The Battlefield Where the Girls Say I Love You



That's just the thing: we will never tell you we love you. In fact, we're here only to hold hands across state lines and yell at the world. We're here to try to touch you across this chasm of flown things. Not even that. At most, I will teach you how to make a gin smoothie when there's nothing left in the house. Hannah can teach you several languages and what to do when your car breaks up with you. Thanks for coming out.

Monday, April 14, 2008

i wore heels to a pig picking and other stories from the weekend.

a few things:

1. the people with whom i enjoy talking on the phone most have small children. that, or they're 8 months pregnant. which means, of course, our conversations are mainly between the mother (surrogate or otherwise) and the child. i say, "oh my god, hannah. we're still unpacking, and i just found a copy of sally's thesis and photographs from college wherein i'm wearing too much make-up and always holding a coors light dooce-dooce." to which she says, "stop trying to get your brother in trouble. he can play all by himself if he wants. put down the potted plant and go to your room."

then, i call molly and say, "it just sucks that we have this nice ceiling fan/light that's remote controlled and the last tenants didn't leave the controller, so i can't turn it on or off." to which she says, "gavin left me here with the kids all day while he went to play baseball and i just realized he has both carseats and, thus, we can't leave the house for twelve hours."


2. hannah's teetering on the edge, by which i mean she's had a frustrating few days. let's just say, aaron managed to break her car window. oh, and she doesn't really sleep at all. i worked the two busiest days ever at the restaurant, where the hostesses (bless their vacant hearts) began seating 20 people in my section a half hour before opening, while i was still in a sundress and sandals, polishing silverware. then an entire table spoke to me as if i were a dog. as in, "good girl! you're such a good girl!" in these weird voices. then i yelled at a foodrunner i'd never met before, tried to give cash to the underappreciated dishwashers (who thought i wanted something in return). finally, when it was calm again, a coworker began talking about how nice her husband is, how he washes her car and runs her baths. and i said, "yeah, undergrad is so great that sometimes i look at him and think, why are you so nice to me?" to this, another waitress said, "well there is this book called, why men love bitches."

so anyway, hannah and i have been answering the phone by saying "thank you" instead of "hello." we've been treating each other carefully and with empathetic responses, much in the same way you'd help an elderly woman cross the street.


3. morgan had her first soccer game saturday. i was sure she'd be less than awesome, what with her awkward run and, well, the gene pool. when i lived in charleston, the ex coached 5 and 6 year-old coed club soccer, and i always related best to the one pudgy girl who sort of drifted off the field whenever she felt like it. as in, she'd run her little butt off for, oh, 2 minutes before strutting over to see what kind of flower bloomed in the grass by the parking lot.


i was fully prepared to console morgan...but she's a phenom. it's the weirdest thing. she scored the only two goals for her team. and, with little people, it's only 3 on 3...which somehow hikes up the stakes. forget chuck klosterman's essay in sex, drugs and cocoa puffs:


the truth is that most children don't love soccer; they just hate the alternatives. for 60 percent of adolescents in a fourth grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen...this is why soccer seems like a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. soccer feels fun because its not terrifying-- it's the only sport where you can't fuck up.


jerk. and i don't trust anyone who loves the semi-colon as much as him.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love semicolons...

but then again, I hate Chuck Klosterman, so...

Mamie said...

yeah, i think my defenses are up because i'm a recently recovered semi-*&;#-colon addict.

and, well, chuck klosterman is a punk.

sallylynn said...

i love semi-colons; i mostly hate reading them, however, in student papers, wherein the semi-colon usage is something like:

"global; warming is going to; destroy the planet; the plants; the flowers; the dogs and it might even come to your house with a knife."

i sort of have the hiccups after reading their writing. but that's mostly because i can't breathe i'm so terrified of how very little it seems i've taught this semester. but that's a tangent for another day...

sallylynn said...

also: i'm glad you found my thesis next to the coors light pictures. that seems appropriate. :)

Mamie said...

sal, i thought it was my thesis...until i realized it was dedicated to jack and julie...who i don't know.