There's really no correct answer to the question, "What do you want to do with your life?" but an especially super-un-correct answer is "I don't know." Actually, there are a lot of questions that I think up on walks, and in the shower, and as I'm falling asleep, were I to take the time to answer them, for which my answer would probably be wrong.

Why do I choose to take buses instead of walking or biking when experience clearly shows that I am exhilarated by exercise? Why do I have this perverse need to get to where I am going faster, only to have that perverse need clash with my perverse fear of too much free time? What is this rushing around only to languish at home wishing I was still outside? What makes me spend my days inside surfing the internet for useless information when experience clearly shows that this gives me a headache and makes me depressed? It's not like heroin; it isn't even that fun while I'm doing it. I'm not euphoric, high-energy and babbling to anyone about how excited I am, and I'm not slumped in a narcotic daze of perfection; what I am is hunched, tense, and slightly spellbound, but only slightly, at things that will not matter in the next second. Yet I will submit myself to this every day at the cost of the headache, and the depression, and, long-term, the complete waste of life it will make up, viewed as a whole. This is a question I would almost like to go into neurology just to be able to answer. Why we would evolve to have our base instincts be so dead, dead wrong.

Our instinct is to eat fatty, empty-calorie food, and it eventually kills us. Why? Well, I know the answer to that one. We haven't evolved past the human - nay, animal - drive to gorge, to stockpile, to be prepared for famine. I guess the question we don't know the answer to is, is is even possible to evolve past that.

Historically, the reason we have evolved to avoid certain things, or to embrace certain things, or to behave certain ways, is to make it at least past reproductive age, and to have greater reproductive success. We avoid poisonous food because it immediately kills us. And, to simplify this criminally, we perform certain social behaviors because it makes us more likely to reproduce. But our diseases now - depression, heart disease, diabetes - they don't kill us until we're old. They let us reproduce, before we feel the effects, and then they kill us, past the point where evolution has any hope of intervening. Sure, certain acute stress related things that result from severe, severe stressors can keep a young kid from making it, or at least from being fertile. But merely sitting around being lazy, unhealthy, depressed, and unproductive isn't making the human race any less prolific.

And on that note (being questions with no correct answer), why do bookstores make me so sad?

That's where I just came from. A Barnes and Noble, which, for some reason that may be worth noting later, makes me way sadder than libraries. I go to bookstores mostly when I'm in a wandering mode, and thumb through every section. It takes me hours. And I get sadder and sadder until I'm thisclose to crying and I have to leave because it's not socially acceptable to cry in a Barnes and Noble. One day I should just do it. Then I could write about it. Because the secret to happiness appears to be to do something unconventional and then write about it and happily be lauded as the expert on whatever unconventional thing it was that you did.
The only thing I'm an expert on is uncertainty. I guess I'm an expert at observation too. I can observe the hell out of anything. I can write about a girl eating and have her fork's journey to her mouth take paragraphs and paragraphs, mostly consisting of tangents.

But I am a record-speed-reader and a record-speed-forgetter. I estimate that in my life I have read about five thousand books. I have read, and been briefly fascinated by, completely obscure things that I immediately forget. The trajectory of asteroids. What scientists predict will happen when the volcano under Yellowstone Park erupts. Multiverses and how they would be stacked together in spacetime. How an aye-aye makes an omelet out of his dinner of bird eggs. The history of lesbian relationshops in feudal China. Do I remember any of these things? No. Do I wholeheartedly regret that I don't? Emphatically yes.

I would love to be a walking encyclopaedia. Going back to the beginning, my most accurate answer to the 'what do you want to do with your life' question would be, 'I would like to travel wherever my fancy takes me and keenly observe and record everything that I see.' And since I am a member of this culture, I of course cannot be satisfied with simply observation and recording; I must draw conclusions! I must come up with hypotheses and test them through stringent and rigidly controlled experiments! Having come up with a conclusion, I must now relate it somehow to the vast moving living library of human knowledge, find a niche for it, tuck it in there, hold it up somehow as a way for improving the human race.

And if I am to do that, the more things I can pull out of that squishy, lunging library to relate my observations to, the better.

Of course, for me, that isn't the real reason, or at least not the only reason. The primary thing, for me, is that it's fucking fun to know things. It is eminently enjoyable to sit back and let ideas and knowledge flood your synapses, even - especially - if the knowledge isn't originally your own. It's less tiring if it isn't. You get to bask in some stranger's knowledge, their epiphanies, without having to lift a finger or a synapse to do all the work that led to it.

That's why bookstores make me sad. I don't have time to know all this stuff. I don't have time to sit down and become acquainted with it all, and even if I did, the second I put the first book down to pick up the second, I'd forget the first. And even if I did remember everything I read, by the time I put down the last book I'd be an old woman, ready to die, without having fulfilled the crazy social pressure to ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING! I would have just spent my life sitting around reading about everyone else's accomplishments, and that would be all the time I was given.

I've forgotten already all the names of the books that I grabbed for hungrily, only to stuff back on the shelf in my thirst for another one. I don't carry a notebook with me even though I keep telling myself I should. Instincts again. Wrong again. It is not easy to do the 'right' things. I don't have an answer for the questions that I ask myself because it is not easy to answer them.

I was about three or four and in a group music lesson. We were taking a five minute break and another kid caught me in the corner picking my nose and sampling the contents. Between her 'EWWW!!!' (she was about nine - I was the youngest kid there by a good four years) and her inevitable tattling on me to the teacher and all the other kids, I was able to convince her that my family came from Russia and in my family (and all over Russia, presumably) it was a ritual we did for good luck.

I discovered a new sensation walking to the bus stop this morning: thick snowflakes falling on sunburned skin.

It's a Midwestern rainy day in the desert. I've got a glove with a coat hanger twisted through the fingers making the 'rock on' sign in the corner, and a wasteland of chocolate wrappers surrounding me. I have a surprise birthday party coming up that, yes, I am supposed to know about, but not the details, and the details being a surprise is enough for me. I also have a surprise birthday dinner coming up that was wholly a surprise until I figured out the clues in a burst and rush of lucky guesses this morning.

It occurs to me that if this were a story, trying to 'illustrate' my happiness, to 'show and not tell' the details that made me that way, it would probably sound forced, but since it's real, and I'm not trying to write, and this is a fleeting feeling, it reads real, at least to me.

We, this stranger and I, were using the Scrabulous chatbox to chat to each other about rambutan and its availability in the United States versus its availability in Canada, which is of course the best possible use for a Scrabulous chatbox. I told him it was near-impossible to get them here unless it was June, and he assured me that the stores were crawling with them in Vancouver, that they were just as prolific there as pineapples or grapes. I was distracted by this beautiful spectre, plus had racks like either 'AUUNOII' or 'CCRZBVX' but never mixed together, so he was winning for most of the game, and was friendly as could be while he was doing so, even bordering on flirting, which skeezed me out a little but was innocuous enough if I just sidestepped it.

Until I started to win. As I got closer and closer to his score he got more and more stroppy. His compliments became sort of backhanded; his comments more guarded. And when I had just one tile left, and was leading by just fifteen points, he probably knew he was going to lose, and so typed 'wow so why do your turns take so long when it's obvious you're using a [Scrabble solver] program' and then left, only to return the next day to finish out his loss with only silence.

What a classy gentleman! I love playing games with those who think that if they don't win, the other person must be cheating. But there is a bigger issue at stake, and that is that the rambutan availability in Vancouver has been thrown into question. I can't trust the claims of someone who turns into a five year old at the first available opportunity! What if Vancouver ISN'T really a fruitful paradise spilling over with rambutan? What if it turns out it's just a cold, rainy, grey city with only oranges and apples to offer?

Every Tuesday I sort of wish it will snow so there won't be a softball game. This, after I spent all my time looking up a softball league that would have me after ten years of not playing at all. I wanted something that would get me into shape in a nonthreatening way (rugby, my last try two years ago, turned out to be a threatening way indeeed; the warmup mile run alone was too much to start with, and the fact that I was the lightest person there at 150 pounds was practically a guarantee that I would be in the hospital before the end of the season) and would shape my week a little bit, force me to compartmentalize my time.

But now I just wish it would snow. Snow or be warm. As much as I want to have something to do when I'm alone in my house, when I do have something to do, and it's stressful, I wish it were optional. Actually, it's probably simpler than that; softball, for me, means biking four or five miles down to the fields on the outskirts of town, and when the game's over and I'm exhausted, either biking back (all uphill) or going out to the main road and waiting a half hour for a bus - this all when it's at or around freezing and the wind is howling. For everyone else, they just have to jump in their cars, drive there, play, jump in their cars, drive back. Simple as that.

It's a sacrifice I make, not having a car, and I like to think it's for the good of the environment, so I can gloat, and not just because I don't have the money, which is probably much closer to the truth. I oscillate between liking it and not. Sometimes when I'm struggling against the wind with both handlebars wobbling with the weight of my groceries and it's starting to snow and cars are sweeping by me at close range and sometimes honking, I get frustrated and angry to the point where it's not even in line anymore with the situation. But later, thinking about it, I think, what do I not have that these people in their cars do?

I used to think nothing. I used to think I had nothing less, and that I was actually gaining something - exercise, and time spent outdoors. Things like that. I disagree with myself now. I'm definitely short on something these people have, and that's the freedom to just go out at a whim and have fun without getting weighed down with the consequences of when's the bus running, what are the intervals, how cold is it, will it snow, which way is the wind blowing, can I ride my bike into it, has someone stolen my bike light, how long will this take, will I be able to get any sleep tonight once I get home?

Because of all these questions running through my head, I often decide just not to go anywhere because it's too much trouble, and my life becomes more monotonous instead of more colorful. And yes, I realize that this is ridiculously whiny and specific about a problem that's not a problem at all, compared to the rest of the problems of the world, and yes, I realize that I could just not think about all those things and go anyway and deal with the consequences as they happen, but that's not who I am, and these are the consequences that riding a bike has, for me, and this is how it's been and now I go nowhere more often than I go somewhere. It makes me sad.

Since many of my 'injuries' over the course of my life have been faked, or at least exaggerated mightily, I discovered last week that I don't actually know how to respond when something is actually wrong with me. I'm not used to it. What I am used to is swallowing my malaria pill wrong, suffering throat and chest pain, and thinking 'oh my god I have bird flu/am having a heart attack/my lungs are collapsing... I better not talk or move or do anything except lay around whining, faintly and dramatically whisper out my last words, or secretly do Sudoku puzzles when no one is looking/is around to whine to'. What I am used to is ditching my crutches when no one is looking, because, man, my armpits hurt and I can actually walk on this thing. What I am used to is pinching my cheeks until I'm flushed and lidding my eyes... Mom, I can't go to school. It is an impossibility. Really - an impossibility.

But my only real injuries have been either when I was too young to remember much (broken finger, age 4, broken arm, age 5, my only real sprained ankle, age 12). So when I got a softball slammed into my leg straight from the bat during practice, I kept playing. I figured that even though it hurt like hell, it would probably be better if I played through it. I walked on it all week like nothing had happened. I played catch. I played pool. I played in a softball game. I played in two softball games. Three triples among them. Sprinting. All the while the bruise was getting worse, and blood, under my skin, was filling my foot. After the last run around the bases, my foot looked up at me, tears filling its eyes, and said 'No more.'

I thought I'd been subconsciously making up the pain, exaggerating it even to myself, making it out to be more than it was. I thought I could make up for my past by staunchly NOT acknowledging it, refusing coddling, refusing help.

Wrong. Now I'm on crutches for real. It sucks.

Is there anything that kills these squirming remnants of creativity quite like the blink-blink, blink-blink of tiny vertical line on a blank screen?

So nobody figured that one out, huh (or else nobody cared)? Those bolded words were Scrabble words. Scrabble words! I attempted to curb my addiction by making the threat to myself that if I chose to play Scrabble instead of doing something creative, then I would be forced to write a story using every single word on the finished gameboard. But instead of working for me, it worked against me; I played Scrabble anyway, and I ended up actually having to do it. Thus the wonderful, convoluted, cheesy story you see before you that morphed into disgust and reader challenges that no one took.

Anyway, I've been having apocalyptic nightmares lately, all right in a row, like some sort of sign - if I believed in signs. The string ended (hopefully; it might not actually be over since this one was just last night) with my stealing a bus from my job to go on a road trip, crashing it, worrying about how I was going to return it without anyone noticing, and then realizing it didn't matter because (a) I was awake and (b) the world would probably end before I got fired or reprimanded.

Notice that I had been having so many apocalyptic dreams lately that my being awake (and I was awake) didn't in any way dim the certainty that the world was going to end. I've just been taking that as a given in the mornings. Fireballs, nuclear war, asteroids, zombies taking over. All in a night's work.

When I entered her room, it was dark except for the weak flame of a mandarin candle burning by her bedside. The room smelled, unsurprisingly, like mandarin, but under that, something sour. "Pardon me," she yawned, "but I feel as though I've got a touch of the ague."

"The ague?" I asked. "God, it's been so long since I've heard anyone say that. So long that it was probably before I was born. I didn't think people got the ague anymore. I thought it was eradicated... whatever it is."

"Uh, I don't know," she mumbled as she turned over and half rose. "I just woke up. I was just talking. I was just using it as a general term for being sick. Like men is sometimes a generic term for humans, even though it doesn't mean the same thing at all."

"You're cute, jo." I smiled and walked over to her bedside. Her frocks were all crumpled up in a heap at the foot of her bed and spilling in a fat pile into her closet.

For some reason, that sight had me riveted. As my feet beg(a)n to drum unconsciously against the lines of her wooden floorboards, I started remembering fruit vendors in Mexico in their fancy dresses with beads of sweat rolling down their faces as they sold slices of flan and children freed themselves from the impossible folds. They never got their dresses dirty. Never. They were always as clean and shiny as the day they were made. Eons and eons of dirt falling on their dresses wouldn't have even smudged the fabric.

The thought made me want to jot something ridiculous on the dresses on the floor with a marker, like Greek letters - mu or xi or something - just to see if they would make a mark. But then, I knew, she would hate me.

As if to make up for the mere thought, I quickly mustered up an offer. "Would you like some rye toast with butter?" I asked. But she was asleep. I couldn't have given it to her if I had tried. She wouldn't have et it, anyway, with her stomach that ailed her. So I exit quietly.

The qi in the room was blocked from her illness, and the awkwardness that we had, and from my unkind thoughts, so I went back downstairs. The qats in the yard bent under the weight of the sun. They couldn't win, either; their future was rigged. They weren't meant to be in a yard in the hot, wet South. They were meant to be in the Middle East, just as the faux wats in yuppie towns across the country probably felt far from home when they thought of their native Thailand.

No od here, no escape, just like the endless march of numbers in pi, or an el car when the tracks are broken. Okay, that was just terrible. Possibly the worst metaphor I've ever written in my life. Zap this before it gets any worse. And for what? No idea yet, eh? Un-believable. How about by now? Is it obvious yet? Must I hit you over the head with it, like maybe with a bat? Or a bucket of hot aa? Ha!

And lo! It has hit you! Or, has it?

Anecdote. Seemingly profound thought. Another anecdote that has nothing to do with said profound thought. Aimless wanderings capped off by offensive statement. Apology for offensive statement. Explanation of apology for offensive statement that nullifies apology.

Paragraph break.

Sentence that is meant to be deep, so probably has some superfluous alliteration. Pregnant pause. Several sentences written while being talked to by someone who has no idea that I am not listening. Second pregnant pause while I consider whether to include this in my diatribe. Awkward sentence that results from me deciding not to include it.

Paragraph break.

Attempt at summation. Awkward sentence that does not belong at the end of an entry. Second attempt at summation, this time including awkward sentence. Second awkward sentence that is so awkward that the summation won't even deign to include it.

Maybe the reason I seem like such a jerk to ethics professors is that I tend to look at things from an entire-earth point of view, instead of from a human point of view.

The first thing anyone does when they're trying to convince you that you're not really a moral relativist, that there's no such thing as moral relativism, is ask you how the Holocaust could possibly be viewed as morally OK.

This is not a hard question to answer, in my opinion. It not being a hard question to answer has nothing to do with me not thinking, personally, that the Holocaust was horrible. I do think it was horrible, which is so obvious as to almost be unnecessary to say. I would have lost relatives in it had they not very recently immigrated to the U.S.

But it's still easy to answer, even though the questioner will think you're dodging the question and must therefore be anti-Semitic, homophobic, gypsyphobic or whatever the word for hating gypsies may be, etc.

Anything that so drastically lowers the number of humans on this earth is of direct benefit for virtually all species of animal and plant. Our system of ethics is based on humans. We don't think of it in a big enough picture to notice this; we think we're being objective and all-encompassing. We're not. The death of the entire human race would be such good news for everything else on the planet, that upon hearing it, they should all burst into their version of celebrating and getting wasted.

This says nothing about my personal opinion of whether it should be worth it. You can't ask a living being to discuss the morality of the obliteration of its species, no matter the benefits for anything else. Biology precludes it. But I do think it funny that ethics professors think there is no way around the 'Holocaust Question'. All you have to do is love animals more than humans. And though I'm not one of those people (close, but not quite), there should be more than enough 13-year-old girls and angsty farm boys on this earth to pretty much tip the balance the animals' way.

Maybe it isn't a serious issue now, but when our population reaches the point that the death of millions, perhaps billions, will save OUR species (all other species aside) from extinction, this is going to have ethicists' underwear all in a bundle.

There is too much music in here to write. There is too much music in here to write. It’s too hipstery to play Scrabble in with friends and I want to say it’s too crowded, or it’s trying too hard, or the kids have much too contrived haircuts, or are too snobby, to hang out in by yourself, but really, except for the music, I like it, and I only don’t like the music because it’s too amazing for me not to feel bad that I didn’t create it. I have this problem often. Any music that isn't good hurts my ears, literally hurts them, and as for the music that is good, I get jealous of the artist and can't enjoy it. My favorite music is music that somehow escapes either of these two extremes. I realize that this is not healthy.

I've been sick, which serves me right since all I've been doing lately is pompously bragging to anyone who'll listen about how awesome my immune system is. How my parents didn't make me wash my hands after every time some kid sneezed in the next block somewhere, how I ate everything served to me, sometimes off the ground, how I flew in planes all the time and was therefore exposed to every airborne, foodborne, sandborne, dirtborne virus known to man. How now I snigger at people who carry moist wipes everywhere they go, open doorknobs with towels draped over their hands, won't use public restrooms, won't eat uncooked fish or any food that hasn't been blasted to the FDA-recommended stage of burnt, and still manage (unsurprisingly) to contract every bug that blows by in the wind.

But even though I generally do still agree with myself that it's healthier to get your hands into everything, run around barefoot, and eat whatever you please (and do also agree with general society that you shouldn't go around LOOKING for illnesses by eating month-old yogurt and using Port-a-Potties willy-nilly) a healthy immune system doesn't always work, and sometimes you get slapped with the stomach flu AND a cold at the same time right after you've finished bragging about how you never get sick. And when that happens, everyone you've bragged to has every right to make fun of you and make faux-puking noises and waft rich, nauseating foods under your nose, and make goose honks behind handkerchiefs.

Instead, upon whining my plaintive whine, I was brought Saltines, grapes, and soda water, and got my back and legs rubbed and cold washcloths placed on my forehead. I always crack about how life is unfair, but forget all those times it is unfair in my favor.

I do think I would be satisfied if I spent the next two years getting on planes and jumping in cars or on boats at the slightest of whims to follow my taste buds around the world. I know that there is a term for this, and it's called a super-mega-important-sought-after restaurant reviewer (also known as: in your dreams). But really. If I were to suddenly become a gazillionaire, after I gave away 80% of it or more, depending on how much a gazillion dollars really is, that's what I would do. And yes, I know that if I suddenly craved Tibetan momos, the craving, and my good temper with it, would probably be gone after 18 hours on an international flight, three different customs forms from three different countries, a tiny wobbling plane struggling through the high winds around the Himalayas, and the crazy long-ass nap I would take upon finding a place to stay. Still. It would be a good jumping point for all sorts of adventure that I wouldn't know how to look for if I just sat here and thought, 'Now, where shall I go look for adventure?

Last time I was down at the creek, four weeks ago, maybe, I happened to be by myself, and the creek happened to be just teeming with ducks: ducks sliding down waterfalls with little bobs, ducks ruffling their feathers as they righted themselves after hitting the bottom or those waterfalls, ducks standing up on rocks stretching their necks and displaying, ducks pecking at other ducks' tail feathers, ducks attempting rape indiscriminately. (If you know me in person, and most of you do, you'll have already heard my 'ducks are the major brutal rapists in the avian kingdom' speech, so I'll spare you hearing it again.) This description, so you know, doesn't even become to come close to making it clear to you just how many damn ducks there were. There were so many, the water was hardly visible. Ducks were coming down waterfalls three, four at a time. Territorial disputes, nay, wars, were going on over three-inch-square patches of sand, or tiny slivers of rock poking out from the water.

Although I called people frantically to get them to come share in this freak-of-nature event, nobody showed up fast enough. I sat on a bench shivering and staring at the quacking, flapping duck quilt until clouds came out and covered the sun. By the time Chris and Eugene showed up, the duck covering was merely patchy, almost a normal level of ducks (if ducks came in levels, like humidity or temperature), and they thought I had been dreaming, or making it up or something.

Anyway, I was down there again yesterday, with Dan this time, and there were still straggler ducks hanging out in the part by the library. They were pretty much done raping each other by now, and were more interested in pulling who-knows-what from between the icy rocks of the bottom. We sat down to watch them, and presently a man with headphones showed up with an entire loaf of freshly bought Safeway bread and started throwing whole slices into the water.

We actually hadn't seen the man at first, but when a slice of wheat bread landed lightly like a Frisbee on the surface of the water and fifty ducks dove wildly into the middle of it and started frantically pecking each other's feathers out for the mere chance at a sliver of the bread, we saw him, nearly next to us, preparing to throw another slice.

There's really no story here. He split the rest of his bread evenly between himself, a man with a dog who wanted nothing more than to have a duck lunch (the dog, not the man [probably]), and Dan and I. We spent some time feeding the ducks and it was good. I hadn't done it for years. The last time I did was probably close to the time I was about seven and fell into Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles trying to crouch down on a mossy rock to get closer to my target duck. Echo Park Lake is more used syringe than water, or was at that time. My whole body itched for days.

Guest posted over at Nora's place today with my miraculous weekend internet that only pokes its head from his shell on very special weekends.

I started typing and it started transliterating into Malayalim! Oh my God! I had to figure out how to make it stop and while I was doing that everything I wanted to say just flew right out my ears. I have a fever and I'm at work and I have a terrible haircut. This is all that's left. I've been trying to decide whether to cut my losses and just cut the stupid haircut all off, which would leave my hair chin length, which I KNOW looks terrible on me, but it's tempting because I think that the current cut looks more terrible. For awhile now I've just been going to Great Clips and everyone keep telling me Great Clips sucks, but they've been so good to me, and the second I betray them by going somewhere else, God suddenly goes completely insane and gives me a Haircut-Specific Smite in the form of an Middle-Aged-Woman Haircut. God and Great Clips are apparently friends. I don't think 'smite' is a noun. I don't know if I have the appropriate writer credentials to just force it to be a noun.

Speaking of forcing words to be different parts of speeches than they're used to, I was in a friend's car coming out from a Chinese restaurant, and a car honked, or didn't honk, or something happened that involved either honking or the conspicuous lack of honking (see... this is what happens when I don't allow myself to embellish, and my memory isn't exact) and he said something like, 'Should I have horned at him?'

'Horn' should definitely be used as a verb all the time. 'Did you see that guy? He cut right across five lanes of traffic to get to the on-ramp, and everyone was horning at him, and he just flipped everyone off!' 'Should I horn at that hot woman in the Kia, or would that be crass?' (Do guys ever consider that, just maybe, it might be just a LITTLE bit crass to horn at women from cars?!)

The innuendo of sexual advance just makes it better. But I supposed there's no innuendal benefit to changing 'smite' into a noun. Scratch 'smite'. But we'll consider 'innuendal'.

Every time I get a massage (not often, but enough to remember that this happens), the pleasure turns my brain to mush and I lay there thinking ridiculous thoughts:

In the future, when we're all engineered, genetically or otherwise, to conform better to our jobs, will massage therapists have hands that automatically generate massage oil with the right nerve twinge from the brain, or, primitively, a touch of a craftily hidden button? Will employers pay for their employees to have this feature installed, and if so, will it be somehow tweaked so that the feature will automatically disable ouside of work hours? Will male employees then pay chip hackers the big bucks to come retweak the chip so it works all the time, and therefore makes masturbation easier? Would the employer somehow have the chip's activity tracked, and then fire the employee for using work materials for personal use? Then could the employee sue the employer for invasion of privacy?

I lay there, I think these things, I think, I love the future. I love massages. And then I get a little panicked and hope that my concentrating so hard on ridiculous future scenarios didn't keep me from feeling the strokes of her hand.

Inadvertently I reminded my mom that I used to lie to her all the time by bringing up corn on the cob.

"What do you think he'll really like me to cook, though?" she asked me, referring to my boyfriend, and dinner.

"Well," I said, "his mom's allergic to corn, so I guess he's never really gotten to eat corn on the cob very often. You could make that."

"We could eat it with chopsticks, just like what's-her-name's family, that girl you were friends with back in... middle school? Elementary school?"

"What girl? You mean Yexin?"

"Yeah, Yexin."

"Her family didn't eat corn on the cob with chopsticks. What are you talking about?"

"You told me they did."

"I did? When?"

"When you were a kid. You came back from dinner at their place once and said that they made corn on the cob and ate it one kernel at a time with chopsticks. You were really excited about it."

"Ummm... I made that up."

"No, you didn't! I remember you telling me."

"And I remember making it up. How could you eat corn on the cob with chopsticks, anyway?"

"I don't know. I guess you couldn't. Why would you make something like that up?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know??"

"No."

It always really bothered my mom that I did that. Once, I guess (this is all via her, because I don't remember) I came home from kindergarten and wove her a long, complex yarn about some kind of kindergarten drama that unfolded all over me that day - it had kids making fun of me, and teachers yelling, and construction paper everywhere, and crying - and when she went in to talk to my teacher about it she found that it had never happened. Not only that, nothing close to it had happened. The day in question was an especially normal day.

I guess that when I came home that day and she asked me that omnipresent question: "How was school today?" I didn't want to say 'Fine' like every other day. I would have rather had a story. Even now the act of saying 'Fine' as a response to anything puts me in a bad mood - 'How are you', 'How's your day going', etc. It's boring. It's small talk and it means absolutely nothing. Not just something shallow, even, but literally nothing. Nobody ever says 'it's going terrible' or 'I'm feeling a bit off today' (even my officemate, who's British, just responds with 'fair to middling' no matter what the situation is). People are always saying 'How are ya!' to me by the water cooler and it makes me visibly cringe, because obviously I am a complete sociopath.

Now that I'm not in kindergarten, I obviously know that I have more than those two options (saying 'Fine' or making up a long, complicated, and completely untrue story). There is always the option of taking the truth and telling it like a story. This isn't hard for me; I've never had a day in my life that I felt could be summed up by 'Fine' - there's always the tiny victories, like a bus coming as soon as you round the corner to the stop, or a man yelling 'you dropped your wallet!' after you as you pedal away from a stop sign, instead of just stealing it and leaving, or the weather warming to 68 in the middle of winter - or the tiny battles, like locking yourself out of your house on the day you have to rush home and get ready for a fancy dinner. These are all true and have happened, and have story-worthy details that I've forgotten only because it's been awhile (except for the fancy dinner one, which happened on Valentines Day). I try to stick to these kinds of true stories now that I am 23 and should know better than to constantly lie to people I love.

But sometimes you just want an explosion, you know? Sometimes you want to have run into your favorite celebrity at the beach. It's not even the attention - I can live without attention; in fact, I prefer it - but rather the thrill of telling it, of inventing it convincingly as I go along.

My mom used to tell me - she said my kindergarten teacher told her to say it - that if I wanted to tell her a story like that, it was okay, as long as at the end I said 'just kidding' or something similar. I remember very clearly having none of that. It sucked all the fun out of it. I said, 'okay,' and just kept doing it my way. My mom, rather than recognizing me as the lying little brat I most certainly was, took me at my word, and believed my stories from there on out. Because of this, we're constantly running into things like the corn on the cob story where I have to, once again, remind my mother that hardly anything I said to her as a kid had any basis in reality. It's sad. More accurately, in a detached way it's sort of sad. I don't feel it myself at all, because it's how my reality has always been, and hard as I try, I can't feel anything wrong about it, even though I can recognize it objectively as something that's probably sad for her. Strange.