Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Transfer Student Day!

The transfer student makes everything possible. You think it’s just a fresh start for you, but the transfer student represents a fresh start for the entire school. You’re the fresh eyes who never saw anyone crying through lunch, the fresh ears who hasn’t heard the thousands of derogatory nicknames those students have been wearing like nooses around their necks since elementary school. For them, for everyone who sees you, you are a new beginning.

You have no idea the power you possess.

Make a friend today. Lure girls in with your stories of what teenage society consists of outside of their district. Tell them tales, tell them lies, tell them whatever it takes to win their trust and make them want to claim you as theirs.

Get a boyfriend. Lure one away from his long-term girl. Tell him what love was like where you came from. Tell him boys do things to girls where you came from, things you can teach him. You’re pretty sure he can learn, because he seems just as mature as the boys you used to know.

Introduce your classmates to a new synthetic drug. Show them a dance they’ve never danced before. Make them watch a Youtube video they never even heard of, and they thought they’d already seen them all.

You are the open door they can’t wait to storm through. You can lure them anywhere, even to their ruin.

You know your mission. You know what this means to Lower Hamilton High School that you infiltrate and demolish Washington East. This rivalry has gone on too long. It’s time to stop trying to settle this on the football field.

You’re our chance to take them down from the inside.

Happy Transfer Student Day!

Monday, November 19, 2012

Family Road Trip Day!

Take a road trip with your family. Get your kids into the back seat and your husband in the front and hit the fucking road.

“WHY ARE YOU DRIVING SO FAST? IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WHERE ARE WE GOING!” your kids and husband will shout. Tell them to shut their goddamn mouths or you’ll drive through a guardrail and into a gulch.

“Road trips are supposed to be spontaneous,” you explain once they’re all quietly cowering. “We’re going to drive and have dangerous adventures until something about us changes.”

You pull into bars and pick fights.

You break into vacation homes and steal silver and electronics.

You transport crystal meth and you pick up hitchhikers who remember seeing the ghost of Elvis Presley and you come to the aid of a crashed crop duster, managing to rescue the pilot before his plane bursts into flames.

You drive for four more months, and when you pause to celebrate your daughter’s eleventh birthday and your son’s ninth by the lip of the grand canyon, you all finally agree that you’ve each discovered something about yourselves that has changed you forever.

“I hate the road,” your daughter says.

“I hate America,” your son says.

“I hate being in a car,” your husband says.

“I want to spend the rest of my life in a tree,” you say.

Your husband hoists you up into a tree then he and your two kids wave goodbye as you climb higher and higher. Your husband says he’ll come back in a few months with divorce papers, but that he’s glad you’ve discovered yourself, and that you won’t be in his life to drag him on another awful trip like this one ever again.

Happy Family Road Trip Day!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

“Nightowl,” he says.

You look up from your book and smile a weak smile. “I just can’t stay in bed with my husband through the night,” you explain before returning to your book.

He should just go back to his work, whatever work a graveyard shift hotel desk clerk might have, but he’s not going to. He just got married and he wants to know if his wife does that. “Do all women do that?” he asks.

You tell him you’re sorry you bothered him and you’ll move to the business center.

“Do all women do that?” he asks again.

“I’m just a light sleeper,” you say, trying to put some comfort into your voice.

He asks if you were always a light sleeper. You don’t answer, which gives him your answer loud and clear.

“What stirs you?” he asks.

You close your book. “My eyes snap open like someone flicked a light-switch,” you say. “And I slither out of bed and watch my sleeping husband, feeling like I’m in control, like we’re engaged in some kind of war of wits and by waking up and living a few hours of conscious life without him even knowing it, I’ve got the drop on him.”

He’s terrified. “What do you think will happen if you sleep the whole night through,” he asks.

You shrug. “Not sure since I haven’t let it happen one time in the past fourteen years of marriage,” you say.

He asks again, “Do all women do that?”

“I don’t know if your wife does that,” you say. “Maybe she doesn’t need to since you work nights.”

“I’m just filling in tonight," he says.

Go to his desk and place your hand on his. "I love my husband,” tell him. “I just don’t want him to win.”

“Win at what?”

You can’t help but smile, he’s so adorably naive.

“Why, win at marriage of course,” you say.

Let go of his hand and go to the business center so he can make a frantic phone call home now.

Happy The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

Wednesday, November 07, 2012

He Cries More Now Day!

When you bump into him it’s the first time you’ve seen him in ten years. He looks the same.

“You look even better,” he says.

You do it at his place. He isn’t married, just like back then. He’s barely employed, just like back then. He’s still good in bed, just like back then. You tell him he hasn’t changed at all.

“I cry more now,” he says. “Sometimes for days at a stretch. Normal I suppose.”

You cry less.

“I also have more trouble going into buildings sometimes now,” he says. “Occasionally I’ll just start walking toward a building entrance and I’ll have to turn around and run. Part of aging I guess.”

That hasn’t happened to you yet.

“I also find myself following men who look well put together to see how they live and find out what they figured out. Is that something that just happens after 35?”

Yeah you don’t really do that at all.

“Anyway want to meet my squirrels?” he asks.

You tell him you have to head home.

“To your squirrels?” he asks, a little uneasy.

You don’t have any squirrels but just to calm him down you say, “Yes. They’re waiting for their nuts.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. He gave you a taste of your past, and you gave him the false hope that his present isn’t as off-course as he suspects it might be.

Happy He Cries More Now Day!

Monday, November 05, 2012

Senator Outside Your House Day!

He’s in love with your daughter.

“She’s in college,” you remind him. “And you’re married.”

“Which is why I have to keep it a secret,” he says. “Up for reelection.”

Your daughter comes running outside and into the Senator’s arms.

“Now you know about us Daddy,” she says, kissing the Senator all over his face.

“Still not going to vote for you,” you say to the Senator.

The three of you laugh very hard, then your daughter and the Senator start making out as you look up at the sky, puffing on your cigarette, wondering whether there’s someone out there for you to love, the way the Senator loves your daughter. It’s been so hard since her mother died.

Happy Senator Outside Your House Day!