I do a lot of things by myself. I live by myself. I go shopping by myself. I eat at restaurants by myself. I’m an introvert to the fullest extent, so usually, I revel in all this “me-time”, but the looks I get from strangers as I order my second gin and tonic and toast myself get a little annoying, and how often I shave my legs is directly related to the amount of human interaction I have, so I figured I’d better make some friends. The last time I made really good friends was at Notre Dame, so what better place to look for new friends than the Notre Dame Club of Cleveland? I could be sure they all shared my love of Notre Dame football and 25-cent hotdogs, and that’s what friendships are made of. The club was sponsoring a service project at the local food bank, so I signed up in hopes of meeting some other guilty Catholic introverts to befriend.
I was one of the last people to get to the food bank, so when I walked into the volunteer room, everyone had claimed their seats and the room was pretty divided. One side was full of young, well-dressed, attractive people, all paired up with a significant other and chatting away with other couples. On the other side were the rejects—single, frumpy looking men and women, complete with hair scrunchies and Notre Dame sweatshirts, staring at the floor or examining their fingernails. My own hair was scrunchy-less, but poofy. My top was kind of cute, but my shoes didn’t really match. Most significantly, I was alone. I knew where I belonged in this group. I sat next to a woman with ashy blonde hair and Velcro shoes. As desperate as I was for friends, I knew this wouldn’t work. I tried to edge my way onto the attractive people’s side by awkwardly jumping into their conversations. I overheard a man named Greg introduce himself two seats away from me and instinctively responded “Nice to meet you!” even though I was not the one he had been addressing. I shrank back into my plastic chair, accepting my seat on the friendless reject side. If I couldn’t make friends, at least I would do my part for the community by sorting some canned goods.
A man with a lobster claw for a hand was in charge of the volunteers. As he led us into the warehouse, one of the attractive people started talking to me. I yammered away, desperate to make friends. I tried to keep myself in check lest someone mistake my enthusiasm for a bubbly personality, but it was difficult when these friend-making opportunities were so few and far between. Lobster man started dividing us into pairs, and I was determined to get paired with my new best friend to solidify our friendship. I could have a shopping date planned within the hour! But then that jerk dumped me for the peppy blonde who didn’t even look like she had gone to Notre Dame. My options for partners dwindled quickly, with pre-established couples obviously picking each other. A man in his 50s wearing a Notre Dame polo that showed off his moobs grinned at me. Lobster man asked for a single volunteer. I jumped at the opportunity.
There are two jobs for volunteers at the food bank—reading expiration dates or sorting food. Since there were too many volunteers, I was placed in between an expiration date reader and a food sorter to “pick up the slack”. Both jobs are pretty easy. There was no slack. Nevertheless, I tried to help. I scanned left behind cans and boxes for expiration dates and placed them on the conveyer belt. When a jar of sauce would pass me by, I’d snatch it up and toss it in the sauce bin behind me. It was pretty mindless work, so I took the opportunity to talk to the girl next to me. She had come with her boyfriend, but as it turns out, people with significant others can be sociable! We were chatting away (me probably more than her, despite my best efforts to not look desperate), but in doing so, I started shirking my food bank responsibilities. A couple of old farts next to me had gathered all the sauces I missed and when I came to gather them for the sauce bin, the man said to me, “Finally! We thought you were never coming back!” As a knee jerk reaction, I responded with “I have ADD.” Somehow, that blatant lie was supposed to explain my long absence from the sauce bin. Then I topped off that gem by grabbing one of the cans he had set aside and saying, “This isn’t even sauce. These are diced tomatoes!” and throwing it in the sauce bin anyway. I have obviously been away from humans for too long. It's a wonder I didn't start throwing my own feces and claiming I had Asperger's as well.
After all the cans had been sorted, lobster claw man came by to thank us for our work. One of the Irish fans piped up and said she would love to help out again. Sebastian hands said we all needed more practice to master the art of spotting botulism, then singled me out. “This young lady over here was too busy being miss chatty to sort her bins!” He grabbed a can of Manwich meat with his one giant finger and thumb to demonstrate. “She’d pick a can up. Look at it. Talk some more. Look at it again. And do that about five more times before finally just putting it down on the belt! Girl, you need a lot more practice ‘fore you come back!”
I left the food bank with no phone numbers, no shopping dates, and no feeling of helping the community, since apparently I did such a crappy job at it. Maybe it’s better that I spend the majority of my time in solitude. It gives me a chance to practice swiftly reading all the expiration dates in my pantry.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
False Signs of the Snowpocalypse
You might think that the scariest thing about moving to Cleveland would be the crime or living by myself or starving to death because I get lost every time I try to find the grocery store. However, the part about Cleveland that sends me into fits of terror is something I’ve been dealing with my whole life—weather. I grew up in Ohio and spent the past five years in Indiana, which are both places with hard winter and lake effect snow, but never before have I watched the morning news before hitting the road on a snowy day.
Just a month into my new job, and I’ve already started a routine. I wake up, flip on the TV and set the channel to WKYC, Cleveland’s NBC station. The anchor and meteorologist fill my morning with cheery banter surrounding stories about school board meetings and photos viewers sent in of their dogs. They gently tell me to wake up and gleefully instruct me to grab a cup o’ joe. Then, just when they’ve gained my trust, even my friendship, their jovial attitudes turn dark and the weather and traffic segments begin. The weather woman warns of the doom that surely awaits me as soon as I leave my apartment. She tells me the visibility is so low I will need bat sonar to navigate my way to work, that I will freeze to death if I can’t make it to my car in under two minutes, and that it will be even worse on my drive home. Then, she puts on her whitestrip-enhanced smile and tosses to the traffic guy, who has a grizzly beard and more bad news. He says that traffic is so heavy I need to leave an extra 15 minutes early, even though I’m already running 20 minutes late because I stayed in bed a little longer to watch their news story about teens raising awareness for puppy cuteness or something. The grim traffic man reports that there are already several accidents and some cars are sliding right off the road into deep ravines filled with sharks. He warns that I better get my butt moving or I’ll be next. Then, the morning news resumes its cheerful disposition and tells a story of a local cherry farmer who makes jewelry out of the pits.
Just after I’ve convinced myself that the weather can’t be all that bad—I mean, I looked out my window and there’s zero precipitation—the meteorologist steps back in front of her green screen to point at a bunch of arrows that are meaningless to me but she says indicate a blizzard or a plague of locusts. I look out my window again and start to doubt my vision. She is on TV. She has a clicker in her hand that makes a smoke-like graphic move across a map. Even though my eyes are sending my brain an image that says it is not snowing, the weather woman must be right, so I start to panic. Not only am I going to have to fight the 4 gods of winter—Snow, Ice, Wind, and Seasonal Depression—but I will have to do it partially blind! I scan the closings scrolling across the bottom of the screen, hoping my place of business has the compassion to protect its employees from the storm, but no such luck. I pack up my things and prepare to leave my apartment for what could be the last time. I bid farewell to my cat and put out extra food just in case the snow piles up past the 10th floor and no one is able to reach my apartment. I take one last look at my apartment, and head out toward my destiny. On the way down in the elevator, I try to think of the great life I have lived, but all I can picture is my tiny car careening off the road into Lake Erie. Then, I’m eaten by a polar bear.
I expect a snowpocalypse, but when I drive out of the parking deck, the world is not a whiteout—it’s perfectly fine. Cleveland is not breaking off from the rest of the state under the weight of the snow and floating away to become a Great Lakes iceberg. In fact, the roads are dry. There isn’t even any traffic. I briefly wonder if perhaps I am the only survivor of a terrible snowstorm that quickly melted and moved on. But then I realize that the people I trusted so much, those I considered friends and who I allowed into my home to start my day, had lied to me. The anchor and the meteorologist and the bearded traffic guy were all in cahoots to trick me and make me panic so they could have the roads all to themselves. Oh, they’re good. They really had me going. Then comes the part where I vow never to watch them or believe them again.
And the next day, the cycle repeats.
This is going to be a long winter.
Just a month into my new job, and I’ve already started a routine. I wake up, flip on the TV and set the channel to WKYC, Cleveland’s NBC station. The anchor and meteorologist fill my morning with cheery banter surrounding stories about school board meetings and photos viewers sent in of their dogs. They gently tell me to wake up and gleefully instruct me to grab a cup o’ joe. Then, just when they’ve gained my trust, even my friendship, their jovial attitudes turn dark and the weather and traffic segments begin. The weather woman warns of the doom that surely awaits me as soon as I leave my apartment. She tells me the visibility is so low I will need bat sonar to navigate my way to work, that I will freeze to death if I can’t make it to my car in under two minutes, and that it will be even worse on my drive home. Then, she puts on her whitestrip-enhanced smile and tosses to the traffic guy, who has a grizzly beard and more bad news. He says that traffic is so heavy I need to leave an extra 15 minutes early, even though I’m already running 20 minutes late because I stayed in bed a little longer to watch their news story about teens raising awareness for puppy cuteness or something. The grim traffic man reports that there are already several accidents and some cars are sliding right off the road into deep ravines filled with sharks. He warns that I better get my butt moving or I’ll be next. Then, the morning news resumes its cheerful disposition and tells a story of a local cherry farmer who makes jewelry out of the pits.
Just after I’ve convinced myself that the weather can’t be all that bad—I mean, I looked out my window and there’s zero precipitation—the meteorologist steps back in front of her green screen to point at a bunch of arrows that are meaningless to me but she says indicate a blizzard or a plague of locusts. I look out my window again and start to doubt my vision. She is on TV. She has a clicker in her hand that makes a smoke-like graphic move across a map. Even though my eyes are sending my brain an image that says it is not snowing, the weather woman must be right, so I start to panic. Not only am I going to have to fight the 4 gods of winter—Snow, Ice, Wind, and Seasonal Depression—but I will have to do it partially blind! I scan the closings scrolling across the bottom of the screen, hoping my place of business has the compassion to protect its employees from the storm, but no such luck. I pack up my things and prepare to leave my apartment for what could be the last time. I bid farewell to my cat and put out extra food just in case the snow piles up past the 10th floor and no one is able to reach my apartment. I take one last look at my apartment, and head out toward my destiny. On the way down in the elevator, I try to think of the great life I have lived, but all I can picture is my tiny car careening off the road into Lake Erie. Then, I’m eaten by a polar bear.
I expect a snowpocalypse, but when I drive out of the parking deck, the world is not a whiteout—it’s perfectly fine. Cleveland is not breaking off from the rest of the state under the weight of the snow and floating away to become a Great Lakes iceberg. In fact, the roads are dry. There isn’t even any traffic. I briefly wonder if perhaps I am the only survivor of a terrible snowstorm that quickly melted and moved on. But then I realize that the people I trusted so much, those I considered friends and who I allowed into my home to start my day, had lied to me. The anchor and the meteorologist and the bearded traffic guy were all in cahoots to trick me and make me panic so they could have the roads all to themselves. Oh, they’re good. They really had me going. Then comes the part where I vow never to watch them or believe them again.
And the next day, the cycle repeats.
This is going to be a long winter.
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