Eat the Damn Cake

I try to be nice for the most part. I also try to sound smart. But sometimes the niceness wins. And sometimes I’m just not that smart.

The other day, I was having coffee with a friend who was talking about the world. It wasn’t a conversation I was proud of. In fact, it was maybe a little embarrassing.

Her: “The world is just a messed up place!”

Me: “Hell yes, it is!”

Her: “I mean, it will keep you down. You have to fight for everything you have.”

Me: “You do!”

Her: “You know what they say? They say no good deed goes without being noticed. I believe that.”

Me: “Me too.”

Her: “And that’s the saving grace.”

Me: “It really is!”

It was a conversation composed entirely of clichés. But I like her. And I wasn’t about to disagree or ask for specifics or clarifications. It was easier and more fun to just go along with it. So there I was, in a coffee shop, eagerly agreeing with statements about life being a little like a bowl of cherries, or was it a box of chocolates, as the guys with their ironic laptop bags at the next table over glanced up curiously to see who could possibly be having such an unimaginative conversation in such a cool part of Brooklyn.

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There are no examples of people who look like me being hot. Because I am this weird combination of parts that surprised even God. God was like, “Wait, really? That can happen?” when I was born. I still don’t understand it. I look at my parents and grandparents and can kind of figure out how it’s possible, but I can also see how it could’ve easily gone a lot smoother.

Growing up, I knew this couple who were gangly and oddly-arranged. They had bad posture. They looked somehow drab. And they had three kids who looked like child models, and later, like actual models (although that line is a little blurry sometimes, so maybe I shouldn’t make the clarification). It was like all of the parents’ fantastic genes had been singled out and put to work. It was fabulous.

It didn’t happen that way with me. Maybe my parents were too good-looking to begin with. Which is really OK. I mean, I’m over it. For the most part.

(even her bird has a prominent nose. source)

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What is that? Apparently it’s something. One of the readers of this blog sent me some info on it, wondering if it might be an interesting thing or possibly, possibly a real one.

Orthorexia is when someone is obsessed with eating healthy foods, often to the point of self-harm. It’s not a medically recognized term, but Wikipedia is all over it, of course.

OK, our culture wants to medicalize and pathologize (I’m getting red squiggly lines for both of those words as I type this. Get with the picture, Word!) everything in the world. I don’t know anyone who can’t recite at least one Greek-based term for something that’s wrong with them. I have scoliosis (as you know from the yoga post) and anemia, myself. Wait, neither of those is from the Latin, right? I probably also have several things relating to my tendency to nod enthusiastically when other people speak, my abnormally acute interest in little summer dresses, and my inability to stop cutting my hair.

Naming things often gives them meaning. But some things have meaning even before someone tags a fancy title on them.

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I went on a walking tour of Brooklyn the other day, with my visiting bonus mom and Bear and some other people we didn’t know.  I learned that when the Brooklyn Bridge was constructed, it was the tallest thing on the horizon. Hard to imagine! I learned some other stuff, too, and I already forget most of it.

One of the women on the tour turned out to have gone to grad school at the same place as me, and she had lived in the same neighborhood during.

“Remember Gray’s Papaya?” she said. “Remember Koronet’s pizza? I think I gained twenty pounds.”

“Oh, I remember,” I said. And we laughed.

We had a little moment of bonding. The way women do when they talk about how much weight they’ve gained.

I think most women bond over college this way. I have had the conversation hundreds of times, now.

“Remember freshman year? All I ate was ice cream.”

“Me too. I ate ice cream three meals a day.”

“I gained twenty pounds.”

“Me too! I totally gained twenty pounds!”

We’ve all gained twenty pounds during some ill-advised period of ice cream and pizza eating. That’s what being a woman is about.

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When I was little, I loved to climb. So I tied my sheets together and climbed out of my window. I couldn’t get back up, though.

I climbed onto the long, sloping roof from the top of the garden fence, and then I climbed to the peak. I climbed trees, when the branches were the right distance apart. I climbed onto the overhang above the back deck. I climbed onto the deck itself, which was high up, wedging my feet in the cracks in the diagonal beams that supported it.

And then one day, I didn’t like climbing anymore. And then one day after that, I was so scared of heights, my breath caught when I came near the edge of something. In the Time Warner Center, on the fourth floor, standing by the glass railing took resolve. On the Brooklyn Bridge, sometimes I look down and, through the slats, I can see cars far, far below, and it seems like I’m walking on air, and my heart picks up pace.

Zip-lining in Costa Rica was a failure. Everyone else loved it. Everyone who has been has a story about how great it is. I still remember what I was thinking when I was dangling over a green, misty canyon on a trembling line, “I am not supposed to fly! I’m a person!” After a childhood of wishing I could fly! What a disappointment.

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There are a couple big reasons why I don’t do yoga.

1. Everyone else does it

2. I know already that I’m bad at it

3. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that people should actually be able to be really bad at

(4. It has this spirituality edge that makes me uncomfortable)

#4 isn’t as big. I can deal with that.

(source)

My mom’s back is messed up. She got a scary diagnosis. She is one of those people who isn’t good at talking about it when something’s wrong. For most of my life, I can’t remember her being sick, because she was so good at not being sick. Even when she was actually sick, she kept going like nothing was wrong, and I only knew when Dad said, “Mom’s not feeling good today.”

“Wait– what?”

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