The Who

There's this crazy thing that always happens to me when I meet new people that bemuses me to no end. It's giggle-worthy to the max and sometimes out and downright laughable. For kicks, I like to ask people about it after they get to know me a little better, because it's always fun to hear what people assume about me when they meet me for the first time. Perception is reality.

This is average everyday me. Sitting in front of my laptop, book on my lap, twisting my hair as I always have since childhood. Seriously if you don't believe me, go to my home, walk up the stairs until you get to the upper hall near the piano. On the wall will be a picture of me and my siblings in a cornflower blue frame where I am wrapping my hair around my finger in this exact way. It's like an uncontrollable tic.

Sorry, tangent. Anyways, it's pretty unassuming, right? Just some college kid sitting around in her pajamas. 

Let's take a look at the board, one hundred people polled and the most common answer for personality traits for this girl is...
Angry. 

Oh, ouch.

Let me just clarify; I'm by no means a violent person, but if you happen to meet me when I'm ranting about how yes, Pearl Jam is better than your hogwash television show where kids from high school sing versions of Pearl Jam songs, then there is a slight chance I could come off as, shall we say, disgruntled. Not that I'm speaking from any sort of experience or anything...*ahem*.

So I can deal with the angry assumptions, not everyone can have their best face forward all the time, but take a gander at some other assumptions about me:

Conservative. Just because I attended Catholic middle school does not mean that I am awash in the Bible-thumpin', neat-tucked, tax-cutting friends of the so-called right wing. And I shouldn't even tell you when the last time I attended church was. My grandma might read this.

Vegetarian. Say it with me, cows are tasty. And really? Vegetarian?! I worked at a taxidermist for four years of my life for goodness sake. This one makes me laugh outright because people don't even ask. On three separate occasions by three separate people this has happened, "You're vegetarian, right?" Not even a question. That's a confirmation statement. I know you're vegetarian, but clarify that one for me. Here's the kicker, in one instance, I had literally just finished eating fried chicken with the question asker. Yup, that's me, the chicken-eating tree hugger. (Granted my major is an environmental program, but so is the kids' who test the beach water for E.Coli.)

And last, but oh no, certainly not least:
Lesbian.  Sometimes even in combination as Angry Lesbian. I've been told this one has to do with my hair cut. Short hair immediately translates to lovin' the ladies, I guess. Then again, I've also been told that my long hair makes me look even more religious, so I guess I can't win this one. The fun thing is, it always ALWAYS comes from guys. Which is a minor bummer, the guys reject me for a happy clam and truth be  told, I've never even had a girl hit on me before. To gentleman I appear to be way off target and for the girlies I'm not even an attractive lesbian look-alike. That's disheartening.

Just some observations I've made during my lifetime. I am an angry, meat-shunning, conservative lesbian. If what you see is what you get, then boy-o am I handful.

Heaven Smells like A Waffle Cone

My legs are numb.

My legs are numb and my back hurts.

My legs are numb, my back hurts, and my forearm is getting creepily buff.

Now on to the plus side:

I got the job at the chocolate shoppe I've been coveting since my move to university. Kilwin's, you delicious slab of brick and mortar, you. Where've you been all my life?
 In the last two days I've undergone the rigourous training it takes to be a Kilwin's gal. Our slogan: We're not cows here. We LOVE to get tipped! And I'm digging it. Hardcore.

I scoop, I bake, I take cash and make change.
Lookout world, I'm here! Feeling like a celebrity as I roll waffle cones by hand in the window in my sunflower shirt and matching gardening gloves (waffle irons are hot, people.) today, three people took my picture. Someone, somewhere, has a picture of me Vanna White-ing a freshly made waffle cone on their Facebook page probably with some awesome title underneath it like, "Kilwin's rocks!... And this girl is my hero!"

Sure, I added that last part, but I'm feeling confident tonight, so I wouldn't put it past them. I'm someone's hero.

I'm dog-tired, but I'm a lot happier than I've been in a while. I walked home tonight smelling of waffle cones, chocolate and ice cream with over ten dollars in tips in my pocket--more hard cash than I've had my hands on since leaving Tuebingen--feeling like a boss. Sure, I can't quite figure out how to work the register yet, and yes, I've spilled a lot of ice cream, but my scoop size is dead on and I can roll waffle cones with the best of them. With those things sitting straight I can't help but think the rest will just fall in line.

Cue the Dancing Gopher

If Caddyshack could be used as a metaphor for my life. Then I would be Bill Murray. Bumbling, brash and destructive. Get the job done at any means.



Just go ahead and pick up another job during finals time, Rebecca. That'll work out great.

 In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher'.

good night. p.s. the bugs are not bad

It's been a long time since I've written. Itchy trigger fingers are yearning for something beyond analytical essays to type.

I'm a first-generation university student by definition. My grandparents didn't go to college; however my parents did for a bit. In fact, while dating, they both attended seperate universities for a while and they hated it. Without even telling each other they quit on the same day. That makes that my favorite story ever, but it also makes me a first-generation student.

I guess this makes me special, going in for the long haul and whatnot. There's a student organization on campus specifically delegated to telling me so, it must be true.

Maybe it is. These past few years have been a lifetime, but not a long enough lifetime to say I know I am an adult. I have no idea when you officially become an adult. On my 21st birthday I recieved an e-mail from one of the wisest people I know and she wrote:
                        It happened overnight!  A minor no longer...  a major forever more.

Forever? I have to be an adult forever now? That's a long time. And I keep looking, but there doesn't seem to have been any changes. Nothing physical I can find, no tail or anything, no signage on me that appeared that said, "Official adult" like the packaging of USDA certified organic. How do I know when I'm certified mature?

Often she would joke that incoming freshman (or 'freshpeople' as she is like to say) are students, and not fully real people yet because one must always denote if you're a student. Does my age make me a real people now?

My mom and dad, fantastic people that they would be, never experienced this,... what is it? Extended pre-adulthood? How do you explain my experience of major-ing and lack thereof of feeling?
I've been sitting on that for a while now. I'll take suggestions from the audience. The best I can explain it so far is comparable to some work I've read on.

Three hundred students taken out in to the wilderness for a week. Alone.
The beginnings of an urban legend? Not quite. Before the study, the students answered a few questions. One being, "If you could change yourself in any way, what would it be?" Most answers were physical, taller, stronger and my favorite being: "a little more bigger".

After the Outdoor Challenge, the kids filled out some questionnaires and all the general descriptive boring psychobabble was concluded, but their journals were deep, man. I didn't think most people could become so retrospective. This is what they got:

"I don't understand it I just feel so much alive I want to yell and scream and tell everybody."


"When I go home I know I will want to tell my friends about this experience. I will become frustrated and bitchy because either I won't have the words or they won't have the ears."

Reading these I just nod my head. THAT'S IT! Please someone explain this to people when they ask me why I seem 'out of it'. I need one of thse kids, who are probably well into their forties now, to be my day-to-day translator. Like a signer at a play, but more like my daily sidekick. I want to explain this minature metamorphisis I'm feeling but it's just not clicking with others. Quarter-life crisis much?
My experiences have told my old vocabulary to beat it and now it's replacing it with something completely improved and sometimes it feels like I'm speaking a different language. I don't have the words, but then again, does everyone else have the ears?

Curse you, Birthday!

Let me spin you a yarn.

 Ironically, that's the only way to make yarn, otherwise it's twine. I heard that in a movie once, and as a responsible adult, I take it to be true.
 Prove me wrong, Internet.

This tale goes back many years, longer than half a decade, in fact. And that's not just putting it in a way to make me feel old. For six years now this story has been underway and annually I've made slight of it, but I feel like I now have to accept the fact that I can't deny much longer:  I am cursed.

Not in the beautiful way that a melancholy princess is cursed for being too perfect and she bares her burden with sorrow and peace until one day a handsome prince slays the dragon/awakes her with a kiss/banishes the evil witch/finds the glass slipper/insert stereotypical fairytale ending here where they ride off into the sunset in a crystal carriage as the words "And They Lived Happily Ever After" scroll out in Chopin Script.

This is much less pretty. And much more diseased. I'm the German fairy tale version. The Original. Struwwelbecca. Spoiler Alert: Everyone in German fairy tales die. Everyone. Or their thumbs get cut off.

Fortunately, I still have both of my thumbs. I haven't, however, eaten a real-person meal in,...well, let's just say a while.

It all started on my fifteen birthday. A friend of mine was going to take me rock climbing and I was so pumped I woke up early to shower. I had everything packed and ready and I was going to be sitting, patiently waiting at the door, when she arrived. I stood up, walked out into the hall and promptly passed out and racked my head against the railing of the stairs. Not being able to go climbing hurt worse than the bump I'd dolled out to myself.

Next year for my sixteenth birthday, I got a surprise party. Too bad my head was swimming and after blowing out the candles to my cake, sat on the floor next to the stairs while my guests enjoyed themselves. I was happy, but man, I remember thinking, "Sleeeeeep." How terrible is it to feel relieved when your last guest leaves? I can't be the only one.

Year seventeen through nineteen passed much the same. Most of my birthday pictures are me, white-faced and sunken eyes smiling for the one picture in front of a cake that I didn't feel like eating. In fact, for one of them, my mom woke me up and I came out wrapped in a blanket so I could sit next to my grandparents. I look like death. My sixty-somethings for grandparents are the pinnacle of vitality. Morbid birthday humor.

Last year, I was in Germany, and I didn't advertise. My host mom left me a gift on my seat at breakfast and that about ended the birthday festivities because she took a look at me and gave me some pills to take with my morning orange juice. Comparative to other years though, I felt as fit as a freakin' fiddle.Maybe I should figure out what she gave me...

Whoever said that the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes needs to get themselves over here and work on this matter. After my birthday this year, I held out for two days of gut-clenched pain before vomiting. After I felt a little better and I lay whimpering and shaking on the floor in front of the heater before the cat came up and sat beside my face.

I still can't figure out if he trying to make me feel better or he was taking pity on me and trying to suffocate me and end my suffering.

And thus ends the tale of Rebecca, the Sickened.
Looking back at the last while it's got me thinking. Life is struggle, man. At every birthday, the Universe is asking me, "Hey, you sure you wanna keep going? It could get a lot worse than this. And this sure isn't a cake walk." 

Every year, I guess, I keep shaking my Birthday's hand and saying, "Yep. Bring on the fresh horses."
Bring on the fresh horses, indeed.