Found: A Note From My 6 Year Old Self

So I found an old diary of mine the other day, and besides the rambling musings of little girl I also found this gem:

________________________________________________________________________
It reads:

This is a free contry
This is a free HOUSE
You are acting like you are the QUEEN!!!
But you are just a Big old BULLY!

Alison

P.S. I might run away
_________________________________________________________________________

I think this is a note I had written to my mom, being so incensed about something but had never actually worked up the cojones to give it to her as it still resided in my diary all these years.

I have thoughts on this first being:

I don’t know what my mom had done, but I don’t think it would have ever warranted this much sass. No one got away with that much ‘tude in our house and lived to tell the tale.

Secondly, I like how I left in some wiggle room with the use of the word “might” in the post script. I knew even then, that me and my Strawberry Shortcake suitcase couldn’t get too far from the house without getting scared. I mean, the house was where the Teddy Grahams were, so I wanted to put in that caveat without losing any power from the threat of running away.

Glad I never gave it to her, what a little brat. Happy Mother’s Day ya’ll.

Arstidir: Punk Rock Angels of Death?

I’ve recently happened upon this video of an Icelandic Group singing an 800 year old hymn. Apparently, they had just finished a concert and the video was taken late night in a German Train Station with them singing impromptu.

It’s possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard:

I couldn’t help but wonder though, if I had just gotten off of that train, I’m sure I would just assumed that I died.

Literally the thought would be “Oh wow that’s a beautiful, ethereal sound. Wait, WAIT am I dead? Like did I die on a train? Oh man I died in a train station and the angels greeting me are dressed like punk rockers WIERD.”

 

Also, did you see the guy still holding the beer while he sang?  The late-night style is strong here.

The Time I Accidentally Sexually Harassed a Personal Trainer

I’ve been on a workout kick lately. I usually have a pattern of realizing that summer around the corner in late spring and then go into beast mode. Beast mode being, I get on a treadmill and bro out in the mirror at my gym with the 10 pound pink weights. You know hard-core.

I go to a small gym that is across the street from my office, and it has regulars. If you go there enough you’ll recognize literally everyone who walks in. There aren’t strangers and everyone gives one another an obligatory chin nod when you walk in. The gym also has trainers who run their sessions there. My story has to do with one of them:

One seemingly innocuous evening a trainer, whose name I don’t know because we’re only at the chin-nod stage of our acquaintance, was finishing up a session. I was also finishing up making a fool of myself with a medicine ball on a mat. I was trying to do an ab workout, but I feel like what I was doing looked like a poor attempt at a rhythmic gymnastics routine. (There were far too many unintentional leg kicks and wriggling to look like I was doing anything athletic.)

Yeah I totally looked like this.

As a note of description: the trainer in question is super nice, and looks like a young, non-mullet having John Stamos. I know that he isn’t everyone’s dream boat, but those people may not have been 90’s kids who religiously watched Full House. I mean HAVE MERCY!

So Stamos-doppleganger finished with his session and standing in front of some stacked cubbies everyone uses to store their stuff in while working out when I walked over. My cubby was underneath the one he was using and he had his back facing me while I awkwardly stood there waiting. He hadn’t noticed me, and I wasn’t sure how to let him know I needed to get to my stuff.  I opened my mouth and this bomb fell out:

“Hi excuse me, I just need to get to my cubby-”

*He moves out of the way*

“Oh yeah thanks I didn’t want to do a reach-around and…”

At that moment all time and space held its collective breath while all the blood in my brain raced to my feet. I think it did that out of self-preservation because the pain of processing the embarrassment coming my way was enough to take me to point break. I grabbed my stuff and walked to my car while looking at my phone like it had the answer to time travel in it to avoid eye contact.

I was so embarrassed that I had to sit in my car and just stare while I thought about what I had just done to myself. Also during the drive home and for much of the night, right when I started to relax I thought of what would happen when I went to the gym again and saw Stamos trainer guy as I knew I would. Right when I was worrying about that the whole recent scene would pop up again and I’d hear myself say it “reach-around.” Like an ever-present ouroburos that was just hovering in the background of my thoughts, the cycle of hearing the moment would start head to tail any time I’d relax.

 

Yes, I have been back to the gym since the unintentional service offer. And yes it did take a pump up speech from me, to me, to get me back in there. Turns out it’s fine, and I’ve been doing my regular late-spring gym ratting in peace ever since. To Stamos the trainer guy’s credit, I didn’t hear a laugh from him or even feel a stare. I prayed that he didn’t hear me, but I know that was unlikely.

Thanks Uncle Jesse look-alike. You’re a pal.