an open letter to some new female loyola students
Hi. You’re on the #155 Devon bus, which goes east-west from campus all the way to Kedzie. Every fall, when you’re brand new to Chicago and slightly dazed by the idea of being away from home, I find you on this bus, in giggling clusters of three, four, or more, going into the wild free yonder of West Rogers Park. You are almost always white. Sometimes you are all a-twitter about buying saris and gauzy scarves at the “Indian stores,” getting henna tattoos and paste-on bindis, which just makes me sigh. Dress-up is fun and all but really? This is a real neighborhood, with real people who share a real ethnic background about which I suspect you know very little. I’m sure they will be more than happy to take your money, but that doesn’t stop me from eye-rolling.
It would go a long way if you could try to be cool. Even a little bit. Look at a map before you leave. Quit shrieking to each other about how nervous you are to be going a WHOLE MILE off campus. Think of yourself as temporarily living in Chicago, instead of just attending a college.
Here is where I need to be stern with you. Sometimes there are strange people on this bus. Yesterday a standard-issue bus crazy was riding with us, smelly and mumbling and making hand gestures at his imaginary friends, and I was fed up to here with you poking each other and laughing. What is so funny?
Look, I have detailed many of my (weirdly frequent) interactions with transit loonies on this blog. I have partaken in curse-fests [note: contains language about the developmentally disabled for which I later apologized], listened to their monologues, and told them to shush. Sometimes I have been annoyed and sometimes I have been quietly amused if they were actually saying something funny. Mostly I just try to remember that it must be no fun at all to walk around being that scared and upset, and that mentally ill people deserve their space, privacy, and dignity as long as it doesn’t encroach upon mine. So grow up, bitches. Be a part of the city, break out of your privileged bubble once in a while, and don’t fucking point and laugh at people or I may have to get violent.
AUTHOR AUTHOR
You may be pleased or frightened to know that Nora has started another installment of Book Beast. This one is more of a novel with illustrations than the comic strip of last year. The critic in me would like to suggest that she hold off on introducing new characters, lest the whole narrative turn into a sort of extended meet-and-greet: in addition to Book Beast’s old nemesis Smart Girl, he also will apparently have to battle good guys Super Zebra, Hammerhead, and Fire Spider in the future. Good luck, angry anthropomorphic book!
SORRY, SECOND GRADE TEACHERS
This year Nora has mandatory journal writing for “Communication Skills.” I think they get free-writing topics each day except on Fridays, when they can write whatever they want. Nora chose to write about her favorite video game, which would not have been my first choice in terms of “let’s put the best spin on our family life,” both for the topic itself and for the particular video game. Lately she has been playing Tropico for her “screen time,” which is a simulation game where you are dictator of a small Latin American country. This explains why Nora knows words like “rum distillery,” “embezzlement,” “Swiss bank account,” and “coup.” She even drew a map of the game in her journal where she labeled the “tenements”* and the rum distillery. Sigh.
*Some of the villages and slums are named things like “Poop Town” and “Toilet World.” Well, that’s what you get with a seven-year-old dictator.
TONIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT SPONSORED BY NYQUIL
I am sick with a horrendous cold and cough and so I have been swigging cough syrup before bed the last few nights. This gives me amusing dreams. I was wandering through the White House on a self-guided tour and found President Obama in a room by himself. He had a large orange sponge, the peanut-shaped kind that you use to wash the car, and was carving it with a pocketknife.
Dream Obama: I’m making a naked lady!
Dream Me: Cool!
DO: It’s going to be awesome. [frowns] I don’t know how to make the legs though.
DM: Why not just leave them pressed together? Sort of like the Venus of Willendorf?
DO: Great idea! Thanks!
Also, HGTV rules when you’re sick. All the shows sort of gently bleed into the other shows, there are never loud noises or changes in tempo to wake you up all the way, and you can be marooned on your couch-raft surrounded by kleenex and half-empty mugs of tea and just drift along. Oh look, a wall getting painted a different color, some whiny asshole buying his first house, etc.
Speaking of, it is nearly official now: the gods of underwriting (all hail!) have smiled on our financial situation and we are one step closer to a November 4 closing on MY NEW HOUSE.
I am taking a week off work to get serious about packing and we’ve already written our “SO LONG, SUCKERS” email to the condo association. Well, it was phrased a tiny bit nicer than that.
—mimi smartypants is so out of here.