No One Asked for This

by Cazzie David

  My dad had a secret stash of Charmin he kept underneath the sink for “emergencies,” which I guess now must have meant diarrhea. When my friends came over, I’d steal one of the Charmin rolls because our toilet paper embarrassed me so much; every time someone came back from the bathroom, they’d ask what was up with my TP. I didn’t want to be known at school as “the weird girl with the weird toilet paper.” Kids are mean! That stuff happens!

  When my friends started driving, I made them pick me up a block away from my house if they had what my mom called “a gas-guzzler.” When my friends asked me why they had to park so far from my driveway or why they had to leave their Starbucks cups in the car, I would simply tell them the truth: “Because my mom is crazy.”

  One day, my friend Julia was picking me up for lunch, and I looked out the window just as she was pulling her mother’s SUV into my driveway. Frantically, I said goodbye to my mom and told her I was in a rush because Julia was outside waiting. I ran out of the house desperately hoping my mom wouldn’t follow, but she did because she “just wanted to say hi.”

  GO! Drive! Get out of here! Leave me behind! I wanted to yell to her. It was too late.

  “There’s three kids in my family. This car fits all of us,” Julia whimpered to my mom.

  Later, I tried reasoning with my mother by saying that maybe they couldn’t afford an eco-friendly car. Wow, was that a dumb thing to say.

  “OH?! But they can afford a hundred dollars’ worth of gas every week?! Inexcusable! The environment can’t afford their carelessness!”

  It was clear my mom had officially lost her mind when she started putting fake parking tickets on gas-guzzlers. They read: This vehicle is in violation of polluting the planet. (Yes, the notices were printed on recycled paper.) Whenever we went out anywhere, we had to account for an extra ten minutes so she could park her car and hand out tickets. I’d anxiously wait for her, hiding on the floor of the car, occasionally peeking out the window to see people’s reactions once they discovered them on their windshields. Some people crumpled them up and tossed them. Some laughed because of how downright insane it was for someone to do this. Others looked genuinely confused, as if it were a real ticket. Word eventually spread that my mother was doing this and they ended up parodying her on South Park, which I thought might officially shame her out of shaming strangers. But it didn’t.

  “Good,” she said after we all watched the episode that roasted her. “Maybe someone will be inspired and reconsider driving a gas-guzzler that will contribute to their future grandchildren’s asthma. Do you know how many people are going to have asthma and allergies in the future because of air pollution?”

  Much to my dismay, my mother’s righteousness didn’t end with environmental rules. Her documentary topics began to widen into other areas that you also would never want to be scolded about by a stranger. The time she was researching for her documentary about the sugar and food industry was a particularly bad era. My new boyfriend and I had just parked outside of her house when I noticed he was holding a Mexican Coke bottle. It was his first time meeting my mom, so he had no idea what was about to transpire, but I did.

  “Don’t bring that soda in.”

  “What? Why?”

  “ ’Cause my mom is crazy.”

  “But it’s not plastic.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Trust me.”

  “Come on. It’ll get hot if I leave it in the car, and then I won’t be able to drink the rest.”

  He opted to bring it in, and as I expected, it was the first thing my mother noticed. Her eyes were drawn to the bottle before she’d even looked at his face.

  “So nice to meet you! I’m—”

  “Do you know how much sugar is in a bottle of soda?”

  “Uh . . . no?”

  “Why don’t you take a look at the grams on the back of that bottle.”

  “Uh . . . okay.” He turned the bottle around and looked.

  “What does it say?” my mother asked, knowing the answer full well.

  “Thirty-nine grams,” he said nervously.

  “Thirty-nine grams. And do you know how many teaspoons of sugar thirty-nine grams is?”

  “No,” he muttered.

  “Ten teaspoons of sugar. Ten teaspoons of sugar have been dumped into that tiny bottle. Would you eat ten teaspoons of sugar?”

  “I don’t think so . . .”

  “Do you know the diseases this thing causes? Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity . . . this corporation is making millions of people sick and then broke because they have to spend all of their money on medical bills! And you’re a part of it! Consuming that much sugar is as bad for your body as smoking cigarettes!” He also smoked cigarettes, but neither of us would be stupid enough to mention that.

  The encounter ended with her pouring the rest of his soda down the sink drain as he looked on like a little kid being punished. Let’s just say neither of them made a good first impression on the other.

  When she told me about her next documentary topic—technology addiction—I knew my days of technological freedom were over. The only thing she could talk about for months was the similarities between iPhones and slot machines. Anytime I picked up my phone, she saw it as a confirmation of my addiction. Even when she was the one calling me, it somehow turned into a conversation about my bad habits.

  “You answered quickly. Were you on your phone?”

  “Nope.”

  “It only rang twice before you answered. You must have been looking at it.”

  “Nope. It just coincidentally happened to be near me at the moment you called.”

  “I hope you’re taking breaks from that thing. You have an addiction, Cazzie.” She always called my phone “that thing,” which was ironic considering she was definitely addicted to her Apple Watch, the smartphone thing for your wrist.

  “So, Mother, how was your day?”

  She’d continue. “Did you know they make the notifications on your phone red so that you think it’s an emergency and check them immediately? If the notifications were green or blue, you wouldn’t feel the need to open them as often. Who knows the impact this is going to have on our brains! Everything programmed on your phone is meant to suck you in for as long as it possibly can!”

  According to her research, addiction wasn’t the only negative side effect of our phones. Text neck was a term I heard so often, it began to feel like my name.

  “Cazzie, text neck.” I’d immediately put my phone up to eye level. “Do you want spinal surgery when you’re thirty?”

  But text neck was nothing compared to the radiation anxiety. She ordered all of us magnetic gloves to hold our phones to keep the radiation from seeping into our hands. We avoided wearing them whenever possible because we didn’t want to look as crazy as my mother made us feel.

  The documentary she worked on right after tech addiction was about ivory poaching, debatably the most distressing topic of all time. Truthfully, though, there was a part of me that was relieved by it, regardless of the disturbing information on the subject I’d come to learn. Ivory wasn’t as ubiquitous as phones, sugar, energy, gasoline, or plastic. My mom wouldn’t be able to harass someone on the street for killing elephants. Or so I thought. After she found out a jewelry store on Martha’s Vineyard sold ivory bracelets, she made me come with her to protest outside of it, telling anyone who dared enter the store the harrowing details of the ivory trade.

  Living in her household, I dreamed about the day I could move out and live without restriction and constant information. I could leave towels on the floor and plugs in their sockets. I could ignorantly be sucked into my phone for hours. I’d have toilet paper so soft, I wouldn’t dread going to the bathroom. My boyfriends could drink soda and I’d maybe even use plastic tampons to make that insert the tiniest bit more agreeable. My showers could be leisurely affairs if I wanted; I could even take a minute to sit on the shower floor and cry as the hot water came pouring down. Something about that always seemed
so appealing. And in case of dire thirst, I’d buy water in a plastic bottle that I’d mindlessly toss after a single use.

  But when I finally was on my own for the first time, it wasn’t anything like the liberation I had imagined. Every time I wiped with the soft toilet paper, I felt guilty. I wasn’t able to bring myself to use plastic tampons, bags, or bottles. Text neck still scared me. Even boys who drank soda scared me. My showers remained military-fast. I’d bring a reusable cup to buy coffee and stare at all the people around me using plastic and throwing it away, thinking about how this was just one coffee shop out of millions in one moment out of billions. I lived as though my mother were standing next to me at all times, questioning my values and the person I was because of my daily choices.

  It wasn’t long before I became a straight-up mini version of my mother. The first time I realized it was when I was back in Los Angeles for spring break and saw a woman watering the plants in her front yard drop the running hose on the ground to chat with someone in her driveway. As I stared at the sparkly water gushing out onto the already drenched spot on her lawn, an overpowering wave of anger rushed over me. I tried with every fiber of my being to stop myself from saying something, but I couldn’t keep it in.

  I self-consciously shouted across the street, “Um, hi! Sorry! Your hose is running! It’s just so . . . wasteful.”

  The woman stared at me incredulously. “What the fuck? Mind your own business.”

  I nodded and backed away as she huffed and turned the hose off.

  Afterward, she went back to her conversation and I overheard her say how obnoxious I was. But like my mom, I didn’t care. Instead I felt an unfamiliar sense of pride that I was able to save maybe a minute’s worth of running water and perhaps make this woman think twice the next time she watered the plants. I guess it took me becoming my mother to finally realize that my mom was a hero for being so fucking crazy. And if everyone was brave enough to act half as socially inappropriately as my mother, the world would be in a better place.

  Today the planet is burning before our eyes. Because of that, it’s become morally necessary for everyone to at least appear to care about the environment.

  The other day I was standing behind two girls in a supermarket checkout line.

  “Would you like a bag?” the cashier asked them. The girls raised their eyebrows in unison.

  “Um, no . . . hello? The environment?” they said in stereotypical Valley girl accents.

  I smiled, thinking about the shame I used to have around my mom when she said that and I had to watch her passionate speeches fall on deaf ears. I guess the only good thing that’s come out of the world’s imminent ecological end is that my mom doesn’t sound crazy anymore.

  We’re now two degrees away from the most vulnerable regions being wiped out, fundamental species extinctions, unendurable heatwaves, and mass amounts of people dying. Many of us have grown up witnessing devastating floods and tornados and droughts and hurricanes and earthquakes. We watched almost five hundred million animals burned alive in the Australia fires. Five hundred thousand is a lot. Five thousand is a lot. Five hundred is a lot. Fifty would be a lot. Five is a lot. But five hundred million? That’s five hundred million Marley & Me movies. How do you distract yourself from that horror? Talk about boys? Watch television with no bathroom breaks until you die? The point is, we’re fucked.

  Every new natural disaster I groan on the floor to my mom, “Moooom, what do we do?!?!!”

  “We get the world to start doing something about global warming. We raise money for NRDC, and we elect Democrats.” It’s the same thing she said twenty years ago.

  “Mom, it’s too late!”

  “We can still prevent the next one,” she’ll say matter-of-factly.

  Apparently, my mother, the biggest worrier I know, has always moonlit as an optimist. “I don’t get it. How can you have any hope right now?”

  “You can’t be an environmentalist without it,” she’ll tell me. “It’s part of the job.”

  And really, that’s everyone’s job. To always have hope, to always keep fighting for justice in the face of new injustices every day.

  In other words, to always be crazy.

  * * *

  Tweets I Would Tweet If I Weren’t Morally Opposed to Twitter: II

  The worst text I can receive is my mom texting me Call me when you’re up. Like . . . what. So I can talk to you???? When I WAKE UP?!?

  Having a TV in your bedroom is the best thing that can happen to you in life. Period.

  I can’t imagine being a teenager right now and having the boys I like wear a single long earring and grind in the air on the internet

  The one thing every girl has in common is a deep hatred for when their boyfriend gets a haircut.

  It takes such manipulation to be able to convince your boyfriend not to get a haircut without him knowing the reason is because he looks so bad every time he gets one.

  I’m the luckiest person in the world but sometimes I think God actually is only laughing at me

  My new thing is tricking God into thinking I do not at all want the thing I want the most by constantly thinking about how I don’t want it. I’m hoping that will make Him give me what I want the most. We’ll see if it works.

  People can’t hide their excitement when they realize their friend is taking a video of them doing something silly even though they know that excitement will now be apparent in the video

  My friend told me she’s never had a cigarette in her life and it was the rudest thing anyone has ever said to me.

  Eating a lemon is a really good substitute for cutting

  I can’t look anyone in the eye. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want them to really see me or I don’t want to really see them, but I think it’s ’cause I don’t want to violate their soul by looking into their eyes. I don’t have the right

  My daily chores are looking at the Instagram stories of everyone I hate the most every morning

  Seeing my dad cry is like watching a dolphin be murdered

  I’ve only heard my dad cry once and it replays in my head whenever I’m doing nothing just to torture me with its sadness

  Living with your dad is cool, you just constantly overhear him and his friends talk about who has cancer right now, who’s finally cancer-free, and who is waiting to hear if they have cancer

  One of the most frustrating things to ever happen to me was when I got sick in college and bought all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls on iTunes and a day later it came out on Netflix.

  There are twenty desperate horny straight girls for every one guy who doesn’t care about any of them

  Main goal in posting absolutely anything online, no matter what it is, is to make every person who’s ever gone out with you feel pain and every other person think you’re a mood

  The human body is amazing; I can’t believe I can have this level of internal anguish and not have imploded yet

  High thought: Have you ever examined a zipper before? Like, really examined it? ’Cause whoa.

  Two things I heard two of my insane friends say: (1) I’ve been super-respectful with her. Yeah, every time I’ve fucked someone else, I’ve used a condom. (2) I fucked a couple, independently. It goes against all logic.

  The easiest mind trick you can play on someone is pretending you’re confident and sexy. People actually buy it; it’s wild.

  It seems you’re still reading my book. I’m so sorry.

  We don’t talk about the trauma of UTIs and yeast infections enough.

  People who aren’t foreign who greet people by kissing them on the cheek cannot be trusted

  My biggest fear is people hating me, yet I do nothing at all to prevent it from happening

  The closest I’ve ever gotten to watching porn is rewatching The Outsiders every six months since I was thirteen

  My favorite thing is when Dua Lipa is off the market

  If you meet a guy who doesn’t know who Dua Lipa is, marry him

&n
bsp; Don’t say your significant other’s name for the entirety of the time you date bc by the time you’re on your fourth relationship you WILL call them the wrong name. Maybe even multiple wrong names. Names are for spouses only

  If you have delusions of what your face and body look like, make someone else make your bitmoji/memoji for you.

  I obsess over a new aspect of my face every month and won’t stop until I’ve looked up a hundred pictures of other people’s chins, lips, freckles, etc and find one person with the same thing I have who I don’t find unattractive so I can believe that maybe I’m not either.

  Remember in high school when you thought u were depressed bc u put on Bright Eyes and cut yourself but didn’t want to do any real damage so they were just pathetic meandering red scratches you’d trace over again and again until they made a mark so you could have evidence of your own depression? Just me?

  One of the most telling examples of how easy men have it during sex is that women have to focus with all their might on coming, and men just have to focus on not coming.

  If ur caption is a paragraph I probably won’t read it unless I scroll to the bottom and it says RIP

  Where’s more embarrassing to say where you met your husband, on Hinge or at Coachella?

  A perfect explanation of how my brain works is I had splitting migraines for seven days in a row and my first thought was I have brain cancer and my second was I’m developing superpowers.