Written 10/28/1999 I hope platform shoes never go out of fashion. My sandals have 7cm heals, and I can finally look at guys in the face (hmmm, is that why they suddenly seem a lot less attractive?). When winter comes everyone will think I was shortened… I have to get high healed boots. There's a professor here who works with midgets. He says the most common treatment for them is to saw their legs in half and insert cartilage into them. Isn't that the most horrible thing? I'd way rather be a midget than have my legs sawed. There's a midget at my business school that yells at people over her cell phone all the time. I bet she's the head of some department, except she sits behind some big chair like in the movies, and no one knows she's 2 feet tall.
The Prof. who worked with midgets told me that he was once invited to one of the conferences of the society called "Little people of America". He told me that he felt like Guliver, and that the midgets were "so cute trying to climb on the chairs". I still can't believe that even at the midget's national conference they couldn't get chairs their size. I wonder who organized it - I would hate to be the person who made that mistake. Probably it was a midget himself that forgot to think that life could be improved.
How did I get to writing about THAT? Well….
I went home to my parents for the weekend, after not seeing them for 3 weeks. I know, for Americans this is nothing but I almost never stay away from home this long. I actually missed my parents. I have wonderful parents, which is very rare around here, I have found out. As a kid I used to take them very much for granted, but I don't anymore. When I was a kid I really did everything to make sure my life would not look like theirs, but I kept seeing that if I make the choices in my life I really want to make, I'll end up just like my mother. I fought this for a while, by being the "bad girl", but then I decided to give into it. Now I just hope my life will turn out as good as my mother's.
My brother is also the coolest. You ask him about his life and get a 24-hour stand up comedy routine. (What's worse than a worm in your apple?………. The Holocaust! HA! HA! HA!. Not very tasteful, I know). I kind of envy him for his ease in social situations and his "cool"ness, even though he's 16 and I'm supposed to be the elder and the envied one. My parents always tell him to be more like me (mostly in school). I wonder why they do that? They never told me to be like anyone else, and anyway, he'd better not be like me. He'll be way better.
Things between him and my dad are not great. My dad promised to help him with his computer troubles, but kept forgetting about it until the computer crashed and my brother lost everything he's written in the past few years. It's a small thing, but I can see how it would get on his nerves. Especially since he warned my dad that this would happen if he didn't help him. So now my brother sulks at my dad all day. My dad also has these annoying leaps of logic when he argues with us. I remember I would get frustrated to the point of tears from arguing with him. Like:
"Get off the phone" "Why?" "Because I'm waiting for a call" "But we have Call Waiting" "Well, it's too expensive" "But it's after 10pm - only 50 cents an hour!" "Well, you have homework" "Already did it" "Why don't you go visit her instead of talking on the phone" "What do you care?" "Just get off the phone because I ASKED YOU TO!!!!!!!" I was so angry when he used to do that to me. Now my brother inherited it. He told me that sometimes my dad calls him from his room to yell at him (it's not that big a house but we're very lazy people) and my brother hangs up in his face! I can't believe my dad is cool about that. I bet it's worse in that house than it looks on weekends… My brother is way meaner than I was. He said because my dad refuses to argue with him logically, he has a lot of repressed anger that will be released by sending my dad to a parent's home when he's old, instead of keeping him in his house. I wanted to throw up when he said that - because any reference to my parents getting old makes me sick, and how could my brother be so evil???? And manipulative! What kind of megalomaniac monster have we raised???????
He has too much self-confidence for his own good, and ours. But he's cute so we let him get away with it.
Oh, I forgot the weirdest thing about this weekend. On Saturday morning when Odie was sleeping, my mom casually told me that she and my dad had gone to counseling!!!!!!!! And why? To discuss the topic of "How we can give our daughter the confidence needed to end a relationship that we think is bad for her". They went to THERAPY because of ME!!!!!!!!
For background - my parents have never been to any kind of counseling before, except about my brother's dyslexia. My dad used to laugh at my mom whenever she said the words "social sciences" because to him if it doesn't involve difficult math, it's not a science. He's an engineer - what can you expect? He used to hate any kind of "psychological bullshit". And my mom is too "common sense" for it. She thinks you can solve anything by hoping for the best, cleaning the house and singing. (Seriously, She sings when she's scared and anxious and I don't think it's even conscious). My parents did not go to counseling when they found my brother's marijuana plants on the roof!
Anyway, they went to two meetings with some young shrink, who told them to let me decide for myself what to do with Odie (as if they had a choice! AAAArgh!). They don't like him and they got the idea that I'm only staying with him because I don't believe that anyone else will want me (that's not exactly the truth, but I can understand where they got the idea). But what they eventually focused on was wht they could do about my low self esteem. Was it their fault? What did they do? Were they too critical of me when I was a kid? (Hardly) Did they expect too much? (Not really) Did they stop me from reaching for my dreams? (What dreams) Did they give me the idea that they were perfect and everything was easy for them? (Now, that is maybe getting a little closer)
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