Christmas morning when we would finally be able to gather around the tree and open our gifts together. No matter what we received, it was always a special time of warmth and love.

In the following days and weeks, though, the tree would start to brown - and eventually, my father would dismantle our holiday display and haul the tree into the woods. It would slowly die under the snow of winter, withering away until it was merely a pile of branches and dead needles.

Spring would soon come, and the sun would do its best to break through the treetops and melt away the remnants of snow. Once all of the snow was gone and the woods were a bit drier, it was finally time for the best woods game in the land. It was time to play:

Poor people.

I know, you're already thinking, "What the hell? Poor people? That's awful." Listen, I know it is, but who cares, it was fucking awesome. There was one single rule to playing poor people, and it was this: pretend to be poor with whatever you can find in the woods. Thanks to this rule, the first game of the year was always the best.

That's right, you guessed it. The dead tree! It was time to play poor people Christmas, which was just like celebrating real Christmas all over again, except that there were no real gifts and also it was sort of disturbing. Generally, the game started with me locating the rotting pine carcass from the previous holiday season and hoisting it up against an actual living tree trunk. It would almost always sort of just sag towards the ground, and I was certain to lose a good number of needles in the process, but eventually it would stay standing! At this point, the real fun began.

Decorating Poor People Christmas tree was the highlight of my year. In December, there are boxes of glass ornaments and garland and lights to use to make things as festive as possible - but in the woods in April, all you have is your imagination and hopefully some trash. I recall using old single-serving Doritos bags, rusted beer cans, soggy newspapers, and plastic soda can rings. Decorating that tree was more important than decorating the real Christmas tree, because everything we used was creative and no one had ever used such a thing to decorate for the holidays before.

Finally, once the tree was decorated, it was time to have Poor People Christmas morning. Unfortunately, since we were supposed to be poor, we weren't allowed to give each other gifts. So, instead, my two sisters and I would stand around the tree with sad looks on our faces, and we would say things like:

"Well, maybe we'll be able to afford gifts next year."

or

"At least we have this beautiful tree that someone was careless enough to throw away into our woods."

or, my favorite,

"I know we aren't supposed to give gifts, but I got you each a rock. I know it's not much, but it's all I could manage."

And that's it. Eventually, one of us would start laughing at the absurdity of things, and then we would all collapse into fits of giggles over how ridiculous we were being. It didn't occur to us then how heartless and terrible we were being, nor does it occur to us now to feel bad about it as adults. We were children, and we were having the time of our lives. We were, of course, lucky to have a real Christmas, and gifts, and a house, and nice things.

Really though, I couldn't have asked for anything better than playing Poor People.

Oh, I'm blind.

Here is yet another example of me nearly dying one time.

Several years ago, I drove a car that was terrible. (Okay, well. To be honest, I've driven several cars that were terrible.) It was a 1991 Chevy Cavalier, and it was basically just a piece of complete and total crap from the minute I bought it. Things went wrong with it basically every second.

Once, I picked up my sister on my way to work. She was going to drop me off and borrow the car to get to an interview. She pulled out of the Goodwill parking lot and the car broke down. Hilarity ensued - I walked down to meet her, and we spent the next half an hour trying to drive my car approximately a sixteenth of a mile. We were laughing so hard at the end that I think I might have peed myself.

It wasn't funny though, really. My car sucked, and finally it was unavoidable - I would need to spend money to fix it.

I took the car to my family's "guy" - you know, the shady guy that you wouldn't take your nice car to, but you don't mind taking your clunker there, or maybe your scooter or something. Anyhow, I brought the car to him and he told me:

"No problem. It's just a spark plug issue. Cheap cheap. Have a nice day."

So... that's it! It was fixed. Seriously, no car of mine had ever had a problem so easily remedied. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. So I paid the nice man a few dollars, I climbed in my car, and I started my drive to work. Things were going swimmingly! I had rejoined the world as a civilized motorist, and it felt good.

I vividly recall stopping to get gas. I remember smiling to myself at the pleasantness of vehicle ownership. I remember thinking:

"This is great. Things couldn't get better. What a good day."

I continued on to work and was whistling to myself at the joy of the moment when suddenly I heard a noise that I didn't quite recognize. It was sort of like a swoosh. It was the sound of rushing air, but in a way that didn't really make sense to me. Since I couldn't quite place the sound, I sort of glanced about to see if I could locate the source of the noise. In failing to do so, I turned my attention back to the road - or, as it turned out, to a blank whiteness.

First, I thought I was blind. No, though. That was wrong. I could see my dashboard, and other various car innards. Only at the very last second did I realize what was happening. My car's hood had unlatched, and it was approaching my face at an epic, unfortunate speed.

What could I do? Nothing. Just brace for impact. In fact, I think I may have slammed on the brakes. Now remember, I was driving down the road at what I can only imagine was probably about fortyfive miles an hour. Slamming on the brakes was probably the smartest thing I could have done. Basically, thank god I'm not dead.

The impact was mental. If this is a thing that has never happened to you, and I hope that it is a thing that has never happened to you, then you can not even imagine the sound that this event can create. The hood crashed hard into my windshield, and the windshield reacted as you might imagine a large sheet of glass would react. It cracked, and then it shattered - while I was still behind the wheel or a car that was stopped in the middle of the road.

At that point, I pulled over to what I could only assume was the side of the road. Since I couldn't see a thing in front of me (aside from cracked glass and a great, white expanse of metal), it was hard to tell if it was actually the side of the road. Strangely I remember thinking:

"I hope I don't run over a dog."

Priorities you know.

I cut the engine and I turned on my hazards. To be honest though, anyone who knows anything about driving did not need the warning of my hazard lights to tell them that something was wrong with my car - or my parking job, which I eventually realized was pretty laughable. (Thankfully I did not run over a dog!) I got out of the car and I realized that I was covered in tiny shards of glass that had apparently fallen out of the shattered windshield.

Thankfully, my mechanic replaced my windshield for free. He did, however, try to blame the entire situation on me. You see, I should have known that I had an old, rusted hood latch. I should have known that it wasn't reliable, and I should have checked to be sure that it was hooked securely before I drove away. I should never have assumed that the mechanic would ever have done such a thing, because that would have been absurd.

Needless to say, that man is not my mechanic anymore.

Happy, shiny people laughing..

Middle school was easily one of the best times of my life. I had the best friends, I had cute boyfriends, and my grades were good. Everyone knew who I was, and I loved every second of it.

You can imagine that when my mother told me that we were moving away, I was slightly upset.

(Maybe slightly upset is an understatement. I think that I wished death upon my mother, and then I ran out of the house and far, far away. To my friend's house, down the street. There may have even been some swearing!)

We'll come back to this.

As you may or may not have read previously, I am a survivor of Catholic school. I attended St. Charles School through the fifth grade, and when my parents told me that I would be transferring to the Dr. Daniel L. Joyce Middle School, I couldn't have been happier. However, public school was not immediately everything I imagined it would be.

First of all, I had no friends. Really, seriously, I was "the new girl", and it was terrifying. Over time though, people started to warm up to me. I had no sense of style, because I'd been wearing a uniform to school for my whole life. I didn't understand hot lunch, and I didn't know that school dances could actually be fun. It was a new world for me, but eventually I found some people to help me start learning about it.

Sixth grade came and went, and by the time seventh grade arrived, I might as well have been famous. My friends and I were inseparable - and that's saying a lot, because there were approximately eight thousand of us. If you'd asked me who my best friend was then, the answer would have changed by the minute. I was starting to go out and do things outside of school, and it was the best beginning to a social life I could ever have imagined.

In the seventh grade, I learned about mitosis (Mitosis, Mitosis, the division of a cell. Mitosis, Mitosis, cells do it very well), I voted for the new color of M&M (I voted for pink, because blue is not a naturally occurring food color), and I took a typing class. On a typewriter. I sang in the choir, I took my first year of French, I threw palettes loaded with acrylic paint out the windows of the art room while the teacher wasn't looking. Things were going wonderfully, and my friendships were growing stronger by the second.

Eighth grade though. Eighth grade was the year to end all years. I know that a lot of people think that their childhood was the best childhood - but really, the year that I was thirteen was the best year of my life. If I'd thought that my friends and I were inseparable in the seventh grade, then in the eighth grade we must have been surgically attached. Literally, offhand, I can think of at least ten of us that were always together. We went to the movies. We went to dances. We went to the mall. We went to each others' houses. We lived and breathed each other, and it was perfect. When we weren't together, we were on the phone. "I have to hang up with you to call this other one, but don't worry, you can call a different one, and then later that one can call me." Getting rides from our parents was never an issue, because we just walked everywhere. I had calloused feet by the end of that school year, because I so rarely wore shoes while I walked the streets of the city. We had parties at every opportunity, but they were the most well-behaved parties. We were loud and we were rowdy, and we laughed and we screamed, but we did it all while drinking soda and eating chips. We wrote notes and we told stories and we all dated each other, and then we all broke up and dated someone new, but we were all still best friends through it all. The idea of life being any better was unimaginable, and it was the clearest fact in my mind that we would all be together until the end of time.

Until one day, I went home, and my mother said:

"We're moving to New Hampshire."

Without a doubt, I felt my heart - my physical, beating, blood-pumping heart - break in half at that moment. I begged and I pleaded. I cried and I screamed. When none of that worked, I swore - and I left.

I didn't go far, really. One of my beloved crewmembers lived within walking distance, and I ended up at her house, sobbing and sharing the terrible news. She cried with me, and we tried to decide how we could make it work so that I could live with her through high school. Eventually, we realized that it wouldn't work that way, and I went home.

My mother hadn't come after me. She knew where I was going, and she knew that I needed time. When I got home, we talked things over, and I eventually came to accept that - whether I was happy about it or not - I would have to move.

And so, I did the only thing I could think of. I threw a raging party.

My friends came to my house that day and they were wonderful. We laughed, and I cried, and there were hugs and pictures and presents and love. I realized how lucky I was to have all of those people in my life, and I felt warmer in my heart than I ever have felt before. We all promised to stay in touch, and then the party ended, and with it went the best days of my childhood.

It's been nearly fifteen years since that day, and it still amazes me to realize that it's ended. I kept in touch with most of those people for a while, but now I only speak to a few, and even that is rare. We've all grown up. We have careers, we have lives. Some of them are married, some of them have children. Some of us have moved, some are still where we were when it all happened. One of us has died, and he will be forever missed. The world is turning, and the days keep going, and life keeps moving, and we are all what we are, and that is amazing. And though I miss these people every day, I realize that it is because of them that I am who I am today - a smart, goofy girl who isn't a girl anymore, but a woman. A woman with the utmost respect for her friends, because sometimes you never know.

Today could be the best day of your life.

Asphyxiation.

As you may or may not recall, I went to Catholic school for six years. The Catholic school that I went to, St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School in Woburn, Massachusetts, accepted students from kindergarten through eighth grade. (Thankfully, I was able to escape just after the fifth grade.) The school was very small, with probably only sixty or so students in each grade at any given time. Classes were split into two buildings - grades K-4 in the "Lower Building" and grades 5-8 in the "Upper Building." The younger kids would go to the Upper Building for gym class, and the older kids would go to the Lower Building for the library, and all of the kids would go to the church on the first Friday of every month. Other than that though, you were confined to your tiny little building for the entirety of the day, every day - except for at recess.

Now I will tell you - there were a lot of weird things about Catholic school. Things that I didn't realize were bizarre until after I moved on into a public school setting, but things that were definitely, definitely strange. Gym class, for example, did not often touch upon the regularities of physical education. We didn't play football or baseball, we didn't really do too much as far as gymnastics went, or volleyball. We did, however, do a lot of jumping jacks. Like, a lot. Also, that parachute thing that you sometimes do in school? You know, where you all stand around a parachute and flop it around and hide under it and stuff, the thing that's pretty big in preschools apparently? Yeah, that was part of gym class too, every year. And the most interesting part of gym class? We didn't have a gym. Nope, apparently since the classes were so small, they felt as though we could handle holding gym class in the auditorium, in the space between the front row of seats and the stage. Completely normal, right? Oh, totally.

Lunch was also completely bizarre in Catholic school. Our cafeteria (which now, come to think of it, could easily have seconded as a gym?) was pretty average-looking. There were five long rows of tables, and for some reason, there was a small stage at the head of the room. Any tiny shred of normalcy ends right there, though. Once you arrived in the cafeteria, you were required to sit with your class. Too bad if you have friends or family in a different grade. Pretend they don't exist, because you're not going to be able to sit with them. Also, don't even think about being too loud in Catholic school lunch, because the assistant principal will stand on the stage and yell, and then he'll shut all the lights off. You'd better be quiet when those lights are off, or you will be punched directly in the face and sent straight to hell. Lastly, you'd better hope your parents gave you a bagged lunch in the morning, because hot lunch did not become an option at St. Chucks until I was in the fourth grade. "Well," you're thinking, "at least they got it eventually." Not really. They sort of started serving hot dogs sometimes and pizza sometimes, but you'd better believe that you had to order that shit days in advance. There was no coming to school and thinking that you might want pizza that day. If you weren't on the pizza roster, you were out of luck.

Uniforms are a given for Catholic school. "Oh, uniforms! What a good idea! Students will be less likely to focus on fashion and fitting in, and therefore they will be more likely to study and be awesome and have tons of friends!" Hardly. Here is the one thing that uniforms were good for: making you freeze your fucking ass off in the winter. Not the boys! Oh no, not the boys. The boys' uniform consisted of a blue button-up collared shirt, a tie, a sweater if the mood struck, and navy blue pants. Yep, pants. But the girls didn't get pants. No, regardless of the weather, I got to wear a skirt. Yes, that knee length plaid skirt that, if you are a man, you are drooling about right now. I was ten though, please calm down. Blue button-up collared shirt, girl tie, a cardigan if the mood struck, and a knee high skirt in the middle of fucking winter, too bad, deal with it, we don't care if it's cold. "If it gets to be very chilly, please feel free to wear knee high socks." Oh, you're right, knee high socks will save me from these frigid winds, thank you mein fuhrer.

And lastly, recess. Oh recess, how odd you were in Catholic school. The grounds of St. Charles School were sort of awkward. (At this point, it shouldn't shock you that anything about this school was awkward, but I feel the need to mention it.) For instance, there was no playground. Honestly, there wasn't even really any grass. There was an upper level patch of lawn, sort of, that served as the recess area for the fifth through eighth graders, but the kindergartners through fourth graders had to run around a giant closed-off parking lot. Also, the upper level students and the lower level students could not mingle. Do not even think about trying to go to the other recess area, you will be slaughtered. Now honestly, this didn't make too much of a difference to me. Through the fourth grade, I had no desire to visit the upper level recess area, because everyone that was up there was older than me and therefore terrifying. Also, for second through fourth grade, my younger sister Jenny was around, so we got to play foursquare and jumprope and the like. (Shockingly enough, classes weren't segregated at recess, though I'm sure that was only because they couldn't think of an efficient enough way to do it.) Then, once I hit fifth grade, I didn't feel the need to go to the lower level recess area, because my youngest sister Steph had started there that year, and I knew that Jenny and Steph had each other, and I could enjoy my 5x5 foot area of grass like the upperclassman that I was.

Now this is where shit starts to get ugly. One day, while I was enjoying the hell out of myself on the grassy knoll, a mysterious stranger approached me and said, "Your sister is at the bottom of the stairs and she wants to talk to you." (Dear mysterious stranger, I just don't really remember who you were, sorry. You're not incredibly relevant to the story, so please forgive me.) I went to the top of the stairs that separated the two recesses and saw my sister at the bottom, looking shaken and nervous. I knew that something must be up because, a.) Steph was nowhere to be seen, and the two of them were generally attached at the hip, and b.) talking to people in other recess was almost as bad as trying to cross into other recess, and Jenny wasn't one for breaking the rules. I asked her, from the top of the stairs, what was up. She said

"Steph's having an asthma attack and they won't let us go into the building so she can use her inhaler and I don't know what to do."

Okay, now. Really? My asthmatic sister, who was literally five years old, was asphyxiating in a concrete parking lot. I never understood the point of keeping asthma inhalers in nurses' offices, but that's where it was, and it was not doing her any good as such. Recess was fifteen minutes long, and we were only just moments into it. If she did not get to an inhaler, it is likely that she could have died. So I told Jenny to talk to a recess attendant, and she said that she had, and they'd told her to wait until recess was over. My mind was racing, it was up to me at this very moment to save my sister's life! So I told Jenny to wait at the bottom of the stairs, and I found an upper level recess attendant. I said,

"My sister is having an asthma attack and they won't let her into the building to get her inhaler."

and the recess attendant told me,

"Muahaha, she's going to die in the fiery pits of hell for being born with less-than-average lungs! Say your prayers to the lord god above, because no one can save her now!"

(Alright, she actually said "I'm sorry, but she'll have to wait until recess is over, we can't let her inside just yet." But I mean, same thing, right?)

So I went back to the top of the stairs, and Jenny was in a panic. It was at that point that I realized what I had to do. I looked to my left, and I looked to my right, and when I was certain the coast was clear - I went into lower recess area.

Now really, I don't know who I think I was fooling. As I have previously mentioned, my uniform was a blue shirt and a blue skirt. That was for students in grades five through eight. Suddenly, I found myself wading through a pool of girls in yellow shirts and green plaid jumpers - the uniform for grades K through four. But it didn't matter, I was on a mission. I had Jenny lead me to my slowly-expiring sister, and when we got to her, she was knocking on death's door. (I'm probably exaggerating a bit. You know, traumatic memories always seem worse in your head. Really though, she wasn't awesome.) I assured her that everything would be alright, and I flagged down the lower level recess attendant who, obviously, realized that I was out of place. Before she could try to tell me that I needed to go back to the grass patch, I said in as serious and angry a voice as I could muster,

"My sister is having an asthma attack and if you don't let her get her inhaler, she will die."

I think at this point, recess was probably almost over, but apparently the woman realized that I wasn't fucking around. Steph was finally allowed inside the building, and thankfully she did not die. (I know, you were worried.)

And that's it. That's a pretty accurate representation of my memories of Catholic school. Was my education incredible? Of course it was. Did I learn things there that still affect my life? Yes I did. Would I ever send my kids to Catholic school? Maybe. But probably not if they have asthma.