K - KHAKIS
I used to abhor jeans. They're stiff, itchy, and blue. Who the hell wears blue pants? Instead, I preferred the khaki jeans family whenever the weather called for them. Sure, it's not as bad as a jean shorts phase, but it was weird all the same. I didn't come around to them until one or two years ago, mostly because I had gained the Freshman Negative Fifteen and a lot of the clothes I had brought with me to college no longer fit. Somehow, the pair of jeans that I had brought "just in case" were suddenly an option.
What was worse was coming home to a closet packed with shirts that were a size too large. Some of them hadn't even been worn; there were others that I wish I could put in that same category. At some point, I had seriously considered wearing a red Hawaiian shirt with a neon teal floral pattern. Another shirt stated that, now that the room was in complete disorder, I had done my job. Wow Kohl's, your selection of shirts really speak to the kind of person I am!
To my credit, I didn't start growing until 10th grade and I didn't care what I looked like for at least another year. Sure, I was a huge dork, but I didn't really care. I went to the information technology center at my high school at my high school, went home, and spent the rest of the day trying to dissociate myself from there. A lot of people consider high school to be the playground for real-life social functionality. For me, it was 8 hours of Chinese water torture. The therapy for that, apparently, is a healthy dose of video games.
To say I'm ashamed of my teenage years is to say eating a pufferfish might upset your tummy. At one point, I figured that I had read all of the books that were worth reading, after I spent my middle school years devouring the formulaic Redwall series and every Calvin and Hobbes collection the library had. The light at the end of the tunnel didn't show until I somehow ran across Kurt Vonnegut and began to branch out musically past They Might Be Giants.
What happened – especially around sophomore year of college – felt like a fog was being lifted, like I was actually able to realize what I was doing and what that meant to myself and others. In that sense, my life resembles that of a robot who learns how to express emotions despite not having them programmed into its hardware. It was almost as if my life were a movie, but instead of acting, I was watching. In terms of Myers-Briggs personality types, it was as if I was a pure Feeler, governed completely by my heart.
The worst example of this was when I played football with a few of my neighbors and I'd run back to my house in the middle of the game to quench my thirst – quite literally – with a Sprite. No, not water, because Sprite tastes good. Oddly enough, being hot and sweaty ruins it. Anyway, when I had finished chugging the thing, I'd wander back out and finish playing rather poorly. At least there were grass stains on my khakis.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Sarsaparilla Alphabet #10
J - JAR
He was just in the middle of eating. No one should be taken away while they're eating. Nor should they be placed into a glass container. But this is the situation that the caterpillar found himself in.
There are some parasites that find their ways inside caterpillars, usually by laying their eggs inside the thing's head. Once the young are able to, they seize control of the caterpillar's head and turn it into a cute, little zombie. While human zombies are inexplicably drawn to brains, the caterpillar zombie is drawn to the top of a plant, where it can be seen in plain sight. This, of course, provides a wonderfully easy dinner for a bird, which is where the parasite find itself next. Feeding off the bird, it eventually reaches maturity around the same time that it finds itself outside of the bird. This, however, was not as horrible as what our caterpillar was experiencing.
He found that he wasn't alone. There was a stick, too. Oh, and some leaves from a nearby oak tree. He didn't really like oak leaves. He preferred maple.
And then, the sun disappeared from the sky, yet it was still oddly bright where the caterpillar was. It sounded as if God was replacing a lightbulb. The caterpillar was then thrust upward like a rocket and he smacked against the hard sides of his new home. Out of fatigued eyes he saw a great, blurred figure. "If this is God, I wish He weren't so hard to see," thought the squishy thing. He hadn't decided whether he liked God or not. He didn't know whether he liked his new home or his new friends, either.
Then came a muffled shout, and the world shook and was slammed down. Things were quiet, but it was an unstill quiet, where the caterpillar was granted a second to become absolutely terrified. And then the great Thing blocking the sun bent with a great WHUMP. The three amigos were thrown around by it, and again by another. The sun once again shined down, but only bleakly. This was rectified when another series of WHUMPs ensued. And then, they heard the voice of God.
"See, he's got everything a bug needs... food, air, light, and a stick... y'know, for... fun. Do caterpillars eat sticks? I know they eat leaves, but maybe he'd like a stick, too."
And then they moved to a dusty room. Unlike his home, this one was dark, the air was choking, and it was dry. Very dry. Apparently the caterpillar, the stick, and the leaves (which weren't all that tasty) had to condense the dusty, dry air themselves.
And so things went like this for a few days. The caterpillar even managed to climb up the stick before it slipped and he fell to the floor. He contemplated inventing caterpillar origami. But the biggest problem for him was not how to create interesting shapes out of leaves, but surviving. He was hungry and thirsty, but God never showed up. He'd come into the same room, but he never acknowledged the jar, nevermind what was inside of it. On the one occassion that he did, he wondered aloud when the caterpillar would change into a butterfly. He dreamed of the miracle of life that would occur in his room, nay, in HIS jar! He would be capable of seeing the stuff of elementary school science textbooks in real life, and then, one day, he would let the butterfly go and its wonderous colors would shimmer in the sunlight as it flitted across the sky.
The next day, he discovered that his caterpillar had died. What he didn't discover, however, was that this particular species of caterpillar never turned into butterflies.
He was just in the middle of eating. No one should be taken away while they're eating. Nor should they be placed into a glass container. But this is the situation that the caterpillar found himself in.
There are some parasites that find their ways inside caterpillars, usually by laying their eggs inside the thing's head. Once the young are able to, they seize control of the caterpillar's head and turn it into a cute, little zombie. While human zombies are inexplicably drawn to brains, the caterpillar zombie is drawn to the top of a plant, where it can be seen in plain sight. This, of course, provides a wonderfully easy dinner for a bird, which is where the parasite find itself next. Feeding off the bird, it eventually reaches maturity around the same time that it finds itself outside of the bird. This, however, was not as horrible as what our caterpillar was experiencing.
He found that he wasn't alone. There was a stick, too. Oh, and some leaves from a nearby oak tree. He didn't really like oak leaves. He preferred maple.
And then, the sun disappeared from the sky, yet it was still oddly bright where the caterpillar was. It sounded as if God was replacing a lightbulb. The caterpillar was then thrust upward like a rocket and he smacked against the hard sides of his new home. Out of fatigued eyes he saw a great, blurred figure. "If this is God, I wish He weren't so hard to see," thought the squishy thing. He hadn't decided whether he liked God or not. He didn't know whether he liked his new home or his new friends, either.
Then came a muffled shout, and the world shook and was slammed down. Things were quiet, but it was an unstill quiet, where the caterpillar was granted a second to become absolutely terrified. And then the great Thing blocking the sun bent with a great WHUMP. The three amigos were thrown around by it, and again by another. The sun once again shined down, but only bleakly. This was rectified when another series of WHUMPs ensued. And then, they heard the voice of God.
"See, he's got everything a bug needs... food, air, light, and a stick... y'know, for... fun. Do caterpillars eat sticks? I know they eat leaves, but maybe he'd like a stick, too."
And then they moved to a dusty room. Unlike his home, this one was dark, the air was choking, and it was dry. Very dry. Apparently the caterpillar, the stick, and the leaves (which weren't all that tasty) had to condense the dusty, dry air themselves.
And so things went like this for a few days. The caterpillar even managed to climb up the stick before it slipped and he fell to the floor. He contemplated inventing caterpillar origami. But the biggest problem for him was not how to create interesting shapes out of leaves, but surviving. He was hungry and thirsty, but God never showed up. He'd come into the same room, but he never acknowledged the jar, nevermind what was inside of it. On the one occassion that he did, he wondered aloud when the caterpillar would change into a butterfly. He dreamed of the miracle of life that would occur in his room, nay, in HIS jar! He would be capable of seeing the stuff of elementary school science textbooks in real life, and then, one day, he would let the butterfly go and its wonderous colors would shimmer in the sunlight as it flitted across the sky.
The next day, he discovered that his caterpillar had died. What he didn't discover, however, was that this particular species of caterpillar never turned into butterflies.
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