Television Deficiency

I haven't told a lot of people this, but until I was ten years old, my family didn't have a TV. My parents decided before I was born that they didn't want their children to grow up desensitized and over saturated with popular media. Because of this, I was a little behind as a child. Barney? Saw him once at my grandparents' house. Dora the Explorer? She's the hispanic lady next door who walks around the neighborhood looking for loose change. Teletubbies? Sounds like an STD that small children are unnecessarily frightened of.
I found my refuge from otherwise interminable boredom in books. Though when I started reading it was a chore, I experienced a moment in second grade that has impacted my entire life. My parents had been reading "Harry Potter" to me at night to try to get me interested in reading, but it wasn't until I picked it up off the couch and started to read it independently that I was enthralled by it. And ever since that moment, I have enjoyed reading immensely. It was the perfect entertainment: It was light, didn't need electricity, and could be taken anywhere. I was set for life.
Or so I thought. Unfortunately, my peers had not been similarly restrained by their parents, something I found out in sixth grade as it became increasingly obvious that I was out of the loop. At this time we had a television, my parents finally having succumbed to the mounting pressure (and an encroaching hurricane).  Poor adolescent me, however, was left without knowledge of The Rugrats, The Simpsons, and similar cartoons (Do all cartoon titles start with the word "The"?). It was this feeling of social estrangement that led me, in the middle of my sixth grade year, to seek asylum at the Texas Military Institute, a private school in the area. My social ineptitude was still there, but less noticeable in the small student body of rich kids and nerds.
Today I like to think that my lack of a television for the early part of my life has given me an endearingly witty sense of humor, intelligence, and a mind to use it. To my peers I am still an anomaly, and I am sure many of them would disagree with my previous assessment of myself. In the end, there's not really anything I can do but sit back, crack open a book, and read about someone else's hopefully more significant problems. 

Some (different) limerics

There once was a boy named Fred
Who got a little hot in his bed
Jumped up with a shout
And ran all about
To find that his family was dead.

I once had a friend named Jerry
Who's disposition was often quite merry
Her senses were keen
And her meat often lean
But was killed after drinking some dairy.

When taking an old friend to tea
Be sure to keep an eye on the fee
For when wallets are pulled out
To pay for that lake trout
You may count on receiving a plea.

There once was a man from Peru
Who was found with a nail in his shoe
Police dogs were muzzled
And detectives all puzzled
For feet he had none of the two.

Sitting typing these here into Blogger
Reminds me of that game Frogger
Both seem to possess
A strange emptiness
For in doing both I am simply a bother.

For any of you looking for meaning in these limerics, there is none. I felt that I had not been writing enough poetry lately, so I decided to whip out a few limerics. While writing them, I decided to do something that is slightly defient of the often silly nature of limerics. So, all of these limerics, except perhaps the last one, have a kind of morbid theme. Please don't judge me too harshly.

Tales of a Cash Register

Today at the Shopette, which for all of you who are not in the military is a kind of convenience store that sells everything from gum to furniture to random, totally useless lawn supplies, I realized that I have fallen into a couple of idiosyncrasies that totally amaze me. They amaze me because, first of all, I had no idea that I basically performed for cashiers everywhere, and second because they are in no way related to any way that I have ever seen anyone else behave. Now, before I tell this story, I must set the scene in order to capture the rank embarrassment that I felt this afternoon.

Imagine your local 7-11, then render it in monochrome, slap some arbitrary stickers on the merchandise that say "Military Choice", and you have our Area 1 Shopette. Then, to top it all off, it is entirely staffed by Italians, with one or two Americans thrown into the mix just to surprise you one day in the check out line. Anyway, these Italians are just like any other cashier that you could find in the States in the fact that they really don't care about their jobs. At all. I think that the fact that they, native Italians, have taken jobs on an American base says it all. However, they have the added bonus that they only understand about a tenth of the words that you say unless you happen to speak Italian. So anyone who goes through the check-out is subjected to a stare that manages to say "I pity you", "I hate my job", and "I'm better than you, even though I work at a place that would be bankrupt in a normal economy" in an all-encompassing, yet somehow entirely hollow expression. However, making a run on the Shopette is not as depressing as it might seem, because usually by the time you're hungry enough that you need the type of food that can survive the 3-4 week journey across the Atlantic Ocean, and the only hunger that can drive you to eat that food is the kind that totally possesses your heart and so.

And so, we arrive at today. In a unique turn of events, it was actually not hunger that drove me to walk the halls that a more retrospective person might label the set of a movie from the 1950s. Instead, boredom whispered in my ear that I might find some enjoyment in chewing some gum, which, as any teenager knows, only serves to heighten your boredom, as every chew is like a clock ticking away the time you've spent with nothing better to do than chew gum. Having picked out some spearmint Extra gum, I proceeded to subject myself to the death stare of the currently working cashier, a middle aged caucasian woman who managed to look pissed off and bored at the same time. Having deposited my item on one side of the infrared scanning thingy (I have no idea what it's called) I heard myself saying "thank you". Now, the lady, obviously Italian, probably had no idea that what I said would be considered strange, but in my head, I started urgently examining everything else that I have said to other cashiers recently. I can't say why this bothered me so much, but I began to flash back to other things that I've said or done when I wasn't thinking.

During my recollection, I discovered a few things. First, and I don't know if anyone else has this habit, but whenever I go to check out with a small item, such as gum, and all I have to present the cashier is a twenty, I say "sorry". In retrospect, I have gotten a lot of weird looks from chronically bored people who have no idea why I am apologizing to them. From my perspective, though, I think that I would feel thoroughly offended if some random kid decided to get something that cost 2 cents, then had the temerity to stand there impatiently while I slowly count out his change from the bins containing coins that are all within 2 centimeters of being the same size. Also, I always find myself standing awkwardly in that strange moment when I've given the cashier money, I know that the amount I've given them is only 25 cents away from the amount that I have to pay, and I want to just say "keep the change". However, it seems like whenever I say that people stare at me, like I've just said groovy, or some other colloquialism now out of style. Is it just me, or is that not a thing anymore? I really need some help with this.

Anyway, I think that I am now teetering on the cliff edge between good writing and boring monologue, so I will sign off after just one more comment. I know that several of my upper classman friends are running blogs, and anyone else who has a job and maintains a blog may not have time to balance good, long term editorializing with their serious work. So, I am proposing that this week and next week, the week after Christmas, be Blog Week. I think that now that we have some time off it is the perfect opportunity to post all of our smallest thoughts and worries on the internet. Well, let me know if you think it's a good idea.

Keep Dreaming!