Category Archives: Fiction

The Reason For Delayed Gratification

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There is something so irresistible about the idea of easy money. Whether you’re stealing it, winning it, or earning it in your artisanal pop-up meth lab, the wish fulfillment fantasy that surrounds a surprise windfall is one of the best fairy tales there is. In a jackpot culture, where multi-state lotteries make national news, how humans deal with unexpected largesse reveals everything about their character. We all like to think we would behave selflessly and generously if put in that situation. I’m sure YOU would be angelic. You seem really nice.  But let’s face it, greedy jerks are more interesting to read about. Characters looking for easy money make bad choices leading to dumber choices leading to fleeing down a beanstalk from a ticked-off giant with a stolen bag of gold coins, or fleeing from the criminals that financed a view of the green light on Daisy’s dock, or fleeing from a ticked-off giant with a stolen bling-flinging goose.
Me: I don’t like to criticize
Jack: yeah
Me: but maybe a softer target
Jack: go big and go home
Me: you’re doing that saying wrong

Take free money, add awkward family dynamics, and you have the inheritance cluster rodeo that is The Nest, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s new book about four adult siblings squabbling over a pending trust fund payout in present-day New York City. The life-long promise of the money coming from the fund (nicknamed the Nest) gets this family completely twisted. Sweeney completely nails the arrested development that dogs inter-sibling-ary relationships and the self-destructive fallout that results from spending your chickens before they hatch. It’s funny, moving, and almost painfully real.
Jack: Geese
Me: Huh?
Jack: Spending your geese before they hatch
Me: That is your waterfowl bias talking

Some books hook me with beautifully crafted language. Some grab me with a wickedly twisted plot. And some, like The Nest, get under my skin with characters so well-conceived that it feels like the author isn’t writing fiction but instead recording notes on an anthropological expedition. The entitled siblings in The Nest are so self-absorbed and selfish that it stressed me out. My favorite is Leo, the jackassiest of all jackass brothers who ever jackassed–but really, all of these siblings are spectacularly jackassy. Sweeney creates some really squirm-inducing decision-making, so much so that I (allegedly) tried to reason out loud with the people in the book. Because yelling “STOP WHYYY ARE YOU DOING THAT” is  the best way to get results out of your fiction. No matter how much I tried to get their attention, the characters in the book ignored me, so I managed my discomfort by engaging in some positive visualization. That’s right: I pretended won the latest billion dollar jackpot, then I fake spent my imaginary winnings in the most humanitarian, saintly way possible. Step aside, Mother Theresa.
Jack: Are you upset because a giant is chasing you
Me: No
Jack: I get upset when giants chase me
Me: Omg a giant isn’t chasing me
Jack: I’m saying, it’s upsetting

Relief Map  The Nest spends a lot of time detailing the endless search for the perfect real estate. Buying in an up-and-coming neighborhood at the bottom of the market is sexier than Chris Hemsworth cuddling a golden retriever puppy while saying you were the best one in the threesome. Self-worth is enmeshed with having the ideal street address. I get it. If I had all the money in the world to spend, I’d want my custom-built domicile to reflect exactly who I am. You guessed it – my dream property is a personalized water park. Not only will it have state-of-the-art waterslides, it will have a connecting waterslide around the perimeter so I can waterslide to each waterslide. Because it’s a water park. Not a walk-on-dry-land-to-get-to-water park.

Pressed For Time The most prevalent lottery fantasy is using your new money to buy your way out of your least favorite chore. Yes, I could feed the hungry or open a school, but is that going to get me out of doing laundry for the rest of my life? FOOLED YOU that’s a rhetorical question. The Nest characters hope to use their windfall to retire early and that’s okay, I guess. I hope to build a dry cleaners in my backyard. I’m undecided if I need to hire someone to stand at my back door collect my laundry every day. I don’t want the neighbors to think I’m too diva to walk to my dry cleaners.

Check It Out The siblings in The Nest struggle because they all have a severe case of keeping up with the Joneses. The emphasis on having the right clothes, the right kind of house, all the cachet of a Manhattan life, costs them. I’m above this kind of conspicuous consumption, of course, and that I why my final act of lottery boom spending will be building a library. It will be just like the Library of Congress only bigger and better and I get my own parking space. It will also have hammocks because I like to recline when I am reading.

 

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Weird financial planning meeting.

 

Since I am fresh out of beanstalks, and my chances of winning the lottery are infinitesimal, I am sadly reconciling myself to a simple life of doing my own laundry and annual waterslide rides.  I’m all set to work hard, save, and invest. As a backup plan, I’ve got a friend who has promised to show me how to spin straw into gold.
Jack: Bad idea
Me: Says a guy who baits giants
#beanstalkproblems

Action Items
A Book Of Giants by Ruth Manning Sanders is a collection of European fairy tales about giants. Because you need a book of fairy tales and it should be about giants.

The Reason I’m Not Invited

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Shopping at bookstores is something I can do for a long time. I’m not gloating about my superior concentration abilities. I can do it for a long time because I like to do it. When I have to do something I don’t like to do, I’m not going to do it for a long time and I am going to fake an ankle injury to get out of doing whatever the non-like thing is. But bookstores are my creampuff-filled universe, and I prefer going alone. (It’s not that I don’t like you. I really do – in fact, I think you are amazing.) But the thing about being at the bookstore with you is this: When you are ready to go, I am not. When you give me another twenty minutes, thinking I am wrapping things up,  I am still not ready to go. When you are REALLY ready to go, I am very much not ready to go. When I don’t invite you to the bookstore with me, I’m not snubbing you. I’m sparing you an afternoon of watching someone giggle and cry while picking out books to purchase. To understand the real craft of social snubbing, go no further than Edith Wharton.
You: I’m ready to go
Me: I can’t, I hurt my ankle
You: I need to take you to the ER
Me: I can’t, I hurt my ankle
You: you can’t fake an injury to get out of having a fake injury

Edith Wharton was born in 1862 with the bluest of blood into one of the oldest of the Old New York families. As a young lady of gentle birth and privilege, all that was expected of her was to marry well. Instead, she became an accomplished author, publishing novels, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction and was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her work chronicles America’s Gilded Age. If F. Scott Fitzgerald defined what it was like as an outsider to long for acceptance by America’s wealthy elite, Edith Wharton was the ultimate insider, telling the stories of proper people doing things properly and not so properly. She knew all about trying to sit at the cool kids table, when the cool kids table was in a formal dining room, seated thirty-two people, and had  20-piece place settings that included finger bowls.
Society: so just get married and do lady stuff ok
Edith Wharton: I can’t, I have this ankle injury
Society: then be an old maid
Edith Wharton: oh I would but this dang ankle

The Age of Innocence is the best known of Wharton’s novels, but I have a soft spot for The Buccaneers. It tells the story of trying to crack social codes in that most stressful of situations: when you and your sister have to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to find husbands in the English aristocracy because your family money is too new to entice anyone of quality in New York. That is hard-core snubbing-when your whole home state of dudes won’t look at you twice because you’re not American long enough, and none of the women in England will give you the time of day because you are so very American. Wharton perfectly captures all the cringe-worthy interactions that result from perpetual social rejection. The rules are, you don’t know the rules because no one is going to tell you the rules but no matter what don’t be yourself, ever, but it’s really irrelevant how you act because nobody will like you. It’s hard not to imagine myself trying and miserably failing to win friends and influence people while talking about my interests with turn-of-the-century British peerage.  There are endless opportunities for embarrassment. Choosing the wrong fork at dinner. Accidentally using profanity. And then, there’s trying to explain why I take tap dancing lessons.
Me: I take tap!
Lord British: uh-huh
Me: This finger bowl soup is delicious
Lord British: Please excuse me, I have this nagging ankle injury

I swear, taking tap was not my idea, but not not taking it was my idea. It’s not like I studied dance for years as a child and then took it back up just to keep my skills fresh. It’s not that I wanted to be able to utter that most mature of phrases “Hey, you want to come to my dance recital”? It’s not like I wanted to wear sequined dresses and false eyelashes while desperately trying to remember if I’m supposed to be doing a cramp roll or a drawback. (I am 100% lying about the false eyelashes.) (Okay and the sequins.)

You know what’s adorable? Little kids dancing. Little butterball toddlers in tutus turning around on their tiptoes. 8-year-olds, defying gravity as they jeté from corner to corner. Long-limbed, long-necked adolescents, executing ever more complex choreography with grace and speed. Ok, now take all that adorableness, set it on fire, throw it in a gas station dumpster, and you get the idea of what it’s like to watch a fully formed adult person with zero dance experience learn how to tap dance. It. Is. Painful. I know exactly how you feel, because I have had to see my reflection in the studio mirror shuffle-ball-changing for the past four years. Honestly, I have no excuse. I just keep showing up in the hopes that Glinda the Good Witch  will be there at dance class one day, granting Magic Feet wishes.
Glinda: I’ll grant you your heart’s desire
Me: Please make me good at tap dancing
Glinda: GAH my ankle

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This is a metaphor.

There is no place in Edith Wharton’s tasteful universe for my brand of awkward. Maybe I’m just fooling myself, but I don’t want to hang out with those snobby drags anyway. The cool kids might have an oyster fork, but I’ve learned most of the Maxie Ford (a tap step so mean it will pinch you just to make you cry). I know I am definitely not invited to dinner, but you know what? They are not invited to my recital.

#ouchmyankle

Action Items
The Buccaneers was in progress at the time of Edith Wharton’s death in 1937.  It was completed by Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring and published in 1993.

 

 

The Reason To Close Out The Tab

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I am all kinds of sluggish right now. Do not feel sorry for me because I brought it on myself. If I don’t know by now that the second martini on a school night is a stupid idea, then I deserve exactly what I am getting. Still, it’s a bummer to know that there isn’t a good time to be had that doesn’t have some kind of payback. Scream your lungs out at a concert-lose your voice for a week. Enter a chili dog eating contest-get an upset stomach. Bingeread a fabulous book-ok, can’t think of a downside for that one. Indulgence demands balance, so at some point or another, everyone gets a hangover.

Ancient peoples could not account for the severity of their hangovers, attributing splitting headaches and the morning-after craving for ancient pancakes to angry gods. Now, after a big night out, you only have to go back 12 hours on your Instagram feed to find out what went down. There you are, in the backseat of your Uber, chugging Fireball. FIREBALL. What the hell were you thinking?  The night before, it’s all spontaneous musical numbers and high fives. It’s a magic bubble of invincibility, and since nothing can hurt you that fourth margarita is a good idea! And yes you can stay out until 4! You’ll be fine with 2 hours sleep! Of course you never are. The morning after brings the need for several extra strength Tylenol and a fountain Coke, and no small measure of gratitude that you woke up at home. As opposed to waking up covered in mud, blood, and body parts, because that is what happens when Donna Tartt is in charge.

First, a PSA: I am glad that Donna Tartt is a writer, because she writes my favorite books and I love having favorite books. Her novels are epic in scale, with her characters coming to terms with life events experienced at violent extremes. Some overcome, and some fail spectacularly, and it’s impossible to look away even when you can see what’s coming is not going to end well. The Secret History (Knopf, 1992) is a murder mystery reverse engineered from what is essentially a solved crime. The book opens with a confession to a murder, revealing that a cliquish group of six friends have killed one of their own, Bunny Corcoran, staging a hiking accident by pushing him down a ravine. The story then centers on the backstory of the motivation for Bunny’s death and the friends’ tangled and twisted relationships. Donna Tartt explores the way that the human desire turns into greed – greed for knowledge, greed for experience, greed for power – and how that greed turns cancerous.

Donna Tartt publishes one incredible book about every 10 years. I assume she could publish an incredible book anytime she wants to, but she is a badass who does not care how many books you think she should publish. The Secret History was her first book and it was an immediate bestseller, making her a literary star. This book shows how toxic hubris and arrogance are and movingly illustrates the beauty inherent in sacrificing for the ones you love. It also gives me perspective on my own wild nights, because there’s hangovers, and then there’s The Secret History hangovers.

My hangover: My head hurts and that light is too bright
Secret History hangover: Can anyone confirm or deny that we killed a dude last night

My hangover: Wow, I danced for several hours!
Secret History hangover: I drank myself into a fugue state

My hangover: I thought we’d never go home
Secret History hangover: I thought I was a deer

My hangover: I need greasy diner food
Secret History hangover: Breakfast is booze, cigarettes, and determining an alibi

My hangover: I’m taking a nap
Secret History hangover: Let’s invite Bunny to go on a hike

There’s always a price to be paid after a party is over, and if Donna Tartt is writing the hangover, payback isn’t just bitch. It’s a bitch with a baseball bat and access to all of your bank accounts. It makes me a little bit glad that I’m a book nerd with a love of down time. My “about last night” stories aren’t as flashy but then again I don’t have to budget for as much bail money. Still, some nights do go on longer than others. If you’ve got a hangover, please feel free to consult the handy chart below to triage your situation and determine the most efficient cure.

Symptoms: You have a limp from the 50-yard dash someone dared you to run. Your hair hurts and you require sunglasses to brush your teeth.
Hangover Level: Tore up from the floor up
Cure: Ketchup-based fast food and one whiny Facebook status post.

Symptoms: Right hand has three nightclub stamps on it. Left wrist has a medical id bracelet from a colonic clinic. You’re still dressed, but the bra you are wearing isn’t yours.
Hangover Level: Run over by a truck
Solution: Travel back in time and make new friends who won’t encourage you to qualify for Olympic Beer Pong. It isn’t even a real sport.

Symptoms: The good news is you’re awake and at home. The bad news is the dog woke you up because he’s hungry, but you don’t own a dog. Or the motorcycle in your living room.
Hangover Level: Football bat
Solution: Feed the dog. Change your name and move.
#notmydog

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I like your motorcycle.

Action Items
Watch The Philadelphia Story, the best movie about hangovers ever.

 

 

 

The Reason Looks Are Deceiving

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My life is kind of eat up with Kardashian-level glamour. It’s never my intention to brag about it, so please forgive the anecdote that follows.

I was at the pet store getting twenty pounds of cat food and three tote buckets of cat litter when the nice woman standing near me in the aisle struck up a conversation about herpes. I’m not apt to casually discuss herpes with strangers, but the cat litter containers are the refillable kind, and I was elbow deep in a big vat of cat litter scooping and filling. I was in a fixed position and since I was not the one who started the interaction it wasn’t up to me to choose the topics. Anyway, the woman (who was killing time while her husband shopped) was relaying the origin story of every cat she had adopted in the last twenty years. She seemed really excited about her feline genealogy, and it was nice to have the diversion from my task.

She got to the payoff, which was about the time she adopted TWO kittens at one time. See, she went to get the one kitten? And it was really cute? And she found out the kitten had a brother? And it turned out both kittens were hard to adopt because they were sick? Suddenly, she interrupted her narrative and fixed me with a hard stare. “Do you know what herpes is?”, she asked me. I was so taken aback I froze mid-scoop. I thought I had misheard her, so I asked her to repeat the question. She carefully enunciated each word, keeping it simple since I was obviously a little slow. “Do…you…know…what…herpes..is?” I affirmed I did, and satisfied, she proceeded to tell me the kittens had herpes and she adopted both of them. At this point, her husband came and collected her and off they went.

I was a little dizzy from the cat litter fumes, so it took me a few minutes to process what had happened. The follow-up questions piled up: I look like a person who doesn’t know what herpes is? Am I blithely going about my business, day after day, projecting a herpes-ignorant vibe? Is it all viruses, or just herpes? Then I got super bummed because if I had told her “No”, how would she have explained herpes to me?!? Would I have been deserving of the two-cat adoption story?  Then I did what I always do when confronted with randomly absurd situations. I blamed John Irving.

Mona_Lisa,

Probably not thinking about herpes.

John Irving has broken my heart, made me cringe, and played with my emotions. He has bitchslapped me up and down the page, but more than anything, he has shaped my sense of the ridiculous. The Irving universe is filled with the eccentric, the unusual, characters for whom boundaries don’t apply because they are already more evolved than the rest of us. The formidable Jenny Fields. Gentle, stubborn Homer Larch. The survivor Ruth Cole. John Irving takes these larger-than-life characters and has them speak to what it means to be human by placing them in the most absurd situations. Their reactions are little sloppy, a little violent, a little offensive, and always a little unexpected.

If you would like to witness some spirited, heated conversation, and possibly a fistfight, here is what you do. Get a half dozen people together, sit ‘em down at a table, and ask them what their favorite John Irving novel is. Safety tip: back away after you ask, because you pulled the pin on a literary grenade.  John Irving has been publishing marvelous fiction since 1968 and as is the way of passionately told stories, people connect to them passionately. There will be lots of A Prayer For Owen Meany people. Someone will talk about Hotel New Hampshire. (Keep your eye on that person.) There will be love for A Widow For One Year. No matter what book is being advocated, it’s the funny, rambunctious, surreal scenes that will be brought up and described with delight. Like how Jenny Fields gets pregnant in The World According To Garp. Or the car castration in The World According To Garp. Or Garp disguising himself to attend his mother’s funeral in The World According To Garp. Okay, a lot of weird stuff happens in Garp, but you get the idea.

I know what you’re thinking right now: “What if I don’t look like I know what herpes is?” Don’t be upset! You probably do. But just in case you needed more proof that we are all living in a John Irving novel, here you go:

I got a bottle of fruity-smelling body oil in a gift basket during the holidays. The bottle has just been migrating from surface to surface while I work up the effort to throw it away. Recently, in a frenzy of straightening, I tossed the bottle in my nightstand drawer. The drawer is full of the usual: pens, a couple of notepads, five thousand ponytail holders, and a big loose wad of cash. A couple of days later, I opened the drawer to grab a pen and instead of finding a writing instrument with which to record my brilliant thoughts, I shoved my hand into what was essentially a pile of lube-covered one dollar bills. I had managed to knock the bottle open and it had slowly poured out, saturated the cash, and coated the bottom of the drawer. I emptied an entire box baking soda into the drawer to soak up all of the oil, then washed the bills out with soap and water. I then spread the money out over every available flat space so it could dry off.

The sum John Irving total:
My bedroom looks like someone made it rain at the world’s only OCD strip club.
#catherpes

Action Items
My favorite John Irving book is The Cider House Rules. FIGHT ME.

 

 

 

 

 

The Reason For Neutral Corners

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Greek mythology has always been my favorite body of stories. As a kid, I obsessively read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, and I could not get enough of those ancient babes and beasties amusing themselves at the expense of mortals. I love the endless bargaining, the jockeying for advantage, the punishments and retributions and the petty pranks. My favorite stories, though, are the ones about Zeus and Hera. Hera, the goddess of marriage and home, and Zeus, the god of the sky and thunder, are the rulers of Mount Olympus, the dysfunctional, bickering parents in the divine Greek family tree. (They are also siblings. I mention this so we can all have a collective “UGH YUCK” and move on.)
Hera: so I’m in charge of literally every meaningful human relationship
Zeus: yup
Hera: and you’re basically in charge of making loud noise
Zeus: yup
Hera: seems fair

I could not help but think about Zeus and Hera’s lively married life as I read the amazing Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, 2015). I can’t be the first person to tell you to read Fates and Furies – it’s SO good- but I am probably the nerdiest about Greek mythology. Mathilde and Lotto meet in college and marry within weeks after setting eyes on each other for the first time.  The scope of their married life is big, Greek tragedy big, with the story structured across and filtered through the mythologic ideas of the Fates, divine beings who ruled that which is given and gifted in life, and the Furies, righteous goddesses tasked with finding sinners and delivering justice. Their marriage is earthy and elemental, a series of seismic events that incrementally fuse these two individuals into one landscape.  As perfectly as this grand structure serves the story, it’s the voyeuristic honesty scaled to the quiet, intimate moments between Mathilde and Lotto that are so shattering.  It is utterly absorbing watching these characters claw out a unique space to inhabit together and find that shared identity that is particular within commitment. Groff understands that in learning to be together, you have to learn to someone’s emotional vocabulary. You have to sometimes learn to find regard where you only feel contempt. But in the most revered of the Mount Olympus traditions, you also have to learn to fight. Hard. Let’s bring in our experts.

Drama is relative. Your version of normal might be another person’s version of unbearable tension, an idea that Groff examines with passion and precision in Fates and Furies. That is, unless you are dealing with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus. That neighborhood is all drama, all the time, by anyone’s standard. But even in a crowd that routinely turned people into trees or cursed them with snakes for hair, Zeus and Hera set the bar for fighting. Zeus and Hera are that boundaries-free couple nobody wants to be in public with because of all the screaming and name-calling. I guess they might be forgiven a bit for their histrionics when you consider that they’ve been married for thousands of years. If your idea of a great marriage is tons of infidelity, death, and transforming into animals, then this is the couple for you.

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Prom pic.

You Can’t Hide Your Lying Eyes Apparently, the easiest way to score with ancient Greek chicks was to turn yourself into an animal. This was Zeus’ go-to move anyway. Every time Hera turned her back, he was transforming into a swan or a bull or an eagle so he could cheat on his wife with the latest object of his affection. It’s more than a little creepy but it’s not like he could transform himself into someone more handsome or successful. He was ZEUS. That is the top of any social ladder. Still, you’d think word would get around that if a bull showed up in your room and tried to make out with you, it was probably Zeus. Then there was the reverse animal trick, when Zeus turned his crush Io into a heifer to protect her from Hera. Because, when Zeus panics, he panics dumb.
Zeus: hey cutie
Io: no thanks lightning boy
Zeus: crap! my wife! i’ll turn you into a heifer to hide you
Io: because cows are invisible?!? idiot
Taylor Swift: i am so writing a song about this

Always Go To Bed Mad Hera has a 7th degree black belt in grudge holding. If Zeus liked you, and she found out about it, your life as you knew it was over. Hera was all about punishing Zeus’ crushes, but never punishing Zeus. I question this weird passive-aggressive strategy, because her shenanigans never kept Zeus from picking out his next wildlife disguise, but I have to applaud her creativity. In Io’s case-because it wasn’t sucky enough to be capriciously transformed into a cow-Hera decides to give Io her own personal biting horsefly.
Hera: sorry you got turned into a heifer
Io: uh-huh
Hera: nbd but now i am going to have this fly bite you a lot
Io: well this day can’t get any worse
Taylor Swift: squad goals!

Pick Your Battles Hera knew how to go big or go home, so when she got tired of the one-offs of sending bothersome insects after enchanted livestock, she started the Trojan War over losing a golden apple she wanted to Aphrodite. Because the best way to express your disappointment at not getting that golden apple you had your heart set on is to start a war.  Also, make sure it lasts about ten years, so that your husband knows you are completely serious when you tell him you wanted that damn golden apple for your damn self, and he better think twice next time when he takes the golden apple you wanted and lets that hussy Aphrodite waltz off with it. THAT WAS YOUR SHINY APPLE.
Zeus: couldn’t you just send another fly
Hera: i can’t hear you over the sound of not having my apple
Taylor Swift: the song I wrote is already #1!
Zeus: someone turn her into a heifer
Hera: i’m on it
#marriedtoit
Action Items
I need a nap because I wore myself out not spoiling all the good stuff in Fates and Furies. This was my first Lauren Groff book, and I’ve added all her earlier works to my TBR list.

 

The Reason I Check Under The Bed

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Diving into Stephen King’s world means making a lot of sacrifices. Peace of mind, a full night’s sleep, inability to walk by a sewer manhole cover without shuddering in fear—you give up all these things when you read his books. Upon reflection (and I have an actual reflection, in a mirror, because I’m not a vampire, trust me because I check all the time thanks to Salem’s Lot) it’s apparent to me that I am on permanent terror alert because Stephen King has messed with my head.

King’s body of work is rife with brilliant examples of benign takedowns: surface perfection lulls you in, seduces you, then tries to steal your soul or hijack your brain or at the very least disfigure you. He’s so good at it, and he’s scared me so many times, that I have diagnosed myself with Post-Traumatic King Disorder.  It, where an bucolic all-American small town is a front for a hungry spider. The efficient, banal government officials destroying minds and lives in Firestarter. The solid New England Victorian-house-with-a-view in Pet Sematary. King will jack with what you trust and laugh while he does it and he probably has a really creepy laugh and now I have to go make sure there’s nothing waiting to bite my legs off hiding under the table one sec BRB.

Mechanical Terror I honestly don’t know what happened to Stephen King when he was learning to drive because in the Kingverse, cars are out to get you. When I took Driver’s Ed I practiced going over railroad tracks and finding the hazard lights button on the dashboard. In Stephen King’s Driver’s Ed class, apparently he practiced cyborg mechanics and demon possession. Is that what you have to know to operate a Class I Vehicle in Maine? I haven’t trusted a car since Christine, the novel about a car who goes on a vendetta-fueled killing spree to punish her owner’s tormentors. Or  the short story “Trucks” (vehicles come to life and try to make the world a better place HAHAHAHA just kidding they drive over people for sport and turn survivors into fuel slaves). Thanks to Stephen King every car I see has a distinct air of menace. If I see headlights flicker, forget it. I need a drink and a nap to recover from the trauma. Stephen King is the reason that I lobby AAA to add a Roadside Demon Exorcism service.
AAA: hi, what is your car emergency?
Me: my Ford Focus keeps going to karaoke bars
AAA: that seems pretty harmless
Me: IT’S ALL MICHAEL BOLTON SONGS
AAA: a Lounge Demon! we’re sending a team immediately

Furry Terror In the Kingverse, there’s lots of wonderful animals who aren’t trying to eat and/or kill you. And then there’s the mutated rat kingdom in “Graveyard Shift”, which absolutely is trying to eat and/or kill you. Since reading this story, if I make eye contact with a rat I try to smile in a way that says “Please don’t come into my house, restrain me, and drag me to your underground lair so you can eat my extremities.” Thanks a lot, Stephen King. You’ve turned me into a crazy person who tries to make reassuring, non-edible eye contact with rats. My other King-induced animal trauma is a reasonable post-Cujo reaction: AVOID ST. BERNARDS. Naturally, I cancelled all my ski trips to the Swiss Alps.
Switzerland: hello, what is your Alps emergency?
Me: tell the Matterhorn I’m out
Switzerland: what if we offer you free Gruyere
Me: no deal my fondue pot is broken
Switzerland: a Cheese Demon! we’re sending a team immediately

KingMe

If you feel scared, look at this picture of stuffed animals on a pillow covered with cat pictures (NOT MADE OF ACTUAL CATS)

Invisible Terror You know how sometimes you get an itchy patch and you scratch it and it turns out you’re the host for a murderous alien life form, hahaha? That is the kind of hilarity you can expect out of the short story collection Night Shift. Or the laugh riot that is The Stand, where Stephen King forces you to ponder the question “What if everyone gets the exact same virus cold thing at the exact same time and dies, torpedoing key planet infrastructure?” Y’all—I did NOT pay attention that one semester I took Home Ec. I don’t know how to can or sew or color my own hair. I don’t have any viral apocalypse grooming skills actually. Therefore, I have a mild anxiety attack every time I sneeze. Or if anyone sneezes or feels tired or behaves slightly out of character. As an alert citizen, I make sure that the authorities always know about suspicious situations.
CDC: hi, what is your disease emergency?
Me: i just saw a viral video
CDC: can’t actually make you sick
Me: IT WAS HOTLINE BLING
CDC: Drake! we’re sending a team immediately

Indiscriminate Terror This is actually a terror PSA for you. This is the seemingly harmless, but actually near-fatal scenario: You run into me at the grocery store. It’s July and you notice I’m wearing fuzzy snowflake-patterned pajama pants and an old Hootie and the Blowfish tshirt. You greet me heartily. I answer you, but you sense something is just a little off. A small, uneasy feeling takes root in your stomach. Glancing into my basket, you see barbeque potato chips, a vat of french onion dip, a 6-pack of Lima-A-Ritas and a jumbo box of Tampax.
You. Are. In. Danger. Follow your instincts. Don’t make eye contact. Back away slowly. Abandon your cart and get the hell out. Shit is about to get real in a Godzilla-Tokyo kind of way.
Godzilla: Mothra hold my earrings
Mothra: ‘Zilla why you trippin
Godzilla: I ate four cupcakes and I feel bloated and Tokyo looked at me funny
Mothra: PMS makes women so irra-
Godzilla: (eats Mothra)(burps fire)
#kingme

Action Items
Stephen King’s son Joe Hill is also very good at scaring the hell out of you. Read Heart-Shaped Box but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Reason Good Things Come In Threes

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I don’t want to shock you, but I am not a professional book reviewer. It’s hard to tell because of all the profanity and sloppy grammar. I am not sought out by respected book-centered publications to share my book-centered insights. I KNOW RIGHT? Fuckers. In truth, it’s a very good thing, because I am the last person on the planet who should review any newly published book. I have a bit of a problem, shall we say, being succinct. When I’m excited about a book, I don’t want to deliver a high-level, erudite overview.  I accelerate to Mach 10 Fangirl and no detail is too unimportant for me to exhaustively examine. It’s not that I’m trying to ruin your personal reading reveals, it’s that I have no filter combined with the blind exuberance of a Labrador. Usually, by the time I’m done, you don’t need to read the book. Like Twitter during a new episode of The Walking Dead, I am gonna spoil everything.
Me: the dish ran away with the spoon
World: wth you told me the ending?
Me: SO COOL RIGHT

The book I want badly to spoil for you today but I won’t because DISCIPLINE is Kitchens Of The Great Midwest (Viking / Pamela Dorman Books) by J. Ryan Stradal. This book is California-based Stradal’s first novel, and it’s really good, so in all likelihood it will not be his last. In about five years I am going to have to revise this post to include mentions of his two or three equally successful follow-up novels. Frankly, that’s irksome because in five years I planned to be in London on location shooting my Christmas special with guest stars Imagine Dragons and Hannah Hart but whatever. Way to jack my production schedule, J. Ryan Stradal. At any rate, Kitchens of the Great Midwest perfectly juggles a large cast of wonderfully realized characters who enter, exit, and overlap in ever-expanding and ever-shrinking concentric circles centered around Minnesota’s contemporary food culture. I loved reading it and I can’t hold back—MUST MAKE TALK ABOUT KITCHEN BOOK. I’m like Michael Myers. You can shoot me, blow me up, and set me on fire, but I keep showing back up to discuss symbolism and exposition and story structure. I’m an invincible monster not from this world. Fortunately, I am also an inventive genius, because I have hit on a way to go DEFCON 1 with enthusiasm without spoiling. (*bows, graciously accepts MacArthur Grant*)
Me: I’d like to apply for a patent
Patent office: what did you invent
Me: a way to not spoil a book
Patent office: shutting up is not an invention

Plot, point of view, and character development? Spoiler quicksand. But sentences—nice, juicy, standalone sentences-deliver the flavor and feeling of a book without giving away anything. A perfectly structured sentence gives me a case of the vapors. Those sentences that just scream “LOOK AT ME! I’M SO DAMN QUOTABLE!” Yes, you are quotable, you precious little nugget. Come here so I can watercolor you onto some stiff paper. Kitchens of the Great Midwest has lots of perfect sentences. I e-read it and I highlighted (highlit? Highlightered.) so many passages it looks like I had a lipstick fight with my Kindle. I’m sharing three of my non-spoiler favorites. Sentences are the burlesque dancers of my book review strip show—provocative while revealing nothing.

(1)Lars had also grown to become a little wizard in the kitchen, and by his unintentionally mastering the tragic hobby of lutefisk preparation, its potency was skyrocketing.
There should be a word for “being pissed about getting really good at something you never wanted to do in the first place, like making lutefisk”. Actually there probably is a word in German for that, but until we derive one in English, I nominate the phrase “tragic hobby” because it captures that feeling so aptly. I will go even further and suggest that any time I use “tragic hobby”, it should be accompanied by a sad trombone riff. Also, until reading this book, I was ignorant of how lutefisk is prepared. It was a cool thing to learn and I don’t ever want to eat it ever thanks.
Musician: I’m here for the tragic hobby auditions
Me: what are you playing today
Musician: “Walking On Sunshine”
Me: did you even read the job description

(2)They were generous in the way of people running a garage sale who give things away to the folks who come at the end.
Ah, convenient generosity. I love this line in no small part because I PERSONALLY HAVE DONE THIS. I didn’t give the stuff away because I wanted to be generous though. I was too lazy to want to move all my crap back inside. So change “generous” to “lazy” and you have summed up my character and now I am in a shame spiral.
Book: way to make that all about you
Me: I’m using contrast to highlighter the sentence genius
Book: you manufactured a shame spiral so you could drink wine
Me: (takes long sip, nods thoughtfully)

(3)In the Fellowship Hall, a skinny woman in an impertinent white summer dress—no sleeves, low neck, and a cut above the knee-threw an ivory cotton tablecloth over a folding table.
Is there ever a way to win when you’re meeting a new group for the first time? It doesn’t matter how hard you try. You thought you dressed appropriately, but it turns out you’re getting brazen hussy all over the tablecloths. It is really hard to get brazen hussy out of polyester. You have to use holy water and baking soda.
Musician:  do the sad noise now?
Me: yes that would—dude is that an accordion
Musician: yes. for extra sadness
Me: you are so hired

Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an absorbing, charming read. It’s satisfying not just for its perfect sentences, but for elements like the main character that—um, no. Okay so there’s this big dinner party that happens because….ok. Not that either. There is a hilarious skewering of hipster food culture in a…CRAP. NOPE TIME TO STAB ME AND LEAVE ME IN A CLOSET. By all means: assume I’m dead. That worked out for Jamie Lee Curtis.
#sentenced

 

lutefisk

I skipped the first step.

Action items

 

Skip the lutefisk at Thanksgiving

 

The Reason To Circumnavigate

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Due to wine, I ran a 5k in Concord, Massachussetts. Notice I did not say “5k Race”. Other participants were racing. Being neither a natural athlete or a proficient runner, I do not 5k with any designs on competition. My 5k career simply confirms that after two glasses of wine I think I’m capable of anything and am likely to say really dumb stuff like “I’ll sign up for a 5K!” or “I’m starting a blog!” Two glasses of wine is confidence. Three glasses of wine is me demanding hash browns, which goes to prove the old saying “It’s a short distance between confidence and hash browns.”

Concord is a notable location because in the middle of the 19th century, if you were an American writer destined to write Important American Literature, you probably lived here. Or wanted to live here. Or knew people who lived here. I haven’t interviewed all the dead American writers to verify this non-fact but apparently there was a very lovely swim/tennis community with reasonable HOA fees, and that was all it took to get Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott to accept attractive relocation packages and settle in Concord. The result, as everyone knows, is a comprehensive catalog of successful screen adaptations (with the exception of Ralph Waldo Emerson because apparently nobody will greenlight a buddy-cop action version of “Self-Reliance”). Concord is also closely associated with the philosophical movement American transcendentalism, which emphasized spiritual awareness through personal focus on intuition. It’s the third most popular kind of transcendentalism, behind Canadian transcendentalism and Sylvester Stallone movies. For a literary nerdfan, Concord isn’t just a mandatory juice ingredient. It’s a pilgrimage.

The 5k run I found myself “running” is an annual event that benefits The Orchard House, the home where Bronson Alcott settled his family and where his daughter Louisa resided when she wrote her classic of classics, Little Women. Inspired by her own experience, Alcott’s novel chronicles a family’s sacrifices, faith, and devotion to each other as four daughters come of age during the Civil War. It’s charming, moving, and a sweet picture of domestic life. Louisa May Alcott was already a published, prolific author who didn’t really want to write Little Women, but in the way of all things, she is known for Little Women because people are unpredictable jerks who don’t remember you for the stuff you want them to remember you for. The March sisters are beloved by generations of American readers (is there a Buzzfeed “Which March Sister Are You?” quiz? There should be) and Little Women is somewhat of a trancendentalist handbook, stressing self-improvement through good works and self-sacrifice. All that was lost on me, though, because I’ll always know this book (NSFW) as my introduction to house porn. Let’s call it gateway real estate.
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES. RATED MA-FLOORPLAN.

Little Women makes a strong case for family relying on each other to grow, change, and survive in trying circumstances. Whatever! I first read this book when I was in fourth grade and was completely intoxicated by the descriptions of the houses that made up the Little Women world. I sped through the boring “people talking to each other-plot-exposition blah blah” passages and constantly flipped pages to get to the X-rated parts. You know, where Alcott describes in lurid and explicit detail the layout of a garden. Or a comfortable sofa in front of the fireplace. There was a roomy kitchen from which pies emerged regularly, everpresent kittens, and long, long staircases. Alcott’s New England practically glowed with quaint awesomeness and I wanted to roll around in that glow and get alllll dirty.
Book: I have morals you know
Me: tell the part about Laurie’s foyer again
Book: you are really missing the point here

The March sisters did not have a boring, plain old attic. They had a GARRET. The girls and their friends, in various configurations, frequently retreated to the garret to sulk, cry, analyze the works of Charles Dickens, and engage in other puberty-inspired behaviors. As a child of the suburbs, I felt keenly my drab, non-Federalist-style dwelling. The suburbs didn’t hold geographical inspiration, at least not until John Hughes got ahold of them. I grieved for my lack of opportunity to retreat to a garret to contemplate life’s larger questions. If I wanted to retreat somewhere, the best I could do was close both doors on the Jack-and-Jill bathroom. How was I supposed to suffer life’s larger questions in a Jack-and-Jill bathroom?

Like all beautiful houses, the March house only hung out with beautiful other houses. It was part of the infamous Concord Block Posse, and it included the sprawling mansions of both Aunt March and Laurie Laurence. They rolled like posses do: buying designer sunglasses in bulk, spa days, apple picking parties. The March sisters’ New England country life, with its poverty, chores, and day-to-day routines, was grounded and concrete, but with a slightly surreal, idealized edge. Handy wealthy neighbors, for example, who conveniently cover pesky financial needs whenever emergencies arise. Much like a fairy tale, where everything looks just like the real world – until the mirrors start talking.
Mirror: loved your book
Louisa: thanks
Mirror: when those kids go through the wardrobe to Narnia-wow
Louisa: looks like i’m about to have seven years of bad luck

That pristine, model Little Women domicile lived in my imagination for a long time and became my idea of The Perfect House. I gave unsolicited advice to ranch houses: “You’d be so pretty if you just converted the crawlspace over your garage. I know a guy who does great work, looks totally natural. You’ll never be able to tell you got anything done”. I considered subscribing to House Beautiful (just for the articles).  Going to Concord in person for the first time, I was struck by how much the town resembled my imaginary Little Women world. The route for the run winds through beautiful residential sections and people stood in their yards, cheering on the runners and handing out water. The run begins and ends at Alcott Elementary School and goes past The Orchard House. Louisa May Alcott started her story with her view from her window. She took her intimate sphere and threw it wide, making a universe where her readers could dwell too. It made me appreciate how personal geography shapes what anyone ultimately offers the world, whether it’s a book or a philosophical movement. The March sisters inhabit all of the Alcott sisters’ favorite spaces. New England nurtured transcendentalists. (Trancendentalism would never have begun in Florida, because you can’t make a hard left turn there without hitting an alligator and sinking into a swamp. There are zombie roaches there. It’s difficult to embrace the divinity of the individual when the roach you just thought you killed with a rock is now holding the rock and coming back at you.)
Roach: shit just got real
Me: can’t we hug this out
Roach: you want to hug a roach? ick

Running (OKAY, TRUDGING, I GET IT I’M A BAD RUNNER WHY ARE YOU SO STUCK ON THIS) past Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house, I paused to take a quick break. Looking over the solid squareness of the house, I realized: this is probably exactly where Louisa May Alcott stood to take a break when SHE ran 5ks. It gave me goosebumps. I felt positively transcendental.
#straightouttaconcord

Action items: Run a 5k at Orchard House

The Reason I Told The Truth

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In a rare moment of remarkable restraint, I recently answered a question in a single sentence. A short sentence. Nobody was more shocked than I was. Okay maybe EVERYONE who has ever asked me a question was as shocked as I was and to all of you I say, bite me. Miracles are real. Send your thank-you note to J.K. Rowling.

If you have never heard of J.K. Rowling I really don’t know what to say except, when you bought your house under that rock, did the listing say “1BR 1B 0windows”? Harry Potter rules pop culture, and J.K. Rowling made him up. 10 points for Gryffindor! This brilliant woman took the basic arc of puberty and reimagined it as terrifying marches through spider-infested woods, trolls hiding in school bathrooms, and battling evil wizards for world domination. Real adolescence is actually worse than that but nonetheless it’s a thrilling and incredibly relatable story. Harry has besties, stresses over homework, endures a gross cousin, and basically just feels all our feels for seven amazing books.

I was a recovering adolescent when Harry made his debut. It took me a while to discover the books—I think there were three of them by the time they came across my grownup radar. I spent a pleasant solo weekend catching up with what everyone else already knew bingereading all three. It got CRAZY up in there. I had a straight up reading buzz.
Car keys: What are our hot Saturday night plans
Me: READING
Car keys: FFS
Me: Turnt down for books

Harry Potter went rapidly from book series to world domination. Today, you can cosplay in awesome wizard robes, go to a Hogwarts theme park, or eat ear wax-flavored candy. It’s an immersive, escapist experience, the way the best entertainment truly is. It’s a lovely thing to know that your favorite book is something that you can bury yourself in, surround yourself with, and exult in with a huge community of like-minded fans. Harry Potter is so ubiquitous now that for a while I forgot that there was a day, a Saturday on a bingereading weekend, when I finished the first book  and thought, “Well, hell. THAT got all kinds of things right.” I was so engrossed I hadn’t moved in several hours.
Book: Don’t you have to pee?
Me: So bad but first let me compliment you
Book: Not worth a UTI
Me: Book two next! I’m ordering pizza!
Book: Party. Animal.

Young Adult is a tricky genre, mostly because it’s defined by Old Adults. Old Adults can’t stop themselves from telling current Young Adults how to be Young Adult. We got rules. We got advice. We got teachable moments. We got anecdotes and most of them start with “Well when I was your age” and don’t end for several hours. It’s a sincere desire to spare younguns pain and disappointment, I suppose, but it’s hard to remember that there’s a time when people really want to make their own mistakes and have new life experiences. Maybe as a result of this, the kid’s section has a lot of have-a-bad-experience-but-learn-a-great-lesson-and-we-all-get-ice-cream kind of books. They’re a little misleading, because there are a lot of life situations that take more than 100 pages to resolve. Sometimes, for example, it can take seven books.

J.K. Rowling refuses to talk down to her audience. Life in Harry’s world is black and white, sure—there are good wizards, and bad wizards, and they are easy to tell apart because bad wizards tend to announce themselves by saying stuff like “I’M HERE TO MESS UP YOUR HAIR AND THE HAIR OF EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT”. But life is also gray and purple and squiggly. And squiggly isn’t even a color. J.K. Rowling isn’t lying to anyone about any of it. So, yes, you win (you get to go to a great wizard academy with goblin-guaranteed trust fund) but wins aren’t tidy (because your parents are dead and the dude that killed them considers you unfinished business). It’s truth in all its messy and emotional iterations, and beautiful things happen and terrible things happen and embracing all these things unflinchingly is courage, even when you’re knock-kneed with fear.

I know what you are thinking: I am clearly a superenlightened Old Adult who is a renowned Young Adult Whisperer!
Everyone: Yes, we think that
Me: *blushes modestly*
Everyone: ON OPPOSITE DAY
Me: not cool, everyone
I am just as in love with the sound of my own voice and just as convinced that my life wisdom is superior as anyone. In other words, I am full of shit. It’s not that I set out to be a boring blowhard, it’s just that it comes so naturally and we should all use our gifts. (In my defense I’m overtalky and boring with other Old Adults too because consistency is important.)But against all odds, I managed to get out of my own way recently. Here’s how it went down.

My favorite form of exercise is anything dance fitness because it’s a legit way to be a jackass in public. I walked into one of my regular classes a few weeks ago and greeted the instructor, a personal friend. She in turn introduced me to her 11-year-old niece, who was visiting from out of town. My friend asked her niece if she wanted to take the class and I invited her to come stand by me. NOPE. I tried to encourage her with allll the words, but NOPE NOPE NOPE. Not that I blamed her. Booty shake with a room full of strange adults? In the words of Sigmund Freud, “Hell naw”.

Dance fitness is lively-there’s lots of whooping and silliness and Pitbull. It’s hard to resist and about four songs in, I looked up to see my friend’s niece signaling me over. Thinking she was ready to dance, I made some room, but she shook her head. She had a question. Glancing at the sweaty crowd on the floor behind me gleefully doing the pony and airspanking, she looked at me and said:
“Aren’t you SHY?”
It stopped me. Cold. My first thought was “Damn, how did she know?” She was clearly self-conscious and anxious about looking like a fool in front of a lot of people. She needed to hear it would be okay to take a chance. It’s hard to be shy. I opened my mouth and took the big breath in so I could give her the 2 minute answer about how it didn’t matter if I was shy, and it’s fun, and you get used to it, and overcome adversity, and then High School Musical happens when you just try! Then..in that pause, I reminded myself that I’d been asked a question. And I just needed to fucking answer it. So I did.
“Yes, I am-but I do this anyway.”

workout

A well-stocked workout bag includes water, extra socks, and emotional intelligence.

That was it. There were no follow-up questions. She came out on the floor with me and I had an awesome little partner for the rest of the class. I had truth and she had courage, and that made us wizards. It was fun on the shy side of the room. Sometimes, the angel on your shoulder looks just like J.K. Rowling, and then you do the Nae Nae.
Sofa: you read two books, what now
Me: gonna read another one
Sofa: yay! I got your ass groove ready
Me: be right with you
Car keys: y’all are LAME
#bingereading

Action Items:
Check out J.K. Rowling’s marvelous crime fiction, published under the name Robert Galbraith.

The Reasons You Know You’re As Amazing As Tobias Menzies Probably Is

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The reason you know that you, without any doubt at all, are amazing is because I am ignoring you. I’ll prove it—right now, look at me. See? I won’t make eye contact with you. In fact I am planning my exit because your sheer fabulousness is overwhelming. Don’t feel badly about it, because I will do that exact same thing to Tobias Menzies when and if I ever cross paths with him and don’t you feel special being in the same boat as Tobias Menzies? When is the last time you could ever say, “I was treated exactly the way Tobias is treated”? Now you can. You’re fucking WELCOME.

Speaking on behalf of the functionally shy: interacting with people makes us nervous. Not as nervous as tree full of machete-wielding spiders, but absolutely not remotely as relaxing as a baby sloth holding a winning lottery ticket. I am a hot mess at any gathering of two or more people. My inability to navigate social situations with grace and my tendency to confuse charming with loud guarantee that I leave a lot of people wondering “WTF? Was I talking to a T-Rex wearing false eyelashes? How the hell does a T-Rex even put ON false eyelashes?” It’s not entirely my fault. I have to talk that loudly to hear myself over my inner monologue. “Is this how people talk to each other? Did I say that correctly? Have I already told this story? OMG SHUT UP SHUT UP YOU ARE SCARING PEOPLE. I wonder if I have food on my boobs. How can I check without looking like I’m checking for food on my boobs?*” Needless to say, maintaining narcissism at this advanced level takes dedication and training, and you should not attempt it without stretching first and consulting with a stunt coordinator. I’m a professional. Ignoring you is just easier. For both of us.
*For the record there is no way to check for food on your boobs without looking exactly like you are checking for food on your boobs. Doing this brings everyone’s attention to the fact that you’re the kind of person who cannot get through a meal without getting food on her boobs. I don’t really mind boob attention, but not the attention where people are wondering “Is that a chunk of fish or is she wearing a nametag? I can’t tell.” It’s likely a fish chunk, particularly if the special was mahi.

What I’m saying is, I’m ignoring you because I have a complicated relationship with one of my favorite books, A Wrinkle In Time. “It was a dark and stormy night.” With that borrowed, sly sentence, Madeline L’Engle busts out a mindbender of a book that I first read when I was six and have read since then (according to math) a whole bunch of times. The story introduces the adventures of the extraordinary Murry family. The Murry parents are brilliant scientists, and the father’s experiments in physics have imprisoned him on a hostile planet. Sister and brother dream team Meg Murry and Charles Wallace Murry -along with their friend Calvin- work to save him and the Earth from evil forces while establishing interplanetary diplomatic relationships and learning to time travel. And they get their homework done and make it back in time for dinner. It was all stuff that looked great on their college applications.
Me: I’m here about the Murry family opening?
Recruiter: Great! Skillset is assertive, bold, and confident
Me: Butterflies startle me
Recruiter: Thanks for coming in

As much as I wanted to be, I just wasn’t Team Murry material. The core competencies I brought to the table were ‘awkward’, ‘jumpy’, and ‘big vocabulary’, but damned if Madeline L’Engle hadn’t covered that too. Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit are the book’s friendly space warrior versions of MacBeth’s three witches. Non-Earthling veterans of the ongoing war against darkness, they manifest in absurd physical personas to recruit the intrepid Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin into battle. The ladies are depicted as having as great fun choosing their human characteristics-wacky clothes, crazy hats. I had a particular affinity for the bookish, quiet Mrs. Who. She prefers hanging back from the crowd, carefully observing the people around her, and communicates in quotations because she finds it a challenge to articulate her thoughts. YUP. You go, gurl. More accurately, shrink into the background and never directly approach people you really want to get to know but can’t bring yourself to talk to, gurl.
Me: Do you have any other openings?
Recruiter: Are you good at math?
Me: (tap dances)
Recruiter: I hate this job

I’d never read a book that legitimizes quirky characters the way A Wrinkle In Time does. Madeline L’Engle is incredibly nurturing of eccentricities. Mrs. Who isn’t flashy, and she isn’t spunky, the way most of the female protagonists I was familiar with from kid’s books were. Nancy Drew? I’m looking at you with your shiny convertible and your hair that was always perfect EVEN THOUGH YOU DROVE A FUCKING CONVERTIBLE. Laura Ingalls Wilder, I’m looking at you too. Way to conquer the frontier and all but if you’d dropped me on the prairie with nothing more than a wagon and a calico apron I’d be dead in a week. Mrs Who doesn’t fit the mold, any mold. She’s very much her own being, but it’s her insight and advice-and that classic smart nerd accessory, her gleaming, glinting spectacles-that allow Meg to retrieve her father from his prison on the evil planet Camazotz. She makes her contribution because of who (GET IT) she is, not in spite of it. (DID YOU SEE THAT SUBTLE PRONOUN JOKE)
Me: I can make pronoun jokes
Recruiter: Um, thanks
Me: I do observational humor on all parts of speech
Recruiter: We’ll keep your resume on file

As a now fully formed adult introvert, I recognize that 1. I don’t have alien time-travel powers that allow escape from social interactions and 2. Cave dwelling as a hermit isn’t a good option for me because I prefer indoor plumbing and indirect rock lighting does not flatter my complexion. Therefore, I occasionally have to do an impression of a person with good social skills. I do my best, but usually I end up in a corner, propping up a wall like a well-accessorized load-bearing column, watching all the people I’d love to meet and talk to in conversation circles that appear both Alqonquin-y and Round Table-y. Trying to keep it cool makes me a little twitchy, and I know I’m prone to conversational blunders. I’m just trying to figure out the rules on this planet. It takes me a while to work up my nerve. When that happens, I’m likely to appear in front of you, quote something obscure, hand you something shiny, and leave before you have chance to respond. Honestly, it’s all I can manage. It means you’re totally fucking amazing.

As talented as I am at making up shit to worry about, I’m not worried that I will ever have to avoid Tobias Menzies in person. He doesn’t follow me on Twitter, we live in different countries, and he’s not invited to Thanksgiving at my sister’s this year. Frankly, it’s a relief. He’s clearly smart, funny, and British, and that is too much for me to process coherently in public. But I swear, if by chance I ever sit next to him on a plane, I am going to ignore him. I am going to ignore him so hard.
#teammrswho

 

 

menzies

Puppybait me all  you want, I’m not making eye contact

 

 

Action Items
Explore the ways Tobias Menzies can entertain you here.