On Pants, English Teachers, and other such Adventures

~By Alex~
Hello Annabel, World, and other such Entities! I'm writing a blog post!

What? You're probably thinking, We thought you had been eaten by wild cows! We wrote you a eulogy and everything! 

Well, sorry to disappoint. For the past few months I have been telling myself over and over that I was going to write a blog post, that it was going to be witty, and entertaining, and Annabel and I were going to be bona fide Superstars!!! with a capital S and three exclamation points. 

But then, as it always does, procrastination kicked in. But I've got homework! I rationalized, Besides, Annabel hasn't posted in a while. And I have to walk the dog, then fill out taxes. I've got way too many important things to be doing.

Well, now it's Winter break, Annabel has posted a grand total of four times, and I don't even have a dog. Or, for that matter, taxes. 

This year, I transferred high schools. It's a mystical new place, with mystical things such as "assemblies" and "tutorial" and "biology" that were nowhere to be seen at my previous public school. 

I am not a shy person (unlike Annabel, however I do believe that she gives herself way less credit than she deserves. The first time I met her she practically assaulted me with her likeableness. I mean really. How inconsiderate). However, I am the sort of person that is too quiet when I should be making an impression, and too loud when I should be keeping my mouth shut. I am also terrible at first impressions. 

I'll give you a particularly unfortunate example. 

On the first couple days of school, one of my friends invited me to go out canoeing with some of his friends so that I could get to know some of the kids from my new school better. I eagerly accepted, and got all ready to make an excellent first impression and oodles of new friends. I could wow them with my charm! My geeky, science related puns! My sometimes misguided obscure movie references! My terrible pronunciation of words!

It didn't turn out this way.

What ended up happening is that I sat quietly at the bottom of the canoe while the three boys (two of which I had never met before) made inside jokes and put on ridiculous italian accents. 

I kept trying to find an entrance point into the conversation, or think of something witty to say, but I ended up just looking sullen. Besides, my italian accent isn't very good, anyhow.

I was content with cutting my losses and having them think that I was just a little bit of a wet blanket, until, social disaster reared its ugly head.

One of the boys tipped the canoe.

I was wearing skinny jeans.

If anyone has ever worn wet jeans, you understand what an unpleasant experience it can be. The denim becomes a suction cup, sticking to the very pores of your skin, rubbing and chafing.

And we still had to plans to go out for ice cream afterwards, not to mention the half hour drive back home. 

We headed back to one of the boys' house to change, and I, thoroughly embarrassed, was forced to ask to borrow one of their pants. Even worse, I had to give aforementioned boy back his pants the following Monday, at school, in front of everyone.

As you can imagine, the first day of school, what with all it's introductions and how-do-you-dos and forgetting names and dreaded first impressions, was quite an ordeal for me, so by the last period of the day (english), I was thoroughly exhausted.

My new English teacher, who, for the sake of this blog post we will call "Mr. Beard", is quite literally everything you would imagine an English teacher would be. He uses words like 'syntax' and 'diction' interchangeably with 'walking' and 'breathing'. He makes english teachery jokes about Poe and Dickinson, even if he's the only one in the room that understands them. He wears sweaters.

He is the quintessential english prof, and I am convinced he was stolen out of the film the Dead Poets Society. My mother said it best: "Every time I see him, I want to stand up on my chair and recite O Captain, My Captain, by Walt Whitman."

I'd like to say that I'm a connoisseur of language and literature, but really, I just tell people that I am and then go home and read trashy romance novels, a la Paul Bates from Midnight in Paris. In any case, I am the sort of person that will use the word connoisseur. 

Anyway, on the first day of english class, I walked in, slightly disheveled from climbing the seven hundred sets of stairs that it takes to get to the English wing. Thoroughly exhausted from an entire day of making small talk, interacting with people, and god forbid, paying attention during long hours of hello-welcome-to-such-and-such-class-here-is-a-syllabus-and-a-joke-to-prove-that-you-can-have-fun-while-learning, I just wanted the day to be over so I could go home, collapse face first on my bed (dramatically, of course), and have a cup of tea. I tapped my finger on the desk impatiently as I waited for Mr. Beard to start explaining the syllabus. As expected, he started off the class with "I'm Mr. Beard, welcome to AP English..." I prepared to tune out, until I heard him say "You don't really need to know the syllabus, It's on the internet, go find it if you're interested." And the rest of the class was spent analyzing poetry and discussing the merits of oxford commas. Edgar Allen Poe puns were made. The purpose of grammar was questioned. Lives were changed.

I began telling Mr. Beard stories to my friends, my mom, my little brother. It became a running joke between a few of my friends and I that I have a teacher crush on Mr. Beard. Even my boyfriend (since boy has already been taken, we'll just call him boyfriend) has acknowledged my crush on Mr. Beard. In fact, he's completely okay with it.

Anyway, I've adjusted to my new school (and I like it quite a lot, in fact), and I hope that my new school has adjusted to me, as well (despite rocky first encounters).

Christopher

Hello, world! This is Alex!
The lovely Annabel has written TWO WHOLE blog posts in the last few days and the word on the street is that she's working on a third.
Well, Alex, you might be thinking, you need to up your game. This partnership is becoming a little unfair, isn't it? Annabel carrying all the work load?
You might even be thinking that me writing this update is a real blog post.
WRONG. I've recruited my kid brother to do it for me, because I'm the laziest of all the people.
Annabel briefly mentioned my brother, Christopher in her last post. Christopher may be 10% hilarity's biggest and only fan, and as such, he decided he has the right to write a small guest posting. So, here it is... hope you enjoy!
Note: I've only edited for spelling, as Christopher is 9 years old and does make the occasional spelling error
~~~~~

Hey everybody! It's Christopher! And before I forget, thank you Annabel for your compliment about me being the reason for the universe (which is totally true).

ANYways, since I'm posting this here on 10% hilarity, I'm not really 10% hilarity blah blah blah, I'm 99.99 awesome, and .01 very rare mistakes. I said that because I know that everyone makes mistakes, see I'm not THAT vain. Actually, in real life I'm not too vain.

Now, maybe if you knew me a tiny bit, you might ask: What is your favorite TV show? Well, I actually rarely watch TV, I go on computer or Wii most of my electronic time, and when I happened to ACTUALLY go and watch TV, I don't watch cartoons or anything, I like to watch cooking shows like Iron Chef America or Chopped when there's nothing to watch on YouTube or when I'm bored of Wii games.

But when I play Wii or go on computer, my favorite Wii game is Kirby's return to Dreamland (MAN that's so fun) and what I like to watch on YouTube is these thingamajigs called LP's. LP is short for let's play, an LP is when people play all sorts of games whether they're new to it or they've already played it. I like to watch LP's about Kirby's return to Dreamland (obviously). Now, I bet you're thinking : That's so stupid, why would people make videos like that?! well if you watch some, you might like them a lot like I do.

Another thing about me is that I HATE SODA, A LOT!!!!!!!! Why do people like soda? Now, I bet you're thinking, : WHY do YOU hate soda? well because soda is fizzy. ME NO LIKE FIZZY!!!!!!! And that's just the thing, why do people like fizzy drinks? The only thing fizzy I like is fizzy apple juice.

Anyways, I gotta go, so I hope you liked my first ever post on 10% hilarity, so I guess this bye now,
so bye ( And by ze way, I'm waving my hand at you right now).

YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER THIS POST.

I'd just like to take a moment to talk about terror.

Most of us confront terror only once or twice in our lives, and those confrontations are some of the more memorable experiences, each second dragged out like math class on a Friday. We overcome our fear and move on with our lives, stronger for our confrontation with danger.

This is not even close to my predicament.

Imagine, reader, if you, for some reason, decided to force yourself into a situation that caused you paralyzing, crippling, eye-boggling fear. Now imagine you knew from experience that you would not get over this fear, then please, and I know this is a stretch, picture forcing yourself to do this repeatedly--once or twice a month.

Who would do such a horrible thing? Who would willingly face danger without the incentive of increased emotional fortitude, knowing for certain that the results would be invariably terrible? What a disgusting individual. What an obsessive, truly tortured soul.

...Oh, hi. That's me.

Before I go into the gory details of my psyche, I believe no further judgment can be passed without full knowledge of the situation.

Remember Boy?

Yes, the chocolate milk fiend.

Here is the source of my torment:

He has friends.

I know. Honestly, I'm shocked too. I'll give you a little time to absorb this.

And the thing is, they're not normal friends either. They're this bunch of jovial-looking guys who are tall, nice, funny, and absolutely terrifying. In order to protect their identities, and to protect myself from remembering that I don't know anybody's name, I've given them nicknames that they will hopefully never see. They are:

Higgins biggins, Beardy Workface, J-cheese, The-one-with-the-nice-girlfriend, Flippy-hair,  Glasses+Enthusiasm, I-don't-know-who-you-are, I-don't-know-who-you-are, I-don't-know-who-you-are, I-don't-know-who-you-are, and I-don't-know-who-you-are.

As you can tell, they should probably be on a pirate ship. Whenever Boy describes his experiences with them, I always picture them singing yo-ho-ho on a tilting floor, their voices all scratchy from screaming at neighboring ships.

...It's probably the hair. They have lots of hair.

Well, except for Beardy Workface, which is probably why he scares me just a little bit less than everyone else. But don't get me wrong. He's still horrifying. And he compensates by having a fake beard in his profile picture on Facebook, which is the reason for his nickname anyway. He has a nice girlfriend too, but I can't have two The-one-with-the-nice-girlfriend-s. That makes no sense.

Anyway, Boy knows them all through his SUPER-SECRET-CULT-IN-ALL-CAPS-CAUSE-IT'S-IMPORTANT. Because they're all a part of it, they're very chummy and familiar and palsy-walsy and close and all those good little adjectives that make people feel warm and fuzzy. Of course, this means there are SUPER-SECRET-CULT-SECRETS-IN-ALL-CAPS-CAUSE-THEY'RE-IMPORTANT, which are apparently either above or below me or are in a parallel universe in which I do not exist. I tend to gravitate toward the latter.

Every time I go visit boy I get all excited and decide 'Yeah! I'm going to have mutual friends with Boy! I'm going to be social! I'm cool! People like me! I've got my awesome socks on today! Everything's possible!' So we stroll right on out into the real world, arm-in-arm with feet kicking up like we're in a dandy old musical. Birds begin singing when they see us coming. I am a social butterfly and nothing can bring me down. We get to the SUPER-NOT-SECRET-CULT-HIDEOUT-IN-ALL-CAPS-CAUSE-IT'S-IMPORTANT and rap on the door. I open it right on up, giddy smile on my face.

...Then I shrivel and die.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

I'm shy.

Once I finally realize this, I lose my ability to speak. The Hair, as I collectively call them, becomes all friendly, welcoming me into their SUPER-NOT-SECRET-CULT-HIDEOUT with smiles and handshakes. My mouth dries out to reinforce my shyness, making my teeth stick to my lips every time I try to smile. I'm pretty sure they think the resulting monkey-grin is actually how my face is supposed to look. I am intimidated. My voice cracks. I'm not a boy. That's not supposed to happen. Or am I a boy? Am I still in puberty? What day is it? I think I just accidentally winked. Am I a sleaze? Do they think I'm a sleaze? Why can't I swallow? I don't even remember.

My entire sense of self goes swirling out of me until I am a shell, stupid and blinking at the people with large masses of hair around me.

I convince myself that I don't understand what anyone is saying. If someone addresses me, I have to ask 'What?' about four times before I can even come up with a response. Either the pirates think I'm deaf or idiotic. Personally, I would suggest they each get a parrot for their shoulders so they could say everything at only half as many times. I wonder if this will ever end.

Finally, an exit. I am invited to play MarioKart, and I jump at the opportunity to be completely silent. I could just drive alongside these people, refusing to converse for concentration's sake. Maybe they'll think I'm one of the computers.

Unfortunately, I am good at MarioKart.

After winning the second time in a row, I realize that winning means that people notice me. I get a congratulations from Flippy Hair, who excuses his poor playing with the fact that he is a pirate. Pirates are bad at MarioKart? Okay then. Time to fit in. I play poorly for the next two rounds.

Then---

Horror.

Boy has to go to the bathroom.

MarioKart is done.

I am alone.

Half-crazed, not conscious of my own thoughts, I flee toward the only thing that I know--Boy. The only pirate that will never intimidate me, he is my safezone.  I find him as he is just opening the door to the bathroom, and subtly slide in behind him.

'Annabel, what are you doing?'

'I just. They're people.'

'And?'

'And everyone left.'

'Uh...'

'Just. Let me stay.'

Like a good boyfriend, Boy let me stay, making fun of me the whole time in whispers. I looked away while he peed, then we waited for everyone near the bathroom door to leave. I figured people would just think he was slow.

...Turns out he told everyone about it the next week. Thanks, Boy. What a champ.

Hiding in the bathroom with Boy made me feel, for the first time, safe, and suddenly I remembered I existed. My tummy, which also existed, started growling and Boy soon understood that it was time to go get food. At least we had a legitimate excuse. As we said goodbyes, I surveyed the Hair's faces to see what they thought of me, and was surprised to find a divided opinion among the faces that were actually discernible through beards and floppy cuts. Either the pirates thought I was very strange, which was an accurate assessment, or I was completely boring, which made sense since I couldn't talk. Still, though, none of them knew me. My mission to get mutual friends had totally, completely, utterly and catastrophically failed, but all I felt was relief.

The next time I visited the SUPER-NOT-SECRET-HIDEOUT, it was Boy's birthday. After spending the entire day with me, the pirates decided they deserved some of Boy's birthday time, which was absolutely true. I waited a couple of hours for them to have their SUPER-SECRET-MEETING and pretended to write essays in Starbucks. When Boy finally emerged, I was relieved. He hugged me and told me wonderful news: we were going over to the SUPER-NOT-SECRET-HIDEOUT! I could make friends! I could be a social butterfly! But as soon as we caught up to them, a familiar feeling took hold.

Once again, I remembered that I was shy.

This time I made an effort to speak when Boy asked me if I wanted a bite of the cupcake the SUPER-SECRET-CULT made for him. They actually looked pretty good, and Boy's even had a little candle sticking up. But because I am mean to Boy, I acted all disgusted and said 'EW NO!'

Beardy Workface looked hurt.

Sometimes, when I feel uncomfortable, I just insult everyone around me. Unfortunately, this makes everybody more uncomfortable, myself included, and I actually prefer to pretend none of this ever happened.

Maybe if I block it from my memory everything will be fine. I'm sociable, right? I'm cool. People like me. This'll be great. Boy and I can have mutual friends! I'll put on my awesome socks!

Oh. Oh wait.


So it begins.

Post Script

I've decided to be awesome and do a ton of updates this winter break. Also, I don't believe I fully explained my photo. My badassery within the photo speaks for itself, but its other content perhaps leaves a little to be explained:

I love chocolate milk.

This is a fact with a long history and many little chocolate-colored plotlines flowing out of it. This is a fact that has driven many of the most harrowing experiences of my life. This is a fact that has made my life mine.

Let me begin by informing my audience that chocolate milk was, for a long time, a rather forbidden food in my home. In my mom's world, chocolate milk is classified as a soda. I know. I don't understand either. I've asked, but she always begins by talking about sugar and then I get all distracted and start having daydreams about cakes and marzipan.

Mmmmm.....marzipan.....

No, I'm not fat.

........

......

...Yet.

Okay, what were we talking about?

Right, Chocolate milk. So, as a soda, chocolate milk had certain restrictions placed upon it. I was allowed precisely one soda a day on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The other 4/7 of my life was horribly, tragically, unbearably free of delicious chocolate dairy drinks.

This absence broke something in me. What was once a beautiful love affair became a bitter resentment toward everything that kept me from my one love. And there were reminders everywhere.

Take, for example, television. Since I am a child, I watch only kids' channels, which are saturated with commercials for saturated foods, like the 'cheesiest' mac and cheese and the 'chocolatiest' cereal. These make my face water--my mouth, my eyes, the whole works. My brain stops thinking and two words start throbbing across it:

I.......wanttttttttttt.........


(Side note: I only watch TV right before dinner, to distract myself from the fact that I'm hungry. It works really well, actually. Nothing calms hunger like watching a dinosaur made of cheese dive into a bowl of cheesy noodles. I highly recommend it.)

Worst, though, was Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. One episode involved a character named Cheese, who said "I like chocolate milk" over and over again until I couldn't even think straight. Never had I felt so much empathy for a cartoon character. As his mouth moved, apparently made of two bowls that clacked together, I could just feel his anguish, his utter despair over the lack of dairy beverages in his life. His stupidity, even his obnoxiousness, was irrelevant. Cheese and I shared a common goal.

The torment didn't end with television. My boyfriend, who we will just call Boy, soon discovered my predicament when he began drinking chocolate milk in front of me on Skype. Delighted with his new ability to make me wriggle with hatred, and having the protection of being halfway across the country, Boy began to dig up any excuse to drink chocolate milk in front of me. He would pretend he was going to divulge a very important secret, building up over hours at a time. Then, when the big moment came, he would simply look me in the eye, and take a huge swig of chocolate milk right there in front of me.

Boy has since suffered my wrath.

Later, when I was in Alaska (yes, Alex wasn't lying--which is frankly rather shocking) I went without any dairy at all (excluding milk powder and questionably sweaty cheese) for forty days straight. Around day 16, a bush plane came in with a new supply of food for my fellow campers and I. Among the goods were two packs of milk from my good friend's parents, one plain and one---swoon---chocolate.

We did not talk about the chocolate milk for the first day. It sat in our bright blue tarp among chicken-flavored texturized vegetable protein and bags of wheat flour, a diamond in the rough. I flirted with it throughout the day, trying to keep from staring. I batted my lashes at it. Whenever I accidentally let my guard down and did look at it, I looked away as quickly as possible so as not to frighten it.

In other words, that chocolate milk and I had a very respectful courtship.

But alas, once again chocolate milk rejected my advances. My good friend was homesick, and since the chocolate milk was from her parents, she wanted to drink it herself to feel a connection to them (we'd been in the wilderness for weeks at this point, so if any judgment is to be passed over my friend I suggest the judger not talk to any of his or her family or friends for forty days and report back to me later).

It was beginning to seem that chocolate milk and I would never make it.

But do not fear, dear readers, for this is a story of triumph, not defeat.

I beseech you, take another look at that picture from yesterday.

Notice the victory in my eyes.

Yes, my friends.

I have finally won the affection

of the one

the only

the beautiful

chocolate milk.

Letters to Alex

Dear Alex and the World,

World, you are everywhere, and don't worry, Alex is somewhere within that everywhere. Alex, though, you're in Switzerland, and it is WAY too far away from me. Google maps can't even find directions from me to you, cause guess what? There's a freaking OCEAN in the way. Disgusting. Theoretically we could both row halfway but that might take a little longer than just waiting to be reunited in January.

The waiting, though, is equally horrendous. I've tried twiddling my thumbs, but I get all confused about which thumb is going in which direction and sometimes they collide and I usually end up just sitting on my hands out of frustration. To cope, I've been dipping my nose shockingly far into books. I'm in the middle of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which, by the way, is particularly beautiful, but I just finished Walden. If my writing strikes you as the least bit snobby or narcissistic, please forward all complaints to Henry David Thoreau, the one man who managed to live a very humble life with, I imagine, a self-satisfied smile larger than the Cheshire Cat's. My writing's getting smugger just thinking about it. Of course, he certainly had some lovely sentences, but the problem was with what was in between them--offensive rants usually about how the rest of society was in the wrong for wanting to do everything from socialize to have ice water. I mostly agree with his message and all, that nature is beautiful, simplicity is grossly underrated, and people cut life's corners for efficiency's sake, but I don't believe I'm the only sane person in the world because of it. Anywhoo, this is probably pretty dull for those of you who don't read 19th century books because you can't stand superfluous words, or even words like superfluous. I understand. Moving along.

Look! A picture!
I don't do pictures.
But guess what I do do?
1. Make lists. Look at me, all organized-like.
2. Try new things, which means
3. Follow through on my New Years Resolution to try new things, which means
4. Follow through on my New Years Resolution to follow through on my New Years Resolutions, which means I
5. Kill two mosquitos with one slap. (I don't do birds, mostly because I don't know what a mockingbird looks like and I'm afraid that if I kill even one bird, let alone two, Atticus Finch will come after me and give me a stern talking to--and as a great admirer of Atticus Finch, being on his bad side would completely destroy my sense of morality.)

Alex, aren't you proud of me? I did so many good things up there. I'd list them, but that'd be redundant because I've already made a list and my writing is brilliant enough to stand on its own. Oh my god. I'm turning into Thoreau.

Okay, I wanted to write a letter to Alex because it's Christmas and she's eons away, so I'm going to do it. But I will keep it short, because I know very little about Switzerland but I don't want her to know that.

Alex, are you eating lots of chocolate?
Alex, are you eating lots of cheese?
Alex, are you speaking lots of languages?
Alex, stop being hit on.
Alex, say hi to Christopher!

That is the end of my letter. Wasn't it insightful? I sound so knowledgable. What a job well done.

By the by, for those of you who don't know Christopher, he is the reason for the universe. Any questions? Good.

Well, Air Force One is on TV, and since I'm a sucker for propaganda, that means it's time for me to sign off. Until next time, you beautiful world. And to all a good night.

Splendidly, Happily, Magnificently Yours,

Annabel

Adventures in Williamsburg

Hello world! Don't you look just lovely today.

So Word On The Street says I'm at college. I'm not one hundred percent on where Word On the Street gets its info, but I'm actually just in a magical place sharing a house with lots of people and going to the same three self-serve restaurants for every meal and letting older people tell me things and reading books and going on quests and climbing on roofs and things and writing papers in which I always, for some reason unbeknownst to me, argue against an omnipresent imaginary cynic.

So get it right, Word On The Street. College is for chumps. And I am certifiably unchump.

This magical writereadabsorbeatsleepdiscusss place is in the mysterious, unexplored land of Virginia. And I'm saying that not only because this is my personal introduction to Virginia but also because I'm in Colonial Williamsburg and sometimes I get confused about what century it is.

Perhaps, before continuing, I should describe the cast of characters who live in my large house with an abnormal number of tiny rooms.

1) Audrey, the girl whose bed is in my room. She likes horses. Sometimes in her sleep she turns into one. Don't tell anybody.

2)Lindsey. If Lindsey wrote an autobiography, it would be on graph paper. But if you can distract her from her studies you find that she is quite bouncy and probably will be the next Iron Chef.

3)Crystal, who has one of the nicest voices I've ever heard and is so fashionable that she has more heels than any other type of shoe. In fact, I'm not sure if she owns any shoes that are not heels. She loves sugar, which makes sense cause she's a total sweetie. Also, she can kill you with a fan. Watch the fuck out.

4) Leonymae.

Coolest name ever? Check.

Kickass attitude? Check.

Love for pink fluffy cute things which completely contradicts her kickass attitude?? Check.

Don't even worry about it. Tiny Leonymae has so much awesome in her, I don't know where she keeps it. Probably in her ridiculous supermodel hair.

5) Catherine--the insane one.Don't let the bows she wears in her hair religiously  fool you. She is not cutesy innocent. She is CRAZY. Skwak-like-a-bird-crazy. Act-drunk-when-you-don't-ever-drink-crazy. We can pretend it's endearing for the sake of this blog. I fear her wrath.

6) Jenna, who lives on the foreign second floor, is one of those people who is so talented that a role on Glee would suit her if she were a little less sane, though she seems to be in the process of slowly going crazy. Swears have been peppering her normally-pristine speech like hiccups as of late, not to mention her episodic maniacal laughter. Next stage: Glee.

7) Molly, the dashing one. I like to pretend that I'm a good friend to her but somehow I end up insulting her every other sentence. I think I told her to go die once.

8) The bajillion other people in this house that for some really rather disturbing reason I DO NOT KNOW WELL ENOUGH. Really. We live together. How does this even happen?!?!

9) Bernardo. He is a mouse. He is rotting from the inside. Any questions? Good. Moving on.

In this mysterious land I've discovered that my S.A.A.D. is becoming more and more problematic. I've started baking cookies and going to Jo-Ann fabrics, which (with the addition of a cute little frilly apron and orthopedic shoes) would put my age at around 83. But yesterday I went and saw Santa. He didn't ask what I wanted for Christmas. Santa, that hurts. You know what I wanted for christmas? For christmas, I wanted Santa to fucking care about me. Bitch.

So that makes me a cussing 2 year old and 83 year old. But the fact that I just used the word 'cuss' instead of 'swear' probably puts me back in Victorian times again, so the whole scale is just completely off and I need to go lie down for a minute because I'm not sure if it's 1711 or 2011 again. Uhg. I'll keep you posted.

What's my age again?

Note: This post is written by both Annabel and I, so pronouns might get a bit confusing; in order to clear things up a bit, things that I write are in italics and things that she writes are in normal font.

~

So, I was looking at my driver’s license today and I noticed that, according to it, I am 18 years old.

This is incorrect.

I don’t act 18. I don’t think like an 18 year old; though, to be fair, thinking is a rare occurrence anyhow.

No. 18 is definitely wrong.

But, the problem is, I’m not sure what age I actually am. I’ve got a general idea of the range, however- I am definitely somewhere between 2 and 87 years old. That’s pretty broad, I know, which is what makes my life so confusing. I know I’m not in the middle of this range, though, because I’m not old enough for a midlife crisis and I’m too old to be writing letters to Justin Bieber (or am I??? more on this to come…). So let me amend that statement:

     I am either 2 or 87 years old.

This isn’t my problem alone. Perhaps if I were the only one enduring this perpetual sense of age confusion, my suffering would be intolerable. However, Alex also suffers from this addling disorder and can relate to my turmoil.

Take, for example, our experience the other day. We had finally reunited in Boston after Annabel’s Alaskan camping trip, and we had some touring and catching up to do. We felt appropriately independent when her parents left us to fend for ourselves in the unfamiliar city, and we had grandiose plans of touring modern art galleries, walking arm in arm through Harvard square, and lounging around the Boston Common. I took it upon myself to decipher our route to the art institute, and with our map in hand we were off.

We felt pretty mature… or at least, we did until Alex asked,  “Is that blue stuff on the map over there… water?”

As it turns out, Alex has the map reading ability of a four year old.

Needless to say, it took about five minutes for us to get completely and utterly lost.

Time: 11:00 am

Approximate age: 7 years old

It wasn’t long before we found that we both have the stamina and gumption of elderly ladies. After about a half hour of wandering around aimlessly, we were both exhausted, and had all but given up on our glamorous dreams of roaming the city. We were feeling quite sorry for ourselves at this point. Annabel was feeling stomach sick from the seafood we had eaten that morning, My feet were practically bleeding, we had no clue where we were going, and to make matters worse, it was about six hundred degrees outside, even in the shade. 

We quickly found the most comfortable looking park bench and tended to our aches and pains.

Time: 11:30 am

Approximate Age: 77 years old.

Things were looking pretty grim … that is, until I spotted some kids playing around in a fountain nearby. An idea took root in my head. Within seconds, I had grabbed Annabel’s arm and bounded over the grass into the jets of water.

“Alex!” Annabel exclaimed, thoroughly scandalized, “you’re going to get all wet!! Not to mention you’re the only person here over the age of five!”

I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care.

Time: 11:45 am

Approximate Age: 5 years old

This pattern of drastic age swings continued throughout the day. At one point, Annabel pulled out her knitting (approximate age: 60) and we both sat listening to classical music for a bit (approximate age: 85). Not even fifteen minutes later, we were engrossed in the Disney Channel TV series Phineas and Ferb (approximate age: 10)

That night, we were invited to go to a concert with some friends who are about our age. But, by the time we got there (me still sopping wet from the fountain and Annabel with her knitting needles), given the day’s confusion, we weren’t quite sure if we fit in anymore.

Time: 6:00 pm

Approximate Age: ?????

Here's a graph

Warning: The age confusion that we have mentioned in our post is actually a form of Severe Addled Age Disorder (hereafter referred to as S.A.A.D.). S.A.A.D. is a very serious illness, and should not be taken lightly. If you think that you, or someone you care about may have S.A.A.D., you should contact a doctor or specialist immediately. To learn more about S.A.A.D., or find out how you can help, please visit this website