All Or Nothing

Yippeee!!

I Am.

My friend Bethany once told me a joke about a husband and wife. Apparently the husband had a tendency to be overly-friendly to the opposite sex, and his jealous wife decided to do something about it. So, she rigged up their garage door opener to respond to her husband's....errr...arousal. That way, if their garage door flew open without warning, she would know that somewhere, her husband was thinking naughty thoughts, and she could punish him accordingly. The story seems pretty straightforward, right? Not hard to understand, not very confusing. Of course, the range of this garage door opener would have to be pretty technologically miraculous, but besides that, it's a harmless little joke, right? Nothing life defining, certainly.

Well, that's not exactly true. I was in the 5th or 6th grade at the time of hearing this joke. The word "horny" held NO meaning for me whatsoever, unless it was associated with the toads that inhabited the vacant lot next door to our neighbors. I had only recently learned that the classical music station I always listened to was SO not cool, and that girls who didn't shave their legs were TOTALLY gross. So behind was I that I couldn't even name the guys from New Kids On The Block, or sing EVEN ONE of their songs.

I was a total and complete dork, and I knew it. But I DESPERATELY didn't want to accept it.

So this joke, the one about a guy being horny and setting off his garage door because of it, this stupid little joke, well, it WAS life defining for me. I remember that day, walking back to Bethany's house from the Chinese restaurant down the street, the one her parents would let us go to by ourselves. We walked and kicked pebbles and tried not to swallow the dust that was swirling around us like it always does in West Texas in the springtime. Bethany was about to graduate the 6th grade, and I was, as always, homeschooled. Grade-less. School-friendless. Category-less. Unable to define, and therefore unable to fit in.

Actually, that's not totally true either. There was one group I could have identified with. They were the Other Homeschoolers. They went skating at the old skate rink every Friday afternoon, the majority of the girls wore long skirts EVERYWHERE, they talked about science and reading and the cow's eyeball they had just dissected, and I would have rather died than be associated with any of them.

In fact, it was a strange little paradox: When I was surrounded with these Other Homeschoolers I felt simultaneously like the coolest person in the world and very the least cool person possible. The more I thought about how dorky they were, the more I was bombarded with the mental image of just how dorky I looked to all the Normal Kids. Oh, it was painful.

Well, this joke turned things right around for me. I asked Bethany what "horny" meant, and she looked at me like I was crazy. And then she laughed. That's right, she laughed. At me. At my pathetic, dorky, uncool innocence. I'm sure she ended up explaining it to me that day; I honestly don't remember the talk that ensued. All I remember is deciding, once and for all, that I was NOT going to be so stupid anymore.

I decided that my parents were The Source Of All Uncool, and so I would NOT listen to them anymore, either. The Other Homeschoolers? TOTALLY UNCOOL, all of them. Even the ones I was kind of friends with. They were OUT. From now on, I would only associate myself with COOL KIDS. The ones who know about being horny! The girls who shave! And I will listen to the pop station! No more classical. I will forget all my knowledge about Mozart, about Bach, about Mendelson. I will NEVER talk about reading, or books, or science, and I will most certainly not bring up any discussions regarding dissection. If someone says something that I don't understand, I will pretend to! I will laugh at all the jokes, even if they make no sense to me! I will NEVER AGAIN ask what something means. I will sing along to all the songs everyone knows, and if I don't know the words, I will lip sync.

I got really good at mouthing the word "watermelon" and moving my head just right. I became extremely adept at sensing a joke or a story or a word or a pop culture reference that I would inevitably not understand, but SHOULD know by now. And I was awesome at faking it. Fake it until you make it, I would tell myself. And I did. I truly did.

I went to Cool Kids school, REAL school, in the 7th grade. And as soon as I realized that making 100's on every single assignment was also TOTALLY not cool, I stopped that too. Instead of being disappointed that the classes were so easy and so boring, I would pretend to sleep. I would pretend to NOT CARE so much, that I didn't even care about listening in class. I learned how to cuss. And not just dorky cussing, either. I was totally good at it.

The first detention I got was awesome. I was so proud of myself that it was doubly hard to act cool and impervious. The next few detentions came a little easier, and by the summer after 7th grade, I was sneaking out of my house like a pro, going to high school parties, and I had even FRENCH KISSED a NINTH GRADER. I was TOTALLY COOL.

Then we moved. We moved all the way across the state of Texas, from the flat barren landscapes and beautiful full skies of West Texas to the piney woods of East Texas. I started a new school, a private school, and left all my Cool Friends and hard-won acceptance behind. I figured that I had the angry, stone-faced, tough teenage act down pat, and that this new school would only be a little bump in the road; a short delay on the highway of awesomeness.

I was wrong.

Everyone at the new school HATED me. I mean, really, truly hated. They were appalled at my "bad girl" ways. I went, in two years, from being a total, pathetic dork, to being a cool, rebellious kid, to being ostracized for the VERY QUALITIES I had worked so hard to develop. I got suspended from my new school within the first few months.

The only way the school would let me back in was if I went to counseling. I would have just rejected the whole offer without batting an eyelash, but the alternative school that was lying in wait would have made even the toughest teenager a little nervous. So I decided to take the plea bargan, and off to counseling I went.

It was such a wasted opportunity, I felt, to be going through something so easily made fun of as counseling, and not even be able to ridicule it with my Cool Friends. If I would have ever gotten lucky enough to be sent to counseling while at my old school, it would have raised my cool meter more than a few notches.

But instead I was at my new school, stuck with kids who didn't like me in the first place, and were now scared to even talk to me. They were just horrified that someone could be SO BAD as to get SUSPENDED from school, and then be forced to GO TO COUNSELING. I think I was about three steps from hell in their minds. I was the human equivalent of a Biblical plague; they just wanted to stay far, far away.

Now this was a challenge. I could have just given up, but my inner chameleon had only recently proved its expertise. I figured if I could trick those kids at my old school, I could trick these kids as well. So I went about making a new change. I reformed some of my ways. I quit telling stories of things I had done in the past that would have been seen as cool by my old friends but threw my new friends into a tailspin of worry and horror and made their mothers set up "Prayer Chains".

A lot of the changes, just as before, actually did take. You are how you act, to an extent. And some of the reasons I "reformed" were truly genuine. But the heart of it all, just like the last time, was me trying desperately to fit in. To measure up to some standard that I thought had already been set for me.

Fast-forward through high-school. No, keep going. Go all the way through college. Go through my stint as a Biology major. Keep forwarding through Communication, English, Fashion Design, and then Communication again. Go through my friends, my boyfriends, my broken engagement, my breakups and breakdowns. Go through my fashion stages, the Sex and the City stage, the hippie Earth girl stage, the casual-professional stage. Go through my college graduation, my move to Dallas, my plans to move to California, my plans to move to Europe, my plans to move to New York, my plans to move anywhere. Go through my marketing job, my very short-lived country club job, my legal assistant job. Who am I? Who can even tell anymore?

It's a struggle to find ourselves. "Finding ourselves" sounds SO very dramatic, anyway. I'll just say, with no triteness intended, that it was hard for me to find myself. In fact, I seriously doubt that I am at the end of the road labeled "Find Who You Are, Really. No, REALLY".

But I am a lot further down it. I don't flinch at the thought of not knowing about something I "should" already know. I'm not so scared for people to think I am dorky, or cool, or happy, or pensive, or melancholy, or pathetic or awesome. Because I am all those things.

I am a lot of things. I am one thing to one person, and another thing entirely to someone else. But now, that's not because I TRY to be different around everyone. It's just because I AM. I am multifaceted. I am unique. I am naive. I am experienced. I am thoughtful. I am timid. I am silly. I am serious. I am.

Welcome

Even More Proof That Mass Murderers Might Be Lurking Everywhere

I read this post today on the website of my dear friend Allison. I must say, she hit the nail ON THE HEAD. Give it a read and see if you don't agree. And, if you see nothing abnormal about any of these examples, then I will probably have to add you to the list of possible mass murderers wandering undetected in our very midst.
Number 5 of 7 in "TV Commercials that Disturb Me" is presented below as a teaser.

5. Classic Mr. Clean bits have been underestimated when it comes to disturbability. I know he's got the sexy pirate thing going for him, but if I saw his face appear in the bathtub I had just cleaned, I'd be more than a little concerned. It's hard to tell if the women in these commercials are more excited about their cleaning success or by the wink Cleanie gives them when they finish the job. Maybe he's not there at all....maybe they're just high on fumes. They're exasperated by the lack of their husband's appreciation for their housekeeping efforts, and the whole thing is a chemical induced fantasy about a man FINALLY noticing how good they are at what they do. It's less treacherous than having an affair.

It's About That Time

My favorite necklace right now features the face of an old watch belonging to my late grandmother. She had tons of watches. Lots of big and bead-y necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, too. Tons of gold. By normal standards it's mostly total crap, until recently, when ALL of it has suddenly jumped back into style (Reference! Reference!). You can thank me later for the links.

I can just picture my grandmother sitting in her art studio, going over her will, pondering what lucky soul would be the recipient of her massive costume jewelry collection. After much thought and prayer, she, in her infinite fashionista wisdom, must have decided that I would be the only person to really appreciate it, and penciled me in right below the line reading "Miscellaneous Items".

I remember the week after she died, helping my mom clean out her little apartment, and hearing the news that I was the Lucky Soul. Here's the jewelry closet, Elise, have at it! I tried parading around with a tiara and at least twelve necklaces in an attempt to convince myself of how awesome my newly inherited riches really were, but I think everyone else was relieved to not have to deal with it, and feigned jealousy to appease me.

I ended up throwing more than half of it away, spending vast amounts of time trying to untangle little pieces of tissue and old bobby pins entwined in long gold chains that looked better suited for tiny lion taming, or as reins for a miniature pony. I found buttons and pins proclaiming that my grandmother had, in fact, successfully finished Weight Watchers in 1973. And then again in 1978. And again in 1984. Pretty damn impressive, if you ask me. I found jewelry that she had made herself, globs of metal clumped together with tiny rhinestones sprinkled randomly throughout. Some of these globs were attached successfully to pins, and some of them were just kind of free-spiriting it through the jewelry cases. There were bags of fake sapphires, false rubies, faux diamonds, and even some tiny yawning hippos. Buttons from untold numbers of Chanel-knockoff suits, ribbons attached to Canadian leaf pins, roosters eating rhinestone worms, and enough bangles to make the 1988 Madonna jealous. I finally packed about four cases full for myself, threw the rest into large Hefty bags, and saluted the end of an era.

Anyway, I like my watch-necklace. I hadn't touched the boxes in several years, but in the past months I have really enjoyed going through the jewelry my grandmother decided to leave to me. I like finding pieces that I can combine to make something new. I think she was right about me.

I made my wedding jewelry out of two of her old necklaces. I wear at least once pendant, chain, or bracelet of hers every single day. I don't know why. I don't do it on purpose. It just happens. Long before she died, before I had any idea of the sheer mass of gold-plating I would someday own, I wore a little pendant of hers. The pendant was nothing but a little glass ball with a mustard seed inside, but for many reasons, it was always a favorite of mine. I always assumed that those reasons had little to nothing to do with my grandmother, but I am starting to think otherwise.

My mother and my grandmother didn't really get along. Nothing dramatic, just your average mother-daughter tension. They didn't understand each other, they were too different and yet too much the same, so on and so forth. A pattern that was repeated nearly exactly in my relationship with my own mother, and in the relationships of a thousand other daughters with a thousand other mothers. So I grew up hearing my mother's frustrations with her mother. She was too sporadic. Too inconsistent. Too free-spirited. Not grounded at all. She had no sense of reality. No concept of time. She was in her own little world. Pretty much the worst insult my mother could throw at me while in our clashing years was to directly compare me to her mother. Even in their last days together, my mom would try to get on the same page, and my grandmother would start a completely new book.

My grandmother and I were never close. I'm not sure why. It wasn't because I disliked her, or because I never saw her. Every normal family holiday she would be there, and as her health faded, she moved to my hometown and was around anytime we wanted to stop by and visit. I talked to her, but it was never about anything real, always just what I had been up to lately, or how to turn on the computer. She painted and drew, made clothing and jewelry, wrote poems, and kept on saying she was going to publish a children's book, one of these days. I really am sorry I didn't get to know her. Thinking back on it, there was probably a whole lot to know.

Anyway, this new necklace of mine, the one featuring a watch face, well, the watch doesn't even work. It's stuck on 10:12, and even though I finally figured out how to make it show the correct time, the winder is permanently broken. I suppose I could take it to a jeweler and get it fixed. My husband thinks this would be the natural step to take, and I don't know for sure, but I am willing to guess that my mother would feel the same way. A watch that doesn't tell time is a rather pointless item, I suppose. But I'm not getting it fixed. I moved the hands back to 10:12. I think it speaks volumes about my grandmother, and about me. And I don't think it's pointless.

I think my grandmother was right about me.