Their Mutual Friend (@ Statler)

“Yeah,” she said. The two of them would say that word a lot. It was lunch and they sat on a long table next to one another, him with his laptop out, her with her carrot sticks. She took a sip from a carton of milk.

“Yeah I don’t know why,” he said.

“She’s like—”

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

“She was considering like...”

“She—” They couldn’t seem to really grasp what they were trying to say about their mutual friend. They didn’t really know where to start, and both of them were unknowingly trying to bounce off of each other’s sentences.

“Why? I mean she didn’t tell me. I mean, I feel like I’ve known her for a while,” the girl said. But she didn’t seem upset; her statement was more matter-of-fact with no sighing involved. She picked up a carrot stick, and bit it in half.

The boy wasn’t using his laptop, and the screen went black. He touched the touchpad to bring it back to life. “I guess, like,” he began, “she just like asked to see what they were doing, I don’t really know.”

“Yeah,” the girl said.

At first glance, it looked like the two of them were having a closed conversation. Across from them sat a tall blonde student, buried in a textbook, occasionally jotting down notes in pen along the margins. But then he suddenly lifted his chin up to look at the two across from him, and said, “I feel like finding out junior year would be really stressful.”

“Yeah,” said the boy with the laptop.

“I think usually you’re supposed to take the class even earlier,” said the girl, “but this year was apparently really hard.”

“Yeah,” the boys agreed.

“So I’m really hoping for us it’ll be better.” Her carrot crunched. The boy across from her went back to turning the pages of his Economics textbook, studying for his exam later that night. The other two didn’t have any academic pressures just yet, and continued their conversation.

The boy with the laptop said, “Yeah, I don’t know, I didn’t want her to stress about it.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to talk to her about it,” said the girl.

“No and I didn’t really have a stake in it, I just wanted her to be able to cool off.”

“I asked her about it and she was like ‘I just don’t want to’, so we didn’t, I don’t know.”

“Yeah.”

“And I mean, that’s fair, so…”

“Yeah sometimes she’s just like that. Also, yeah she pretty much predicted it last year.”

“I just don’t want to see her like shortening her life because she’s worrying herself away just incessantly studying.”

They took a pause, and two breaths turned into a longer silence than their entire quick conversation. The boy with the laptop clicked around the screen. The girl finished her milk and closed the spout of the carton.

Mixed Feelings

Technology kind of ruins everything.

Twenty years ago or even less, you knew if someone wanted to be your friend because they would make an effort to find you, or visit you, or talk to you. Long letters took a bit of effort but people would do it. Phone calls weren’t always cheap but people would make them. Phone calls required having to actually talk to the person, and you had to want to coordinate your time together.

And now they have texting and Facebook, and you can comment when you want or text little tidbits and never really talk or communicate and that’s an excuse for getting to know the other person. You can say, “Sorry, didn’t see your text.” You can misinterpret what other people are suggesting, assuming that they don’t like you because they don’t use this or that emoticon, or they just say one simple word like “yeah,” or “ok,” or “lol”.

I don’t see my mom very often and when I do, she has her phone out, ready to respond to anyone who texts or instant messages her, right away. She has to respond right away. No waiting. If she waits, she thinks the person who started the conversation will get mad. So she sits across from me at the table, telling me “I don’t know why your brother is texting me this. Do you know what this means? I’m going to tell him he should call me so we can talk about it—my phone is so slow—”. When we’re at home and I come downstairs and ask my mom if she wants to go for a walk, she tells me, well, she doesn’t say anything. I ask her again and she says “SHH. I’m—oops—” and then in another ten minutes she’ll say, “just a minute, Katie, I’m writing an email”. And half an hour later we’ll go for a walk, where she’ll start texting her friends or playing Words with Friends and talk about how I haven’t been calling her often enough while I’m at school.

I know I’m ranting by saying all this. But I’m studying technology in college, Information Science and how people interact with computers, and just think it’s kind of sad, even though it’s supposed to be interesting. Society is changing all the time and technology just kind of changes it along a different path. Different from what was predicted, because the internet and phones and video broadcasting and everything else were never intended for personal use at all.

And I do love being able to contact people and keep in touch with people who I wouldn’t normally keep in touch with. I love being able to text during class or leave a voicemail for someone who isn’t around, or to share pictures with family on Facebook. The other day I got a call from my Grandma telling me how much she loves my pictures. She loves to see what my brothers and my parents and I are up to whenever she logs in. She told me she thought it was funny that my older brother was throwing a housewarming party, and laughed over the description having to do with wanting people to bring alcohol. She would never have been able to laugh about that if we didn’t all have Facebook to keep connected. She’d always want to know what’s going on, but would never be able to, because getting prints of photographs can get expensive, especially if I am to get separate prints for her to be able to see them, since I see her once a year. And those are just photographs.

Technology does kind of ruin everything. But only kind of.

As a Man

            I try my best to stand and sit up straight, but it usually doesn’t work, and my shoulders are broad and heavy so that when I slouch I look like a mountain or some sort of bog creature. I have curves in all the wrong places, because men should have smaller asses and more slender hips (at least my brother has that, and he’s a much better-looking guy, I think). My muscles are fine for bunches of strings but they have a thick layer of skin and fat over them that doesn’t seem to go away. My back isn’t so bad, even though I slouch. I’ve been told it’s nice. It’s not rock-hard-celebrity “nice”, but when you touch it it’s not plush like my stomach (and don’t touch my belly-button. It’s got a bit of a fur line running down around it, but it isn’t hidden, and it’s an awkward area for me. I feel like someone could poke straight into my stomach through it. So don’t touch my belly button).

            I have boring brown hair and boring brown eyes and the lips of a woman. Maybe some men like having woman lips but I think they look stupid on my puffy face. Puffy lips, puffy face. Maybe my face isn’t that puffy, but I can’t find the contours of my cheek bones without sucking my cheeks in, so I think I look soft and stupid. That’s not good for a guy who doesn’t want to disappear in a crowd. Along with my slouching and baggy shirts and jeans, people could just identify me as a nerd even though I don’t play video games and I don’t play Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons (because I guess I’m stereotyping and that’s what I imagine nerds do—I also don’t wear khakis or glasses or shirts where I’d use a pocket protector, you get the idea).

            I do like my nose, and I think it kind of narrows my face (a little, because that’s hard to do). It’s thin, but not too thin, and it’s straight, not curved or bumped or flat or round or crooked. And my eyes: even though they’re brown—and not an interesting brown, it’s like, brown-brown, boring-brown, like I said earlier—they’re big and they kind of squint when I smile in a way that makes my smile look genuine and happy, even if I’m not, and I think that’s good. It also means that my eyes, since they’re not small, are more proportionate to my face. Which is good.

            I walk a little bow-legged and my feet are kind of lumpy and gross. They’re huge feet and they’re super knobby. You know that little bone on the top, inner part of your foot, in the center between your ankle and big toe? Most people don’t have that really visible. Mine sticks out and for a while I thought I was the only one because everyone else’s kind of sinks into their skin...so my feet are weird. I also don’t really keep up with my toenails. Just don’t look at my feet.

            As for the rest of my body, I don’t know, I guess I’m kind of average, and I don’t really want to talk about it.

Fish Food

            A bell jingled when they opened the door, a homely smell of dog food and lemony soap failing to completely cover the smell of pet feces. The shopkeeper greeted them from where he sat behind the old desk, surrounded by caged rodents and reptiles and one noisy parakeet that huddled at the bottom of its cage awkwardly. The puppies were up front, and crossing the shop, the boy hesitated by a little cage of cats.

            “Matilda, look!” he said, crouching toward the animals and sticking his finger into the cage. One scrawny orange tabby rubbed its nose against his finger.

            Matilda glanced over. “Roy,” she said, “goldfish food. That’s all we need.”

            “Boring,” he said, entranced by the orange cat. “Just—aw, hey kitty—won’t you buy it? Mom won’t let me have a cat at home—”

            “If I get a cat, it’ll be a kitten, not that old skinny rag.” The little boy’s sister grumbled, going up to the shopkeeper and asking where the fish food was located. He pulled it out from behind him and she paid.

            “You mean you’d get a cat if it was a baby?” asked Roy when his sister finished paying.

            “No, probably not,” she said. “Cats are a pain.” She stuck the jar of fish food into her purse.

            “I could come over and play,” said Roy, poking his nose closer to the cage and letting the friendly tabby lick it.

            “But you wouldn’t clean its poop, or pay for food, would you?” It was a rhetorical question. Matilda sighed and crossed her arms, waiting for her little brother to stand.

            “He’s so cool! Smarter ‘cause he’s older, I bet! Prolly catches his own mice to eat, wow!”

            Then Matilda tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said. “Mom wants you back for dinner, so let’s take you home.”

Bingo

            In either first grade or second grade (I really can’t remember) I went to a Hallmark store with my mom so that she could get a greeting card. Hallmark stores carry a bunch of simple gifts and cards, but the most important part of the store in my eyes were the stuffed animals. And I found the perfect one. It was a beagle a little over a foot tall, sitting down, with saggy brown eyes and smooth fur and markings not unlike my own beagle back home, Bingo. But my mom told me that no, I couldn’t have it, I didn’t have any money. I was sad, but I was a kid and my desire wasn’t too deadly.

Maybe I forgot about the stuffed animal beagle, but at the end of the academic year, it was waiting for me at home and I remembered it again.

            I felt like the beagle was some sort of answer to my life. Life hadn’t held any meaning before the moment I laid eyes on my own stuffed animal beagle. And I had a lot of stuffed animals: about twenty bunnies of various shapes and sizes and colors, a cat, a white seal, and a few bears which were nothing special. I named him Bingo and he was different and new and not a hand-me-down and he was the first stuffed animal that I ever remember receiving, because I’d already had all those other stuffed animals since before memory held any place in my mind.

            I took Bingo upstairs and downstairs. I took him to my friend’s house. I played pretend with him, and we were buddies, and I would run and he would run and we’d be just like Calvin and Hobbes. I took pictures of Bingo with my real beagle named Bingo (because all beagles, besides Snoopy, are named Bingo, obviously). I took Bingo out to restaurants, and in the car, and on trips.

            And then something happened that took my relationship with Bingo by the scruff of the neck and stretched it in ways that made my heart dip into something like a steaming pit of dirty bath water. It wasn’t like the time my neighbor threw my Beanie Baby squirrel into their pond, or like the time where my stuffed animal cat, Kitty, lost her nose in my car seat. It wasn’t like the time when real-live-Bingo ate my model Alpaca, or the time he ripped the head off of one of my bears.

            My younger brother, Zachary, was sitting next to me in the car on the way home from a restaurant one night. I’m sure my older brother was there too, but in my memory I don’t see him. My dad was driving and my mom was in the passenger seat looking ahead at the white road because in my memory I don’t notice the dark shades of the evening.

            Zachary was little and jealous and there had been nothing as good as pizza or hotdogs at the restaurant, and his eyes were weary and his small baby mouth was pushed into a smudge of a pout. Usually that was me, and to see someone else take the place of the family Grump made me feel the flutter of pathetic hesitance. Maybe there were tears, or shouts, or a screaming tantrum. My little brother’s discomfort made my heart squirm and I knew there was only one way to solve it. And so I tried pushing Bingo in his face, saying, “hey, it’s okay,” you know, “don’t be sad!” and then my hold on Bingo was broken gently and I knew I was giving my brother my new best friend.

            Just seeing Zachary’s tense shoulders relax as he clutched Bingo in his tiny arms, sitting in his gray car seat that had little colored squares all over it, the gleams in his wet eyes clearing up, made me think, okay. This is okay. It had to happen. It’s for the better.

And it was as if Bingo had just died, and I was never going to see him again because he wasn’t mine anymore. But my brother was happy, and I was happy for him.

It was there in my life that I think I started seeing things from the perspective of someone who wasn’t the center of the universe. I don’t like seeing people unhappy. I’m allowed to be sad, but if I can help it, my brothers and everyone else won’t be. By the end of the night my mom made sure Bingo was back with in my arms because she feels the same way about her children, and Zachary already had his bear Pooki and his jingle-dog Rosy at home, but I wonder how differently my life would have been if Bingo’s place as a puzzle piece in my life had been removed so early on.