I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
My dad used to like to tease my mom about how the more educated she became, the less she actually knew how to do. I viewed this as an overt display of insecurity that he was married to a woman with both nice boobs and a Master’s degree, when he merely finished high school, followed by a few college courses. And he doesn’t have nice boobs, either.
10. Bedskirts are absolutely essential. Anyone who doesn’t have a bedskirt is a filthy individual you oughta steer clear of.
She’s the box on the calendar with “Spring begins” in italics. And she’s a favorite song played over and over until every beat is the irregular heartbeat she was born with. She’s a creaky voice late at night, the bed smelling like dirty dog and clean laundry.
*I stole this from April. She calls it the “If it ain’t in Texas, you don’t need it” survey.
My dad overhears my cousin Jessica, age three, say she hates something.
My infrequent visits to the post office have been known to trigger homicidal rage.
There was that one time that a nasty clerk made me cry on my birthday. She kept yelling at me to get back in line. This occurred after I had walked up to the unoccupied window twice to be served, having no idea that there was some man whose turn it was. Never mind that he kept leaving the periphery, as if done with his business… I had to wait for him to wander away for the final time before the clerk pointed at me to step forward. My jaw was clenched and I gave her the package slip without a word. She spent eternity looking for it. “Just to spite me,” I thought. When she found it, she carelessly dropped it on the counter and shoved it in my direction. It was a birthday package from home. There was a picture of me hanging on a tree on the side of the box. The words, “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! You look like a monkey, and you smell like one, too!” danced before me in my mom’s handwriting. I was so angry about that mean old bitch treating me and my care package so disrespectfully.
I’m feeling a bit empathetically (or should I say empathically - they’re both in the dictionary) overwhelmed with stuff happening to some people I care about now.
“This is a candid photo,” my mom said when she handed me this photograph. As if I couldn’t tell with all the men not looking at the camera, while the women do. “Look at those heels!” she laughed and pointed at the stilettoes on my great-grandmother, her grandmother.
Under it, in the album of the plastic sucking noise whenever opened, she wrote, “Second thoughts?”
Perhaps it was the giddiness of staying in a five-star hotel or maybe the discombobulation of random cool pecks on the cheek by people I’ve yet to meet. I’m not used to that, nor do I understand how everyone thinks it’s sophisticated rather than invasive. In fact, the only one whom I was okay with this familiar greeting is maybe that one co-worker of Cade’s who took a sip of my mojito over the summer. He and Cade.
