the strange case of dr. dave and mr. etc

It was Thursday morning, which in the collegiate realm marks the inauguration of the glorious weekend, and my friend Dave and I were celebrating our free time by playing Rock Band. We had met four years earlier as freshmen in college. At first, we were just awkward neighbors, but soon enough, we both realized our shared weird sensibilities and were happily throwing yams against brick walls together. It was a special friendship. He taught me how to make icing sandwiches, and that it was okay to say black instead of African-Americans. I taught him how to catch a bear, and that is was okay to skin it while it was still alive. It was a special friendship. And as we sat there playing Rock Band on that fateful Thursday morning, it became even more special.

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.

Heartbreaker Part II

Years and years passed and I was still stuck playing the saxophone. And with each year, I think I was somehow getting worse. My dislike of the saxophone mixed with my natural unnaturalness with all things relating to music produced an incompetence like no other. I_was_terrible.

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.

Heartbreaker Part I

The summer after fourth grade my parents enrolled me in a summer music course to learn how to play an instrument. This introductory course was designed to give its attendees a head start at learning an instrument as all the kids would be joining the school band the following fall.

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

The cool spot.

This is not about the old 7-Up mascot.

I have a friend. A great friend. A weird friend. A great and weird friend. A friend so great and weird that she once suggested we get a pet rat because:

My friend Carlie was once in 5^th grade. She was a tween– a particularly strange species that is almost teen, but still secretly plays with toys. The female tween creature can generally be identified by her excessive amount of glitter, her high pitched screeching at the mentioning of a pop icon, and her outlandish and uncontrolled color alterations to the eye region (through the use of the make-ups).

Both boy and girl tweens are highly perplexed by the other gender. Boys don’t understand girls and girls don’t understand boys–  all they know is that there is something oddly fascinating about their counterparts, but they just can’t put their finger on it, not yet at least. This, combined with their debilitating physical awkwardness and emerging hormones, leads to strange and irregular interactions between the two genders, interactions that are fascinating to us regular human beings and make tween sightings an exciting occasion.

That being said, Carlie, being a tween, did not really know the proper ways to interact with the male species as a normal human being would, nor did the rest of her girl posse. So when conflict arose with the rival boy posse, hilarity ensued.

What was this conflict? Apparently there was a “cool spot” to stand at the school Carlie attended. I’m not sure what made it cool, perhaps a water fountain or a crack in the pavement that resembled JC Chasez. Regardless, this spot was cool and just about everyone wanted to stand there.

It was Carlie and her girl posse that were the inhabitants of this cool spot. They were the queen bees, the top guns, the coolest of the cool, the big tweens on campus.  Life was good at the cool spot and every day the gals would stand there and have a really great time.

But something terrible happened. One day, the rival boy posse seized the beloved cool spot from Carlie and her friends and claimed it as their own. The girls were no longer allowed and the boys flaunted the ownership of their new hangout.

The girls were enraged. Seething. Inconsolable. How dare the boys seize their spot and displace them to some dilapidated part of the playground! Reprehensible! Surely, there was some kind of protection from such flagrant thievery, from such abuses to amicable indigenous peoples. Should they tell the principal? That wouldn’t do- they would take the matter into their own hands. The girls would not let this injustice go without retribution. They would get their spot back and the boys would pay.

Serious measures had to be taken as soon as possible in order to regain their ownership of the coveted cool spot. Had I been in the same situation, being the very civil and urbane child I was, I would have probably just thrown some rocks, kneed some balls, or spit a lot. But it was not I, it was Carlie and her friends, and they were a very shrewd and calculated bunch. Instead of an impulsive direct attack, they plotted an elaborate plan that would:

A. Make the boys leave

and

B. Avoid direct confrontation

Fighting the boys would be a messy affair. So instead of that, wouldn’t it be easier if the boys left on their own, if they decided that the cool spot was no longer appealing and just got up and left? The cool spot without the cool is just the spot. And who wants that? No one.

But how to make the cool spot seem uncool? Well, duh. That’s an easy question to answer: Make it seem like a homeless person is living there. Yes, this is the idea the girls came up with. Homeless people are just about as uncool as helmets. It was the natural solution that all normal people would think of.

Now that they had their foolproof plan, they just had to bring it into fruition and set up a convincing homeless scene. Bringing the right hobo-looking possessions was of the utmost importance.

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Yes. Carlie was to bring the poop. What better way to fabricate a homeless person’s place of residence than by placing a piece of poop on the ground? Poop was the icing on the cake. Poop was the irrefutable evidence. Poop was the way to ensure the boys would never come back. Nevah evah. Poop_Was_The_Answer.

(Of course she wouldn’t bring human feces. That would be disgusting. Carlie would merely collect some of her dog’s poop and bring that to school.)

The next day came. Carli was prepared. She had followed Spark around, waited for his moment, collected his business, and stuck it in a shoebox. But when she got to school with her shoebox of poop, none of the other girls had brought their hobo props! IDIOTS!

Carlie was disappointed in her friends, but there was no time to dwell on that.  The boys were standing in the cool spot, and fiery flames of anger were burning inside all of the girls. Their strategic, non-confrontational plan went out the window. This was war.

They marched right up to the boys and demanded their spot back. But the boys would not budge. Yelling. More Yelling. Fists of anger. Yelling. Mean name calling. Yelling. SCREAMING. CURSING. FINGER WAVING. Things were getting out of hand. The situation was escalating.

(Girls are represented by blue and boys are represented by pink. FEMINISM.)

Carlie felt the cardboard in her hands. She knew she had a very, very powerful weapon– a weapon that could end this silliness immediately. Much like the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, the poop was a weapon that could bring peace, but only at the cost of much destruction. Using this poop would bring about tremendous consequences, and once she unleashed it, there would be no turning back. She had to think long and hard about it, and made her choice:

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I’m a little hazy on the detail of what happened afterwards. I guess the boys ran away and very quickly relinquished the cool spot. Perhaps the girls ran away as well, seeing that the madness of war had turned their friend into a poop threatening monster. Carli was tattled on and her mom received a phone call from the school that was probably hilarious, a little embarrassing, but mostly weird.

Carli didn’t get in much trouble. There was no real concern that she would turn out to be some crazed, poop-hurling adult. As you can see below in my chart, Carli’s actions were only a level two on the parental concern scale.

(if you are having trouble reading the image, click on it)

These days Carlie has put down the shoebox of poo, and instead picked up the old science books. She has just taken the MCATs and is on her way to becoming the best doctor evah.

And someday, after she saves the life of some patient in some difficult surgery, I’ll gently put my hand on the shoulder of that patient and say, “Hey there, you know that doctor that just saved your life over there?”

She will nod and I’ll point to Carlie, and we’ll both look at her with much admiration and gratitude.

Then I’ll look at the patient very sincerely in the eyes, and she’ll think I’m about to say something inspiring, but instead I’ll just say:

“She used to go to school with a box of dog turds.”

At first she’ll look at me weirdly and wonder, “Who are you?” But then she’ll think, “Dog turd? In a shoebox? Ew.”

attack of the giant octopus.

As this will be my last entry while still in India, I thought it would be appropriate to recount the eventful story leading up to my stay in this amazing country. It’s a long one so bare with me.

Chapter One: Pre-Crisis

I had to go to into the city to get my employment visa. Without this visa I could not work in India, nor could I even get into the country— it was of the utmost priority. It took me a while to compile all the required paperwork for my visa. I had to collect the usual documents as evidence of my identity- my passport, birth certificate, proof of address, etc. But, the real tricky part was getting a justification letter, which is described on the India visa website as being:

A letter from the employer in India certifying that applicant is a skilled and qualified professional, technical expert, senior executive or in a managerial position. This letter should state that the applicant’s skills are not available in India.

Well, the funny thing is, I don’t have any skills, much less a skill that all the  one billion people in India lack. I graduated from a liberal arts college and majored in East Asian Studies. This means I am qualified to do absolutely nothing. Perhaps my greatest accomplishment from my four years of higher education was discovering this potato chip:

(click on image if it is really small)

I also did gain some proficiency in the hard level of Rock Band (guitar only, not drums), in addition to acquiring a deep-seated aversion to all the things related to science.

The folks down at our college career center encourage us to tell our prospective employers that we are critical thinkers. What exactly that means has always been unclear to me— a fancy way to say intelligent or logical, perhaps?

Anyhow, I was a bit curious as to how my employer was going to justify to the government of India my working over there. But, my boss proved to be a magician as he was able to produce the needed materials.

So with all required documents in hand, I was off to the big apple to get my visa and start my adventure across the sea. But, before I left, my parents informed me of a graduate school fair that was happening during the same time I would be in new york, and that I should definitely go because it would be supah helpful.

My new P.O.A. was to first go the grad. fair then go to my visa appointment at 11am the next morning.

I arrived in the city. Ahh the city!

I used to hate the city- it’s only redeeming quality being the cancer-filled hotdogs sold on the streets. But, now that I am older and have a mature appreciation for the finer things of life, I have come to really like it. Plus, the WNBA Liberty games are a really great and insanely inexpensive opportunity to get yo’ drank on and eat nachos.

Someday I would like to move there. Part of me wants go as soon as I get back to America. But the other part of me thinks I’m really not cut out to be a new york city slicker. Would I really fit in there? I’m certainly not cool enough to be a hipster. And I’m definitely not hardworking enough to be a young, wall street sort:

Regardless, I was happy to be spending some of my last few days in the vibrant city of new york, even if I didn’t fit in, and even if I had to go to a grad school fair.

When I walked into the large hall full of tables and grad school representatives from across the country, I noticed that all the other one-thousand, million people had on business attire. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Not only that, but everyone seemed to me much older than I- with actual job experience and such. I felt like a tween wearing a skirt from the Delias catalogue at a high school prom.

I awkwardly wanderer around the tables, pretending as best I could that I was really interested in learning all about the about the various programs offered, what kind of jobs students got post-graduation, and all the intriguing research the professors were up to. Everyone else seemed to be having really serious and informative conversations. I was way too intimidated to talk to anyone so I just walked around writing my email on a bunch of lists and sneaking away before anyone noticed me.

It brought me back to those stressful and daunting days in high school when I was applying to colleges and pretending to be a person who was really eager to write papers on things like the philosophy of philosophy, engage in dialogues about diversity and gender constructs, and eat dinner at my professor’s house. And now I was pretending to be someone who was eager to start a professional, lifelong career. This idea of commitment and responsibility terrified me— meandering my way through life is much more appealing. Tis’ the symptom of being 23 years old.

I was able to muster some semblance of confidence:

Wait one second! They are trying to impress me. They want to convince me to go to their school. I don’t have to convince them to let me in…not yet at least. Who cares if I have no idea what I’m looking for? Who cares if I am under-dressed?

So I stood a little taller, brushed the dirt off my shoulders (figuratively), and stepped in line to wait my turn to chat to a grad school representative.

I didn’t have a question in mind and there wasn’t anything in particular I really wanted to know— I just wanted to assert myself after having felt so out of place and awkward. I started thinking about what I should ask. I tried to imagine what an Ivy League Joe emitting toxic levels of confidence would say.

Hmmmm….what to say…what to say….maybe…

No. That won’t do.

Yea. That’s it. That’s what a person who knew their shit would say.

The woman in front of me was having a lengthy conversation with the representative. I tuned into their conversation only to hear,

Swiss Embassy, you say? Yowzah! That certainly makes my TJ Maxx work experience sound considerably less impressive. This is your cue to leave.

And I did. I busted out of that shindig at lightning speed without having talked to anyone. But it’s okay, because I did something equally useful and beneficial for my directionless future:

Chapter Two: Crisis

Flash forward next morning: I have overslept. I have less than an hour to get to my visa appointment, but I have no idea where the building is.

But, even against these incredible obstacles I conjured up my inner super powers and managed to make it on time. I triumphantly ran up to the receptionist. He asked me for my documents. As he looked at them, he informed me that I was at the wrong place and said,

Without taking the proper amount of time to put all my documents back in the folder, I was out the door and sprinting across Manhattan to get to the correct building. I finally arrived- only about thirty minutes late- and went up to receptionist. I handed her my folder with all my documents. As she looked at them she said,

I looked at her stunned. “It’s in the folder. All of my stuff is in that folder.”

Then she said four words that tore my soul into a million pieces,

“It’s not in here.”

And that’s when I realized-

Oh. No. I must have dropped it while I was running out of the first building.

I was absolutely destroyed. I was the stupidest person in the entire world. I had dropped my passport in New York City a week before I was going to work in India. It would take weeks to get a new one. I couldn’t get my visa. I would miss my flight and be stuck in America. All my plans from six months ago would be cancelled. I would forever live with my parents. I really was the stupidest person in the entire world.

I had no idea what to do. After 15 or so minutes of statue-like behavior, I convinced myself this was not the time to get upset. This was a time that called for swift and immediate action! I went out of the building and retraced my steps back to the other building.

(Do not mistake my decision to go out looking for my passport as some kind of newfound hope I would find my passport. I did not think I would find my passport. People don’t lose their passports in the city and find them. People pick up passports in the city and sell them to people in Kyrgyzstan).

So there I was trudging around Manhattan, looking like the most devastated, hopeless human being in all of america. I bought a pretzel.

I kept looking though. It was hard to motivate myself because all I wanted to do was lie down on the sidewalk and cry. For hours and hours. I couldn’t even fathom calling my parents and telling them what happened. I didn’t want to face anyone. You have to be a really talented idiot with years of experience in stupidity to pull something like this off.

How was I to proceed? What was I to do??

I’ll head west and work in a diner and be that unfriendly/alluring waitress with a mysterious past. Maybe I can go work on an organic farm in Mozambique. I’ve always been fascinated by beavers and their semi-underwater abodes. Maybe I’ll go runaway and study them for a while.

I arrived back at the building I had first gone to. No passport. I talked to a security guard inside. No passport. I went back outside and recognized a police officer from earlier. I walked up to her to ask what one does when one needs to report a missing passport.

She responded with the words that sewed the pieces of my torn soul back together and reinforced it with the glue of utter jubilation (illegal in most countries),

Chapter Three: Post-Crisis

“You found my passport?”

“Yes. Just dropped it off at the station.”

My jaw dropped.

Tears erupted from my eyes.

I was so stunned I couldn’t speak.

I put my trembling hands on her shoulder to show my infinite gratitude.

(and I nevah touch strangaz)

“It’s okay. Don’t cry, now.”

But I wasn’t crying. My body was producing angels of happiness and hope, and these angels were flying out of my eyeballs to fill the world with messages of universal love and joy. The world was a glorious, glorious place.

And within just two hours, I had gotten my passport back, returned to the correct building, and successfully submitted all my documents to receive my visa. Mission accomplished. I was the luckiest idiot evah.

What a rollercoaster of emotion. I was the happiest person in the world. I was the fat girl who had won the beauty pageant.  I was the handicap kid who got to be the water boy for the varsity basketball team. I was the happiest person in the world. I was invigorated, born again. I was an angel of happiness and hope, and I wanted to pass on all the fortune I had received to another soul in the spirit of karma. And also in the spirit of the movie Pay It Forward.

It did not take long for that opportunity to present itself to me. A homeless woman approached me as I was floating down the street in my bubble of ecstasy.

Who is Kendra?

Sometime back I received an email from my freshmen year roommate/super friend Ashley (fun fact: she knows the man who invented special features for DVDs). In this email, Ashley informed me that I reminded her of Kendra and that if I ever happened to meet Kendra, we’d be insta-great friends because we are so similar.

But then it occurred to me-

Ashley had thrown her name out in the email as if I would immediately recognize it. She had made no mention of who exactly Kendra was or in what ways I was so similar to her. She provided no last name, no identifying information- just simply Kendra.

Evidently Kendra is such a big deal that everyone should know who Kendra is by the mere mention of her first name. No further explanation is needed. She belongs to that very exclusive club of very accomplished people that are known by just their first names- like Aristotle, Mozart, Sinbad, Nico, Lassie, and Shaq. Who is Kendra? Kendra is Kendra.

Even though I had no idea who Kendra was, I assumed it was a compliment to be compared to her. If you can be referred to solely by your first name, you must be pretty great (exception: Bono).

I was really excited to find out who this amazing human being was and about all her wonderful qualities (that made her so much like me). Clearly, I had been out of the loop for not knowing who she was, but from that point on, I made an effort to keep my eyes peeled for any illuminating information on the mysterious and ostensibly magnificent Kendra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After awhile, Kendra faded from my mind as I had many matters of utmost importance to attend to.

But just yesterday, for whatever reason, Kendra came to mind. I decided to finally put an end to the mystery and make the tremendous and time-consuming effort of googling her name:

Kendra Leigh Baskett (born June 12, 1985), also known professionally by her birth name of Kendra Wilkinson, is an American television personality and glamour model. She is well known for her role on the E! reality television series The Girls Next Door, on which her life as one of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends was documented. Although not a Playboy Playmate, she has appeared in three nude pictorials.

I failed to see the connection- Glamour model?  E! Reality television series? One of Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends?

The textual description of Kendra provided no information on our shared attributes. Perhaps a visual depiction would shed some light. So I google imaged her name. At first glance I did not see any similarities. But then I performed a very complex computer-generated cross-analysis (see below) which finally revealed why I remind Ashley of Kendra.

 

 

 

Almost indistinguishable!

a friend’s sacrifice. part III.

This is the final installment of a three-part series.

When I last left off, we had just arrived at our campsite in the desert and I became best friends with a camel named Beyonce Giselle Knowles.

We ate dinner and watched what was quite possibly the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen.  It was absolutely wonderful and I was feeling rather euphoric sitting out there surrounded by all the natural beauty of the desert. It was quite the blissful Circle of Life-esque/spiritual hippie moment for me. I think I was the universe’s/nature’s biggest fan at that given moment:

However, that feeling soon faded as the temperature began to quickly drop. As most intelligent people know, the desert is a land of extreme temperatures. While the days are characterized by blistering heat, the nights are freezing. Such is the way of sand. I was not one of those intelligent people and did not sufficiently prepare for the numbing cold of the desert. Only carrying a light jacket, it became very clear that I had a long and unpleasant night ahead.

When it was time to go to sleep, I could not stop myself from shivering. It was so cold. I stared at Beyonce Giselle Knowles. Enviously. She looked so cozy sleeping in her warm, fur exterior.

I don’t know if my brain was succumbing to the freezing cold temperature, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. All that I could think about was that scene from Star Wars where Han Solo cuts open the body of his Tauntaun to provide shelter for Luke while stranded in the outskirts of Hoth (You don’t know what I am talking about? Shame!) Beyonce began to look more and more like a heated bungalow and less and less like my BFF homegirl.

“I can’t kill Beyonce Giselle Knowles, cut her open, and use her entrails as bed cushions and carcass as an igloo. That’s absurd. Anyway- we are great friends. The best of friends, in fact. We are the dynamic duo! Companions for life! She is Martin Lawrence and I am Will Smith. Batman and Robin! John and Yoko! Sloth and Chunk! Doug and Skeeter! The Golden Girls (if there were only two)! Bette Midler and the woman who dies in BEACHES!  Lindsay Lohan and cocaine! George Foreman and the George Foreman grill!   We are a team. And teammates stick together. Teammates are forever. Teammates never say die. And most importantly, teammates don’t eviscerate one another.”

But it was really cold.

I started to think of all those movies where people form wonderful bonds with animals- bonds that transcend any formed between two humans.  By the end of the film, the animal always ends up heroically sacrificing his/her life for the new human friend. Didn’t that happen in The Great Panda Adventure? It definitely happened in Old Yeller. Beyonce was a noble steed- she would be happy sacrifice herself to save me. We had spent 8 whole hours together- surely she was ready to die for me.

And anyway, after she did, I would be sure to search out her family and let them know of her heroic actions.

I would even raise her orphaned camel child as my own.

I didn’t disembowel my camel. I couldn’t. All I had was a dinky pocket knife. And to do something like that you need a lightsaber, stupid.