Mortification Monday, Ch. 5

Mortification Monday, v. 1.0 (Disclaimers here)
Chapter 5: Not Your Typical Crush

Sometimes, a Monday just falls on the wrong day. Between a caffeine-fueled cleaning blitz (Lavazza coffee: Different kind of bean, different kind of gas!) and the subsequent mental crash, the author loses her funny. And perhaps her three-year-old coerces her into spending the morning “fishing” with a plastic straw, which is THE MOST BORING of all boring games in existence. Yes, even more than The Quiet Game, which was invented for the purpose of torturing prisoners of war with EXTREME BOREDOM. Anyway, things start going awry, and then haywire, and then dropped dishes/hunger-striking baby/stubbed toe disastrous. And then, because she is not thinking straight, the author looks online for a new swimsuit and subsequently changes her name to Flabby McBlimple. And by the time she opens her old diary to share it with the Internet, she is so overwhelmed by the patheticness and irresponsible use of underlining therein that she gives up on life and goes back to fishing.

So you see, sometimes, Mortification Monday has reason to fall on a Tuesday. You are kindly asked to get over it.

::Clears throat::

When we last peeked into preteen Bethany’s diary, there was mention of liking Igor and unholy amounts some underlines. That pretty much brings us up to date:

Tuesday, February 25^th (Age 12)
“You know how in most crushes you usually don’t look at the guy you like, you usually don’t talk to eachother₁, and you probably only see him once or twice a week or₂ month?₃ With Igor and I, we talk all the time, look in eachother’s eyes, (he has hazel-blue eyes just like mine) and see eachother₄ quite a bit (not by ourselves, obviously₅). Today when he got a haircut that I didn’t like a lot, that didn’t change anything. He’s still the same guy, ugly or cute.₆ I’ve made a list of character qualities in a guy, and he gets 22 out of the 26, and the other 4, I’m not sure of.₇”

₁ In elementary school, I spent long portions of every day doing grammar exercises and practicing penmanship like a good little Colonial girl (I also knew how to cross-stitch, evade the Tories, and throw tea into harbors, but that is beside the point). I only started to love the English language, however, during my rebellious stage when I looked up bad words in the Dictionary (I also started listening to Oldies AND wearing tank-tops in secret… shock! Though this, too, is beside the point). I started to love English even more a couple of years later when I fell head-over-heels for a boy who said things like “nary” and “hoary debacle” in an excruciatingly charming way (“Cogsarned!” “Tickles my lollies!” “Homoerotic binge with Yoga!” Swoon, I know. Yet still beside the point). I enjoyed tutoring writing classes in college so much that I married a tutoree, and my creative writing class was basically chocolate-flavored crack, and sometime in there, I decided I might as well get my degree in the field I love (as opposed to elementary education, which gave me seizures, or psychology, which made me neurotic and has nothing to do with the point). The Point is that I eventually learned “eachother” is actually two words. Glad we cleared that up.

₂ Remember last time? When I promised this entry would have absolutely no underlines whatsoever? And through my clever lie got you to come back this week? And you’re still reading even though there is, in fact, an underline? HA.

₃ Quick poll: Do you ever look at the guy you like? Do you ever speak to him? Do you see him more than twice a month? No? Well, congratulations! You have a Typical Crush™! If you’re interested in progressing to the next level, that being Social Contact™, you may want to try incessantly stalking him until he asks why you’re hiding in his shoe rack again. Casually mentioning his Social Security number is a good way to break the ice.

₄ TWO words. Just a friendly reminder to diary-prone preteens everywhere. (Also two words: “All right,” “this morning,” and “anal retentive.”)

₅ Obviously. Because unsupervised Social Contact™ could lead to other vices such as playing footsie, listening to rock music, and me stealing his pencil because it smelled like his delicious, clean, guy smell. Not that any of those things ended up happening, of course…

₆ I was quite the saint in those days. First, I was not angry when the love of my life put his arm around me. Then, I was not offended when we got to play a pretend couple. Finally, I continued to feel twitterpated EVEN THOUGH Igor’s hair was temporarily on the short side. Folks, this kind of selflessness is what relationships are all about.

₇ Regrettably, I do not have a copy of this list, but I can imagine some of the character qualities I found appealing:
+ Hazel-blue eyes
+ GOOD HAIRCUT (temporarily suspended from list)
+ Is really sweet
+ First name Igor
+ Last name Dreamboat
? Has already picked out my engagement ring

Next time on Mortification Monday: The saga of the unfortunate haircut continues!