One of my closest friends moved to New York in the summer. She’s always saying we should have our own show. So for our Secret Santa gift exchange, I made her what I thought the poster for our fab TV show would look like.
As you can tell, we are two very modest, very humble young women who take ourselves very seriously.
a really good conversation about how we like to do our hair. Neither of us is a fan of that really polished, sleek look. Michele basically summed it up pretty well:
“If your hair looks like you just had sex, people will want to have sex with you.”
I was checking out my friend Lauren’s camera that she brought along with her.
“Woah, it’s waterproof! And it comes with a thing to make it float! That’s sick Laur… Where’d you get it?”
“Zach bought it for me for my birthday…Best thing I ever got out of that relationship.”
Trying to one-up her I added wisely,
“Relationships come and go, but stuff…STUFF LASTS FOREVER!”
As Laur and I cracked up, Sil piped up:
“Can you guys stop? People are staring.”
Everyone seems to forget there was a time before texting when we actually used to call each other. I still call my friends. They don’t pick up. But they will text me back later with a:
“I just saw you called! Is everything ok!?”
…Because if I’m calling it must be an emergency. But I mean, the way I see it, every time I want to talk to you, it is an emergency. I want to talk to you right there and then and have your full attention. And I don’t think I should have to be bleeding or broken for that to happen. I just want to have a good solid conversation with you. None of this texting casually back and forth…waiting for a response…doing something else….forgetting about it….coming back to my phone…responding….wait again….When I want to talk, I want to do it right here and now, not fragmented and scattered over my day and over other conversations- having to remember where we left off… what we were talking about… And then heaven forbid one of us wants to introduce another subject and we start talking about two different things! It’s miserable.
So yeah- it is an emergency. It is urgent. Because life is urgent and I don’t have time to waste.
my friend Marija told me about how she tricked an elderly lady into taking her seat on the bus. She said she couldn’t just offer it to her because she assumed the lady would be too proud to take it. So Marija’s solution was to put on an entire act of getting off the bus. She pretended to peek out the window as if she was looking out for her stop. She rang the bell (“I knew someone had already pulled it, so I was good”), and then finally stood up as if she was ready to get off.
And it worked. The old lady took Marija’s seat. And Marija…just stood there.
“Oh!”, the old lady said, “I thought you were getting off!”
“Nope”, said Marija.
My friend Marija is insane. In a truly wonderful way that is one of a kind.
I might have AIDS so I could get her to call me immediately. When I want to talk, I really want to talk. Afterwards when I made fun of her for believing me, she’s all:
“Jess… I knew you didn’t have AIDS.”
Sure Marija, sure.
There’s no other way to put it. It’s actually the only thing I really know for sure about that night. The rest is a little hazy. I had totally forgotten it even happened until my friend Marija reminded me about it.
A bunch of us went to New York for a music festival. Marija and I were at the Walgreens just down the street from where we were staying. Walgreens is like an American Shoppers Drug Mart. It was 4 in the morning. We were with two friends of friends, John and James, who we had met only two days earlier at the beginning of our trip. John and James were checking out snacks over by the refrigerators. Marija and I ran through the store and snuck up behind them. I was hiding behind a huge display of something- I’m not even sure what- quiet as a rhino. Marija was a few feet behind me, hiding behind a different display, I’m thinking more quietly than I was managing. I was clutching this amazing snack I discovered that they sell at Walgreens. It’s this little stick of mozzarella cheese wrapped in proscuitto. SO SO DELICIOUS. I whipped it at John and James. They turned around all of a sudden and I wasn’t prepared for that and I panicked and in that moment I just let myself fall back onto the display of beef jerky right next to me. I just fell. Suddenly I could feel the little hangers that hold the jerky digging into my back. I could see Marija’s face. I think the fall looked worse than it felt. Or maybe it really was that bad. I think it might have actually really hurt but I do this thing where I pretend that everything is ok, and most of the time everything really does become ok, just through sheer willpower. It’s like magic. I can definitely ignore a problem away. Plus I had a lot of adrenaline going through me at the moment, which helped. The guys came over to where we were and John told me to calm down. I did not appreciate this as much as I think he wished I had. Eff you John. You calm down. Get on my level.
I was hanging out at school with a new friend I had made from class. We were having a conversation about something when he had one of those moments when you completely forget what you were about to say. Totally normal. But then, all of a sudden, he goes:
“Think think think!”
…What…the fuck?
I guess I must have looked taken aback that he would need such an aggressive method to get himself to remember something because he asked me,
“What? Don’t you do that?”
I laughed, immediately regretted it, and replied “No”, without trying to seem condescending. Not an easy task. I’d like to think it didn’t make me look at him differently from then on… but I definitely looked at him differently from then on.
He’s 16 and works in the produce department at our grocery store. Mark’s favourite word is “chill”, and at first I was pleased when he described something I did this way. I’m not above a teenager thinking I’m cool.
….Until I realized he describes everything as chill. I really probably should have seen this coming. Teenagers are so fickle. Mark’s mom packed him a lunch today- chill. He went biking with his friends- it was chill. We’ve got hotdogs on sale- chill.
I pointed this out to him the other day and he admitted that he does use the word “chill” a lot. But he also assured me that I’m ‘pretty chill’, which I’m told is like next level chill. So now I know for sure he’s not bullshitting me.
Mark also really respects this guy Dilan at work because Dilan is ‘the chillest person “ he knows. I don’t want to crush Mark’s dreams or anything but I really don’t think anyone wants to be as chill as Dilan. Dilan is so chill he’s almost comatose.
Remember when I was all ‘Why did I eat the dairy when I knew it would hurt me?” I know why now.
I was slowly being able to eat more dairy without feeling sick. So this one morning I made myself a bowl of Cheerios before work. After I ate a couple of spoonfuls though, I could tell it was not going down well. I asked my Dad if he wanted to finish it for me. He asked me why I didn’t want it and I told him my stomach wasn’t sitting well because of the milk; I thought I could handle it but I couldn’t. He said ok. I took my spoon and he took the bowl. Dad added some sliced banana, some granola, even a little bit of chocolate powder on top and began to eat. After a couple of spoonfuls he began to clutch his stomach:
-“Dad, what’s wrong?”
-“…It’s the milk. I can’t take it.”
Jesus Christ. Difficulty accepting reality is a family trait apparently.
The girl who just can't play it cool 