DAY 35: NEW GIRL

     Why is there always someone who's unfriendly to the new girl?  Why is that someone almost always another girl?  And why does this still go on years out of high school?
     I'm the new girl right now and I've experienced some unfriendliness lately.  But today it felt more mean.  Who has a birthday and a birthday cake and only allows some people in the office to have a piece of her cake?  A mean girl, right?  Or a just plain insensitive one.  At first I thought she singled only me out, but then I noticed she was being really selective about how she shared her cake with...  It was bothersome and a little bizarre.  I know if it was me I'd share the cake with everyone.
     What happened to all the rules one was supposed to learn in kindergarten?

DAY 34: THUMBS LIKE TOES

     Just ask my prom date from junior year who so aptly pointed out that my thumbs look like toes.
     (Thank you Mr. Z.  Would now be a good time to mention that I knew my prom date back when we were young, him 3 and me 4, or around then, and that my future Mr. high school junior prom date used to wet the bed?  His top bunk bed had plastic sheets on it.  And how do I know this?  Because our moms were in the baby-sitting co-op together and my mom traded an index card or two or a half of one--they were pastels, sort of, a light green card was an hour and a light orange card was 1/2 and hour or vice versa--with his mom for some baby-sitting time while she ran some errands.  Mr. Z--your mom baby sat me and I smelled your urine soaked or urine-pooled bed sheets.  I had to flee your room.)  
     Before then my sister and I (she only has 1 toe-like-thumb, but it still counts.  Our grandma cut her thumb nails to try and rid her of her wide thumbs.  It was so painful an experience, that my grandma never dared try to cut the other thumb nail.  She only got to one of my sister's thumbs.  My sister may deny this story, but I swear to you I was there, I saw the nail clipper and heard her screams.) called my thumbs "wide thumbs."  They're short and fat with wide nails that look like they're missing a joint.  But they're not.  They're just short and wide.  So wide that they look like toes.
     Go around with thumbs like that for a while and you'll see that people start to notice them.  The obvious people who notice are manicurists.  I just had a manicure and the manicurist said "my brother has thumbs like that."  It's akin, but not really, to the comment "oh, I have a gay cousin"--there's always someone out there who has one.
    I know that my great-aunt, my grandma's sister, had thumbs like me.  When I see other wide-thumbed people we smile and rejoice.  It always feel good to meet someone that has something you have...even if it's an appendage that should look like one thing but doesn't.

DAY 33: THEY DON'T MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO

     I just had the pleasure of hearing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak.  Wow!  She was amazing.  She spoke so well and the small excerpts of her writing that she read were incredible.  Such a class act too.  Plus, she's from Brooklyn, where my mom was born, so hearing her voice was like hearing my mom or grandma speak.  A little surreal and a lot heartwarming.
     The Justice spoke about how things are so bipartisan now and how she probably would never have made it past Senate confirmation hearings if she'd been appointed in the current political atmosphere because of her ACLU connections.  It was disappointing to hear that--whatever your political leanings are...
     It felt good to be the same room as such an accomplished woman.  She is 77 years old and still goes to work everyday.  I better forget my dreams of early retirement.

DAY 32: ADVANTAGE AGASSI

The U.S. Open (for tennis) is starting this week—well if it starts on time…this crazy storm Irene has caused the USTA to cancel some of the first round matches—got me thinking about my all time favorite player Andre Agassi.  I loved Andre Agassi.  I still do—your favorite’s your favorite your favorite no matter what.  His Nike posters covered my walls during high school. 

When Dad went to go visit his girlfriend (who eventually became my step monster; for the record, thank goodness she’s my now ex-step monster) in New York and go to the U.S. Open I felt pangs beyond jealousy.  But Dad did bring me back an Agassi t-shirt; the black one from Nike with a full portrait of Andre’s face’s silk-screened onto the back of the shirt’s fabric.  It didn’t show his shorts, but that was when Andre wore those black (and at one unfortunate time, those acid wash denim looking shorts) shorts with hot pink bike shorts underneath.  I for one found that look hot.  Very hot.  And I adored his mullet as well.  Who didn’t back then?

My crush on Andre wasn’t fleeting.  It lasted.  In fact it lasted all throughout high school and into college.  And let’s not get started on his amazing comeback after he divorced Brooke Shields.  But I digress.  One person thought my crush on Andre should end and he straight up told me so in one of his mailers he sent to my college dorm room.

Dad sent me letters all the time when I attended college.  They started as normal business envelops with his black-felt tip printed block letters on the front and then morphed into these huge Priority U.S. Mail mailers full of newspaper articles and fashion clippings from the New York Times Style section. 

In one particular mailer, Dad sent me a doozy during the 1994-1995 school year.  One that caused me to pause, reflect, and I’ll admit shed some tears.  Dad sent me an article on Andre Agassi with photos.  Andre had shaved his head, gained weight and had lost his top spot in the rankings.  Dad didn’t send a dear daughter letter about how my idol was changing his look and trying to revamp his career with a new fitness regime.  Instead he opted not to send a letter at all and scribbled in his ALL CAPS writing the following (I remember Dad’s words verbatim—they were too mean to forget) under one of Andre’s not-so-flattering pictures: “SOME TIMES YOUR HEROS BECOME FAT AND BALD.  SOME TIMES IT’S TIME FOR NEW HEROS.” 

I was aghast.  Who writes that?  And who writes that about my beloved Andre?  Dad thought he was doing me a favor telling me to quit my hero and find a new one.  I didn’t listen and stayed on the Agassi bandwagon.  It took Andre some time regain his footing and pull out amazing, now historic tennis wins.  But he did it.  And of course when he did, Dad cheered him on with the rest of us.  Dad did always like a good underdog, triumph-in-life-after-everyone’s-forgotten-about-you-story; he just got a little scissor-happy with the information and articles he felt needed to be shared with his daughter. 

DAY 31: IS THERE SUCH THING AS A PERFECT FACE?

     My sister says that Russell Brand has a perfectly symmetrical face.  She read an article about him in Vanity Fair and it mentioned this perfect face of his.  It also said that he's so charismatic that he can literally seduce people into liking him or making them laugh--something like that.  I just saw a movie with Russell Brand as the leading man and at first I thought he was annoying and now I'm ok with him.  More than ok actually.  Maybe he does have a perfect face or I just really like charisma.

DAY 30: OLD SOUL

     I get called an "old soul" or some variation of it a lot.  I think my mom being diagnosed with leukemia when I was 7 years old and her passing away after 3 bone marrow transplants when I was 10 has something to do with it.  Some people think I'm a bit wiser than my years.  I take it as a compliment, but I'd give up being this wise and having lost so much if I could get my mom back and my dad back for that matter.

DAY 29: EMINEM IS A GENIUS

     This morning in spin class an oldie but goody came on--the Eminem song Without Me came on.  You know trailer park girls and Batman and Robin references.  It reminded me of my dad--if you wonder why I talk about my dad a lot, it's because he died 3 years ago and had raised me an my sister alone after our mother died when we were young, I was 10 and my sister was 7 when Mom died.
     Anyway, I saw 8 Miles with my dad over Thanksgiving the year it came out.  As we left the theater, Dad said and I quote: "that Eminem is a genuis."  All of which led to Dad requesting I burn him a copy of The Eminem Show cd.  Now isn't that fun?  You tell me that last time one of your parents was that cool or that one of them even knew Eminem was a white rapper and not a hard shell-coated over chocolate piece of candy.
    My Dad jammed out to that cd.  Priceless.