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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

"little children"

You know when you have those days where your success of failure is all dependent on one thing going right because if that one thing goes right it will trigger a series of events through which the rest of your day will go right? And then that one thing does not go right and you feel like you might cry because you have banked your day's happiness on that one thing. Basically what i'm talking about is those days where things go wrong and then finally the straw breaks the camels back and you break down in front of complete strangers in some public place like a coffee shop or a mini mall, and someone comes up to you and say "are you ok" and you incomprensibly mumble phrases like "yeah iiii'm fine it's just (tears) nothing EVER goes right and just to top it off this and why me!" So today wasn't quite that but i just wnated to set the tone.

All day long, and cathy can attest to this, i have been craving an in n out cheeseburger. If you have never had an in n out cheeseburger you are sorely missing out. I mean, the perfectly cooked meat, the melted cheese, the crispy toasted ring around the edge of the bun. I have travelled far and wide (really only to like 6 states but still) and have never found a burger quite as pleasing as the in n out cheeseburger. Well all day long i was telling cathy how my plan was to go to the movies at 1:10, but on my way stop at the in n out down the street from the theater, use the remainder of my gift card my cousin gave me to purchase a cheeseburger so i coudl sneak it into the theater and eat it during the movie. A wonderful plan, i thought.

I had been contemplating this since last night. I had gone on wikipedia and teh in n out website just to get myself mentally prepaired. i mean I WAS EXCITED! I was learning all of these new facts, like for instance did you know that animal style means your meat patty is cooked in mustard? i did not knw this. I knew all the other stuff but this mustard cooked patty was kind of mysterious to me. Like what does a mustard cooked patty taste like? This all got me talking to cathy about how i'm really not a very exciting person. i generally stick to what i like and i order that forever. For the first 18 years of my life i excuslively ate hamburgers. In fact, i think i didnt' actually have my first cheeseburger until college on a trip to, of all palces IN N OUT! well since then i have been on a strict cheeseburger fad. I have this thing where when i'm looking at a menu i think "ooh that looks good. but what if it's not. what if i order it and it's not really what i want and i waste all of those calories and money on something i dont' even like or enjoy! but i'm so boring. i should just try it." well i get myself all worked up and by the time i make it to the ordering booth i say to myself "do it! order something new" and then what comes out of my mouth is "cheeseburger, no onions." so what i'm saying is, i am a creature of habit. Well after talking ot cathy today for about an hour about how much i love cheeseburgers and because of this love was a bit scared to try to double double animal style she finally convinced me. So i got in my car, drove to in n out wiht 10 minutes to spare and rolled into the parking lot to find....

25 fucking cars waiting in line for what i can only assume is the same damn double double animal style! goddamnit! i was filled with such rage. I definitely did not have time to wait in that line or i would for sure miss my movie. So i made a rash decision. i drove off and called cathy to complain about how wretched and cruel life can sometimes be (in a very uncruel way, i mean you know, this is all for dramatic value). I told her i was on the verge of tears, which i really was, and i told her how much i hated americans because "what kidn of disgusting peopel are eating in n out for lunch on a work day! i only eat like this on vacation! god, i hate americans! this is why they are so fat!" And really i ask, who eats fastfood on a normal lunch day? if you do i think you shoudl really stop, buy yourself some wheat bread and turkey and chow down on something healthy for a change! because seroiusly fast food should be reserved for a few rare times a year when you let yourself enjoy, like for instance VACATIONS! so anywyas i was very bitter and ended up just going straight to the movie theater and feeling really upset that my whole plan to enjoy a nice double double animal style had been ruined by a bunch of gluttonous people who also had the urge to eat in n out that day on their lunch break.

so i saw this movie "little children" and it was really good. And it's nto really teh kind of movie where you can talk about plot and stuff liek that, but it's the kind of movie that leaves you thinking. And after i came out it really put that whole in n out debacle into perspective, and i dont' realy know how, but it did. It got me thinking about my life, and what i value, and how sad it is that not getting a double double animal style can throw me all out of wack, because really, what does this say about me?

And then i was driving home kind of pensive, when i saw this old mustang with a for sale sign. I dont' know anything about cars so i cant' say what year it was, but it took me back to a day when i used to want an old mustang. I remember asking my dad for one and he said it was a very impractical car and my parents are all about practicality. And the reason that i wantd the mustang was not that i cared about how it ran or anything like that or that i knew anything about engines and shit, but it was because i used to watch 21 jumpstreet and johnny depp's character drove a mustang and i stuck with me. I mean, i was a really big johnny depp fan at the time. i also really wanted an old VW bug. I had these memories of my aunt lucy, who later became my "crazy aunt lucy" when she used to pick me and Jenny up and take us to the movies in her old sky blue VW bug. I thought that car was teh coolest and it seemed very me. Well i didnt' get a bug. Instead i got a boring, green, honda civic. And the irony (in the alanis morrisette way) was that this other mexican girl who had almost the same name as me only with an H had an old VW bug. and i always had this feeling that she somehow was the cooler, more confident version of me (with less controlling parents). She wasn't even that pretty, and boys liked her, and she was tall and had an awkward body wtih a flat butt, but again, no one seemed to notice. And she was smart and we had fun together when we got put in the back of our AP history class because we were the only girl who didnt' show our coochies to our dirty history teacher (turns out he was a pedophile and we were the on;y non slutty girls in class). And i always felt liek in some alternate world we would have been friends. It reminds me of this quote "if i had been someone else in a different world Id've done something different, but i was myself and the world was the world, so i was silent." That's how i feel about a lot of things, and that's kind of how the movie "little children" made me feel, when i say "i felt pensive."

So i leave this entry with no conclusion, except to say that i went to in n out afterwards. there was still a line, but i waited and i got a double double animal style. It was too big for me. i only ate 3/4 of it and threw the rest away. Sometimes we shoudl listen to the signs that life gives us.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have had similar experiences at the in n out drivethru, prompted by my brilliant conclusion that they couldn't POSSIBLY make you wait in the drivethru as long as you do inside because, I mean, you drive through, and they have to keep that line moving. Yeah. Wrong. Anyway, I was missing a lot about California but hadn't even thought about burgers, sigh. I hear New York burgers are good too but so far I haven't found one with bacon for under $8.50 so burgerless am I.

Emily said...

i feel like this is one of your more genius entries for some reason... it captures so many truths about life. and this is beside the point, obviously, but i really do always order the same thing all the time, and sometimes when i force myself to try something different it turns out to be not as good. like when i go to brunch i usually get eggs, bacon, maybe hashbrowns if it's part of the meal, whatever. but today i tried to get a waffle because i always think - i can make eggs at home - and then i felt full and gross all day from all the carbs. sometimes you order the same thing because it's better.