Eavesdropping

It’s my favorite thing to do, next to people watching. The best part is eavesdropping and people watching go hand in hand. The thing is...I am starting to do it with my own group of friends. Which, to be honest is a bit awkward when I am trying to be engaged with the new group. For example, lately I have found myself restless in social situations, which is very unlike me. I can be having a perfectly nice conversation with someone, and I find myself eavesdropping on the conversation next to me. How can I expect to get to know anybody if I don’t listen to anyone? I used to pride myself in listening, and now I can’t seem to focus. It’s like I have a hierarchy of people I want to get to know, and if I am spending time talking to one person, but a person higher up on the list is sitting next to me talking to someone else, I try and wiggle my way into their conversation. It’s ridiculous and disingenuous. Being new to a group is not easy for me, but I should know you can’t become part of a group’s history over night, or ever...really. It is too difficult. All you can do is keep hanging around, creating your own memories with people. Eventually, you are part of the group by default. I just need to recognize that I can’t listen to or rank my way into a group of people. I just need to be myself and the rest will come. God knows it has already gotten a lot better. It just takes time.

Entitlement

I was listening to an NPR broadcast the other day and someone had done a piece on the young generation, that I guess I am considered a part of, and how we were born and socialized to believe we are entitled to certain things, no questions asked. They were using examples with the context of higher education. A younger professor was getting a lot heat from students and parents alike for his grading system. Students thought that if they did all the required reading and attended classes on a regular basis, they should receive an A. The teacher argued these were the requirements for the class, resulting in a C. C is average and when you do just the required elements, students shouldn't be rewarded with a higher grade.

When I thought about it, that is totally true. When I was in school I was always disappointed when I wasn't given an A for what I thought was a good effort. The thing is, I am not sure there are still those students who ask for extra credit, or even know what or how to go above and beyond what is in the curriculum. I don't even know that grades are packaged that way anymore. I don't think packaged is the right word... but you know what I mean. I was a 3.5 GPA in college and I don't know that I did more than I thought I needed to do for those grades. The thing is I also studied abroad in college and my GPA suffered for my semester overseas. I wonder if it is not only a generational thing, but a ethnocentric thing as well.

However, I was conflicted because I did agree with the teacher. As a rule of thumb, in life, rewards come when they are earned. They shouldn't come because they are expected. However, with the first year of my professional career behind me and no ladder climbing to speak of... I am starting to wonder if I feel like I have done more than I have, and I in fact haven't done enough. I don't by any means think I am entitled to a pay raise or a title bump if I haven't earned it. I wonder what grade I am getting?

My generation, generally speaking, does have an entitlement problem. I am just not sure we can be broken of it like biting our nails or smoking. Sex within the first few dates seems to be an expectation. Higher salaries starting out seems to be an expectation. Cars at 16, affordable health care, student loans...all of it. Fill out a form and you shall receive. I wonder how this will affect the world when our generation starts having kids. Will we instill the same expectations to them, or start the pendulum swinging the other way?

Love Hurts

I have on many occasions said that I get irrationally involved in things that take place on stages and screens, but it has recently come to my attention that the feeling I long for more than any in the world is to be in pain. Not real physical pain, but the pain that comes from being hurt by someone you care about so much, that you feel like you are dying inside. I know this feeling has been over romanticized by the medium aforementioned...but the thing is... it's also real. I have felt it before in my teens and my twenties and for some masochistic reason, I want to feel it again. There is something pure and unabated about the desperation that cannot be replicated by other heart-wrenching events. It is vulnerability and strength. It is control and the loss of it. It is beautiful.

Yawning

A friend of mine told me her theory on why yawning is contagious and I think it is the best one I have heard yet.

People by nature are selfish or at least survivalists. When you see someone yawning, your brain registers it as someone else stealing the air you are breathing. So it is an involuntary reaction to try and get it back.

Makes total sense to me.

T-shirt.

I think someone at threadless or palmer's cash or whoever makes t-shirts soon have ones that talk about the economy.

My best idea so far.

I'll stimulate your package.

Gross. I know.

Fuel Prices

I think it's a little strange that you have to pay a fuel charge when taking a cab. If I wanted to pay for gas I would use my own car. I realize fuel prices are probably taking their toll on cab drivers across the United States... but again if I wanted to pay for gas I wouldn't be using other transportation options.

Death

She was sitting alone on a park bench. Wondering why they always have scenes in movies where people sit alone on park benches. In real life no one sits down on the opposite end and talks to you. If they do it’s usually a homeless guy who just wants your spare change. She could name a few movies where the homeless guy actually ends up being the oracle of the protagonist’s destiny, but the chances of that happening today were about as slim as her staring in one of those very movies. When she woke up this morning it wasn’t to a musical score or the voice of an omniscient narrator. In fact she didn’t wake up at all.

Where did all the time go, she wondered? It seemed like yesterday when she was sitting on a park bench, free of her gravity ridden and sun dyed body. Ambition and wanderlust radiating from her core. She had her whole life ahead of her. Now her life was behind her. The path less traveled because it was her path to tread.

There is no white light. She isn’t hovering over her body. She isn’t dressed in an awful black frock that her children pulled from the back of her closet. The one they thought was modest and understated, but itched like barbed wire. She is sure they mean well. Doesn’t everyone mean well when you are dead? Unless you are one of those lucky people who leaves behind an estate that your family thinks is worth fighting for. She wasn’t one of those people. She left them memories and a modest black frock in the back of her closet.

There is no blinding light or pearly gates. There is a park bench. A place to sit and contemplate all the things she never got to do, all the great things she did get to do and all the things she never even thought to do. Her thoughts slip out of her brain like the seeds floating from a dandelion. Carried away and falling somewhere to start a life of their own. Her brain is clean. The voices in her head are so much clearer. Perhaps because they aren’t her voices. They are the voices of those who knew her, loved her, were drawn to her or have an obligation to someone who falls into one of the aforementioned categories.

Her son-in-law wants her to know that he never thanked her for giving him someone to love, but he always meant to. Her granddaughter just wants to get out of these tights. Her old boss wonders why he never tried to screw her in the copy room; he always thought she had nice legs. Her therapist is thinking about his father. Her best friends are telling a story from college, a story that til now, her children had never heard. Her daughter wants just one more day with her. Her son wonders what else he didn’t know. Her dog can’t smell her anymore.

She hears the words in no particular order.
Had one of the best laughs. Took her sweet time. Nagged and nagged. Smelled like jasmine. No, no it was lilies. Remember that time. Looked great in red. Red was her color. Goofy. Remind me of. Uptown Girl. She never got to go. I love you. I love you. I love you. I . . . loved you. I loved you. I loved you.

Her husband thinks it won’t be long now until he is sitting on the opposite side of a park bench. He always said he couldn’t live with her, but he knew he definitely couldn’t live without her.

She wonders how he knows about the park bench. She is still sitting on the park bench. The air is filled with the voices of those she left in her wake. She wonders how he knows about the park bench.

This still isn’t a movie. It isn’t her movie. But she thinks in spite of the circumstances, it’s nice to sit on a park bench wondering what it would be like to be sitting on a park bench in the movies, waiting for the leading man to come along and sit on the opposite side. He won’t be her oracle or her omniscient narrator because he is something infinitely better. He was a witness to her life. He is her witness. She smiles, knowing that when he comes they will sit in contented silence because there is nothing they didn’t get to say. A park bench and silence. That is her heaven.