Buggy Goodness.

Yesterday on my lunch break, I went to sit in this nearby cafeteria type food court thing that caters to a mix of office workers and tourists. I sat at a table next to two teenaged boys who had bought their lunches. One of the boys had sushi, and the other one was staring at it like it was about to jump up and bite him. He asked his friend what all of that was, and the boy eating the sushi shrugged and said he didn’t know. He pointed and said, “This green stuff, I have no idea what it’s for. It doesn’t taste like anything. Try some!” So the kid took a big scoop of the ‘green stuff’ and put it in his mouth. And then his eyes bugged out of his head. He started to cough and suck down his bottle of water, and I cracked up laughing. The boy who had played the prank looked over at me and motioned for a high-five. So I gave him one. It was awesome.
It’s that time of year again. Mosquito time. Three new bites in the past two nights, and I react really badly to them. I’m probably going to die of West Nile Virus before the summer is through. Either that, or I’ll grow a third limb because of all the toxic bug spray I douse myself with every night before going to sleep. Of course, even the best toxic bug sprays only work for four to six hours, and I sleep longer than that. Even so, it’s how I manage to wake up with only one or two new bites as opposed to six or seven. The mosquitoes just . . . like me, or something. I can’t say I blame them. I’m sweet, after all. And yummy too.

I think I’m going to put some mosquito netting around my bed. That’ll be stylish.

I kind of cut off all my hair last week. Well, not all my hair, but I got mad at it one day coming out of the shower and took a scissor to it. It went from midway down my back to just above my shoulders, which is the shortest that my hair has been since I was eight years old. (Quick note: if you have a daughter, and you’ve given her a boy’s name, and she has not yet grown enough to have a distinctively female body, do not force her to get a boy’s haircut as well, because people will call her “him” all summer and it will traumatize her. For life.)

So, yeah. It’s short, and I don’t really like it. The worst part is that there’s not enough weight in it anymore to make my hair curl down, and now my hair just curls out. So I’ve basically doomed myself to a summer of blowdrying.

My little brother just had his prom this weekend. It’s been making me think all sorts of weird nostalgic things about the end of my senior year in high school and my graduation and all that. I was freaking out at the time over the thought of having to be an adult and do all of those sorts of grown-up things. I didn’t think that I was at all prepared for it, and truth be told, I wasn’t. That was one scary-ass time.

And in celebration of that scary-ass time, a quick survey, stolen from Hurricane Katie, all about that ‘wonderful’ time known as high school.

1. What year was it? September ’96 – June ’00. That’s right, Class of 2000. I figured that out when I was in 2nd grade, and I thought that it was the most awesome thing ever. Truth be told, I still kind of do.

2. What were your three favorite bands? I didn’t have favourite bands. I never knew what the hell people were talking about when they discussed music.

3. What was your favorite outfit? I went to two different high schools – in the first one I had to wear uniforms, and by the time I switched to the second one I was so unused to picking out my own clothing that I had no clue what I was doing. I usually wore ratty jeans and an old shirt. I wasn’t what one would refer to as ‘fashionable,’ until towards the end of my senior year I discovered that I actually like wearing skirts and then people were confused over my sudden “transformation.”

4. What was up with your hair? I don’t think I cut my hair once during high school. It was really long, so much so that it often got caught on the buttons on the sleeves of my jacket, wavy and light brown/almost blonde.

5. Who were your best friends? I didn’t have a best friend at my first school, and at my second school it was this girl named Erin. I was fully aware, however, that I was never actually her best friend.

6. What did you do after school? In my first school I actually played a few sports — softball and tennis. I quit those in my new school though. I was always, always in the musicals and plays, and if I didn’t have rehearsal after school I would just go home.

7. Where did you work? I was a camp counselor for a couple of summers, and then my senior year I worked at a CVS around the corner from my house..

8. Did you take the bus? No, I lived within walking distance of both schools. There was a period of time for a few months after I had transferred to the new school when I still lived in my old town (the house was new construction and wasn’t finished when it was supposed to be) and my mom would pick me up after school, we’d wait two hours for my brother to get out of his elementary school, and then we’d go home. When rehearsals for the musicals started, a bunch of seniors arranged a carpool to drive me back the thirty minutes every afternoon. I always thought (and still do think) that it was so awesomely cool that they did that for me.

9. Who did you have a crush on? I had a bunch of small crushes, but nothing major and overwhelming. I never went out with anybody I went to school with though. Well, one time when I was a senior I kissed a freshman in the chorus room, but that was it.

10. Did you fight with your parents? Always, but now that I think about it, it was pretty typical teenaged stuff.

11. Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on? Jewel. I hung a collage of pictures of her on the wall across from my bed and I would look at them when I masturbated. Now I just think she’s skanky.

12. Did you smoke cigarettes? Yeah. And I stole them from the CVS I worked at, too. I practically ran that place, and they paid me next to nothing, so I stole makeup and cigarettes. Shut up, I was seventeen. I worked with this one guy though who would steal whole cartons and resell the packs individually for a profit. (I wish I could remember his full name — he went to school and was in the same class with the only person reading this who could have potentially gone to school with somebody I worked with. Now this is going to kill me, dammit.)

13. Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker? No. I knew where my locker was, I just never went to it. I never brought my books to class, either. I had one big notebook that I carried around. It pissed my teachers off. I didn’t care.

14. Did you have a ‘clique’? Nah. I was sort of on the outside of the bandies, though. I’d hang out with them in school, but only very rarely outside of it.

15. Admit it, were you popular? Nope. I’ve never been popular and I’ve never really had a desire to be.

16. Who did you want to be just like? Mike. No, I’m just kidding. Is anybody even going to get that? I was pretty content with my life in high school. I had my friends and I paid no attention to any of the “popular” people, because I really saw them as being kind of pathetic. It’s funny, because my brother’s girlfriend apparently has a sister who was in my class, and while the name is vaguely familiar to me, I wouldn’t know her if I fell over her. There were a lot of people who just weren’t on my radar at all.

17. What did you want to be when you grew up? An actor. Which is exactly what I am.

18. Where did you think you’d be at the age you are now? Living by myself in some big city somewhere. Which is exactly where I am.