ideas (thoughtful and less so)

As I face important choices, as I am overwhelmed by responsibility, as I realize that I am sorely lacking in good decision-making skills, there are many, many times that I want to just escape, in many ways. Of course, there’s the feeling that physically escaping the situations will make it better, the desire to just leave, but that’s unproductive. And then, the need to escape back in time a few years.

I’m rereading all my Animorphs books (and getting a lot out of them, surprisingly; they are remarkably complex for endless-series-ghostwritten books written for ten year olds). I’m immersing myself in that world, in a fight against slug-like brain-controlling aliens that sounds ridiculous when voiced aloud by a near-adult (and only slightly less ridiculous when voiced aloud by a ten-year-old, I’ll grant you that). I’m ignoring all my more recent interests and responsibilities (blogging, for one, as you may have noticed, and I’m also not answering my email for the most part, so don’t be offended if your communication with me has ceased). 

See, I’ve never been very good at coping with stress. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have a driver’s license because then I would take that first escape route, and while reading the Animorphs is relatively harmless, leaving the state or country to escape your problems can create new (major) ones. 

I’m enjoying this journey to the past, though. Over the course of fifty-four books (plus four Megamorphs, four Chronicles, and the two Alternamorphs (which I like to pretend don’t exist)), you get to know these characters. This story goes from being a relatively light one to a kind of serious and intense war story. There are ambiguous moral choices. There is violence and death. There’s a lot to take in here, a lot more than is suggested by the format (the never-ending series that we all read at least one of when we were ten or so–my favorites were the Animorphs, Sweet Valley High, and the Babysitters’ Club, at different times). 

So it’s pretty intense and absorbing if you’re reading anywhere from three to eight of these per day (I’ll run out soon, though). It’s enough to distract me pretty thoroughly from all the things I don’t want to deal with. Not only does it take me back to the Animorphs’ world, it takes me back to my own childhood as well. However, when the books run out, I’ll have to deal. 

As stress-coping strategies go, however, I’d say this one is pretty awesome. 

Plus, if you never read these books–do so immediately!

I know this girl, not well, but she’s an acquaintance, and she’s an actress. I’ve seen her in a couple of plays, and she’s really great. She’s also an awesome person–not just incredibly talented, but genuinely a really kind and wonderful person. Anyway, she got a part in One Tree Hill. A major TV show. I don’t mean an extra, I mean she actually got a part and spoke and everything. It was kind of surreal to see someone I know on TV (the news doesn’t count), and no one deserves that success more than she does. 

It makes you think about things, though. She’s seventeen, and an actress, and she’s really accomplishing things in her chosen field. What have I done? Not a lot, really, particularly because I’m not entirely sure what my goals are, what I want to be doing. Writing is one, and I’ve done okay there, but it’s not like I’m a published novelist or anything–in fact, if we’re using that as a marker of success and achievement, I haven’t even written a whole novel. I’ve been published once. I blog. But shouldn’t I be writing more, going after more opportunities, achieving more? I don’t know. I don’t know what the standard is. Sure, the girl mentioned in the first part of this post is probably not a good standard of comparison; most seventeen-year-olds haven’t done anything like that. But why shouldn’t she be the standard? Why shouldn’t we all be striving to meet that level of achievement? Answer: we probably should. It may or may not be possible, but we should try harder. I should try harder, I mean.

Sometimes, I think that everything worth fighting for, every revolutionary and radical idea worth believing in, will always be seen as naive, idealistic, and unrealistic. 

That is all.

We all need someone we can trust, no matter what. It’s good for us to talk about things freely, without watching our words, and for that, we need to trust people. 

The problem, however, is that once you’ve trusted too many people and had that trust betrayed, it’s difficult to completely trust new people. 

That’s the past at work on the present. No matter how hard we try to escape it, the past is always exerting its influence, good or bad, over the present.

So, I work a few hours a week in hell (Kmart), and I babysit a bit, but I’m a poor student, and I need all the help I can get. I want to buy books, desperately want a new camera, and I’m also trying to save money for a trip this summer with my friends. And I could use your help! If you’re planning to buy something from Amazon, I’d love you forever if you’d click through one of my associate referral links (valid for 24 hours after you click through on anything you buy!). Just to get you started, why don’t you click through to Amazon’s Teen Books page?

I’d never been to Waffle House. I’d heard that it was smoky and dirty and “totally sketch,” to use the words of one friend, especially after midnight.

It was 12:30 AM, and my friend was driving me home from a birthday party, when I said, “Let’s go to Waffle House.”

Naturally, this suggestion was met with, “Why?” I answered, “Because it’s an experience. Because I want to have experiences. And going to Waffle House in the middle of the night is an experience. I’ll give you ten dollars. And buy you a hash brown.” And he loves hash browns, and needed gas money, so we set off for Waffle House. 

When we walk in, it’s smoky and dirty and full of all kinds of people. The waitress who took our drink orders was all you can imagine: a middle aged woman with a smoke-tinged, southern accented voice, the kind of person you imagine might have a stereotypical waitress name, like “Flo,” and call you “honey,” and know your name if you come in often enough. 

The guy who brought our food is young, possibly a little stoned, and with ridiculous hair. He has to keep his head sideways to keep it out of his eyes, and when he asks about the check he says, “Do you want to get together, or separate, or…whoa. Get together. That sounded wrong.” I stare for a minute. Stoned? Or just stupid? I can’t get a good look at his eyes; the hair, remember?

The people in the booth across from us are college-aged, a guy in a hoodie and a girl with a t-shirt with faded Hebrew writing across the front. Not too interesting, until someone who knew them comes in and says, “Wow, you guys have been here for like five hours.” Five hours on a Friday night at Waffle House…Interesting. 

Over two booths in the corner, there is a sign that says, “non-smoking section. Every Waffle House in America has a Non-Smoking Section,” however, that’s very nominal. Most people in Waffle House smoke, and you’re not too protected from it by sitting in those two booths. 

There is a “Did You Know…” trivia fact on the back of the receipt. It says that in the jukebox at every Waffle House, there are songs written just for Waffle House. One is about raisins in toast. I can’t come up with any change. Too bad. I’d have liked to hear those songs.

We stay in Waffle House for two and a half hours. Many people in Waffle House past 2AM seem to be intoxicated and/or crazy, but you’d be surprised at how many seemingly normal people are spending time in Waffle House in the middle of the night.

We talk about life. We talk about the future and our plans and ourselves. We tell silly stories and complain about how awkward it is when M and W, a couple, hang all over each other in public, and then can’t stand it anymore and go out to the car and we all pretend we don’t know what they’re doing in there. We talk about how all friendships are unbalanced equations; one person always cares more than the other. I’m always on the wrong side, the side that cares too much. I’m on the wrong side with our friendship, but it’s okay because we talk about it, and that makes it more okay somehow. We talk about everything. We watch people, from the group of women in fancy clothes to the gangster-types with bloodshot eyes. We wonder who puts Worcestershire sauce on what at Waffle House. We eat our hash brown and drink our cokes, and it’s an experience.

That’s what I want out of life: experiences. I want to sit at Waffle House for two and a half hours in the middle of the night. I want to get lost driving to the dollar movie theater at 10pm on a Tuesday. I want to shut my eyes, spin, pick a direction, get in the car, and go. I want to see where I end up, who I see, and what happens. I want to watch life happen in weird places. I want to find a hole-in-the-wall Salvadoran restaurant in a strange city. 

That’s part of what I want from New York. I want to be in the city that never sleeps because the craziest things happen in the middle of the night. I want the experiences, and I hope that I can find someone to share them with. The friend in the Waffle House story is someone who is sometimes cooperative with my weird desires, but in a tolerant, indulgent way. I want somebody who wants to do these things as much as I do, not because I think anything specific will happen, but because I just want to see what might happen or what I might see or where I might end up. Is there anybody out there who’s  this crazy? After mulling it over, I’ve decided that there’s one person who might be: a fellow writer. Don’t we always want to people watch and see what stories come out of it? Don’t we always want to see new places and meet new characters? And don’t we always want to come home and write it down, like I’m doing now?

I can still feel the smoke in the back of my throat as I write this. I’m happy.