The Random Life
NEIRAD enilno edition
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Thursday, September 18, 2008. Picture day. I have been planning my picture since last year: big dorky glasses, pencil behind my ear, lipstick smeared on my face and
“accidentally” on my teeth. I acquired the proper glasses and practiced my
“look” the whole night before. When, on the day, we were told to go take
pictures, I basically sprinted from English down to the picture room. I stood in
the doorway and applied lipstick as the photo people watched. It was only
after I looked like a total clown that I was told that this was supposed to be a
“serious” ID.
Wait, what? Really?
So my passport and my driver’s license aren’t “serious” IDs? Of course, so silly
of me. At the airport, the officials always ask for student ID first and become
annoyed and sometimes outraged when you present a driver’s license as a
substitute. The cops always ask for “student ID and registration, please.” How
could I have been so stupid to think that I could have some fun with a tiny
little picture that nobody is ever going to see?
I’ve looked forward to the veritable freedoms that come with being a senior, and
I was so looking forward to this picture. Now I just can’t wait to see the raw,
rubbed lips and cheeks, fresh from a hasty, rough lipstick removal, the
eyes brimming with furious tears, and the shoulders, shaking with anger and
disappointment, of my brand-new, shiny, serious student ID.
I love when people compete about lack of sleep. The day of a big test I always hear people talking about how alarmingly little sleep they got the night before (I'm guilty of this). Since when does a lack of sleep mean intelligence? Since when does a tired brain mean a good test result? We're all competing to see who can sleep the least and, therefore, do the best on their test. The best part, though, is when you can tell someone is lying. The liars always claim to have pulled all-nighters.
While walking through the first floor of C-wing the other day, I was met with a veritable sea of freshmen. Seriously, there were so many of them that it was like being tossed and rolled by the waves of an ocean. I was pressed by puberty-ridden bodies on all sides, the nattering voices roaring in my ears. I thought I would surely drown and was waving my white flag just as a friend appeared out of nowhere and pulled me as I sputtered to the safe side of the hall.
The other day, as I sat on my couch dressed as a butterfly, cutting things out of magazines, I had to take a moment to consider my sanity. I then pictured some gorgeous babe of a Monarch, sitting on a leaf in our overgrown garden and snipping from Lepidoptera VOGUE.
I just can't take leather pants seriously.
My youngest brother was flipping through a book of maps one day and exclaimed,"Oh no! I've passed the Arabian Sea!" Immediately, an image sprang to my mind. A British frigate, circa the mid-1800s. It's raining. The coxswain, at the helm, pulls out a compass and consults it, then looks around. He keeps nervously checking over his shoulder and standing on tiptoe to observe the waters ahead. He pulls a map out of his pocket, looks at it, checks his compass again, and is suddenly gripped by terror. "Oh no!" he thinks, his eyes widening as the captain approaches him. "I've passed the Arabian Sea!"
I don't understand the signs that I always see around that picture a person in a wheelchair and say "Area of Refuge." I'm always waiting for the day when I find some poor, wheelchair-ridden fool with a broken leg sitting under one of the signs, panting and looking around nervously, while a pack of bullies stands somewhere near, cracking their knuckles and saying to one another, "He has to move sometime." He's in an Area of Refuge, after all, and can't be touched. It's like home base in manhunt or hide-and-go-seek, I suppose.
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