Embarrassing Shit on the Internet

Once upon a time, this thing we call "the Internet" didn't exist.  We didn't have to read about our friends' politics on Facebook, and unless we were physically next to our friends at lunch, we had no idea what they ate.

For a few formative years, we played with real, tangible people and things so that we learned to speak in more than 140 characters and knew that poking was rude.  But technology advanced.  And before we were legal adults, we were having our every awkward, embarrassing, adolescent moment documented online for all of our "friends" to see.

When the Internet came into our lives, the first things we made were email addresses.  People used to care about forwarded emails; there used to be actual email threads.  It was our first encounter with dancing flower graphics and digital American flags.  We believed our forwards could cure people we'd never met of diseases we'd never heard of.  It was a magical time.

Eventually, our parents let us come up with our own AIM screen names, and by the time we were in middle school, we were using them every day.  We once invited dates to Preteen-Center dances under aliases like:

partygurl727

orlandobloomrox42

Wetkiss773

Alittlbtdramatic

Lilsportygrlmgs

lilsurfchick31

lazyboi8881

CAguysdoitbetter

ditzyblonde3242

MissKewl86

digitom91

Hottstuffaroo

It's obvious what was "kewl" at the time: spelling errors.  Also, apparently these "hott" 9-12-year-olds knew how to party.  I get the impression that while I was playing Oregon Trail with my cat, they were dressed up in their Limited Too finest and "wet kissing."

Personally, I want to remember myself as a kid who loved tea parties, Katharine Hepburn movies, and Irish rock.  I want to believe that I was cool.  But because the Internet butted its way into my life before I was a fully developed, semi-stable human being, it documents the embarrassing truth: that I WASN'T cool.  That's right.  I've been trying to bury this for years, but my first AIM screen name was KittyPwincess24.

This is what I imagine someone named KittyPwincess24 would look like:

 
Every day, we post things online.  We instagram photos of our breakfast as if anyone actually gives a shit, and tweet inane nonsense like, "Garbanzo beans!  Yum!"

Someday these things may embarrass us, just as we are embarrassed by our first screen names.  Someday (later tonight) I will regret having posted that photo which yes, is an impressively posed selfie of me.

Do as I say, friends, not as I do.  Remember when you were a QTpatooty32, and then DON'T post your embarrassing shit on the Internet.

Special thanks to everyone who sent me old screen names!  If I didn't use yours, don't be sad, be proud:  It wasn't quite as bad as the others.

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Dancing in Ballrooms with Boys

I am a 5-foot, 8-inch tall individual of medium build.  If I came packaged, my tag would read “Human, Standard Size.”  I get away with it now, but I have been this size since I was approximately 8 years old.  I had fluffy Hermione hair, glasses, and may or may not have experimented with olive khaki capris.  The word “swarthy” somehow applied to me.  If you were to see me on the street, you would imagine my name was “Gert.”

People see photos of  “Gert” now and say things like, “Oh, I remember my awkward stage!”  But this “stage” you speak of lasted for several oafish years of my life!  And it was during those years that I took cotillion.

In case you grew up with parents who didn’t know you needed proper training in ballroom dancing and cookie-nibbling in order to get ahead in life, now you know that cotillion was just that: dancing and etiquette classes.  Boys who hated girls and girls who hated boys gathered in one large community center once a week to nervously eye one another and sheepishly pose for their enthusiastic paparazzi moms. 

“Gert” did not do well in this environment.

I remember standing in line outside by petite, delicate little blonde girls, who actually argued about who would be forced to stand next to me.  “You stand next to her!”  “No YOU stand next to her!”  I shifted from one heavily clogged foot to another, sweating beneath my pink hand-me-down skirt that dropped straight from waist to mid-calf.  The goal was just to get through it—to endure—until it was time for lemonade and cookies.  We would trudge inside and I would sit wedged between two boys, who would eagerly lean over me to discuss “Dragon Ball Z” and which pretty doll-girls they hoped to dance with.

Cotillion’s saving grace was that most of the time you didn’t have to deal with the terror of choosing a dance partner; you were assigned one.  And all of the boys were over a foot shorter than me, so while they stared squarely into my brawny, guppy swim team-developed chest, I got to look over their heads and out the window, or send desperate “Save me!” faces to my laughing mom. 

When I did have to choose my partner, I would just wait until everyone else was paired off, and then wrinkle my eyebrows at the last boy standing in an, “I guess we’re both left?” kind of way.  Of course, I would have preferred to dance with the tallish-British kid who was named something like “Rupert” or “Algernon” and wore crested blazers, but I was happy to be with wee Jonathan with the high crackling voice, too.  The main goal was always to dance well enough to win a 3 Musketeers, which somehow, inevitably, made the unparalleled agony of cotillion all worth it.

This story doesn’t have a moral, but I’ll try to pin one on it anyway.  Chocolate rewards are a good thing.  Little girls can be bitches, but who cares, because they’ll probably get pregnant during high school.  It’s okay if you’re tall and oafish.  Wee Jonathan will one day come back from summer vacation and be taller than you, and you’ll get contact lenses, and people will forget that they didn’t want to dance with you, until you remind them via blog. 

And by that time, you’ll be an adult.  And you can drive to the store and buy lemonade and cookies and 3 Musketeers for yourself, and you don’t have to endure doing the foxtrot for an hour to songs by The Mamas & the Papas before you eat them.

Just eat them.

xx-Gert.

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Fortune's Fool, or How I Learned My Future

Once a year while I was growing up, a carnival would pass through my town.  And let me tell you: it was the coolest place to be.  Tweens went to flirt.  High school students went to drunkenly vomit on rides.  And I, regardless, of age, went for the cotton candy.

Every year it was awesome, but the year I was in 8^th grade stands out in particular.  That was the year my friends and I visited the carnival psychic.

At first, we were skeptical.  Was a palm reading really worth $5?  And… was it dangerous?  After my first two friends had their palms read, though, I knew this psychic was legit.  She had somehow known that my adolescent friend Katy was having issues with her mom.  And she knew that Kelly had a crush on a boy at school!!!  THIS LADY WAS MAGICAL!

Trembling, I handed over my $5 and prepared to meet my fate.  Here is what I remember most:

1.  She said I intimidated boys my own age.  (So that’s why I didn’t have a boyfriend!  It had nothing to do with my braces and curly bangs!)

2.  She said I would “go east.”  (And you know what… I DID.  Because it turns out EVERYWHERE is east of California!)

3.  And she told me—drum roll please—that I would be a professional SPEAKER ON SUBSTANCE ABUSE. 

In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that most “palm readers” are merely good at measuring personalities.  We were a pack of giggling, gawky, 13-year-old girls, so of course we were dealing with crushes, “mean girls,” and helicopter parents.  The psychic was hardly taking a gamble when she told us our palms dictated such things.  But where the heck did she gather that I’d become a speaker on substance abuse?  I don’t remember sitting there with bloodshot eyes and bruises on my arms.  But for whatever reason, she looked at me and thought, “This girl… rough… substances.”

This incident came to mind last month when I was out with friends.  We walked past a psychic shop and, on a whim, decided to peek inside.

We warily swept past a burgundy velveteen curtain and found ourselves face to face with the shaman.  She was a chubby woman in a white tank top, smoking a cigarette and playing Angry Birds on her phone.

“Do you guys want tarot readings?” she demanded, sizing us up.  When I hesitated, she narrowed her eyes at me.  “You’re the one that needs this the most.  You’re the one with all the man problems!”

………...…WHAT?  So that’s how this works, then?  The magical spirits, who are apparently personally invested in my love life, gossip about me with the shaman?  Or was the shaman simply reading my aura, which said, “Help, I’m single?”

I called “bullshit,” and coldly declined the tarot reading.  I don’t need some shaman in a Beverly Hills gypsy hut to tell me where my life is going.  I already know:

I’m going to be a speaker on substance abuse.

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