This Girl

My first sorry attempt to write about the perils of social media strove to answer the question, "Who are we and how did we get here?" As you can see from that post and from the follow up , there is no easy answer. In fact, I'm not even sure if there is an answer, for I still do not know the whole answer and nothing but. Here is what I do know: I am me, you are you and the folks looking in on our conversation from some undisclosed location (but let's face it, it is most likely their living rooms, where they are spending their time lurking in on us and not socializing with their families) are just plain creepy. But once again, as is my MO, I have severely digressed.

It's that time of year again. The colors are turning. The wind is blowing. The leaves are falling. The Boilermaker football team is disappointing. Yup. Thanksgiving time has arrived, and with it, my yearly not-meant-to-be-exhaustive and in-no-specific-order list of little things for which I am thankful. Here goes.

Dear Politics, There is no easy way to say this, so I will not try to sugar coat it. I will be blunt, but swift, so hopefully the sting will fizzle quickly. You, sir, are a bitch. I know, mean, right? I'm not sorry I said it. It is a fact and facts, necessary as they are, can hurt. The facts are indisputable. Facts are emotionless. Facts do not play favorites or lean right or left. Facts are sometimes hard to take. But facts do not lie. And the fact of the matter is that you, Politics, are a total bitch.

Given that I don't have kids, the title of this post may seem a bit odd. What do I know about planning for parenthood, right? I don't have much room to talk, right? Sure, I might not be one of the lucky ones who enjoys the joys of little bundles of joy, but I'm going to ask you to cut me a little slack before you judge. After all, at the age of nineteen, when I first moved away from home to prepare for a career in Radiography, I did not know I would be childless many moons later.

It didn’t take long to get me hooked on soccer. One play did it for me, as a matter of fact. The sequence is unforgettable—Rapinoe to Wambach to Goooaaaaalllll! That’s all it took. Now, sure, I’m a late bloomer when it comes to footballing. I still don’t understand the game fully. The whole idea of “tackling” is a puzzle to me. Isn’t that essentially tripping your opponent? If so, isn’t that just downright rude? I still don’t know how soccer players are able to overcome the fear of getting kicked in the face. And you know that whole foot-eye coordination thing? Yeah, I did not inherit that gene. But, I digress.

The Readers Digest was almost a required read in my household growing up. I remember reading the jokes and funny stories that people submitted and thinking, "If only something that funny would happen to me, I might have the chance to win 250 bucks for my story." Mostly, it was a source of laughter and feel-good anecdotes. One series that I particularly liked was the "most unforgettable" character series. We all have people like that in our lives. Unforgettable folks whose voices ring clearly in our heads at the most unexpected moments. Whose faces we can trace without a blink. And whose absence leaves a void that no other can fill.

[Because this bears repeating in such desperate times] Scientists report that a recent rise in the overuse of punctuation marks will ultimately lead to the demise of the common message. It is not known if the increasing trend of ending a sentence with multiple and in some cases, mixed, punctuation marks is the result of the natural evolution of messaging, or if human actions are speeding the process. What is clear, though, is that punctuation marks and messages are not taking their impending doom lying down. In a rare twist of bipartisanship, punctuation marks and messages came together to call for measures to halt the message crisis and return our civilization back to the days of making points in a clear, concise manner. Speaking for the punctuators, Exclamation point stated, "I'm a loner. You don't need two of me. The whole purpose of my existence is to accentuate a  point. I thought I was doing that just fine already." Mr. Question Mark had this to...