In Johnny Cash’s biography, he talks about this pain that he gets in his body. The book was written  five years before he died so of course he‘s gonna have pain in his body. He was an old man. But what he does when he gets this pain is this: he lays down in an empty part of his house, or tour bus, and lets his mind take him away to a spot in Alaska he once visited where two rivers meet. To him, this is his calm place.

I have a calm place. I have several, actually. I’m always trying to collect them. One of the places is in Shereen and Shahla Taheri’s grandma and grandpa’s backyard in Hastings, by the river. I was there a couple of years ago for one of their cousin’s graduation party. It was just so peaceful and relaxing and as I layed in the grass, I felt like nothing was wrong in the world.

Another place of mine is a made up place–I pretend i’m in a field. Sometimes it’s just acres and acres of grass, sometimes its wheat. It’s always a little breezy, but warm. I’m always laying on my back, with my arms behind my head. Its totally quiet and nothing is bothering me.

When I get panic attacks, I try to think of these places. It helps to imagine myself there so that my brain gets sidetracked and forgets that i’m having a panic attack.

My best moment was when I was in rochester, NY for a punk fest. My friend John drove all the way up from Florida in order to hang out with me that weekend. Of course he tried to brush it off at the time, saying that he was already planning on visiting his family in Yonkers, NY and that he “might as well stop in rochester along the way and visit.”

John and I had admitted that we had crushes on each other not too long before that, so we were super excited about seeing each other.

The night we met up, we slept in the basement of this big punk house . We were freezing to death on the hard cement floor with a thin blanket for both of us, which wasn’t the ideal romantic setting.

There was this little weird half-room off to the side that some dude was sleeping in that night. We found out when we woke up that it had a mattress in it! So we immediately starting planning out how we were going to snatch this “room” away for the next night before anyone else could.

So the fest played on all day, and after it was done, all the punks piled into their vehicles and made their way to the house. John and I raced over there and snatched that room up quick before anyone else could. This was going to be great. More blankets had made themselves known, including a heater lap blanket that we made up on the mattress.

This was the “calm place” of all other calm places I have stored away in my head. I’m laying on this bed, with the heater blanket keeping me cozy. No one else is in this room* except for John, who is peaking out the door for other room-predators. The mattress was actually really comfortable. I was really happy to be there with John too. And I said “I’m very comfortable right now” outloud, but I wished there was a bigger word for it because it was the moment of all moments and it just didn‘t come close enough to how i felt. It could possibly be the happiest moment of my life. It’s up there, definitely.

To you, it may not seem like that important of a moment. Of course I could never show you or  help you feel everything I was feeling at that moment, but just be assured that it could definitely compare with your happiest moment. It had the strength to combat any panic attack or sleepless night or bad day I could have.

I called up John last night after I read that part in Johnny Cash’s biograph about his calming place.  I told him about that moment, to which he said he liked that it meant a lot to me because he was in it, and then he told me one of his happiest moments. It’s something in the way you know these little things about a person that really makes you appreciate them.

*Actually, one of the dudes from The Ergs!  tried really hard to sleep in the little room with us, but we wanted to makeout and stuff later, so no amount of love for his band was going to persuade us enough to let him sleep in there with us.

When we were driving back home after the movie, sensing that we were close to the cemetery again, my dad said ” Do you want to go to that cemetery?” I got really excited about going until he realized we were in the middle of nowhere and we were running out of gas, so we couldn’t go. How strange is it to have a fascination with graveyards. One only my father and I possess, I’m sure. We’ve frequented many abandoned graveyards in west Michigan together, many times with our pet dogs. What a way to bond, y’know? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my dad is weird. In a good way.

When I was in 7th grade, I was doing some homework in my room one night. My dad came in and said “Karen, you’re not going to school tomorrow. I’m calling in sick to work, and I’m calling your school and telling them you’re not going. We’re going to drive to Indiana and pick up some fireworks!!!”

So the next day we got in my dad’s red pickup and drove 3 hours to the border if Michigan/Indiana. The first warehouse with the tacky firework paint job we saw, we stopped and picked up A TON of fireworks. Those fireworks ended up lasting at least 2 years of camping trips and holidays (when you have such an abundance, you use them up like you have 2 weeks to live). I boasted to my friends about my adventurous day off from school and they were majorly jealous.

My dad was always a fan of doing something big for a little reason. A couple years ago, I came home to visit my parents. I asked where dad was, and my mom said “Oh, he’s in Chicago having a cup of coffee with his brother.” My uncle lives in Chicago, and my dad doesn’t get to see him that often. So one morning my dad woke up, called his brother, and started driving. Apparently they met at a coffee shop somewhere, hung out for an hour, and my dad drove home again. Actually this story may have been something that my dad was going to do, but something came up that day. But it definitely seems like something in my dad’s nature to do.

Another time my dad got a job at the movie theatre because he was bored. He just wanted a way to get through another cold Michigan winter a little faster, so he applied for a job at the Holland Star Theatre. This was back when everyone who worked there had to wear tuxedo-type uniforms. He looked rediculous. He would come home from work at his 9-5 factory job that he’s had for most of his life, eat supper with the family, and then put on the tux and scrape melted raisinets or dried puke off the floor and empty garbage cans. He refused to work any other job than the one that no one else wanted to do.

I can’t help but try to have the same outlook at life. It keeps things interesting. Sometimes i’ll tell people things about my dad and I don’t realize it’s weird until someone points it out. Did i mention he met the Smashing Pumpkins in a restaurant in Fennville? Just as the blond girl in the band was about to leave her purse behind, my dad raced after her and gave it back. (True Story!)

* GETTING DENIED WHEN TRYING TO RENT A CAR

Y’know, i was really excited about going on my trip. I had been stressing about it all week, to the point of having a semi-permanent stress headache. I left that morning with high hopes. Two buses and an hour and a half later, i was at the GR airport, waiting in line at the car rental agency place. I had never rented a car before, but was pretty sure how it was going to go down. I’ve been with people who had rented a car, and i did all my research and read the fine print on the website and thought i had everything i needed.

I walked up to the woman at the counter, told her my name and my reservation info. “Can i see your drivers license and a credit card, please?” is what she said, but what i heard was “please hand over your soul.” Because when i gave her my drivers license and a DEBIT CARD, her face changed into something ugly. She was like the mayor of Halloween town in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Her eyes twitched and her head spurted and twisted around and suddenly i was face to face with a goblin. “THIS IS NOT A CREDIT CARRRRD. THIS IS A DEBIT CARD.” Saying it in a tone like i didn’t understand English. “Yeah, but I have all the money in my bank account, and can’t you just run it as credit? Isn’t that the point of the two options with a debit card?” “NO. Unless you have a credit card, you can’t rent a car.” And just like that, my trip was cancelled. The image of me dancing like a mad woman at the reception of my friends wedding in Florida got replaced with me eating cinnamon rolls alone on my couch in my living room watching Hope Floats.

I walked out the doors and into a secluded part of the parking garage and just LOST IT. I did the quiet whimper. I did the quivering bottom lip. I cried so much that when i talked to my mom on the phone, she couldn’t understand anything i was saying. I cried for (I’m not kidding you) 2 1/2 hours. There were some breaks in there, but everything that i had been stressed about in the past week all came to the front of my brain and kept replaying itself over and over like a cd skipping.

While crying, i had to figure out a plan B.  My mom was helping me the whole time over the phone, and getting upset herself because my mom and I are the same person and we can’t help but be sad for each other.

She was looking for different places to rent out cars and i tried calling different friends who were over 25 to come and help me out. The whole time this is happening, people are walking past me, doing that thing where you pretend you don’t see that 27 year old girl with the red face and glistening tears dripping down her cheeks. I just did not care.

I rode the bus home with my head hung in shame for thinking a small square of plastic has made me miss one of the most important days of two of my friends lives.

note: i eventually found someone to rent a car in place of me.

*WATCHING HARRY POTTER .GIFS ON THE INTERNET

**warning: spoiler alerts**

.Gifs are like 4 second long video clips that are the size of a regular sized photo. You can put them places where you’d put photos, like on blogs and stuff like that. I frequently visit a website that has all these different Harry Potter .gifs. Sometimes they’re a little heartbreaking. It just makes you remember that part of the movie, and how it made you felt, and then you start comparing it to your own life, and then you start getting upset because harry potter is totally done and there aren’t any more books or movies to watch and be surprised at. Like the .gif where Lucious Malfoy says “Let’s just hope Harry Potter will always be around to save the day” and Harry says “Don’t worry…I will!” Or the one that shows harry potter as a 12 year old trying to get to platform 9 3/4 by going through the wall for the first time, and then it switches to when Harry is a 30 something year old and he’s helping his own kids get to platform 9 3/4. But the one that made me just straight up cry myself a river is the .gif where harry potter is in the woods. He’s about to die and he’s just accepted that he has lost and he WILL die. He had just opened up the resurrection stone and suddenly in front of him are both of his murdered parents that were killed when he was a baby, his godfather, Sirius Black, who had died by bellatrix lestrange’s spell in book 5, and Remus Lupin who had taught him everything about being a good wizard, who at that point, was still freshly dead from one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters.

They’re all standing in a circle around Harry, standing still, except his mother, who is simple lifting a hand to him, as if saying “Honey, you’ve done so well. We are so proud of you. It’s time to come join us.” This was the moment i would straight up get watery eyes while taking a shower or walking to work if i thought about it. If you haven’t been a part of the Harry Potter phenomenon up to this point, YOU JUST WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND.

*LOOKING AT PHOTO’S OF MY NEPHEWS HUGGING

I’m not the best with kids. Usually they drive me nuts and i try to get them as far away from me as possible. I was the worst babysitter ever. I’ve accidentally run over a little girls toes with a rocking chair before. I’ve let kids pour pee from a cup into the sink. But when April emailed me professional photographs of her two sons playing in and around a barn out in the country, hugging each other and picking flowers, i felt like every bad thing I’ve done in the world was melted away by just glancing at these angelic photo’s for a few moments. It was just the pure joy on their faces. The look of genuine, organic  happiness. Maybe sub-consciously I want to be a little boy playing in a bunch of hay or looking at my reflection for the first time in a pond. Whatever it is that I saw in those photos, there was no way I was gonna come out of it without crying a little.

*WHEN MY ROOMMATES PET RAT DIED

Rats are disgusting. I’ve never owned a rat myself, but I’ve seen them in radioactive sewers, Indiana Jones movies, and in a cage in my living room. Having a rat as a pet is the same as owning one of those lizards you see scampering around the entire state of Florida. They’re everywhere. It’s just ridiculous to own one as a pet. My roommate had a rat named William. Sometimes i’d sing “William it was really nothing” by the Smiths to him. He mostly stayed in the cage, but every once in a while, he’d run loose in the house.

Sometimes he’d get lost and we wouldn’t be able to find him. Sometimes i’d be watching a movie and suddenly I’d see William drag his “privates” over the remote control. Gross.

I never really cared much for him, but when he died, i was surprised to feel something pulling at my heart. My roommate and her boyfriend put William in a shoe box and walked out into the backyard to bury him. I was chopping up some vegetables for lunch, doing a good job of holding my tears in. I got the great idea of playing “Dust In The Wind” on the stereo in homage to William. I tried to think of funny things, like when my friend fell on the ice and somehow ripped her underwear in the process. I thought of the movie Dumb & Dumber. My roommate walked in the door, clearly upset. My tears fought harder. She walked past me, paused, then looked back, turning her neck to look me directly in the eyes. I lost it. Tears drizzled the carrots, broccoli, and onion i was chopping.

I have no way to end this column, except maybe by saying Stop giving me a hard time for crying at things! I can’t help if I feel emotional every time I watch  Beth gets a new piano in “Little Women,” or when I read the last chapter of “The Time Travelers Wife.” Crying is totally healthy and you should never have to suppress emotions. Just let ‘em go.

I was chowing down on some strawberries, when “The Thong Song” started playing on my headphones. The first time I downloaded it, it was funny. Every time afterward, I’d skip past it, no longer enjoying the novelty. Until now. I decided, instead of changing the song, I was going to turn the music up the furthest it would go, and jam along to it while I waited.

I was jolted into reality when suddenly, the bus was right in front of me, opening it’s doors to let me in! I stood up and searched around for my wallet, which seemed to have disappeared. I stepped inside the bus and mumbled “sorry…you caught me off guard…let me find my wallet a second…” to the bus driver. He motioned to have me step aside and collect myself, while he shut the doors and continued driving.

As I put my grocery bag to the side, I looked up and saw around 25 people silently staring at me. Then I realize: The thong song is still BLARING out of my headphones. I pretend I don’t care, to look cool, like I was one of those people who go in public places all the time with their music blastin’ outta their own headphones or their cell phones. I gave the driver what he needed and casually reached in my suddenly impossibly small pocket and turned down the music.

I’ve had embarrassing moments for as long as I can remember. Some involve manure, roller skating and  jnco jeans, or getting my pants pulled down to expose my “days of the week” underwear.

But my most embarrassing moment happened when no one else noticed.

I was sixteen, and it was winter in the mitten state. There is one superb hill in Zeeland to sled on, at a local elementary school. My mom drove Renee, my sister, and Tonya, my best friend to go sledding on the hill.

We didn’t have any decent snow pants in the house, so most times I’d just go without and be freezing cold in my wet pants. My mom had a pair of bulky snow pants, that had  suspenders and little straps on the bottom to put over your heels so the pants won’t ride up your leg and get snow inside. The pants were red, so every time someone was looking for them, we just ask “where are the Santa pants?”

I decided to wear the Santa pants sledding this night with Renee and Tonya. I think we had spaghetti that night for supper, and it wasn’t settling well in my stomach. Of course I didn’t start feeling the  effects until after mom dropped us off at the hill. I started getting a little panicky, because I soon realized there was absolutely no bathroom anywhere. I went down the hill a couple of times, thinking I could suppress it, to no avail. I needed to get to a bathroom PRONTO.

I got to the point where I didn’t even care if people got suspicious of me having diarrhea.  As I walked to a neighboring house, I went through our future conversation in my head. “Oh y’ know….I just drank a bunch of lemonade at supper and I have to pee” or ” I may have bitten the inside of my cheek….is it ok if I check it out in the bathroom? Oh, and since I’m here, I may as well go the bathroom.”

When I knocked on the door, something happened. My stomach got peaceful. By the time someone answered the door, I felt like I could possibly make it the rest of the night without having to go. “May I have a glass of water? I have a really dry mouth.” The woman walked away, and came back with a glass of water. I drank some, thanked them, and left.

Almost as soon as she shut the door, the stomach pains came back. No way would I be able to knock on that door again. I’m sixteen, not nine! I have a reputation to uphold! So I did what Atreyu would have done if Artex wasn’t such a fast horse and could get him to any surrounding bathroom before the evil “Nothing” captured them: I found a dark windowsill in the school. Thankfully it was an elementary school, so all their windows are actually 3 feet from the actual window, made to have little kids jump out of them in case of emergency.

I did my business and soon realized that I had absolutely nothing to use as toilet paper. Not even a dead leaf lying around. Just tons and tons of snow. Here’s where the Santa pants come in handy.: All I did was pull up my pants. I knew there was a fierce smell omitting from my pants, but the Santa pants were so thick and padded, that you didn’t even notice!

I don’t know how much time passed from my “accident” to when my mom picked me back up. All I remember from the rest of that night is getting home and running to the downstairs bathroom (the “long term” bathroom, as my family liked to call it) and my sister calling from outside the door asking if I wanted any hot chocolate.

So I know that you’re reading this story and it doesn’t seem all that embarrassing to you. But you have to imagine a time in your life when image was everything, every little thing that went even slightly wrong was a BIG DEAL, and things like pooping in a windowsill wasn’t “punk rock”– it was just straight up disgusting.  Plus, living in Zeeland was a time warp in itself. I don’t think I wrote in my diary about this incident, I was so embarrassed of someone reading about it! But I’m telling it now, 10 years later, to hopefully remind y’all of your own embarrassing stories so you can laugh about them again. And hopefully tell me, to make me feel better for telling a story like this on the internet.

Lately, I’ve been so disenchanted by the world in general.  I get in bouts of sadness when I think of the world around us and how its crumbling into a depressed mass of fat people. I’m not going to get into most of that, because it’ll just make me bummed out, and I don’t want anyone sending a pity party to my house.

Cell phones. Yes, this is what I’m so let down about. I can’t hang out with a single person, other than a select few, without them always whipping out a cell phone and moving their fingers around on the little plastic contraption while I’m talking to them. Sometimes I would eat out with a bunch of  friends . I would look around at all of us at the table, and every single person, except one, had their head down, punching in text messages or checking their facebook or whatever people do on their smart phones instead of conversing with the other friends at the table!  Right in front of them! We’ve arrived at an age where we’d rather communicate with someone through technology than by moving our lips and forming sentences and staring in their eyes, face to face.

I don’t have any clever way to breech this subject without it sounding mean and “holier than thou.”  I feel I can’t even write out this column in a way to make sense, or sound smart; and I’m sure people will leave messages pointing out all the loopholes that justifies the action, but it’s just something that I have to get out: Please stop playing with your phone all the time! Life is what happens while you update your status!  YOU ARE AT THE BEACH, PUT DOWN THE PHONE AND MAKE A SAND CASTLE! Try pretending your phone is a landline and leave it at home. Use it only for emergencies, or if you’re in the waiting room at the dentist, or in a check-out line on black friday. Think of these questions before you whip out your phone: Is someone talking to me right now ?  Could I be doing something productive? Could I be striking up a conversation with that babe over there? Does this place have Wi-Fi?  (just kidding.)

I personally find it extremely rude to be texting while someone is talking to you.  Please be courteous and show some respect.

Obviously I’m not trying to tell  you all that I’m above all this. I text, I have the internet on my phone, yadda yadda yadda. But I can understand when I’m in a socializing setting, and when I’m at my house eating supper by myself.

We all have our own ways for dealing with social awkwardness. I understand that playing around on your phone is a way of dealing with that; and every person is different in how they cope. Well, if you can’t handle being at a show and not sit in the corner playing Tetris, then don’t go. Give your $5 to someone else who’s going for the social experience of seeing bands play.

I’m beyond the point where I care if people get mad at me if they feel personally attacked by my message.   I’ve thrown my hands in the air in surrender, and will now go and get some string and a couple of tin cans and pass my time in complete darkness..

She liked doing nothing on sundays. When I was younger, she took to wearing sweatpants on days like this, but the past couple of years she started to wear dark denim and a knitted sweater, or in the summer, a tank top. She always liked making clothes for my Barbie’s growing up, and when I was in my “I want everything” phase, she made me a home-made pound puppy (remember those?) that I still have.

But let me tell you, I was feeling out of sorts. Just mere hours before, I had left a part of me in Chicago. Believe me, it’s not easy to simply leave a part of you in another city.

I spent the weekend in the presence of other people like me. It’s as simple as that. I watched an episode of “Little People, Big World” once. In the episode, the family went to a conference a state or two away for little people. They spent a certain amount of days hanging out with people who could relate to each other. At the end of the episode, I remember one of the family members saying ” I hate leaving. I’m leaving all the people who I relate to. I don’t want to go back to the real world where I have to deal with my “normal life” problems. This is where I belong.”

I hear ya. I wish more people were into writing zines. Or I guess I wish I had some friends who I could really relate to with writing. I was excited about going to the Chicago zine fest for a long time. I wanted to be around people who liked what I liked. As the weekend went on, I realized that these people, I think, understood me more.

I was at a Q & A workshop with Aaron Cometbus. Someone asked him how he gets inspired to write. He said “its just a nagging voice in my head. Its the same voice that says to do good things, its the voice that says  “jump” and its also the voice that says ‘kiss her.’ You keep ignoring it and ignoring it, until finally you give in.” I sat  listening in a plastic chair in the audience and it just came over me like a wave. I understood completely. This is what I have to do.

Now I know that this column is probably boring to anyone who doesn’t enjoy writing as a hobby. But can’t I just go off on a rant once in a while and talk about what makes me happy? If you have something that you feel you just HAVE to do,  you don’t want to not do it. You can’t stop yourself from doing it. You are a slave to it. That’s what writing is to me.

When I went to Chicago, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who were just like me. I picked up my first Cometbus zine 7 years ago in Florida. Now, I was standing right next to its author, both of us with our arms crossed, watching someone butcher a Journey song on Karaoke. Cindy Crabb, who writes the zine “Doris” stood in front of a room packed with people and cried as she read a story out of her zine about a friend killing herself.  For Cindy, writing in her zine was how she coped with the loss of her friend. There was no other solution to how she was going to go on living.

On the second day, I had a table set where I had my zines displayed. Throughout the day, I sold more than half my zines.  My tablemate told me that someone came up to my table and said “oh, so THIS is the zine that everyone was talking about!” Just hearing that made my day. To write because you have to is one thing, but to have other people actually like it? Amazing.

I’ve kept a journal/diary since I was 8 years old. My first entry was on Christmas eve, 1994. I wrote about how I saw the movie “Junior” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and how I wished I would get the board game “13 Dead End Drive” for Christmas. I still write in a journal, and could only wish my biggest problem was not getting something for Christmas.

Like my mom, I enjoy doing things. For her, sewing is how she deals with life. She could have a bad day at work, or get in a fight with my dad, but then go in her sanctuary and work on one of her many sewing projects, and it calms her down. I like to write things down. I also like to make mix tapes and bake desserts as a form of therapy.

What you need to do is pay attention to things in life. Notice when, after doing something, you feel much better than how you felt when you started. These things, no matter how ridiculous they may be, are the things that you need to focus on. They may save your life one day.

I always tell people that my fascination with death comes from my not having much experience with it. I’m lucky for not having to deal with it as a (young) young person. In fact, the first time I dealt with death happened in a set of three, which, I guess is no surprise.

When the September 11 attacks happened, that day, no one was thinking about how horrible our government was. No one was thinking about how everything could be blamed on George W. Bush. We got in our jammies and watched things unfold on the tv. We had moose tracks ice cream and told each other our story about where we were when he heard the news. And when we went to bed that night, a great deal of people didn’t. As a human being, that has to effect you.

Not even a month after the attacks, a guy who was in my grade got killed the night of the homecoming dance. Everyone found out as they were walking through the school doors in their fancy dresses and corsages and their makeup tediously tended to for the past few hours. Needless to say, no one stayed around. A couple weeks later, i had my first ever panic attack, brought on by the fear of thinking i was going to die in my room while my family was upstairs watching the show “Survivor.” My mom had me breath in a paper lunch bag in the kitchen while the commercials were on.

The third was when my grandpa died on christmas eve. We kinda knew that he was going to die, so it wasn’t a totally shocker, but still, very sad. I remember just sitting around all day with my sisters on christmas, watching tv, my parents not even home.

Surprisingly enough, these things didn’t effect me as much as one hot day in Florida.

I had spent the last 8 months living in central Florida, volunteering at the American Red Cross. We had just gotten word that not only one, but TWO hurricanes were headed our way. The thing about Hurricanes that differs from tornados is that you know about them for days before they actually hit, and you can actually tell where they’ll land, too. Clouds that form the outer bands of the hurricane start showing up as long streaks of billowy cocaine lines in the sky, and as the days go on, they move faster and faster. So the waiting around, preparing yourself and your home, getting extra food, making sure your family and friends are taken care of is enough to make you a nervous wreck.

Two days before the hurricanes came, I called my sister for her birthday. My dad answered the phone, chatted with me, told me my mom had to tell me something, and then handed the phone over to her, instead of my sister (whom I wanted to talk to in the first place).

“Karen….”
When my mom made that first pause after saying my name, I knew immediately something was wrong.

“Meesha…..”

Meesha was our dog. I had grown up with her, and was my closest friend. She was the one that I talked to when I was 9 and was scared to go to my first day of fifth grade. She was there when I was 18 and had just broken up with my first serious boyfriend. She was laying on my bed the last night I slept at my parents house before I moved to Florida, too. For most of the year I was gone, I had this looming bummer attitude towards myself for forgetting to say goodbye to her before I left for Florida. It felt like how Kevin’s mom in Home Alone felt when she finally realizes that she left her son at home.

So when my mom said her name, I knew it was too late. I immediately started crying, and didn’t stop till my body broke down and fell asleep.

Meesha had been let out on the deck, to sunbathe, like usual, but decided to take a walk to the front yard and eventually got hit by a car. The thing that sucks the most is that the person that hit her didn’t even stop. We know this because one of our neighbors witnessed it all happen. It happened on my sisters birthday too, which was ironic, because Renee got Meesha on her birthday all those years ago.

The way I felt about Meesha dying was as if someone had taken a butter knife and rubbed the serrated edge enough against my skin till it bled, then poured lemon juice on the cuts. I didn’t know someone could feel so deep an emotion, especially towards a dog.

I can’t help but be self concious when i sleep in beds with people. I’m not talking about sex here, i’m talking like ” i live in the west side and its 3 am and there’s 3 feet of snow on the ground and i only have knock-off converses to walk home in” situations.

Like when you’re in 7th grade; you spend the night with your kinda new friend, who just happens to live on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. You wake up a million times in the night because you’re sleeping in a water bed that your friend inherited from her parents when they got a clue and realized that waterbeds suck and aren’t comfortable at all. You wake up suffocating because you’re lodged between the side of the bed, and the sack of water that’s supposed to consist of the bed. Outside, you hear the distant screaming of cows being slaughtered by your friends dad and older brother. There will be food for dinner tonight!

You wake up with bed hair. You call your mom after breakfast and she picks you up and you cry on the way home because you’re so relieved you aren’t surrounded by manure and vicious dogs who chase your car for a half mile anymore.

Once you get into the big leagues, its different. Once drinking enters the picture, you’re no longer playing “Sorry:” you’re playing ” Strip Parcheezi.”

A couple of summers ago, i rented out a room in this huge house on wealthy street with 4 GVSU women athletes. Needless to say, we had nothing in common. I told them i had a food allergy and that’s why i didn’t eat mac and cheese every day like they did. The day that i came over to look at the place, the girl who was moving out of the room was there, showing me all the different rooms and kitchen and what not. Sarah was moving to chicago for the summer semester and didn’t want to pay for what she wasn’t using here in grand rapids,.

A couple of weeks later, i moved in. Things were going fine and relatively easy going in the house until about a month into my stay at the place. I heard distant discussions (if someone talking wasn’t in the same room as you, it sounded like they were on the other side of a warehouse, that’s how big the house was) about sarah coming back for a weekend visit. This is always weird because you know they’re gonna want to go in your room to see “what you’ve done with the place.”

So the weekend came, and i was out till late friday night. I crawled up to my room and into my bed, noticing that none of my roommates were home, probably out partying with sarah.

I woke up at around 7 am like i always do because I have a bladder the size of a pea and have to go to the bathroom twice before i get up for real for real.

I walked down the long hallway to the bathroom that has a claw-foot tub, and a shower, along with a huge closet and could also probably fit my bed in it as well. Upon opening the door, i see our guest, sarah, in a tank top, tucked up in the fetal position on the rug in the center of the bathroom. She’s kinda twitching and mumbling. I ask her if she’s ok, and she says “yes” in a quivering voice. One of the perks of choosing not to drink is feeling good knowing i’ll never have to experience anything as bad as throwing up all night and then sleeping on a wet-pukey rug all night with no blanket.

I obviously can’t pee, and the downstairs toilet is out of commission, so i just crawl back into bed.

About 3 minutes later, my door bursts open. Sarah walks in and slams it shut, and immediately jumps in my bed and crawls under the blankets with me. This is awkward. Who is this girl. I can see her thong sticking out of her trampy jeans and the dried puke crusties in the corners of her mouth. Her face is 6 inches away from mine, sharing MY pillow with me.

I scootch over a little bit, y’ know, giving her some room, and stare at the ceiling. I really don’t want to get up right now because the bed is warm and i like being in my room and all my stuffs in here and maybe if i knew how to work the remote on the tv i would go downstairs, but i don’t. I lay in bed for 20 minutes or so, trying to get to sleep, unsuccessfully in the end.

I get up and take a shower and decide to walk very slowly to work. Thankfully i had the morning shift, so i could’ve only really been able to sleep for an hour and a half more if there wasn’t any, um, interruption.

I’m groggy all day, but kind of interested in what will happen when i get home from work at 2.

So i walk home. I get in the door and one of my roommates comes up to me and says “oh my gosh, karen. Sarah had to leave earlier, but she is SOOO SORRY ABOUT LAST NIGHT! She is so embarrassed!”

I brush it off like it’s nothing, but make a mental note to get some sort of lock for my door.

So I had a situation the other week that involved the unplanned event that I speak of. For weeks it seemed as if my eyes were getting lazy. They didn’t feel like trying to focus on things that were far away. I couldn’t see the velvet underground poster in my living room from my kitchen. When I closed my eyes to sleep at night, I could feel my eyes still doing the “focus” movement from attempting to focus on far away things all day and being unsuccessful.

So I took the eye test and sure enough, I wasn’t crazy- I really was blind. The fancy eye place in the mall told me that they could take me out back, make me wear the clown outfit from the movie “It“, throw dead turtles at me, and dump a bucket of cow semen on my head and they’d give me a pair of glasses for free. Well, they didn’t say that per se, but when they told me the total cost for a pair of glasses I was looking at, I asked for any alternatives to paying the hundreds of dollars.

So i left empty handed and a couple of days later went to Goodwill Optical. The guy that was working that day was very chipper and was doing a good job of helping me out with picking a pair of glasses that looked good on me. There was a strange woman there as well who would give her opinion on how particular pairs of glasses looked. I appreciated both of their help, since i had no knowledge of how the world of glasses worked. So I picked out a pair and went to pay for them.

Again, it was a lot of money. Over $100, in fact. But it was better than anywhere else I went. I paid most of it, and left the store owing $6 dollars because it was an unplanned occurrence and I hadn’t expected to be dishing out buckets of money for something.

Fast forward to when I got the phone call that my glasses were in and I go to pick them up. The same man gave me my glasses and told me that I didn’t owe him the $6 dollars anymore. Apparently the woman who was helping me came up the man after I had left and told him that she wanted to pay my ENTIRE bill, not even asking how much it would be. When he said “she’s already paid for most of it. All but $6” the man told me that she was actually mad that I had already paid for it, but that she’d pay the $6 dollars. Now how often does that happen?