You know that one person who seems to make a point to know every single detail about your life and then judges what you might like to talk about based off of those things? To a certain degree, we all do this, and it might even be a good thing in moderation. When it's all they talk about, though, I start to feel like that person is convinced that that is my only interest and saying absolutely anything else to me will make me either run off waving my hands in a fit of anger or drop dead spontaneously from the insurmountable task of comprehending this new, foreign concept. This is the way Facebook has been treating me lately and I don't like it.
Facebook has always tried to act like it knows the lives of its users. This used to manifest itself in really helpful features--People You May Know and Recommended Pages, for example. Most recently, they began to personalize their advertisements, which is a really good idea on paper. The problem is that the service, when implemented, is a bit... single-minded.
I'm one of those lucky people who lives in a town where I can be at least 73% sure that putting my sexual orientation on my Facebook will not result in a congregation of devotees performing an exorcism outside my door. (Although, come to think of it, I do live three doors down from a church...) One night, after watching a really sappy frustrated-gay-men romcom my mom put in the Netflix queue for me as a teaching moment, I got up the courage to fill the "interested in" box on my Facebook profile. Either no one saw it or no one was surprised (I can't imagine why; I'm totally the motorcycle-riding football-watching boob and beer enthusiast type), but one thing did come of this: Facebook's advertising engine became that friend that always talks about the same thing.
The trouble is that Facebook's advertisements aren't always tactful, either. Of the ads I see, 3/4 of them roughly resemble these two:
Don't get me wrong, I understand their arithmetic.
Male + Interested in: Men + Single + Almost always online on Friday nights + Watches romantic comedies frequently enough to suggest desperation = Interest in dating services
They just don't have to be so accurate.
Then, sometimes, they just get offensive, like this one:
I mean, come on, Facebook. Really? Does it really look like that's a book I'd-- nevermind. Don't want to know the answer to that.
I've become convinced that the governments of the world have been keeping a secret for centuries. An earth-shattering secret that would expose every clock or time-telling device you have ever purchased as the shameless liar that it is. A secret that would make fundamental questions we consider "obvious" uncertain. Does gravity really exist? Is air really there? Would the world be a better place if science found a way for Jacob Pitts and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to combine their gametes and make a baby? After this, we can't be sure.
The secret? Are you sitting down? (I'd be surprised if you weren't--the mental image of the beautiful man-baby offspring of those two men is something I'd consider enough to make just about anyone need to sit down)
The 10 minutes between 7:16 AM and 7:26 AM do not actually exist.
Due to my sleep deprivation on most nights, I am actually sleepwalking for the first thirty minutes I'm awake, so things tend to fall in place the same way every morning. (Being remarkably good at shaving while asleep is the only thing that has kept my carotid arteries intact.) I usually come down the stairs at around 7:14 AM, give or take a few minutes depending on how much time I spend panicking over the fact that nothing in my wardrobe seems to match that early in the morning. (Some traumatizing childhood memories have made me very fastidious. I'll leave it at warning you all that wearing a red t-shirt and green sweat pants will very quickly net you the nickname "Christmas boy.") It has to be around the same time because the first sight I'm greeted with every morning is a close-up of Meredith Vieira's face on the TV screen. This is such a frightening sight that it's hard to forget.
From there, I usually go into the kitchen, grab whatever derivative of cake that society deems acceptable for breakfast, prepare my caffeinated substance of choice and begin the effort to make it through breakfast without falling asleep. It seems to be barely seconds later when I hear the Wicked Witch of the Today Show caterwaul,
"It's 7:26 AM. Now let's take a look into the preparations underway for the Royal Wedding--"
This is around where I start thinking about how little I care about two attractive heterosexual people in positions of power getting married and how Kate Middleton is a total bitch because she's flawless and she's about to become a princess and have a really attractive husband and I don't even have the luxury of a creeper that sends me suggestive text messages, much less a member of the royal court--
Wait a minute, holy shit. 7:26 AM!?
I used to blame myself for this phenomenon. I used to chastise myself for moving too slowly or being too tired, but I will not accept the blame any longer. I know the truth. Why do you think NBC always puts advertisements on around that time? Because it's imaginary advertising, intended to lull you into thinking that time is going by while stuffing your brain with corporate slogans and promotional material.
If I suddenly disappear from the internet and this post is deleted, you know what happened. They couldn't handle the truth coming out. But now you know, and never again will you be tricked into thinking that you have enough time to eat breakfast and still be on time to school.
My grandmother made me obsessed with water. To her, it was imperative that any drive--be it to a restaurant for dinner or to CVS to use a coupon--was accompanied by a drive along the shore of Lake Erie. I couldn't blame her. Lake Erie, like many things in America, is really pretty from a distance. Driving along Route 5 in my grandfather's teal Chevy Lumina put us just far enough away from the water to ignore the (often aromatic) brownish sludge on top, but close enough to satisfy my grandmother's desire to watch each wave come to completion.
When I was little, driving to the Dunkirk Pier wasn't just a nice evening out, it was a religious experience. Luckily, the pier is one of the few places in Dunkirk where you can park your car and expect to drive away with all four tires and both side view mirrors intact. When it was nasty and cold outside, we'd go to the Greek restaurant that's situated right by the lake and insist upon a table near the big windows at the back, where I could stare wide-eyed out the window at the seagulls and the waves and ignore my parents' conversations about clients and the court system. But when it was nice out, we'd drive into downtown Fredonia, go to a little sub shop called the Bomber House (I spent years trying to explain to my friends while telling this story that this was not a bomb shelter and we would not get in trouble for talking about it on school grounds), and bring our tinfoil-wrapped dinners to the pier where I could stare creepily at fishermen and ask inane questions about the marine life and the power plant you could see in the distance. At that age, there was nothing better. However, soon after I entered my teenage years, the proprietors of the Bomber House went back home to Puerto Rico (I think) and took their subs with them.
Fast-forward to now. I can't seem to watch any movie, regardless of the subject matter, without ending up a mess of thought and reminiscence at the end; I'm a glutton for introspection. I went to see Water for Elephants last night with a couple friends. Although I drove in the opposite direction on Route 5 to get to the movie theater, it was the same Route 5 and the same Lake Erie, and although Tim Hortons isn't quite the Bomber House, the bagel I ordered at the 24-hour drive thru had enough carbohydrates to send me into a fit of nostalgia. I needed a pretty place to park by the water and I needed it urgently enough to pull haphazardly into the first road I saw going in the direction of the lake. Unfortunately, the actually really pretty place to park had already been discovered by a couple of shady-looking guys standing in the dark (this was at midnight), and had been discovered long before that by the Town of Hamburg, who put up a very intimidating and persuasive sign saying "PERMITS REQUIRED" right at the entrance. My grandmother would have been ashamed. No one should be deprived of the opportunity to sit by the lake and reminisce.
Happy Easter. I don't know about your family, but in mine, Easter has been relegated to "dinner holiday" status--we make an effort to avoid the microwave and use the more neglected parts of the kitchen, but that's about it.
More relevant about today is that it's the second-to-last day of my spring break, which means that it's my day to wonder where the time went, remember where the time went, and then hate myself, in that order.
Ever since I have been imprisoned without bail in the public school system, every break has gone almost exactly the same. We don't typically go on vacations, because the Buffalo area in the middle of April is way better than any of that Florida or Bahamas nonsense where the sun is actually visible and people actually go outside. If life were like current-generation video games and kept you participating with unlockable accomplishments/trophies, this is what every break would roughly look like:
Date: The Friday before break begins
Accomplishments I'm Trying For
- Clean room
- Actually catch up on the 15+ games I was so eager to buy but haven't even bothered to touch, half of which are still in shrink wrap
- Do at least part of my homework before the last day of the break
- Lose weight, or at least avoid gaining it (it's a game of expectations...)
Yes, I know, my expectations are high and I'm just setting myself up for disappointment.
Date: The Sunday before break ends
Accomplishments I've Actually Managed
- Go one week without moving a single piece of clutter in room
- Pick up 3 games you haven't played, glance at them, feel guilty for not playing them yet, and then set them back down and go play Scrabble
- Manage not only to avoid doing homework for an entire week, but also forget half of the curriculum of every course taken this year in school
- Gain some weight because half of the meals you ate over break were fried, based on heavy cream, or both, but dismiss it as totally waterweight
- Go to Applebee's twice in two days
- Spend enough money on coffee in a single week to need to take a trip to the ATM to withdraw more money, and stop for coffee right after
Don't be jealous. It isn't easy to live the thrilling life, but with some work and practice, you could be just like me someday.
I am not a sporty person. I am known in the physical education department at my school as the kid who "tries really hard and totally gives 110 percent"--the tactful way of saying "your kid seems to intend to move the ball in the right direction, but we've never seen it happen." Although I have no illusions about my athletic aptitude, I've never really been satisfied with it. I was always jealous of the people who actually got the ball passed to them--even if people wanted to pass me the ball, no one was ever quite sure of what team I was even on.
When I was 15, a really good idea called Lucky Lanes presented itself to me. Bowling is kind of a sport, I thought. It involves movement and a ball. Besides, it can't be that hard. There are leagues for old people. Thinking my logic was infallible, I took the next opportunity to schedule a bowling trip with a couple of my friends and eagerly awaited my breakout performance.
When I got there, I realized two things: I am way more hopeless than I ever could have expected, and there are really fit old people in the world.
I didn't even get to an alley before I realized I had miscalculated. I couldn't find a ball that fits me. I have... big-boned fingers, meaning any bowling ball with the standard size holes accentuates every throw with the super attractive half popping, half squeaking sound of my fingers grasping for space. This meant that I had no choice but to go for the balls with the obscenely large holes. Unfortunately, these are also accompanied by a lot of weight (apparently, the assumption is that all overweight people have a lot of upper body strength, which... well... I'd like to see the study that concluded that) and if you're bad at aiming a ball that's light, you're extra bad at aiming a ball that's heavy. By the end of one game, the number of balls I had gathered to "try out" was greater than my average score per frame. When you consider that I was with three other people and only about seven balls fit on a rack... I don't want to talk about it.
Fast forward to now. I am still a terrible bowler--I proved that Thursday night with a group of friends. I made it into the newspaper recently for being recognized for making it into some list of top students in some other newspaper (see, I'm not totally useless...). I'm sitting with my grandfather and my mother at lunch on Thursday afternoon, eating a deliciously unhealthy plate of chicken and biscuits, when my grandfather turns to me and says:
"Oh, by the way, what's your bowling average?"
I had luckily just finished taking a sip of water. That isn't a question I'd ever have expected, and it's not information I'm keen on sharing. "...Why?"
"The newspaper said that you were on the bowling team."
At least the local newspaper is creative.
I cannot stand the idea that anyone I come in contact with throughout the day, no matter how brief the encounter, might leave with a bad impression of me. I put tremendous effort into avoiding this, and it works most of the time. (Or at least I think it does. Please don't tell me if it doesn't.) The problem is that babies seem to have a built-in judgment of me that they are born with.
For some reason, be it my dashing good looks or my fatherly emotional stability, I am always the person a parent chooses in a room full of young adults to interact with their child. I don't usually mind this, since the kids are usually between the ages of 3 and 11 and are thus old enough to consider me a likable person, but it becomes a real problem when the child is a baby. It invariably goes down something like this:
1. Parent offers child to me to either talk to or hold. Understand that I am not, under any circumstances, given a choice in this matter--the parent wants the baby to have attention now, and any attempt to escape is almost guaranteeing my permanent banishment from their home and entire social circle.
2. I reluctantly accept the offer and either make a very lame attempt at holding the baby (after 18 years, I still have no idea how--I have a lot of respect for those 16 and Pregnant girls only because they are not only able to hold a child properly, but do it in front of a camera) or try to strike up some sort of conversation. I cannot and will not do baby talk, which is usually what the parents are expecting me to do. When I was a baby, I found baby talk demeaning and objectifying. Probably.
3. The baby does one of the following:
- Begins to cry loudly enough to mobilize local police stations
- Attempts to slide off my leg (if I'm sitting down) or wriggle out of my arms (this option seems highly illogical, since if the baby is successful, they will fall on the ground and cause themselves brain damage, but I guess talking to me is that bad)
- Stares up at me really awkwardly until the situation gets awkward enough for me to give the baby back to his/her parent voluntarily
4. The parent snatches back their child, scoffs at me with disapproval, and probably whispers apologies and criticisms of me into the baby's ear as if I can't hear them. Any attempt I make at tension-easing conversation (i.e. "Wow, he/she wasn't having any of that! Hahah...") falls flat.
The strangest part of the whole sequence is that I never really did anything in interaction with the baby. The parent's outstretched arms towards me, intending to transfer the child into my possession, are enough alone to send the baby into some sort of attack of writhing and bugged-out eyes. This is only made worse by the parent's repeated baby-talk utterances like, "You want to sit over with Kelly?" or, "You want to talk to him now, don't you? Don't you?" I don't mean to tell other people how to be a parent, but I'm thinking that a baby mimicking a seizure while you're trying to do something is probably a pretty solid hint that they don't want it to happen.
Yesterday, I discovered my latest nemesis: tables that face each other.
I like to watch people. I know that sounds creepy, and it probably should, but it usually isn't with any sort of prurient interest. I just like to see what's happening in other people's lives and pretending to be a part of it. This is usually something I get away with, since I am very well trained at avoiding eye contact (I am a master of the "look over your shoulder at someone but pretend you're actually looking for your lost child" move), but it is impossible to avoid eye contact when you are sitting at a restaurant table facing someone directly across from you.
Making accidental eye contact in this situation at least once is to be expected, but you know you've screwed up when he turns his head a full 90 degrees after he's caught you looking at him for the fifth time... to look at his wife... who is there with their kid.
It's undeniably best to just brush a situation like this off and pretend like it never happened, but I have this insatiable impulse to go over and say something to someone when I've done something that made them feel awkward. What the hell do you say to the patriarch of a happy family of three after you've been caught staring five times? It would come out something like this:
"Hey... uhh... I know you caught me staring at you a couple... I mean, I wasn't staring at you on purpose, it was totally accidental... I wouldn't stare at you on purp--I mean, I totally would stare at you on purpose if I had the choice since you are a pretty attractiv--I mean, uhh... Your kid is super cute! Bye!"
And their chicken hibachi dinner at the Fuji Grill is completely ruined by some creepy kid who just totally hit on someone who's old enough to be his father.
Have you ever been caught staring in a really awkward way? Is staring at someone considered harassment? ...Do you know the number of a really good lawyer? Let me know.
