My New Sport?

I exercise regularly but I’m not that big into sports. I did watch some volleyball in the Olympics. But I wasn’t so interested in the volleyball that I would have watched it without one of the teams being American. If I were ever to play against any really good women’s volleyball team I would get killed. I don’t mean that figuratively speaking. I mean I would get injured (or more like “wounded”) by a fast-moving, spiked volleyball and die as a result. I can just see myself being rushed to the hospital where I would be pronounced dead. They would list the reason for death as “extreme volleyball trauma”. I may be pronounced dead at the volleyball court. I might not even make it alive to the hospital.

I mention volleyball because a few days ago a friend at work, Anna, asked me if I wanted to play some casual volleyball. I asked her; How casual? She said that the players were a group of adults who got together once a week to get a little exercise and have some fun. Anna said that the only reason they bother to keep score was to know when to quit. It sounded good but I wasn’t convinced. I could still see myself taking one in the head and being knocked goofy, or goofier than I already am. My game is golf which isn’t saying much since I have been on a driving range once, and played miniature golf about five times. But I had the best score of my two friends the last time I played miniature golf, and I once hit a golf ball at the driving range 200 yards. I was pretty impressed with myself after that hit until the guy hitting balls next to us said that it is amazing how much farther a ball will travel when there is a thirty miles per hour wind pushing it along, and the ground is rock-hard. I’m still figuring that 200 yards is 200 yards.

Anyway, I was still hesitant to play volleyball with my friend because, like I said, I have this aversion to being hit in the face with a spiked ball flying downward like a meteor. Then Anna told me that they have unusual rules for their game. Under their rules no one can hit the ball over the net while jumping. At least one foot has to be touching the ground. To sort of counteract this rule, the court is longer and even a little wider than a usual court. It supposedly makes for a game with more movement, and less getting hit in the face by a volleyball going the speed of a bullet. Another difference was that no one cares how the ball is hit. Open hands are okay, just so long as a player doesn’t obviously catch the ball. I finally agreed to play.

Well, this game was actually fun. A lot of the fun had to do with the people, who played pretty hard, but joked around too. I liked the idea that I apparently could not do anything klutzy enough to get yelled at, because I did some pretty klutzy things. In fact, they asked me to come back.

So anyway, I think “my sport”, golf, might be replaced by this strange form of volleyball, just so long as no one ever yells at me for messing up, and no one ever expects to see a star player named Heather.       

The Quarter

I think I’m having some kind of early-20s time crisis, similar to a man's mid-life crisis, but female and earlier. I have this desire to have time somehow slow down.

My high school graduating class recently had a five-year reunion. I didn’t go. I have one high school girlfriend who went to the reunion with her boyfriend. Another girlfriend and ex-classmate went with her fiancee. I can’t believe it has been five years since high school. I can remember commencement like it was yesterday. It was outdoors. I wore blue slip-on shoes under the robe. My friend Jenny was sitting right in front of me during the ceremony and I kept annoying her by reaching forward and playing with her hat. My favorite aunt traveled to Chicago to be at my commencement, but she brought her dog and so she had to stand behind the seated audience. When the dog began to bark, she had to leave. She never saw me get my diploma. It’s scary to think all of that took place over five years ago.

I have lived alone in my own little apartment for almost three years now. During one of the first days I lived there a quarter dropped off my kitchen table and fell to the floor under the table, an inch or so from the wall. It’s in a place that I cannot reach with a vacuum. I have too much stuff on the table to make moving it an easy task. My best option would be to go under the table on my hands and knees. I’m poor, but not so poor as to bother climbing under the table to get 25 cents. So the quarter still rests there on the floor. And nearly three years later I still don’t feel like crawling after it. Just this morning the quarter caught my eye as I was getting breakfast. Has it really been lying under there for almost three years? Yes it has, as hard as it is for me to believe.

I think the thing is; three years doesn’t seem like the same span of time as it did when I was a small girl. When I was a girl, three years was forever. Now it’s still a lot of time, but not forever. In a three year span I went from being a high school junior, to having a brief college career, to working full-time and living on my own. Heck, I’ve had the same quarter for nearly three years. I’ll bet in three years that quarter will still be right where it is now. Why wouldn’t it be? After all, three years isn’t so long, not anymore.   

  

I'm Just Too Simple Minded

Sometimes I think I’m just too simple-minded when it comes to men. It actually angers me that I’m this way. Some guy picks me up for a date in a nice, new, fancy car and it disappoints me because it isn’t some ordinary, seven year-old Chevrolet. Another thing that bothered me was his clothing. It wasn’t that he dressed too nice, it was that he dressed too expensive. Why couldn’t he have worn some slightly worn plaid shirt? Even his haircut looked expensive. Why am I this way? Maybe I feel intimidated by such things, or maybe it's just an odd form of discrimination that has no basis. I wish I knew.

One of my favorite times out with a guy was when we picked up a pizza, ate it at a picnic table in a park, and then went miniature golfing at this place where everything was so dilapidated, it looked as if it was a week from going out of business. Just before we left, my date carried on a friendly, two minute conversation with an old lady who was running the place. He entranced and fascinated me, and then never called me again. I guess that can happen.

None of this is new. When I was twelve years old I had a crush on a boy who was practically a modern-day Huckleberry Finn. He didn’t care about video games or the newest geek stuff. He was too busy fishing in the Olentangy River, or riding his bicycle to who-knows-where with one of his rowdy friends. I wanted more than anything for him to take me with him, but he never did. If he were just a wild kid I wouldn’t have paid any attention to him. But he was more than that. Now and then he would sit with me on the porch steps and we would talk. One time he told me not only that I was pretty, but I was going to be even prettier when I grew up. How could I not have a crush? I never saw him in nice clothes.   

Don’t get me wrong, I like guys who know when to be clean and well-groomed. I hate the slightest hint of body odor. I like getting dressed up and going to fancy restaurants. I have had a daydream where a friendly, courteous guy takes me to a beautiful restaurant. Once we get seated in a booth, he points up to this big, sparkling chandelier, and then self-mockingly jokes, “I’ve got one just like that hanging from the ceiling in my bathroom.” His humor gives me a hint of who he is, and so does the gentle smile that follows it. We order our dinner and then he softly asks me if I'm having a good time. And of course I am. I’m to simple-minded not to.       

Customer Service

I am supposedly a receptionist at a large car dealership but I’m really kind of an all-around plug-in employee. As my father would say; a jack of no trades. I might end-up going wherever I am needed just so long as it doesn’t involve actually doing anything to a car. I do various kinds of paper work, filing, mailing brochures, sometimes I will even find myself in the service department desk interacting with customers. Usually that happens when they are shorthanded, and even then I am there only for a very short time, usually just a few minutes.

Yesterday I was manning the service department customer counter for all of about ten minutes. While I was there, one of the technicians came up to the desk and began chatting with me. His name is Dane. I have talked to him briefly once or twice before. He is maybe in his mid-thirties and funny in a quiet sort of way. Yesterday he was jokingly complaining how his coveralls had gotten dirty, and he had planned to wear them out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I replied that he would look much better once he put on a necktie, and that no one would even notice the unsightly coveralls. He thought that was pretty funny.

Anyway, I had been there occupying the service desk and talking to Dane when an angry customer bolted through the door. He hotly stated that someone in the service department had driven his car while it was in for repairs, and had put 50 miles on it. I told him that I was going to be at the desk for just a few minutes until the supervisor returned. I did not know what else to tell him.

Dane began chatting with me again as the customer anxiously stood nearby, waiting for the service department supervisor. Finally the customer stepped forward and heatedly said something like, “Little girl, is your manager coming back or not? I can’t wait around here all day. First you people drive my car, and then you have no customer service.” I don’t know if those were his exact words, but they are pretty close.

It was then that Dane said something like, “Sir, if you can just remain patient, I’m sure the supervisor will be here in a second.” His voice was very calm, pleasant, and even had a friendly tone to it. But the agitated customer just gave him a quick glance and huffed out, “I’m not talking to you, asshole.” It’s funny but I know those were the customer’s exact words. It is as if they are glued into my memory.

Dane kept leaning against the counter, but he said to the customer, “You really don’t want to call this lady "little girl",and you definitely don't want to call me an "asshole"…” a few seconds passed and then Dane added, “do you?”

The worked-up customer didn’t respond, he just continued to fidget around anxiously. It was then that Dane stood up straight and barked a very loud, very scary “Do you!?”

Right at that moment I wanted to be anywhere else but behind that counter. Apparently the customer wanted to be somewhere else too. He spun around and hurried out the door. Dane turned to me, smiled slightly, and said, “Now there’s some customer service for you.” He then said a very calm goodbye, and walked back to his work station.

I don’t know if Dane has, or will get into any trouble for his actions. I know that my hands didn’t stop shaking for fifteen minutes. My ex-boyfriend was a little like Dane; a soft-spoken, amusing guy, but a guy you definitely did not want to mess with. My ex-boyfriend once told me that because he was so easygoing, some people thought that they could intimidate or bully him, only to find out differently when it was too late. God help me for saying this; I think there’s something kind of cool about guys like that. 

A Few Days Worth of Baffling Stuff

There are a lot of things I don’t quite get. Just in the past week I have come across several things that baffle me. The whole thing with dreams has me puzzled. Not only do I do things in dreams that I could not, or would not do in real life, but I don’t even have the same opinions, desires, or likes in a dream as I do when I’m awake. A few nights ago I had this dream where I was running around looking for my lost Aunt Sandy. I think I was dreaming about Aunt Sandy because she called me about a week ago to see how I was doing. In my dream she had become a missing person. I was frantically looking for her, and helping me was this guy named Michael who I actually knew slightly in high school. What makes it all especially weird is that I barely remember Michael at all, and what do I remember is that I thought he was kind of annoying. In my dream I wanted to find my aunt so I could then spend time with Michael, who in my dream I was hot for. My god, go figure! I definitely do not understand what goes on with dreams.

Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a YouTube link of a clown video. There’s a lot about clowns I don’t get. First, why didn’t the popularity of clowning die-off about three minutes after the first clown stepped out in front of an audience? How have they stayed a part of the entertainment world literally for centuries? Some people think that the average clown is creepy. I don’t think that’s the case, but neither do I think they are generally funny. Sometimes a clown can be funny, but it’s not because he is a clown. It’s because he is saying, or on rare occasions, doing something funny that has nothing to do with the fact that he dressed like a clown. I don’t get clowns.

Saturday I pulled into my fitness facility parking lot and I had to stop to allow a giant Hummer time to park in a rather small parking spot, or at least try to park. The driver finally gave up and he parked his Hummer farther out, where there were two open parking spaces together. Monday I walked by the same Hummer and glanced inside. I figured the owner probably had a lot of power tools in the huge car, or maybe he was stowing his snowmobile in the back of the vehicle over summer. I mean, why else would anyone drive a big, ponderous monster? But it looked like the Hummer was pretty much empty. So while I was working out, I tried to figure out why anyone would want some big beast of a vehicle if they didn’t need to have one. They take more gas and are harder to drive. Needless to say, I don’t get it.

I went out with a guy a few weeks ago who cussed a lot. My girlfriend is dating a guy who swears about every other sentence. I’m referring to an endless stream of f*** this, and f*** that. Sometimes the word “mother” is thrown in for emphasis. It doesn’t seem to bother my girlfriend a bit, but that stuff drives me crazy. When an habitual cusser is speaking, swearing continuously, I have a strong desire to raise my hand to halt his talking, and then say, “I want to hear what you have to say, but not if it’s full of swearing. Now, it’s your choice.” I don’t know how my girlfriend can stand it. It’s just another one of those things that I find baffling, one of many things, I guess.   

Am I Really No Longer A Girl?

Okay, it could be that I’m no longer a girl. Maybe I’m an actual woman. I know that in many ways I’ve been a woman for about ten years. In the eyes of Mother Nature I’ve had womanhood for about a decade. At the time there wasn’t much else that suggested I was a woman, but as far as my womanly ability to procreate, I became a woman long ago.

Legally I have been a woman for about five years. I am now twenty-three and I could have gotten married without parental consent on my eighteenth birthday. It was also the first time I was of legal voting age. When I was eighteen, I thought of myself as more a woman than I did when I was thirteen, but I still did not consider myself a woman. Heck, I still hadn’t graduated high school or even gone to the prom.

But this is the first summer I did not want to be tanned. Any tan I have is really an accident. This summer I have used a lot of sunscreen. These days I rarely chew gum. When I grocery shop, I sometimes look at the ingredients listed on packages. I do not want to put a lot of salt, sugar, or cholesterol in my diet. When I was nineteen I did not worry about such things, now I do. What’s up with that?

Not long ago I sighed for ownership of my own car. I couldn’t have dreamed of that when I was fifteen. And when I drive I drive more slowly than I did when I was seventeen or eighteen. And now I use my turn signal most of the time. I drink coffee, just like my father does. I have even developed a taste for red wine.

I still do not have any strong desire to get married and start a family, but yet I do not like the sound of “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” anymore. The terms have come to sound too adolescent. I guess the guy in my life will need to be more than a boyfriend, but less than a husband. That sounds like that might be pretty tricky. 

Anyway, I just thought I’d throw this idiotic revelation into my blog while it was on my mind, and I have the time. I know tomorrow I’m going to be busy getting my car’s oil changed. Oh my god, see? Since when do I care about something like oil?            

It's No One's Fault

Yesterday I had my first date in six weeks. I went out with a guy, Thad, who saw my OKCupid page and went to my blog to chat with me. After we exchanged a few messages, I let him call me. He seemed like a nice guy. He wrote that he didn’t have much money, and that he drove an old Saturn car. Thad called me on Monday, just to confirm the time he was going to come by. During that conversation it came out that he really had an okay job, and he did not drive a Saturn, he had been joking about the Saturn, and his financial situation. I was excited about the date, a fact I did not try to hide.

I found out yesterday that Thad really drives a car called a 370Z, or something like that. He seemed very proud of it. The car was sky-blue and very pretty. He likes to drive it very fast. Thad works handling investments for a bank. He graduated from Northwestern University about six years ago. Thad said that he makes good money but that “he doesn’t have as much money as I think he does.” I did not have any thoughts on his money one way or the other, so I’m not sure how to take what he said.

We went out and had a pizza at a place called Qs. It was a nice place that was kind of old-fashion. While we waited for our pizza to come out of the oven, Thad talked about something, but I’m not sure exactly what. It had to do with his job. The pizza was pretty good. Afterwards Thad suggested we go to a sports bar somewhere, but I was pretty tired, not to mention I had to get up early the next morning. So I said that he had better take me home. Thad walked me to my door and I was going to kiss him goodnight, but he said goodbye and left before I could. I think he was in a hurry to go somewhere.

Anyway, all morning I’ve been thinking about last night, kind of going back over it in my head. I think the thing is; Thad does everything faster than I like them done. He drove his car fast, he walks quickly, he even talks with the words coming out rapidly. I know it sounds dumb, but those things bothered me. It isn’t Thad’s fault, and there’s nothing wrong with doing things hurriedly, but I don’t want to be with someone if I have to rush just to keep up. But like I said, that’s nothing against Thad. That’s just the way he is. I just wish we could have just relaxed together and spent some time casually talking. 

Another thing I did not like is that Thad would swear sometimes. Again, I know it makes me sound like a dolt, but the cussing bothered me. Even I will swear when I’m really angry, but I don’t swear when I’m just talking normally. Maybe I should have been a nun.

It could be that I'm wrong but I think Thad was expecting some other kind of girl, a girl different than me. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little guilty that I took a couple of hours of his time last night. I think he could have spent them more wisely doing something else.     

Wow, Am I A Classy Girl

I have an account at OKCupid, and there in my profile I say that I’m not too much of a partier and I don’t go to clubs very often. Truth is; I don’t have a whole lot of social life beyond my friends… not that I’m complaining. But I haven’t been on a date in six weeks, and that date six weeks ago wasn’t a whole lot of fun. I‘m tempted to go into detail about that, but I don’t want to bore anyone who might be reading this.

Anyway, I’m going to come right out and state that I'm excited about Wednesday because Wednesday I'm going out on an actual date with a funny, nice guy. The guy I’m going out with will probably read this, but that’s okay, I think he already knows this stuff. I’ve never been the type of girl good at hiding her enthusiasm. I have pretty much accepted the fact that I can sometimes act like a genuine dork, and I do mean "genuine".

So about 11 AM this morning I decided that I needed to do some shopping. I didn't have much time so I quickly threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and gargled (I decided I could floss later). I then dashed out to my car and hurried to the mall.

I rushed through about three stores. While I was scurrying around, I noticed that I seemed to be getting some strange glances. Sometimes the glances would be accompanied by a smile or even a giggle. I looked down at myself and as far as I could see, everything was in order. I was wearing a summer dress, and I had not put it on backwards. My shoes were a matching pair. It was perplexing.

I ended up buying one casual, lace top, and kind of a pretty but inexpensive necklace. Even though I was in a hurry, when I got out to the car I decided to take a moment to see how the necklace would look when I wore it. As I held it around my neck and glanced into the rearview mirror, I saw a pale-blue glob hanging from my chin. It swear it looked like a tiny stalactite. For a few seconds the sight scared me. I thought it was a strange growth sprouting from my skin. But when I touched the small, weird lump, a bit came off onto my fingertips. It was of course toothpaste. Apparently an hour earlier I had been in too big a hurry to adequately wipe my face before leaving the bathroom.

For the next minute or so I thought back on my shopping excursion, trying to recall who had seen me wearing a glob of toothpaste and generally looking disgusting. In the end I came to the conclusion that there was no point in feeling embarrassed after the fact. Hopefully come Wednesday I won’t make the same mistake, but, well, since it is me, who knows. :)    

If God Had Hired Heather

I sometimes wish god had chosen me to fashion planet Earth, and all the things on it. I would have designed some things differently. I like the blue sky, but I would have made plant life more colorful. I think I would have had different trees with different colored leaves. An oak might have had leaves of orange, for example, while a spruce would have leaves of purple. I would have made some trees that had one color of leaf on the lower branches, and another color leaf on the higher branches. I would have one tree with pitch black leaves.

I think god really showed some creativity when he came up with the concept of fur. If I were god I would have a lot more animals with fur. But many more animals would have a sweet-sounding call. No barking or screeching. A raccoon could sound like a chord played on a harp, an elk might sound like two quick notes strummed on a well-tuned guitar. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I don’t know, maybe it would take some getting used to.

Rain would come in different colors, depending on the temperature. A hailstorm would look like a down pour of beautiful marbles. The storm would still do damage, but at least it would look pretty doing it.

Finally, I’ll call it The Pinocchio Effect”. If I were god, the ears on a human being would swell ever so slightly each time the person was guilty of stealing. The nose would grow just a touch each time the person lied. And the person’s feet would enlarge each time the person cheated. To find out the character of a man or woman all anyone would have to do would be to look at the individual’s ears, nose, and feet. All god came up with was blushing which is seldom a sign of an impropriety. This I know because I’m constantly doing things that make me blush, and I'd never do anything wrong... oh nooo, not me.        

Lucky Heather

I don't like to get overly philosophical but the reality is; I’m a lucky girl. That fact has occurred to me before, but it’s never popped into my mind at the same time that my blog has, at least not until now. Anyway, it’s the truth, I’m lucky.

I was born a healthy baby girl in 1989. I spent my first fifteen years living in Columbus, Ohio not having a care in the world other than not falling off my bicycle, and getting the occasional decent grade in school. I not only always had enough food to eat, but I always received gifts every Christmas. My mother, father, and even my brother are relatively normal people. There’s never been any need for anger management in the family. There is no insanity. None have a criminal record. For all those things to be true there just had to be a lot of luck. More luck than most people would realize, that is, if they bothered to give it any thought. I could have been born in China. Worse, I could have been born in China in 1845. I probably would have worked the rice paddies, had six children, and died at the age of fifty-two, a toothless, arthritic woman. And that’s if everything went well. Worst case scenario is that I would have been born a month premature and died before taking a breath.

I might have been born in what is now Nigeria in the year 600 A.D. To tell you the truth, I can’t even give you an inkling of what that life would have been like. I’m sure my childhood would have been worse than it was in a middle class neighborhood in Columbus in the late 1990s.

I live in Chicago now and when there is congested traffic I will sometimes get stuck at the same stop light for more than one cycle. It makes me mad. It makes me mad that I have to sit in complete comfort within an air-conditioned car for an extra forty-five seconds. Can you believe that? I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Out of all the human beings who ever lived on the planet, what percentage had all of the follow, #1; born with perfect health, #2; born into at least modest affluence, #3; born in an industrialized nation, and finally #4; born since the development of vaccines and antibiotics? Is it one person in a thousand? Is it one person in every ten thousand?

See, that is why I never bother playing the Illinois lottery. I’ve already won the lottery, whether I stop to appreciate it or not.