Assorted Commentaries

            by Ana Gabriela Hernandez-McKig

 

Gravity’s Twisted Plot, or My Inability to Remain Erect

        I must be the most unstable person I know. Ninety-five percent of the time, I, like the rest of the non-paralyzed population, stand and walk like everyone else. But, then there’s that other five percent. I cannot quite explain what happens any other way than, I simply lose balance. And I’m not talking about walking or standing in precarious places. I’m talking about on solid flat ground, I sometimes may be spotted randomly falling over. In case you’re not quite following, I mean I am walking (or standing) and the next moment I’m flailing my arms around like a failed tightrope walker.

        Thankfully, I can catch myself almost every time, but by then the damage is already done. I have the fantastic fortune of having the most inopportune timing or placing. These lovely fits like occur in the presence of cute guys or on a street corner where I stumble into the road. Into traffic. Needless to say, it is a common assumption I will inevitably get hit by a car (or bus). One would think after sixteen some odd years of generally being upright, I’d be able to maintain that state. But alas, gravity wishes to counter that so widely accepted expectation one would have.

 

“You’re So Mean”

        After years of my friends and myself spewing mostly sugarcoated bullshit to each other about how much we loved each other and how we’d be friends forever. This, of course, would be followed shortly by each and every one of us turning around and complaining to all our other friends about how we hate our “best friends forever” (or BFFs for those of us too lazy and/or stupid to say the whole thing). Fed up, I decided to cut the crap, on my part at least. I was done lying to make people feel good about themselves; I was done having friends who weren’t brave enough to pose their complaints to the source (for review and adjustment); but mostly, I was done trying to make the world feel as if it can shed it’s Valium crutch and skip through the field of daisy without worry of stomping on Mr. Bee and his associates that were peacefully lying among the flowers.

         Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to go up to some random stranger and tell them, “You’re hideous! How have you not killed yourself yet?” I’m not evil. I simply will state my honest opinion, if I feel certain the person can take it, and I’m not often wrong. I don’t necessarily only say negative things either.

Someone can be a fantastic dancer, and I’ll tell them exactly that. But, what I mostly get critiqued on are the more negative comments. Which leads me to my dad.

         My dad called me one day and started telling me about how some make-up girl told him he should shave off his beard because it was aging him. My dad’s 52. At his age, the biggest thing that aging him is his birth certificate.

 

        “You said I’m old.”

        “What?”

        “You told me when you were down here that I was old.”

How did I know he wasn’t gonna let that one go?

        “I did? Well, you’re not young...”

        “You’re so mean.”

        “What do you want me to say? You look twenty?”

        “Should I shave my beard?”

I had to break the news.

        “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

        “Why not?”

        “You look better with a beard.”

        “When have you seen me without one?”

        “That one day you shaved it off a long time ago.”

        “That was a long time ago. You remember that?”

        “Yeah. Keep your beard”

Now, I didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings but the only time I’d ever seen him without a beard was when I was five or six, for about a day. I can’t remember what he looked like, but I remember running away from him. He was the strange chin-less man who claimed to be my papi, which was a lye. My papi had a beard.

        “It wasn’t that bad.”

        “I was scared. I ran to my room and hid.”

There may have even been crying involved. It’s all a bit fuzzy.

        “You really think I should keep it?”

I could tell he was starting to slip into that thing  where he sounds like he cares but really couldn’t care less about what you had to say.. I had to tell him exactly what I thought and quick, or my dad would be roaming the streets of Hollywood, frightening innocent bystanders and maybe making little kids cry.

        “Let’s put it this way: I won’t talk to you if you shave off you’re beard.”

        “Really?”

        “Yeah.”

        “Oh...alright...”

Disappointment was dripping from his words.

        “Okay, look. You can probably get away with shaving the sides to a goatee, but that’s it. Nothing less than that.”

        “Okay.”

 

The beard remained fully intact and the general public was spared. Although, he still thinks I’m mean, I like  to think that I had a greater good in mind, one beyond his fragile ego’s understanding grasp.

 

Damn Trees....

Typically, girls are about 5’5”. I am about half a foot away from normal: 5’11”. It’s thankfully just shy of six foot (which I consider to be freak status), but it’s still up there. It may not seem that tall, but when your friends are on the other end of the “average height” spectrum, one start to feel like a towering giant, especially when between my mom, step dad, and older brother, I’m the tallest in my house. I have people tell me a lot that I’m not that tall, but I’d like them to tell that to my brother, whose ego is still suffering from the day I noticed I was looking down at him, despite him being three years my senior.

At my height, walking down the sidewalk is a hazard, not only because I have to worst balance this side of the Sierra Nevadas, but due to the small issue where if I don’t pay complete attention (something very hard for me, I might add), I have been known to walk into trees and other various forms of plant life. Taking a leisurely stroll becomes a game of dodgeball ducking and shifting away from an assortment of hard extremities from the local foliage.

Then there’s the lovely ridiculous comments referring to athletics, always starting with, “You’re tall; you’d be good at (insert sport here).” The usual are basketball and volleyball, with the occasional crew (for those as clueless as I once happily was, it’s that one where you row facing backwards in skinny boats racing). What most people don’t realize is I’m not in the least bit athletic. I politely remind them of my serious lack of coordination, which tends to be followed by either an “Oh, I see” and an awkward silence or a “well, that’s okay” and my questioning them how I’d be of any use on a team if I’m lacking that one fairly major skill.

 

 

Thrust!

I pretty much have no shame. Especially around certain friends, I lose complete concept of others. I will burst into song or maybe do a little dance and not even notice, for quite a while, all the funny stares I might be receiving. I have been called craving for attention, which would really only be true if the motivation behind my random actions are driven by getting looks and stares for myself. But alas, my snail paced brain normally doesn’t even register people until I feel that horrid feeling one gets when they’re being watched. My friend, Amina, in particular, has this ridiculous effect on me. With her, I have done everything from singing down the hallways of school (during class, I might add), dancing on street corners (not for money, I promise), and paralyzing laughing fits that typically end with at least one of us on the floor (mainly me). One event in particular rings prominent, not to long ago. On our way back from a typical run to Peet’s Coffee (for some rather scrumcious jasmine iced tea which I highly recommend, by the way), we were standing on the corner awaiting to cross the street to head back to class, causally discussing pelvic thrusts, when I started to demonstrate one. It was after a good few seconds of thrusting, I noticed there was a man who had been in the process of making your typical left turn until he noticed the pelvic actions of myself on the corner. Me being a bit slow in the action-reaction department, continued to mildly thrust as I noticed this guy staring at me in complete disbelief and confusion. I finally realized I should stop by the time he had already made his turn, but that obviously didn’t stop his stares and the expression on his face which plainly read “What the fuck?!” The light changed and Amina and I quickly trotted the length of the crosswalk, laughing  all the way back to class.

 

 

Hmm?

If you ever been around a kid whose about six-months-old, you probably have a pretty good idea of how little attention span they have. I’m sad to report my own isn’t much better. I have developed ways to help myself cope, such as listening to music when I sit down to do anything, situating myself where I don’t need to get up too often, or depriving myself of sleep. To illustrate, just working on this piece, I’m listening to music, it’s 1:56 am (on a school night), and I’m sitting in my kitchen with snacks and a drink, and yet, even with those supreme conditions, I’ve succeeded in covering an entire sheet of paper in random scribbles, song lyrics, and handwriting improvement tests (writing letters in different ways, spacing, and styles), chewing my nails down to their typical nonexistent state, creating the sweatshirt design for the spring musical, and checking my email. Three times. Once my friends took me into Tiffany’s, and I spent the entire half hour there walkiing around staring at the super shiny things everywhere without really looking at any of them in particular. In short, never take me into a jewelry store....mmm...shiny.

 

 

The Dark Side

At my school, there are many different activities that could be seen as cultish, such as those on the crew team, those who take Latin, et cetera. So, during any given performance in a theater, there are the performers on stage and the people in the shadows making everything work. These shadow people are theater technicians, or “techies” as they like to refer to themselves as in our theater. I am one of the techies. The thing you need to understand is that even though we do have some serious cultish aspects, we unlike the rest of the groups on campus are not full time. Our little cult exists only during the theater season (approximately one and a half months in total each semester). During the theater season, we are certifiably insane. Most of us at least abandon half of our regular obligations, if not more (these are things like homework, eating dinner with our family, and so on), we spend a ridiculous amount of time indoors in the darkness (we are known to get fairly pale in spring due to the musical), most of us don’t have a fear of heights due to extensive work standing on top of a thirty foot tall ladder, and we have been known to walk around in packs late at night following a show singing tunes from the current musical, and finally we spend more time at school than any other place (home, cafés, restaurants, etc). We are the dark side of the theater for several reasons, including but is not limited to, our “excessive” cursing, our predominantly black wardrobe, our preference of being behind a light rather than in front, our Bouncer status for the theater, and most importantly, our unofficial theme song is the “Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s theme song) from Star Wars. But as intimidating as we may seem, we aren’t that bad. You just need to understand how we work and what to avoid doing that would trigger our wrath.