"Spotlighting for Santa"

Anyone who read my last entry will know why I'm subjecting you to my creative writing ventures.  I'm feeling guilty for the lack of updates, and I'm also lazy.  Also, I'm beginning the studying process for my Chaucer final, which means I have to take roughly ten breaks per hour.
This story was written for our English club's comedy reading; making it Christmas-themed was my own preference since 'tis the season and all.
Generally, I don't go into detail about my writing process unless someone specifically asks me a question, because I can't imagine that many people are terribly interested, and also because I generally write analyses of different types of literature, so, frankly, I don't even care that much about my writing process.  But this does take a smidgen of explanation, lest you think I'm more creative than I actually am.  The concept behind spotlighting for Santa is not mine.  Yeah, this is my "I do not own Spotlighting for Santa" disclaimer.  A good friend of mine participates in this activity with her family; although, to the best of my knowledge, none of the Santas have ever been maimed or injured.  Everything else, though, is purely fiction.  This is a bit longer than the previous story, which is more of a monologue.  I think it comes out to about three pages, so it's not a novel or anything, but I don't want people thinking they signed up to read a pamphlet and feel like they got Les Miserables.  Again, happy reading.

Spotlighting for Santa

Because my parents were visiting relatives out-of-state, I spent the first few weeks of Christmas vacation with my roommate Lauren and her family. Lauren extended the invitation to me somewhat delicately.  “We’re going to be having some pre-Christmas celebrations,” she said carefully.  “I know your family doesn’t…traditionally…celebrate the holidays…”

I did not want to spend two weeks alone at my house, so I told her it was no big deal, and I was looking forward to the new experience.  I’d just have to make sure I was careful about telling my mom I’d be staying in a house where they perpetuated the Santa myth.

My mother is very, very religious, and thinks that those who teach their children about Santa Claus are actually worshipping an idol that the devil has placed in a red suit with white trimming and gifted with a deep, somewhat disturbing laugh.

“The good Lord hates this time of year,” my mother somberly told me once after we watched a holiday commercial.

“Well, it’s normal for people to dislike their birthdays as they get older,” I said, but fell promptly silent at the look on my mother’s face. 

“I believe,” mom said, attempting to disregard my interruption “that God wants me to remove traces of Christmas commercialism from the world.”

I paused, trying to think of a way to make this conversation less insane.  There was none.  “God wants you to exterminate Santa?”

My mother rolled her eyes.  “Well, there’s no reason to make me sound like a holiday version of Charles Manson; God wants me to eradicate the pretentious aspects of the holiday…But essentially, yes.”  And from that point on, Christmas became a dicey time of year.

Mom’s passion regarding her belief has moved her to extremes.  I still remember riding home from the grocery store with my parents when my mom yelled at my dad to pull over.

“Steve, stop the car,” Mom said urgently, digging in the glove department, and placing a pocketknife in her coat pocket. 

Dad steered to the side of the road.  “What is it?” he asked, but my mom was already out of the car, sprinting to the yard that boasted the offending symbol of Christmas cheer: one of those huge inflatable Santas.  She was running all hunched over, like she was trying to avoid spotlights from police helicopters, and when she got to the strings that were holding the inflatable Santa to the ground, she glanced back and forth quickly before she started sawing away.

“My God…” Dad muttered, sinking down into his seat.

Seeing that mortification had rendered my father useless, I put my window partially down.  “Mom,” I hissed.  “What are you doing?  Someone’s gonna see you!” 

But by then, my mother had cut through a cord, pulled Santa down, and stabbed him viscously until he was a deflated plastic pile of dashed dreams and manic vandalism.  She ran back to the car, cackling.  “Drive!  Drive!” she yelled at my Dad while she slammed the car-door shut.  And it was then, peeling out of the Jones’s driveway with my mother laughing and putting her knife away, that I realized I would always have a very complicated relationship with Christmas.

So, with experiences like that influencing my image of Christmas, imagine my conflicting emotions when Lauren’s dad informed me we were going to “spotlight for Santa.”

I smiled a polite, excited smile for him, and then waited until it was just Lauren and me in the living room.  “What is spotlighting for Santa?”  I asked the question with no little amount of fear and accusation in my voice.  I had a picture in my mind of a fat, bearded man staring blankly into a bright light before meeting an untimely demise at the hands of a group of hillbillies.  Or my mother.

“We just have one of the adults put on a Santa costume, and have him go out into the woods,” Lauren explained.  “Then we take the little kids out on four-wheelers, and we pretend to have sighted Santa.”

The idea actually sounded pretty cute, and so I put aside my jaded associations with Santa, and hopped behind Lauren on her four-wheeler, pulling a wagon in which sat three of her little cousins.  The plan was to rendezvous at a certain spot and shine the spotlight towards a specific tree, thus finding Santa.  For a girl who consistently loses her car in the Walmart parking lot, driving around in the woods at night seemed a little risky, but Lauren assured me she knew where she was going.  After about 15 minutes of circling the same area, I remembered that Lauren is the person most often with me when I am looking for my car in the Walmart parking lot. 

“We’re lost, aren’t we?”  I asked Lauren, balefully.

“Well, I think if we just head back to the house, and start over, we can end up where we need to be,” Lauren attempted to reassure me, but then she admitted, “I’m not really positive which way to go.  We’ve been circling so much…”

“Really, Lauren?  Really?  You were all, ‘I’ve grown up in these woods.’  You made it sound like you were Squanto showing the pilgrims their way around Plymouth Rock.”  I was, admittedly, overreacting.  But I was from the city, and to someone who only ever saw, like, a dozen trees at a time, getting lost in the woods was basically like walking the plank.

“I know, and I’m sorry.  I may have exaggerated my knowledge of the woods a bit.  Do you have any idea how to get back?”  Lauren was being meek and apologetic, and since I still wanted to be angry, I found her humility annoying.

I sighed deeply.  “Just turn right and keep driving.” 

In reality, I had no idea how to get back to her house.  But at that moment, it felt very important for me to maintain the upperhand intellectually.        

As we were driving, I heard Porter, one of Lauren’s cousins in the wagon, gasp and shout, “Is that a person?”

Lauren stopped and I shined the spotlight around, until I saw a man in a red suit huddled on the ground, clutching his leg.

“Santa?” Porter said, and the two other kids, Amanda and Jake, peered over the sides of the wagon as well.

I jumped off the four-wheeler, and Lauren followed me, telling her cousins to stay in the wagon.  I had a second of fear where I considered the possibility that this was not, in fact, Lauren’s uncle in a Santa costume, but instead a serial killer with an elaborate and fetish-y game-plan.  “You go first,” I nudged Lauren forward.  She paused and looked at me questioningly.  “He’s your uncle,” I insisted.

“Uncle Mike?  Are you OK?”  Laruen asked, also not getting too close. 

Mike groaned.  “I tripped over a root, and I think I broke my ankle.”

I looked closely at our surroundings to make sure my mother was not hiding behind a tree with a club and a scary smile.  For a moment, I also wondered why Santas always ended up in painful heaps around me.  I had somehow, it seemed, become my mother’s unwilling apprentice.  I was actually a much more apt Santa-slayer than my mother, who had to plot and take risks.  All I had to do was be, and, bam, down went Santa. 

Lauren and I heaved Mike up so we were both supporting most of his weight, then we helped him hop over to the wagon.  The children were thrilled to have found Santa, until they realized he was hurt.

“Will he be able to work on Christmas Eve?”  Jake asked tearfully.

I was not familiar with all of Santa’s powers.  I mean, yeah, he could squeeze down chimneys and order elves around, but could he heal himself?  If healing broken bones was part of his allure, I was starting to see a little of my mother’s point about the confusion between Santa and God.  Lauren was busy trying to make sure Mike was comfortable, so I was left to field the question.

“Well, I’m sure with a few weeks of rest and some serious physical therapy, he’ll be able to get around on his own just fine,” I said, patting Jake’s head. 

“But Christmas is two weeks away!” Amanda whimpered.

Lauren glared at me as the kids started to cry. 

A tear-filled ride, a hospital trip, and some cookies and comfort later, the children were reassured that Santa would live to ride again, and I was calling my mother to let her know how I was doing, and explain the concept behind spotlighting for Santa.  It struck me, somewhat belatedly, that my mother may not be the best person with whom to share this experience.

“Spotlighting for Santa?” she said, with way too much interest in her voice.

And so it with trepidation and regret that I forward my apologies to any Santa unfortunate enough to run into a laughing woman on a four-wheeler.  If you see a bright light, duck and cover.  Merry Christmas.  

"The Story of My Life"

I feel a little bad, because I started this blog with very good intentions.  There actually was a brief window of my life when something funny would happen to me, and I'd think, "This would make a good blog post," but that's about as far as I got.  In order to revive the blog a little, I'm going to update twice.  In, like, a minute.  It sounds impressive and everything, but I'm going to cheat.
We've had two readings at school over the past couple of months.  One was a Halloween reading, which called for Halloween-based stories or poems (you might be thinking, "duh," but it's the weekend before finals here, so this all seems like necessary information to me).  I wanted to support the English club (sponsors of the event) and write something, but a couple problems presented themselves.  One: I'm a literature major, not a creative writing major.  Two: Even if I were a creative writing major, horror is not my preferred genre...mainly because I get freaked out by, like, the movie Jumanji, so I'm confident what scares me does not align with what scares the rest of the sane world.  In order to be supportive-ish, I decided to risk getting sent to English club jail, and bent the rules a little.  Are we all seeing a pattern here?
Now, if anyone wants to read real work within the horror genre, check out this blog.
And, here we go.  This is called "The Story of My Life."  Happy reading.

Let me just start off by saying that I’m angry, and I feel like I have every right to be.  I mean, how would you feel if your ex-boyfriend was basically canonized?  No matter how great of a person you are, I can guarantee that after you break up with someone, there’s at least a small amount of time when you want the rest of the world to hate that person with you, so how would you feel if basically every girl in the world, from seven to forty-five, was drooling after this fictionalized ideal of your ex-boyfriend?  Now add in the fact that someone stole your life story and made millions of dollars off of it.  So, basically consider yourself poor, cheated, and misrepresented, and see how happy you are.  Yeah, the smiling sunshine is not exactly peeking from behind the pink, lacey curtains of my soul. 

Maybe I should just cut to the chase.  You know the Twilight books?  More specifically, the first Twilight book.  Yeah, that’s a romanticized version of my life.  Don’t talk to random Mormons on the street when you’re heartbroken, kids.  That’s the real moral to my story.  I made the mistake of trusting a stranger with my sob story, and suddenly my ex is a Barbie doll.  Please.  If you people knew what he really looked like, no one would ever complain about Robert Pattinson as a casting choice for the movies. 

Those of you who have been paying close attention will have realized that this means I’ve dated a vampire.  Yeah, I did, and as you have probably figured by now, I’m not really in the mood to be judged about my taste in men.  It’s not really that unusual anyway.  I mean, most women have dated guys who’ve slept all day and had a questionable diet.  My ex is just defined by those two characteristics.  Let’s not forget that I’m the afflicted party here, and I think judging my choice in men is getting very blame-the-victim-y, and also missing the point of my narrative: Twilight is my story, and Stephenie Meyer owes me a lot of money and a sincere apology.

Though, the woman is talented, I have to say.  I mean, she managed to make Ted of all people into a sex symbol, which I would have guessed was impossible.  Somehow she turned all of his annoying quirks into these shining attributes…But we’ll get to that later.  First, I’m sure you’re all wondering how one meets a vampire. 

I work a lot of graveyard shifts at a grocery store.  I know, ha ha, graveyard shifts.  Really, I’m over the humor.  Anyway, I met Ted on the bus when I was commuting to work.  He was just this pale guy, dressed in black, with a very intriguing accent, which, coincidentally enough, made me think of Count Chocola.  I’ll admit that it was the accent that did me in, and it was the accent I was imagining hearing on the other end of my phone when I gave him my number.  We talked for a while, he was very charming, and we started to date.  I didn’t think it was unusual that we only talked at night, because I figured he was being considerate of my work-schedule.  We went out on a couple dates, and by the time he told me he was a vampire, I’d kind of already worked it out for myself.  Unlike Meyer’s corrupted version of my life, in which the male lead looks nothing like a typical vampire, Ted had sort of noticeable fangs and also liked to wear a cape around.  I thought that by not mentioning these things, by never saying, “My, Ted, what big teeth you have,” or “What’s with the cape?” I was avoiding a story about a family who was too poor for some sort of vital dental surgery, or a confession about a strange superhero obsession.  Don’t avoid the hard topics, ladies.  You only end up hurting yourself. 

So, anyway, I’ve always been superstitious, and believed in ghosts and everything like that, so the fact that Ted was a vampire was weird, but really also great because that meant that I was right about supernatural stuff and the rest of the world was wrong.  Who doesn’t love it when that happens?

OK, so the relationship progressed and we moved in together.  Mistake.  You know the inherit dangers of that kind of step.  You find out all about the other person’s bad habits, and the other person finds out all about yours.  Well, Ted had one really, really bad habit: He was always watching me sleep.  Somehow in the book of my would-be-life, Meyer makes this pastime seem endearing.  But, really, who would be OK with this?  I would wake up and Ted would be standing over me, just staring.  And, I know, I know, a relationship is all about trust, and Ted said he didn’t eat people, but I was not comfortable with him just peering at my exposed neck when I was at my most vulnerable.  Sometimes when I’d wake up and see his dark eyes a foot away from me, I’d scream, and he’d be all offended.  But, for God’s sake, that’s creepy!  I’d tell him how weird he was being, and he’d pout off somewhere.  You’d think a person who walked around in a cape would be more impervious to criticism, but whatever. 

Another point of contention with us was how poor Ted constantly was.  I know the literary ideal of Ted drove a Volvo or something and had all of this money he showered on his girlfriend, well, the reality of the situation is that Ted was 300 years old and never had over 50 dollars in his checking account.  “You haven’t learned a marketable skill in over three centuries?” I would ask him.  And he’d get all defensive—again with the sensitivity thing, and say that money wasn’t everything.  And I would say, “You haven’t learned an alternative to tired clichés in over three centuries?” And he would say that I was being awful just for the sake of being awful, to which I’d reply he was being poor just for the sake of being poor, and I didn’t know if I was supposed to find his poverty bohemian and attractive, but I definitely didn’t.  And he’d cry.  Like, really.  You know how emo the vampire is in those books?  That’s about the only thing Stephenie got right. 

Meyer also completely misrepresented me.  I mean, it’s bad enough she constantly stresses how plain and borderline ugly Bella is.  The woman just met me on a really bad day, OK?  I had just broken up with my boyfriend, I was entitled to forgo curling my hair that day.  Also, Bella was always like, “Oh, gee Edward, since you’ve been stalking me for months, maybe you should turn me into a vampire so we can be together forever!”  I was totally not like that.  Ted was the clingy one, the “eternity” obsessed one.  That’s part of the reason we broke up; I thought the next step in our relationship was, like, getting a dog or something, but he thought the next step was having me join the ranks of the legions of the undead.  We were just going in really different directions.

So, anyway, things ended, I vented to someone I didn’t know but thought I could trust, and now everywhere I look, someone is in love with this make believe Ted.  I’ve contacted Stephenie and told her I’m prepared to go public with her betrayal, but I have not gotten a response yet.  I just thought all of you had the right to know that you’re obsessing over a lie, and someone is profiting off an innocent girl’s pain.  But, I guess if there’s any justice in the world, Taylor Lautner will eventually show up to comfort me, and I can finally settle this ridiculous Team Edward, Team Jacob debate.      

When Good Classes Go Bad: Dealing with Betrayal

I took a test today for which the professor told us to study a, b, and c, and the test contained material on red, blue, and unicorns.  Sadly, this test was in my nutrition for life class, a class that I've already spent ample amount of time mocking for its simplicity.  Our first lab was a taste-testing exercise, where we had to hold our noses and see if that affected the taste of certain drinks.  To mix things up, we also had to warm up a cup of coffee, let the liquid cool, and see if that changed the strength of the smell.  (A small disaster was narrowly avoided when the people sharing a station with me and my lab partner put a dixie cup of coffee in the microwave.  The cup was, obviously, destroyed, and I was left to wonder if I would survive to fulfill my science credit with Pinky and the Brain at the stove next to mine.)

Anyway, this type of thing regularly happens to me.  I'll brag about how easy a class is, and then the professor's soul will be stolen by one of the many ghosts that haunt our campus, and we'll have an impossible test.  I, meanwhile, will have forfeited the opportunity to complain about this development to anyone, because if I do, they'll wonder if I acquired some sort of head trauma since I last talked to them.
 I'll be up front, I took this class because I need a lab for my science requirement, and Nutrition for Life sounds much less intimidating than, like, Chemistry.  Also, I was prepared to answer questions like, "Cookies are____"  and I'd write in "yummy."  Anything beyond that is sort of surpassing my passion for food knowledge.  I wish I cared more about nutrition, because, objectively, I know the topic is very important.  But I don't care about math either, and I've managed to get through a large portion of my life not even having to make change for a dollar.  Apathy and incompetence are amazing fuel for avoidance.

But, this was not just a hard test because the paths to my heart and brain are (figuratively) blocked when it comes to nutrition.  This was one of those tests where you read the first question and think, "Ruh-roh..." then read the second question and think, "Why the hell did I just imagine imitating Scooby-Doo" and also, "Damn."  But the feeling of ignorance is not that nagging, "I know I know this" feeling, it's that shot in the dark, watching a foreign movie without subtitles or trying to figure out what Tyra Banks is talking about kind of ignorance.  Also, for tests like that, I go through all of the stages of grief, which is emotionally exhausting.  First, I like to deny that this is happening to me, because, seriously, I am not wondering what sugars bond to make what other sugars when all I know from this class is not to put a dixie cup in the microwave.  I do the whole bargaining with God thing, but my offerings are a little lame: "OK, if you help me out, I'll....Oh, there was a discarded gum wrapper in the hall on my way in here, and if it's still there, I'll pick it up on my way out.  You're welcome."  God generally ignores me, which is understandable.  I cycle through anger again and again, picturing writing "WTF?!?!?" and drawing an angry face beside some essay questions, or taking periodic breaks to stare daggers at the professor who is usually bent over a stack of reports, grading.  I also have to suppress the urge to stand up and yell, "This is supposed to be an easy class, and I'm an English major!  Why the chemistry questions?  Why are you doing this to me?!? I thought we were friends!"  Then depression sets in, as I realize I don't know anything about nutrition, and not only am I going to fail this test, but I'm going to probably die a painful death of clogged arteries and malnutrition, because I cannot name a dozen different types of fiber, and such ignorance not only leads to death, but somehow means I'm also going to hell.  (At this point, I'm also getting a little irrational.)  I know acceptance is the last stage, and I'm getting there, but it's a process, you know?  Healing cannot be rushed, and I intend on trudging through these stages again next week when I get my test back.

This Blog is Brought to You by Procrastination

I'm blogging because I have a report due next week that I'm afraid to start.

The whole situation has gotten ridiculous, because, really, the report is not that bad.  Yet, yesterday, after furtively promising myself I'd outline my paper and take some more notes, I decided, damn, it was a beautiful day, and probably a secular sin to spend the evening in the library.  So, I went on a run.  

I literally ran away from my paper.  

This realization was humbling, but since I always love to push the envelope, I thought I'd really procrastinate, and, like, start a blog.  I don't really feel that bad about this exercise in avoidance, because if you're reading this, you're probably procrastinating, too.  I'm just guessing that you have more important things to do than read my blog, and that's OK with me, because I have more important things to do than write a blog.  We're basically kindred spirits.  

I'm a little bummed, because, well, I wish I did important things when I procrastinated.  Like, work on that world hunger problem, for example.  Or try to do something about the lack of world peace.  Or maybe vacuum.  But instead I usually browse facebook to see if there are any status updates, because how can I write my paper if someone I know "smiles, but is secretly dying inside"? (Yeah, that was a real facebook status that I sort of wanted to like, but didn't.)  And if no one has an updated facebook status, then I sort of just sit and....be.  It sounds zen, but it's really just sad.  

So, anyway, this is my blog.  I will do what I can with it, and if it serves merely as a distraction from real life, so be it.  Happy reading.