The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

I have a lot of issues with my parents. Or rather, they have a lot of issues with me. One of my mom's favorite things to argue about is how I am a packrat (guilty) and keep tons and tons of junk that I don't need. While I fully admit to being a packrat, it is really not nearly as dire a situation as she makes it out to be. I get rid of things that I have no use for anymore. Most of my stuff is made up of books and papers. (My mom doesn't understand why I would want to own a book--she figures once you've read a book once, why would you ever want to read it again when you know what's going to happen? But to me my books are like my children, and I read them over and over again, which is why I like to have them around.)

Now, it wouldn't bother me so much to have my mom yelling at me about all my stuff and the messiness thereof, if it weren't for the fact that her room is also very messy and full of things she doesn't use or need anymore. She is always quick to say that it is all my dad's, and it's a genetic thing which she shares no part in. I know that is somewhat true--my dad is a packrat, and his parents were, too. Their house always had rooms and rooms that they didn't really use because they were completely full of stuff. They weren't hoarders or anything, they just had a lot of stuff. So my mom is always quick to say that it's just a Brown thing and she has nothing to do with it. (Although anyone who goes in the parents' bedroom can tell you that a fair amount of the stuff is my mom's.)

And it is true that my mom's family is the opposite. One thing that always drives us completely crazy is how my mom and grandma love to throw things away. I'm not exaggerating; they actually feel joy when they put things in the trash. I do not understand it. My grandma does it because that's who she is; my mom does it to try to prove that she doesn't ever keep anything around that she doesn't need anymore. (If you watch closely, though, it's always other people's things she's throwing away.) But she's always on my case because I supposedly keep all these things I don't need (as I said, I love books, and I have some toys and gifts that I like to keep for sentimental reasons, but if it's something I can't or won't use again and there is no sentimental attachment and no possibility to offend someone, then I get rid of it pretty quickly), whereas she has never once in her life kept anything that she wasn't going to be using again soon.

So I've got the house to myself for a brief couple of days, so I decided to do some poking around in the basement. I threw out some food down there that was several years past it's prime (which my mom will probably freak out about when she discovers it, because she figures if it's sealed it will never ever go bad, no matter how many years have passed), and I found something interesting down there with all the old cans that I just had to laugh at. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. This is not in and of itself funny, until you realize that my mom has been keeping it down there since 1991. No joke. This bottle of medicine was filled for my older brother Jeremy on January 11, 1991. Hello! How can she say she never keeps anything she doesn't need anymore, and here she is with a child's prescription that is eighteen years old?!

Okay, you're probably thinking, maybe my brother got better so she decided to keep it in case he got sick again or something, and then it was just forgotten until I dug it out. But there are two clues on the bottle that suggest that this is not the case, that she had some other reason for keeping it. The first is a sticker near the bottom of the bottle front. It says: "THIS CONTAINER IS NOT FULL BUT CONTAINS THE EXACT AMOUNT PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR." So this was not one of those prescriptions where you just take it when you feel like you need it so there could be some left over after you are better. This is one of those where they give you an exact amount to take and you must take all of it, even if you get to feeling better. If you don't, the germs may not be fully killed off, and they can become immune from the effects of the drug. And if you decide to self-medicate with it later when you think you have the same sickness, you will be dealing with different germs which will react differently, with the usual effect that they become more drug resistant. Just look up antiobiotic resistance on the internet for some good examples of this. It's also caused by thinking that antibiotics work on anything (similar to how various painkillers will dull nearly any pain), when in reality they have no effect whatsoever if you don't have a bacterial infection. Many people refuse to believe this and insist on taking antibiotics whenever they have a cold or other ailment, and since most doctors won't give them to you nowadays if you don't have a bacterial infection (they do absolutely NOTHING to viral infections, people!), I think people save them in case they think they need them some other time. Which goes back to the other problem of people not taking all of the medicine and innoculating the bacteria rather than killing them. And I personally shook my fist at and mentally cursed all the people who have done this and thus helped the germs evolve and become resistant when I had strep throat for nearly a month that was penicillin resistant.

Okay, so on to the second clue. This clue is not so obvious, so I'll explain. It is the date itself. On January 11, 1991, my family was still living in South St. Paul. We didn't move down to Faribault until four or five months after that. Now moving is a time when most people, even terrible packrats, get rid of a lot of their stuff. They have to get all of it out of their house, and in the process they find lots of things that they forgot they had that they obviously don't use anymore and decide to get rid of it. They also find that the less stuff they have to move over the easier it is, so even things that they like and use on rare occasions, they get rid of to make the move slightly less of a hassle. So surely an old bottle full of prescription medicine would be thrown away. Why would you take that with you when you move? But apparently my mom cleaned out our cupboards, found this old bottle of prescription medicine, and made the conscious, mental decision to keep it and move it with her to the new house. Why would someone who NEVER keeps anything she doesn't need keep this? She is worse than me! I never keep old medicines. If I decide for some reason not to keep taking a prescription, I will dispose of the remainder. I wouldn't want to risk taking the wrong amount or something by deciding after a long time to self-medicate rather than getting a doctor to write a new prescription. And I wouldn't give my prescriptions to someone else--the doctor prescribed them for me, for my specific ailments and my specific body, and therefore shouldn't be used by someone else.

Heck, for that matter, I don't even keep over-the-counter medicines after they've reached the expiration date stamped on the packaging. This also drives my mom crazy. She says that medicines never go bad or "expire" and that the FDA requires every single thing to have a date stamped on it for legal reasons, so drug companies just make up a date that is a few years in the future to put on there because they have to, not because it actually expires then. But if you do a little research into the shelf life of medications (which sadly, I have, and even more sadly, I was doing it for my own personal edification, not for a school paper or something) you will find that, after time, the various components in medicines start to break down and separate. In rare cases this can be harmful. Usually it's not harmful, but rather renders the medicine useless because once the elements have broken down it doesn't act the same way. Extremes in weather can also boost this process (which is why the packaging will recommend certain temperatures you store your medicines at). If you don't believe me about all this, and don't believe all the medical science backing me up, do yourself a little experiment. Get yourself a bottle of Excedrin, and leave it sitting in your hot car for a couple of months, or in the back of your medicine cabinet or closet for a year or so. Then open it up and sniff it. I can pretty much guarantee that it will smell strongly of vinegar. That is because the ingredients in the pills gradually break down and form new substances, one of which is vinegar. And while Excedrin works great at relieving aches and pains, vinegar--not so much. So once they've reached the point where they aren't as useful anymore, I get rid of them. See, I'm not so much of a packrat as some people.

It kind of irritated me, because she's keeping things around like this that she doesn't need anymore, and criticizes me for keeping things around that I actually do use and need. I think we each have our own inherited brand of packrat-ism. (Case in point, my grandma is always carrying around and keeping prescriptions that are years old, and/or belonged to other people, and she thinks I'm being silly and stupid when I have a terrible pain somewhere and, when there aren't any over-the-counters readily available, refuse to take the pills that were prescribed to her sister Jeaner in 2005 that she for some reason carries around in her purse.) I just wish the pot would quit calling the kettle black.

A Series of Awkward Events, part the second

Okay, I know I promised to write once a week. And I know that it's been nearly a months since I've written. I had an excuse after the first week--I was out of town, and I didn't have reliable and regular access to the internet. But after that, I guess I just didn't have anything to say. I've been waiting and waiting for something to come to me, and it hasn't. So finally I figured I should finish the story I started back in May, the Series of Awkward Events.

Well the first part ended with me having gone out on an awkward date with Luke, and my roommate Kim and I trying to figure out a day for our double-date with Luke and Kevin. Neither of us really wanted to go out with them, but we'd told them we would, and we weren't going to go back on our word.

I think I already explained last time how I could not just "ask off" for a day at work. It was more complicated than that, and I was not willing to let a coworker be stranded there by themselves so I could go on a date that I didn't even want to go on. But Kim and I still tried to find a day that would work with these boys. It was taking awhile, though. Everytime we all thought we had a good day, something would come up.

So one day I am sitting at the computer doing something on the internet. You see, Kim had a computer that she let us all use, and it sat on a little desk in the corner of our living room. So I was sitting there in the corner using the computer when someone came over. (You have to understand that our apartment was always open--various people were always coming and going, so if someone wanted to come in and see one of us, they just did.) So the person comes in, and it's Luke. And he was a little annoyed. He wanted to know why I couldn't just ask for a day off, that it couldn't be that difficult, etc. I tried to calmly explain why it was proving difficult to find a day. But he got more irritated, and came over to me (as I was sitting there in the corner in front of the computer) and stood towering over me and began to actually yell at me, yelling about how if I really wanted to go out on this date I could find a way to make it work, and it seemed like I didn't want to go on this date at all, and I needed to just find a date. I was not okay with this form of intimidation, and quite frankly it was VERY out of character for him--he was a pretty quiet, timid kind of guy, so I don't really know what his problem was. I was pretty shocked, so I pretty much closed down out of shock and just looked at him and stammered something about how I was sorry. (What I really wanted to do was to shout at him, "Well, Luke, think for a minute about WHAT YOU JUST SAID and maybe you'll figure out that I actually DON'T want to go out with you!" But I didn't.) So he stormed out. Later I told Kim about this incident, and she was kind of surprised, too. So we buckled down and finally figured on one particular Saturday that would work for all of us so we could just get this over with.

We discussed this day with Luke and Kevin and they said it would work alright for them. As it got closer, we asked them what they planned on all of us doing so we could be prepared (you know, what kind of clothes to wear, how we should present ourselves, that kind of thing). They, of course, didn't have anything planned, and I think they were finally getting the hint that we were annoyed with them. So they decided to be gentlemanly, saying that we could choose whatever activity we wanted and they would go along with whatever we decided to do. So Kim and I discussed it, and we finally decided we should all go see a movie. We figured that way, it would be dark, we wouldn't have to talk to them, look at them, or interact with them. I know that may sound harsh, but there it is. So we told them we wanted to go to the movies. They told us to pick the movie and time and let them know and they would get the tickets. We both really wanted to see The New World, and neither of us were morning people AT ALL, so we told them we specifically wanted to see the evening showing of The New World. That was the only directions we gave them, after they wanted us to pick out exactly what we were going to do.

Now I'm not sure about the timing of this, but I think it was about a day or two before we were supposed to go on the date. Kevin talked to Kim and asked her if we were ready for our double date on Saturday, and informed her that we were going to be going to the morning showing of Wallace and Grommit. When I got home Kim told me this, and we were both annoyed. They told us to pick out the movie and time and said they'd do whatever we wanted to do, and then they decided on something totally different? Why would they do that? Especially when they knew we were annoyed with them! We were pretty annoyed because of this, but also because we were NOT morning people and really had absolutely no interest at all in seeing Wallace and Grommit. But we figured, let's just do it and get it over with.

Well the Saturday morning of the date finally arrived. Kim and I were both dealing with some health problems at that time, so we were not feeling well at all, and on top of the just hating mornings in general, we were both kind of, how shall I put this........hormonal. All of this combined to make us really kind of angry. We were talking about the dumb things these boys had done, and Kim couldn't stand it anymore. She called Kevin and told him to come over because she wanted to talk to him. So he came over, and she let him have it. I stayed in my room but could still hear them. She told him it was rude of them to make different plans after they had told us to plan it, and it was rude for Luke to come over and trap me in the corner and yell at me, and how we just didn't feel like going out anymore, etc. etc. So Kevin left, and the date was not to be. We were both kind of glad, although I did feel kind of bad that Kevin had gotten ripped into like that, although he totally deserved it. (That's why I left Kim to it and stayed in my room.) Well a couple of hours later Kevin and Luke came over, and Kim and I each stayed in our rooms because we didn't want to talk to them because we were tired and sick and hormonal and still upset. So they left these cards for us. Apparently Kevin went home and told Luke what Kim had said, so they went out to the store and bought these ridiculous cards with droopy puppy dog faces on them because they thought that would make it all better. I don't know what was said to Kim, but in my card Luke apologized for being so rude, and said that Kim had made him realize that he had yelled at me and he was sorry for that. It was all quite sappy, and make Kim and I a little more annoyed, but afterwards I realized that it really was the thought that counted and that even though these cards were absolutely stupid, these guys really were just trying to apologize and be nice. So I guess I've got to give them props for that.

But wait, that's not the end of the awkwardness. No, not nearly. We started a vigorous campaign of avoiding Luke and Kevin because we were embarrassed about all the awkwardness and didn't know what they would do and were wanting to avoid more awkwardness. And it was kind of difficult, since we all lived in the same apartment complex and went to church together and stuff. But I think they were avoiding us, too, so we managed to avoid the awkwardness for awhile. I think Kim recovered sooner and let it all roll off her back because she knew how to deal with boys and the things they do, whereas I had absolutely no experience with boys whatsoever and so didn't know how to react. So my personal avoidance campaign continued.

Now I must introduce two side stories which will not seem to be connected to each other or to the main story, but trust me, they will all come together in the end at the final, supreme instance of awkwardness.

The thing I have to explain is that all during this time I was nursing a major crush on a guy I knew. (I know there are several of you who know who this guy is, and you had better not say a word to ANYONE, because I am still embarrassed about my behavior, and I am still facebook friends with this guy, so if you know who it is, just please, remain quiet about it.) So yeah, I had a huge crush. I knew that nothing could really happen, partly because I was not (and still am not) the kind of girl guys are interested in AT ALL, and partly because, if anything WERE to happen, I would be the one who had to make it happen, and I didn't know how to make things happen with guys. So I finally decided I would try to find some seeminly innocent way of hanging out with him. And I decided that my twenty-first birthday party would be the perfect ruse. My birthday is in April, and I started planning this major party in January. And I planned and worked on this all through January, February, and March. I wanted this to be BIG. There had to be enough people there so he wouldn't suspect I had planned it just as an excuse to get him to come over. But I also wanted it to be big because, hey, I was turning twenty-one. And of course a Mormon party would not involve alcohol of any kind, so I had to make it big and fun in every other way. So I invited everybody I knew. I invited all my friends. I invited everyone I knew on facebook. I invited everyone in all of my classes. I put up a flyer at work. I advertised the party on provoparties.com. I even sent invitations to every apartment in my complex, as well as all the other apartments within the boundaries of the church congregation. I literally invited several hundred people. And I planned. Oh, I planned. I had all the music picked out. I planned on all the beverages we would be having (basically all the fake alcohol--Martinelli's sparkling cider, apple beer, etc.). I also planned on multiple desserts--ice cream, cakes, cookies, etc. And I was working on all of it even up through the day of the party. In the end, it ended up being a big bust--not only did the guy I wanted come, out of hundreds I had invited, only about six showed up. It was really quite depressing, and that party is the reason that I stopped celebrating my birthday, or even telling people it's my birthday. Nobody cares anyway, obviously, so why cause the awkwardness of acting like they care?

Okay, so that was the first seemingly random story I had to interject. On to the second.

I think it was about March when somebody at church came up with this really cool game we could all play over time. I'd actually heard of lots of people doing this at BYU, and it sounded pretty cool. So I was excited. I know it will sound very strange and maybe slightly disturbing, but I'll try to explain how it works. Basically everyone in the congregation was assigned to "kill" someone else. Each person was issued an envelope containing a popsicle stick and the name of the person they had to kill. Once they killed the person, the person had to give them the name of the person THEY were supposed to kill, and the idea was that at the very end there would be one person left alive who was the ultimate killer and winner of the game. The way you killed someone was by "stabbing" them in the back with the popsicle stick. You pressed it into their back, and they were "dead" and had to give you the name of the person they were trying to kill. There were rules attached to the actual killing--you could not kill someone while they were sleeping (how could they be sure you actually killed them?), you could not kill someone while they were in a bathroom of any sort (because that's just rude), you could not kill someone while they were praying (also just rude), and you could not kill anyone on Sunday (because that's the Sabbath and the day of rest, after all). Now I was excited about this game, and when I got my envelope and saw the name inside it, I was filled with evil gleefulness. You see, the person I was assigned to kill was my old roommate, Lizard Girl (name has been changed). I was excited to kill Lizard Girl because she had not left our apartment on good terms. We all had many problems with her--to make it brief, she kept an extremely smelly lizard in our closet, it's live bait was constantly escaping, she ate our food, she didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, she sneezed on the side of my face once, and one time I personally witnessed her pick her boogers and eat them. No joke. We wanted her out, and found a clause in the BYU Housing guidelines that said that pets were not allowed in BYU-approved apartments unless the pet owner got the written consent of the landlord and all roommates beforehand. None of us had ever given our written consent, so I sent several letters to management, finally saying that if they didn't move her to a different apartment or force her to get rid of the lizard, I would turn them in to the BYU Housing Office for violating their contract. Getting turned into the BYU Housing Office is of course every Provo landlord's worst nightmare, because if BYU revoked their approval of the premises, the majority of their tenants would have to move out. So not long after that, the apartment management informed us that Lizard Girl would be moving to an apartment a few doors down from ours. I had generally tried avoiding her after that because she annoyed me a lot, and because she honestly didn't know--she thought we were really good friends for some reason. But when I saw that I was assigned to kill her, I was so happy. I can't even describe it. You know in the animated version of The Grinch, where the Grinch is trying to figure out how to stop Christmas, and he suddenly gets and idea, a wonderful idea, a wonderful, awful idea, and curls up his face into a really evil grin? Well that face he makes is the only way I can think to describe how I felt. I definitely looked forward to killing Lizard Girl. I was having difficulty doing it, though. The only time I really saw her was at church, and killing was not allowed on Sundays, so I couldn't kill her then. I even went down to her work on at least one occasion to try to kill her, but I never ended up seeing her there. At the same time, I was really afraid someone would kill me before I got a chance to enact my kill. I was paranoid. I would look behind me when I was walking, I would stand against the wall whenever possible, and I even had all my coworkers be on the alert for me because I figured a lot of people knew where I worked and could easily come down there and kill me. So I stood with my back protected most of the time I was there, and told my coworkers that if anyone came there looking for me to cover for me so I wouldn't get killed. And when I was at home, I was very careful to always try to be sitting with my back against the couch or chair so I couldn't be killed. Someone could easily walk into our apartment and kill me, and one of my own roommates could have even been assigned to kill me. So I figured I'd sit with my back against the couch, and if I happened to be standing and noticed someone acting unusual, I'd make a break for the bathroom where I'd be safe.

Okay, so that's the second seemingly random story. Now to bring it all together.

It was my birthday. The day of my party. And I was still "alive," although I hadn't been able to kill Lizard Girl yet. So I'm putting the last touches on my party preparations. I was sitting there making my famous Hamburger Cookies (cookies that look like miniature hamburgers but taste like cookie and frosting deliciousness), and I was careful to sit with my back against the couch while I worked so no one could come in and kill me. There was a knock at the door, which I thought was kind of strange, but I figured, I'm sitting here on the couch with my back protected, so I'm safe. So I yelled for them to come in. And in walks Luke. After all my efforts at avoiding him, here he was. I didn't know what to do, and he started by saying he had gotten my birthday party invitation but unfortunately wouldn't be able to make it that evening. So he decided to bring me a card instead. He handed me the card, and I said thanks, feeling really confused, when suddenly Luke started leaning over. I didn't know what he was doing. He put his arms out, and suddenly I realized he was going to hug me. I started panicking inside, not knowing how to handle this. He's hugging me? Does he not get the hints and avoidance and somehow think I was interested him in some way? Oh my gosh, his arms are completely around me, what am I going to do? What should I do? So I'm sitting there and he's leaning and grasping me in this huge hug, and I didn't want to offend him but didn't know what to do, so finally I put up my arms and sort of gave him a little pat on his back. I expected him to step back at that point and end the hug, but he didn't. He kept on hugging me, pulling me forwards towards him, and inside I'm panicking, but suddenly I feel a little push of pressure on the center of my back. He lets go and steps away and, with a really pleased look on his face, said, "And now, you're dead." And he held up his popsicle stick. I was shocked, and annoyed that I was dead without getting to kill my old roommate, and I didn't appreciate the way that he had killed me. He was standing there grinning, thinking it was some great joke and that I'd laugh with him, but I just looked him squarely in the eye and said in a total serious voice, "Luke, you are not a cool person." Then I reached in my pocket and grabbed the piece of paper with my victim's name on it and handed it to him, and I turned away from him and continued putting together my cookies. I did not say another word to him. He turned and slunk out of the apartment, kind of aware that he had just pulled the ultimate in extreme awkward moments.

And so that was the end. That's the end of the long series of awkward events. I avoided Luke for another month or so, but then we were both called to the same committee at church so I was forced to interact with him. My strategy was to pretend that none of it had ever happened, and he went along with that, so in the end it was all okay. Still pretty horrifyingly awkward, though.