Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

Lately, I feel as though I’ve developed a greater awareness of how my surroundings as a child have affected my current perspective of the world. This, of course, seems like a pretty obvious realization, but it’s easy to forget just how impressionable your mind was back in the day.

Memory is quite a mysterious phenomenon. Overall, as the years progress, our minds prefer to hold onto the positive memories instead of the negative, or the funny instead of the sad, but what’s even more fascinating to me are the bridges between objects or visions that are linked with memories, that flash in front of our eyes when you see, smell, or hear something in particular, as if life is just one jumbo game of free association.

Example one: When I was five years old, I had a Playskool puzzle of the United States. To this day, I still visualize the states as puzzle pieces: Louisiana will always be pink, Colorado green, Florida orange, and PA, NJ, and Delaware will always be clumped together into one piece. A font resembling “Cooper Black,” only in blue, displays the name of each state across the piece.

Example two: Motown and Sesame Street. The song, “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me,” by Smokey Robinson will always, ALWAYS play this Sesame St. parody in my head, “U Really Got A Hold On Me,” which lucky for you, I found on Youtube:

And last, but not least, there’s Example three. Does anyone remember Disney TV, aka, DTV, which aired in 1986? They ran some of these specials on Valentines Day or select Sunday nights, and it was quite entertaining. Basically, these specials were like an MTV for little kids, pairing cartoons and clips of Disney movies to Motown or current hits of the 80s.

When I hear “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” by Stevie Wonder, I think of this, at minute 2:38.

I also think of the Jack Black character in High Fidelity, when he responds to a customer looking to buy a copy of the same song:

Barry’s Customer: Hi, do you have the song “I Just Called To Say I Love You?” It’s for my daughter’s birthday.
Barry: Yea we have it.
Barry’s Customer: Great, can I have it?
Barry: No, no, you can’t.
Barry’s Customer: Why not?
Barry: Well, it’s sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells “I Just Called to Say I Love You?” Go to the mall. Oh wait, is she in a coma??

That reference definitely stems from my adulthood, but since it always makes me laugh, I just had to share.

What random associations do you have, that leave you chuckling to yourself because no one else would understand??

Behold, a coupon I received today after picking up a few things from my neighborhood CVS:

A coupon for $4 off a Futuro brace, complete with my name.

I never thought that the CVS kept track of my spending habits, but I guess that makes sense to give the CVS ExtraCare customers a few breaks on the items they buy regularly. Not that I regularly buy braces and splints, but I’ve had a rough year in terms of my foot sprain and wrist tendinitis.

God only knows what else they have on file, ink cartridge ready and waiting to print out my confidential information during my next purchase. Would the next coupon be for Sunkist Diet Orange Soda? Or perhaps Skippy Crunchy Peanut Butter? Or eggs?

While these items aren’t exactly embarrassing, what if I frequently bought something a little more blush-inducing, such as Metamucil, and my coupon for extra-strength Metamucil fell out of my purse, to lay on the floor for someone to find??

Oh, how we are tracked by our habits without even realizing.

The things I do in the name of journalism.

Friday morning, I awake to a migraine. Though the pain hasn’t kicked in yet, as I am peeling the shell of my hard boiled eggs, I realize I can’t really see what one hand is doing. I stare at a blank wall to confirm the fact that I am developing a split vision headache, aka, mini migraine.

What to do?? I had a deadline, and I left my BB charger at work. Drats. So I did what any trooper would do: popped in two Advil, and solicited help from my roommate who was walking out the door at the same time to prevent me from bumping into fellow pedestrians and strollers on our way to the PATH trains.

Functioning with split vision is a bit like seeing the world with that crazy annoying “overwrite” mode in Microsoft Word. In this mode, the text just after the cursor gets deleted as you type new text. It’s incredibly disorienting and frustrating until you realize what’s going on. Split vision is the same thing: your point of focus seems to blur or block out what your eyes are trying to look at. In order to see something clearly, you have to look to the side of it, or sometimes below or above. Fascinating, I know.

I think I should be able to add my ability to type through this phenomenon under the “skills” section in my resume.

Annnnnyways, I miraculously pulled through to deliver this to the editor. Enjoy-ee.

Close Encounters of the Pest Kind

I have a confession. When I was six-years-old, I stomped out an entire ant hill in my backyard. Seconds later, an army of beady, fat, black ants took their revenge by crawling up my chubby legs. They had it coming though–the placement of their hill killed the baby evergreen tree I planted for Arbor Day. But, ever since that battle, the bugs have had it out for me.

This relationship with nature does not fare well when you live in an old house or building, because the outside will inevitably seep in. As luck would have it, I’ve usually had some sort of pest-control on speed-dial. When I was in single digits, all I had to do was yell DADDY!!!

One afternoon in college, my roommate and I found that screaming bloody murder was quite effective after we were welcomed back to our dorm room by a bird flapping around our tubs of animal crackers. Our hall mate came to the rescue, and he scooped the bird up with a lacrosse stick.

But now–I live with two other girls, and the topic of bug-control has not yet come up, until recently.

Upon returning home from a gallery opening post-work, I headed to the kitchen for some water before going to bed, and a little friend was waiting for me. I froze. I spied a huge, blackish-brown, beetle-like thing that walked slowly across the linoleum. I jumped away. The roommates were asleep, and the vacuum was behind my nemesis. I decided to exit the kitchen, turn off the light, and forget I ever saw it. I had to rock myself to sleep.

In the morning, I screeched that I saw the grossest cricket last night into the phone, naturally, to my mother. As a native to New Yorker, she said something so eye opening that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Em, you are such a suburb girl. I love that you assume that a bug like that is a cricket,” she said.

I mean, I guess it didn’t make a noise, and it’s not August quite yet…Then I realized—good God, it might be a cockroach. I had never felt so far away from home.

Since that rude awakening, I have seen my enemy two more times. The second time, I reacted with the same, back-up-slowly-and-return-to-

your-room approach. But, last night, when I saw him creep out from under the fridge, I took action. I placed a white ceramic bowl on top of my nemesis. Whatever he is, he is now in captivity.I left a note for the roommates and told them not to look under the bowl flipped upside down by the microwave. I think they’ll understand. Or, they’ll just think I’m an idiot. Only time will tell if the bowl is still there when I get home.