"So if you sleep until you're 18, just THINK of all the suffering you're gonna miss! High school, those're your prime suffering years right there!"

So I just rediscovered an old blog I used to have in high school that I completely forgot existed until last night. I can't believe I have 83 posts full of absolutely nothing important taking up space on the internet and they've been sitting there since 2002 - blows my mind. I feel old. It's a mess of a blog with lots of broken links and images and the site that had the background I was using on it must've been absorbed into the Great Abyss because now the background's gone and it's almost impossible to read the text and I'll probably take it down when I get a free moment. But since I'm feeling slightly nostalgic but mostly just thoroughly enjoying the ego-stroking satisfied feeling I get when I read through old journal and blog entries (because really, what's more self-aggrandizing than reading stuff you wrote when you were a teenager? because you inevitably have improved as a writer and a human being which makes you feel like you were an idiot back then but you're pretty much a genius now), I'd like to share one of my posts. *ahem*

8.4.03

[girl mode on]

so lately i've been very upset because of this whole lack-of-a-normal-boyfriend/girlfriend-relationship-with-jon thing. i mean, for god's sake, he was over my house on friday and, at night, we were in my room with the door closed and my parents were on the other side of the house, and we turned out all the lights and turned on the blacklight and lay on the floor no more than *six inches* from each other. but did anything happen? NO, of course not. and i was starting to get pret-ty fed up with it. so i planned to talk to him about it. just tell him that i want that kind of relationship, that i'm ready for it. but that i don't want to push him if he's not. but then...

well, i've been deathly ill since saturday. okay, not *deathly* ill. but i've caught onto whatever this school-wide epidemic is, and i feel like shit, to put it simply. and yesterday jon turned seventeen (SEVENTEEN!! i *still* can't get over just how old that is) and got his liscense. he's a liscensed driver now. that is SUCH a big thing for both him and me. being the typical car-obsessed boy that he is, he's been waiting to get his liscense since the day he was born. and so now jon and i are *both* mobile, since he's offered to drive me just about everywhere. but ANYWAY, today after school he drove over to my house to visit me for a little bit. and he gave me my english homework that dave had given him to give me, one of his sweatshirts (hurrah! i know wearing your boyfriend's sweatshirt is the typical girlygirl thing to do, but i don't care. it's big and warm and comfortable...and besides, it has his scent :-P), and a letter. we've started writing letters back and forth to each other. and this one was *only* the sweetest thing i've ever gotten. it wasn't all lovey-dovey-sickeningly-sweeter-than-sugar-and-honey...it was basically about how the cd "simple things" by jim brickman "speaks his life, in music". he then went through the tracks and described how each one related to his life. and, well...among others....
"13) 'it must be you' - ....another 'you' song. it's about 'you' making the singer realize love again. sure, i never forgot love existed, i just didn't know where it went. i found it. in you."
i must've read the letter twenty times. and every time i got chills down my spine. and then i feel back into my pillows with a grin on my face the size of france. and, after reading it the first time (which was right after he left)...i realized just how *selfish* i am. here i am, with a sweet, sensitive, as-ideal-as-they-come boyfriend, and all i can do is complain about how there's nothing physical between us. who CARES if there isn't anything physical between us? i really shouldn't. there'll be time enough for that later. but in the meantime, i should be happy with what i have. and it's not like i have to work hard to find something to be happy with. i have found THE guy for me right now. and i LOVE him. *falls over*

[girl mode off]

peace,
manda

Pretty awful, huh? In case you're wondering, Jon and I never did have a physical relationship of any sort - it turns out he's probably gay and might have Aspberger's syndrome, except that as far as Facebook (why does it feel weird to capitalize Facebook?) tells me he still hasn't admitted to himself that he is either of those things. Unfortunate. We stopped talking after my freshman year of college when he dated a girl who was stalking me...drama. (Yes I'm aware the size of the font just changed, no I'm not going to do anything about it because it's being stubborn and I'm too tired to care very much.)

Anyway. Since this blog's called The Great Atlanta Experiment and not The Great Experiment In Reveling In How Much Of An Idiot I Was In High School, I'll write about Atlanta. Maybe I'll start making sure I write about my current location in every post. That feels like a good rule. Good. So Atlanta. I worked the morning shift today at my coffeeshop, except that it's not even remotely mine because I don't know where anything is still, it's only my second day working there, I don't know any of the regular customers, and worst of all I think everyone who works there must speak a different language than me. Why else would they look at me like I'm spontaneously combusting whenever I talk to them? The only person who works there who I've met so far who seems to understand the words coming out of my mouth is leaving on Sunday to go live in Spain for a year - awesome for him, tragic for me. I'm not kidding though - if I could draw I would draw you a picture of the face my coworker's make whenever I try to joke around, or ask them a question, or really say anything at all. In fact, I'm going to borrow from http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com (which is probably the best blog in the whole world) for a second and actually draw you a picture, just to make sure you understand.

...or not, because I just spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out AppleWorks' paint program and it's freaking confusing. Instead I will find the most accurate picture possible on Google. Just a moment.
Now picture a gay man doing that and that is no joke the face every single of my coworkers makes whenever I open my mouth.

EXAMPLE
Michael (coworker, 30-something, flamboyant): ...blah blah blah I sold 250 pounds of Reindeer blend last Christmas! Now I get to work morning shifts with only managers so I get all the tips!
Me: That's great! I only sold like 20 pounds of Reindeer, that's not even a tenth of what you sold!
Michael:...huh?
Me:I only sold 20 pounds.
Michael: ...huh?
Me: Um, nevermind. Where do y'all keep the extra straws?
Michael:...huh?
Me: Straws? Extra straws? Where are they?
Michael:...huh?
Me: Nothing. (off to find straws by myself)

And then Zach (the only guy who seems to understand what I'm saying) came in and said the way I label our bottles of tea (with the name of the tea, the date it expires, the time it expires, how much tea it is and my initials, like we're supposed to label them in other words), looks like a Calculus equation. "You were a math major, weren't you?" he said. "Um, nope, I just make my a's like triangles to confuse the hell out of people apparently." Zach laughed at that and Michael looked confused. And then I went home. Moral of the story: transferring to a new store after working at one particular store for a year and a half is CONFUSING, but not as confusing as every word I say is to the delightful gay Atlantans I work with. Cheers.