Funneling isn't an "additional skill"

I was on the train this morning and I overheard this conversation:

Girl: "So I didn't get the pharmaceutical sales rep job."

Boy: "That sucks."

Girl: "My mom said she read an article about how pharmaceutical companies are more likely to hire people who were cheerleaders."

Boy: "That makes total sense."

Girl: "I bet if I'd put that on my resume I would have gotten the job."

What?
Who is this girl's mother? Who wrote that article?
Sure, that's what they tell you when you join cheerleading or a sorority - that it's a great addition to your resume and will really give you a leg up within the applicant pool. But no one actually puts it on their resume! (I hope.) If you were a cheerleader, all that says about you is that you can be peppy and spirited. If you were a sorority gal (and I can say these things because I was), all that says about you is that you've mastered the fake smile and are probably an easy lay. Not to mention the fact that you choose to self-segregate. Why would you advertise these things?

Generally speaking, the stigma of cheerleader and/or sorority girl are probably more damaging than helpful in most professional situations. The attributes that made you a good Greek are not as marketable once the keggers are over. Although the fake smile does still come in handy every once in a while. So it's not like you didn't learn anything. Knowing how to hold someone's hair back without getting vomit on your shoes and how to tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue can be helpful skill sets even well into adulthood.

WorN

On my laptop keyboard the letter sticker on the n key is wearing off. Who would have thought that n is the most used key on my keyboard? How many words have n in them? I'd never have guessed that n consistently puts in such a good day's work.

It takes a lot of love (but how much like?)

After a fantastic Thanksgiving feast at B's cousin's gorgeous new house in Maryland (yeah, soooo jealous!), he and his mom and I ended up on the couch at his aunt's Chevy Chase home watching Shennandoah on AMC (the Jimmy Stuart version). While there were several really memerable lines ("What has Virginia ever done for me? When I had my six sons I never once saw the state come around with a spare tit"), the scene that stuck out in my mind was when Jenny's husband-to-be is asking her father for her hand in marriage. Her father (Stuart) asks the young lad why he wants to marry Jenny. He replies, of course, that he loves her. And Jimmy Stuart says "I know you love her, but do you like her? You need to like the woman you marry a hell of a lot more than you need to love her." I hadn't thought about that, but now I can't stop thinking about it. I believe it's possible to be in love with someone you don't necessarily like. But the ones you like are the ones whose happiness you'd sell your soul for.

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug

I just pulled off an amazing parallel parking feet. With grace and ease. My car practically melted into that spot, in no less than one attempt (with under three "finaglings" to get it just right). My first thought was "I'm an expert parallel parker! It's a gift!" Until I remembered the truly heinous parallel parking job I'd done the last time I planted my car for the night. How can that be? How can I be miraculously good at something one day, and laughably bad at it the next?

There are days when I feel like I missed my calling as a race car driver. I speed along the Boston roadways, weaving in and out of traffic and merging into lanes like I was born behind the wheel. And then there are other days, like the day I almost killed myself and Boyfriend (accidentally of course) and we had to execute an emergency Chinese fire drill downtown because I was clearly unable to operate a motor vehicle at the that particular moment in time. What changes from one day to the next? Well, something. Obviously.

But for me that's sort of how my life is. Some days I'm totally together and ooze competence, compassion, and charisma. Other days.... well, less so (I don't want to be too self-degrading here, but I'm sure you know what I'm getting at, and if you're one of my friends you've doubtless been unlucky enough to witness the damage). And even though I know that's how it goes, I'm still always surprised when I'm either totally on, or totally off. I'd like to say the totally on days make up for the totally off days. But they don't. Today I fell up the stairs at work (you know it's bad when you're not even falling in harmony with gravity), was late to almost every appointment I had, and, when trying to explain to the Healthworks attendant why I needed a towel even though I didn't have the measly $2 to pay for it, actually elaborated on exactly which parts of my naked body I didn't really want other women staring at. Why? Why would I do that? I've thought about it all evening long, and parallel parking merry-go-round mojo is the only explanation I can come up with.

Fool me twice

Today, I was carrying two paper cups filled with Starbucks coffee as I approached an obstacle standing between me and my destination: the heavy glass doors of the campus center, the Little Building (which is oddly enormous). Hmmmm, what to do. I did a quick assessment of the situation in my head. I could either 1) stack the two cups on top of one another and use my free hand to open the door, 2) put the cups down on the sidewalk, open the door, and pick them back up again, 3) wait for someone to come through the door and quickly duck in, or 4) keep both cups in their respective hands and open the door with my pinky. Practicality not being my strong suit, I chose the option involving the most useless finger on my hand.

Here's what happened: my pinky didn't have the strength to open the door on its own, so as it strained, the other fingers clenched in commiseration. The pressure the other fingers exerted on the paper cup caused it to cave in the middle, and the caving caused a rising force from within, which in turn popped the lid off the coffee. Which spilled all over me. Don't you feel sorry for me?

This might influence your sympathy: I've made this same exact mistake about five times over.

So here's my thought. If, after several hot, sticky messes, I can't learn that option #4 will have the least desirable outcome, how long does it take for us to learn from the other mistakes in our lives which don't have an immediately correlative consequence? How often do we repeat self-destructive patterns despite our conscious or subconscious understanding that no good can come? Experience is a powerful tool - its purpose is to prevent us from continually making the wrong decision in the critical moment. But how often is our ability to learn from experience temporarily on the fritz?

I used to imagine that experience is the secret recipe for an untroubled life. If you've been through something before, you're bound to handle it better the second time around. Maybe even flawlessly. And certainly there is some supporting evidence to back that theory.

But it would follow that if we haven't learned from a mistake, which we then repeat, we obviously didn't recognize it as a correctable mistake in the first place. We can't trace the events leading up to that particular personal calamity back to its critical moment. We can't define the instant when things started to go wrong. And so we self-inflict pain, frustration, failure, or sadness, again and again. We can't locate the point at which we discarded options #1 through #3, and chose to go with the pinky plan. And so, we can't sidestep the result.

I've spent the past half hour pre-treating, rinsing, scrubbing, and cursing, trying to get the coffee out of my favorite khaki pants. But it won't come out. It's just another stain - an unerasable reminder of lessons, as of yet, still not learned.

My genes, your jeans

Yesterday I had the perfect night - I left work around seven, drove to my gym, worked out in the near desolation that being at Healthworks late on a Friday will guarantee you, showered, went home and put on my pjs, crawling into bed with some kettle corn and a good book. Before I started reading, I decided to call my dad for a chit chat. I knew Mookie would probably be home. How did I know? Because of my genes.

I remember my stepmom Betsy sighing as she'd leave the house on a Saturday evening. My dad and I, stretched out on our separate ends of the L-shaped sofa, would look up from our books to say goodbye. "You two," she'd say "are never going to be happy if you don't get out more." We'd look at each other, shrug, and return our noses from whence they came. After Betsy would leave, we'd call the dogs to the couch to join us.

I'm never home. Weeknights I manage to clammor through the door at around ten o'clock. On the weekend I'm out catching up with friends, running erands, with Boyfriend, with my roommate - just around. So I live for those moments of downtime. I always have. I'm the center of attention more than I'd like. I'd like to never be the center of attention. I'd like to be wallpaper. I prefer to go unnoticed. But that rarely happens.

My dad and I share many qualities - we look surprisingly alike: same teeth, same nose, same hands, similar lean lanky build. We both read feverishly and exercise religiously. We're both compulsive, in our own ways. We work hard. We're fascinated by cars, gender and sex roles, careless liberalism, and canines. We would prefer to live life in jeans and a t-shirt, but don't. And we've been known to pull a hermit every once a while, and usually couldn't be happier than when we're tucked up in our shells.

So the fact that we were both in on a Friday evening is not surprising. The fact that talking to each other didn't seem like an intrusion in our solitude makes sense - we don't harp on one another for being curled up with some good fiction on date night. We support the occasional reappearance of the inner geek. It fits in our universe, because it's in the genes. Congruent with who we are. Which, when you sum it up, is two people who occasionally pull a shut-in, and share an affinity for worn out, broken-in denim.