A little piece of advice

Hey there, kiddos. It's been a while since I've tried to dispense advice that I'm unqualified to give, and I thought you might be going through withdrawal. Hence, I've got something to share.

TIP: Do not mess around with a graduate student if you'll later be embarrassed by any association with said graduate student.

Here's the dealio:

About. . . oh. . . two years ago, I was dating a guy who chewed his orange juice and refused to commit (also referred to as "The Original Subscript"), so I decided that I would declare it an open relationshit, and start dating another guy as well.

This is when psych grad student came onto the scene. PGS, who loves Star Wars, has the maturity level of a twelve-year-old, and, if his apartment is any indication, has never heard of a single cleaning product, was just the kind of mistake I was looking for.

So I had a few meaningless encounters with PGS, forgot about him for about a year, and then followed up by having a few meaningless drunken encounters with PGS. And then, when I got pissed about hickies left on my neck by PGS, I decided to forget about him once again.

I had succeeded. Until today that is. Until moments ago.

That's when Miso, my good friend who has learned to tolerate all of the weird nicknames with weird spellings that I have assigned to her persona, looked up from her computer and said, "What was your grad student's name?"

It was then, just moments ago, that I knew I was in trouble. Meesa was looking at the course catalog. She was picking her classes for next semester. And suddenly, she wanted to know PGS's name.

Uh oh.

You guessed it, folks. PGS is teaching. He's teaching a course that Miseh is required to take. And he is teaching the only open section of that course.

Misa gets to spend an entire semester with my mistake. How embarrassing.

Learn from my mistakes, kids. Don't date a grad student at your university if you cringe at the thought of your friends' taking classes taught by that person.

(Just wait to make your mistakes until you go home for the summer. Then you can be sure of your ability to hide said mistakes from the people whose opinions matter.)

I found it.

I found a reason to hate him. It was easier than I expected. I didn't have to search or anything. One day it just kind of appeared, shouting out at me, "Hey! Why are you ignoring this? It's perfect! It's annoying. It's heinous. So hate him! Hate him!"

And it's not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

It's disappointing really.

Let's consider a somewhat analogous situation.

This summer, I lost my stamps. This is the same book of stamps I've been using since the middle of 2006. I simply don't mail things very often. So one day, after mailing out a bill or two, the stamps disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Without a trace.

I searched my car, my apartment, my tote bags, my pockets, my car, my apartment, my desk, the organizer thingies that cover my desk, my closet, and then my entire apartment again. I didn't find the stamps.

Readers, I live in an efficiency apartment. Some of you might call it a studio apartment. The point is: I live in one room. One ****ing room, and I lost something. How do you do that?

So I was pissed. I was determined to find the stamps. I was on a mission. And that meant that I had to go to the post office every time I needed to mail something. And rather than buying stamps while I was at the post office, I would come home empty-handed, continuing to be pissed off about my missing stamps.

Until one day earlier this week, I was looking for a specific stack of post-it notes in one of the drawers of one of the organizer thingies upon my desk, and I found the stamps.

Recall that I had searched that same damn drawer many times during my frantic search for the stamps. Could I have found the stamps the first time around? Noooooooooo. That would have been far too simple.

And yet, when I finally found the stamps, when I was no longer looking for the stamps, I felt nothing. No sense of victory, no triumph, no joy, no elation, nothing. They were just stamps -- left exactly where they should have been.

In case you're not following the logic here, let's wrap up the analogy.

I don't hate him, but now I have a reason to, should I ever want to. And I don't feel good about that. Don't get me wrong -- I don't feel bad about it. This just isn't what I expected.

What happened to the good old days, when finding the missing stamps was fun?

My sister's words of wisdom

"I need a reason to hate him, and I don't have one."

"Clearly you don't know him well enough."

Someone tell me what to do.

I was born in the wrong decade in the wrong country to the wrong family.

I need a Hindi family in Soviet Russia during the height of the push for the new Soviet man and woman.

I need an arranged marriage, a preplanned career and education, and life without any major decisions to call my own.

Think about it. How ludicrous is it that I am supposed to decide my own future? I am supposed to pick a school, a career path, a partner. Seriously? Me?

I, who can't pick a good relationship from a horrendous one. Hell, you've read my blog. You know what I'm talking about. Out of sheer laziness, I'm not even going to insert all of the hyperlinks.

I, who couldn't pick a major until I had completed nine semesters of full-time college courses. And even then, being the genius that I am, I chose social work. I hate people. And I chose social work. That was brilliant.

I, who have made one bad decision after another, am supposed to decide what to do with my life. And very soon.

Isn't that just grand?

Letter from an Ear to a Brain

Dearest Brain,

Hello. This is the left ear. I'm sure you remember me. I'm the one who consistently sends messages to you through the nervous system to say, "Ouch." You know. . . those messages you consistently ignore. Hence, I thought I would try a new form of communication. Let's see if we can't come to some sort of understanding. Okay? Okay.

Here's the deal. I've put up with a lot of shit from you. A lot of shit. And frankly, I'm tired of it.

Every time you need to exert control over "your" life (remember, there are a lot of other parts of the body, you selfish dipshit) you go shoving new metal through me. Granted, I am thankful that you restrict the injection of ink to the feet, but be careful; they're getting fed up too. From what I hear (and I hear it all) they're planning their own letter soon. Just a little f.y.i. . . .

Anyway, back on track, you keep shoving new metal through me, and it doesn't feel good. Seriously. I know you didn't have control over the first piercing; that was your mom, and you were only two years old. Fine. But come on.

Since then, you've added two more piercings to my lobe, another piercing in my cartilage, and to top it all off you had to go and add an industrial. And let me just say that I especially enjoy how you get mad at me for swelling and being inflamed because it doesn't "look good."

If someone shoved a metal rod through the skull and cut off your blood flow with a piece of metal to which you are allergic, I wouldn't make fun of you for swelling; I'd praise our immune system for the swift response time. The white blood cells have been working really hard to pull that together, and I think they deserve credit.

So next time you shove metal through me, expect swelling. If you insist on wearing metal to which you know I'm allergic, expect more swelling. And expect that swelling to stay. Understood? Good.

Now, on to my second point. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from irritating said pieces of metal that have been shoved through me. For instance, going to an amusement park and riding roller coasters that send the head flying toward a hard plastic headrest, where the head proceeds to crush me and my metal is not "amusing." It is painful. Hence, I sent you a message saying, yet again, "WTFuck? That hurt!"

Did you get that message? Apparently not. Because you kept riding roller coasters. And you didn't stop to clean me or do anything to reduce my pain.

I have had it with you. Enough is enough. No more metal. No more irritation.

If I go on strike, I'm taking the right ear with me, and you can't afford hearing aids.

Got it? Good.


Sincerely yours,

Left Ear

Get this.

Background: I work in a courthouse as an intern for a county prosecutor's office.

The other day, I was walking up the stairs, toward a courtroom, to go watch yet another endless stream of monotonous and unexciting arraignments, plea agreements, and sentencing hearings, when one of the local defense attorneys looked up from his not-so-confidential hallway conversation with his client and said, "Shh."

I stopped. I looked at him. And I said, "What?" Only I didn't say, "What?" I implied it with my facial expression and a not-so-subtle move of the head.

He again repeated himself. "Shh."

I again asked, "What?" without asking, "What?"

He pointed to my feet, said, "High heels," and then, feeling that he had sufficiently explained himself, returned to his conversation with the client who was no doubt about to plead out, because that's what clients of public defenders do.

I was about to lift a pant leg to reveal the ballet-slipper-style flats I was wearing, when I decided that it would be more fun to noisily click-clack my way to the courtroom -- which, by the way, was not in session.

No one fucking "Shh"s me in my courthouse.

Asshole.

Cognitive Dissonance

I don't like change. You all know this. Microsoft updates Internet Explorer and I freak out. I can't help it. When things change, I need time to adjust. Generally speaking, eventually I'll forget about the change and move on to start being resistant to other upcoming changes.

Well, what could be worse than the change of your software or your email or your living arrangements? (And those are all quite tremendous changes, capable of screwing up your life during the adjustment period, so don't scoff, you insensitive people.)

I'll tell you what's worse: Unexpected changes in people.

You all know what I'm talking about. You think have that guy figured out. You think, "He's an asshole. He really is. I'm just going to forget he exists, and I'm going to move on with a happier life, untainted by assholes like that guy. Mhm. I know all about him. Jerkface. Oh. No. He's not even good enough for that title. He is a jerk without the face! Mmmhmmmm. . . Asshole."

And then, out of nowhere, without any warning -- I mean, you've already forgotten that this guy exists -- he does something nice! He expresses genuine, sincere concern for your wellbeing when he's under no obligation to do so. I mean, we're not talking about your brother, who's required to at least pretend to care about you (at least when you're in front of your grandparents).

Back on track, though. How is your brain supposed to process this new version of the guy? You're pacing, you're putting your hand on your chin, you're thinking, you're trying to figure it out, and then! You've got it.

You need a montage. People always figure stuff out in a montage.

So you grab some of those crayons John Nash used to write on the windows in A Beautiful Mind; you download some nifty engineering software; you scan your music library for just the right music -- not too fast, but not too slow, not too peppy, but not too serious; you go to the bookshelf and pull every book you have about psychology and interpersonal relationships; you grab notepads and pencils; you arrange the props and start the music.

And you are ready to begin.

You rush to the window and begin drawing algorithms with your crayons. You stare at them for a moment, and then rush to the table, where you frantically open one book after another, seemingly searching for a reason you would be doing algorithms to solve a problem involving cognitive dissonance and human behavior.

After searching the books, you pull a notepad from your pocket and start scribbling random words like, "Asshole," "Nice," "Incongruous," and "Fuck." With your notes completed, you put the notepad back in your pocket and run to the computer. Hastily sitting down, you impatiently tap the mouse, realizing that you would've been wise to turn off the automatic powersave stand-by before beginning your montage.

Using the new engineering software, you click your mouse far too many times and look intently at the screen while watching the provided modeling demo because you don't have a clue how to actually use the software or create anything of your own. After the demo ends, you pull out your notepad, draw a stick figure, tap your pencil on the desk, stand up, and look back to the algorithms on the window.

As you approach the stereo to turn off N*Sync's "Girlfriend," which has been playing throughout the entire montage, you can't help but wonder, "Are those even algorithms? I'm not sure what a fucking algorithm is. I just kind thought it involved Greek symbols and numbers . . . huh . . . Maybe I should've played Eiffel 65's 'Blue' instead. . ."

The montage is complete. And you still don't have a clue what to do about this guy who's a total asshole but decided to be nice just this once.

And that's when it hits you. I would say you had a lightbulb moment, but you don't have lightbulb moments. You have brick wall moments, when you quit screwing around and run into the obvious like a drunk driver headed for that brick wall straight ahead.

"He wasn't being nice at all! Nope. . . it was just an asshole ploy of his to make me think he was being nice and then make me overanalyze it. I mean, he is that much of a jerk (without the face). . . I just can't believe I didn't see this sooner. Ugh. . . what an asshole. I'm going to forget he exists."

Cognitive dissonance: Resolved. Montage: Awesome. Mission: Accomplished.