When I dip you dip we dip

A word of warning to the guys out there. Don't EVER, not EVER, use the following pickup line on a girl: "Do you dip?" It's just not a good way to go about picking a girl up. Here's the deal. First, she should be insulted that you would assume that she would engage in such a disgusting habit. Secondly, if you're thinking of taking the night anywhere further than a two minute conversation, you probably aren't going to want to have dip on the breath or in the spit that you might swap...just a thought. Finally, on most girls' lists of "what I'm looking for in a guy" you WILL NOT find "one who sucks on tobacco only to spit brown in the desperate hope of giving himself mouth cancer." It's just not an attractive habit and probably not one that you should put right out there unless you want to send girls running, but why would you want to do that when YOU approach them on the Metro platform?

Driving and Drinking...but not together

I feel obligated to respond to E's allusion to my unintended trip to Virginia . It's embarassing. One day, I was making a trip to the dreaded Capital Beltway from a feeder interstate, going in a direction that I do not normally drive. While remaining in the slow lane, so as not to miss my exit, I found myself in the beautiful state of Virginia...on accident. Apparently, it was a left exit that I should have been looking for, not the typical right exit. The worst part of this, for those of you who don't know the Beltway, there are almost no exits on the stretch leading into Virginia. There was no easy way to rectify my mistake. What was supposed to be a quick trip up north and back ended up being a trip north, south, north, east, and south before I finally arrived back home. I had called E to help with the directions and no more than forty-five minutes later, my stepmom called to ask, "How's Virginia?" Damn you, E. Now, not only does my stepmom know that I took an accidental scenic detour, but the entire blog audience (whatever's remaining after your Latin phrase post) does too.

The only other story that I have to report involves my grandmother. She gave up wine for Lent...except for when they go out. Well, the other night she and my grandfather invited my dad and stepmom over for dinner. She went to all of the effort to make a full meal and clean for her company, which is a taxing endeavor for a woman her age. So when dinnertime came around, she poured four glasses of wine. When she was called out on her Lenten vow, she responded in all sincerity, "well, we are having dinner. And we do have company. So, it's like we're going out. So I can have my wine." She is the Queen of Qualifying and I love her all the more for it.

Getting lucky...

All I have to say is that my neighbors are one lucky couple, despite the fact that they have to get up at 4:30, 5:30, and 7:30 in the morning in order to get their groove on.

The Best Laid Plans

Here's what I know about my upstairs neighbors without ever having met them. They are a couple. They have a young child who sleeps in the room above my sister's. They have a rolling desk chair in their living room. The guy is a football fan who often has friends over to watch the game. They go to bed around 11. They have sex at 4:30 in the morning.

Here's what I know about my downstairs neighbor without ever having met him/her. He/she is not afraid to complain, but is afraid to show his/her face. And handwriting. Here's the story. One day as I was sitting at my computer, I heard some noise at my front door. Not knocking, mind you, just noise. I got up to have a look. Someone had slipped a sheet of paper under my door. This is pretty typical for our apartment building because when the management needs to make announcements to all the residents, they use this method. I pick up the typed note which reads: "Hello Neighbor! This morning at 6:45 I heard the sound of women's shoes on the hardwood floor. Since this is the second time that this has occurred, it is necessary to tell you that I would appreciate you waiting until you get to the door to put your shoes on. I don't have to be up until 7:30 to get ready for work. Please respect your neighbors. P.S. If it's not you, would you please put this note under your neighbor's door so that I don't have this problem again. Thank you."

My response was not so gracious. I was annoyed that the person didn't have the guts to talk to me directly. I was also annoyed that he/she wanted me to do his/her dirty work by passing the note on. No way was I going to be as cowardly as my neighbor. I would have been less offended and felt more likely to comply with the request had the person spoken to me rather than hand me an anonymous typed note. It's not like I don't know where they live. Nevertheless, I don't wear my shoes in the morning(that was a sleepy oversight on my part).

And now we come to the point of this post. Last night, I was surprised when I was able to crawl into bed around 10, read my book, and go to bed early (for me anyway). I woke up once around 3:30 thinking how wonderful it was that I still had two glorious hours before I had to drag myself out of my flannel sheets for work. At 4:30, I hear the slow, rhythmic creaking of the metal bedframe above me. I know what's going on and I don't want to be a part of it. I bury my head under the blankets and extra pillows and desperately try to salvage my remaining hour of sleep. But I can still hear the bed, faster and louder now. I start humming to myself, like a crazy person, in yet another desperate attempt to avoid the aural (no half pun intended) voyeurism into which I have been forced. Then I hear moaning. Oh my God! Could this get any worse?! For fifteen minutes I laid curled under my blankets shaking my feet, rustling the blankets, and humming to myself. It was perhaps the saddest thing I've ever done, but damnit! I should not have to give up my flannel sheets because my neighbors have a kid that they have to avoid.

I understand that when you have kids, you have to plan around the kids for sex. I get that. But I don't have kids (for many, many reasons) and I don't feel like my sleeping plans should be interrupted or determined by their schedule. I want to take the cowardly route like my neighbor did and draft them a note, typed of course you know, so that they don't know who put it under their door, letting them know that their bed needs to be fixed and placed on a thick carpet with an even thicker padding. I'm just not sure how to go about drafting something like that. "Please keep your lovemaking to normal business hours." "Have sex any time you want, after 5:30 a.m." "Was it good for you?" "Good morning to you, huh?" Seriously, what do you say? Unfortunately, I feel like I'm in a powerless position here. For now, the plan, for the next time this happens, is to remain in the fetal position buried beneath my pillows and blankets humming to myself in yet another desperate attempt to avoid their morning plans.

Who do you know?

Who do you know who can be described with the following ideas: "glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity." When M presented this same question to me, I could think of three off the top of my head.

In an article in The New York Times on February 8 entitled "For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be 'Evil'," readers learn that the excerpt I just gave you identifies people who are most likely to commit violent crimes. I got three right off the bat! That's slightly terrifying. How many did you come up with?

Of course, another coworker noted that left-handedness is indicative of a criminal nature so that means that a lot of us are prone to being naturally evil. Then he contradicted himself and said, "perhaps it's right-handedness, I can't remember." So, really, I guess the point is that any of us are prone to violent behavior. And, now the blog comes full circle to the saturation I experience with my job, as William Golding suggests, humans are naturally evil unless checked by society.

Let's tie this in with the story that E alluded to in his post. Today, after a horribly draining school day, I come home to eat a brownie in a desperate attempt to drown my sorrows and cynicism. I saw the blinking red light on the answering machine and got excited that someone called to talk to me. Not so lucky...the message was from the security department at my credit card company. Someone in Illinois decided to go on a shopping spree with my credit card. If I had to take a guess, I would bet that this person was left-handed, but maybe he/she was right-handed, and I would guess that this person possessed some superficial charm and probably used my credit card because he/she was experiencing a particularly boring day. But, then again, that could really be anyone...or no one, I can't remember.

Can you tell I've had a rough day?

Friends from Old Places

As E pointed out to me, the amount of blogging is inversely proportional to the amount of work that we have to do. As you can see based on recent activity, E has a ton of work for which he is responsible. The only reason that I'm posting right now is because I have work to do that I am trying desperately to avoid. I'm having a rough time getting back into this work week because one of my best friends was in town. His visit has had the effect of making me slightly philosophical. If you want the gist of the post without reading it, just hum The Golden Girls theme song. If you aren't in the mood for a slightly sappy post...stop here. If you want to reminisce with me about the friends you've managed to keep through the years, here we go...

When you get to your mid-twenties (I think that's the first time I've thought of myself as that..scary), you are actually able to look back and realize that you've had a relatively long life. Seriously. Anytime you can say, "wow, that was ten years ago!" and have a vivid recollection of whatever the event was, you know you've been around for awhile.

Z and I have been friends since eighth grade. That's eleven years (if I've done my math right). We have the type of friendship where sometimes we talk every other week and at others we can go months without a phone call. But, it's also one of those great friendships where when we do catch up, it's like no time has passed. We fall right back into the old jokes, tease each other about the habits that we each have maintained since middle school, and remain supportive of whatever (ridiculous, challenging, painful, stupid, or wonderful) endeavor the other has chosen to undertake at the present time. This is true of my friendship with Z and equally as true of my friendships with T and L. T and L have also been some of my closest friends for ten years now, and I can remember our early times with, sometimes, embarrassing clarity.

As one who has just moved to new city where I'm meeting and spending time with a bunch of new people, there is great comfort in spending time with those who know me almost better than I know myself, people who knew me when I was a (self-conscious, awkward, stupid, immature, naive, (are there any good adjectives for this?!)) middle schooler. Middle school!! And, the best part is, that Z, and all of my other friends (old and new), still want to be my friend despite, or perhaps (amazingly) because of those things.

Samuel Johnson once wrote, "We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." This weekend was the drop that reminded me how much I love the friends who have loved me from the time I was completely unsure of myself and the world around me to now, when I still am unsure of the world around me, but definitely more certain of myself. We're in it for the long haul.

Stuck

Once again, my coworkers save my love of literature. I work with people who know how to use language to create great joy in my life. After school we were all chatting about how Sean Connery hasn't been in a movie lately. Some of the women in my department were wondering when they were going to have an opportunity to gaze upon him on the silver screen again. One of my male coworkers said, "he's gone from dashing to..." and another male coworker finished the sentence with "dashed." What a wonderful description: from dashing to dashed. The quiet humor of this office reminds me that, as Tim O'Brien says, "we [share] a common interest in the subtleties and textures of the English language."

And again, no matter how hard I try, I cannot escape the world of books.

In the Corner

So, while I know that I'm supposed to being witty in my banter in order to beat out the news people and E (which I may never be able to do based on that last post), I just wanted to write to complain about the fact that I can't get any work done. I'm putting down the gloves for a minute because I simply don't have the energy to throw a wicked left hook right now.

I know that it's going to be a busy weekend, and I know that I have a lot of work that will need to get done on top of all the running around that I have to do. The problem is that I have this last hour of school free, and I can't force myself to actually DO any of the work. I don't feel like grading quizzes and journals. I don't feel like thinking about Lord of the Flies or sonnets anymore. I don't care that Death shouldn't be proud or that Jack is becoming increasingly cruel toward Piggy. Honestly, I really don't.

Sometimes, I envy people who don't love their jobs. When they go home, they get to leave it all behind. I thought that teaching English would ensure that I would always get to have literature in my life. This, in fact, is the truth, unfortunately to a fault. What I didn't consider was the downside to ALWAYS being around the thing that you love. When you can't get away from it, it can make it hard to love it all the time. As I write this, I realize that my words are also making a profound statement about the proposition of marriage or cohabitation (things I intend to avoid for quite some time based on my current experience). Anyway, back to the point. The point is that I have to talk about Lord of the Flies for at least 90 minutes per day (180 on a bad day), and that's after I've spent two hours preparing for the class. So, if I've done my math right, that's 310 minutes (or 400 on a bad day) for ONE chapter of the book. For those of you who are curious, there are 12 chapters in this God-forsaken book. I'll spare you the rest of my calculations, but this one was just to emphasize the reason that I don't even want to think about William Golding or his theory on the evil and good that resides in humans.

Maybe I'll head to the library, forget about my volumes of responsibility, and raise some hell. Then again, that would put me in the vicinity of more books (something I intend to avoid, at least for the remainder of the weekend).

The Competition

It seems that some news writers want to compete with us here at Wittier Banter. This morning I was reading an article about a library in Massachusetts that is trying to crack down on the noise that kids are making at the library after school. At the end of the article, the reporter who "broke" the story made a very important point. The article reminds us that "Going to the library is kind of like voting...Visiting the public library is a right, but it carries with it volumes of responsibility."

The competition is really heating up. E, we're really going to have to stop with the Kid Rock songs and get serious if we want to beat a line like that.

Girls' Night Out

I hate the bars for one reason. When you come home and you want nothing more than to sit down, eat a brownie, and watch some good t.v., you have to, instead, get into the shower, change all of your clothes, and bury the dirty ones at the bottom of the laundry basket so that you can't smell the cigarette smoke as you try to get to sleep. Girls' night out is fun...coming home is not.