Tuesday, October 04, 2005

pettiness brings me great joy

So there's this annoying girl with an annoying blog. Apparently she's sort of famous. If the world of blogs were high school, she'd be the class president and I'd be outside on the jungle gym smoking Marlboro Lights and possibly wearing smudged eyeliner. In other words, it's my duty to mock her and point out that she writes the most contrived, patronizing shit I've ever read. I don't fault her for being serious sometimes, but she writes about her life with a somberness of Tori Amos proportions. She always has 47 comments tearfully praising her supposed eloquence. So here's my tribute to her. It'd be funnier if you knew who I was writing about, but you'll just have to take my word on it. Besides, her drama club friends would totally kick my ass.

The laminator jammed today. I had put together a nice little autumn activity for my students: pumpkins, apples, red and yellow leaves, assembled with love and rubber cement, edges trimmed just so. The laminator didn't do the right thing. Instead of coating my work with a transparent seal, it choked and swallowed and spit it out. I unplugged it and that was that.

It made me think of you. You, who always wanted everything just so. I wanted to be perfect for you. I tried to keep everything smooth, creaseless. Edges trimmed just so. But it was just a glossy version of myself, a Kodak. Maybe I wasn't doing the right thing by deceiving you, by not being transparent. I think of you when nothing around me is perfect and I just want to pull the plug. You and the surfaces we were never able to smooth over.

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