Aren’t you excited?

Museums aren’t really my thing. When V asks if I want to go to Art After Five with her on Friday, I say okay because I haven’t seen V in awhile and I want to spend some time with her. Lots of people find art museums to be calming, but for some reason walking around the Philadelphia Museum of Art makes me feel listless and lost.

V was my English professor at Penn State for three semesters. She taught me how to write better, to think critically (something I now forget how to do), and to remind myself that I am beautiful and smart from time to time. I’ve cried to her about everything from a C+ paper to my anxiety around turning twenty. Since she left State College to open up her own business in Philadelphia, we’ve become great friends and I respect her immensely. V is the same age as my mother.

“Wanna smoke some pot?” V says before we get into a cab.

“Right now?”

I am reminded of that C+ paper, which I received shortly after telling my English 458 class a silly story about being high as balls at the Band of Horses show at the State Theatre my sophomore year. I sat down in my balcony seat next to my super cute graduate student French teacher, whom I had exchanged mixes with when I was a freshman. With monsieur Nate on my left and Zack on my right, I had bugged out and told him how stoned I was. Nate nodded. “This show is gonna be really great for you.” A few weeks later, V asked me if I had been high when I wrote my paper. I was wildly embarrassed.

I did not smoke much after that.

We climb the stairs to the art museum two at a time, out of breath by the time we reach the top. I look behind me and sigh. Philadelphia, you are so beautiful. V leads me to a dark corner by the entrance and pulls out a little baggie and one-hitter. “Here, Allie, your fine motor skills are probably better than mine.” She has matches, no lighter. We hear a door slam and jump, as if we’re sixteen years old, trying to get stoned before Homecoming without our parents knowing. Note: I never smoked pot in high school, not once. I was too proud of my good girl status, too scared to lose the trust of my parents.

I giggle. I am not scared. We are 25 and 55. We are adults.

V and I enter the museum. Inside, the sound of Wayna, an Ethiopian Grammy-nominated singer wafts through the hallways. I grab $8 glasses of cheap-ass wine from the bartender and smile big when he pours to the top. V and I grab seats on the steps and look around. I’m not sure it can get more bougie than this.

“Who would have thought we’d be hanging out five years after you came crying to me about your C+ paper?” V asks me. “Who would have thought we’d be at the art museum on a Friday night, enjoying live music and wine and taking it all in?” She pauses. “I think I’m a little high. This conversation feels a little more edgy than it would be normally.”

Who would have thought.

Wayna ends her set and a DJ spinning exclusively world music takes over. An older couple starts doing the fox trot, or something, while everyone else awkwardly watches. V’s friend M comes by and they chat for awhile alone. M is fifty, with dyed red hair, a heavy South Philly accent and a six-pack I can see through her slinky going-out top. She’s going through a divorce, V tells me later.

When I come back with two more glasses of wine, the makeshift dance floor at the bottom of the steps has filled up. I drop all my shit in a corner and make my way to join in. I am surrounded by people of every age. Little girls dressed to the nines, big black dudes with dreads and head wraps, elderly couples letting it all hang out. The DJ is bopping his head. Apparently world music with a beat is a thing.

V and I dance together, bumping hips and getting groovy. V tries to get some of the single men to dance with her, just for funzies, just because she can. My boots slip and slide gracefully on the cool marble floor; I twist and shout, I moonwalk, I spin myself in circles. The atmosphere has shifted from bougie to bananas. I am dancing unlike I have ever danced at a club or a party or even in my own living room.

“Hey, baby,” V says, shaking her body around me in every direction. “This is what fifty looks like! Aren’t you excited?”

What It Feels Like

This weekend I went to New York to see Katie Hudson dance her tush off and celebrate the birth of three friends at a “Roaring 20′s” themed party, complete with silent films, strings of pearls, and one giant gin bucket.

When I go to New York, I know I’m going to be out late. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just not something I’m used to. Here in Philly, when the bars close at 2AM, I go to bed. All day Saturday I prepped myself with this mantra: “Five AM, Five AM, Tonight You’ll Be Awake til 5AM!” Not very clever, but it worked. I didn’t get sleepy or anything, and Maddie patted me on the back for closing the bar down.

After the “Roaring 20′s” the crew headed to Good Co., which is apparently Jill Haney’s favorite bar in Williamsburg, and I can see why. There was a large space for dancing, it wasn’t too crowded, and the DJs were playing hip hop tunes from our adolescence. I had been sitting in the “couples corner” for awhile where people were either crying, talking quietly or falling asleep (I was a little tired, whatever) but then the DJ started playing some bangin’ 90s hit and I strolled over the the dance floor. The group got down to some good jams. The bar flashed their lights. It was 3:45AM, last call.

I went to grab my coat and some guy took it out of my hand and put it back on the table.

“I’ve been making eyes at you all night. I couldn’t get your attention. What’s your name?”

“Um, Allison.”

“I’m Ben. Are you from here?”

Ben took my hand before I could say anything else and put his arm around my waist and spun me around in a circle. The DJ switched moods from R&B to M83. I was fancy dancing with a strange, soft, weird dude whose appearance screamed NEB.

Here, listen to this song to help you understand.

I looked at Chris Rizzo over Ben’s shoulder and gave him a look that clearly said, “Save me.” He didn’t. He laughed instead. Happy Birthday, Chris.

Ben asked me some more questions but I really couldn’t hear him. No one on the dance floor was dancing. “Midnight City” finally ended and I said, “Okaythankshaveagoodnight.” I turned to get my coat.

Then, right before he walked away, almost sneakily, like he had a secret that he wanted to tell so badly or maybe like he had something enticing to share he goes,

“I’m Jewish.”

“Okay?”

He left to go back to his friends and I sat down immediately.

I was pissed. I stood up and found Maddie. “Can you believe that?” I asked her. She couldn’t. The bartenders kicked us out and a group gathered around the door. “I’m going to say something. I have to say something.” She nodded. “Do it.”

I waited for Ben and his friends to get outside. They were the last ones to leave.

“Hey,” I said. “What was that?”

“What?”

“You pegged me for being a Jew from across the bar and made it your mission to come after me?”

“I mean…well, yeah. Aren’t your parents always on your back about bringing home a Jewish guy?”

“No. I live with my boyfriend. And he’s not Jewish.”

He looked embarrassed. “Well, my parents are. Grandparents too. They’re straight from Poland. I could never bring home a girl that wasn’t Jewish.”

“Well I’m sorry, but I think it’s weird that you told me you were Jewish when obviously nothing was going to happen between us. Did you think that was going to reel me in or something?”

“I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking since 9PM.”

“Are you on J Date?”

“No, online dating is weird.” And hunting bars for Jewish girls isn’t?

He apologized again. Maddie approached us, all business. “Are we done here?” We got in a cab. Maddie gave me her feather boa and wrapped it around my neck. “Here,” she said, “this will make you feel like a sexy bitch.”

***

Weirdly enough, I stumbled upon this at work today. It’s an App that uses location-based technology to find Jewish singles who are nearby. It’s like “Grindr, but for Jews. “

And so, Ben, wherever you may be, I hope Yenta helps you get some hot Jewey action next time you’re leaving the bar at 4am. You’ve got nothing to lose, right? (I wonder if bubbe and zade would approve.)

A Dramatic Retelling of a Bad Traveling Experience

It’s not like I’ve never traveled by myself before. The first time I flew solo was September of my senior year of high school, when I met my father in Providence, Rhode Island, to take a gander at Brown University. I felt remarkably adult, even with an air time of just 45 minutes and knowing that my daddy would be waiting for me with his rental car at baggage claim. Later that year, I went to Portland, Oregon, to visit Lindsay Baltus, which was the first time I’d ever seen the West Coast. I never thought twice about flying alone after that.

On Thursday, I was all set to go to Chicago, Illinois, for work. I was pumped but anxious. Anxious like first-day-of-school anxious. What if my project failed? What if no one wanted their photo taken at Comic Con (yeah, right) What if all my social media efforts and all this money returned zero new Facebook “likes” and then I got fired?

I schlepped Zack’s NikonD60 and my co-worker, Keith’s shitty tripod and fifteen hundred TicketLeap stickers to Philadelphia International Airport by way of Septa. I boarded the plane and plopped down into 16B.

We were on the tarmac for two and a half hours, due to the sky being congested. The pilot was talking about air traffic controllers, and that started to make me a bit nervous (Zack and I finished season two of Breaking Bad last week). My phone battery had exhausted itself before we even took off and I was getting hungry. When we did finally leave, so much time had gone by that I should have already been in Chicago and having a beer with my co-workers. The airline attendants started passing out tiny tea biscuits to ease the pain.

An hour into our two-hour flight, the pilot came onto the loudspeaker with another announcement. We were trying to avoid bad weather, and the new route that he had planned for us would take another two and a half hours before we landed in Chicago. I was in the middle of heading to the bathroom when he said this, and I stopped dead in my tracks. “Did he just say what I think he said?” I asked the people around me.  Heads lifted from a sea of iPads. Yes, he did.

I went to the bathroom and felt so claustrophobic that my heartbeat felt like it was trying to crawl up my throat. I exited and started pacing around the back of the plane. Then I started crying. Not, like, sobbing or anything, but my voice started cracking and tears were pooling underneath my eyes. I looked at myself in the reflection of a stainless steel food cart. I was wearing sandals, a cotton shirt with poufy sleeves, and a pair of Juicy terrycloth sweatpants. I looked like I was in 11^th grade.

A group of unrelated dads approached me. Three or four men with well-worn wedding bands, men old enough to be but younger than my own my father, started asking me a bunch of questions.  “Do you need help?’ “Are you okay?” “Do you travel often?”

“This is,” crack, “my first business trip.”

“Don’t worry,” they all said. “This is what it’s like to do business travel. Things like this happen all the time.”

An airline attendant with bad hair but a warm smile came into the cabin. “I was told there was a girl back here having a panic attack. Can I get you anything?”

“Do you have an Ativan?” I asked with a straight face.

“No, but I can get you some water.” She shooed away the group of dads. “You call can’t congregate back here.”

I drank a cup of water and took a few deep breaths with my head against the wall. She started telling me about her fear of elevators, how she can live on a plane for twelve hours a day, but she won’t get into an elevator alone. “I understand how you’re feeling,” she told me.

A nice girl who was waiting for the bathroom suggested I drink some wine and go to sleep. This sounded like a good idea. I meekly asked the airline attendant if I could have a mini bottle of the Cabernet, and told her I was in 16B so she could collect my money. She waved it off. Thanks for that, USAir.

I clutched the Cab with both hands and returned to my seat, which was sandwiched between an Indian man whose breath smelled like a septic tank and a 15-year-old Spanish exchange student named Julio, whom I told I would help navigate to the shuttle bus area once we arrived in Chicago. At this point, it had been almost six hours since my last meal and I drank the wine faster than you can say “alkie.” My muscles relaxed instantly. I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew, the pilot was talking about a “short cut.” We would be landing sooner than expected.

He made a joke when we touched ground. “Welcome to, uh,  I have no idea where we are!” Everyone clapped and laughed. “No, welcome to Charlotte. I mean, Chicago.” Fewer laughs. He wasn’t joking then.

Julio followed me off the plane.  I was walking very quickly. I followed signs to baggage claim and public transport, rolling suitcase behind me. I asked Julio if he had called his host family to let them know that he had finally arrived. He didn’t have their phone number.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “This is far as I can take you.” I waved and gave him a thumbs up. “Good luck!”

I hope he made it okay.

Cry When You Get Older

My grandma never comes to Pennsylvania. Last August was the first time in six years since she’s left her Florida condo for the likes of the northeast, and when she came up she stayed for a couple weeks. She was in Devon for my littlest brother’s graduation party, saw the family, met Zack. I didn’t think she’d be back for awhile, but my uncle is having surgery and she wanted to be there for him. She wanted to take care of him like another mother would, even when her son is sixty years old.

I was really excited to see her. I talk to my grandma on the phone every week or every other week, usually when I’m walking somewhere. Gotta walk 15 blocks? Time to call Leone. She’s always there, she always makes me laugh, she always wants to know what I’m wearing, who I’m seeing, and how much wine I’m going to drink. We like to gossip about celebrities and family members.

My office is really close to Suburban Station, which makes getting to suburbia a breeze. I took the 5:05 Express to Bryn Mawr with about a million other main line commuters and sat down with a book. I’m rereading “Local Girls,” by Alice Hoffman, which was one of my favorite Young Adult novels when I was of age. I plucked it off my bookshelf in Devon last time I was at home, along with “Chasing Redbird,” by Sharon Creech. When we approached Wayne, I took out my toiletry bag and started applying makeup, because I wasn’t wearing any. Eight hours at the office with wet hair, no makeup, a striped jersey dress and stinky cotton sandals. Professional? Eh.

I took out my blush and mascara, then hesitated. Uncapped the eyeliner and eyebrow pencil, because why not? Every time I see my grandma she tells me how I would benefit from eyebrow pencil. A few months ago I finally took her advice, bought the damn thing and you know what? My face looks way more complete. Grandma knows best. At least, mine does.

When I take the train to Devon from work I feel so grown up. I walk up Station Avenue, cross the five-way intersection, wave to the neighbors. I open the side door of my parents’ house, and my mother greets me from the kitchen, always. My grandma was in the living room and said slyly, “who’s that?” as I walked through the doorway, and immediately complimented me on my eyebrows, figure and face. She didn’t like my dark nailpolish, though. Five minutes and five hugs later, she gave me a beautiful gold ring she purchased in Florence in the 1970s. It is so very chic.

My brothers, parents, grandmother and Zack started sipping on wine, nibbling on a sharp cheese from Wellfleet, Massachusetts, when I brought up Le Grand Continental, which I started rehearsing for at the beginning of July and will continue until the performance weekend, which is the same weekend I turn twenty-five. Two hundred Philadelphians of all ages will perform a thirty minute performance piece in front of the Art Museum steps. My grandma laughed at the idea of me in a “dance recital.”

“Oh that’s right,” my mom said. “I think Justin has something that weekend, too.”

In case you didn’t know, my 19-year-old brother Justin plays guitar for a band called McLovins. They tour nearly every weekend in New England. They play festivals, concerts, and they are recording at the ESPN studios this week for the second time as Sportsnation’s house band.

“What, no,” I started in. “You have to come see me. You can’t miss this. You see Justin do everything.”

“We’ll see, I’m sure it will all work out.”

“But you drive everywhere for him! You watch him play all the tiiiiiime! Moooom!”

Zack kicked my foot under the table. “What?” I snapped.

“You’re whining.”

“I can talk to my mother, she’s my mother.”

But I was whining. And even though I knew it didn’t sound good, or professional, or adult-like, I didn’t care. I’ve been working hard, trying to memorize a half hours worth of choreography. I’m doing my part within the community! I’ve been putting four hours a week into this thing! And fuck, it’s going to be my birthday!

I asked Zack to accompany me to the garden to pick some rosemary for the dipping oil we were going to eat with dinner. “I turn into a child when I’m home, you realize that, right?”

I didn’t go up to my room at all. Most times, when I’m home for an afternoon or just for dinner, I don’t. I get lost in it. I open all the notebooks, the drawers, the closets. I read passed notes and finger through jewelry and shuffle papers. My room overwhelms me. So I avoid it.

I was planning to spend the night in Devon after Zack went back to Philadelphia, but the thought of not sleeping in my “own” bed at my parents’ (currently occupied by my grandma) was making me anxious. Like, how weird that for half a dozen years growing up I would never sleep anywhere but home, and now I’d rather be in my “own” bed, in Queen Village, with Zack. As I dumped a quick load of laundry into the dryer, I apologized to my mom for whining, or being rude, or as I often do, “jump down throats.”I felt bad. I always say the wrong things, say too much, get emotionally involved too easily- even after just one glass of zinfandel. She said not to worry, and that she wouldn’t miss my performance for anything. I made sure I’d see my grandma again sometime before she left to go back to the sunshine state and got into the passenger seat of Zack’s car.

After the doors were locked and teeth were brushed, Zack said out of nowhere, “You’re a good daughter.”

“Why?”

“You love your mother and grandmother so much. You treat your mom like she treats her mom. With care and love.”

Springing

There’s a man who sits on his stoop next to Dmitri’s, right on my corner of third and Catharine. He’s there every day, wearing those old school headphones that hug his ears and connect around the back of his head. When it rains he holds an umbrella; when it snows he sits in the driver’s seat of the pick up truck that’s parked right in front of his house. A stack of books a foot high rests on top of the console. He’s probably in his early forties.

I walk past him at all hours of the day, no matter if my work day starts early in the morning or late in the afternoon. He sees me ushering the boys out of the house in their karate uniforms and watches them race to their front door once they let go of my hands crossing third street. After a few months of nannying, I started waving and smiling at him. Just little nods, or a “good morning!” type exchange. Neighborly, curiously, kindly.

Two weeks ago I was offered a full-time job at a Philadelphia start up company called TicketLeap. Everything happened so quickly- I applied for the position Monday night by sending a tweet to the CEO, corresponded with him on Tuesday, interviewed Wednesday morning and was hired Wednesday night. I can fully apply my finding a job is like finding a relationship theory to the hiring process at TicketLeap. No games, no messing around. “I like you and you like me, let’s do this thing!”

After I got off the phone with TicketLeap, I burst into tears. This is what I had been waiting for for almost a year and a half. A job that matched my skill set and personality perfectly.  I moved to Philadelphia in November of 2010, worked a part-time job for a non-profit, interned for Yelp for 9 months (“It’s like we made a Yelp baby!” my boss said to me at my last event as an intern) and nannied for nearly as long. I had applied to countless jobs, went on over a dozen interviews and had a quarter-life crisis every two weeks or so because of it. My time had come. And now I had to tell the boys’ mother that I was going to leave.

I called my parents first, barely able to speak through my tears.

“I always knew you were emotional,” my dad said, “but you have to calm down. Where’s Zack?”

“Sitting next to me.”

“Is he wondering who this crazy person is he’s been living with?”

I hiccuped, then smiled. “No.”

“This is what you’ve been waiting for. Cheer up and go celebrate.”

Before we could enjoy a fancy cocktail at Southwark, I had to run down the street and tell my “family” about the job I was so excited for. At this point my face was red and puffy, especially below my right eye (you can always tell if I’ve been crying by looking at the beauty mark). I passed the guy on his stoop but barely made eye contact.

“Is everything okay?”

I stopped in my tracks. I’ve never heard the man say more than two words.

“Yeah, I just,” deep breath, “I finally got a real job and now I have to tell the boys I can’t be their nanny anymore.”

He smiled sympathetically. “Ah, I see.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be alright.”

I nodded.

***

This is what I will miss about nannying (in no particular order): greeting the boys as they get off the school bus, perfecting the toasted bagel with butter and cheese, M’s serious thoughts from the bathtub, A’s self-confidence, hearing A ask to be tucked in to bed, mid-day trips to the bookstore and Mama’s Vegetarian, being constantly flabbergasted by M’s level of intelligence, the look on their faces after they earn a new stripe on their karate belts, making friends with the other Queen Village moms (they don’t recognize me unless I have the boys by my side), my #nannydiaries, the fudgey brownies their mom bakes every week without fail (I will probably lose three pounds by not having one of them each day), Shabbat hugs, brushing up on my Hebrew while helping them with their homework, sleeping nine hours a night, spending my mornings at Bodhi drinking tea and writing (the one place I can truly call myself a “regular” at), catching M in the middle of a nap, introducing A to some of my favorite childrens’ authors (Judy Blume, Julie Andrews Edwards), listening to M ask questions about life, love and my relationship with Zack. He is truly the most insightful and adorable kindergartner I have ever known.

***

This is what I’m looking forward to (in no particular order): having a “regular” schedule, interacting with real adults, Tweeting for a living, planning events, working on a MacBook Pro at a desk in an office with green and brown walls in the heart of Center City, making new friends and contacts, putting everything I learned from Michelle C to good use, blogging and learning more about WordPress, using my brain and being proactive, wearing clothes other than leggings and a t-shirt, “evangelizing” the company (how many people did I convince to sign up for Yelp? I’m confident in my abilities), and finally, managing an online community. This job was made for me.

Greetings from Saint’s Cafe, State College

On the drive from Upper Bucks County to State College, Pennsylvania, Zack and I listened to a “This American Life” episode entitled “Pray,” which originally aired in 1997, years before evangelical pastor Ted Haggard’s gay sex scandal. The longest act of the show, clocking in at 41 minutes, focused on TAL contributor Alix Spiegel’s time in Colorado Springs and her exploration into the “prayerwalks” of an incredibly Jesus-centered community. While she’s in Colorado, Spiegel can’t sleep, and later finds out that one of the pastors she’s been interviewing has prayed she won’t sleep until she finds a place for Christ in her life.  Extreme, no?

I think the only times I’ve been routinely approached by religious folk have been in State College. In a town where there are nearly a dozen places of worship (only one of them a synagogue), it was always the Mormons who were out to get me, though I will admit, the kind folks at the Chabad house were always trying to suck me in to their Friday night Shabbat dinners, too. Whether it was before my shift at Viet-Thai on North Atherton or walking home from class past the Allen Street gates, I always had a hard time saying no to the cute, clean-cut blond boys handing out pamphlets or the modestly dressed girls in peacoats who wanted to tell me about the Book of Mormon. The weekend after the Sandusky bullshit began, I sat down on a bench outside of Schlow Library to check my Twitter feed or something when I was immediately targeted by a nice looking girl, again, in a peacoat. She offered me a postcard and I took it. “Thanks,” I said, “but I really like being Jewish.” She nodded and smiled, still hoping to save me with a 3 X 5 prayer.

About a week and a half ago, I took the R5, excuse me, the “Paoli-Thorndale Line” from Market East to my home in the western suburbs. The train was pretty empty for 6 p.m. on a Saturday (I guess most people are coming in to the city around then, not leaving it) but two younger girls, completely unrelated to each other, chose to sit behind me. One voice started talking loudly.

“…it’s  just that my boyfriend broke up with me, not that I really care, because he was always drunk. I’m sorry if, like, this is too much information, but last night was so awful. I woke up at like 4 a.m. when he started heaving and escaped his vomit, by, like five seconds before it came out of his mouth. His sheets were totally nasty and I had to sleep on the floor. I’m just so upset because I don’t really get along with my parents, and I always depend on my boyfriends. But they always break up with me, you know?”

“Mmhm.”

This pattern of conversation went on for a few more stops. At this point I started live tweeting the event (does this make me a bad person? Don’t answer that).

“…and I know you don’t care, because we don’t even know each other, so why should you, and I feel like I’m rambling but it feels so good to talk to someone.”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind listening. My life has really changed since I decided to only date Christian boys. I’ve been reading this book called ‘The Satisfied Heart,’ and I think you should too. Those boys can’t satisfy your emotional needs like God can.”

“I just have a hard time believing in God when I was raped at 12 and given this shitty life. If there was a real God, he wouldn’t let that happen.”

“God is good,” the quiet girl said, unsure of how to respond to that. “He loves you. It’s the devil who is trying to corrupt us.”

“If I could find a way to see that God is really there, maybe I could believe?” the loud girl said/questioned.

“The first step is you opening your heart. You can test God. You can ask for him to reveal himself to you, if you want.”

“Okay,” the loud girl said slowly, as if she was started to get it. “I think I can do that.”

“It’s such a blessing that we’re having this conversation,” the quiet girl responded excitedly. “Gods redemption is real, I’m telling you.”

The loud girl continued to talk about her perfect, unfairly pretty older sister, her parents who don’t understand her, and her record of older ex-boyfriends. She talked about how tired but “hyper” she was, and the medicine she forgot to take this morning. She cried a little bit. The back-and-forth slowed between them.

As the ticket collector called out my stop, I stood up and looked behind me. The voices I had been hearing matched faces that looked about sixteen years old. The one by the window had mousy brown hair, no makeup and simple wire frames. The other donned braces, acne, smeared eyeliner and damaged hair that appeared as if it had been tie-dyed four different shades of auburn. She smiled sheepishly at me, knowing that I had been listening to their entire conversation. “Hi,” she said. “Hi,” I replied, confident in my demeanor. I am a 24-year-old who remembers high school perhaps too well. “It gets better, okay?”

She nodded and said thanks. I stepped off the train and waited at the platform for my father to pick me up.

Pack Rats

I used to save everything. I think that’s why I love boxes so much. Everywhere I go, I seem to fall in love with another decorative tin, another brass or wood box. It’s a habit that takes up a lot of space.

I was given a “treasure chest” as a young child that still sits underneath my bed. It’s pretty big– maybe two feet wide and a foot and a half high. That’s where all my class pictures are, diaries I started and left incomplete, felt flags signed by all my camp friends at ESF, pieces of a Princess Jasmine Halloween costume that I put in there because I associated the tiara with a kindergarten friend who died when we were five. Drawings from an imaginary world, marble notebooks filled with stories. Over time, the treasure chest lost some of its innocence. I hid bottles of liquor there in high school, and buried deep are print-outs of high-lighted medical journals from a time when I thought a close friend had an eating disorder.

The two little boys I nanny for have similar boxes under their beds. Instead of a flowery treasure chest, complete with locks, they have plastic bins, like the kind you’d keep under your dorm room bed for extra socks or notebook paper. In these boxes they keep their “Precious Things,” which I learned about when I was asked to go through their closets and pick through the clothes that were too small for them. “A” is 8, “M” is 5. If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably read my #nannydiaries hashtag and gotten to hear some of their quips and phrases. These boys are wildly intelligent. “M” is especially emotionally mature, often asking me questions about life, death, and relationships. He asks about Zack a lot.

Anyway, as we sorted through their closets they insisted on keeping some of their favorite t-shirts and putting them in Precious Things even though they had grown out of them. This I understood. My closet in Devon, Pennsylvania is home to my Bat Mitzvah dress, my prom dress(es), my favorite pink cotton dress from when I was four with the hearts on it (my yia-yia lovingly sewed a layer of lace onto when it got too short), my favorite zip-up hoodie from high school, and strangely, a few of my zade’s suits which are stored there for reasons I do not know.

However, this morning, as I was scraping dried up bright blue toothpaste from the boys’ bathroom sink, I took a look at the two large plastic cups on either side of the faucet. Toothbrushes, at least a dozen of them, each encrusted with fluoride, sat awkwardly in each cup. Collections, the boys had insisted when I first started sitting for them. No. These were bacteria breeding grounds, and it was grossing me out. I started channeling my neat freak Aunt Tammy and summoned “A” and “M” into the bathroom with me.

“These,” I said slowly, “have got to go. Pick the one that looks the cleanest and we have to throw the rest away.”

“A” looked at me fearfully. “NO!” he cried, tears immediately sparking from his blue eyes. “No! You can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I love them. You can’t take them away.”

I had each boy bring their handfuls of toothbrushes to the kitchen. I boiled water, poured it into a measuring cup, and swirled each toothbrush until all the dried paste and spit and mold had dissolved and fallen to the bottom.

“Look,” I said, holding the glass up to the light. “That’s bacteria. That’s yucky. These toothbrushes will make you sick if you keep using them. You have to throw some away.”

“A” started crying again.

“A, M, you understand what I’m saying, right?” “M” nodded. “Pick one to use, throw your least favorites away, and the rest we will put with your Precious Things.”

“A” lifted his head. “Okay.”

This attachment to, of all things, toothbrushes.

“Do you not want to throw them away because they remind you of being little?” I asked.

“A”  nodded.

I understood this, too. I once cried into Sara’s shoulder in the bathroom at a sixth grade YMCA Carriage House dance because the DJ was playing Savage Garden and “Truly Madly Deeply” reminded me of the fourth grade and “being young.” I shit you not.

And with that, one by one, after inspecting the characters on each colorful handle- Spiderman, Batman, Cars, Yo Gabba Gabba (these were deemed “too babyish” and discarded)- we disinfected and bagged the most Precious, to be kept under their respective twin beds.

I went through a phase in middle school where I kept every note my mother left taped for me on the side door because I was scared she was going to die and I wanted to have everything that she had written or touched or thought. This included post-its that said things like “pls empty d/w” and “went to yoga, be back at 4″ and “love you, have fun at kelly’s” scrawled inside giant heart. I still have these, amongst many other notes and letters, pictures and invitations, in boxes, under the bed.

“M” asked me about dying today. “Can you die if you’re a letter or a number?” His face looked puzzled. “What about metal or glass? What about food? Food dies, because we eat it, right?”

I explained to him that only the animals that breathe and the plants that grow can live or die.

I wonder, if years from now, the boys will look through each of their Precious Things and remember why they believed them to be so precious.

Five Year

The Top Five Strangest Things that Happened at My Five Year High School Reunion

Most of these events happened towards the end of the evening, at which point I was extremely intoxicated. They are being recalled to the best of my ability, but I could easily be leaving things out because I don’t remember and/or embellishing them because it all seemed so much bigger in my mind at the time. If you find any of these stories untrue or are upset by them, you can message me via whatever and I will take down whatever has offended you.

1. A boy I went on a couple dates with during the second semester of my senior year came up to me and apologized. “This is the reason I came here tonight,” he said. “I wanted to say I’m sorry for being so awkward with that whole thing senior year. I really gave it my all, I put too much thought into it. I still think about it sometimes, and I just wanted to tell you in person.” This was a nice boy, a cute boy, a boy who paid for my round trip ticket on the R5 and walked me down South Street, a boy who shared a plate of fries with me at Minella’s after my very last Inkwell and drove me home and pulled into my driveway, a boy who never kissed me. The reason it didn’t work out was because I had my heart set on someone else, which I wished I just told him in 2006 and should have told him that night instead of making him wonder.

2. A girl I’ve known since the second grade told me that she thought I was really cool. We were friends at New Eagle Elementary, but didn’t talk that much throughout the rest of our time as students in the same school. She told me, again, with a glass of wine in her hand, that she thought I was really cool. “I follow everything you do on the Internet!” she said. I was extremely flattered but at the same time did not know what to say. Luckily I had about nine drinks in me and simply thanked her, trying to wave it off. “My parents just moved to your neighborhood,” she said. “No way!” I said. “We should hang out when you’re in the city!” “No,” she declined immediately. “I couldn’t. You’re too cool.” This justified my silly dream to become an Internet personality. I told her to stop it, and that wasn’t true, and we exchanged phone numbers. Her good friend was standing next to her, and I said, “Hey, I remember your first day as the new girl at Valley Forge Middle School. Your locker was next to mine, and you were wearing a tye-dyed t-shirt.” She told me I was the first kid who was genuinely nice to her.

3. A boy who I never spoke to in high school but had an English class or two with at Penn State sought me out almost as soon as I got there. He is responsible for my first broken wine glass (there was another later in the evening). The first thing he asked me was “are you still writing?” Which I answered with a shrug. He told me that I had to, and that the nonfiction piece I wrote about Matt Wanetik that was published in Penn State’s litmag was one of his favorite pieces he read as that year’s nonfiction editor. We talked about having non-writer boyfriends and girlfriends, and agreed that they are important to have for a sense of balance, among other reasons.

4. I’m not sure when I started crying or how long it lasted for, but I started thinking about how badly I wished Matt Wanetik was there. Over Thanksgiving, I had broken out the home videos and watched a few clips from my 14th birthday party. Two of the girls who were at that party, who I don’t keep in touch with anymore but are two of the nicest girls I’ve ever known, came up to me immediately and asked me what was wrong. I told them I was crying about Matt, and asked one if she remembered 5th grade and our imaginary boyfriends and the notes we used to pass back and forth in Mrs. Hewittit’s class and how I hated how “Mrs. Allison Wanetik” sounded but if I really wanted to, I could keep me own last name. She remembered. I found Matt’s best friends and hugged them tightly, cried into their shoulders. They told me Matt wouldn’t want me to cry, he’d want me to be having fun. I drunkenly agreed and I think this is where I broke my second wine glass. The next morning I sent both of them Facebook messages and apologized, hoping I didn’t bring them down.

5. Two friends had slept over. In the morning, we gathered in my bed and passed around the bottle of Advil and giggled for about two hours, recalling the weirdest moments, the highlights, the bizarre interactions. We couldn’t believe who was in law school, who was engaged, who looked better than ever (bravo!). However, we did not know where one of our friends ended up. We called and called, no answer. I wrote on the event wall asking if anyone knew where she was, which had us laughing so hard my abs hurt. We met up with a few more friends for brunch. “Did you see our Missing Friend making out with That Boy by the bar?” one asked. Um, no. “Yeah, they left the Field House together after like, twenty minutes.” We found her safe and sound.

***

I was wondering where the following people were: Evan Wattles, Michaeleen Colgan, Shirley Pan, Reggie Pierce, Julia Ries, Julie Watson and Brittany Lee, Scott McCallum, Kristin Toler, Wesley Dunkel, and our resident Stoga celebrity, Mark Herzlich, who has yet to respond to any of my tweets.

I was happiest to see: Robyn Liebman, Natalie Zucchino, Asa Curry, Perry Wang, Sarah Edelson, Adam Blitzer, Jen Satzman.

There was one person I saw but could not remember the name of. That person, I later found out, was Greg Nestle. There was also one high school crush confession. The person is now following his dreams as a rapper. I couldn’t stop smiling about any of it.

One more thing. There is someone who has been jokingly stalking me online since 2005-ish. They have followed me from virgostarr to amsterdam_n to hydeparkblvd. We have had one email interaction and the only clue ever given was that they sat behind me in Mr. Smith’s 10th grade American Literature class. This person goes by the name of “The Giraffe” and writes me hilariously weird comments on my blogs from time to time. This is your time to come forward, Giraffe. Who the hell are you?

The Other AB

At the end of junior year of college, I got an email from Barbara Berger with the subject title “Golf.” Odd, I thought. I’ve never golfed before! I read the email twice. Never in my life has my mother ever referred to herself as “mom,” either.  When I realized that the other recipients of the email were people I didn’t know, I was beside myself. There’s another Allison Berger out there- and her mother’s name is Barbara, just like mine.

Later in the summer I started receiving various e-newsletters, from the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and a place called Pitcher and Piano, which is in the UK. There was also this:

Apparently this Allison Berger is a mother herself, or at least, at the time of the email she was expecting a child.

Yep.

I haven’t put too much thought into this other Allison Berger, even though over the past two years, I’ve collected a lot of information about her. She’s about 28 (I was invited to her 10-year high school reunion), lives in Georgia, has a kid or two, and goes on lavish vacations, or at least cool business trips (I’ve gotten hotel and resort confirmations for hotels in Colorado, Chicago, and San Francisco).

She also has an unknowingly funny mother. But that Barb’s got nothing on mine.

The other AB has never contacted me for a missing confirmation email and she hasn’t changed her email address on any of those listservs either. While the whole thing has been funny to me, how annoying has it been for her? More importantly, how hard is it to get her email address right? I’m pretty sure the only thing that differentiates mine from hers is a period between our first and last names. Google message boards have explained the dilemma before, and most people insist that the periods don’t matter. I don’t know. Try sending me a message at allisonberger@gmail.com and maybe the other AB will write back to you instead.

Hot July

Do you remember the small stone ledge on the inside of the underpass at the Daylesford train station? In high school, people started leaving little trinkets on the carved-out rock– it sort of turned into this “thing”, this unspoken game for the Conestoga crowd. At the red light on Lancaster Avenue, you could roll down your window, reach your arm out and take whatever was being offered: a tootsie roll, an individually wrapped mint, a Wawa coupon, a lost & found Stoga ID card. You were then semi-obligated to leave something of your own. A mix CD, a folded up math quiz, a partnerless glove.

The majority of my high school summers were spent working the counter at Rita’s Water Ice in Paoli, at the freestanding location on Route 30 that is now Whirled Peace Frozen Yogurt. I sped the Steel Magnolia (the family “kid car,” a 1991 Honda Accord) down Conestoga Road, rolled through the stop sign on Old Lancaster and then always, always hit the red light at the train station. After that, you were allowed to go 45mph on Route 30 and it was a straight shot to Rita’s from there. That light took forever to change. The only nice thing about it was the ledge, which became one of the many things I loved and continue to love about “home.”

Two and a half weeks ago, Nick Guyer, one of my brothers’ closest friends, passed away suddenly. The memorial service was at St. Norbert’s, on Route 252, close to Rita’s. My family drove past the high school in my father’s car, came to a complete stop at the stop sign, paused at the red light. I looked to my right, out of habit. There was a brand-new pack of tissues on the stone ledge, just sitting there, waiting for someone in need to reach out their window and take it with them. Above it? A Conestoga sticker, maroon and gray, pressed firmly into the stone foundation of the overpass.