Taking the Back Roads

Today I learned something about myself.

I learned that I love to take the back roads.  I do everything I can to avoid the highway.  I’d rather roam through the countryside in my suburban for an extra hour than blaze through the land and arrive at my destination in a timely fashion.  The highway can be convenient in some situations, but in most it has become tiresome and annoying.

I love driving the long way, through the neighborhoods with the cute old fashioned houses that all have a porch swing, along endless fields of grass, down roads I didn’t know existed.  I love all of that.

I like to take time to looks at things and observe, and the highway moves too quickly for me to get the chance.  All you see is pavement and the fronts and backs of hundreds of cars cutting across lanes or tailing other people.  Not to mention the countless people as of late who have left their blinker on for miles after changing lanes. 

What happened to everyone wanting to move so quickly from place to place?  Everyone has somewhere to go and hardly anyone ventures of the road to take another way.

If I were to plan a road trip it would be a ROAD trip, not a highway trip or a race across the country.  I like stopping to take pictures and sight see.  Sure, I can’t get everywhere without taking the oh-so-big-stretch-of-cement every once in a while but I’ve discovered that I don’t need to take it as much. 

Bring on the cute houses, flower gardens, mailboxes, and picket fences.  Some days I just like to take it slow.  

Well, That Was Embarrassing

There is so much I could write about.  So much!  I could talk about my weekend and playing laser-tag with my floor, or I could talk about being sick, or I could bring up conversations with my mom on the phone, or I could shout for joy about how I ate a full plate of food today for the first time in 5 days!  The possibilities are quite endless.

Instead, I thought I would tell you one of my most embarrassing moments so far this school year. 

Yesterday morning I had a class at 9:30am.  Needless to say, I wasn’t wide-awake and I wasn’t feeling very well since I had spent the weekend being sick and feeling incredibly fatigued.  I spend most of the class slowly eating a banana and trying to get some protein into my body. 

My UFND class is all about the Christian faith, and we are currently starting to investigate the different divisions of the faith such as Lutheran, Baptist, Protestant, etc.  At one point during the class the girl next to me, Sammy, raised her hand to make a comment.  Sammy is the Teacher’s Assistant in my class, which means she is the sophomore that answers the freshman’s questions about work in the class while also helping the professor grade our classwork.  She also happens to be one of the girls on my floor, so I know her fairly well. 

Anyway, Sammy raised her hand and Professor Drovdahl called on her.  I’m sure she was saying something quite profound, but considering what happened during the next instance I don’t really remember any of it.  I had just taken my hair out of the bun I had put it in earlier that morning and was going to redo it.  The chair I was sitting in had a back that would bend when I leaned back.  I’ve talked about these kinds of chairs before in Chair Paranoia. 

As Sammy was talking, everyone was looking at her, which meant I was the next closest person that they could have been looking at.  Trust me, the next instance they were definitely looking at me as the left side of my bendy-chair completely snapped, causing me to throw myself forward in order to keep from smashing my head against the wall behind me. 

The Professors face went wide-eyed and so did everyone else’s and during the brief silence that followed and I had enough time to say, “My chair just broke.”  During the laughter that followed I tried to regain my composure from my near falling-out-of-my-chair experience.  I was laughing as well and thinking that I must have looked like an absolute fool. 

Somewhere during that time the professor cracked another joke and everyone was laughing again.  I didn’t actually hear it considering I still had a ton of adrenaline running through my body.  (I was told later it was something about how I shouldn’t eat such an energizing breakfast, a comment resulting from the fact I had propelled myself forward very quickly when my chair broke.)  I just smiled and laughed.  Sarah told me later that I covered it up pretty well.  I guess my few years in Theatre actually paid off.  

At the end of class the professor said goodbye to me by name, and patted me on the back.  I’m sure he’ll never forget my name now.  I’m sure none of the class will forget either.

Later, when I was talking to Will and a couple of other guys in their hallway, Danny (who has UFND with me) walked past us and said, “Hey Will, your girlfriend’s chair broke in class today.  It was absolutely hilarious!”  So of course I had to tell the story and all the guys were laughing at me.

I can say that the instance was literally a “jump-start” to my day. 

I think it’s about time for SPU to invest in some new chairs.  

Monday Moments: Backwards

Monday mornings are always a bit of a challenge.

Rolling out a bed never fails to be an obstacle and once I get going, things move rather slowly.  I probably open and close drawers several times before I actually pull out what I’m going to wear.  (Planning outfits would prevent this problem but I’m always worried that by the next morning I’ll have changed my mind anyway.)

Today I pulled out a blue shirt that I’ve owned for… probably forever.  I remember buying it at the store with my Mom and, due to the fact I’ve hardly grown, it still fits and it’s not worn out enough for me to get rid of. 

I noticed it had one black dot on the tag.  For a second I couldn’t remember why someone would have put one black dot on my tag but it quickly came back to me…wow, this shirt is old. 

When my mom used to do everyone’s laundry (years and years ago) she had no ideas which clothes belonged to which child, which makes sense considering there are 5 of us.  My clothes had one dot, child #2 had two dots and so on.  I can’t believe I’ve had this shirt since that time of my life.  I’ve been doing my own laundry for a pretty long time which means it’s probably from middle school and I’m currently in college.  That’s a little embarrassing. 

Then, unbidden, I remembered something else funny about my clothing from when I was younger.  When I was learning how to dress myself my mom would draw little arrows on my underwear that would point upward toward my bellybutton once I put them on.   It helped me figure out whether or not I had put them on the right way.   

I can’t even express how many times I put my underwear on backwards, regardless of the arrows, and how many times other people in my family put things on backwards as well.  Dresses, t-shirts, pants, underwear… it was always a problem.  My brothers were pretty good at putting things on backwards and inside out.  This is probably partially due to the fact we all learned how to dress ourselves at a very young age—it would have been impossible from my mom to dress all of us one by one in the morning. 

There’s a certain day I remember very clearly.  I was riding my scooter on the sidewalk behind my house and looking at my brother, who was on a scooter in front of me.  We were in elementary school at the time and he had his shorts on backwards.  The back pockets were in the front and the fly was in the back.  (How he managed to consciously do that I’m not sure).  Before I knew it I was doubled over in laughter at how ridiculous he looked.  I couldn’t tell him without laughing, and he ran back into the house to turn them around. 

I was talking to my friends on the way to breakfast this morning and I asked them, “Did you guys ever put your underwear on backwards when you were younger?  Or other clothing in general?”

Apparently they didn’t.  Apparently my family is the only one who ever had an issue with it.

#mondaymoments