The Mighty Ducks and the Battle of the Blemish

After I moved out for good, my parents took to vaporizing every memory of my childhood to create an oceanic-colored workout haven in what had once been my room. Gone are the closet doors that were emblazoned with sappy New Kids on the Block lyrics after elementary school love gone wrong, height markings from 6th grade when L, A, and I generously gave ourselves an extra inch or two (which I still have not achieved), and the date of my first real kiss. I’m proud to report that the pink duck-printed wallpaper I chose in kindergarten did not go down without a fight. After 18 years of tenancy, the ducks had absorbed themselves into the very fibers that make up the drywall and had to be sanded out. I like to imagine that the ducks screamed with agony and vowed revenge at that point, but it suffices me to know that my dad cut himself repeatedly in the duck removal process.

But do a few cans of paint and a sander erase memories or mask them? Are the ducks going to come quacking through the blue paint and scare my mom off the treadmill (again)? Will the next homeowner years down the road one day uncover that I kept track of important life events on a closet door before I got my first journal? I can only hope so.

How could one small girl have done so much damage to a room? There are battle wounds on the tan carpet from the time I dribbled red nail polish, the many times I splattered Diet Coke everywhere, and my mom’s personal favorite, the bleached-out spot where I missed my hand and shot alpha hydroxy-laced lotion on the carpet. That bleached spot represents a feverish night where my dad and I learned to let the proverbial sleeping dogs lie, leave well enough alone, and the meaning of every other cliché my angry mother spat at us during her spot-discovery hissy fit. Dad, always a trooper, thought that we should try to mask the spot rather than just cover it or let it exist in its full glory. Now, tan carpet shouldn’t be that difficult to match, but when you’re starting with a sickeningly tangerine-colored blemish the size of a dinner plate (I shouldn’t have tried to wipe it up first), the task becomes far more difficult. We started by pouring Diet Coke on the spot to neutralize (and quench the thirst of in a calorie-free manner) the color. That didn’t work, so we moved down a notch on the color wheel and tried Worcestershire sauce next. That wasn’t quite right either, and the spot was getting rather fragrant at that point. The last attempt was coffee. Well, coffee may stain teeth to the color of my bedroom carpet, but apparently it doesn’t do the same to other materials. As we were contemplating not only how to return color to the carpet but how to get the smell out, my bleary-eyed mom came in the room to see why we were still up. We jerked our heads up guiltily and her Momvision focused in on the spot. “Pat!!” she shrieked. He pointed at me. “Kelly!!” she corrected. She was livid and practically pushed us aside to get a better look. “What. Have you done,” she measured. I just looked at her pathetically. There’s nothing you can do in a situation like this. She won’t feel sorry for me no matter what I say, so the best course of action is to back away and let her attack the blotch herself. “For Pete’s sake…” she mumbled. “Who’s Pete?” I whispered, to which my mom glared a response and my dad stammered something about going downstairs and “makin’ himself up an Alka-Seltzer.” The next day, the spot was covered with a small blue rug that my mom threatened me not to mess up under penalty of death. Luckily the treadmill covers the spot nicely now in their new room.

I don’t know if I expected my parents to freeze time and keep my room in tact as an homage to their little princess’ youth. Okay, I do know. That’s exactly what I wanted. I’m an attention whore. Maybe light a scented candle each night under my framed senior portrait? Nothing big. My dad presented me one night with a bag of “cremains” from my room. Looking at the bag of pink dust that once was wallpaper made trite, melodramatic tears well-up in my eyes and an equally banal montage course through my mind. The projection TV in my head showed me at 3 watching Sesame Street, coloring peacefully at my table, and singing along to the educational anthems of our youth. I then saw myself at 5 pretending to be a Hallmark cashier ringing up all of my treasures for unseen customers. I was a strange child. That scene faded—no, this is a good place for a star wipe—into me sitting on my bed at 11 crying about having to get glasses and wiping my nearsighted peepers on Teddy’s absorbent, furry ears. Alright, now fade into me at 15 crying, again, about not getting asked to the Homecoming dance, and then segue into me packing my most-prized possessions to take away to college, not knowing at the time that my room would never again truly feel like it was mine.

Somewhere under all that paint and new pictures are the scarred walls of my childhood. I’ll admit that I was slightly bitter about the transformation for a while, but it’s hard to ignore how good the room looks without me there to muck it up. There are still relics of the 18 years spent there that will never go away. One can still hear that god-forsaken Woodson High School marching band clearly on a crisp fall day, enjoy the same view into the house behind us, and know that the bleached-out spot will one day be unearthed again to taunt my mom with its unnatural color and faint scent of everything brown in the kitchen.

Keys on a Lanyard and the Future in Your Hands

The first year of college is like a suspension of time and reality in which you learn to ride out extremes. You learn who you really are by your position amongst people who are on academically and statistically even ground with you. All of the prior years in school are futile in preparing a first year student for college. These four years are a social psych experiment disguised as an education based on book learnin’ from high school. The first, and most important, thing I learned at UVA was that I’m not smart. I was thrust into mediocrity the day I arrived in Charlottesville. And I have to tell you, that was fine with me. Luckily the majority of students realize within the first few weeks that school isn’t everything. Only half of the actual benefit of college is understood while one is a student there. Those benefits involve karaoke that’s so bad it’s good, student discounts, stories that start with “allegedly I,” football games, and bonding with people whose last names you never find out after four years of being good friends. What can compare to the giggles you get over people whose names have been replaced by elaborate monikers to distinguish them from the rest, like Pledge Dave, Hot-Not-Soccer-But-Actually-Lacrosse Matt, and Hairy Theta Delt Guy?

Thankfully, college is the gift that keeps on giving after graduation. Forget the benefits of a college degree in the work world. I’m talking about every time you see your school’s team win a close game, going back for homecoming, knowing that someone is a decent human being just because they have a UVA license plate, and the knowledge that you’re part of a population that, since 1819, has found a way to leave a legacy (or stain) on the serene landscape of Central Virginia.

By far, first year is the greatest of the four years at school, but that’s simply because it’s the only year you can never recreate, no matter how hard you try. There’s no way to reinstate the fear, excitement, innocence, and freedom of being away from home for the first time. Not only are there no parents around, but everyone is the same age and within walking distance.

The only thing a student can come armed with is a willingness to resign to naiveté. No one can give you adequate advice on going off to school; however before my parents left me that first night, my dad offered me three recommendations: 1. Never drink anything that was mixed in a trashcan, 2. Fix myself up and study at the med school library often, and 3. Make myself look pretty and approachable, and go sit on the steps of the law school. My parents had invested a lot in me during the past 18 years. As my dad once told a boyfriend of mine at dinner, “After all of the dance lessons, hair appointments, and clothes I’ve paid for, I think that it’s about time I got a return on my investment. Don’t you agree, son?” He didn’t. It’s okay. I’m quite a handful. I didn’t follow my dad’s first piece of advice, and I thoroughly rebelled against the last two sagacious bits. I’m still trucking along just fine, well, other than that nasty addiction to trashcan punch.

My first year of school mostly consisted of practicing with the cheerleading squad, stealing things from the guys’ suites below us, going fratting in too-tight black pants, and gallivanting about Charlottesville knowing that anything stupid I did could be absolved by the phrase, “I’m a first year, hehe.” One of my more challenging experiences was learning how to live with not only a roommate, but eight other suitemates where there was no kitchen, no free laundry, and no privacy whatsoever. Surprisingly, it was great. Not do-it-again great, but it was appropriate for the time and situation. I learned to live without shame. For example, the journey to the laundry room could be a tricky mission. I had a strange paranoia that I would drop my underwear on the stairs without noticing on my way to the laundry room. That, in itself, wasn’t the terrible thought. What’s terrible is the return trip upstairs to see the fallen undies. Nobody wants to be the one to claim ownership. So, what do you do? Do you pick them up, chancing that someone will witness you plundering stray underwear from the ground? Or, do you leave them there, not only losing your drawers, but having to pass by them repeatedly until the laughing cleaning guy hoists them up with the end of his mop? I lost sleep over that for the first month of school; however, when I adopted the mentality that whatever doesn’t kill me will make a great story, I loosened up. I’m now known for sporting undergarments on my head and answering the door in a towel (sorry Crystal and Jeff…). I call that personal growth.

Isn’t growth exactly what first year is about? We learn that there are other people in the world besides us, and that they are nowhere near as judgmental as you think they’ll be. The first year of college is the formative time when you can free yourself from the shackles of parentally-instituted decorum, learn that no one will take care of you if you don’t take care of yourself, and find that a family isn’t necessarily the people related to you, but those who will be there to listen to your ridiculous stories and eat cheap pizza at 3:00AM , even if you do occasionally drop your underwear on the stairs

Careful! That Cheese is Sharp

I think there are very few people out there who have not been broken up with over something that seems unreasonable. If you haven’t yet, just wait. It’s like the chicken pox—the longer you ward it off, the worse it’ll be when you finally get yours. I sit with my friends for hours and hours discussing what might have been different if they had not gotten on the guy about leaving the seat up, scratching himself in front of Grandma, being the cheapest man alive or dead, or forgetting that they hate onions on a burger. What have I learned in my old age? Well, I’ve learned that nothing would have been different. The apocalypse was coming and you didn’t know when or where, but apparently the four horsemen dragged in a real doosey of a ridiculous argument that has nothing to do with the root of your relationship problems.

My dad has a friend who used to come home every night and slice a piece of cheese off of a block that was big even for a Costco purchase. When it got moldy, she just scraped away the mold and sliced more cheese, because that’s just what she did every night. One night she came home and looked in the fridge to find a void where there once was cheese. Her husband nonchalantly said he had thrown it away. She then packed her bags and left.

My friends, the cheese does not, in fact, stand alone. Hi-ho the dairy-o, the cheese comes with a whole platter of issues. When questioned why she would leave her husband over a block of moldy cheese, my dad’s friend rolled her eyes and sighed, “Pat, sometimes it’s not just about the cheese.” Like a lactose-intolerant friend of mine once claimed, the cheese broke her will to press on. It’s that one last issue, act, or argument that makes one up and leave. While it’s the last issue, it’s rarely the first. We can beat ourselves up over what might have been, but honestly, did you want what might have been to actually be? Despite the heinous break-up moment, the person pulling the trigger really is the savior. Just think, if you both stayed silent, you could be spending the rest of your life with someone who, if he doesn’t now, will never put the seat down, will never stop scratching himself in front of Grandma or even your pastor, will only become cheaper when he doesn’t need to impress you, and seriously, if he doesn’t remember now that you hate onions on your burger, he’ll forget more important things as well.

You, my dear, are also not without your faults. We, as women, nit pick. Stop. Don’t argue. This is a habit that, if unchecked, will eventually turn us into our mothers. In turn, this nit-picking is what crushes us for far longer than a guy in a break-up. We rehash, create alternate scenarios, and think of what we could have changed. But sometimes it’s not just about the cheese.

I’ve come away from college with only a few true lessons. 1. Dining hall trays make excellent make-shift sleds, as do Rubbermaid under-bed storage containers; 2. 19th Century British literature does not impress as many people as I feel it should; and 3. I make the same mistakes over and over. One of the mistakes is not looking at the big picture. Does it really take 12 years of boyfriends and pseudo-boyfriends to learn how to do this? I’m not sure yet. I haven’t quite mastered this ability. You can’t change who you are and how you deal with the majority of situations, but you can learn to let yourself go and accept that you are a whole person, not a list of transgressions in a relationship. Someday we all will find the other whole person who understands and appreciates us; the one who loves us and our moldy cheese.