You Can't Relive the Pasta
By now, we're all about to splooge over the upcoming Sex and the City movie. Where else can we vicariously live out our fantasies of being fortysomething New York working women living out their fantasies as twentysomething NYU trust fund girls? Everywhere, thanks to all the Sex and the City ripoffs peppering network TV. But now they're making a movie about it. So this got me thinking that perhaps I should indulge my post-feminist self-indulgent side and admit that I am my mother. Yes, it's true.
I'll explain. Just this night at work I noticed a call on my cell phone from a number I vaguely recognize. I was pretty sure it was my roommate. No, I don't have my roommate's number saved in my phone. Why? Because he only calls me to complain. I could either save his number in my phone and endure the mild aggravation of seeing his name pop up on the caller ID whenever he's just called. Or I could never input his name and number into my phone and retain the hope that maybe it's not him. So I saw this number I vaguely recognized on my phone tonight, and I thought, "At least there's some hope that's it's not who I think it is." But he's called so often. The number is beginning to get memorized, no matter how quickly I look away when I see it there, shining from the small screen of my phone.
He didn't leave a message this time. I came home to my apartment after work. Flipped on the light in the kitchen. There, taped to the lip of the fan above the stove is a white piece of paper with the following written in black marker: "Whoever ate my pasta don't take my food without asking! If you do then Replace It." And "Replace It" was underlined.
My mind suddenly flashed to the moment he must have written about. It was a lonely Sunday afternoon. I needed spaghetti, and I didn't care who I had to hurt to get it. I looked in the cabinets and couldn't find where I thought I had put mine. Then I saw a half-empty box. "Oh, well good, I found it," I thought. "Now nobody gets hurt." But I was wrong. That half-empty box was not mine for the taking. I had taken the wrong box, which was identical to mine. And now this poor boy had to walk half a block to the 24-hour deli and throw down a whole $1.50 for a new box. I had hurt the man I lived with.
Keep in mind, this is an isolated incident. It's not like I've been hoarding my own food and seeking out his to steal. Normally, I buy my food, stash it away, then cook it when I get hungry. That's been the protocol. Nothing easier. If I were to ever look in the cabinet and not see the half-box of spaghetti I thought should be there, I would assume that I had eaten it and forgotten about it or that one of my roommates had accidentally eaten it, and then I would move on to more important things in my day. I tried to trace the thought pattern of someone who would see a half-box of spaghetti missing and then feel the need to write a note about it. And then to see the note he had just written and think, "No, a note isn't good enough, a call is in order as well." For me, personally, to write a note to someone we would first need to have an "issue" to talk about. We would need to come to a crossroads in our day-to-day relations. "Issues" include: clogging the toilet on a regular basis, leaving tracks of mud all over the carpet, stomping around with your friends late at night routinely, gunplay, raping my girlfriend, having sex with my girlfriend on a regular basis, acting like a fool, and writing needlessly irritating notes about insignificant accidents.
But more importantly, I asked myself how should I respond? My options were: A. Do nothing; B. Deliver a brief, perplexed yet earnest apology over the phone; or C. Write an effusively apologetic note attached to four brand new boxes of spaghetti. I of course, being my mother, did the latter. And I have since engaged in the cautious dance of avoidance, which I hope to continue until the next dreaded call from a vaguely recognizable phone number.
How does all this make me excited for the upcoming Sex and the City movie? It does because I learned something today. I learned that perhaps all the internal squabbling of my daily life does bear some resemblance to the catty dishing between those vile characters on that show. I too sweat the small stuff. And then I react to it in a passive-aggressive childish way. Perhaps their world - the world of Carrie, Samantha, the lawyer one, and the hot one - does have some resonance within my world. At least in some small part. At it definitely resonates within the world of my roommate, Candace Bushnell. Vindicated.
By now, we're all about to splooge over the upcoming Sex and the City movie. Where else can we vicariously live out our fantasies of being fortysomething New York working women living out their fantasies as twentysomething NYU trust fund girls? Everywhere, thanks to all the Sex and the City ripoffs peppering network TV. But now they're making a movie about it. So this got me thinking that perhaps I should indulge my post-feminist self-indulgent side and admit that I am my mother. Yes, it's true.I'll explain. Just this night at work I noticed a call on my cell phone from a number I vaguely recognize. I was pretty sure it was my roommate. No, I don't have my roommate's number saved in my phone. Why? Because he only calls me to complain. I could either save his number in my phone and endure the mild aggravation of seeing his name pop up on the caller ID whenever he's just called. Or I could never input his name and number into my phone and retain the hope that maybe it's not him. So I saw this number I vaguely recognized on my phone tonight, and I thought, "At least there's some hope that's it's not who I think it is." But he's called so often. The number is beginning to get memorized, no matter how quickly I look away when I see it there, shining from the small screen of my phone.
He didn't leave a message this time. I came home to my apartment after work. Flipped on the light in the kitchen. There, taped to the lip of the fan above the stove is a white piece of paper with the following written in black marker: "Whoever ate my pasta don't take my food without asking! If you do then Replace It." And "Replace It" was underlined.
My mind suddenly flashed to the moment he must have written about. It was a lonely Sunday afternoon. I needed spaghetti, and I didn't care who I had to hurt to get it. I looked in the cabinets and couldn't find where I thought I had put mine. Then I saw a half-empty box. "Oh, well good, I found it," I thought. "Now nobody gets hurt." But I was wrong. That half-empty box was not mine for the taking. I had taken the wrong box, which was identical to mine. And now this poor boy had to walk half a block to the 24-hour deli and throw down a whole $1.50 for a new box. I had hurt the man I lived with.
Keep in mind, this is an isolated incident. It's not like I've been hoarding my own food and seeking out his to steal. Normally, I buy my food, stash it away, then cook it when I get hungry. That's been the protocol. Nothing easier. If I were to ever look in the cabinet and not see the half-box of spaghetti I thought should be there, I would assume that I had eaten it and forgotten about it or that one of my roommates had accidentally eaten it, and then I would move on to more important things in my day. I tried to trace the thought pattern of someone who would see a half-box of spaghetti missing and then feel the need to write a note about it. And then to see the note he had just written and think, "No, a note isn't good enough, a call is in order as well." For me, personally, to write a note to someone we would first need to have an "issue" to talk about. We would need to come to a crossroads in our day-to-day relations. "Issues" include: clogging the toilet on a regular basis, leaving tracks of mud all over the carpet, stomping around with your friends late at night routinely, gunplay, raping my girlfriend, having sex with my girlfriend on a regular basis, acting like a fool, and writing needlessly irritating notes about insignificant accidents.
But more importantly, I asked myself how should I respond? My options were: A. Do nothing; B. Deliver a brief, perplexed yet earnest apology over the phone; or C. Write an effusively apologetic note attached to four brand new boxes of spaghetti. I of course, being my mother, did the latter. And I have since engaged in the cautious dance of avoidance, which I hope to continue until the next dreaded call from a vaguely recognizable phone number.
How does all this make me excited for the upcoming Sex and the City movie? It does because I learned something today. I learned that perhaps all the internal squabbling of my daily life does bear some resemblance to the catty dishing between those vile characters on that show. I too sweat the small stuff. And then I react to it in a passive-aggressive childish way. Perhaps their world - the world of Carrie, Samantha, the lawyer one, and the hot one - does have some resonance within my world. At least in some small part. At it definitely resonates within the world of my roommate, Candace Bushnell. Vindicated.
posted by Vindicated at 11:10 PM
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