Author Archives: Wistar

Extracurricular Activities

For most of my life I have avoided clubs and extracurricular activities. I was always more comfortable hanging out by myself or with one other person than as part of a group. I also hated being committed to stuff, because I like having the flexibility of taking a nap if I need a nap. When I was a kid I guess I played on a few sports teams. I was even on swim team for a time in 5th grade, but mostly for the Rice Krispy Treats and single serving Twizzlers that the concession stand sold at Saturday meets. Then my friend Caroline and I started skipping swim practice. Instead of doing laps, we’d walk around town hiding from our parents and neighbors before dousing our hair and our bathing suits in the YMCA locker room sinks. But for many years I didn’t participate in any after-school activities. In college a few of my friends started a club called SEED – The Society for Eastern European Decadence. We sat around and talked about The Unbearable Lightness of Being and drank wine spritzers, always a little tongue-in-cheek (I hope), but the club dissolved the night that we invited the boys to play Truth or Dare and some shirts came off. Then I just retired altogether from group activities. Even holding a job was hard for me. It was always too much like Office Club or The Secretarys’ Alliance. However for the past few months I have been involved in a writing group that I LOVE. I always felt too introverted and embarrassed to join one of these, but now I find myself interrupting the other members to say what I think of an original story. And it helps me open up that we typically have wine and cookies at our meetings. This workshop group combines my great loves – words and sweets. And it just doesn’t bother me anymore that being in a club is totally gay.

So even if you think you are incorrigibly shy or socially awkward or if you just don’t like people, I think there is a group out there for you. Dominic, you can find a club made up of people who like to listen to obscure music alone for hours, and then put their playlists on the internet. Willis, you can join a gang of people who like to giggle at America’s Funniest Home Videos. Jennifer, you already have too many extracurricular activities. And Darren has joined a club of computer nerds who like to play soccer and go to happy hour at French restaurants. There is a community for everyone. So get off your computer, get on Craigslist, and start your own club. You can even have a clubhouse and a secret password. You can even make t-shirts and make fun of non-members. You can even give out cheap trophies for attendance and hang out at Pizza Hut on Saturday afternoons.

Local Sightings (of me)

I love being “spotted” at the library with a bag full of Philip Roth novels. It is so much better than being spotted at Target buying fake nails. One Saturday afternoon I was at the library contemplating checking out the new biography of the Hilton sisters and I ran into my friend Abbey, who was headed to the basement to peruse old New York Times articles on microfiche. I will never be that cool.

A Challenge to Myself

Never take the time to write a blurb for your homepage, replacing “This is just a small space for you to write an introductory about yourself. Nothing too long should be written here. It should be just enough to tease your visitors to find out more.” Never take the time to upload a picture of yourself. Never write about significant things. Never stop fixating on oral sex and ice cream.

My Neighborhood Just Got Richer

My neighbors just won $100,000 in the lottery! So now I have to remove my grandfather’s bumper sticker that says “The lottery is a tax on stupid people” and put up one that says “The lottery could have paid for my retirement if I hadn’t been so snobby about it.” [Love ya, Poppy.] I wrote down a bunch of tips for how to win, and now I’m going to start buying tickets every day at the liquor store. The next winner could be me! I think the chances of next door neighbors winning thousands in the same month are pretty high.

Morning Routine

Since Darren has a real job, working full time as web designer, and I have a fake job that involves lots of lounge-work, I have become interested in perfecting our morning routine. He gets up around 9 to get ready for work, while I occupy myself with sleeping. Then he kisses me goodbye around 10 minutes to 10, and turns on my bedside light, asking me what I’m going to do today. “Shh,” I say. “I am sleeping.” Then I hear him dawdling around upstairs, and I want to impress him with my productivity before he leaves the house, so I stumble to the kitchen in my pajamas (do not pass Go, do not brush teeth) and tell him I am ready to work. Then he finds me reading the CNN and Page Six websites in my office in the dark, and again he turns the light on me before kissing goodbye for the second time. Then I may or may not go back to bed. Then later in the morning I email him explaining that my vacation ends tomorrow and I am going to buy a dry erase board where I can write out my daily schedule, and this will change everything. Then I go looking for breakfast ice cream.

French Restaurants: A Haiku

Love French restaurants!

When I visit la belle France,

Just plain restaurants.

Moms on Acid (Did anyone else read The Babysitters Club books when she was little?)

“I think the moms are dropping acid,” said Mary as we sat around her bed, waiting for the phone to ring.

“I think so too,” said Debbie. “And last night, after the Danbury kids went to bed and I was digging around the freezer for ice cream, I found a sandwich bag of mushrooms. It must have been at least ten ounces.”

“Mrs. Danbury never has good ice cream,” I said. “I hate babysitting there.”

The phone rang and Mary picked it up, day planner and pencil at the ready on the purple bedspread. “Oh hi, Mrs. Chin. Thursday night? Let me see if Kate’s available.” Mary looked at Kate, who was shaking her head furiously. “Mrs. Chin? I’m sorry but Kate is already engaged. How about Debbie? Okay, six o’clock. Thanks for calling the Babysitters Club.”

“Sorry, Mary,” said Kate, looking relieved. “Last time I babysat there, Mrs. Chin came home at like 3 a.m. tripping balls and she tried to make out with me.”

“Great,” said Debbie. “Thanks a lot.”

Divorce had taken its toll on our small town. We were only in middle school, but we still heard about the past year’s rash of extramarital affairs. Middle-aged English teachers would come to class wearing sweat pants, and then let us watch movies while they text-messaged and graded papers through their tears. It all started with one cheating spouse, and then his wife cheated with a married man to get back at her husband, and then that wife cheated for revenge, etc. The whole thing snowballed until most of the formerly married men in town were living in hotels and the wives needed lots of babysitters to facilitate their new single lives. Soccer moms were dating again, driving to Baltimore, the nearest city, to meet men they had been talking to on the internet. They also hung out a lot with each other, at least those women who hadn’t shared men recently, and met for chardonnay and gossip and sobfests that went late into the evening. But we were pretty sure they were getting into harder stuff.

“Are you sure she was tripping?” I said. “I thought Mrs. Chin was more of a pothead.”

“Who knows anymore,” said Kate. “I think they’re all still looking for their drug of choice. They don’t want to get stuck in a routine again. That’s what fucked them up in the first place.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s acid,” said Susan, speaking up from the pile of stuffed animals in the corner of the room. “I was at the movies with Ryan last Saturday night and Mrs. Chin and Mrs. Vandross were sitting in the back row, totally tweaking. It was that movie with the aliens and the mind control – I forget the name – but the moms had to leave like a quarter of the way through. They kept screaming and stuff at parts that weren’t even scary, and giggling at the scary parts. When the movie was over I saw them lying down in the parking lot in front of CVS, trying to grab the sky.”

“That’s the night I was babysitting,” said Kate.

“Yeah,” said Mary. “And I was with the Vandross children that night. But Mrs. Vandross got home earlier, at midnight or something. She only said like two words to me. It seemed like I was freaking her out. And she didn’t even react when I told her Colin had busted his lip on the side of the bathtub. I told her how much she owed me, and she just handed me her whole wallet. All that was in there was a slice of processed cheese and a GI Joe. I was so pissed.”

“If Mrs. Vandross got home at midnight, I wonder where Mrs. Chin went for three hours,” said Susan.

“She was probably with Mrs. Haywood,” I said.

“The social studies teacher Mrs. Haywood?” said Debbie.

“Yeah,” I said. “Last Saturday I was watching cable at her house and fell asleep. Then I heard a car door slam at like 2:30 but no one came in. I looked out the window and she was on the front lawn, dancing in the sprinkler in her bra and underpants. She was making a lot of noise and I worried that someone was going to call the police, so I lured her into the house with Cassie’s colored flashlight.”

“I am so glad my mom’s just an alcoholic,” said Debbie.

“Yeah, no shit. Me too,” said Mary.

“Where are they even getting the stuff?” said Kate. “I can’t even find a dime bag anymore. I thought the town was dry.”

“I guess you have better connections when you’re grown up,” I said.

The phone rang and Susan lunged for it, kicking teddy bears out of the way. “Babysitter’s Club,” she said, and was silent. “I’m sorry Mrs. Murray, but I can’t help you. I think you’re trying to call the plumber. That number is on your fridge too…I don’t know how to get the circus out of the dryer. Call the plumber.”

“Ugh, I want to move,” I said.

“We are totally raking it in though,” said Mary. “We’ll be able to go on vacation together when school is out next month. My older brother said he’d take us to the Warped Tour.”

“No way. I think Mrs. Danbury’s going to that,” I said.

“What? She’s like 40!” said Mary.

“I know. It’s because she was way too young for Woodstock.”

“They all were,” said Mary. “Don’t you think that might be the problem?”

To the Cast of the L Word

I get it, you’re gay.

Bad Girlfriend

I went away for one night, and when I came home Darren was laid up on the couch with sunstroke, a lost wallet, and a sprained ankle that someone kicked in at his Sunday soccer game. He is burnt, broke, and limpy, but I am happy to see him. I better make him some dinner because he has probably forgotten to eat for 24 hours.

Last night when Keith and I went to see our friend’s band Greenland play in Baltimore, I found a girl who just got engaged and convinced her to let me try on her diamond ring. She had to show me where to put it. Then I texted Darren back in Charlottesville, “A girl here showed me which finger the love goes on. Her hand is more bitten than mine.” This seemed like a very Isabel-type message to send. An example of one of hers (also sent last night): “Privacy has a wild prettiness, a spice box at its heart.” Another: “Reading bisexual’s guide to the universe & baking green cupcakes. I’m such a perv.”

Swimming in the City

If I had known in advance that I was going swimming at the city pool this afternoon, I probably would not have had six beers last night and a cheese omelette/home fries/English muffin/french toast/Gobstoppers for breakfast. But if I had known that someone was going to take a crap in the city pool today, I probably would not have gone swimming. Darren and I discussed who might have taken the crap in the Washington Park pool. There must have been a hundred witnesses, all of whom had to evacuate the area promptly after the incident. Who took the crap? Was it a kid old enough to feel ashamed at being responsible for closing down the pool? Was it an oblivious toddler or baby whose parents had to suffer the wrath of all the other swimmers for not putting their kid in a swim diaper? The timing of the accident could not have been worse. There is a drought going on so it’s not like the city can just empty, sanitize, and refill the crappy pool. We’re all supposed to be conserving water. Summer is basically over now. At the Meade Park pool the lifeguards won’t even let you go off the diving board because the splashing depletes the water supply. You are only allowed to dive for ten minutes per hour, and the fat kids and I just had to make the best of it.