Tag Archives: me me me

Wicked Awesome

I don’t go to many concerts. Haven’t paid for a concert ticket since 2006, in fact. I love music, but I tend not to get too obsessed with particular artists, so there aren’t that many concerts I would pay money for. Some, I think, are worth it; most aren’t. You often have to stand, if it’s at someplace like the Paradise, and have to suffer through one or two crappy opening acts. You fret over whether you should sing or dance along with the music, especially if you don’t know all the words by heart, and you glance around to see what other people are doing. You often can’t see very well, your ears are ringing when the concert is over, and half the time, you end up thinking that the artist sounds better on the CD. Or at least I do. It’s not the case for a lot of people, I know. Some people get an incredible natural high off of live music. They’re excited months in advance for a concert by an artist they love. They go to random concerts by artists they’re not familiar with just for the thrill of live music. They post on Facebook about how a certain (indie rock, of course) band opened their hearts and filled them, in those exact words. And while I kind of roll my eyes at that, I’m jealous of those people, too. I love listening to music, but I don’t get the huge spiritual boost from live music that some people seem to. I can’t accurately claim, either, that any music has ever changed my life or had a huge impact on me. It just doesn’t have the same effect on me.

It’s the same with religion. I’ve talked about my religious beliefs a bit here. While I do find religion comforting and benevolent, I’ve never had the kind of mind-blowing religious experience that some people talk about. I’ve read people’s writings about how religion—everything from Christianity to Buddhism to Islam to Orthodox Judaism to the Baha’i faith—changed their lives, gave them unspeakable joy, gave them whole new ways of looking at things. When people credit their faith for getting them through a tragedy or difficult life circumstance, or for giving them the strength to overcome addiction or some kind of self-destructive behavior, I marvel at the thought that religion could have that much power. While I respect religious beliefs and have my own, I’m not affected by religion to that degree.

Then there’s yoga, which I’ve gotten more into in the last year. I enjoy it, it’s shown me a better way to breathe, and I do feel a bit more relaxed after shavasana, at least more so than I would after any other form of exercise. (Some people say running gives them a great natural high, but although I run a lot myself, I can say with complete certainty that I have never felt that at all.) But my feelings on yoga are pretty similar to Sarah Bunting’s, who says “the taking of yoga so very, very seriously mystifies me.” When people say that yoga is life-changing, I have a hard time figuring out why. It’s not that relaxing. I was even at a party once where a girl said, completely seriously, “The world would be a better place if everyone did yoga.” That’s not just eye-rolling but seriously obnoxious—it’s like saying “The world would be a better place if everyone found Jesus.”

All of this does have a point, which I’m getting to. Last week, I went with a group of friends to see Wicked at the Opera House. I hadn’t seen a musical live in a long time, and I had almost forgotten what good musical theater does to me. I’ve seen Les Miserables twice, and both times, it put me in a good mood for the next week. But although I knew a couple of songs from Wicked and had read the (very different) Gregory Maguire book that it’s based on, I’d never seen Wicked before.

And holy shit. I started tearing up at least three times during the play. The storyline, which was a lot different from the book, was touching and surprising and occasionally funny. I’ve wanted to burst out singing all the songs since I saw them. I don’t often feel like music is “speaking” to me (and it would probably make me roll my eyes again if I heard someone said that), but there are a couple of songs in Wicked that I feel like I could sing about my own life. And this scene here? GOOSEBUMPS. Even more amazing in person.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAuWRE7FMf8]

I’m not a cynical person. I’m generally pretty positive and there’s a lot that I love. So I’m glad to know that even if I remain indifferent to live music, religion, yoga, etc., there is still something out there that I can find sublime, something can move me beyond the usual limits of my emotions.

Putting the Passport to Use

Remember back in December of 2007 when I first got a passport?

It finally has a stamp on it.

Yep, a few weeks ago my family and I went to Aruba! It was the first time I’d ever left the country or been anywhere tropical. And what an awesome trip! I spent most of the week lying on a beach reading. And the beach there doesn’t have anything you hate about the beach in New England—no seagulls, no seaweed, no screaming little kids, no bottom you can’t see, no freezing cold water. It was just gorgeous. See for yourself:

Aside from the obvious reasons of enjoying my trip to Aruba, I’m really happy to have left the country, finally. Sometimes I just feel like so much of my life has been defined by what I haven’t done. I haven’t lived anywhere but the Boston area. I haven’t had a boyfriend. I haven’t been in love. It had always really bothered me that I’d never left the country.
But now I have. It might be just a stamp on a passport, but to me it’s what it symbolizes as well as the fun trip that put it there that means so much to me.

Adventures Driving in Boston

I don’t drive very much anymore, and that’s fine with me. In fact, I kind of hate driving. Well, “hate” is a strong word, but given a choice between being a driver and a passenger, I always choose passenger. (Please don’t read any deep meaning into that statement. My life is not a Volkswagen commercial.) I get nervous easily, as I’ve discussed before, and since I started driving ten years ago, I’ve been a nervous driver. But the last time I drove a car on a daily basis for more than a few months was my senior year of high school. In college, I couldn’t have a car on campus, and I could get pretty much anywhere I wanted to go on the T. After college, I deliberately chose apartments and jobs that had T access, and thus began my love-hate relationship with the T.

Not having a car means that I have to rely on rental cars when I do need to drive, and driving cars that don’t belong to me make me even more nervous. I joined Zipcar, but rarely used it, and after a bad experience with them, I quit rather than renewing my membership. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I had to rent a car during a business trip to Georgia (and, for the first time in my life, got pulled over, due to a taillight that was out).

And then this past Thursday, I needed to rent a car again, this time to drive a longer distance than I’d ever driven before, and by myself at that. One of the authors I work with was having local sales reps, along with my boss and me, to lunch at his beach house in Narragansett, which is way the hell at the bottom of Rhode Island. About an hour-and-forty-five-minute drive. Eighty miles, according to Google maps.

I was scared to death.

I know it doesn’t sound like a long way or a difficult thing to do, especially for someone who’s been driving for ten years. Most people would just get up and drive there without a second thought. But although I don’t understand why some people are afraid of spiders, I know that it’s a very real fear. Be assured, so was this one. In fact, I spent the whole week worrying about it. What if I got into an accident? What if I hit a pedestrian or cyclist? What if the car broke down? What if the tire blew out? What if I got lost and completely missed the lunch?

The car I rented was also in a busy area of Boston, an area in which I’d never driven. After an initial bit of panicking in the parking garage I was leaving from (OMG it’s raining and the windshield wipers don’t work! Oh…yeah, they do.), I was off. I found the highway I needed to get on with no problem.

And then I got in the wrong lane.

I think I spent literally an hour trying to get back to where I was supposed to be. In the process, I drove over most of the city, on several highways. I went through a toll booth, something I’d specifically tried to avoid when I printed out the Mapquest directions. I swore out loud at people doing dumb or inconsiderate things. I paused at the end of a street, trying to figure out where I was, only to be impatiently honked at. Ah, road rage, I thought, feeling a flash of anger rise within me. This is where it comes from.

Finally, I got back on the highway. While driving around Boston, I’d been on the verge of tears, wondering if I should just call and say I’d miss the lunch and unsure if I’d ever get there. But once I got on the highway and realized I could get to where I was going, I started to relax. The whole driving around Boston situation started to seem funny. I even started singing in the car, the way I do when I’m driving around my hometown. When I finally got there, I was a bit late, but not late enough that I missed the lobster and clam chowder we were having.

It seems really easy to boil this whole experience down to some kind of platitude or cliché like, “Keep a sense of humor,” or “You have to face your fears,” but it’s not that simple. The thing is, you always know things like that in the back of your mind, but you’re so scared or upset that they never quite make it up to the front. There’s a great line in the book Empire Falls by Richard Russo that’s even a car analogy: “Not giving a shit, she’s realized, is like the defrost option on a car’s heater that miraculously unfogs the windshield, allowing you to see where you’re headed.” And what is fear if not giving too much of a shit?

I’m glad I had this experience and that I made it to Narragansett and back unscathed. I think I may re-join Zipcar. A car of my own is not an option now for financial reasons, but when I finally get one, I’ll already have the worst of driving in Boston behind me.

But for the record, every stereotype you’ve heard about Boston drivers is true.

Hypothetically Speaking, Of Course

You’ve read all the updates on the Phoebe Prince case, which has made you cry, and you’re not alone. You read this story last Sunday in the Globe and felt terrible for Lexi, and you’re not alone. The increase in news about bullying lately has made you reflect on how mean people at school were to you when you were younger, and you’re not alone. But when you were in middle school, it sure felt like you were.

So you were awkward. Not because of one thing, but a combination of things that added up. You had long, tangled hair and an overbite so bad you couldn’t close your mouth. You didn’t make friends easily, and the friends you had were awkward for their own reasons. You liked to read on the bus. You did well in school, which often made you a target. You weren’t quite sure how other smart people managed to escape the labeling and being badgered about grades, so that people could either make fun of you for doing well or for not doing so well this time, but you certainly couldn’t. You weren’t good at sports and always got picked last in gym class. You could never figure out what the right clothes to wear were, and when you tried to wear something trendy, you weren’t comfortable.

To be fair, you didn’t do yourself any favors, either. You didn’t pick up on some social cues. You cried easily, when you didn’t do as well on a test as you wanted to or when you were upset with someone. You would talk about how much you didn’t like the popular girls in your class, which sometimes got back to them. If people made fun of you, you’d try to come up with a comeback, which usually backfired when they just laughed at you more.

But you certainly paid for it. People would ask you why you were wearing what you were wearing in a pointed voice. They’d tell you to get a haircut. They’d put two fingers in front of their mouths making fun of your teeth and call you a buck-toothed rabbit. You heard “nerd-girl” and “Miss Perfect” a lot. Every time people found out your grade on anything, they’d make fun of you, and they’d announce every mistake you made. People would ask if you and your equally awkward friends were lesbians. One guy asked you if you’d ever had a date, and when you asked him why he wanted to know, he said, “Because it doesn’t look like you’ll ever have one.” If a guy was teasing his friend, he’d call out to you, “Hey, will you go out with Mike?” because you were like the symbol of all that was uncool in a girl. It wasn’t just one person or group of people, either—it was pretty universal in your grade.

High school was better. It was bigger, first of all, and since everyone was trying to get into college, it was no longer uncool to be smart. Most of your classes were honors or AP classes, where the people were nicer and more like you. You enjoyed school for the most part, and you made new friends, but they mostly weren’t close friends. You never thought that people would miss you if you weren’t there. Some semesters, you spent a lot of time in the library during lunch. In group settings, you felt like you were always saying or doing the wrong thing and spent a lot of time beating yourself up over it. People mostly thought you were really quiet because you’d decided, to paraphrase an old saying, better to keep your mouth closed and be thought awkward than to open your mouth and erase all doubt.

Even now that people have long since stopped making fun of you to your face, the fear that they’re talking about you behind your back remains. In college, you thought you’d found a group of friends who’d actually miss you when you weren’t there, until you realized that, because you’d once again not picked up on social cues, they actually thought you were annoying and didn’t want you around at all. Sometimes now, you see on Facebook that your friends were invited to a party that you weren’t, or you see pictures from a birthday party or wedding that you weren’t invited to, and you can’t help but take it personally and wonder why no one wants to get close to you. The guy who told you you’d never have a date was right for a long time- you didn’t go on a date until you were in your twenties, and you’ve still never had a boyfriend. You wonder if the things in you that made people taunt you over ten years ago are still in you now, and people are just too polite to say so.

Someone you’re close to doesn’t like to hear you talk about how much middle school sucked. She never had a hard time in school herself, so when you bring up your own middle school days, she rolls her eyes and, in so many words, tells you to get over it and stop playing the victim. You wish you could just relax and have confidence that people do want you around, but it’s hard. You never assume you’re welcome anywhere without an explicit invitation, and you scrutinize everything you say, still beating yourself up if you think you made a faux pas somewhere.

You’re glad that awareness of bullying is increasing, at least in the media, but you’re scared about how school must be for kids today, now that there’s Facebook and Myspace and Twitter and Formspring. You know that rules and laws can punish kids for physical violence or saying outright mean things, but that there are some things that can’t be controlled—the spreading rumor, the subtle dig, the eye-roll. Bullying might never go away, and maybe you always would have been the awkward kid no matter what, but you do spend a lot of time wondering who you would have turned out to be if people hadn’t been so mean to you all those years ago.

Graduate of Life

You may grow a new skin every seven years, but it seems like every four years, you start a new life. Four years of high school, then four years of college.

As of today, it’s been four years since I graduated from college. I guess that means that I’m no longer a…senior in life, I guess. But there will be no big changes. I’m not moving, I’m not heading to school, I’m not starting a new job. Life will just go on as usual.

But four years ago, all I could see was my old life ending. I’d been up all night with my friends, drinking the leftover alcohol and feeling more sad than nostalgic—friendships and relationships had changed so much over the course of college, and things, I thought, were only going to get worse. In the car with my family after the graduation, I kept falling asleep and then waking up in tears.

Life after college was really hard for awhile, for reasons I’m still not comfortable writing about on a public blog. But it did get easier. If I could, this is what I’d go back in time and tell myself on May 22, 2006:

-The first year out of college will be the most difficult year of your life. There will be a lot of tears and worries and stress-induced illness. But it won’t last forever. When you look back on it, you won’t know how you ever got through it, but you did. Like Chumbawumba, you’ll get knocked down, but you’ll get up again.

-You will be amazingly lucky in your housing situations. No bipolar roommates who throw things at you like in college. Christina will save what’s left of your sanity during that awful first year. You won’t have sewage leaks or flooded basements like some of your friends, either—in fact, both of your apartments will be fantastic.

-Right now you have it in your head that friendships don’t happen after college. Maybe it’s because you never made close friends at any of your previous jobs or because you remember Koren Zailckas writing about how cliquey and mean the girls at her first job out of college were in her book Smashed, but you’ll be totally unprepared for the friends you’ll make once college ends. Colleagues, fellow chorus members, and friends of friends will all become parts of your life. And you won’t just make friends, you’ll make close friends, the kinds who are always fun to be around but also support you and help you through difficult times. Like the Beatles, you’ll get by with a little help from your friends.

-Drama and cliquey-ness never really end (hell, they even happen in retirement homes), but they do get considerably better once you’re out of college. You’ve managed to reconnect with some friends you drifted apart from in college. In college, there was a friend-of-a-friend who disliked you to the point where she wouldn’t say hi back if you said hi to her and left a seat between you and her when you went with a group of people to a movie theater. A few years later, you’ll see her at a party and not only will she say hi to you first and ask where you live and what you’re up to, but you’ll actually have some nice conversations with her through the night. In college, you sometimes felt like everyone would eventually desert you or stab you in the back, but in life, you’re becoming more and more convinced that most people are good.

-Surprisingly, one of the things that will help convince you of that is work. While work will cause you some major headaches at times, the people you meet will by and large be fabulous. (Exceptions include that one girl who said, “Cancer!” in a cough after hearing you and another co-worker discuss your love for Diet Coke.) Pop culture has convinced you that cubicle jobs suck out your soul, that your boss will be a tyrant, and that coworkers will be the bane of your existence, but nothing could be further from the truth. Some of your happiest memories from the past four years have been work-related.

-You’ll always worry about money, but you’ll discover that however little you have, you’re pretty good at managing it.

-I wish I had better news for you regarding your love life, but I don’t. You’ve still never been in love or dated the same guy for more than a couple of months. You are out there dating, but not much luck so far. At least most of your friends are still single, too, and you’re mentally healthier than you were in college. Like Snow White, someday your prince will come. (Okay, feel free to roll your eyes at that one.)

-You still won’t quite feel like an adult in four years, and you still see “grown-ups” as a group separate from yourself. You don’t feel like that quite as much as you did right out of college, though. Also, college students annoy the hell out of you now.

-You’ve seen a lot more of Boston and its surrounding areas now that you don’t view it in collegiate terms. You mention Teele Square and the Fort Point Channel in conversation now when you didn’t even know what those areas were four years ago. You’ll spend the first couple of years out of school living within feet of your college, allowing yourself to retain some of the life you loved, but moving to Davis Square will prove to be a very good decision and a change of scenery that will suit you well.

-You’ll talk a lot about how much you miss college for the first couple of years. At a Christmas party that first year, you and your friends will be exhausted from work and will spend the whole night in your friends’ tiny basement apartment sounding like the Chris Farley Show from SNL: “Hey, remember when we did (fun thing) in college? That was great.” A year out of college, you’ll write this blog entry. But before you even realize it, you won’t say things like that anymore. You did love college and you do miss your friends, your classes, and the general college atmosphere, and you’ll buy a BC Snuggie to remind yourself of that, but after awhile you’ll start to realize how much you love your life right now. There are ways you’d like it to improve, but as you finish your fourth year of life, life looks pretty damn good.

Katie’s Ash Wednesday Blog Post

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. For a lot of people, it’s a mark on a calendar, but it does mean something to me. So today, I’m going to break a taboo and write about it.

I’m twenty-five years old and I identify as Catholic. But it’s not exactly something I tell people the first time they meet me. Or the second, or the third. In fact, it’s probably not something I’d bring up until pretty late in the game, if at all. And if I do, I feel the need to qualify it: “But I’m a liberal, open-minded Catholic!”

I’m sure it’s different in other parts of the country, but in blue states, admitting to being religious, especially if you’re Christian, is almost un-PC. It’s fine to say that you were “raised” in a religion, or that your family subscribes to a religion, or to joke about Catholic guilt. It’s even fine to say that you’re spiritual but not religious, because you don’t believe in organized religion. But if I mention that I go to church as part of a conversation, I can see people’s glances uncomfortably shifting as their perception of me changes.

To give you a little background, my family is Catholic, but even though I grew up going to church and CCD and received the sacraments, we’re not super religious. As an adult, though, I realized that I did like going to church and wanted to continue going. In college, I sang at Mass with the campus Liturgical Arts Group. Now I attend The Paulist Center, a progressive Catholic church on Beacon Hill. I do not agree with everything about the Catholic Church, but I’ve found ways that I’m comfortable reconciling my personal beliefs while remaining part of the Church. I’m also very interested in learning about other religions and have tried to read more books on religion and attend services in places other than Catholic churches. It is entirely possible that my beliefs will change as I get older, and I would never tell anyone that what they believe or don’t believe is wrong.

What is wrong, though, is forcing religion on others. Trying to convert unwilling people is wrong. School-sponsored prayer before public high school football games is wrong. Trying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools is wrong. Actually, trying to ban anything in the name of religion is wrong. Opposing gay marriage is wrong, especially if you try to justify it in the name of religion. Telling people they’re going to hell is wrong.

Equally wrong, though, is disrespecting religion. It’s one thing to call people out on it if they’re forcing religion on others, but mocking someone’s personal faith or obnoxiously questioning their beliefs is a terrible thing to do. I find Bill Maher’s movie Religulous horribly offensive because he’s not mocking the forcing of religion on others or even the distortion of religion to fit one’s personal beliefs—he’s mocking people for having faith at all, and forcing people—regular people who aren’t hurting anyone—to question their beliefs.

It’s also wrong to lump all religious people into the same group, whether it’s equating all Muslims with terrorism or believing that all Christians are Sarah Palin-loving homophobes who picket abortion clinics. Particularly, the culture wars seem to have lent people license to equate “Christian” with “Republican.” As a Democrat, whose more religious family members are also Democrats, who knows far more Catholic Democrats than Catholic Republicans (although, granted, that might just be because I’m from Massachusetts and went to a Jesuit college), that bothers me a lot.

Moreover, I don’t think you’ll find any two people within a religion who believe exactly the same things. Faith is a deeply personal thing, and people interpret religion differently. Catholics like me, who don’t agree with everything about the church, are often pejoratively called “Cafeteria Catholics,” but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. People like Bill Maher accuse religious people of believing blindly, and while that’s certainly true of some people, I think they’re outnumbered by people who have given their faith serious thought and have accepted or rejected certain beliefs based on that.

The First Amendment guarantees us freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but I often wish people felt more free to speak openly about what they believe or don’t believe without insulting anyone else. I like learning about other religions, and I wish it were easier to talk to people about what they believe and why. I know this post basically boils down to “Why can’t we all just get along?” but to me, it really is frustrating that people who abuse religion have made it so hard for the rest of us to talk about it honestly. I mean, I know someone who visibly recoils if you even say the word “church,” and whom I could see tensing up when I mentioned the name of a Catholic college in casual conversation. And I know someone else who, when someone asked him out of curiosity about his religious beliefs or lack thereof, looked at the person asking the question as if he was pissed that the question had even crossed her mind. So…why can’t we all just get along?

To end this post on a lighter note, I give you this song by Christine Kane, a singer-songwriter and fellow BC grad. It’s called “Mary Catherine’s Ash Wednesday Journal Entry,” and it’s pretty funny. And check out some of Christine Kane’s other songs while you’re at it.
http://christinekane.com/blog/just-because-its-lent/

An Entire Post About Waffles

Last year, I bought a waffle iron. In college, the dining halls had Belgian waffle makers you could use to make waffles for yourself, and I would wake up weekend mornings dying for waffles slathered in whipped cream. (Just whipped cream- no syrup, no butter, no fruit.) I still order waffles a lot when I go out for brunch, so I figured I should probably get something so I could make them myself when the craving struck me.

Just one problem. I couldn’t get it to work.

A waffle iron should not be that hard to use. You pour the batter in, close it, rotate it, and wait for the light to come on. I did it all the time in college. It was simple.

Except this time it wasn’t. On three separate occasions, I followed the instructions exactly and still ended up with either burnt batter that smelled awful or gooey, undercooked strips of something in an indefinable shape. And all three occasions involved multiple rounds of failed attempts at waffles followed by a lot of scrubbing. It was quite tragic. To steal a line from my sister, a fellow fan of BC waffles, “There is nothing worse than really wanting waffles and not getting them.”

This morning, I tried it again. Rounds 1 and 2 produced a substance that was edible but not in any way shaped like a waffle. But Round 3?

Or something like that. It was the result of getting it set to the right temperature, NOT waiting for the “ready” light to come on, and immediately unplugging the iron as soon as the waffles were done. They were still slightly burned and certainly weren’t the best waffles I’d ever tasted, but they were definitely edible and made for a great breakfast.

I think this is a good omen for the new year, don’t you?

2009 Recap

Almost the end of the year- and the decade. (Did we ever settle on a name for the decade that’s about to end?) My mom and my sister and I have decided that the last few days of the year are like Mardi Gras—you spend them indulging in all the bad habits you want to give up in the new year. So the past few days have been spent eating junk, not exercising, staying up too late, not getting writing done, watching too many reruns of 90s sitcoms, and bringing work home with me.

2009 was an interesting year for me. Outwardly, it doesn’t look like a lot changed or anything monumental happened. I’m still single, I still have the same job, and I still have the same apartment with the same roommates. But internally, a lot changed for me. As you remember, I started the year feeling a bit overwhelmed. Not long after that, I started experiencing symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder—something I’d experienced in the past but hadn’t expected to return. That pretty much dominated the early months of 2009. Eventually I realized that I needed help and started seeing a therapist, which has helped a lot. I’ve had some personal epiphanies and gotten better at being able to talk myself out of irrational worry.

I am still single, but I’ve made way more progress on that front than in any previous year. I don’t know if it’s my increased confidence or if I’m just meeting better guys, but most of the dates I went on this past year were not horrible. Even if they were dates with guys with whom I didn’t want to pursue relationships, they gave me hope that a relationship could be in my future.

I have the same job, which I still love. I did, in 2009, apply unsuccessfully for two jobs within my company that I didn’t get. The second time, I came very close to getting a job that a lot of people applied for, which was encouraging (although the long interview process left me kind of drained). But my mindset, when it comes to work, has improved a lot in the last year.

I had a lot of fun this year, too. Continued to sing in the Somerville Community Chorus, took a terrific Grub Street class that encouraged me to continue what I’m writing, had some drinks with friends, had some drinks with colleagues, sang some karaoke, went to some fun parties, joined my company softball team, which was a lot of fun even though I sucked and we lost most of our games. Saw some good movies, listened to some good music, watched some good TV, and read a lot of good books, which will probably warrant their own post.

I feel more secure in my friendships than I have in a long time. I’ve had a lot of neurotic doubts about my relationships with friends, which I’ve documented here, but I feel like with every day that goes by, I’m more convinced that people are more alike than different, and that most people are worth getting to know, and that those who are kind outnumber those who are unkind. Not to be cheesy and quote a ten-year-old movie or anything, but “it’s hard to be angry when there’s so much beauty in the world.”

And not to become one of those people who prefaces everything with “my therapist says,” but my therapist recommended making a list of ten goals for the new year—just ten, which for a compulsive list-maker like me isn’t many. I’m not going to say what they are, but check back here in a year and I’ll let you know if I’ve achieved them.

I’m hopeful about the new year and the new decade. I think it’s going to be a great one.

Random Question

There’s a great new frozen yogurt shop in my neighborhood called Spun.

Which got me thinking about something- does anyone else call frozen yogurt “frogurt”? That’s what my mom calls it, and it’s an expression I picked up. But whenever I say it, people look at me like there’s something growing out of my forehead. Once, in college, at the Paris Creperie, I ordered “Nutella frogurt,” and the girl behind the counter said pointedly, “You mean frozen yogurt?” I’ve heard “froyo,” but do other people say “frogurt” or is that just some weird thing my mom made up?

With Friends Like These…

Recently, the Internet has been abuzz with outrage about a terrible piece of advice. If you haven’t heard about it, be prepared for a massive spike in blood pressure. A woman wrote to Lucinda Rosenfeld at Double X, telling an awful story about how her drink was drugged at a concert and the two friends she came with not only went home without her when they couldn’t find her but, after she was taken to the hospital with no memory of what had happened, only grudgingly drove her back to her car when she called them. Rosenfeld’s “advice” was that while a significant other or a family member is obligated to help out in that situation, a friend is not. Infuriatingly, she also insinuated that the letter writer might have a drinking problem and was possibly lying about being drugged. You can read about the whole situation here, and there’s also a good discussion of it on Tomato Nation (Sarah Bunting, the founder of that site and co-founder of Television Without Pity, is a much, much better advice columnist, by the way).

As discouraging as it is to read about this, it is, at least, a bit heartening that the vast majority of people who read Rosenfeld’s column are furious. So I’m not going to repeat the points others have made.

But the column did get me thinking. Rosenfeld apparently doesn’t think that friends are obligated to respond to a panicked 4 AM phone call, although not many agree with her. If someone called me at 4AM in a terrible situation like the letter writer’s, even if it wasn’t a close friend, I’d respond and help. And if I called someone in the same situation, I’m sure someone would help me, because that’s what decent people do.

This is my question: which friend would I call? My issue with the situation isn’t that no one would respond. It’s that whomever I called would respond, but I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t be surprised to be the first person I called. I can’t imagine calling anyone in that situation who wouldn’t be thinking, “She didn’t have anyone else to call? Really?”

The thing is, that letter raised a lot of interesting points about date-rape drugs, blaming the victim, the obligations of friends, and the assumptions that prevent women from reporting rapes. But a smaller point it raised was that sometimes the people we think are our close friends don’t actually see us that way.

And that is a huge fear of mine. I have made that mistake before. My freshman year of college, I had the unfortunate experience of realizing that some girls I’d considered close friends didn’t actually like me, or at least didn’t consider me a close friend. I know that was a long time ago and I should be over it, but the fact is, it still influences the way I behave towards those I meet and sometimes keeps me from getting too close to people. When I start to make new friends, I can’t help but think things like, Do these people really want me here? Do they actually like me or are they just being polite? Oh, no—should I have said that? Did I accidentally offend someone? Am I being annoying without realizing it? Maybe I shouldn’t have come. And if people don’t invite me to do something, is it because they forgot about me or because they genuinely don’t want me there?

I don’t think I’d be the first person anyone would call at 4 AM, either. Again, is that because I haven’t let anyone get too close to me, or because other people see me as selfish or unreliable? It’s occurred to me recently that there are people I consider friends whose phone numbers I don’t even have. What do those people really think about me?

This post probably makes me sound like a neurotic freak, but it’s not a new thing. I think about it a lot, because I always wonder what would happen if I left Boston. Would people forget about me? How many people would really miss me? What would happen if I left and then came back? How many people would really want to stay in touch with me?

Everyone likes to think that friendship lasts forever, but that’s not usually true, in my experience. Even if you don’t stop being friends with someone, eventually someone will move away or get married or move onto a new stage of life, and inevitably, the friendship will change. Someone you still consider one of your best friends might no longer be the first person you call when something good or something bad happens. You like to think that your friends care enough about your life to want to hear what’s going on with you, but ultimately, you care too much about their lives to be willing to subject them to it.

Wow, this post sounds really depressing. But I can’t complain too much—at least I haven’t been drugged and left alone to fend for myself in a hospital with no memory of most of the night. As that poor woman starts to recover from that horrifying experience, I wonder whom she’s leaning on, since her family is far away and she clearly can’t depend on her friends. I hope she’s successful in finding better friends. In the meantime, at least I know I have people who wouldn’t leave me alone in a bar and would willingly come pick me up if I called them from the hospital in the middle of the night—regardless of what those people really think of me.