as a high school freshman, i was in love with a senior boy. his name was something like, but not exactly, harry. my high school did have a handsome boy who was older than me named harry—although, now that i’m writing this, i’m remembering that actually his name was dylan.
were there any harrys in my grade? were there any harrys in my school? there had to have been. that’s a pretty common name.
“why are we still talking about this?” you’re asking.
the answer is: i don’t know! i can’t stop! my brain is a nightmare!
a n y w a y, whatever. the point is, my whole freshman year, i was in love with not-harry (actual not-harry, not the not -harry who was in fact dylan). he was very tall, and more importantly, he was very sweet to me, a pigeon-toed and badly socialized fourteen-year-old who really believed she looked good in low-riding boot-cut jeans with leopard print patches on them. not-harry and i met because he was the student waiter at my lunch table, and we stayed acquaintances because of a peculiar and excellent thing that happened to me, which was that for the entirety of my high school career i was not in my school’s lunch attendance system.
the thing you have to understand for any part of this story to make sense is that my boarding school had a lunch system where most days you had an assigned seat. every other lunch period, you were seated at an arbitrary table in order to like, help you make friends or something. student waiters would bring your food.
there was a rotation freshman year in which every student had to be a student waiter, and if you were good at it, you could stay on and make money.
i was so not-good at it that they took me off rotation early, which feels pretty on-brand for me.
for whatever reason, i was never assigned a table. in the land of seated lunches, i was king.
some people might have used this opportunity to sit with their friends or maybe with a teacher from whom they wanted to hassle a better grade, but i was a simple child and all i wanted to do was have many opportunities as possible to ask not-harry, who always remembered my name and never called me out for knocking things over all the time, to bring me the vegetarian option.
the teacher assigned to that table was a teacher that i never had, and never bonded with, and was constantly perplexed as to why i always insisted on sitting at his table and then never spoke to him.
“so weird they keep assigning me here,” i would say, and mr. wilcox would answer, “but they didn’t. i have the list. you aren’t assigned to sit here.”
“so weird,” said i.
the other great benefit of not having an assigned table at lunch is that i did not have to go to lunch. i could go to nap.
alternatively, i could go back into the kitchen and cajole the cooks to give me extra dessert, which i also did all the time. they made these peanut butter and chocolate bars that slammed. i kept some hidden in the freezer wrapped in paper towels because i am never more like a dragon than when somebody asks to share food.
everybody who knew that i existed knew that i was in love with not-harry. my school was very small, and probably even people who didn’t know me could have pointed at me and said something like, “whatever that girl’s name is, she’s in love with not-harry, who is tall and cool and has lots of friends.”
let’s break here to talk a little about not-harry. i, of course, was miserably uncomfortable in my own body, extremely uncool, and hadn’t yet figured out the difference between being sarcastic and just being mean. also, i once wrote and recorded a song called, “sweet like elk bladder,” which is something i don’t exactly regret but am also not exactly proud of. and if it sounds like i am being unkind to tiny baby molly, please know that despite being objectively unbearable, i love her. she was trying her best, and would improve rapidly between the ages of seventeen and twenty. she was a late bloomer.
but, at fourteen, if i could boil down my whole personality it would be: your least favorite cousin.
you know the one.
you don’t have to tell anybody who it is, just visualize them in your mind.
that was me.
not-harry, on the other hand, was devon sawa in little giants. he was sean biggerstaff in harry potter. he was what’s-his-face in a walk to remember. (you know. not matt damon but the guy that kind of looks like matt damon?)
not-harry:
in high school freshman molly’s fantasy of who not-harry was, he played the guitar, is what i’m saying.
i do want to say, in my own defense, that i was aware of how out of my league not-harry was. it’s not that i thought i had a chance with him. first of all, he had a girlfriend, who was blonde and beautiful and also very nice, which was rude because it meant i couldn’t even spitefully dislike her. she played field hockey and once helped me pick up an armful of books when i inevitably dropped them.
secondly, i have never in my life expressed an emotion and even if he had been moved by my letter, i am confident that if he’d approached me about it i would have simply sprinted away at top speed.
thirdly, like, a bird can love a fish but where would they live, you know what i’m saying?
anyway, all this exhausting set up is to say that i was obsessed with not-harry, and he did not know who i was except probably to have noticed that i was assigned to his lunch table a lot.
“she’s actually not. i don’t know why she’s here all the time.” - mr. w, still not getting any answers.
every year for valentine’s day, my school would do this fundraiser thing where you could buy carnations and have them sent to your friends (or, you know, if you were the kind of person who got asked out, you could send it to your babe or whatever. that…wasn’t really a concern for me).
or, of course, some people sent them anonymously to people they liked.
“no,” you’re probably saying to yourself. and i get it!!! i get it. looking back at my own self, i am also saying, “no.”
that’s a pretty common theme, for me.
i think that i knew, at the time, that it was a bad idea. i kind of remember thinking to myself, this is a bad idea. i know that this is a bad idea. and then immediately following it up with, yeah but how bad of an idea can it really be?
pretty bad, molls!!!! preeeeetty, pretty bad.
you know, looking back, i think that the worst thing wasn’t even sending the carnation. like, that’s pretty embarrassing, but not end of the world embarrassing. but i didn’t just send it, i sent it and i included a note, and that note said, with painful earnestness, “this is the closest i’ll ever get.”
god. god!!! i know!!!
like, what??? was i thinking?? what a horrible, creepy, incredibly vulnerable thing to just put in the universe!!!! lil’ baby molly, somebody is going to read that. he, and all his friends, are going to know that you have feelings. feelings are embarrassing. we’ve been over this.
honestly, at the time, i think i was kind of just like … screw it. you know? i was young. i knew high school was going to be the time in my life where i was the least likeable person i’d ever be. everybody knew i had this huge embarrassing crush on him, so, like, what was the worst that could happen? you only live once!!! you might as well just be the most embarrassing person you can be.
obviously, i did a complete 180 on that opinion the second it was too late to take it back.
as soon as the carnations went out i started making plans to dig myself a hole and quietly die in it.
everybody knew it was me. i mean, everybody. not a single person saw that note and was like, “gee, i wonder who sent this. could it be the awkward, long-armed monster child that spends the entirety of lunch drooling at not-harry with her chin in her tiny troll hands? haha, no. that’s crazy! it must have been someone else. what an unsolvable mystery.”
i fruitlessly tried to talk my way out of it. i sent an email to my entire grade that i am deeply grateful has been lost to the internet abyss that said something like, “hey just in case anyone was wondering who sent that carnation to not-harry, uh, it wasn’t me. i’m not saying anyone thinks it was me, but if they do think it was me, it wasn’t. they’re wrong. i definitely didn’t send a carnation to not-harry. that would be weird, and am i weird? no. as this email proves, i’m a normal person who does normal things only.
“normal things only,” is going to be the name of my autobiography, and it’s going to be a bald-faced lie.
in hindsight, this wasn’t even the most embarrassing moment of my high school career, though it certainly ranks. but it does hit a very specific and tender part of my memory: high school molly was so young, and so earnest, and so terrible at everything, but she was trying so hard. you know? when i think about myself writing that horrible note, i remember thinking, “obviously he is not going to read this and dump his beautiful, kind girlfriend to date me,” but i also remember thinking, “…yeah, but he might.”
i feel like this attitude toward things has lowkey been a guiding principle in my life, and possibly all of human history, for better or worse: this isn’t going to work, but it might.
humans are such heartbreakingly optimistic creatures, even when we try not to be. think of all the times that we have done things just to do them. just to prove we could! just to do something impossible. we are impossible animals who do impossible things.
like, people built airplanes!!! how dumb is that? people built airplanes and gave humans wings, even though it definitely wasn’t going to work, except that it might, and it did.
i like the idea of that, i think. every once in a while, it does. it does work. against all odds.
to be clear, in this particular instance, it did not.
not-harry never talked to me about it, because not -harry took one look at me and probably realized that i had enough problems. i know he got it, because i watched him get it in the lunchroom. i chose not to sit at his table that day, because i was an idiot but i wasn’t stupid. i knew i didn’t have the acting chops to keep a straight face when he opened it.
not-harry looked at the note, and then looked around like, “what the hell kind of john-hughes-movie loving moron sent me this?”
we locked eyes.
dear god, i thought to myself, if he puts the note away and no one ever talks to me about it again i swear i will find a new table.
not-harry held the note up. i looked at it, and then back at him. i don’t know what my face was doing, but i can only assume i looked like little foot in the scene where he realizes the thing he thought was his mom was just his own shadow.
very slowly, and very kindly, not-harry put the note in his pocket.
“i haven’t seen you at lunch in a while!” mr. w said to me months later, in passing, and i did the sign of the cross as i said, “so weird!” and kept walking.
(i looked not-harry up on facebook just now, and he’s still beautiful, and i still love him. reader, should i friend him? probably not, right? it’s probably a bad idea.
Look, this is my litmus test: I pretend I am the original Earl of Sandwich. I have asked for non-bread foods to be brought to me inside bread, that I might more easily consume them one-handed while gambling.
This does not enable my wretched regency habits. This is not what I asked for. I do not deign to grace it with the name of my house.
This is it. This is the new and perfect litmus test.
Litmus test accepted
Perfect.
From “first of all how dare you” to “fuck yeah, toast those responsible like a grilled cheese sandwich.”
Hey all! Some of you are asking about the bear incident. I will tell you in due course, but for now ill give you a teaser
It involves a bear, a tree, and a lack of pants
Well I’d be worried if the bear was wearing pants…
To clarify. Im lacking pants
hopefully you’re fully equipped with as many pants as you need at this point in time, i’d be much more worried if you didn’t have any pants at all.
To clarify AGAIN: AT THE TIME OF THE BEAR INCIDENT I WAS LACKING PANTS
CURRENTLY I HAVE MANY PANTS AT LEAST 2 OK
Okay but did the tree have pants
THE BEAR HAD NO PANTS I HAD NO PANTS AND THE TREE HAS MY PANTS OK
YOU WERE ROBBED BY A TREE???
…..maybe…..not exactly
As a non-native speaker I always wonder: pants as in two long tubes of fabric that go down to your ankles or pants as in the underwear. Please tell me it’s the latter
I mean at that point it was both
A tree panty thief… i always knew trees were suspicious…
Wait, how does the bear fit in??
DAMMIT YOU GUYS
I WAS GONNA GIVE THIS ONE TO YOU LATER WITH PROPER THOUGHT AND WRINTING BUT NO YA’LL HAVE NO CHILL
BUCKLE UP FRIENDS YOU’RE IN FOR A WILD RIDE
Ok so i’m twelve. little twelve year old Rekina. I was a scout for most of my life, so the forest is like home to me ok. In a city i get super turned around, can’t find my way around to save my life
but drop me in a forest? man ill have an entire camp set up and find my way out in less than a day ok im wilderness survivor exrtordinare
So i’m out camping with my troop. We’re big kids now so the adults dicthed us for our very own solo three day hike
let me just say that my troop didn’t like me. I was the quiet nerd kid who read alone in my tent and kicked everyones aass at lighting fires, when they all were sneaking in booze, peeping on girls, and failing to light fires
So one afternoon while i’m out hunting for supper (a task no one has succeeded at, they just wanted me out of the way. fools) i discover i severly have to pee. So i got ahead and prop mysef agaisnt a tree as you do
Now, when you’re a girl, you don’t get the lucury of just whipping it out and pissing on a mushroom ok you have to remove all clothing from the lower half and squat agsint a tree like a weight lifter
so im doing my thing, my pants around my ankles, when i hear the bushes near by rustling
Those fucking boys i swear im going to kick their asses if they’re spying on me
but im midstream and you don’t just stop midtsream ina forest cause then you drip all over your under wear and its not fun
I get two more seconds of peaceful pee time
BAM the bush fucking explodes
i scream, and almost fall over because my legs are getting tired ok peeing in a forest is hard work for women let me get an amen
But its fine, i look over and it isn’t one of the boys
it’s a baby bear no threat to me
I continue about my buisness.
wait
baby bear =
mama bear
Sure enouogh the second i think that she rears up from behind the bush
now this thing is gigantic im talking would knock an nba player away from the hoop and get a slam dunk with out even trying ok
huge
I don’t move. I;m racking my brain like ok what did the manual say to do what would indiana jones do shitshitshitshit well ok as long as it doesn’t see me im safe ill just wait for it to go away and make no noise
she looks over and roars
had i not already been peeing i would have pissed my pants
I was caught, literally, with my pants down.
I think its time to beat a hasty retreat i threw the manual and indiana jones out the window
id like to say i calmly made my escape, floating like a graceful ballerina
didnt happen
i waddled away like a psychotic penguin screaming and flailing and being decidedly ungraceful ok i would have made Mumble proud for how my my little feet were moving i was like a penguin tap star
I booked it, desperaty trying to pull up my pants so i can at least die not looking like Bert from mary poopins doing his ridiculous little dance
so im running for life, a big ass knife in my hand and i know i won’t be able to stab this thing
or out run it
or out last it
i couldnt out anything it
but im good at climbing
I beeline for this massive oak and scramble up that thing like a penguin, squirel hybrid. I prop my self up on one f the high branches, stilling trying to pull up my pants, but that’s kind of hard while your ass is being tickled by fire ants
lets just say i took the short cut down
I plummeted face first out of the tree, screaming like a banshee
The bear screamed back andd ran away because when i say banshee i mean banshee ok i have the shriek of a dolphin on helium
suddenly im not falling.
A branch had snagged my jeans and now i was dangling maybe ten feet of the ground by my pants
in a true, rekina, cliche move, i slip from the branch and crsh the ground completely unharmed (except for my bruise dignity) and somehow managed to not stab myself with my knife on the way down
on small problem
i left my pants in the tree.
The branch had flung my three layers of pants three different ways
my underwear fluttered to the ground beside me like the graceful ballerina i wish i was
my long underwear was twisted around a branch not far above my head
and my jeans had been freaking rocketed into one of the highest branches, the bough too thin for me to climb
i so i put on my now fire ant infested under wear (after doing my best to clean them and quickly snag my long johns because i know one thing for certain
i still see baby bear
mama is coming back
I high tail it like i have never high tailed before ok i was hauling ass outta there
I sprint for a good minute or so when suddenly a brown blur shoot from he bush and im thinking oh shit ima dead man so i do the only logcal thing because im going down fighting aint no bear gonna find me curled on the ground
i lashed out with my knife like a frickin knight in shining armour except im not a knight
and im in my under wear
and it wasn’t a bear
in my amazing survival stab the beast reflexes i didn’t notice how low to the ground i was aiming
i had stabbed a water rat
you can bet your ass im not wasting that meat
I scoop it up, its blood splatterd all over my face and strut back towards camp
i roll in there pantsless, covered in blood, dirt, and fire ant, grinning like a maniac
“I found supper”
none of the boys ever peeped on me again
How are you even still alive
I wish i knew
Mother fucker this is exactly why the aliens are never going to attack earth. A furious monster attacked a human youngling while as vulnerable as possible and the youngling not only survived, it also climbed a tree half naked, scared the monster away, and caught dinner for it’s pack members with a blade. Not to mention we’re all just chillin’. Laughing about a terrifying near death experience.
Story of my life bro (literally)
@dannyaches american scouts are freakin hardcore man…
Anonymous asked: If humans had a third hand what do you think it would be called? If you could play any instrument without practicing, what would it be?
First one: This? The greatest question. Okay so like obviously if it was a hand that sprouted from like right above your sternum, it would be called the middle hand, seeing as we already have the right and left hands (fun story, you know that phantom limb thing that happens with ADHD, among other things? My brain used to really stubbornly spit out ‘middle eye’ as A Thing I Had when I was younger, it was weird). On the other hand (ha, I’m a riot), if it was another hand below either your right or left hand (wouldn’t it be interesting if it was genetically dictated which side you had your third hand on, like handedness is genetically dictated or which thumb is on top when you lace your fingers) I imagine you would still have a ‘dominant’ hand. Like, one of the three would be more dexterous than the others. So maybe you’d have like “Yes, this is my left hand, and this is my right hand, and this is my prime hand.” WHICH WOULD BE RAD. Also, if you had two pairs of hands you could have your ‘prime’ hands and your ‘off’ hands, so like ‘prime left’ and ‘off right’ and yeah, this was a good question.
Second one: ANY. I have very limited patience for learning instruments because I can’t read sheet music for shit (I have tried, I have made an effort, I have spent years on it, but nope, brain won’t do the thing). I can sing! But IDK I played the flute for a while, which was fun, and I’ve always wanted to be able to play like a harp or a lap harp, or the guitar. I would really love to play either of those. (I recognize that the flute and the harp are both really delicate instruments for someone like me but I like them, okay. At least the guitar fits The Aesthetic.)
Husband was looking for me all round the house so he could show me something he’d made but he couldn’t find me so he just shouted really loudly, “Fantasy and Sci-fi are the same genre!” and the rational part of my brain doing laundry was like “I’m not responding to a meme, wait where am I going—” as I ascended up the basements stairs like the wrath of god, and he just turned like “there you are” and I’m SO MAD THAT IT WORKED
Fic where all of the Avengers are trying to teach tech stuff to Steve (especially Tony who just gets so annoyed at his apparent tech incompetence) but he just seems super hopeless at it until one day one of them stumbles across a youtube account that’s filled with a series of videos titled ‘How Long Can I Keep My Friends Convinced I Have No Idea What Technology Is’ and it turns out he’s been gaming them for YT hits for months.
“How do I make the Google do the thing” has over 30 million hits alone.
It works even better if you put it in a universe where they all have secret identities, so rather than Captain America conning, say, Hawkeye, it’s just some super built dude who for some reason (probably that he’s blond) is vastly underestimated by his equally anonymous friends. A debate rages constantly in the comments about whether that guy IS Tony Stark or just a ringer.
a. Steve’s username is brooklyn1917 and the top question he keeps getting is “Are you really Captain America?” The other question is “Please tell us if you’re actually Chris Evans.”
b. Steve eventually makes a video to address these two questions. Except he basically spends the video laughing for like five minutes and then just smiles this ACTUAL LITTLE SHIT GRIN and then goes, “No, I’m not Chris Evans.” It drives his fans into a frothing frenzy.
c. After the “How Do I Make Google Do The Thing” debacle, the next most popular videos are “How Do I Get My Email Through YouTube?” and “Why is My Email Not in My Mailbox Outside My Door?” There are varying reactions among the Avengers for this. Natasha’s “I’m Going to Kill You Very Slowly™” Face is terrifying. Clint’s “There Is Not Enough Coffee In the World” Lament is priceless. And Tony…. well. Tony’s Rant is Lord of the Rings Epic with Fan Fiction thrown in.
d. Thor is the first person to figure out that Steve is a Little Shit™ and totally joins him on the Trolling.
e. Bruce was the one who actually discovered the YouTube channel. He was promptly bribed into silence by copious amounts of Sarah Rogers’ Patented Chocolate Fudge Magic Brownies™.
f. Bruce’s favorite video is the Instagram Saga, in which Steve Rogers Has Everyone Else Convinced That He Thinks This Is Really a Telegram Service.
g. Currently, Sam Wilson is about to be bribed into keeping silence and to aid and abet any and all shenanigans.
h. Peter Parker is one of Steve’s number one fans and is responsible for feeding Steve more ideas in his YouTube comments.
just remember that I, a registered nurse with a bachelors degree, accidentally glued a patient’s foreskin shut over his penis and had to call a urology doctor to come help me get it to retract
I had to send a page that said “I glued the patient’s penis shut. send help.”
The urology resident said, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like this. Let me go ask someone else.”
It’s been like 5 days since this happened and I’m just sitting at the nurses station with some coworkers and the urology resident walks by and says “hey! Glue any penises shut lately??” And keeps on walking
THEN ALL MY COWORKERS WERE LIKE WHAT JUST HAPPENED
and so yeah, that freaking doctor exposed me and went on his way
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body.
that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
