You, me and the Shins

The girl behind me in the second row had been crying nearly the entire set. The show was almost over, and as James Mercer sang the opening line to “New Slang,” I took a look over my shoulder. High-waisted jean shorts, a blonde top knot with a streak of purple at the base of her neck. Wing-tipped eyeliner, which was starting to glisten at the edges, and teeth that looked like the braces just came off. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

I was sixteen the first time I heard The Shins. Lloyd Cargo, that motherfucker, he put “Young Pilgrims” on the ever-famous “California Mix.” When my father saw the jewel case casually strewn on the kitchen table, he picked up and squinted. “With love? Is that what that says?”

Later that year, I snuck into Garden State by buying a ticket for Open Water (which, it turns out, was also rated R) and I was convinced I was falling in love for the first time. When he kissed me I felt fireworks, and even though he was only the second boy to have his tongue in my mouth, I was sure it was the real thing. He burned me the Garden State soundtrack in addition to both Shins albums onto CDs that played in my 5-Disc changer on heavy rotation. He left for college a few weeks later and I started my junior year of high school in the deepest yet most delicious depression I had ever experienced. The first few notes of “Caring is Creepy” sent my face into a histrionic place of heartbreak and I reveled in the pain. To this day I have never shed so many tears over a record.

Half a year later I was “celebrating my three-month anniversary” (wasn’t high school funny?) with my boyfriend, who also gave me these so-called “fireworks.” We had tickets to see The Shins at the Electric Factory. It was April 27, 2005, and I was convinced I was going to lose it (control of my teenage emotions- not my virginity, come on now). “Pink Bullets” (acoustic) rocked my world and I bought this t-shirt, which had a bleeding heart over my own.

The first time I got drunk it was that coming August, and I was wearing that t-shirt (at Lloyd Cargo’s house- full circle, right?) I know it sounds crazy, but the beers I drank during a game of Kings completely destroyed that shirt. The fabric looked bleached in all these weird places and I eventually ended up cutting out the Shins design and sewing it onto super worn-in and perfectly fitting undershirt I found in a drawer at my great aunt and uncle’s.

A year later I left for college. A few weeks after I was dropped off at Penn State, my brother Michael texted me. “Mom cries every time she listens to that Shins song you love.” I had left some of my CDs in the car. “Kissing the Lipless” was the opening track on “Chutes Too Narrow,” and it was bringing my mother emotional turmoil about me growing up and getting older. If you only knew, ma. If you only knew.

I didn’t listen to the Shins very much after that. “Wincing the Night Away” came out my freshman year, and I thought it totally sucked. I hated that the Shins changed after I was the one who went away to college and wasn’t changing at all (at least, I didn’t think I was changing- wasn’t college funny?) My mom still listened to CDs I had left behind in the family Expedition, but I barely touched my MP3s at school.

At the Tower Theater last Thursday night, I was front row and center thanks to my friend Caroline. I had been listening to the Shins latest release, “Port of Morrow,” after being offered a ticket to the concert, and I was enjoying it very much. Most of the concert was spent sitting down, as there’s really no reason to stand up when you’re eye-to-eye with the band. But when “Kissing the Lipless” started booming from the speakers that were right in front of my face, I jumped up and started singing. Though I know the song is really about sex and breakups, I like to think of it as a homecoming song. “Called to see/if you’re back…” When it came to a close, James Mercer looked at me, and then the keyboardist. “That was a good one, that was a good one,” he said quietly. I had been smiling the entire set. A band that used to bring me to tears at the drop of a hat brought me only a look of sheer joy that night. As the lights came up after “One by One All Day” and people started collecting their things to leave, Caroline grabbed the setlist and I looked behind me once more.

“I have to know,” I asked the long-haired girl standing next to the blubbering top knot. “How old are you guys?”

“I’m 22,” she said, “but this concert is my sister’s 15th birthday present.”

“Perfect,” I said, nodding. “That’s perfect.”

Monday Monday Monday

In August, Penn State Alumni magazine “The Penn Stater” was calling for submissions about concert memories in University Park. I had a lot to choose from. I saw Death Cab for Cutie at the BJC in August 2006, right before I starting going to school there. My dad came all the way up from the Philly suburbs to see Guster with me in the fall of 2007. Band of Horses played at the State Theatre, where I had a really awkward encounter with my super cute French teacher when I was a little bit too inebriated (I got embarrassed and told him the reason I was acting so weird). I saw Third Eye Blind at the Theatre, and Illinois, too. I danced onstage with Jens Lekman at Chronic Town, the hookah lounge on West College, and played the tambourine at Cafe 210 with local favorites The Kalob Griffin Band. Wednesday nights junior year were dedicated to blue grass and the all-inclusive crush on singer Natalie Berrena (she went from blonde to brunette to red and rocked it all). There were house party shows that I wish I could revisit, like Menya at the co-op and Endless Mike and the Beagle Club at the guys’ apartment on Hamilton.

(You can see the top of my head in this whole video.)

Ultimately, I chose to write about Raise Up Roof Beams, which was a band I fell in love with during the first few months of my freshman year. This is what I sent to the Penn Stater:

My first two years at Penn State I was in a club called SOMA (Students Organizing the Multiple Arts). It was the first club after high school that I joined and it made me feel so connected. I loved the responsibility of attending meetings, walking north on Shortlidge to the Thomas building after dinner in Simmons every other Wednesday. I loved meeting other kids who shared a deep love of independent music. Over the course of my college career, I saw many shows put on by SOMA and even organized one myself (The Good Life at The Hub, October 2007). However, the first SOMA show I ever went to was one where I worked the door, handing out fliers to the attendees who gathered on couches in Waring Commons. The opening band, a group of kids from Harrisburg, was called Raise Up Roof Beams, and I remember being mesmerized by the door, listening intently to the lyrics, the accordion, the harmonica, the guitar and the huge bass played by a small blonde girl. After their set, I borrowed $8 from one of my new friends to buy their CD (all I had was Lion Cash). Raise Up Roof Beams’ first record, “Fingers and Photons,” will forever remind me of walking across campus in the fall of my freshman year. I booked Raise Up Roof Beams to play another show at Dragon Chasers downtown in the Spring, which was when I met the members of the band. Five years later in Manayunk, Phliadelphia, I ran into the bass-playing blonde at a bar. I was happy to hear that the band is currently working on their third full-length album.

(This video is five years old, but that’s ok.)

I never heard back from the Penn Stater. The cover of the November issue was originally slated to feature “Concert Memories,” but after Sandusky etc. they put out “Our Darkest Days,” which makes sense. But where did the thousands of submissions go, and will the magazine ever use them? I was really hoping to be published– if only to promote the band. Something inside of me has pushed to make Raise Up Roof Beams “happen” for years. Summer 2007, Sara and I drove an hour and a half to see them play with Koji on the Roof inside a rec hall in Camp Hill. I’m not sure if I saw them play after that– until this past Friday.

Roof Beams opened at The Fire, with only three original members (the others aren’t performing with them right now, but they are recording remotely to contribute to their third album) but with a gorgeously familiar sound. I was looking forward to seeing Nathan (lead singer/guitarist) who is now married and has a baby, which is a total mind blow. Zack said I seemed nervous when I was talking to him. I felt like I was nineteen, starstruck by a local band who hit my heart in just the right way.

After their set, I went to the bar for another beer and made eye contact with someone who looked so familiar. “Do I know you?” I asked. “I’m not sure, but you look familiar as well,” he replied. His name was Chad, his girlfriend was Lisa, and they said they had been to a SOMA meeting or two back in the day. “I fell in love with Roof Beams when they played in Waring Commons when I was a freshman,” I told him, “fall of 2006.” “You’re kidding,” he said smiling, “me too.”

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?

On Mononucleosis

When we were younger, it didn’t matter when we got sick, when our noses got stuffy or our glands were swollen. A pile of cough drop wrappers meant nothing, and when we fell under the weather as temperatures rose, nothing stopped us from touching, from feeling a gentler skin to the other’s burn.

In the first few weeks at Penn State, I came down with a case of mononucleosis. “Let the kissing jokes begin,” I told everyone, and they did.

My mother wanted me to come home as soon as I called her with the diagnosis, and I got on a Greyhound immediately. Three hours later, I began crying as the bus drove past the King of Prussia Mall, continued to sob as we got off at the Devon exit and drove up Valley Forge Road. I cried in the driveway and when I walked in the front door. I hugged my brothers really hard. I ate challah french toast that my mom cooked for me at ten o’clock at night. I took a shower without wearing flip flops, unafraid of athlete’s foot. I walked around my room naked. I put on pajamas and walked down the stairs and heard that familiar sound that my feet make on our hardwood floors. I cuddled with my mom in my room, on a bed with four posts and a frame. It was a homecoming I hadn’t expected.

When I returned to school, I was still lethargic. I mustered up just enough energy to go to a Halloween party, but not enough to get into costume or to drink anything at all. On a balcony overlooking Beaver Avenue, in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, I puffed on a small cigar I connived out of a drunk boy whom I had just met. We kissed a few days later, after I warned him more than once. “I’m just getting over mono,” I told him, our lips already touching. “I don’t care,” he said. My best friend from home claimed that if he didn’t care about getting mono, he was the real deal. He and I only saw each other four times after that.

Five years from then, I find myself in a new home, where I live with my boyfriend, who’s been asleep all day, feeling tired and achy with a painful sore throat. Chicken soup has simmered on the stove, water boiled, tea steeped. We’ve watched hours and hours of television together, not talking, just listening to other peoples’ dialogue. He rubs my shoulders to thank me for taking care of him, not wanting to pass along whatever it is that he’s got. At night, he lays an arm across my body, careful not to breathe too close.

We haven’t kissed on the lips since Monday. I don’t know why everyone was so unafraid of getting sick in college, I don’t know why we always chanced it. No real responsibilities, I guess. We shared sticky solo cups with a hundred people. We passed around backwashed water bottles and soggy joints and of course, wet mouths. I suppose no one really cared about each other like we do, now.

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.

I Needed to Get Out of the Apartment

I’ve been trying to find a cafe in Philadelphia that can truly become mine. When Zack and I lived in Graduate Hospital, I liked to go to Good Karma on 22nd and Pine to write my columns. The atmosphere was clean and simple, it wasn’t too loud and the lattes were wonderful. I wasn’t in love with the place, but it worked.

After moving across town, I have tried writing in three different coffee shops within a 5 block radius, but only today, at Bodhi on 2nd and Pine have I felt like I could return here with good creative vibes. Philadelphia Java Company on 2nd and Christian was too loud. Between the chatter and the whirring of the smoothie machine and the dogs and the babies and the Michael Jackson playing (crikey), I had to take my laptop outside in the blistering heat to get anything done. At Red Hook on 4th and Fitzwater, the punk rock music blaring from the speakers was jarring, even with headphones on. Cupcakes were in the same case as the paninis (come on, no one wants pesto-enhanced icing) and the A/C was barely in effect. The view from the window seat (my favorite place to sit, in any cafe) was bleak: the empty storefronts of fabric row glared at me from across the street.

So here I sit, at Bodhi, with a glass of peach green iced tea and a container of locally made strawberry yogurt (Williamsport, PA, holla!). The window seat offers me a foot rest and a view of Headhouse. The other customers here are completely silent, and soft ambient music is playing quietly from above. There is a shelf of local goods for sale, and charcoal sketches on the walls.

I’m not sure if knowing that Webster’s Bookstore and Cafe in State College doesn’t exist anymore makes it more or less easy to find my next “place.” When news spread last summer, I was already in Texas and while devastated, I was glad that I wasn’t in Happy Valley to watch it get torn down book by book. Of all the coffee places in State College- Irving’s, Saint’s, both Starbucks, both Dunkin’s, and more- Webster’s was my favorite cafe for many reasons. First, there was the “third place” state of mind. You could expect the same people- students, professors, locals- in Webster’s at most times of the day. You got to know names and faces of people you might never meet in your typical 11-3 college class schedule. Seth, my favorite long-standing barista, always called me by my first name and said hi when we ran into each other downtown. A beautiful girl with a “g” tattooed on her chest whom I always admired would later become one of my closest friends after making me a dozen yemaya melts. During the “Summer of Women,” Webster’s became a sort of unspoken meeting place in the middle of day. Friends would just congregate there, at the benches across the way and on the stoops next door.

Then there was the food and drink. All local, mostly vegan, and expensive as hell. I don’t even want to know how much of parents’ allotted food budget was spent on gourmet grilled cheeses, which were both the perfect hangover cure AND study aid (I ate them a lot). Their baklava rivaled my Greek cousin’s. Their Mexican hot chocolate was perfection.

Sometime during senior year, I was on my way out the 501 door with my laptop and books when Amber asked me, “What do you do when you go to Webster’s?” Was it to be social or was it to get work done? Depends on who was there, I suppose. I knew Dyanna from Webster’s before I even knew her name, and I don’t think that’s unusual for the typical cafe crowd. But yeah- more work was done at Webster’s than any floor of the library or at my desk, that’s for sure. The crowd, though some called it “hipstery” and “unwelcoming” (which I never understood, as I am not a hipster and consider myself to be very welcoming) encouraged creativity without ever saying a word. I worked on all of my writing there (most of it at the window seat, occasionally looking up to watch the pedestrians on Allen Street) throughout all four years of my undergraduate life.

Sure, the fluorescent lighting was less than superb, every once in awhile someone would “forget” about my breakfast sandwich order and sometimes the place smelled a little musty, like old books (duh) and dirty dishes, but Webster’s served a purpose unlike any other establishment in the most central of downtown State College locations. Even if it wasn’t actually, it felt like the center of Centre County. I attended club meetings there, and professor’s office hours, too.  Zack and I had our first “coffee date” at one of the two-seaters that sat against the wall of the cafe in September of 2007. We routinely did our homework together amongst the sci-fi section in the back.

I miss Webster’s.

It’s 3:40 pm, and Bodhi is suddenly bustling. I’m going to give up my window seat and let someone else enjoy the view.

Too Tall To Be Adorable

July 2006- Adorable

This was written in one of my many Staples spiral notebooks during a family vacation to Hawaii. I was eighteen.

You Know How I Know You’re Not In College Anymore?

On Sunday night I was up until 2 a.m. This doesn’t sound crazy to most of you, I’m sure, but I haven’t seen 2 a.m. on a “school night” since college- and even then, it was rare. I’m a baby, or an old woman. Even though I don’t have a real job, and I don’t have to get up at any particular time in the morning, I usually go to sleep when Zack does- around 11pm.  He wakes up for work at 6:30 am (after hitting snooze as many times as he can before I hit him)  and I get up two hours later, making my usual night’s rest clock in at around 9 hours. I never have circles under my eyes. Aren’t I lucky?

(Other things that have happened in the past year that have assured me I am no longer in college include filing a noise complaint at 4 a.m. when I lived in Texas and gagging on a Bud Lite mere months after graduation.)

So Sunday night I couldn’t sleep, which was probably because I took an hour-and-a-half long nap earlier in the afternoon when Zack put on a movie with subtitles, which is usually what happens when you combine lazy Sundays and subtitles. The Internet gets quiet that late in the weekend. Everyone who’s usually busy documenting their neurosis has passed out by then. I was tired of my newsfeed, all caught up on my Google Reader- even Thought Catalog was slow. I decided to something strange- I logged into Livejournal. There was one post on my friends page, dated early June from Natalie Zucchino. I found this reassuring, but I do not know why. It was almost inspiring, knowing that she was still writing for an audience of, I presume, zero. Like AIM buddy lists, LJ friends pages are a teenage wasteland. I perused the rest of the site. I had received several spam comments from a post dated 2008- other than that, no traffic. Spam? On LJ?  Weird. You can now update your status or play games, a la Facebook or Twitter and download the LJ iPhone or iPad app. I was flabbergasted. “Livejournal” and “iPad’ are two things that simply do not coexist in my world. I feel so removed- as I should. Invites for Conestoga’s Class of 2006 5-year reunion went out last week.

Exploring my old favorite site was weird. Not only was I reliving an entire archive of high school memories, I realized that Livejournal itself was just like high school. Upon visiting the institution where you garnered your most prized adolescent experiences, you come to realize that school goes on with out you as if you were never there. Dear LJ friends- though I don’t doubt there are still a few thousand users who complain and overanalyze regularly about their lives, the website really did go on without us.

Speaking of which, you know what I hate most about my body? It’s not my nose, which I wanted to fix when I was sixteen, or my belly, which has gotten noticeably smaller as of late but still not small enough, its the fact that Apple brand earbuds don’t fit into my goddamn ears. They just don’t stay in. Which means I can’t look like a cool idiot like everyone else and talk to my mom while my iPhone is in my pocket, and I have to wear a dorky pair of $4.99 foam headphones I got at Walmart when I work out. But I lost those headphones during our last move, and so when I’m on the treadmill I transform into the Hunchback of Sweaty Neck so that my head doesn’t move and the ear buds don’t haphazardly fall from my ears. But they always do anyway, and I’m left with stiff shoulders.

I guess this post is teenybopper overkill, but guess what? I went to see Bright Eyes at the Mann Center with Zack and our friends Brian and A.J. over the weekend. The weather called for rain and so I stuck an umbrella in my purse as a responsibly precautionary measure. At security, they wouldn’t let me in until I got rid of it. I was so pissed. “But it’s my umbrella,” I whined. “I love this umbrella.”  My last umbrella with the pink and red hearts lasted me eight years- my mother gave it to me as a Valentine’s Day present in the 8th grade. I took it to high school and college with me, as well as about six European countries. I left it at the Shandygaff one night senior year. Zack stashed my year-old plaid umbrella in the bushes. I made sure to look for it after the show, which was chock full of feelings and uncharacteristically happy power chords. And there it was, in the bush where we left it! Zack and I hopped onto the 40 and took an almost-hour-long bus ride back to our neighborhood. When we got off at 3rd and Pine, I slapped my forehead. I left my fucking umbrella on the bus.

My History Of The Internet

Joe Gallagher linked me to this piece on Thought Catalog, which inspired me to write this list.

COMPUTERS
My first memory of a computer is probably from when I was around six years old. A black start-up screen, something named “dos,” calling my Uncle Ted if anything froze (which it always did), and sitting on my dad’s lap playing a game called “Duke Nukem,” the one and only video game that I have ever beat or even wanted to play. Later, in elementary school, we had CAT (cannot remember what the letters stood for) and Applied Tech, which sounds completely outrageous to me now. Aren’t kids just born with computer skills these days?

AOL
In third grade we got America Online, which was very exciting and very confusing- as bewildering as a fax machine. The cool girls in Mrs. Vogel’s third grade class all had AOL. Kristin Toler, Jen McDonell, Emily Farina and I all exchanged “screennames” (Mine was AABFMSP, a mix of my initials and my beloved American Girl dolls’, of course) and would send each other forwarded chain letters and stuff. AOL didn’t differ too much over the years. I remember constantly getting CD-ROMS in the mail for free hours of AOL. It seems so strange that we used to pay for that by the minute, doesn’t it? No matter what version it was, chat rooms seemed pretty much the same no matter what. In fifth grade Susan Newman and I used to go into chat rooms and pretend to be different people of all ages. Sometimes I would get scared or nervous that something bad would happen to us- and this was long before “To Catch a Predator.”

My parents got rid of AOL in eighth grade and we used Comcast instead, because it was less expensive, or something. The concept of free-standing browsers made zero sense to me, and I was really bummed I had to get rid of my most favorite screen name ever (ye olde Sapphire9987) and make a new one for AIM, a separate instant messaging service that I thought looked cheap. A few years ago, AIM was most definitely a dying art, and now I am about 90% sure it is totally and completely dead and gone forever.

AIM
AIM definitely was a huge part of my adolescent life. It was a similar addiction to Facebook. Checking away messages and profile quotes back then is kind of like checking your mini-feed now, don’t you think? It’s something to do before bed so you don’t feel like you’re missing out on anything (does anyone else feel like that??). Friendships were ruined and built back together on AIM. Never could you say harsher words or have your thoughts more misconstrued than the times they spent in an AIM chat box. There were always those one or two kids who would send a message with “sup?” “nm u?” “nm” who annoyed everyone. I wasn’t really big on talking to strangers on the internet during this time. I remember I met a kid at Rachel Zatuchni’s bat mitzvah who I talked to a lot, only I can’t remember his name, only his lime green-on-black Comic Sans font, which essentially defined his personality. Mine was Times New Roman, 10 pt, bolded, and magenta for most of my AIM life. AIM also introduced “the question game” to young teenage boys and girls- kind of like Truth or Dare without ever having to hear someone’s voice or even look at them. First it was questions like “would you ever kiss me?” which later grew into “how often do you masturbate?” The question game stopped after I got my first real boyfriend when I was 17. The new AIM prompt was “tell me a secret!” which was similar in practice and theory.

DEADJOURNAL

In eighth grade, blogging was the thing to do, except we didn’t call it that, we called it “updating DJ.” I don’t know why exactly, but somehow I ended up on Deadjournal with a whole slew of kids from VFMS. We used initials to talk about people we knew, complained about life as fourteen-year-olds, posted surveys and quizzes, left anonymous comments for people we didn’t like. I never deleted my account- everything I wrote in 2002 is still up there.H owever, nothing makes me cringe more about my adolescence than reading those entries. Rachel Goodman later inspired me to move to Livejournal, because it was more cheerful.

BABYNAMES
By far my dorkiest internet endeavor was my membership with the message boards at babynames.com. I’m actually dying a little inside as I write this. God, ninth grade was awkward. So basically? I have always really liked onomatology, where names came from, listing all my favorite names, the idea of babies, and things of that sort. This is when I used to use phrases like “avatars.” The message boards at BN weren’t just about naming children, though. A lot of the topics were just about normal stuff. Though there were definitely a ton of moms on the site, I made friends with the other teenage girls, and we would band together when moms would complain about girls clogging up the boards with threads about babynames when we weren’t even out of high school, let alone pregnant. We would exchange phone numbers and talk on AIM, Direct Connect and send pictures. Sometimes we would send each other shit in the mail. I thought it was totally badass and would whine to my parents if they didn’t want me giving out our phone number. “BUT LEAH IS A GIRL, MOM!” I would yell. “A REAL GIRL JUST LIKE ME WHO LIVES IN COCOA BEACH AND WHOSE FATHER IS FIGHTING FOR OUR COUNTRY IN KUWAIT.” Leah would talk my ear off. When the site began charging a yearly fee to post, I paid for two years, I think. This was hard to explain to my parents.

LIVEJOURNAL
I stopped using BN as much and became completely enthralled and invested in a little old thing called Livejournal, which, when returning to it, will help me remember my older teenage years for the rest of my life- something that I am completely thankful for and definitely makes all that internet drama worth it. I was in the first hundreds of members of a celeb gossip community called OhNoTheyDidnt, a page that later got bought out by Buzzmedia and often gets cited by People Magazine, among others. I got a lot of shit and a lot of praise for my Livejournal, which covered everything from my first kiss to the loss of my virginity. My page was “friends-only,” which meant that only the 50 or so users I had listed were able to read it, and there were even “custom” friends groups, which could limit who read a particular entry if I deemed it too personal to share with everyone. I felt and still feel a weird bond to my Livejournal friends, most of whom I attended high school with and don’t really talk to anymore, because they know a lot of stuff about me that other people oddly don’t. Livejournal provided a kind of anticipation that differs from Facebook. You would go to bed after writing a particularly juicy or angsty entry, wondering how many comments you would have in your inbox in the morning. Feelings were often on the line. Literally.

PATHETIC.ORG
Around the same time I joined Livejournal and became obsessed with LitMag at school, I “applied” for a spot at Pathetic.org, a site dedicated to people of all ages who wrote poetry. Each profile was that particular author’s “library” where they could shelve works of writing into folders and upload a sweet userpic. I remember one poem called “Making Daisy Chains” by a girl named Kristina Costa. I googled her and found out she was a student at Harvard. My inactivity caused me to lose my account and I lost that poem. I still can’t find it anywhere else. I used a pen name and won two teen poetry contests- $100 for “apple and oranges” back in the day. I was one of the younger posters on the site, and people often told me how great and talented I was for sixteen. My dad read my poems and when I found out I was mad and embarrassed. He just told me he was proud of me.

MYSPACE
What a weird time. When I look at my page now, the numbers look so small and insignificant. 192 friends and 332 comments. I supposed I really only spent an active year or two on MySpace. My listed interests include “flashbulb memories, lucid dreams, windows down/music up, “Wayne is the city for those who want to fall in love in November”, rehashing last night’s events, Canadian music/television.” When I think of MySpace I think of Eric Sproat. All in all, I think MySpace is/was more narcissistic than Facebook is. MySpace isn’t really about sharing current events, videos or news in pop culture.  MySpace is really about the image you project on the Internet- not that Facebook isn’t about that, but there are definitely other elements to the Book.

LAST.FM
I always forgot to turn on the damn scrobbler.

FACEBOOK
One of the few things I don’t like  about Facebook is that it plays an integral part in how Zack and I started dating, which is funny, I guess, because Zack never uses Facebook. I always hate that part of telling The Story. “We met at a party on Atherton and made smoldering eye contact and I went up to him on the porch and said ‘Hey I’m Allison, my friends and I are leaving, do you want to come with us?’ and he came, but then he started talking to Amber and so I left, now knowing that they already knew each other, and then four days later I got some message on Facebook from a guy named Zack Hartman and I was like, who the hell is this guy?”

Anyway, Facebook has completely revolutionized the way we share and gather personal and public information, keep relationships, and stalk your crushes. You know this, you have an account. You know this, people won’t shut up about it. You know this, people wrote a million books on it and there’s this little move called The Social Network that may or may not be up for several Oscars this year.

John Hendrickson, Rich Coleman and Mike Hromchak were my friends on Facebook before I ever spoke to them in real life.

TWITTER
I have an account, I just can’t commit. It feels zoo-y, claustrophobic. Like I can’t keep up.

YOUTUBE
The girls on my floor from my freshman dorm made an account we all used. There were a few videos posted of us goofing off, but I ended up making three or four video blogs towards the end of my Livejournal days. Two from my sophomore year of college, and another from when I studied abroad in Amsterdam. Vlogging is cool, if only to remember what you looked, sounded, and acted like during a certain point of time.

WORDPRESS
This is where I am today. Much more public, much less updated. A smooth, clean look without the stigma of an “online diary.” Though I don’t think of WordPress as a community as much as I did other websites, I don’t mind it.

YELP
This is my new jam. Writing about food and drink establishments validates me going out so much, I suppose. So far the best thing about Yelp was writing a poorly rated review for a bar in center city- and getting called in for a free round of drinks by the CEO of the place. I have high hopes for Yelp. You can read my reviews here: allisonb123.yelp.com

See you on the internet.