The Chronicles of the Cape Part 2
It was my first day to wear my cape out and about. I have to say, I was initially very hesitant on doing so, especially because it was just out to eat with my dad. I wondered whether or not he would be comfortable walking around with me in it, and I wondered if it would just seem silly. Then I realized that it would always seems silly and that silliness was beautiful, not to mention that as a story teller, I should at least be willing to make some good stories of my own. I don't think my dad realized I was wearing it at first, and by the time he had, it seemed too late for the reaction of "I see you're wearing your cape," to be acceptable.
When I pulled the car up to his office, I was reluctant to get out. There were two middle-aged men--good ol' boys by the looks of them--leaning up against a telephone pole having a nice chit-chat, undoubtedly about the weather or the Hemi engines in their trucks. I knew they would stare when they saw me, and I knew they wouldn't actually say anything to me. I would be walking away from them, so all they would see was my cape swishing behind me, and I had a feeling that these weren't the kinds of guys to sit and crack jokes, but would more than likely just have a quick thought of Crazy Austinites pass through their conscious before returning their attention to what sort of boots are the best for hunting. (Of course, the assumption that their conversation consisted of the weather, Hemis, and boots is just made off of a gross stereotype. The stereotype is obviously there because there's some truth in it, but for all I really know, they could have been discussing the sardonic humor in Voltaire. But let’s be real and admit that the odds lean in favor of the boot discussion.)
"You're a story-teller, Claire, make some stories!" So I got out of the mini-van and walked straight to my dad's office acting as if nothing about my apparel was the least bit interested. I was afraid that my dad would say something like, "I didn't really expect you to wear that thing out in public!" but like I mentioned, he said nothing. I was also scared that he wouldn't want me to wear it out to the restaurant, but again, he didn't mind. While we sat at our table, discussing my future college plans (a discussion that I could very well just tape record my end of and play over and over again for everyone who asks), my Avenger Sense (similar to the Spidey Sense, but I think that name sounds kind of wussy, not to mention I'm not Spider-man) began receiving inklings that people had to be pointing at my cape and talking behind my back. I heard nothing of it, but I could tell it was there, even if it was just something like, "look at that chick" and a finger held in my direction. It's only natural for people to wonder those sorts of things; goodness knows I do it all the time. Some of my friends are terrible about that sort of thing (I try not to go out with them in public too often because of it) so I can't complain. It's not like I didn't know that I would be encountering that sort of curiosity when I put on the cape, but I expected it to be a little bit more in-your-face. I wanted someone to just come out and ask me about it rather than all the worry about being polite or invading people's privacy. Half of these people probably look at porn (this is a generalization too, but hear me out), so they're okay with totally invading someone's personal privacy to the worst degree, but they're afraid of infringing on mine? Is it because the porn star puts herself out there to be looked at, as if inviting prying eyes to come view? I sort of put myself out there when I wore a cape. If I wasn't putting myself out there I would have gotten braces or something that I can cover up, but instead I got a cape! You drape it over my entire back side, how much more can I put that out there? Oh well, no matter. It was just the restaurant.
My dad and I headed back to his studio so that he could teach, and later I joined him in one of his lessons to film a piece for him. A room full of my peers and a people a few years younger than I, and my cape became the pink elephant (the one in the corner that everyone sees but no one wants to point out). I could tell the younger boys were staring at it in utter confusion. Here I was, a normal looking girl wearing what they must have thought looked an awful lot like a super hero cape. Things--didn't--quite--add up. Ouchy--it--hurt--their brain--so bad. I could see the question I'd been waiting to hear hanging on the lips of one of the young boys, but for some reason--perhaps it was that dreaded thing his mother had implanted in his brain called a "social conscience"--he couldn't ask it. I filmed the lesson, people scooted their chairs as needed to avoid the elephant's bulk, I finished and left.
From there I drove to a restaurant across town to where I was supposed to meet some friends for dinner. (I know it sounds like most of my day was spent eating, but there was more time that elapsed between the meals, though most of it was spent wasting time in my dad's office before I filmed, and I didn't want to bore you with it. It's something you can do when you write...why do I even have to explain this? Just know that I don't spend most of my days eating, and when I refer to the "pink elephant" it's not a commentary on my own weight.) I got their early and decided to wait in the car for others to arrive. When I spotted some of my group in my rear view mirror as they entered the building, I went to join them. Of course when they saw me coming, they saw me from the front where my cape was barely visible. They said hey and gave me hugs, and it was the hostess (not a very good hostess, so I just say that because that's her official title and I don't think you would know who I was talking about if I just said "the wench holding the menus") who finally mentioned the elephant. More like, she mentioned it by saying, "Look at that fat elephant." I don't remember what exactly she said, but I know she was asking how many would be sitting at our table, and when one of my friends said they didn't know but to ask me she said something about "Oh, the girl in the cape?" I didn't like her tone. Something about it pissed off my Avenger Sense. She shot me a disdainful look which I tried to ignore. Use your powers of clever avenging only if absolutely necessary! I told myself.
Very shortly thereafter, I found it justifiably necessary.
She harshly told us that we would have to sit in the bar area until all of our party had arrived, and as we followed orders and did just that she put together some tables in that same area at which we would be seated and served. As we stood around, waiting for her to finish getting the tables together, she asked us our ages. We gave an age range from eighteen to nineteen which she shrugged at condescendingly as if to show us that we were nothing more than young ‘uns. She couldn’t have been any older than twenty-two herself. As if that wasn’t enough salt in the wound, she began to tell us a little bit about herself. Too bad no one asked.
“I graduated high school when I was seventeen and by that time I already had a degree in computer engineering. I started my own business and make a good amount of money from that. I just do this job part time for play money.” She flashed a smug smile and walked off (perhaps to a land where someone cared to hear her talk).
As we sat down, we all seemed to be wondering if this girl was serious. The guys didn’t seem to mind it as much as I did, but I figured it was because they hadn’t had an immediate jab made at what they had chosen to wear as soon as they’d walked into the building. They were almost just as bad, though, because none of them had heard any of my plans to wear a cape and even when they saw me in it, it was a while before anyone said anything about it. It was my friend Alex who was the first to speak, saying something about how it was a nice cape, but he would prefer to see me in just the cape. After the topic had finally been brought up, there were a few more comments about it, but nothing more than that.
But back to the wench with the menus. She had come back a changed person; she was now the wench with the water. As she handed out the waters around the table, my friend Justin became excited by the prospect of some high quality H2O.
“Why do you love water so much?” Alex asked him. “Did you know”-Alex, I should mention earned himself the nickname of Stats, meaning this isn’t the first sentence he’s ever started with the same three words of “did you know”-“that too much water will decalcify your bones?”
Now, I can’t stand it when people try and act as if there’s anything wrong with drinking tons of water. Too much of anything will kill you or damage your body in some way, and water’s probably the last thing you need to worry about. I’ve always been the one who swats sodas out of my team mates hands before soccer, volleyball or basketball games, because I’ve experienced the difference first hand of being hydrated and dehydrated and how it will make you feel, even if you’re not playing sports. People dissing on water, saying that it’ll do this harmful thing or that to your body, get on my last nerves. So as Stats began his slander on water, I quickly defended the honor of that which has quenched my thirst without fail for all these years.
“That’s such bologna. You can’t have too much water-“ If I had been allowed to finish my statement, I would have made some qualifications like, “unless you drink so much your stomach explodes.” Unfortunately, the water wench didn’t allow me to finish. She interrupted me with, “yeah you can, people die from too much water-“ so I interrupted her back, knowing full well what she was talking about, but deciding it would be much more pleasurable to frustrate her. “Well, yeah, if you drown.”
“No, not if you drown,” she said in a tone not even a wench should be allowed to use, “if you drink a gallon of water you get water on the brain.”
“But who actually does that?” I asked, as rudely as I could. “No one does that!”
“Oh…Well, I was actually gonna try that sometime.” Justin interjected from beside me, ruining my momentum.
Of all the people I know, Justin would be the one to try something like that, which reminded me of this Oprah I saw the other day. I decided to change subjects to something a little more light hearted, even though the water wench hadn’t left yet.
“I saw this thing on Oprah the other day where there’s the game called ‘the choking game’ where kids choke themselves until they start to get fuzzy and black ou-“
“Oh yeah, I used to play that game when I was in middle school.” This time it wasn’t Justin; it was the wench.
Somehow it made sense that she did this at a young age, perhaps cutting off too much oxygen too often. I made one last smart ass comment involving how I was planning on taking ecstasy, but now that she’d enlightened me on something or other (it was a really good comment I made, so it’s unfortunate I forgot what it was) I wouldn’t, and she finally left.
The guys at the table turned to toward me. “Wow, you really didn’t like her, did you?”
“Did you hear the first thing she said about me when I walked in? She was dissing my cape? How could I like her? If we’re going to make comments about clothing, she better not start.” It was true. She was wearing over-sized black clothing and had died black hair that had begun to fade. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if she hadn’t been such a pain, but the fact of the matter was that she looked like a burnt-out, grown-up, emo kid. Meanwhile, my ensemble was made up of some jean capris, a blue and white stripped polo with a nice jacket and my natural hair color. Oh yeah, and a cape. It was just that: I looked nice, oh yeah, and I was wearing a cape. Big darn deal, who cares? She picked me out from the start and didn’t like me before I even opened my mouth.
I understood the surprise my friends felt at the way I’d related to her; normally I would just sit there and take it, then later complain about what I should have said. But something about this time made it different. I couldn’t just sit around as she seemed to take after me and only me. I’ve met plenty of people like her before. They see you, they think they know something about you when they really don’t, and they decide that you’re full of yourself and need to be taught a lesson. Maybe it was something about how this is the last nine weeks of my high school career; maybe it had to do with the fact that I was sick of people just staring at me and my cape and not asking the question that they really wanted to know, letting frivolous tact get in the way; maybe it was because I’ve dealt with too many people like her in the past; either way, I didn’t feel like I deserved to take the attitude she dealt out. I deserve better treatment than that. I treat people nicely in everything I do and act as diplomatically as I can, and here she is, without knowing anything about me other than the fact that I’m wearing a cape, and treating me like I need to be shut down and set straight. You can forget that.
When I say I’ve become a Caped Avenger, don’t take this to be only a title change. I feel an actual change brought on with the cape-and object that singles me out of a crowd-and even though I’ll still be the object which insecure people will try to bring down, I’m not going to wait until I can’t take it anymore to stand up for myself. I’m standing up for myself right here and right now when I sense any sort of unjustified hostility geared against me.
Let this be a warning to all wenches, especially those who try to disrespect water.