That's what she said

Almost two weeks ago, Seth and I moved into a new apartment in Brooklyn. The bathroom doesn't have a sink and we don't have internet, but we have our own rooms, so we're pretty satisfied.

I went away to Kirksville for a week, which I plan to give its due attention later. When I got back, I found to my dismay that the gentleman who was supposed to have hooked up our internet was in fact not a gentleman at all, but a douche, who was surly to my roommate and gruffly remarked that there were X amount of things that he needed before he could connect us to the system of tubes that supplements our post-collegiate procrastination. He told Seth to make a date for the next week.

There is a smattering of wireless connections floating around our space. They are all password-protected and typically-labeled, save one: a saucy unsecured network dubbed Tompkins Is Pussy. It might as well be named Carmen Sandiego, for it is as elusive as it is alluring. In our desperation for convenient Facebook, Seth and I asked our English-speaking neighbors what internet services they used and how good the connection was.

A friend of ours knew someone on the first floor, and he said, "Yeah, Steve's been on Tompkins Is Pussy, but it doesn't last very long, and it's really hard to connect to."

Without even thinking.

It's like ten thousand spoons whan all you need are your hands and tongue back

Usually I'm not very good at spotting these things, but nonetheless it seems ironic that I would move to a big city to find acting work, only for my first show to be directed by Truman alumni.

It seems similarly ironic that I would get to play Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, a play that I've never studied in any of my classes and had never read on my own. Not just I-was-supposed-to-read-it-for-class-but-I-had-to-label-every-song-in-my-iTunes-by-genre-and-scrub-the-toilet not studying; it wasn't even covered by the curriculum. I skimmed it when I was preparing, but I considered it as equally valuable to brush up the plays with which I was more familiar, and since there were more of those, that task vacuumed up more time.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Not a bit.

Small (Town) World

The stage manager led me into the room where I was supposed to read for Katharina in Taming of the Shrew with two other people. There was a blond lady, a man in his late twenties, and a dark-haired lady whose name I knew was Sabrina. I got ready to begin the scene.

"Let's see, first of all, Meredith...." They pointed at me like I was the perpetrator in a police lineup. I gulped. "You went to Truman!" The man and Sabrina threw their arms up in celebration.

"Yeah, yeah! Who went to Truman?" I asked.

"We did!" they both responded. Joy surged through my every capillary.

"What year?"

"Two thousand one," the man replied. "It'd be right before you came, so I think Alan Altmansberger would be still around that you know."

"I totally know Alan! Do you know Randy Bame?" I exclaimed.

"Hell yeah I know Randy Bame!" he laughed.

"What's your name?" I asked him.

"Brian Waters," he said.

"Oh! I've heard of you!" It rang a heavenly choir of bells; this guy played a key role in many of Randy's tales of the olden days when he first started working in the auditorium.

Suddenly, I didn't feel quite so nervous anymore.

Dry Land and Dry Wit: Reflections Upon Leaving Kirksville

The summer before I was a sophomore was when I really started living in Kirksville, beginning the Truman Week that two freshman dropped out due to heat-related dissatisfaction. That summer I spent a week in Scotland, three months at Taco Bell flirting with a manager two years older than I was, and one humbling night drunk off my ass for the first time. I moved in my off-campus apartment on one of the more sweltering days, watching the highway evolve into town as I drove in along 63, the convenience stores and billboards springing from the cement like ruins from the desert. I referred to that stretch of road as the Path of Despair because I'd frequently returned home to St. Louis every few weeks and every Sunday I would inevitably take my place in a long line of cars savoring every last second that they were not in Kirksville. I had less than twenty dollars in my bank account and spent most of it that afternoon on a fan and Pop-Ice from Wal-Mart.

Come December, I was typing my papers in gloves, a sweatshirt, my robe, socks and slippers, with a blanket around my shoulders because the cold was so fierce and I had no thermostat, only a musty heating grate that ran for five minutes and shut off for thirty. I left my window open over winter break to air out my apartment and made $400 working at Taco Bell that month. At the end of the break, my landlady informed me in broken English that my pipes had frozen and created $400 worth of damage.

The memory of Kirksville is shaped by two forces: the weather and the dust. They are the constants, and everyone and everything I have experienced since that first sweaty day have been variables victim to their command. The dust on the side of the road, the dust that makes up the unpaved roads, the dust unearthed by ceaseless construction and costly attempts at improvement, the dust that forms a fine film on the windowsill and bookshelf, the dust that forms soft gray balls; so soft it made me gag to have to touch them and throw them away. The dust that clung to my sweat when I walked along the uneven and potholed sidewalks in July and formed a different fine film on my flesh: a glutinous one I tried to wipe away but only suceeded in redistributing, one that traps in the heat and reappeared an hour after showering. One I shared with others, through contact of arms, legs, hands, and lips. It's salty. It makes you thirsty. It makes you weary. It makes you lonely and lascivious; and come the cooler blue-gray twilight, this intoxicating sultry dust-paste is a double-edged aprodisiac, gluing you drunkenly to another as stickily passionate.

The population of Kirksville, a town touched by farms on all four sides, is less than the sudent body of Mizzou, a college campus in Columbia, the nearest legitimate metropolis. It's a town that consists of Townies, who have been and will be in Kirksville forever, and Students, whose two largest fears are running out of money and getting stuck in Kirksville, the first of which inevitably exacerbate the chances of the second. Its motto is "Where the People Make the Difference," and the unintentional truth of that is in order to achieve anything, whether it be goals, creature comforts, basic human need, or even fun, you had to be intelligent and ingenious enough to make it happen yourself. You got by with a little help from your friends. I've met and spent time with some of the greatest people in the world in Kirksville, MO, whether they were born there or just passing through for four-plus years. I've learned as much from them as I have from my college education and loved them as only a twentysomething girl with few responsibilities can love. Every once in awhile a townie would give you a huge break or help you out. I got a job at JavaCo and hundreds of dollars worth of painting sold when Jan Collins found out I was a nice girl with an artsy streak. The lady at For the Fun of It conducted last-minute business with me for green hair dye without even meeting me face-to-face, leaving the products I needed by the back door when we discovered our schedules didn't match up for me to peruse the store. The lady at Hidden Treasures offered me her house to stay at when she learned that I'd be staying at friends' houses a month before leaving town. And then there were the rat bastards who made your life miserable. My first boss at Travelers Inn was a drunk who regularly passed out in various places around the building and who was recently indicted on multiple drug felony charges. The schizophrenic lady on the first floor of my apartment tried to beg change off me when she was sober, and when she was drunk she would gibber at the walls, blast her music, and call me a whore. The human experience was what made your life unique, because you sure as hell weren't going to get your kicks from clubs or museums. There weren't any.

Such a microcosm doesn't teem with activity or have regular bursts of energy. Rather, it breathes. It sighs with the seasons shifting, pants during party weekends, gasps during finals week, and occasionally holds its breath and lets it out in a whoosh like a mischievous child who is learning the meaning of tension and release. The dust shifts with the flow to other places and other forms. It stays in the air with the October gusts just enough to keep it warm and remind you of summer's irresponsible rascalous freedom. Kirksville exhales, the weather changes; it inhales, the weather changes back. It's the most dynamic time of the year. Ambition is still fresh, I could comfortably walk everywhere I needed, I could wear a jacket if I wanted but could get away without it, and I had all the time in the world. My birthday was in September. October was the most fun. I started dating almost all of my boyfriends in early November. My best semesters were the firsts.

With time, the dying summer breezes rest, the dust settles. The dust on the windowsill grows thicker before the dropping temperature forces you to close the window for the next several months, and the dust outside freezes with the ground or mixes with the snow when it falls, forming an insufferable sludge. With the arrival of January came also the realization that Hell was not fire and brimstone; Hell was a Kirksville winter. When we got hit with snow it was more like an artillery assault, and when there was no precipitation the north windchill made it unbearable to leave my apartment for any reason. It made any sort of movement desperate, and only as much as necessary. Winter is isolating. It is claustrophobic. Instead of bringing people together to salvage warmth, it drove us apart; almost any interaction chipped away at sacred personal space of which they had already been so robbed. My seasonal depression reached its zenith around mid-February. Most of my romances deteriorated around March.

I've often wondered if it is beacuse of, or in spite of the size of the town that its residents have the relationship with it that they do. The citizens are obsessed with themselves as a part of the town; there are endless Kirksville-pride events, homages to a near-nonexistant history, and activities designed for the betterment and enjoyment of "the community." It's also a town with an income gap larger than I think anyone could fathom. In the span of a few miles, I've walked from the two-story houses along Halliburton that most likely belong to the professors, dentists, doctors, and small business owners, to the housing projects by PC Mills park in the southwest corner of town where every child has a parent either in jail, dead, on welfare, or on drugs. There are self-supporting farmers who sell their apples and brownies on the square on Saturday mornings, Amish famillies with cell phones at Wal-Mart, and supposed meth labs in the woods. I think they all talk about "community" without really knowing or considering at the time what all that community consists of.

The townies love it, and the students hate it; they hate it for its lack of entertainment when the unforgiving winter locks them quickly inside; they hate it when the dependence on human interaction affects them negatively; they hate the noisy frat across the street and how the community theatre only does cheap-laugh comedies, and fucking Wal-Mart; and they hate the fear of being stuck there. And yet sometimes they grow to love the town too, when the warm breeze makes the rainbowed leaves tornado in the fall, or when the silly child finally lets his breath out and spring blows in with tepid, overdue gusts and warm spittle drizzling the yellowed grass to life.

Kirksville casts a strange spell over some. Once I lived there year-round, I realized the small things I found lacking in St. Louis, such as walking to work, or biking on dirt roads with Randy, or old bridges and railroad tracks and how fun it was to climb up to them and have a cigarette with Rachel, Christian, and Eric, or how the sky was so thick with stars on clear nights that I could finally understand why and how the Greeks invented constellations, and how beautiful those constellations looked when walking in the dark with Jared. I began to breathe with the town, inhaling the same dust as the grizzled barbers and groomed businessmen. The same dust that Kirksvillians have been breathing for decades, the dust that settled in the lungs of the Beards and Floyds and McClains and Goulds, rooting them inexorably to the ground that they were eventually buried beneath, and the dust they became part of themselves. The dust grounded me as well, weighing me down as I consumed and washed off years of deteriorated particles of iron ore, failed crops, and generations of corpses, and I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay in Kirksville because I lived there year-round; I'd known it in all its capricious seasons; I'd tasted its bitter monotonous savor mixed with my own sweat; I had a steady job and a role in the community theatre and all my friends still went to school there. Highway 63 had long since ceased being "the Path of Despair" because I rarely left town and I couldn't wait to get back when I did. I was happy, and my greatest fears were running out of money and not being happy.

I think the fact that my plans to leave superseded that contentment was due to understanding that the greatest portion of my happiness was tied to a facet of the town that did not wish to be a permanent part of it. My friends would eventually leave, and with every passing year I would be more entrenched within the town, both hating and adoring my cramped, repetitive universe in 365-day cycles until I was no more than another common name on another headstone.

So I left, right before the leaves started turning, before the temperatures plunged into oblivion, but after I had one more summer of sweat and dust and heady squalor. I miss my friends, and what they're doing that I'm not able to be a part of. I dream about them, and the stupid, fucking, self-obsessed town that I learned to love. I'm still coughing up dust from all the bike rides and bridge climbs, brushing it off myself after being yanked up from the ground but unable to find another place to set root. Though I know that years out of the Midwest, in sundry times and diverse places, I will still be shaking it out of my hair and clothes, and I'll remember those breathless October days in Northeast Missouri.

Goodbye, Dukum Tuesday

Last night was my last Tuesday Night Karaoke With Wendy.

It passed quickly, which is either indicative of how much fun I had (the amount of which surpassed the weight of a herd of T-Rexes on Jupiter) or Wendy's reluctance to start karaoke without Ron and Randy being there right at the beginning. Both are probably true.

Clint came with two CDs full of downloaded karaoke songs, most of which I would have loved to sing. I chose "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles because it made me the happiest. I made requests for Clint to sing "Born to Run," Jared to sing "The Lady is a Tramp," and Aaron to sing "Come to Papa." Due to the enormous volume of patrons, however, the only one that happened was the first.

I sipped two Bloody Marys full of vegetables while Randy sang "The One," Jason sang "New York State of Mind," and Max sang "Your Song."

I bought Justin a drink in exchange for him singing "Other Side," convinced Liz put in a song, and hated myself for perpetuating all that "You just have to sing!" crap which I despise.

I never had time to step outside. I never got to talk to Gina, Ron's wife, and tell her I was leaving in a week.

Jared, Aaron, and Clint collaborated on "Hey Jude." It's one of my favorite memories.

I put down "New York, New York" to be my second song despite the potential cheese factor, but due to a special request from Dereck, Wendy changed it to "Don't Stop Believing."

Karaoke in Kirksville is strange. It becomes a cultish habit. I feel particularly queasy at the moment for even devoting a post to a topic so shallow as this, even more so for actually listing the songs. I don't know why it's such a big deal other than that it's an excuse to socialize on a weekday and this condition is recognized among my immediate aquaintances; I don't know why I've gone almost every week for the past two and a half years and it's become a ritual steadfast enough to make plans around, other than that for every night that is gratingly lame, there is one that becomes a warm beery haze or laughing stumbles to my apartment afterwards. But like everything else, for better or worse, I'll miss it when it's gone.

Come Fly With Me

I was walking towards the square tonight and saw a small brown lump on the sidewalk under a streetlamp. At first it looked like a frog, but when I approached it closer, it turned out to be a bat. I don't know how bats are supposed to move, so I'm not sure if he was hurt or just learning to fly, but this one couldn't get very far off the ground. I saw him hop, scuddle, and occasionally flap up a few inches into the air in the grass.

Once, he stopped moving for a several uncomfortable moments, and I was shocked at the thought that I might have just seen him die.

He moved his head around, though, and continued scurrying to the steps of the nearest building, crawled up the wall and across the stoop. I let him be after that point. I'd never seen anything like that up close, or at least, up close and not in a cage.

I can only write when that madman is staring down at me.

I was going to write something funny about how I moved all my stuff out of my apartment but I'm still in Kirksville, and now I'm a homeless bum living off the charity of friends, and I'm going to try and see if I can sleep in a different place every night. Then, as I was carrying my computer monitor to my car on the third carful of boxes I took to Rachel and Nick's, I saw a lady dumpster diving in the garbage bin behind the apartment, filling a baby carriage with salvageable rubbish, and I didn't really feel like it anymore.

You can't take it with you.

I'm in the process of either selling, giving away, or throwing out all of my posessions that are too expensive or cumbersome to transport to New York when I move in a couple of weeks. My progress feels a little counterproductive at times; my Stuff Ratio of Purged to Gained is about 2:1.

Case in point: I need enormous suitcases to house my massive apparel collection, since I might as well make my two bags that I am allowed to check on the flight as large as possible. After weeding out my closet for a painful second and third time, I managed to produce another garbage bag or two for the Salvation Army. This past Tuesday, Liz Vanderhoof came into town with a suitcase full of beautiful clothes to sell at the now-nonexistent The 'Ville, which she didn't know had closed down. I offered to buy some if she threw in the suitcase, which she agreed to. So now I have a suitcase, which won't hold as much as it could because now I have more clothes. Not as many as I threw out, but more nonetheless. I was able to throw out all my plastic CD jewel cases, but doing so required me to buy a CD binder. There are socks and books and trinkets that I need to return to friends, and other items I'll be shipping, but to do so I have to stock up on boxes.

I had to sell all of my Anne of Green Gables books. I haven't been able to let go of any stuffed animals yet. Sarah, Carley, and Jessica are getting my microwave, Nick might be buying my car, and I'm selling the furniture back to Hidden Treasures. This all feels a little morbid. "I want you to have my colored pencils. And to you, I leave my plastic storage bins and empty tubs." Like I know that I'm dying and I'm writing my will about who's getting what when I'm not around anymore.

Kirksville Nursing Homes: Helping the Elderly Die Quicker for Thirty-Five Years

My first real class in months and I'm almost late.

My boss at JavaCo offered to pay for a class in food safety at the Vocational Tech school for all that were interested in being certified. It was the five of us, some kids that worked at a concession stand, some ladies that worked at a nursing home, one of the owners of the Wooden Nickel, and a few other women that I wasn't sure where they worked but they said they made Sloppy Joes.

We watched an informational video that claimed to have "Real People! Real Situations!" but in fact featured worse acting than I've seen in the entire library of the Taco Bell instructional tapes and enough flashing font and synthesized techno beats to make the 80's blush. Most of the facts they presented were common sense bits I'd already known. Our instructor gave us a packet and a lecture, which covered word-for-word everything that was in the packet, and then a test, for which we got to use the packet. She tried to scare us with personal eyewitness accounts of times she's been out eating and witnessed unsanitary food preparation, but confessed that she was always reluctant to say something because she was afraid they would spit in her food. The other middle-aged women nodded and shared some tales of their own, and the two ladies who worked at the nursing home candidly spilled the beans about how there are some things they should be doing "in theory," but they don't get done.

I aced the test, which was ridiculously easy.

I realize food safety is important, and that e.coli, botulism, and salmonella are significant and possible threats, but I think that if I spent as much time paranoid about it as some are, I would lose my mind, never get any orders made on time, and develop the weakest immune system known to man. That, and I think the amount of instances that they recommended I wash my hands would cause me to either develop OCD or at the very least remove several layers of dermis.

At least I don't live in a nursing home. A reassurance on many levels not even having to do with food safety.

Absolut Zukini

I've been commissioned by one of the bakers at JavaCo to paint flowers on the walls of her chicken coop. It's a bigger ordeal than I had originally thought--it took me over six hours to finish one side. In addition to monetary payment, though, she gave me four zucchini, a mess of green beans, and invited me to raid her garden whenever I visited to paint. I had no knowledge of how to prepare zucchini, outside of my usual dip-it-in-honey-mustard-sauce-and-consume-raw routine, but one of the ladies at the pool was kind enough to offer a recipe basic enough to remember offhand and not require any ingredients that I wouldn't be able to use in anything else.

Today, also at said pool, I was talking to the kid who wears Forrest Gump-style braces on his legs. After showing me his "trick" (a tidal wave splash, then going underwater, holding his breath, and wiggling around), he announced, "I have a really, really, really big zucchini."

"That's cool. Did you grow it?"

"Yeah."

"Are you going to eat it?"

"No. It's too much for us to eat. We might give it away. Maybe to you." He laughed, then splashed, went underwater, held his breath, and wiggled around.

He was probably joking, but I couldn't help imagine what I would do with this bounty of zucchini that has been bestowed upon me, and why I was chosen to receive its glorious healthful plentitude. I pictured my refrigerator overflowing with vegetation as I'd attempt zucchini cakes, zucchini smoothies, chicken-fried zucchini, zucchini chips, zucchini-stuffed zucchini, zucchini dog food, zucchini vodka. I'd shake my fist at Providence with every well-intentioned gift while simultaneously offering a weary thanks, because at the moment I'm out of honey mustard sauce and I could really use a drink that began with Z.

My Iron Lung

I wanted to go to a bar yesterday evening before the smoking ban went into effect in Kirksville and no one would be able to have a cigarette within ten feet of any public property. Unfortunately, I forgot what day it was and missed out.

Before the resolution passed, I got conned into being in a political ad for it when I actually was opposed to it. I smoke when I feel like it, which is very seldom, and one of the reasons I don't do it oftener is because it's hell on your health. I wasn't against banning cigarettes in public at all, but I thought the decision should be left up to the individual property owners, who pay the taxes on their buildings and businesses, not the whole of the town dictating to the few. If the owners cared about public health, then it'd be on their conscience whether or not to allow smoking in their building.

My boss knew I acted, so she asked if I wanted to be in a commercial. I said yes, and she told me that all I had to do was hand a cup of coffee to my co-worker, who was pretending to be a customer, while she read a five-second pitch from the script. The crew set up the lights and camera and she practiced reading. When I overheard her rehearse, "We became a smoke-free restaurant five years ago," I balked.

"Umm. I think I might have to decline being in this after all," I told her.

"You don't have to decline," she smiled most diplomatically, with a resolve that would have reinforced the Berlin Wall. I sighed, and when the cameras were rolling, handed the cup of coffee uncomfortably over and over and over the counter to Patrick, an equally unwilling participant, until the KTVO crew called one a winner.

I never saw it, but I'm sure it did wonders because the resolution passed. I figured I'd salvage my wounded activism by sticking it to the man anyway and putting the commercial on my acting résumé.

And Rachael Ray Shot JFK

I've never been particularly worried about things like Mad Cow Disease or e. coli outbreaks--probably because I'm no longer a carnivore--and at one time I had no qualms about eating an M&M off the ground under a loosely timed five-second rule. When I say that I've recently become paranoid about food and started calling conspiracy theory, it's a cause for serious concern.

*Adolescent vanity trained me to stringently track down the nutritional contents of everything that slides down my gullet. So naturally, when I became hooked on iced coffees at McDonalds, I went to their website and looked it up. A 32-ounce coffee has 250 calories. I didn't believe it for a second. Those things are sweeter than a debutante and have enough cream to make a heifer blush. Therefore, I believe the core of McDonalds' new nutrition-consciousness consists of lying about how bad the products are for the customers by falsifying the caloric and fat content. If I had a way of finding out the truth, I would sue them for millions of dollars, which would allow me to buy millions of delicious iced coffees.

*One of my friends got tricked into buying a pack of Limited Edition Retro Starburst. The kid at the Kum and Go counter said that he'd give my friend his more expensive coffee for free if he bought the candy because his boss said he "wasn't selling enough." Taking advantage of the deal, my friend agreed, only to find out later that there was a nationwide contest among Kum and Go employees to see who could sell the most Retro Starburst. Upon closer examination, I found the bite-sized taffy to come in four flavors: Psychedli-Melon (representing the sixties, I'm assuming), Disco Berry, Hey Mango-Rena (I shudder to think that's what the 1990's will be remembered for), and Optimus Lime. This "inadvertent" promotion coincides remarkably with the release of Transformers: The Movie --a little too well, I believe. Either the guy who gets paid to name the Starburst got geeked out on Mountain Dew and pop rocks when he received the project that he'd waited twenty years for, or the Transformers producers slipped him some bills under the table for some low-cost-yet-high-exposure promotion. I'm positive the film features Los Del Rio's acting debut as the Bee Gees, who operate a yellow submarine that morphs into a three-headed bone-crushing rainbow-bot. The prize package will be two tickets, a pair of platform shoes, and two tabs of acid.

*Water is supposed to make you not thirsty. It's also supposed to alleviate dehydration-related symptoms of a hangover such as nausea. In the past few weeks, I've found Kirksville water to do neither of these things. I believe the water "purification" plant is distilling our faucets with chemically fine-tuned crap to make the drinkers sluggish and sick, not only so they will want to consume more and turn a profit for water-related utilities and services, but to also sap the desire to emigrate from this Surrogate-Motherland and allow them to raise the aggregate I.Q. so we may finally have the cultural capacity to necessitate a Target store being built.

An Open Letter to People Who Leave Their Shopping Carts in Parking Spaces

Dear People Who Leave Their Shopping Carts in Parking Spaces,

Congratulations! Your tenacity and ingenuity have proven key in keeping the fight alive against major retail stores such as K-Mart, Kohls, and Garden Plus. When most of our other tactics have died out, you have continued to reinforce this decades-old battle with consistency and success, thus weakening their power and transferring it back to the hands of the people.

It sends thrills of unadulterated joy down my spine every time I enter the parking lot and see a stallwart metal buggy glimmering proudly between the yellow lines. The clever rebels choose their spaces carefully: near the front, to publicize the cause to the maximum amount of patrons entering and exiting the facility; in bold clusters occupying multiple spaces in a more open area, as strength lies in numbers; and concealed within a seemingly open space camouflaged on either side by a truck or SUV. The more carts that are sacrificed to the cause, the more resources and employers they will have to divert to free their lot of aluminum cholesterol. This will drain their funds, bankrupt their patience, and deprive the consumer of the friendly, down-home experience they want and deserve.

Every time another patron is driven to nervous prostration (please excuse the pun) from umpteen figure eights throughout the concrete labyrinth, it is one more customer that will utter, "Fuck it!" and illegally occupy a handicapped spot, earning a ticket and vendetta against that capitalist emporium. One more customer that will develop road rage so severe that they will feel the overwhelming desire to plow down shoppers more fortunate than they, involving the corporate cesspool in a potentially crippling lawsuit and deathly PR. One more customer that may say, "You know what? I don't really need to purchase my small-ticket goods at this establishment! Let's go to Mom and Pop's, where the slightly overinflated prices will offset the cost of gas we're wasting driving around this monolith!"

Now is the time to stand strong! Do not let naysayers, busybodies, and the overzealous rule-enforcers deter you; they are but blind puppets of the larger institution! When confronted with one of these conservative tools, employ one or more of the following excuses to throw them off the trail and keep the dream alive:

It is essential that we must all hang together in our cause. Together, we can stick it to those bastards who sell toothpaste cheaper than any of our proud local stores and who give our red-blooded Christian jobs to those bums overseas.

Army of Geriatrics

I was walking my dog yesterday when an old black lab started following us. He ran ahead, behind, and around us, marking every bush in sight and reach. I was surprised that he had it in him. He kept up almost the entire way, right until the final stretch home. He had a collar on, so I wasn't as concerned with his health as much as his safety, as he clearly had no concept of the moving vehicle or how fast it could go.

I rode my bicycle down Potter Street today when I kept crossing paths with (and ending up behind) a sixty-something man on his own bike. I wasn't as concerned with passing him as I was with trying to lose him by taking side streets, as it's pretty awkward to be stuck behind a stranger who knows full well you're there.

As neutral as I feel towards old people, I'm worried that this is going to become a trend. There's already an older man who comes into the coffeeshop all day Sunday, orders refill after refill while working on his screenplay, and has offered to pay me $10 an hour licking envelopes for him when it comes time to send it out. I can picture driving home on Memorial Day, sandwiched between sedan after station wagon after beige Camry, right as Highway 63 turns into one lane. Even worse, I'm sure some elderly dame will feel the strongest need to cross the road right as I'm at cruising speed but within stopping distance.

Nevertheless, I was tempted to keep tailing the guy on the bike all the way home, just to see if the dog might be there too.

In Which Meredith Meets Her Underwaterloo

My first day of lifeguard training was today. I probably should have known what to expect, but I didn't--at the very least being that I should have been wearing a swimming suit, which I was not. I don't even own one. The last time I needed one was at 10:30 pm at Wal-Mart on an August weeknight last summer. They closed the fitting rooms at 10, and I'd be damned if I had to shuck out $10 for a tacky, picked-over, mismatched, clearance-rack bathing suit I'd only be using once, if I couldn't even try it on.

Heather let me borrow her spare suit.

We have to pass a number of tests in order to become a Certified Lifeguard. There is a written exam on rules, procedures, techniques, and judgement calls. There's also a skills test, where you have to demonstrate various rescues, holds, and necessary fundamentals. One of these requires us to swim to the twelve-foot deep end, retrieve a brick from the bottom, and swim it back to the other side.

I can run a 5k without stopping for breath, I can bicycle twenty miles without getting too fatigued, but for the life or death of me, as much as I tried, I wasn't able to touch the bottom of the deep end. I have until next Saturday. The worst-case scenario is that I'd only be able to guard the wading pools in the parks, which would throw a few kinks into my schedule and leave the aquatic center without another full lifeguard at their facilities. But I'm not going to let that happen. I may swallow water; but it will not swallow me.

Come Saturday, that brick is mine.

Futures are for dweebs.

The 32nd Annual Theatre Banquet yesterday evening certainly surpassed all my expectations with flying unicorns. It was a rockin'-sockin' time complete with pre- and post- parties which I spent with my dearest friends here who shaped my life and shared my passions.

Rachel called me today and said that she's decided to drop out of the program at Catholic University in Washington DC and moving back to Missouri. She'll probably re-enroll with Nick at Truman to the MAE program, try to get a job as a RCP advisor and after two years teach community college. So this means that I won't be moving in with her in Washington, living there, working, trying to save money, or auditioning because it's closer to New York than Kirskville is, after all. My two most feasible options are either to stay here or move back home to St. Louis as well.

I'm not angry. Just kind of...blank.

But the theatre banquet really kicked ass.

No Melanie Daniels

Leah told me that the worm probably graced my windshield because a bird picked it up, then decided it didn't want it and dropped it. This makes sense because all the robins around here became morbidly obese the four or five days of rain last week and one more morsel was just too much.

Or the bird could have been launching its own neo-Hitchcockian attack against Kirksville mankind in retaliation for their air pollution, neverending hunting season, and poor food scrap quality, all while taking advantage of a weekend downpour's worm harvest.

Too bad for the worm, though--it died nonetheless.

Rolling back prices on natural phenomena

Did you know that sunsets are mostly just dust particles interefering with wavelengths of light? Cool colors are scatterings by molecules in the air, whereas red, yellow, and orange are light reflecting off soot and smoke closer to the earth. When I railed against pollution as an idealistic elementary school environmentalist, one kid pointed out that without pollution, we wouldn't have changing leaves in autumn or sunsets. Ever since then I've watched what I've said about tailpipes, other than to poke fun at their ridiculous size on souped-up West County cars. Sunsets appear at diffrent times each night, and the latest sunset actually occurs a little after the summer solstice. The sun will go on rising and setting no matter what happens to anyone on this puny earth--save a nuclear cosmic disturbance.

When Ben and I broke up three years ago, we swore to remain friends and that there were no hard feelings, and to prove that we went to Wal-Mart, which is what friends do here. As we left, he ran into a friend of his and started chatting, where I stared outside at the pastel orange sunset outside. Four months later he met the girl he eventually got engaged to.

Statistically, coincidences are inevitable.

Yesterday, Jared and I left Wal-Mart with our Combos and Turtle Chex Mix, respectively, only to greet through the sliding doors a scarlet sunset crowding the horizon. It was stunning. He told me not to be emo and I chortled at the very thought. I'd seen this coming for quite some time, but I'd still thought it wasn't too late to change things, or if I waited a little longer it would get better. He looked happier and more relaxed than I've seen him in months. I suppose that counts for something.

I'm fighting the good fight against The Emo. It's too close to call.