it's been one of those days....this is not the cheeriest entry so don't read if you want uplifting.
The other day i was talking with someone and we were asking each other random questions and i asked him if he could do anything in life what would it be. He responded with something about being a pro basketball player...and fame...and glory...and....Then he asked me what i would do -
i sort of surprised myself with my answer. my answer is that i would move to france, get some little old inexpensive apartment, customize it with all of the random things I have collected, paint murals on the walls incorporating the cracks in the wallboard into my design, find very modern, angled furniture and buy a nice set of dishes. I'd get a few plants, maybe a dog. Then i'd find myself a job as a waitress in a cafe on the corner of some street in my little city on the riviera. I would get to wear a short black skirt and a white apron with my hair in a looseponytail finished off with a red ribbon, maybe even some low black stilettos. i would perpetually have the perfect tan because i would do most of my serving outside on the deck to tables with cute umbrellas that wiggled slightly in the warm, sweet smelling breeze that would continually blow and centerpieces with bright, fresh flowers that i cut every week from the flowerboxes in front of the store. on the weekends, though, or sometimes on my nice length walk home, it would rain, but not the kind of rain that would make you run inside, but the kind that drizzles only slightly and smells like it will wash everything bad out of the world - the kind of rain that you can't help but dance and twirl around a little in. The weekends i might use for travel, i'd take the train to some city, maybe go backpacking for a few days, just to see what i could see. i might meet random boys, and some of them would fall in love with me, but from a distance and i would never know any more of it than just a passing thought. i would eventually fall in love with my best friend, whether things worked out or not really makes no difference, as long as all the time we were together we were happy and after we weren't together any more, we were still just as happy. it would be the kind of love that you see in romantic comedies though, the ones that only ever elude to sex and involve a lot of canoe rides and hand holding. my weekdays though, at my job, would be completely separated from any of my personal life. i would spend my days serving lemonade to the middle-aged men who came in every day and made slightly off color jokes and hit on my incessantly; i would get to know the families that lived on the block - i would share their problems, their worries and their joys, i would serve their kids sodas on their way home from school and i would package up to-go dinners for the mother when she was just too stressed to cook, i would help the fathers prepare sweet, romantic surprise date dinners for their anniversaries; i would watch couples whose first date was drinking strawberry milkshakes and watching the people walk by and who then came in every week for those same milkshakes and who grew more in love every day and then i would watch as the young man proposed to the love of his life, and if i'm lucky, it might be so beautiful that it would make me cry.
i didn't describe it in that much detail to him, but when i finished there was silence, which i immediately covered up with, "wow, sorry, that was random." and i hate myself for that comment and for ever feeling like i needed to apologize for myself.
then he told me that my dream was certainly much more attainable than his.
i thought about it for a few days though and its not at all. that dream is so far away that it is an impossibility. its a life that i will never and can never have. first, because i was not born into it and second, because...well...because of the things it symbolizes. I would never want to age, i would want to stay twenty and carefree forever. my figure would never change, i'd never have to worry about gaining weight after having kids. i wouldn't have ties to any one or anything. i wouldn't have to wake up early on sunday to call home. i wouldn't ever want to leave to visit people that i once knew, they wouldn't exist. that would be home.
do you know what i will probably be doing instead? i will be a perfectly content mother of a few kids with a few extra pounds that i keep talking about dropping. i will drive some horribly inefficient SUV instead of walking home in the rain. I might have flowerboxes in front of my middle-class, middle-sized, middle-everything house, but they'll probably be overgrown with weeds and the painted swirly designs that decorate them will be slowly chipping off and falling to the ground. i will drive kids to random sports practices on weekends and the only backpack i will carry will be the one carrying the cheese, apple slices and capri suns for snack time. i might work a part time job, maybe full-time when the kids grow up, doing something maybe relevant to my degree, maybe not. i will probably be in a knitting circle. i will go to the coffee shop with my other mother friends and we will envy the young girl serving us with her short skirt and loose ponytail.
none of that, just as a point, even remotely involves anything that would be the product of an intellectually stimulting academic discussion about the social construction of scientific institutions and the understood, though unstated, laws that control them and the societal implications of those laws and hence the function in society of said institutions. so what i am doing here, because, unfortunately, the aforementioned discussion will have cost me close to 200,000 dollars. i should have just skipped right to the suburban house.
i sort of surprised myself with my answer. my answer is that i would move to france, get some little old inexpensive apartment, customize it with all of the random things I have collected, paint murals on the walls incorporating the cracks in the wallboard into my design, find very modern, angled furniture and buy a nice set of dishes. I'd get a few plants, maybe a dog. Then i'd find myself a job as a waitress in a cafe on the corner of some street in my little city on the riviera. I would get to wear a short black skirt and a white apron with my hair in a looseponytail finished off with a red ribbon, maybe even some low black stilettos. i would perpetually have the perfect tan because i would do most of my serving outside on the deck to tables with cute umbrellas that wiggled slightly in the warm, sweet smelling breeze that would continually blow and centerpieces with bright, fresh flowers that i cut every week from the flowerboxes in front of the store. on the weekends, though, or sometimes on my nice length walk home, it would rain, but not the kind of rain that would make you run inside, but the kind that drizzles only slightly and smells like it will wash everything bad out of the world - the kind of rain that you can't help but dance and twirl around a little in. The weekends i might use for travel, i'd take the train to some city, maybe go backpacking for a few days, just to see what i could see. i might meet random boys, and some of them would fall in love with me, but from a distance and i would never know any more of it than just a passing thought. i would eventually fall in love with my best friend, whether things worked out or not really makes no difference, as long as all the time we were together we were happy and after we weren't together any more, we were still just as happy. it would be the kind of love that you see in romantic comedies though, the ones that only ever elude to sex and involve a lot of canoe rides and hand holding. my weekdays though, at my job, would be completely separated from any of my personal life. i would spend my days serving lemonade to the middle-aged men who came in every day and made slightly off color jokes and hit on my incessantly; i would get to know the families that lived on the block - i would share their problems, their worries and their joys, i would serve their kids sodas on their way home from school and i would package up to-go dinners for the mother when she was just too stressed to cook, i would help the fathers prepare sweet, romantic surprise date dinners for their anniversaries; i would watch couples whose first date was drinking strawberry milkshakes and watching the people walk by and who then came in every week for those same milkshakes and who grew more in love every day and then i would watch as the young man proposed to the love of his life, and if i'm lucky, it might be so beautiful that it would make me cry.
i didn't describe it in that much detail to him, but when i finished there was silence, which i immediately covered up with, "wow, sorry, that was random." and i hate myself for that comment and for ever feeling like i needed to apologize for myself.
then he told me that my dream was certainly much more attainable than his.
i thought about it for a few days though and its not at all. that dream is so far away that it is an impossibility. its a life that i will never and can never have. first, because i was not born into it and second, because...well...because of the things it symbolizes. I would never want to age, i would want to stay twenty and carefree forever. my figure would never change, i'd never have to worry about gaining weight after having kids. i wouldn't have ties to any one or anything. i wouldn't have to wake up early on sunday to call home. i wouldn't ever want to leave to visit people that i once knew, they wouldn't exist. that would be home.
do you know what i will probably be doing instead? i will be a perfectly content mother of a few kids with a few extra pounds that i keep talking about dropping. i will drive some horribly inefficient SUV instead of walking home in the rain. I might have flowerboxes in front of my middle-class, middle-sized, middle-everything house, but they'll probably be overgrown with weeds and the painted swirly designs that decorate them will be slowly chipping off and falling to the ground. i will drive kids to random sports practices on weekends and the only backpack i will carry will be the one carrying the cheese, apple slices and capri suns for snack time. i might work a part time job, maybe full-time when the kids grow up, doing something maybe relevant to my degree, maybe not. i will probably be in a knitting circle. i will go to the coffee shop with my other mother friends and we will envy the young girl serving us with her short skirt and loose ponytail.
none of that, just as a point, even remotely involves anything that would be the product of an intellectually stimulting academic discussion about the social construction of scientific institutions and the understood, though unstated, laws that control them and the societal implications of those laws and hence the function in society of said institutions. so what i am doing here, because, unfortunately, the aforementioned discussion will have cost me close to 200,000 dollars. i should have just skipped right to the suburban house.