Guilt...and Why You Shouldn't Ever Go to the Grocery Store if You Personify Inanimate Objects

I carried a discarded Otter Pops box for three miles today.  

I found it on the side of the road and at first I ran past it.  Then I started feeling guilty about not picking it up because I started to think of all the bad things that could happen as a result of my negligence - What if a bird gets its head stuck in there?  What if someone saw me totally ignoring my responsibility to personally keep the planet clean and free of discarded Otter Pops boxes and then they judged me for it?  What if a child runs across the road to check out that brightly colored thing on the other side and is struck by a car?  What if next time it rains, the dye from the packaging material seeps into the soil around it and then next year a wild strawberry plant grows in that location and produces a strawberry that is just full of toxic chemicals waiting to be ingested by an unsuspecting person who will later die of colon cancer and have no idea why because they always took care of themselves and ate their fruits and vegetables but actually?  That's what killed them.  And it would be my fault.  

I turned around and ran back to pick up the box.  

It was an unwieldy thing and not easy to run with, but I live in the middle of nowhere and trash cans are not easy to come by so I had no choice but to carry it with me for miles.   As I was running along, trying to ignore the strange looks I was getting from passing motorists, I started to hate my guilty conscience.  Why do I always feel like I have a moral obligation to do these things or else something bad will happen to the world, my mom and everybody?  Why can't I just ignore trash on the side of the road like a normal person?  Crap... was that a beer can?   

And it doesn't stop at roadside waste, either.  I feel the need to donate a dollar to breast cancer research every time I go to Safeway even though I only have seventeen dollars in my checking account and I know that I am going to get an overdraft charge but the cashier looks so nice and she was smiling at me and then she was watching me while I was deciding whether to check "yes" or "no" to donating a dollar for breast cancer and I just couldn't check "no" because then she'd see me do it and she'd think I was an asshole and I'd think I was an asshole for personally ruining the lives of researchers and breast cancer sufferers everywhere.   

There is another obstacle I face every time I walk into the grocery store.... and here's where it gets really ridiculous... I feel bad for all of the unwanted items on the clearance rack.  That's right - I experience emotional distress over the "feelings"of inanimate objects.  I start thinking "Oh those poor scissors!  They are on sale for 80% off and no one has bought them yet!"  And then?  I feel like it is my duty to buy them and rescue them from the terrible abandonment they must be experiencing.   

Luckily, I usually have Boyfriend there to try and talk some sense into me.  Sometimes it doesn't end well.  Tthe scissors incident (which is a real incident that I am just getting ready to tell you about) is a good example:  I was in the local IGA with Boyfriend and we were walking past the clearance aisle and there was a bin of items that was marked "50% or more off! WOW!"  On the very top of this bin were the scissors I was just talking about.  Actually, they were scissors with a corkscrew on the handle.   I thought "Oh those poor scissors!" and then I said "hey... we should get these..."

Boyfriend: "What is it?"

Me:  "It's scissors with a corkscrew on the handle."

Boyfriend: "That's stupid."

Me:  "Don't say that!"

Boyfriend:  "Why not?"

Me:  "You'll hurt their feelings..."

Boyfriend:  "They're scissors, Allie..."

Me:  "I know... but they have been rejected by everyone else and they are sitting here in the super-clearance bin waiting for someone to buy them but obviously no one has bought them even though they are eighty percent off and now you just called them stupid!"

Boyfriend: ....

Me:  "Take it back." 

Boyfriend: "What?"

Me:  "Take it back... what you said to the scissors..."

Boyfriend:  "I... I am not going to apologize to a pair of scissors in public."

Me:  "Then can we at least buy them and you can do it at home?"

Boyfriend:  "Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

Me:  "Please?" 

Boyfriend:  "Fine... (whispering) I'm sorry, scissors..."

Me: "Pat them."

Boyfriend:  "WHAT??"

Me:  "Pat them... to let them know you mean it."

Boyfriend:  "I draw the line at patting the scissors."

At this point, I felt strongly that Boyfriend was being demeaning toward the scissors, but - because I am not actually insane - I decided not to push him any further.  Plus, I totally patted the scissors and mouthed "I'm sorry..." when Boyfriend wasn't looking.   

Boyfriend likes to make use of this little quirk of mine when he wants me to do something.  When he can't finish his fries he'll ask me if I want them.   If I'm too full, I say no and then Boyfriend says "but how do you think the fries feel?  You don't want to hurt their feelings, right? I bet they totally want you to eat them and now they feel rejected because you're 'too full...'" And then I throw a mustard packet at Boyfriend and immediately regret it because I start feeling bad for the mustard packet. 

According to Wikipedia, this "object personification" is probably a symptom of my synesthesia:

"For some people, in addition to numbers and other ordinal sequences, objects are sometimes imbued with a sense of personality. Recent research has begun to show that alphanumeric personification co-varies with other forms of synesthesia, and is consistent and automatic, as required to be considered a form of synesthesia"

But that doesn't necessarily make me feel any better about it.  However, it gives you guys a psychologically justifiable reason to not write me off as completely insane, so I figured that I better include it just in case.  I mean, I don't think you typically run across people who project emotional vulnerability onto scissors.  But maybe other people do this too, in which case I would love to hear about it!  

This little problem of mine has lessened with age.  When I was young, I felt terribly guilty every time I walked on grass because I thought the blades of grass would get hurt.  I cried when I lost my mitten because I pictured my poor little mitten sitting alone in the cold and feeling abandoned.  I became emotionally attached to a dead fish that I was supposed to feed to a sea lion and ended up carrying the fish around and singing to it until my mom convinced me that the fish wanted to go play with his friend the sea lion.  I think this all sounds pretty normal for a kid, but for an adult?  Something tells me no.  

Most of the time I can use logic to overcome my tendency to look out for the emotional well-being of inanimate objects, but I still feel twinges of guilt every time I throw something away and I have a very hard time eating Goldfish crackers.  

P.S. I read this to boyfriend and he vehemently denied insulting the scissors.  He remembers the incident and the fact that he said something was stupid, but he asserts that "I would never say that about scissors!  You can pretty much add anything to scissors and it makes them more awesome!" 

I just wish he felt that way when those poor scissors needed to hear that.    

Allie Starts Her "Moon Time"

I started my period before everyone else.  It happened so early that my mother hadn't really had a chance to warn me about it beforehand.  I think maybe she tried to talk to me about it, but I heard the words "vaginal bleeding" and some sort of psychological defensive-mechanism kicked in and I stopped listening.  

At any rate, I don't think it is even possible for an 11-year-old to be mentally prepared for "vaginal bleeding."  It is also pretty impossible for an 11-year-old to understand unrestrained maternal exuberance over the commencement of said vaginal bleeding.  I would also guess that it is fairly hard for mothers to understand why their daughter would resist publicly celebrating her passage into womanhood.  

Basically, there is no good way to start your period.  But this is how I started mine.  

I was playing basketball with my friends Joey and Sarah.  I had been hydrating like a champion, so I eventually had to excuse myself to take a bathroom break.  

When I pulled down my pants in the bathroom, I was shocked to see what I thought was poop in my underpants (for all you guys out there: periods often start off brownish.  Just FYI.  Aren't you glad that you are reading my blog and I taught you that??  You're welcome.)

My first thought was "What have I done??  I am waaaaaaay too young to start losing control of my bowels..." I sat there on the toilet staring at my disgustingly brown panties and trying in vain to come up with a logical course of action.  I was too distracted worrying about my future of fecal incontinence to devise any sort of concrete plan.  

When I had collected my thoughts enough to actually take action, I wrapped the incriminating underwear in almost a whole roll of toilet paper, put the wad of toilet paper and supposed poo-panties under my shirt so that I could walk out to the shed and retrieve a shovel without being intercepted by a questioning friend, dug a hole and buried the evidence of my failure.   

I walked back into the house, put on a forced smile and a fresh pair of underpants and rejoined my friends outside.  

After playing basketball for another half-hour or so, I felt a slightly "off" sensation in my underpants.  I went to the bathroom again and discovered that I had shat myself again (or so I thought).  How could I be pooping myself without even knowing it?  

I went through several pairs of underwear and more than a few psychologically crippling episodes of burying my soiled failure-panties in the backyard while feeling paranoid about being discovered before the accidents in my pants began to look legitimately like blood.   

At that point, I thought I was dying.     

But I was too embarrassed to tell my friends that I was pooping in my pants inadvertently and had just recently started bleeding from what I was pretty sure was my butthole.  I just kept playing basketball with them like nothing was wrong, excusing myself to go cry in secret when necessary.

When my mom got home from work, she asked me what was wrong.  It took her awhile to fish it out of me.   I finally said "Mom, I think I am bleeding in my underwear... like maybe from my butt..."

To which she responded "OH MY GAWD!!  My baby girl is becoming a woman!!"

I didn't know what to make of this, but my mom looked happy, so I was at least reassured about my prognosis.

My mom sat me down on the edge of the bathtub and told me all about what was happening to me.  She told me that I was not bleeding from my butt, but actually I was bleeding from my vagina - which didn't sound a hell of a lot better to me and it didn't explain why I had been pooping myself, but whatever.  She told me way more than I wanted to know.  She told me about ovulation and how my uterus was making a special lining for a baby and that now I could actually have a baby if I wanted to and that girls my age actually did have babies in the middle ages, but times have changed so I probably wouldn't be forced to marry some 45-year-old king and bear his royal heirs.  She told me that I would probably bleed a lot, but not to be alarmed because I would get used to it since it was going to happen to me every month "just like the full moon" until I went through menopause at which point, I would have hot-flashes and be really grumpy and wish I could have my period back.  She talked a lot about goddesses and the power to create.  She said "empowering" probably 18 times.  She made it sound like I had just earned my membership into some secret cult of women who bleed from their hoohoos.  She showed me how to use a Maxi pad.

I was eventually allowed to return to playing with my friends who had miraculously been entertaining themselves for the entire duration of my mom's extremely thorough explanation of periods.  They didn't even ask where I had been.  Nevertheless, I remember being so paranoid that they knew what was going on.  I felt like my Maxi pad was the size of a mattress.  "What if they think I am wearing diapers??"  I wondered.  "What if I bleed so much that it soaks through my giant maxi pad and then everyone in the world will know that I bleed from my vagina?"  It was horrifying.  I was so glad when my friends went home and I could finally weep openly about my dismal future as a disgusting vagina-bleeder.  

The next few days were a haze of odd gifts and clandestine meetings with my mother's Native American friends (who apparently understand periods better than anyone else).  I was given crystals, pieces of ribbon, bundles of sage... I heard all about how "sacred" I was as a woman.  I learned about my power animal (moose) and how people used to use corn-husks instead of Maxi pads.  

It was all very confusing.  

My mom wanted me to be "empowered" and develop a positive relationship with my body, a relationship based around an intimate understanding of how I am connected to Mother Earth.  It is a wonderful idea in theory.  In reality, it made me feel just a little weird.  I guess I didn't quite grasp the connection between "bleeding from vagina" and "Earth goddess."  

A week or so passed and the horrors of my first period slowly faded to minor but permanent psychological scars.   I started to be able to enjoy life again.   

It was Wednesday when I went to my friend Selia's house while my mom was at work.  My friend Sophie was there too.  As the summer day was winding down, we got all giggly and decided to play Truth or Dare.  Sophie went first:

Sophie:  "Allie... have you started your period yet?"

Me: (torn between my the morally objectionable option of lying and the socially objectionable option of telling the truth and turning myself into a social pariah) "No." 

I though I had dodged the bullet, but on Sophie's next turn, she kept probing:

Sophie: "Allie, are you sure you haven't started your period?"

Me:  "Yeah, I'm sure.  I would totally tell you guys... Is it my turn now?  Oh it is?  Okay... Selia... do you have a crush on anyone?" 

Selia: "No.  And now it's my turn.  Allie... have you told a lie today??" 

Me: "Me?  No. Periods are gross and I did not start them."  

Selia and Sophie:  *Snickering*  "Okay... if you say so...." *more snickering*   

Me: "I'm thirsty.  Do you have any water?"

Selia: "Yeah.  It's in the faucet.  Are you nervous about something?"

Me: "Nope.  Just really thirsty..."

We walked into the kitchen.  As I was leaning against the counter chugging unnecessary amounts of water to avoid having to answer more questions about my "condition" I noticed a little lavender slip of paper on Selia's refrigerator.   It had stars and moons on it.  And my name.  Wait... what??  I looked closer.  The paper was an invitation. It said:

"MOON TIME CELEBRATION.  Allie has started her 'moon time!'  Please join us in celebrating this special event in Allie's life! (There was a date, but I don't remember what it was)"

There was some stuff about passing on the gift of womanhood to the next generation, but I stopped paying attention.   I appreciated that my mother had tried to protect my fragile dignity by using the code-word "moon time," but I think she drastically underestimated the ability of my friends to decipher such a phrase.  

I honestly do not remember what happened next.  If Sophie or Selia ever read this, maybe they can tell you.  

The next memory I have of that day is being picked up by my mom when she got off work.  I was furious:

Me:  "MOM!!! Why did you tell everyone that I started my period???"

Mom:  "What do you mean?"

Me:  "You gave an invitation to Selia's mom inviting her to some stupid period party that you are throwing for me... and now everyone knows!"

Mom: "Oh Sweetie, don't be ridiculous. The party is just for us parents - we're putting together something special for you... Wendy would never tell Selia about it...."

Me:  "She put the invitation up on her refrigerator!"

Mom:  "Oh... well, I'm sure Selia didn't understand."

Me:  "YES SHE DID, MOM!!  Why are you doing this to me???"

Mom: "I want you to have a positive experience of your first period... I want to gather all the people who know you and love you together to give you support and guidance..."

Me: "How many other people did you give these invitations to??"

Mom:  "Just a few of the other parents... Selia's mom, Sophie's mom, Sarah's mom, Troy's mom, Lacy's, Joey's mom ---"

Me: "MOM!!!!!!!! That's, like, everybody!"

Mom: "It's okay baby... don't worry.  They all understand and they love you..."

Me: "What am I going to tell my friends?"

Mom: "Just tell them the truth."

Me:  "That I'm bleeding out of my... down there?" 

Mom: "Yeah.  They'll all get their periods some day too and then you can help lead them through it."

Me: "I don't want to be the leader!"  

Mom: "Allie, get in the car and let's go home.  It's going to be alright.  I promise.  You might even have fun."

Me: "I will NOT have fun."

Mom: "Okay, but that's your choice."  

I don't remember whether I had fun or not.  The Moon Party may or many not have even come to fruition, but I strongly suspect that it did or at least that it happened somewhere possibly without my knowledge because I have a box in my closet at home labelled "Allie's Moon Box."  It is full of pretty rocks, bundles of sage, heartfelt notes about my feminine power, ribbons and a lock of my hair.  

I take the box out sometimes and look at all the gifts and read the notes.  I even used the sage when I got scared of moving into the apartment on 3rd Street because I was sure that people had done really bad things in there and it made me uncomfortable when I was trying to sleep and my mom came to visit and brought the bundle of sage and we "cleansed" the apartment of negative energy by burning it in my room.  

And my friends did start their periods.  Sophie started hers at my house.  I wanted to rub it in, but I settled on being a good friend and leading her through it.  I showed her how to use a Maxi pad.  She said it felt like riding a horse.  I said "yeah... I know."  And then we laughed until Sophie's mom (who became just as emotionally unstable as my mom when she found out her daughter was finally bleeding from the hoohoo) came to pick her up.  

P.S.  Speaking of being totally empowered, here is a kickass picture that Amber sent me:

And that is why I love blogging.  

I Bet This is How All Great Writers Come Up With Fresh Ideas...

I was having a hard time coming up with ideas for a blog post… so I started walking around my house, looking at things and thinking “what is something funny that I can say about that?"

This is what I came up with:

Furniture:  

It would be really hard to rob a furniture store.  Maybe that’s why we never hear about furniture heists.  They should make jewelry out of furniture and then no one would have to lock their doors ever again.  For this same reason, cash registers should only be filled with quarters.  It would be really hard to outrun the law while carrying a bag of quarters.  And even if you succeeded, you would have only made 39.95.   There must have been a couple nickels in there.  Damn. 

Tortillas:

Tortillas are round.  But is that really the most optimal shape for making a burrito?  I think rectangular would probably be better.   It’s much easier to fold rectangular things.   The original tortillas were round because that is the shape of pans, but modern tortillas have no excuse.  They need to break free of tradition for the sake of innovation.  But I doubt that a tortilla could understand that. 

Stapler:

Why don’t staples come in any other size?  What if I have some documents that need to be stapled, but I have too many documents and the staple doesn’t reach all the way through?  There’s nothing I can do.  Unless I want to buy a staple gun, but those aren’t really staples in the traditional sense.   If I used a staple gun on normal paper documents, I would feel like I was overreacting. 

Box of Cereal:

I bought a box of corn Chex cereal.   I bought it more out of guilt than anything because Chex tries so hard.   I want to say “Chex, I appreciate your intricate pattern of criss-crossing corn, but I don’t think that it is really necessary.  You don’t have to try so hard.  I think people would still enjoy eating you even if you were just a random blob - I mean, look at cornflakes!” 

Whiteout:

Whiteout is cool.  Unless you make a mistake on paper that isn’t white.  That’s funny if you think about it hard enough. 

Toilet Paper:

Did you know that they make toilet paper with cute little pictures on it?  It’s just like normal toilet paper only there are pictures of flowers and rainbows and teddy bears.  I think that the picture toilet paper is for cynical people who enjoy purposefully destroying all that is good and beautiful in the world.  They like seeing that little flower and thinking “I am going to cover you in excrement!” 

TV:

Commercials for HDtv are pretty pointless.  They show you an image that is supposed to be in HD, but if you don’t have HDtv, it just looks like what your regular TV looks like and you won’t really be that impressed.  Only people who already have HDtv’s will be able to fully appreciate HDtv commercials.  Maybe that’s the angle they are going for: “If you want to be impressed by this commercial, you have to buy an HDtv.  Then you can watch this commercial to reassure yourself that you made the right decision.”  



The End.  Maybe.  


P.S. I got internet today.  Kind of.  But I didn't get raped or killed and that is the important part.  


P.P.S.  I have been contacted by a few people about my RSS feed not working.  I would fix it, but I have no idea what's even wrong with it.  Nevertheless, I am going to try to fix it which will probably start out semi-productively until I realize that I'm getting nowhere and then I'll just start clicking on things randomly to see what happens and if it fixed the problem but it probably won't (at least statistically speaking) and I will probably break the internet and then no one will ever get updates from me again.  And they won't be able to look at LOLcats.  That's the real tragedy.  


UPDATE:  I got a very hurtful comment.  I cried and tweeted irrationally.  Then I put on Bruce and now I can pretty much take anything.
  

Bring it, Fucker

I Made Friends! And an Arch-Nemesis!

Guess what?

I made some friends yesterday.  In the real world.  

Guess what else?

The Crap Blog Detective is back, and this time he insulted my furniture.  Uh oh. 

What do these two topics have in common?

That's Bruce.  Actually, it's me inside Bruce.  Bruce is a dragon costume that I made out of a Snuggie, a pair of nylons and a dog bed.  He is wearing sexy underwear because Halloween is always a good excuse to dress like a whore, especially if you're a dragon.

You may be wondering what Bruce has to do with anything.  Well, remember how I said that I made friends last night?  Normally, I'm pretty shy around new people - but not when I'm wearing Bruce.  When I'm wearing Bruce, all of my self-doubt and social paranoia just melt away leaving behind pure, unadulterated confidence.  

As soon as I put on Bruce, I have abilities.  I can suddenly do things I never dreamed of.  I can walk into a party full of strange people and not end up hiding in the bathroom with a bottle of Vodka until I'm drunk enough to not care about how awkward I am.  I can dance to 80's music AND gangster rap without relying too heavily on the lawn-mower dance.  I can comfortably talk to strangers about breast milk, glory holes and blow jobs.  I can enter a sexiest costume contest and win - even though I didn't actually win because some girl dressed up as a sexy gladiator and wore a push-up bra and put glitter on her cleavage and even though she wasn't nearly as sexy as me, no one was ready for what I brought and it kind of hurt my game.   I can lose a sexiest costume contest and still feel good about myself and my future.  Babies actually like me and don't start crying the second I get within ten feet of them.   

I'm practically a superhero.  I even have an arch-nemesis now.   It's the crap Blog Detective.  And Kyle.  

I think it's kind of fun having an arch-nemesis.  It gives my life purpose.  Now I have a reason to get up in the morning and make a striptease video.  I have a reason to do whatever I am going to do to the Crap Blog Detective, which I haven't thought of yet, but the possibilities are endless and I have a dragon costume, so it's probably going to be awesome.  

Anyway, I am getting kicked out of the café with the free internet because they are "closing."  I think they're just jealous of my sexy dragon costume, but whatever.  

P.S.  I put my video up on YouTube .  But don't worry - fame and fortune won't change me.  I mean, I have 40 views already and I'm still just as humble as ever.  

P.P.S.  A little girl stuck some of her Halloween candy in my G-string last night.  It was awkward.  Especially because her parents (both of them) were watching and they totally thought I asked her to do it even though I didn't and probably never would because I am classier than that and frankly, their kid was a little creepy  and it's not my fault that sexy dragons are irresistible to children.  

That's me and some of my new real-world friends.   I hope we can still be friends when I'm not wearing Bruce.  It might be difficult to maintain a relationship that is based completely off of my Halloween costume.  I'm not saying it would be impossible, just really complicated.  Especially if we ever wanted to go to a water park or church or a movie.