I have lived in my apartment for nearly five years, it’s the longest I’ve lived in any one place in my entire life. Each year the lease comes up and I think, “This is the last year I’ll be here.” One of those years I recall refusing to sign the lease, preferring the security a month to month arrangement would afford an on the move gypsy like me.
I do try and keep the floor swept, wipe the counters down, and make an effort to keep the bedsheets tucked in tight, it’s not that I’m a slob I’m just uninvolved. I’m a non-committal inhabitant, itching to move away anytime one place starts to feel a little too much like settling. It’s not that I mind settling *in theory* (I fantasize about it all the time) but I haven’t really ever had the inclination to practice.
Today however, I had the inclination to paint, so I painted just one wall of my kitchen. Then I put up two shelves and hung three framed Hatch Show Prints. I really don’t understand why it took me so long to do it, I’ve been dreaming about wiping out that smugly austere landlord white for at least three of the five “why bother” years I’ve been here. It took all of three hours to accomplish.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll sit down at my kitchen table and hold a cup of coffee, or tea, or whatever my gypsy heart wants in that moment, and I’ll look at that one wall, my wall, and I’ll take a sip, maybe two, and I’ll tell myself “That settles it,” and it will, at least, for one more year.
When I was six, I remember asking my parents to stop making sexual innuendos to one another over the family dinner table, “Mom, Dad, that’s gross, please stop.” I didn’t know exactly what they meant, but I knew their conversation meant more that the words they said. It’s not that I wasn’t aware of mechanics of sex, my parents were not as discrete as they could have been, and as cliche as it sounds, we had cable. It was more that I knew they weren’t supposed to be talking about it in front of kids. – I learned that earlier that year when was grounded for two weeks after my mom heard me using planetary metaphors to explain the sex to a rapt group of neighbor children all sitting cross legged in our back yard. “Well, you see, the man puts his Jupiter in the woman’s Venus.”
After that, my parents didn’t talk at dinner at all – I had effectively shut down their reindeer games. It’s a sad thing really, now that I’m an adult, knowing how healthy for a relationship a good game of innuendo tennis can be, I wonder to this day if I had just kept my mouth shut would’ve they stayed together? I know what you are thinking, you are thinking it’s ridiculous of me to hold onto that childish thought of fault – but let me tell you what, kids are exhausting, they take everything, and more often than not, one of the first things they take down is sizzle between the two folks that brought them into the world. I swear this is why there are so many innuendos in children’s movies. Just so when you are wrecked from a day of working and parenting and your kids want to watch Shrek for the hundredth time with you, your mind has somewhere else to go to than the land of far far away.You all knew that Innuendo in Disney movies is a corporate plot to create more Disney consumers, didn’t you? Why else would they put them all in there, think about it…
As an adult I love word play and hard to unmask innuendo, it’s part of who I am, I’d take a slightly clever compliment to my ass over a slap to my ass almost any day of the week, or at least several clever compliments proceeding the slap. It’s not as impressive as knowing the formula for rocket fuel or having performed open heart surgery, but I pride myself on my ability to decode innuendo and the sexual metaphor in conversation, it’s been a hobby since childhood. This is why it puzzles me so that it has taken me over 15 years to understand why Jessica Rabbit would be married to someone as ridiculously stupid as Roger Rabbit, he’s an idiot of a cartoon character, whereas she, she… is not bad. How did I miss the obviousness of this pairing? His name is Roger for crying out loud, and he’s a rabbit, a fucking rabbit for crying out loud!
And you thought this post was actually going somewhere didn’t you?
I got an interesting call the other day from a Rabbi, “Hello, is this Melissa Pierce?”
“Yes”
“I would like you to help my school win a Facebook contest.”
Huh?
The school flew me out to Brooklyn for a meeting, I taught them how to build a Facebook page, I explained twitter, I explained that when I helped Friendship circle in the Chasegiving campaign they were relentless in getting votes. I explained that it would be hard, very hard, for a school that had no social media presence or persistance to make a Facebook contest work. They said they would give it their all. I flew back to Chicago.
Two weeks have passed since then, and there hasn’t been much happening with their Facebook account, or their twitter account, or with their PR efforts, yet they stay in the top twenty of the Kohl’s Cares contest, which is all they have to do to win the $500,000 Kohl’s is giving away… huh? (again)
I ask them, “What are you doing to get these votes?” They tell me, “We sent out an email to the parents and donors, we’re walking with laptops at events and in shopping malls, we’re asking diners at restaurants we frequent, we’re reaching out to our community.”
DUH! Why didn’t I think of that! Community: Holy freaking crap. Even without all the social media mumbo jumbo that gets spewed all over the internet about engagement and community online, they are winning a Facebook contest without it. They have a real life social network, and it’s winning… on the internet.
Go figure, and go vote for them, the word all over the street is that the school needs a new roof and all you have to do is vote of Facebook to help them. Of course, if you live anywhere near Crown Street in Brooklyn you’ve probably had a bearded fellow in a kippah approach you with a laptop already.
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