My Own Brand Of Legendary

     I reached a new level of stupidity a few weeks back. Several Fridays ago, I was making lunch for my dad, happy and free. My emotions and mental energy were wrapped around a 2002 miniseries on the life of Napoleon. At one point I came across an unusually stubborn package of liverwurst. Now, I am not a deft person, particularly with knives. As I pulled my kitchen knife up to slice the plastic, I failed to notice that the knife edge was facing up, and I was pulling that edge towards my face. Nor did I realize that I was using the sharpest knife in my house. So, like any normal person, I was shocked when the knife suddenly popped up through the plastic and smacked into my own dumb face. 

    MY OWN FACE TRIED TO COMMIT HARA-KIRI.

    I stood there for a moment in shock, eyes closed, before reaching up to feel my face. My hand came down covered with blood, and I froze. From the outside, I seemed merely stunned, but for a brief moment there I wondered if I'd stabbed myself in the eye, or perhaps chopped the upper half of my face off. 

   I steeled myself and felt around again. My eyeball was still there, but I could make out a deep cut above my eyebrow. Still holding the knife, I ran to the bathroom. As I prodded the gash in my forehead, I wondered what sort of opportunity this might hold. What amazing stories might I weave around this new scar? What excuses might I make, what yarns might I spin to make this story seem less stupid?

     I couldn't think of any. 
     As my family and friends found out what the lame half-inch-long cut above my eyebrow was from, I had nothing to tell them but the truth. They weren't surprised at any of it, except for the apparent small miracle that I hadn't actually hit my eye. 

     It was then that I realized that, through years of experience, I have built up a repertoire of klutziness. So much so that I can't faze anyone who knows me well, unless it involves an amputation or a wake. And somehow that kind of inspired me. I may not be a hardcore falcon-wielding lone ranger with an eyepatch, a source of lores and legends, but I guess I have my own legacy. I'm as graceful as an undead manatee. With all the force of a great typhoon. So I have that going for me: my own brand of legendary. 

Dream big, guys.

words and art copyright 2013 by Sabrina Smith

I Hate It When That Happens

     When my bedtime rolls around, Mr. Sandman generally has better places to be. I've had trouble falling asleep since I was pretty young. My sleep patterns go through cycles. I fall asleep at gradually later and later times, and every few months I end up staying up all night, and it resets itself. This happened again a few weeks ago, on a Saturday night. I tried not to pay attention to the clock, but I couldn't help but notice the sky getting lighter and lighter. I kept telling myself it wasn't too late yet, and that sweet, sweet repose would soon fall upon me. But I lied.

 

 

 

 

 

      As 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 came and went, I drank a pot of coffee and watched the sun rise over the valley, something I hadn't seen for a long time. I decided to stay awake until evening and fall asleep at a decent time, rather than sleep all day. Every time I felt remotely drowsy, I sucked down another cup of coffee. Things started to feel so surreal, like my brain was separate from my body and the things I said and did.

 

     I stumbled around my house in frustration. Finally, I resorted to a can of Full Throttle and took my sister to Target.

     I felt pretty alert, so we went to see Oblivion at our local discount theatre, where we sat in a dark, empty room for half an hour. I started to feel the energy escape me with with the same ease with which convicts escape Arkham, and by the time the movie began, I was barely hanging on.

   

     

     The movie was longer than I'd expected. We walked into the main entrance of the theatre. I was so tired.

 

 

 

 

     At this point my sister and I both decided that it was probably best if I didn't drive. I called our mom and told her I was too tired to drive and asked her to pick us up.

 

 

        My sister and I sat in my car while we waited. We both marveled at my weirdness. It became less and less funny the longer I thought about it.

 

 

      On the entire ride home, I cried. I pondered the deep questions of the world. I laughed at my own jokes. I chewed my nails and thought the world was angry with me. I thought I was utterly insane, and to make things worse, I couldn't stop crying. Every time I stopped, some new tragic thing would come to mind, and I would resume sobbing in my Honey Bunches of Oats. 

     I never want to feel that weird again. Since that day, I've been trying to go to sleep earlier, keeping distractions out of my room at night, and waking up at the same time every day. But in all seriousness, even though my addled mind was under the impression my world was ending when I finally fell asleep that night, when I woke up to go to work the next morning, my first thought was, "This has to go on the blog." As long as you people get a chuckle out of it, the whole experience was well worth it. 

     Now go to bed, you noobs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usually This Is Healthy

     Today we're gonna have a guest writer, ladies and gents. My mom, when she was sixteen.

     Recently she found an old English paper marked 2/2/87, nicely typed. It was about one of her few running experiences. She's 16 at the time of its writing. It sounds eerily like...me.

     I have also drawn visual aids to assist your imaginations as you read. Here you go.

Stefanie Black

College Comp.

#3, Essay

2/2/87

     I like to be a spectator at most sports, and I even enjoy particiating in most of them, but if there is one sport I detest above all, it is jogging. Jogging, to me, is not a sport in the true sense of the word. You see, the word "sport" usually implies something that people would do for enjoyment as well as for recreation. Therefore, jogging does not qualify as a sport, although I admit that there are those insane fanatics who do indeed derive some pleasure from relentlessly jarring their bodies down miles of road every day. I must be the exception. They say that jogging's good for circulation, respiration, and perspiration, but I've seen whole rooms full of people getting more stimulation watching the second half of the Super Bowl.

     I learned firsthand about the wonder and exhilaration of jogging while visiting my favorite aunt in California one year. I also experienced the feeling of completely jellied knees, and of having displaced various internal organs, some of which have never fully recovered.

     To begin with, I see no reason why any normal person should, while on vacation, feel a need to atone for their sins, but California is a strange land. Thus, I found myself donning the uniform of a jogger and blindly following my aunt's "exercise routine" at 10:00 a.m. 

"Believe me, Stef," she told me enthusiastically, "you won't believe how great it is to be out there, jogging down a peaceful country road, early in the morning. The view is also really incredible--you'll love it!" I wished we could just drive down to see this great view.

     Before leaving, however, I learned that the conscientous jogger will not jog without first warming up with a "few calisthenics," I figured out that this tradition was started to either a) put off the moment of departure, or, b) to get the body into a state of semi-shock beforehand.

     A "few calisthenics" and a half-hour later, I was ready to take on Jane Fonda--after I regained consciousness.

     "Now," said my aunt triumphantly, "we're ready to go!" I started to ask her if she'd mind terribly if I stayed home and kept track of Donahue for her, but she ignored my pleas and helped me "briskly" walk the half-mile driveway to the road where, she promised, I'd find relaxation and contentment. At the main road, after looking around briefly, I announced:  

     She said it was okay, and that they were just down the road a piece. Now, understand that there is no known measurement for a "piece," and in this case it stood for about ten miles. I doubted I'd ever see them again.

     On that cheery note, we set off down what really did look like a peaceful, country road. However, contrary to popular myths, California is not only a land of sunshine and freeways, but of avid country drivers, and the left-over monsoons from Asia. It was probably one of these little monsoons which caused the twenty-foot-long-two-feet-deep "puddles."

      I thought that the land of 1,000 lakes was Michigan or someplace like that. I figured that with the new average of 1.6 cars per minute and forty-five of those killer puddles for every mile, within three minutes I'd start growing seaweed on the north side of my sweatsuit.

     Undaunted by the continual stream of cars and water, my aunt kept going on and on. I began to notice a small pain in my side and decided that it was probably the cause of the spots I was now seeing, but being brave is part of being a good sport. I think my aunt's body was numbed to the abuse it was being subjected to, because she found it possible to keep up a running conversation (literally) with me. Probably trying to keep me from passing out. 

    I made a choking sound that meant a lot of things and kept jogging.

     The miles rolled on by until, at some blessed, unseen command she stopped running. From behind, concentrating on the "exhilaration" of all this, I stumbled into her outstretched arm and collapsed facedown on the grass.

     I stayed there awhile, and then noticed that the buzzing I'd been hearing was my aunt's voice. She was still pointing toward some distant misty hills covered with sheep and silhouetted nicely against the returning monsoon clouds. 

     Her eyes gleamed. 

    I stood up and focused on one sheep until it stopped spinning and the scene was no longer in black and white. "Yes," I said between gasping breaths, "Nice. How do we get home?"

     She shrugged flippantly. 

     I thanked her for the experience and crawled home alone.







Words and art by Sabrina Smith copyright 2013

I Was That Kid

     Not long ago, I was pouring orange juice and looking back on my wild youth. The first grade was an especially dangerous time. The kendama of the day was Betty Spaghetti, collectible bendy dolls with long rope hair from McDonald's. There were three different dolls, and I had all of them, as did most of the other girls in the class, except for the girls who always went to Wendy's. Every day, everyone would bring their dolls and play. The three bossiest girls would make the others go away, since there were only three different dolls, and two of one kind was forbidden. The bossiest of these girls always got the pink doll, whom we named Miranda (I always got the blue one, which I named Kitty). Then, we would play. It would begin with Miranda and her posse, Kitty and Hannah, having food and talking about boys. Miranda would then tell us we were going shopping at the imaginary mall, and btw guys, Kitty and Hannah were paying for all of it because Miranda was nice enough to be their friend. Kitty and Hannah promptly staged a coup against their tyrannical BFF. Without fail, whoever had the Miranda doll would stop the game, take away all the dolls, and leave. She later would be taken to the principal's office for not giving the dolls back to their owners. This happened nearly every day for a week, until Betty Spaghettis were banned from the school. The dolls from Wendy's were never banned, however.There was always a war going on between the Wendy's girls and the McDonald's girls, and many of the McDonald's clan were sorely tempted to cross over. We lost a few good souls to Wendy that week. No one was safe. You had to watch yourself.

     We were all lost in our own little worlds, as many kids are. We didn't care whether we were invisible to anyone but each other. It was a fairly small PK-12 Christian school, much like the one where I attend school now. The younger students at my school are not invisible to us. If my shy, freakishly quiet first-grade self had known that the high schoolers--nay, even the third graders--were aware of my existence, I would have been mortified. I realized not long ago that not only did the entire student body know who I was, but I was also a bit infamous after certain events went down in the first grade. I was That Kid.

     As aforementioned, I was very shy and very quiet. I was short and gangly and wore clothes from Other Mothers. I had a perpetual half-asleep perma-grin and classic Smith ears. I'd also cut off most of the front of my hair when I was little, so I had massive bangs that reached halfway around my head. I was that weird little girl who'd stare into the middle distance when people talked. For illustrative purposes, here's my school picture.

     This pretty much what I looked like all the time. I could have been furious when they took that picture. Or jubilant. I wouldn't know. I only had, like, one and a half facial expressions.

     I hardly spoke to anyone except my friend Amanda, and a kid I will call TJ. TJ was a stout boy with a crew-cut and a devastating insult for anyone who happened to have the misfortune of being not TJ. Any time I spoke to him, it was to fling a stinging comeback in his direction. He deflected it by crossing his arms across his moobs and screaming "COOTIES SHIELD" at the top of his lungs.

     I mostly remember TJ because he was the first person to talk to me on the first day of school.

     This moment ignited a longstanding enmity between me and TJ that lasted for the next four years. Everyone in our class thought we were in love with each other. Looking back, I can see why. We often sat together in class, trying to one-up each others' mad RoseArt skills. Sometimes we'd "race" each other on the swings at recess, trying to reach the highest altitude first. I always insisted on being a pony/tiger during these races. We would attribute our opponent's slowness to their gender, or that they were acting like a pony/tiger and if our swings' trajectories even remotely lined up, we'd shriek, "Get out of my shower!" because it was the only true course of action one could take in such a duel.


     One one of these racing days, TJ and I noticed a group of big kids (4th graders were terrifying, tall, ancient sages to us) out with a few younger kids on the football field. Long story short, we saw some pretty aggressive physical bullying that day. I went home very upset, and my mom called the school.
     The next morning, the principal announced a rally. The entire school filed into the gym, even the junior highers and high schoolers--creatures so ancient I had actually doubted their very existence. My principal, who looked like Tammy Faye Bakker, took my hand and pulled me to my feet. She told me to point out the boys I'd seen hurting people yesterday. Everyone was watching me. I panicked. I only recognized one boy, who was sitting with two other fourth grade boys. I pointed him out.

     The principal accused all three boys of bullying and sent them to each class to apologize. I tried to tell my teacher that two of the boys had done nothing wrong. I don't think I got the point across.

     Later that day, the entire school was told to go outside and march laps around the football field for as long as the teachers thought necessary. They said it was because bullying had occurred, and that I had not only been the one to point it out, but that I had also lied about who was involved.

     Being an oblivious 6-year-old, I happily marched around and picked dandelions. It didn't occur to me that we were being punished, and that it was because of me.

     So I wasn't exactly invisible in the first grade. In fact, everyone knew who I was. I guess I had a kind of notoriety that I was unaware of until a few years ago, when I ran into TJ, my old nemesis, who told me about it. I was That Kid, who messed up everyone's day one Tuesday in October, and I didn't even know it.

     As I stood there in my kitchen with my orange juice, pondering this, my inner, shy first-grade self cringed. Then, feeling nostalgic, I pulled out my first grade pictures, and cringed again.

Words and art copyright 2013 by Sabrina Smith

Almost Heroic

        Being sick is remarkably effective in getting me to write a blog post. Combine a stomach flu with the additional encouragement of my cats and BAM! Post.

       I realize I haven't written about my cats much recently, oddly enough. I'm kind of a cat person. When I see a cat, I lose track of all interaction or sacredness of the moment and start chasing it around, desperately wanting to love the kitteh. I've always wanted one of those ridiculously luvvy-duvvy cats that cuddle with anything that moves and eventually fuse onto you.

        But my cats will do.

        Louis, my older cat, is essentially the perfect feline, mainly because he's only slightly less active than a brick and he has the gloriously toned body of a hairy pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           And then there's Jack. Jack's about a year and a half old, but he's not really a cat. He is a mutant beast, part squirrel, part dog, part chupacabra, trapped within a fuzzy, shock-orange body. He doesn't really know how to manage cuddles, or whether or not he wants them.

        However, one thing can be said for Jack. He's almost heroic. He fancies showers to be wicked acid chambers, and tries to save me from the bathroom every time I take one. I can hear the sound of him trying to pry open the door, even over the sound of my in-shower tribute to Adele. It sounds like he's trying to dismantle the hinges so he can burst in and save me. Or maybe he's trying to kill whatever foul beast is singing "Skyfall" as wonderfully off-key as I can.

        As soon as I open the door, he bursts in and tries to get me to pick him up, jogs with me to my room, and proceeds to try to kill my feet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

        He seriously needs to get his priorities together and pick a side. Since we first brought him home, he's been bipolar. He spent the first week hiding under our Christimas tree, squeaking at Louis and trying to figure out why all these big-faced oafs were cooing at him. Louis generally stayed away from everybody, since the Christmas magic had worn off a little early. It was pretty magical, by the way. I would take Jack up to my room and watch him sleep on my lap beneath the radioactive glow of my hideous white-and-neon Christmas tree as I contemplated the precious things in life, like pizza. I guess we nurtured his-self-esteem a little too much, because one day, he snapped.

         

    Thank his lucky star's he's not ugly. If he wasn't an orange mound of fabulousness, his renovations in our house's interior design and the occasional pony ride would have gone far less swimmingly than they have.

 

 

 

 

 

 
      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

words and artwork copyright 2013 by Sabrina Smith