Life lessons vs. pizza

When I was a kid and I didn’t want to eat the crusts on my sandwiches, my mum would remind me that there were children starving in Africa. I thought that, in the event that I should put my bits of bread in an envelope and send them to Africa, they would be pretty inedible by the time they got there. Also, it seemed to me that the best way to help the starving, would be to not stuff yourself full of food when you were no longer hungry.

I guess what my mother was really trying to teach me, was to be grateful for the things that I had, and not how to solve world hunger.

Last night, I tried to keep that lesson in mind after I dropped my last slice of pizza on the floor. Pooch knows full well that if something edible lands on the ground, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s hers to pounce on. However, if this something edible falls directly on her head, the rules change.

At that moment in time, Pooch, at least, was very grateful for what she had…

Mucho mojo

I wasn’t much of a fashionista when I was in junior high. Not even close, really. To tell you the truth, I was a bit of a dork. A big bit. That didn’t stop me from trying to look hot, mind you.

All the cool girls in my class had really big hair of the kind that went straight up and then straight down, like a plane crash, and I did my very best to imitate them. Not well, but still. Hairspray was of course an important part of the process. I remember using the kind that turned into a greyish sticky dust after a while. I looked as if I had the worst case of dandruff since… well, since ever, really. Either that or an attack of lice to rival those of a person from the Middle Ages who bathed in cold water only for Christmas and slept on hay alongside of livestock.

One day I’d run out of the stuff. If I had taken the time to develop a sense of style, I would probably have considered that to be a blessing.

But I hadn’t.

So I started searching high and low for a replacement. Anything would do. I tried out every cream and sticky concoction I could find until I discovered one that worked somewhat. It didn’t make my hair stand up much, but it did make it paste nicely to my head, which made it a satisfactory replacement. After applying it, I took a moment to read the tube.

Self tanning lotion.

You know how your scalp, underneath the hair is usually paler than the rest of your face? Mine wasn’t. My face was quite pale – the kinda pale that teenage nerds who spend all summer inside with a book wind up sporting – and my scalp was a dark coconut brown.

Fancy.

Mature adult? Me? Neeeeh

I've come to the conclusion that, in many ways, I'm still the exact same person that I was when I was about five years old. Granted, there are some external changes, such as the fact that I now drink coffee and wear a bra, but the internal stuff is pretty much the same.

When I went to the bathroom last night (I'd had to glasses of soda the size of my head before going to bed. Yet another thing that hasn't changed much since was little. And now that my mother isn't here to keep it in check, it runs rampant on occasion), and in order to get back to my room, I had to walk through a very dark kitchen, then a very dark hallway and up the winding stairs. Which, of course, were also very dark. The whole way, I pretended that there were ghosts and goblins creeping up behind me or hiding in the shadows in front of me. Then, when I got to bed, I spent a few minutes to make believe that there was a monster underneath it.

One major change has taken place, though: I no longer manage to convince mysef that these things are true. I don't need to pick up my cellphone and call my mum at three a.m, and have her come and rearrange objects in my room, so that the shadows don't look scary anymore.


I can do that all by myself, thank you very much.

Being really, really, super cool

When we were kids, we watched a lot of TV, and learned all about smoking grass. Or so we thought. Whenever we felt the need to be really, really super cool, we'd get on our little bikes (I remember mine was pink) and go down to a field by the river, where a local farmer grew his crop. Large trees surrounded it, making it a perfect hiding place.

A tiny, borderline chubby kid with blonde, spiky hair - let's just call him Bo - was responsible for bringing matches. The ground was always more or less muddy, so we'd all lay our bikes down in a circle and sit on the frames. Then we'd cut straws into longish bits, light them and smoke it. I guess we didn't quite grasp the concept of smoking grass as well as we thought, huh? We all felt terribly grown-up.

Despite this, we turned out alright. Well, all of us, except Bo. He was younger than us, and we lost touch. I heard that he did grasp the concept eventually, moved on to bigger things and died a few years back. Weird how things turn out.

I have a friend in Canada, by the way, who insists that she makes the best potbrownies in the whole, wide world. And that they go well with milk. Very childlike and very teen-rebellion all at the same time. I’ve never actually tried a potbrownie (or a pot-anything, for that matter) so I won’t argue with her.

Childhood, briefcases and the big bucks

When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. Basically, the reason for this was that I’d been watching LA Law, and I wanted to wear a powersuit and carry a briefcase. That was pretty much it. Still, the idea stuck in my head until I had to start thinking about which college I wanted to apply to. It wasn’t until then that I started asking myself why I wanted to study law. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the outfit and the briefcase weren’t all that important to me, after all. And so, law was out.

Another thing that I was even more obsessed with as a child, was the thought of having a big income. And by big, I mean huge. And by huge, I mean gigantic. And by… Well, you get the picture. My parents used to say that I could probably chew my way straight through the walls of the National Bank. Sometimes I dreamt that I actually did.

I figured that in order to be like the people on LA Law and make really big money, you’d have to be an overachiever. The only problem was that I had very mediocre work ethics. I still do. I’m lazy at heart. But I’m okay with that. It’s not necessarily a good thing to overachieve. Look at Napoleon, for instance. He did really well at first, but in the end – not so happy.

So the fact that I’m sitting here, writing this, in stead of solving various math problems, like I ought to be doing, doesn’t really bother me all that much.