Staying Above Water

One of those strangely vivid yet hard to place memories I have from my childhood is watching an older man— I don’t know who— floating in the water while I was swimming next to him and trying to mimic his movements. I remember watching him expand his chest and exhale while keeping his body afloat like it was the most precise and exacting of arts. No matter how accurately I recreated his technique, I found that it made no difference in the way I floated. But there he remained, bobbing in the water, only his face and stomach breaking the surface.

I Am Not What I Am

Right now, I look like one of those girls whose mascara has migrated from the tips of her lashes to the better half of her face. I look like one of those girls who cuts deep V-necks out of sweatshirts. Right now, my hair is straightened and my bangs aren't trapped in a clip away from my face. Right now, I am not what I am.

Oh, Bother

• Why can't people do simple things like wait on the lunch line without having to take an entourage of unsuspecting fools (me) with them to asuage their terrible insecurities about standing alone for ten freakin' minutes? It's just a lunch line, nobody is judging you for standing on it.
• I have a scar on my knee that looks like a weirdly discolored blotch of skin rather than the cool WWII battle scar I had intended it to look like... not cool
• I am allergic to AP Biology... no seriously. Every time I walk into the room I feel like I'm being sucked into a vortex of pollen and irritants that no common antihistamine could cure.
• At the rate this election is going, I wouldn't be entirely miffed if Obama and Hillary just pulled a Hamilton vs. Burr middle-of-the-woods duel. Hillary, feel free to loose that one.
• Andrew Jackson was a badass
• What the hell has NASA been up to all these years? Do they think they can just land on the moon and be done with it?
• Whoever manufactures school desks clearly has never had to simultaneously use a laptop, textbook, and notebook while hiding a cell phone underneath it all. I'm sorry but a 3x2 hunk of lacquered square footage just isn't going to cut it. And what's with the whole lovechild of a wood and plastic orgy look?