The Swag Duck

Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, I give you:

THE SWAG DUCK

That is all.

Deterring the Gift-Givers

Last week was my birthday. I hate birthdays. They usually involve friends giving you useless and/or joke gifts while the rest of your friends apologize profusely for their lack of useless and/or joke gifts. This birthday, however, was tolerable (I went to the city and saw Jersey boys and it was awesome and oh my frickin' gawd!), but I won't go into that.

I have a close friend who loves birthdays, specifically other peoples'. A few days beforehand she called me.

"So what should I get you for your birthday?"

I thought about it. "A roll of toilet paper…with your deepest-darkest secrets written on it."

"Come one."

"Seriously. That's what I want."

"What do you really want?"

"I don't know. I have everything I want. I want nothing more. How about some laundry detergent? We're always running out of that stuff."

"Oh my god! Just tell me what you want for your birthday!"

"Laundry detergent!"

We repeated the process four times.

She got me laundry detergent.

I love winning.

The Perils of Living in a Small Town

I live in a small town. And by small, I mean, small. So small that everyone knows each other’s names. So small that it takes 5 minutes to drive from one end to the other. So small your neighbors know your bathroom schedule. (Ok, maybe not that small, but you get my point.)

Now, I’ll admit it’s a great environment to grow up in, but there are times when it gets a little…annoying.

For instance, when I was learning to drive a manual transmission, naturally, my mother had me practice slowly on the dirt roads. Stalling out sucks, but it sucks a lot worse in a small town. Because it means you’re at the mercy of the natives…

I was minding my own business, trying to restart the stupid Honda, when I heard a knock at the window. Oh shit, I thought. I sighed, and rolled the window down. Should I turn the engine off? This can’t take too long right?

It did.

It was one of the countless old faces who have known me since I was “this tall!”. She burst forth in an explosion of clichéd sayings and anecdotes.

“My God, Chelsey, you’re driving?! Oh my goodness, dearie me, I remember when you were but a wee little baby! And now you’re driving, how time flies! I must be getting old!”

Can’t take too long, can it? I’ll leave the engine on. The end is in sight…

“Oh, it seems like just yesterday you were in the third grade writing a poem about the oak tree in my back yard. You were so sweet and innocent…”

There’s still hope. Lord, please let her finish quickly. I can totally leave the engine on, it’ll only take a few minutes.

“…I remember when I taught my little Johnnie how to drive, those were the days…”

I turned the engine off. and began to sing car songs in my head. 99 bottles of beer on the wall 99 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall! 98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around…

“Did you know Johnnie got into graduate school at the University of Preppy-ville? I never went to college myself, but…”

84 bottles of beer on the wall 84 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 83 bottles of beer on the wall! 83 bottles…

“…I got cable television finally, and my goodness, I am so excited about it! There’s this channel called Animal Planet. Have you heard of it? Did you know that giraffes…?”

75 bottles of beer on the wall 75 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 74 bottles of beer on the wall…

“…and did you hear about Harold down at the store? Well, he’s having an affair…”

67 bottles of beer on the wall 67 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 66 bottles of beer…

“…With me!”

Wait…what?

“…I really do love the new fertilizer at the nursery, my petunias are flourishing!…”

53 bottles of beer on the wall 53 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, 52…

“…When I first moved to this town, I felt so welcomed by your parents, you really don’t know how great they are…”

31 bottles of beer on the wall, 31 bottles of beer, take one down…

“…But anyway, enough about me! How are you, Chelsey-dear?”

“22 bottles of beer on the—I uh, what? Oh, uh, I’m great, school is—”

“Oh my, look at the time! I have to go! It was good to hear about you!”

“I, uh…bye.”

I frantically rolled up the window before she came back to update me on the tea outfits she bought for her cats or something. I turned to my mom. “Who was that!?”

“I have no idea, honey.”

The Food Chain Middle School Style

I was recently sitting in Starbucks waiting for a ride home from my lovely mother. I had planned to stay in the coffee joint and work on some homework, but my attempt was foiled by the arrival of a flock of middle schoolers.

Now I was in their very situation only four years ago, but that's a quarter of my life, so nonetheless, their behavior was striking.

What did I feel when I looked at these pockmarked terrors? Nostalgia for the earlier part of my youth? Fondness for their duckling-like qualities?

Nope.

I felt a strong belief in Darwinism.

Not only did they display the classic big fish eats little fish scenario. They displayed humanity at its nastiest.

I watched a larger boy physically sit on a younger one for the attentions of a girl. I watched pre-pubescent outcasts sit in the corner and quietly plot their bloody revenge on society. I watched girls get into real, I'm-not-even-joking catfights.

It was an eye-opening experience. Perhaps I'll never recover.

The incident does, however, make me wonder what adults see when they observe my the interactions of my friends and I...and I think, "hey, maybe we're not all that bad in their eyes."

Then I come to my senses.

So, to all those who are older than me: I am so so sorry.

The Seven Levels of Life (and Macy's)

I recently was window shopping at Macy's (which means riding the escalators all the way up to the top and back down). There I noticed a disturbing trend.

1st floor:
Eateries. Sushi bars. Pretty things like makeup for you to indulge in after your soul-sucking workout across the street. 

Because let's face it, you probably don't have the money or the time to go up the escalator and buy the clothing that they're actually trying to sell.

2nd floor:
They display the most expensive young women's clothes first because that's the demographic that tends to visit department stores like this one. Chic, stylish, trendy, foreward-fashion (I have no idea as to what this means, but I have read it somewhere before).

The clothing reflects youth at it's finest. Sparkly, new, and dare I mention thin. About .5% of the shoppers I saw there could actually fit in the dresses they had on display (which points to an interesting social topic about body image that I won't go into here).

Because if you don't have the guts or the waistline to wear the loud tank tops and distressed-denim skinny jeans, you have your whole life ahead of you! Maybe tomorrow you will! Or the tomorrow after that! There are so many tomorrows that the excitement of it all could give you a heart-attack! But you're too young for that! It's all so hopeful!

3rd floor:
Pretty much the same as the 2nd floor, but nominally more mature. Flowered tops and modern dresses, scarves, and early spring deals.

You still don't have the waistline or money or guts, but hey, you've got time. It's still hopeful. Mostly.

4th floor:
Professional women's clothing. 

Black and white and modern, baby. Dull and plain like your life.

Noticeably more clothes in the larger sizes. Not on the manikins of course, but noticeably more. Because if you have to be on this floor, you don't have time to workout and you're probably married anyway. Your chance of a size 2 disappeared somewhere on the 3rd floor amid the pump heels and the drug dealers in the changing rooms (I didn't actually see any, but you know they must exist).

5th floor:
Baby clothes.

Because after you get married and bust a few of the buttons on your professional attire (see above), you obviously have kids, right?

6th floor:
Furniture.

You quit your job and upgraded your house. This way you can buy a new Lay-Z boy for your husband and buy-out the makeup section downstairs in one go!

If you're still on the experimental side (which is very unlikely at this stage), you can buy a pre-made middle-east themed kitchen set conveniently displayed in the corner because no lifeless mother/failed professional in their right mind would want one.

7th floor:
The Cheesecake Factory.

Now that you're old and fat, you can take your 6 and 7 year old to this dark and cramped restaurant/pastry shop/I-have-no-clue-what-this-actually-is. This way, they too can eat too much cheesecake and repeat the cycle.

Late Night Radio Will Be the End of Me

Ladies and germs:

I must confess a guilty pleasure of mine. I love to listen to late night radio. It's the equivalent of daytime soap operas. So terrible and yet…oh so good.

Ah, the love panels! The bad poetry! The space themed classical music broadcasts!

Last evening, the love panels caught my attention. These types of broadcasts usually consist of two or three advice-givers and random people calling in. Since the stations can't censor the callers, these shows can get entertaining.

"Hi there, so, I've, like, been with my boyfriend for like three years now and all of a sudden he has a microwave fetish...and I'm like, uh, what's up with that?" (funnier if read in a New York accent)

"So, hey, uh, listen. I've always been worried that the size of my…member isn't quite up to the standards, and uh, yeah."

"My husband and I are trying for a baby and he started putting garlic cloves all around the bed because of some superstition that says that'll make it a boy, but I want a girl. What can I do to counteract the voodoo? I'm in my 3rd trimester and rain dances aren't really possible at this point for me."

"So, like, uh, I'm 23, and, uh, I keep hearing about this thing called....called...uh...um....sex? And like, what is that?"

Oh, America, how I love thee.

The Origin Story

They say to write what you know, and I think that’s partially the reason for all the bad writing out there: people don’t know shit. Now, the reason this pertains to me is that I don’t know shit either, and I love to write. That’s an interesting situation for me, because it’s pretty much a given that what I write will be shit and yet I insist upon doing it anyway. I mean, at least with the piano part of the quality relies on how the music sounds.

I feel sorry for my parents. You see: I’m the golden ticket. 16 years old, 4.17 GPA, 2070 on the SAT, blue eyed, blonde. Recipe for success, amiright? I'm just attractive enough to sleep with people in high places to get a promotion. I am the first person in my family to show any sort of intelligence that can be measured by standardized testing. I’ll be the first to go to college. Ideally, I’ll be the first stereotypical success the family has birthed since our lovely founder got kicked out of Switzerland. God, I wonder what the poor people thought when I wanted to learn piano. “Shit. She’s one of those.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re very supportive of the whole thing as a hobby, but I get the distinct feeling that telling them music is what I want to do with my life would be very… awkward.

            “You realize there isn’t any money in that?”

            “Right.”

            “You realize you probably won’t get anywhere?”

            “Yuppers.”

            “You realize you could go to school and learn something useful instead?”
            “Uh-huh.”

            “And yet you still…?”

            “You betchyoass.”

            “Well then.”

            “Well then.”

          

Anyhow, writing. Here’s the run-through. It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon and I don’t feel like doing much of anything. So I was twiddling away the day in the typical fashion: surfing the internet, watching stand up comedy clips, eating bread, fantasizing about being a ventriloquist, and generally basking in a sloppy, wet puddle of self-hatred.

At times like these, you get to a point where actually getting up and doing something with yourself would ruin the beauty of it all. Of course, I could find some way to get off the couch and go socialize with other people my age but shit, is it really worth the effort? Why listen to other people’s problems when I can wallow in my own?

            

Somehow, I got bored and decided to go do something useful.

I tried recording a song, or at least a scratch track of a song, because I felt ugly, and looked ugly, and sounded ugly. And that didn’t work. I tried reading, because I’d like to expand my vocabulary or some line of crap like that. I played with the dog for a while. But you can only pretend to throw a tennis ball so many times before the dog gives a big “fuck you” and pees on your pantleg.

At this point I decided to just write because I had had so little interaction with outside influences that my thoughts sounded fucking brilliant to me. You know those times when you’re alone all morning and you just have this running conversation with yourself in your head? And you’re narrating everything you do in your head, and maybe you’re narrating everything you do in Morgan Freeman’s voice, and it’s flipping AWESOME, and then you start flirting with yourself, and you’re like, “what? Is this normal?” You know those times?

“Dee dee dee, here I am opening the refrigerator. Oh, nothing looks interesting. Well, fuck it. I’ll go flip through Grandma’s encyclopedias. Why are you reading this shit, you sexy girl? You know it all anyway cuz you are one badass chick. Just look at you. You’re frickin’ gorgeous.”

You know those times? No? Well then…