Off the Record

While currently in the process of discovering what it really means to be a grown-up, I've found that parties are good indicators of difference between "us" and "them." As a "young person," we're prone to buy chips and Oreos, 24-packs of Natural Light and bags of ice for our fifths of Wild Turkey. We're unlikely to supply any wine, much less in wine glasses, and it's rare that any fresh fruit would be available to complemet fancy mixed drinks. We usually play video games or watch You Tube clips on someone's Mac, provided the wireless is working, and take obnoxious yet arty pictures with our digital cameras. We talk about school or the latest civil injusttice. We sit on floors, staring up at our friends perched on cushion-less couches or random crates that once held textbooks in our dorm rooms. Drinking occurs fast, if not furiously, and no one sips on water because we'd much prefer to not get up to get a glass and risk losing our space we've so well maintained on the floor. 

Feeling quite extraordinary after a concert tonight in the Loop, I asked some friends to walk down to the Palomino Lounge with me. I'd never been there, but had heard great things about it, as it was a bar in the Loop East that was just like a Northside establishment. After a bit of coaxing they followed me, but we were soon stopped by a city policeman, a mere 2 blocks inside his area. "Can I ask where you kids are going?" "The Palomino Lounge," said Adam. "Really?! I don't know if I'd go down there..." he responded. "Why not?" we asked him. "It's an all-black bar," he said, "we get reports of intoxication from that place." "You get reports of intoxication at white bars too, don't you?" I asked, completely enraged by his comment. "Listen, I'm just trying to watch out for you, that's all. Do what you want," he said, then drove away. He left us there feeling both deserted yet determined to accomplish our goal. We walked into the lounge and received a warm greeting from a woman outside smoking and the bartender inside. A woman at a table came up to me and asked if it was going to just be the four of us because,if so, she had a table all set up for us to sit at. We got our drinks (mine a northside pour of Canadian Mist and soda water) and sat at the high table while Adam chose some songs that the entire bar danced to as we sat there watching, talking and enjoying the fact that we were 23 year-old kids sitting at a bar where not even a city police officer has the guts to step into. "It's an all-black bar," was what he said. So what, dude. So. What.  

With 90 other people, I graduated from a small Catholic high school in Alton; I had a handful of friends, and about 85 acquaintances. I never expected to go to my reunions until I thought that I could potentially write about it and actually get PAID for complaining about it or praising it or ranting about it. So, with an open mind, I will be attending my Five Year high school reunion...notebook in hand.

 

 

This morning I made blue corn pancakes in the shape of what my dad claimed to be the various counties in New Mexico. We ate them on the porch, honey and butter resting on the ledge next to our lawn chairs. We drank coffee and talked about the world dying due to the extinction of bees. Then I forgot the word for Alzheimer's, describing it as, "that disease where you forget things." 

Life should be full of adventures; especially the kind that happen when you go home to Alton on a whim, decide to take a walk in your old stomping grounds and run across a graduation party whose guest of honor you remember seeing in diapers. An adventure where everyone shrieks at you, screaming, "Oh my gosh! You look so good! You're so skinny!" and you end up walking away smelling like everyone at the party because they all hugged you about 5 times each. An adventure where the dad offers you a beer and you smile, thinking about when he was your second father, driving you and his daughter from basketball practice out for ice cream in the 7th grade. An adventure where you sit and talk to these girls who you haven't seen since barely getting past puberty, and now you're discussing job opportunities and current living situations and remembering the days of yore when we played with Pound Puppies and Cabbage Patch kids; now she's asking you out for a cocktail and long evening of further drinking. 

When I come home from work, I find rubber bands on my wrists, purple syrup soaked through my shirt to my skin, chlorine on my pants, and anti-foam on my shoes. All I can smell is Tutti-Frutti and Orange Pineapple and French Vanilla. All I can think about is filling that quart bottle to the proper unmarked fill line. All I can see is the chart where I look to see if the Lemon concentrate gets a regular or fluoridated bottle (those come in the boxes wrapped with blue tape and are located toward the back of the shop near the Blue Raspberry stain on the floor that has grown to look like a naked woman with large melon-shaped breasts and no head). My concentration is on the #4 caps, used for syrup only, the #2 caps for the concentrate or the #10's used for pints bottles. There are the red caps too--those are for the gallons of concentrate. There are the horizontal stickers for the quarts and the gallons, the vertical ones for the pints, and don't forget to use a larger sticker for the box. OH oh and you have to stamp the box, too, with the date on which it was packed. Wash the buckets out with hot water first, then with chlorine, but don't forget to use cold water so the vapors don't rise and make you feel sick like it usually does to me. I wear a face mask now, even when I bottle, because it keeps me from blowing Margarita out my nose. 

As I was riding around the alleys of South City last night around 12am, I noticed something fluffy and pink sprawled on the pavement. I got closer and found it to be a baby's toy, a little bunny rabbit wearing a smock. On its chest was written, "I Love My Mommy." Because it was so close to Mother's Day, I found this image to be painfully ironic, as it brought a tear to my eye. Someone either didn't love their mommy anymore or had forgotten her or someone had ripped the bunny from a child's hand in spite of the mommy. It was sad. But it was there.