| The Outside World |

Monday, November 22, 2004

Molly Schoemann
HUMOR COLUMN EXCERPTS by Molly Shoemann

Molly Schoemann has in every way justified my confidence that she would be a great humor columnist. She is naturally funny- her perspective on life is one that combines the finest elements of humorists such as Robert Benchley, Rita Rudner, and the finest writers of The Simpsons. It is a privilege to know and love her. I consider being able to share her with you one of the foremost accomplishments of The Outside World. Even my mother reads her columns before reading what I write. I don't blame her. -Howard

Unfortunately, my Halloween spirit has waned through the years. Perhaps this is because dressing up when you are young is more than dressing up; you assume another identity, and, rather than telling you that you just can't wear your sequined tutu to school, for one evening every adult around you only encourages your fantasy. I believe the low point of my Halloween enthusiasm occurred during my freshman year at Bard, when I wore an orange shirt to a party and claimed to be a carrot. The shirt had writing on it, but I hadn't bothered to turn it inside out. Several friends eyed me skeptically when I told them what I was, and asked why I hadn't at least said I was dressed as a pumpkin. I lowered my head. That hadn't even occurred to me.

Being around kids once in a while offers a nice change from college life. Coaxing a two-year-old to spit a Styrofoam peanut out into your hand gives you a new perspective that you just don't find at school, even in a 300 level Lit class. I'm not sure what kind of new perspective it is, but I do know it's sticky. The kids I play with are a wide range of ages, but regardless, none of them listen to or appreciate my witty, off-the-cuff remarks. A few of them speak more Spanish than English, and I spent last week's session frantically trying to remember anything I had learned from four years of high-school Spanish. I ended up saying things like "Hey, want to color with the rojo crayon?. . . it's rojo."

What's the point of a D+? It's like a punch in the face, followed by an insincere thumbs up. That little plus sign does nothing to ease the crushing blow of the D that precedes it. Getting a D+ on a paper or test sends the message: "You're almost failing, but at least you're doing it with pizzazz."

My only-child friends often ask me what it was like to grow up with a little sister. I always mumble something inane about how it must have been nice growing up without one. Actually, I'm surprised at the number of friends I have who are only-children. I think I've always been drawn to them, especially when I was little. Only-children were the bossy, demanding, dynamic kids whom I followed blindly everywhere even though they always made me take the broken swing and be the dog when we played Family. I don't believe that children grow up the same with or without siblings. Not being able to get into the bathroom nine out of ten weekday mornings because your little sister locks herself in to blow-dry her hair for 45 minutes even though she's dressed and can damn well move over and let you in to brush your teeth for 10 seconds, has an enormous effect on the developing psyche of a young individual.

All you push-button voicemail junkies out there, I don't know how your little system works and I don't reckon I ever will. In my room I've got an ancient, tacky little black box of an answering machine sitting on top of a sagging cardboard dresser and that's the way I likes it. Sometimes, though, I find myself wishing that my happiness and sense of self-worth didn't hinge on a little red light that blinks when times are good and messages plentiful, and stares up at me with a sullen, red glow when no one cares.

Coming home late at night and being confronted by the hateful, unblinking red light of an answering machine with no messages on it can really make you want to rob a liquor store. (Note to authorities: Not a binding statement.)
I wish my answering machine had a function that made it blink permanently with the promise of a message. When I didn't have a message (as happens oh so occasionally), my pressing "Play" would make the answering machine say something nice to me, like: "You have no messages, you sexy, sexy piece of ass. Man, if I weren't an answering machine...." Or even something reassuring, like "He must have lost your number. I'll bet he's kicking himself." Maybe someday that technology will be available. The future is now.

No, when I get to my room, before getting started on that six-page paper, I call the friend who is in the class with me to complain about the length and difficulty of the assignment. When I get off the phone, I tidy up my desk. I feed my fish. I water my plants. I wonder why living things that need my attention receive it only when I'm putting off doing work. Perhaps my priorities are a little off. At this stage I should only have children if I plan to have the kind of high-pressure job that makes feeding them become an attractive alternative to meeting deadlines. So, the paper. Right. First, better make some Ramen. And a mix tape…

I couldn't have a puppy, but I could have goldfish, my parents said. I sure could. And I had goldfish, off and on, for many years. I discovered early on that I received precious little emotional fulfillment from taking care of a creature with a six-second memory and no awareness of my existence. Not that I didn't try. I named my fish, I took care of them, I watched them swim. It's pretty much all you can do, though I somehow continued to expect more-and to be disappointed. A short but eloquent poem that I wrote at the age of five perfectly expressed my feelings of disillusionment at the deep and profound bond that failed to develop between me and any of my goldfish. It went:

I have a little fish
I love her very much
But she doesn't care.

The thought that I wrote that poem still troubles me. My parents think it's hilarious.

I don't think I've ever driven to catch a train without staring at my watch the entire time, fervently reassuring myself that minutes are, after all, individually quite long. You can drive pretty far in a minute. 60 whole seconds! Eventually the minutes begin to expand before my very eyes. Each minute is a world within itself, a length of time during which anything is possible, if you only believe.

Showers also have their own special laws concerning time. I have been firmly convinced that I could take a quick two-minute shower, though in the morning that's the length of time it takes me to figure out how my bathrobe works. I will go to breakfast at 9:58, two minutes before my class begins, and trust that I can toast a bagel in negative time.

I will also believe that I can write a coherent column on the afternoon it's due.

We made almost enough during last month's Yard Sale to pay for the cost of the therapy sessions I will need to fully recover from having that Yard Sale. There is something about digging old junk out of the closet and scattering it across the driveway that causes one's dignity to evaporate swifter than the morning dew off an old coffee maker that is missing a sieve but still works fine; only $2.

Several times during the course of the sale I attempted to disguise myself as a customer, a mere browser; wandering aimlessly among stacks of water stained self-help books, pausing every once in awhile to inspect a plastic baggie full of mismatched Mr. Potato Head parts, and shaking my head in feigned disgust as I stood over a pile of gnawed wooden children's puzzles. This little charade was generally ruined by a poor, unsuspecting customer whose examination of an electronic chessboard would prompt me to sidle up to him, lean over his shoulder and hiss something along the lines of, "Still works. Only $4. Not bad, huh?"

This week's will be a reduced-fat, high-protein column. By this I mean I am moving to Honolulu in less than a week and am a little short of both time and patience. Also money, but I already wrote about that. Although I almost wish I had even less traveling money than I do, because it would be nice to tell the grandchildren about the time I set off on a one-way trip to Hawaii with $35 in my pocket. Unfortunately, the sum is closer to $50. But I guess I could lie about it later.
"Why Hawaii?", you might ask, but only if you've never heard of Hawaii. If you have, you might ask something more along the lines of, "I'm coming to visit!"

Which isn't actually a question, now that I think about it. (Nor is that a sentence.) The way I figure it, the first year after you finish college is going to be a wipe no matter what you do with it (or so I have heard from other fairly recent college graduates), so you may as well spend it living in squalor on a pretty island.

Possibly one of the most humbling things about moving somewhere completely new and different has been my frantic attempt at remembering exactly how it is one goes about making friends. I've been wracking my brains for several weeks now, and the best I can come up with is a lament about how much easier it used to be to make friends when I was younger. I'm talking, four. Back when you could say, 'Do you like Rainbow Brite? I like Rainbow Brite,' to the girl next to you, and she would smile and nod, and then you were friends, and went on play dates to each other's houses, and played "Take All of the Cushions off the Couch and Stack them as High as You Can".

I sat with my brows knitted in concentration as he worked on my computer, deleting files and asking me questions I couldn't answer for the life of me. Questions like, "Do you recognize this file?" and "You really don't know how to use a computer, do you?" Goddamn it, I don't. I don't really know anything about them, and I'm not exactly panting to learn. It's always been that way for me with complex machinery. I was never the inquisitive child who was filled with curiosity, wanted to know how things worked, and had a never-ending stream of questions about every unknown object. When I had questions, they were usually much more straightforward and narrow-minded. "Can I eat it?" I often wondered. And if the answer was no, "Can I watch 'Rainbow Brite' on it?" and finally, if the first two failed, before the thing lost my total interest it had one last chance. "Did it bring me a present?"

In fact, once when I was in college and should have known better, I opened a potentially dangerous junk e-mail from an unknown source because the subject headline said simply 'present'. Indeed, the lure of A Present is clearly still strong. Much stronger than it should be for someone who is no longer six.