"Wanna get distracted?"

Having a giant ass pimple taking up residence on my chin reminds me that I'm not as wonderful and sparkly as my distorted mind likes to think I am. I am just a normal person. Like you. I often forget about the "regular" people. You know, the ones who don't watch Colbert or Project Runway or even own a TiVo. The ones who think skinny jeans are still in. No, I'm not that terribly narcissistic, but we all have those moments where we believe we're so much better than the people we're surrounded by. Then again, not everyone saw me at Starbucks tonight making lists of countries entitled "Axis of Evil" and "Axis of Love" with my other PoliSci friends. Ergo, this last paragraph is moot. I am as ridiculous and Myspaced out as the rest of the 18-25 demographic in the United States of America (which we put under Axis of Love, by the way).

PMS catches me by surprise every month, usually immediately after I have polished off an entire package of Chips Ahoy. I go to bed in the morning rosey cheeked and red eyed and wake up mid afternoon to a face that can only be recreated with the help of those make up wizards at Lucusfilm.



"I can connect the dots to reveal a picture!" a friend jokes with me about her face one evening when I complain that I am "molting". "Seriously," she rolls her eyes, "Don't talk to me about your skin "problems.""
She sounds like my dermatologist.
"And what are you here for?" She had asked me the first time I walked into her office my senior year.
I looked at her like she was nuts, "This?!" I pointed to the mound on my face.
"So... I guess... acne?" she shrugs. "Is that it?"
I wasn't overreacting.

Prom was almost a disaster, thank G-d for Photoshop, no joke. Just days before the Oscars of High School, I felt the mother of all pimples just ready to erect itself like the Empire State Building on my face. By Monday of that week it was red, angry, and fucking huge.
"Oh my lord," I recall my mother saying. "You don't have to go to school today." She didn't even know at the time that I was also sick on top of it, she had just seen me without make up.

I didn't go to school for three days. Not because I was sick, that I could handle, but the pimple was massive. Perhaps you think I am vain. I'd say yes, but then I would also think you'd never been a seventeen year old girl with appearance issues stuck going to a high school where a nice percent of her senior class hoped she'd vanish out of thin air (something to do with pictures of people while they were drunk being shown to some people in the administration. No big. And it turns out, they weren't the important people in my life anyway. You live, you learn. I have great friends now.).

"Stephanie wouldn't go to school if she had a bad hair day," I recall a best friend telling me my eighth grade science teacher had said while I was gone, again, one day. She was pretty much correct. But I didn't really even need a good excuse to be absent. It got to the point where if I woke up five minutes late, I'd find a reason not to go to school. Or sometimes, I'd just leave early. By the middle of Freshman year I was on a first name basis with Mary in the attendance office. By the end of the year I didn't even bother to fake cough as I picked up a pass excusing me from school at 8:30 AM.

Mind you, school started only at 7:30 AM.

"I don't understand how you live the way you do and not die," a friend once commented.
"Luck and stupidity go hand in hand," I would counter.
"Don't you have some sort of a work ethic?" my sister, the younger more studious version of myself, asked me my Junior year.

At the time, I didn't (let me just say, I do now that I am out of high school. I forgot I actually liked learning...). To me, high school was all about Regis without Kathy, going off campus for lunch ten minutes after I arrived, and never going to Econ class to prove the point that I was more of a badass (read: idiot) than any of my peers. Oh, and making out, which I rarely got to do.

Of course, all this ever got me was a B average and many an electronic voice call home around 5PM some evenings to inform my parents (if they happened to answer the phone if I accidentally didn't) that I hadn't been to "one or more classes" that particular day. But, I had fun. "You did high school the way you wanted to," my Junior year English teacher told me through tears, "I'm just happy you came to my class almost every other day."

And that's the story of why I go to an in-state college.

Quote of the day:
"Are you ready to die in my honor?"
- My question to my professor who walked me out to the parking lot with a friend because he was afraid we'd get raped by the crazy guy going around Phoenix raping and pillaging the city.

“No, seriously, stop.”

There is a boy in my History of Cinema class who stares at me. Or maybe just my hair. I’m not sure if he’s actually gay or not. One thing for sure is though, I have great hair.

He sits diagonal to me and the thing that I like best about him is, if you look very quickly, he almost looks like a young Woody Allen. Its most endearing without being attractive in any way shape or form, which is odd really, considering how much I love Woody Allen. I just never knew I had absolutely no desire to date him.

I usually ignore the stares, choosing instead to give all my attention to the giant John Wayne (great ass) as the Ringo Kid on screen. Although dead, I believe I will get more out of John Wayne than a might be gay Woody doppelganger.



Sadly, these class periods are perhaps the most interesting thing that’s happened to me all summer, except for the few bad dates I’ve had, including one boy desperate to get me to convert to Christianity (or Catholicism?). But that is perhaps more scary than interesting.

My friend set me up with a kid named Chris back in June, claiming we’d get along perfectly. “You’re practically the same person,” she told me as she handed me his number. She had dated him previously in the year and after a badly misunderstood break-up via text message (my reply to her after she told me; “Who the hell does he think he is anyway? Adam Levine?”) the two had become great fake friends, proving to each other that they no longer felt romantic feelings by setting each other up with their most single of friends. “We’re really more like…I don’t know, cousins or something now,” my friend A explained.
“What about that whole “asshole should die for breaking up with me over a text message” thing?” I ask tentatively.
“Oh that?” she waves it off, “He was just having a bad day, and plus, I mean, I did sort of cheat on him.”
“Details,” I joke.

Chris was a former drug dealer ("...I can't believe I'm telling you this...I just feel like I can tell you anything...") with a new found love for Jesus. In fact, he believes he's actually in Jesus. "We are in Christ, therefore, we are saved,” he tells me over lunch, whatever that means, after I joke with him about his former drug sinning.
"I'm Jewish," I tell him.
"Like, how Orthadox?" he'd like to know.
"Please," I shake my head, "I'm not even Kosher. But I'm not a Jew for Jesus or anything. They are crazy!"
"What's so wrong with that?"' he wants to know, stirring Splenda into his iced tea, "Jesus died for your sins too after all."
Ah crap, we haven’t even ordered yet and we’re talking religion. Most people are married forty years before discussing religion. I debate getting angry or playing dumb.
I go for playing dumb because I’m so gosh-darn good at it.
"I don't know enough about religion," I say, dismissing it with my hand. That's a semi-lie. I know what I think is enough about religion. I mean, I’ve seen Superman Returns (I wish Jesus looked like that. If he did, I’d be his follower too) and I believe that having faith and spirituality is more important than knowing all the rules. I think you should know why you believe the things you believe, but I don't think hanging out in church and eating ‘Nilla Wafers and drinking juice makes you a better person than a Jew who might go to Temple on Passover (if they feel like it. I might be speaking from personal experiences.). Especially if they are so blind to what actually makes a person good, like, caring for family, your friends, um, not doing drugs, etcetera.
"You know, my dad is a pastor?" he says, "And I work at my church."
Oops. This is the second time that’s happened to me this summer alone.
"Sometimes," I say, "I watch A Charlie Brown Christmas." To which he responds with a grimace.
"I’m just being honest," I say.
"It’s fine,” he shakes his head, but avoids eye contact. I know it's not, but I let it drop, choosing instead to talk about Flickr, which is my go-to topic when I'm uncomfortable or at a loss for words (this time, I was both). Every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks they're a photographer, so this topic usually goes over well. The Flickr portion of our conversation ends and there's a pause, followed by a sigh on his part.
"OK, so, here's the problem."
"Problem?"
"Yeah," he says, "OK, so the Jewish religion is based on facts and Christianity is based on grace."
"...Uh-huh."
He practically bursts then, continuing on for some time about Jesus, Peter, PaulandMary, and "Him" (which confused me because sometimes Him was "Christ" and sometimes Him was G-d? But "Christ" is G-d? From what I was trying to understand. He was confusing me, and I started spacing out and thinking about Colbert to be honest, and how I was missing him.) I suddenly felt like I had accidentally opened the door to a Bible's salesman.
"Well, in my religion we just eat a lot of bread..." I say trying to lighten what has turned into a very dark lunch, after, no joke, thirty minutes, "And, I'll be honest, but I understood maybe half of what you just said."
"Read the New Testament," he replies, "It'll help you figure things out."
Figure things out? What do I have to figure out? Plus, let’s break it down; sequels always suck as far as I'm concerned. Well, unless we're talking about Back to the Future II and III. But M:I:III? Why spoil a good thing? I think the Old Testament is just fine. You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Plus, oh hi! I'm Jewish. I'd like to know more about religion but, I'd like the over-view please. And I'd like to have it not shoved down my throat by the son of a preacher man (who, ironically, is the only one who could ever teach me)."I'll read up about it on Wikipedia," I say as a throw away sentence, hoping to shut him up so he can finish his pasta and I can leave.
"No! That won't help you like The Bible! That won't save you!"
"What?"
"You should really read it."
"I will after I finish The Electric Cool-Aide Acid Test," I lie. I haven't even read The old Bible, why would I start with the new? Really now. Don't push your religion onto me. I don't go around with pamphlets telling you why you should convert to Judaism (for the food, mostly, if you’re thinking about it). In fact, when I made a "Well, we are The Chosen Ones” joke, it didn't even get a smile.
"I just- I- That won't help you. That's... that's not going to help," he stutters.
"I'm just being honest," I tell him.
"Me too!" he exclaims.

And after all of this? He wanted to see me again.
"When are you free next?" he asked before I got into my car. "Can I call you tomorrow? Or do you want to set something up now?"
Then he hugged me three times. Eh, at least I got a free lunch.

Quote of the day:
“You communist bitch!”
- What I said a little to loudly to my friend Ally in Cinema class during a discussion in which she revealed she didn’t like John Wayne that much.