Are the young women in this video Taylor Swift’s people? Or are they actresses pretending to be her spirited friends? How does one become one of Taylor Swift’s people? And how does one become an actress that pretends to be one of Taylor Swift’s people? Not that I want to become one, but this is just the type of thing I wonder about when I should be eating dinner, but can’t because I have kickboxing class at 8:00pm.

I am a white belt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=all

They don’t: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_birds_have_periods

I have taken a provocative photograph of my cat.

If ever fresh out of anything to write about, my P.O.A will be to hop on ye old city bus for a few hours and soak in the experience. I’m pretty confident a mere afternoon on the bus would afford me with enough posts for a month or so. And this certainly isn’t confined to India. It’s not just an India public transport thing, it’s a global public transportation thing. Everyone from every corner of the world has an amusing public transportation story because public transportation, my friends, is so much more than just a ride, it’s an adventure.

This post is about an experience my friends, Midge and Reiko, had on the bus that they shared with me during our weekly gathering. Please note, those are not their real names (though I  do wish I had two friends named Midge and Reiko. Especially Midge.) What follows is my visual and textual reinterpretation of their adventure, which I have titled:

Midge and Reiko got on their usual bus to work. The bus was very crowded as always, but Reiko managed to grab the last available seat. Midge found some standing space right beside Reiko.

A young woman seated next to Reiko was holding her baby. It was a cute little bugger, and Reiko, being the naturally friendly person she is, smiled kindly at the baby as she wiggled its little bugger toes. People got on and off. The conductor yelled in Hindi. The bus sped through town. And Midge and Reiko chatted about…I dunno…deep sea diving. All was going as usual on this seemingly average commute.

*note: bus was much more crowded than drawing appears*

The bus rides in our city are always bumpy. Not REALLY bumpy, but bumpy enough to make a little, tiny baby a bit nauseous. And with each bump on this bus ride, Reiko noticed that the baby sitting next to her was getting a little more purple— a little more visibly sick— a little more barfy.

“Oh no. This baby is gonna vom all over me.”

She tried to scoot away, but the bus was way too crowded. There was nowhere to run. And then the moment came that Reiko knew was coming.

But something extraordinary happened. Something remarkable. The mother of the baby exhibited superhuman reflexes and nabbed the baby’s vom before it splashed all over Reiko.

Midge and Reiko were stunned. Both were completely astonished at the phenomenal display of ninja-like prowess that occurred right before their very eyes. But more than that, they were filled with the utmost gratitude for the mother that had seized the projectile vomit milliseconds before reaching Reiko’s face.

However, what seemed like a vom crisis narrowly averted, suddenly and unexpectedly took a turn for the worse as everyone slowly began to think—

What was this woman going to do with the baby vomit resting in her hand?

Naturally, one would think the first and obvious place to dispose of the baby vom would be out the window.

However, it seemed like the mother had another option in mind. As she sat there, holding her baby’s vom in her hand, her eyes slowly shifted to the floor— right where Reiko’s feet were.

Reiko and Midge saw where the woman’s gaze had landed. Her intended baby vom disposal target became very clear.

“The window. THE WINDOW. THROW__IT__OUT__THE__WINNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW”

Midge shouted and pleaded, hoping the woman would realize the window was a much more suitable place to dispose of the spew. But she had made her choice. Her hand, right over Reiko’s uncovered feet, slowly began to rotate. The baby vom was about to fall. Reiko, too horrified at what was about to happen, was frozen in a panic- unable to do anything.

Procession of events:

Adding to the horrors that had just happened, were the smiles from all the bystanders, who apparently thought the whole situation was just cute and dandy. At this point Midge screamed,

“STOP THE BUS.“

I imagine they just stood there for a while, wherever they were, trying to internalize what had just happened. That a woman, without thinking it the least bit rude or utterly unhygienic, deliberately dropped her baby’s spew all over a stranger’s foot.

Fifteen minutes later.

That’s the end of that story. But maybe we can put a positive spin on it. Everything is relative. While baby vomit in America is something not so great, in India, maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe baby vom is considered a blessing from god, maybe in India it’s….the best gift eva?

Could this crazy woman on the bus actually have been extremely kind? This baby vomit might have been a wonderful gift to Reiko- a foot perfume of some sorts. Perhaps that is why all the Indians stood with such grand smiles upon their faces, brought out by witnessing such an enormous act of generosity as the woman gave her oh-so-precious and valuable baby vomit to a stranger.

This leads me to two conclusions. The first is that I think there is a great gap in the world of knowledge. Someone needs to undertake some serious, extensive academic research on the cultural significance of baby vom, not just in India, but across the globe.

So I call upon you, academics and liberal hippie students!  Now is your time! Grab your pens, grab your moleskine notebooks, grab your North Face backpacks and head overseas to study the cultural significance of baby spew.  Just think of the cultural insights we can learn!!!

FRANCE:

MEXICO:

KOREA:

Second, maybe I should start wearing sneakers when I’m on the bus.

On this sacred holiday of St. Patty’s day, my roommates and I decide to get our friends over for some good ol’ fashioned day-drinking and wearing of the color green (we also allowed the wearing of St. Patrick’s second favorite color: puddle-gray).  After a few drinks in our casa, we were feeling adequately jazzy and decided to venture out to some nearby bars.

Bar festivities commenced as usual— we drank, we joked, and we chatted. Unknown to us–  one particularly drunk woman took immediate issue with us as soon as we stepped into the bar.  She was apparently dissatisfied that we had dared sit on an empty bench that was in close proximity her. And with due reason. It is our most promised human right—the right to a people-free bar on St. Patty’s day—-that all peoples of all backgrounds deserve. So naturally, she proceeded to shout vulgarities and insults at us while struggling to keep her drunken self from falling over.

We were all were having a good time amongst ourselves so it was not difficult to ignore her unpleasant remarks and scornful glare. We were adults, and like adults, were able to control ourselves in the face of a belligerent and very drunk woman.  However, there are some things that you just can’t control. And this is when the situation escalated— when my friend, henceforth referred to as Humphrey, was unable to control the uncontrollable:

What emerged from Humphrey’s bum was fart— a fart that unleashed a much more savage beast than the one we were dealing with before.

Reacting as if she had just been shot in the eyeball,  the woman became even more combative, evolving into what I shall call the crazed mistress of the night (it wasn’t night). Sensing that this woman was about to implode, Humphrey made a swift retreat to the other side of the bar. But in his retreat, he left our fellow comrade, Bogart, to endure alone the wrath of the crazed mistress of the night.

She became increasingly louder and more crude with each verbal assault. Up until a certain point, her attempts to provoke a retaliation were in vain as Bogart remained calm. like the most calm lady bug you have ever seen. So in a last desperate effort, she decided to just start making shit up:

Upon hearing such blatant libel, Bogart decided it was time to defend himself from this character attack and let the woman know what she truly was: a crazed mistress of the night (day). So he let her have it. Unable to match his reason and intelligence, the woman summoned her manfriend over to defend her honor. Fortunately, the manfriend was a reasonable kind of dude and knew that his ladyfriend was being crazy drunk. Thus Bogart and said manfriend, realizing their common bro-hood, were able to work out a true gentleman’s agreement: You stay over there, and we shall stay-th over here-th. All was quiet on the western front and it appeared as though the conflict had been evaded. This was until Bogart decided to lean in and whisper to the manfriend what was both the best and worst thing to say in the entire history of that moment:

I’m not going to get into the details of the scuffle because …what do you think this is– the Hunger Game? Well yes, kind of, because I do perceive myself to be the present-day Katniss. But no, I’m not going to exploit the incredibly gory details of the scuffle for the sake of entertainment. All you need to know is there was scuffling and shortly after we were “escorted” out of the bar to the cries of “You don’t mess with family,” which presumably meant, you don’t fart on family. Amen to that, sister.

We exited the bar, adrenaline pumping, only to go to another bar, where we eventually realized that it was really crowded and if ya can’t dance, then what the hell is the point of being in a bar. Back at the house we pieced together what had happened to lead up to the scuffle. The only real conclusion we came to was that the crazed mistress of the night was truly a crazed mistress of the night: acting completely beyond our understanding.

On this matter– why a woman was so eager to start a fight with amicable strangers— I am still genuinely confused. Like women who wear high heels, republicans, and mime artists, there are some people who I will never fully understand. But mere lack of understanding is no reason to discount the character of a person. She’s probably a good person and just had a very bad day. I remember the the ever-so-wise Atticus Finch and what he said to his daughter in the classic To Kill A Mockingbird, “You never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them.”

So I sit her now trying—trying to place myself in those shoes— to imagine what could have happened in her past, what happened before our encounter that had left her in such a highly reactive and agitated mood. To understand. To empathize. I too have had my share of bad moods. And I too have overreacted to something trivial due to those bad moods. Maybe the same things that would trigger a bad mood for me happened minutes earlier to her. Like…perhaps she was eating too much chocolate and got chocolate cramps and then her boyfriend was like “There’s no such thing as chocolate cramps.” And then she was like “Oh no. I must have cancer.” And just like that she went from eating chocolate to being in a bad mood to starting fights in bars. I get it.

But trying to understand is hard. And it’s also painful to try to wear another person’s shoes. And if it’s not painful, it’s because the shoes are too big and now you just look like a silly clown. And how are you supposed to get a boyfriend if you look like a silly clown? Personality? I think not.

——

In addition. For this particular story I’ve decided to employ my artistic license and will stray away from my realistic rendering of the human form and take on a much more abstract, post-minimalist approach— which I like to call cuadrados con un corazón. I will also be straying from my usual humorous narrative, as my intentions are to make you weep with emotion. Love is not funny at all. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It’s like Sinbad. Yes, love is like Sinbad. Write that down.

****~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~****

Once upon a time, a young woman was lying on the grass with all her friends. They were on a college retreat and enjoying their free time away from the responsibilities of educational attainment.  It was the 1970s so these young ladies were all fake flower children and conversing about fake flower children things:

Across the field was a young man stumbling around with a stack of books. The young woman and her friends spotted him and laughed, “Dweeb alert!”, “Nerd shit!”, and  “hahahahahaha! JERK.” The fake flower child was my mom. The nerd shit was my dad. And this was the first time they saw each other. My mother was a super hip lady, a social butterfly who was once voted “best personality” in middle school. And my father was the kind of kid that this happened to in middle school:

You would suspect the likelihood of my father and mother interacting after this first visual contact to be slim, but alas, we live in the noble country of America, where the oppressive youth social hierarchy disintegrates after high school, and social butterflies hang with nerds, cool Asians dance with not cool Asians, and athletes play Jenga with overweight theater majors. The only ones who really are excluded are a cappella kids. No one likes them.

So as fate had it, my parents’ social circles came in contact. I’m not sure exactly how their respective friends started hanging out with each other— perhaps my father’s roommate, known around campus as “Night Stalker,” was an acquaintance of mom’s roommate’s boyfriend, the albino poet. Something completely normal like that.

But that’s not important— what is important is that after being introduced to each other, my father quickly became smitten with mother. Again and again he would ask her out, but again and again she refused. My poor father was heartbroken— perhaps it was time to give up, perhaps it was time to start asking her best friend out, perhaps it was time to start suspecting she was a lesbian. But, fortunately for my existence, after a while my mom finally said yes, because as you have learned from such timeless films as Bubble Boy and Transformers, while they might not be as babilicious as the jock in your math class, it’s always better in the long run to date the nerd. They are more likely to “love you for who you truly are” and not make jokes about the WNBA.

*come back for part two- to find out how everyone dies!

We were right smack in the middle of one of our favorite Rock Band songs when the unexpected unexpectedly happened. The chorus was building up and all of the sudden I saw Dave’s drum sticks fly into the air and his body drop to the floor. His muscles became tense, his eyes became freakishly wide, and he started flailing and jerking about on the floor like a possessed fiend. It was super weird.

It all happened so quickly. One second Dave was playing drums, and the next he was on the ground freaking about like a fish out of water. My immediate reaction was:

My reaction was not unfounded because the thing is— Dave is an actor. It’s in his blood.  His own Aunt and Uncle were the stars of the critically acclaimed show Gullah Gullah Island.  This genetic acting blood that courses through his veins, that has run through the veins of all his family members before him and all those after, supplies him the ability to change his persona almost instantaneously. One day he might pay for a taxi under the guise of British Gentlemen. Or maybe he’ll make you a Philly cheese steak while acting as his renowned Man Who Can’t Read character. So you see, it would not be outside the realm of possibility for Dave to unexpectedly change from his usual Dave self into a character like Belligerent German Seamstress, Drunk Dinosaur, or say, Epileptic Drummer. You just never know with Dave, and I thought this was all just one of his many impromptu performances.

After too long a period of time admiring what I thought was Dave’s thespian talents, the realization that he was not just pretending to have a seizure, but actually suffering through one slowly began to seep through my thick skull. I believe it was when his eyes rolled to the back of his head when “encore!” was replaced with “holy fuck nuggets.”

Fearing Dave would die before my very eyes, I quickly ran to my apartment across the hall to get help/ fetch some other death witnesses. My roommates Carli and Megan followed me back into Dave’s apartment. Megan called 911, at which point she realized this was her first time calling 911, how exciting!

As Megan spoke with the emergency hotline, Carli proceeded to Google seizure and I stood helplessly above Dave trying to keep his raging head from hitting a piece of furniture.  A feeling suddenly came over me that there was some kind of medical procedure I was supposed to be doing to keep my seizing friend alive and well. I remembered a vivid image of my 9th grade health teacher standing in his tracksuit:

However much I racked my brain, I could not recall how he finished that sentence, and Carli was taking too long to find an informative seizure website, so I went with my gut instinct:

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Dave’s tongue appeared to have gained a mind of its own as it wriggled all over the place in the back of his mouth.  I became absolutely fixated on the idea that he was going to choke on it, and eessh, how unbecoming that would be. So I did what any hero would do. I stuck my finger into Dave’s mouth and went after his wildly tongue. And in that way I’m a lot like Abraham Lincoln.

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It was one for the history book. A carnival indeed.

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The medical professionals arrived and Dave was rushed to the ER. Amen to supreme beings, he was ok. He got to eat some delicious liquid hospital food and to this day is healthy and well. All was good— the frightening day had ended without any unfortunate outcomes, and on top of that, I learned a few valuable life lessons that I would like to share with you:

Moral Number One:

Life is a crazy and full of horrifying surprises. All you can really do is use Google.

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Moral Number Two:

Never assume your friends are talented. I assumed Dave was a great actor and wasted valuable tongue grabbing time. If anything, assume they are weak.

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Moral Number Three:

Death is all around us. After watching a seizure, I’ve become very aware of human vulnerability, frailness, and mortality.  Death is real, homies, and as of yet, no one has invented some sort of preventive spray to rid us of this nuisance. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been very aware of our mortality, and have had several experiences with it:

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Watching your friend seizure all over the floor adds a whole new flavor to the dish of death.

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Moral Number Four:

Befriend people with missing fingers. When I stuck my finger in Dave’s mouth to snatch his runaway tongue, I wasn’t just saving the life of my friend; I was risking the life of my finger. Dave had no control over his body, and as he flailed across the floor unpredictably contracting and convulsing muscles, his mouth could have easily snapped shut with my finger still inside. And then just like that, I would have had a missing finger and joined the tragic pool of people who are victims of cannibalism.

We can then take a leap of faith and assume that anyone with a missing finger lost that finger because they were trying to save their friend’s life/tongue. So the life lesson here is if you meet a fella or a gal with a missing finger, you should become insta-friends. Because that’s exactly the kind of person you want on your team— one willing to sacrifice a finger or two for you. Yes, there is a chance that he or she may have lost their finger because they are a Somalian pirate or an alligator tooth poacher, but sometimes you just have to let go of that prudent feeling, “but he has an AK47 in his hand…” and become best friends forever. Because, really, that’s what life is all about— befriending people with missing extremities. If not, then what? Love? — I don’t think so, Romeo.

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Moral Number Twenty-One:

Video games DO (almost) kill. Playing Rock Band is highly dangerous and seizure-inducing. Do not indulge in this activity. Instead, participate in far less dangerous (but equally fun) endeavors such as throwing yams against brick walls, smelling your hair, or tying string around not sharp sticks.

I was so much worse than everyone else— and there were some seriously incapable human beings also playing instruments, and even they managed to push something out that sounded better than a drowning muskrat/Cher.  Most of the time I wouldn’t even bother playing, I would just pretend to while dreaming about all the other better uses for my saxophone: fire kindle, a silly hat, a life preserver for someone I wanted to see drown, a remote control, a giant bubble maker.

High school came in 2003, and everyone in band had to join the marching band. The whole idea of it terrified me— because unlike band, marching band required not only the ability to play your instrument, but also the ability to simultaneously march around in some prearranged manner whilst wearing a silly hat.  What a terrible idea. There was no way I was going to be able to play a saxophone and move at the same time. That was asking way too much. Having me do such a thing is like having Charlie Sheen host the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards: lives would surely be destroyed.  I had to get out of this.

Again I began arguing with my parents to let me quit. I claimed that they were no better than the fanatical, strict parents that pushed their kids to become child prodigies; some now refer to these types as Asian Tigers, but they can also be classified under the general term psychotic.

But after realizing that was too far of a stretch, I claimed they were like the delusion parents who believed that their talent-less children were beaming stars of endless potential.

But as I said, my parents are indestructible and unflinchingly rigid. There was no beating them and they would not accept the fact that I was terrible at the sax. I was searing with anger.

Marching band started and our routine was based on the catchy showtunes of The West Side Story. During one particularly inspiring song, we would form a giant heart. As you can imagine, it was emotionally stirring and thus a very crucial part of our show. The responsibility of leading the saxophone section to connect with the flute section during this one segment had arbitrarily fallen upon me. And this, my friends, is when I became the Heartbreaker. Because all I literally had to do was take fifteen steps in that –> direction, but somehow managed to fail at this every time. I would always break the heart.

Despite my continual heart breaking and overall incompetence, the marching band managed to score pretty high in all our competitions. And when the state competition rolled around, we had a decent chance of winning. I spent the entire week before this worrying about the show. I was absolutely sure I was going to blow the whole thing by breaking the heart. Everyone in the marching band would hate me— I would be the least popular kid in the least cool extracurricular activity.  High school was off to a great start.

But guess what haters— the day of the state competition came and I did it. I nailed it. The marching band virtuoso buried deep down in the caverns of my soul finally emerged and I successfully walked in a straight line. It was the artistic peak of my entire life. I was euphoric. “This,” I thought as I breathed heavily, “is how Bono must have felt when he sang at the Super Bowl.” Except I didn’t have an American flag sewn in my jacket. But, it was still awesome.

Lil Mama, whom I like to refer to as the voice of our generation, once said as a judge on America’s Best Dance Crew, “Y’all took the extra stab in the heart of the chicken!”

I’m not really sure what that means, and am pretty sure Lil Mama is crazy, but I’d like to think if she were there the night of my successful performance, that’s how she would have described it. Stabbing the chicken heart or whatever.

After that year of marching band my parents finally let me quit the saxophone. Their greatest fears did not come true— while I have become a drug-addicted prostitute, I’ve managed to stay out of Orlando (thank God). And other than that, I’ve accomplished a lot of great things.  Like, for instance, when I went to a Dunkin Donuts right before it closed and the cashier gave me all the leftover, stale donuts for free. No big deal. (It was the greatest day of my life).

The end.

Before the class started I had to make the important decision of what instrument I wanted to play— a decision that would shape my entire life— and if I picked incorrectly, I knew I would be destined to lead a sad and miserable existence. I wasn’t butch enough to play the trumpet. I wasn’t prissy enough to play the flute. And I certainly wasn’t Asian enough to play the violin. So after a whole minute of critical thinking, I chose the saxophone.

I waited impatiently for the summer course to begin. It was my reasonable belief that I was the most gifted child in all the universe, and naturally, would be sensational at the saxophone immediately. I could not wait to get my hands on the shiny, expensive looking piece of metal and start churning out jazzy noises that made people want to get up and jazzercise.

The summer class finally started and it was great. There were fifty or so hyper-excited eight-year-olds who, like me, were exceedingly happy to be holding something that made loud noises. We didn’t really learn anything, nor did we get any individual attention to ensure that we were playing correctly— we just kind of blew away on our instruments and thought about how much better we were than all the other eight-year-olds who were not taking this jumpstart course.

 Both summer and my class came to close and my first year of school band was starting. I was eager to show off to my new teacher my extraordinary saxophone abilities. Surely she would be blown away as I played the difficult classics I had mastered over the summer.

But things did not quite work out as I had imagined. In fact, what would be the exact opposite occurred. I barely played three notes before my instructor commanded me to stop.

She looked me straight in the eye and told me I had it all wrong.

According to this muxpert (music expert = muxpert), I was completely neglecting the woodwind technique known as tonguing. For all you non-muxperts out there, tonguing is like rapid fire licking, except the intended target is not your Fudgesicle or Tiger Beat poster of Justin Bieber, it is the reed of the saxophone.

Such incompetence, my teacher concluded, could only be remedied in one way—PROMPT CONFISCATION OF MY SAXOPHONE. Everything but the top goose neck. She told me that I wouldn’t be needing the rest (98%) of the instrument until I learned how to tongue. “All you need to focus on,” she said as she took the instrument out of my hands, “is properly licking your saxophone.”

My precious ego was shattered into a million pieces, my dreams evaporated. There would be no jazzercising tonight. No jazzercising ever. When I returned home I threw the case in the corner and looked at it with contempt. This was what Don McLean was singing about, because, this was truly the day the music died.

By the time my parents came home, I had already buried my shame and musical failure deep inside my soul and was on the computer fully engaged in Math Blaster.

“Greetings Daughter! Why don’t you show us what you learned during your first saxophone class?”

“Can’t you see I’m busy learning math.”

“Please.”

“FINE. BUT DON’T EXPECT ANYTHING FANCY.”

I walked very angrily over to my case and pulled the remaining piece of my saxophone out. My parents looked at my stripped saxophone perplexedly.

“Where is your saxophone?”

Emotional collapse.

I sat in the corner gently weeping and licking the reed of my saxophone. My parents backed away slowly.

When my teacher took away my saxophone, I like to be poetic and say that what she was really taking was my enthusiasm for musical growth and development. Because from that moment forward, there was nothing I felt for my saxophone but pure, utter hatred— and I wanted to quit immediately.

My parents, however, did not feel the same way. Their strange parental conscience deep down in their hearts whispered to them, “If you let your daughter quit the saxophone, she won’t grow up understanding the concepts of perseverance and responsibility. She will unavoidably become a drug-addicted hooker that lives in Orlando. And you will have to take care of her HIV babies.”

I begged, pleaded, argued and strategically negotiated with my parents to let me quit. But they were unwavering in their decision. And they did not want to take care of my HIV babies.

Not even a convincing PowerPoint would dissuade them. There was only one thing left I could do— murder my parents and make it look like an accident. But, surprisingly enough, I love my parents and/or am not deranged so I just kept on playing.  Also my parents are indestructible.

End Part I