"Bust the mud," said his boss. My boy busted a mountain of mud that summer, and he never did learn what the boss wanted it for.
I don't know what he'll be doing this summer, but I figure he's qualified to be a waiteras long as his duties are limited to busting orange juice.
Beth Mullally
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Learning How to Be Roommates
I was never very neat. Later in life I learned to attribute this flaw to my creative genius, saying that my bouts of disorganization were simply the flip side of my unique gifts and talents. Yet, when I arrived at college, I hadn't come up with any impressive reasons for my big messes. They just wereand my roommate didn't seem to appreciate their contribution to my bright future.
I'm not sure why they stuck us together. I don't think they could have possibly picked two more different people to room together. Kim was extremely organized. She labeled everything and each item she owned had its place. She even had one of those cute little pencil holdersand used it! Mine had become a collection spot for bits and pieces of paper, odds and ends. I think one pen may have found it's way into the pencil holder but I certainly didn't put it there.
Kim and I fed off each other. She got neater and I got messier. She would complain about my dirty clothes, I would complain about Lysol headaches. She would nudge my clothing over to one side and I would lay one of my books on her uncluttered desk.
It came to a head one fateful October evening. Kim
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came into the room and had some kind of fit because one of my shoes had found it's way (inexplicably) beneath her bed. I don't know what was so significant about that shoe but it infuriated her! She picked it up, tossed it toward my side of the room and managed to knock my lamp onto the floor. The light bulb shattered, covering the layer of clothes I had been planning to fold that very night. I leapt off the bed in horror and immediately started yelling about her insensitivity and rudeness. She yelled back similar frustrations and we each ended up pushing toward the door to be the first to slam our way out of the room.
I'm sure we wouldn't have lasted a day or two longer in that room. Probably not even a night, if it hadn't been for the phone call she received. I was sitting on my bed, fuming. She was sitting on hers, fuming. It was later in the evening and the room was so thick with unspoken expletives that I don't even know why we had both returned to each other's company.
When the phone rang she picked it up and I could tell right away it wasn't good news. I knew Kim had a boyfriend back home and I could tell from her end of the conversation that he was breaking up with her. Though I didn't mean for it to happen, I could feel the warm feelings of empathy rising up in my heart. Losing a boyfriend was something no girl should go through alone.
I sat up in my bed. Kim wouldn't look at me and when she hung up the phone she quickly crawled under her covers and I could hear her quiet sobbing. What to do? I didn't want to just walk over (I was still a little miffed) but I didn't want to leave her either. I smiled as I got the idea.
Slowly, I began to clear up my side of the room. I took back the book I had set on her desk and I cleaned up the socks and the shirts. I put some pencils in my pencil holder and made my bed. I straightened the dresser top (but not the drawersI had my limits!) and swept the
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floor, even on her side. I got so into my work that I didn't even notice that Kim had come out from under the covers. She was watching my every move, her tears dried and her expression one of disbelief. When I was finally done I went and sat at the end of her bed. Not really saying anything but just sitting. I guess I didn't know what to say. Her hand was warm. I thought it would be cold, probably because I always thought the organized were pretty heartless. But no. Her hand was warm as it reached over to grasp mine. I looked up into Kim's eyes and she smiled at me. "Thanks."
Kim and I stayed roommates for the rest of that year. We didn't always see eye to eye, but we learned the key to living together. Giving in, cleaning up and holding on.
Elsa Lynch
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The Plaster Shell
Intense feelings of embarrassment and absurdity filled my entire body. These feelings were not helped by the fact that I was slathered in baby oil, clad in a T-shirt and lying in my basement, in fifty pounds of plaster. I stared down at the warm plaster that embraced my midsection and slowly crept up toward my chest, and I tried to remember why I had chosen to make a plaster cast of my entire body. For a moment, I simply concluded that I was an utter fool, but I soon remembered my motives. And while the plaster dried, I certainly had the time to think about it.
The insecurities of my freshman year in college, combined with my poor body image, made me feel like an oaf. Here I was surrounded by all these lithe, long girls who wore the latest fashions really well. Was there some mold that churned out these girls? And where in the world did I come from?
That was the beginning of the question that led me to my plaster ensconcement. It all began 506 years ago, when my forebears were thrown out of Spain. They migrated to Eastern Europe and developed the stocky, bosomy shape consigned to overstuffed chairs. Though my tall, slender parents seemed to have defeated this pernicious (certainly
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in my eyes) shape, it continued lurking in the depths of the family gene pool and flung itself into existence again with the arrival of their firstborn childme. It gifted me with wide hips, a nonexistent waistline, powerful shoulders and ample breasts. Very reminiscent of a long line of intimidating German matriarchs.
Built to survive harsh winters and to breed children, I certainly wasn't near anything I saw in fashion magazinesor like any of my new college peers. I loathed my shape and cursed my past. Though I was always an independent person who disregarded the edicts of popularity and fashion, I could not ignore our culture's concepts of beauty. The rancor I had for my body made my freshman year of college really hard. Clothing seemed made for those generic stick figures I sat next to in class. That was when Dorothy, my slightly eccentric art teacher and mentor, originated the idea of body casting.
Consequently, on a lovely May morning, I found myself sitting in a dark basement, encased in plaster. I lost all sensation in my legs at approximately the same time that the plaster hardened. After an additional uncomfortable twenty minutes, I slipped out of my plaster shell. At first, I was rather depressed by the sight of the powder-white and headless torso lying on an old towel. It looked more like a sea creature stranded by the tide than a human shape. My eyes squinted, trying not to take in the entire picture of my shape, which was even more exaggerated by the plaster. I thought about how I would never be graceful or delicate, how two-piece swimsuits were absolutely out of the question and how I would never be conventionally beautiful or fashionably thin.
As I stared at the empty outer shell of myself, a great realization hit meI realized that I had been completely wrong about my body image. For the past nineteen years, I had believed that my linebacker-like shape would
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discourage others from noticing my additional attributes. How would they ever see my love of science and books, my creativity or my offbeat sense of humor?
All this time I had wanted to be fashionably svelte, but that would not make me a better person. I recognized that confidence was much more important to others than a dainty appearance and that if I had confidence, they would notice my talents. More important, I realized that I did not actually want to be thin and bikini-clad. I was quite content using my powerful build to lug around sixty-pound scenery pieces, and I liked my one-piece, practical bathing suits. My physical appearance had shaped my personality in a largely positive way. It contributed to my dislike of conformity. It gave me my somewhat self-deprecating sense of humor. And it gave me that strong will that I cherish so much. The misconception I was holding all these years, along with the exaggerated body cast that lay there on my basement floor, was suddenly so hilarious to me. I laughed for f
ive minutes straight.
The body cast currently resides in Dorothy's attic, under a large blanket. I never actually used it in any art piece; I felt it had served its purpose. The process of body casting had been far more important than the product.
Since that day three years ago, I have not resented my ancestral build. I have also discovered that being comfortable in my body has given me increased confidence and assertiveness, something many girls, and women, lack. Perhaps they should all be given the opportunity to make their own body casts. When the shell of the body is separate from the person, it is obvious that it is severely lacking. Without the wisdom, sense of humor and heart, it really has no shape at all.
Miriam Goldstein
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The Great Escape
I never felt like I could be myself in high school. I thought I had no choice: either I played cute, or boys wouldn't talk to me. So I hid my grades, kept my love for T. S. Eliot to myself and spoke in short sentences (''Good game,'' for example), biding my time until I could get to a place where everything would be different.
College, I knew, would be just thatthe great escape to a place where everyone would talk fast, love books, stay up all night and not obsess about football. A chance to throw off the cheerleading uniform and let the real, witty, sophisticated me break free from my fake self. So I moved two thousand miles away from my tiny coal-mining town in western Colorado to attend Columbia University in New York Citythe capital of fast-talking, book-reading weirdos.
But when I got to Columbia, the witty, sophisticated me, instead of bursting free, dove for cover. Everyone in New York seemed either insane or awesomely together. I couldn't imagine whom to hang out with or where I fit in. A girl in my hall raved about the rowing crew, so I declared that I would join. But when it came time to get up at 5:30 A.M. for a swimming test, I bailed. Then I went to a sorority rush event and realized that pledging meant wearing pearls
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so I split. Finally, I closed my eyes and jumped headlong into the hipster scene. I got a crew cut, bleached it blond, bought black clothes and dated an actor who claimed to have once stolen Ethan Hawke's girlfriend.
But somehow nothing quite worked. There's not a lot you can do with a crew cut, and black clothes get gloomy after six months straight. Plus, the actor continued to steal other people's girlfriendswhile he was dating me. I tried to throw myself into my schoolwork, but my classes were so huge and formal that I was afraid to open my mouth. So there I wasstill the same confused person in spite of my new surroundings.
But when I least expected it, things turned around. I started waitressing at a local café and met my soon-to-be best friend. We spent all our spare time there, studying and hanging out even when we weren't hawking fat-free cranberry muffins. Inside the café, I found a more casual atmosphere. A few of my professors came by regularly, and, perhaps because I was the one behind the espresso machine, we had the kind of relaxed, interesting conversations I'd imagined in high school. I found a close circle of friends. Another waitress and I started writing stories we called The Adventures of Shark and Desperate Girl, chronicling the paranoid behavior of two café regulars having a torrid, not-so-secret affair. I began to learn the fine art of flirting with the firemen who came in for java breaks and, finally, realized that I liked my life.
So college is the perfect place to findor redoyourself. Suddenly, without parents and high-school friends who remember when you tripped down the stairs at junior prom, it's a level playing field. The time is ripe to explore that long-concealed interest in pre-Cambrian fossils or to date a goateed poet type.
But once you have the chance to be anything you want, you face the really tough question: What do you want?
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It's harder than it sounds. What you think you want when you're surrounded by familiar faces looks different in a new place. Things you thought were cool suddenly appear dorky, irrelevant or simply wrong. In high school, I was sure I'd fall in love with the first man who wanted to talk about Hemingway; but when I met that person, I hated his guts. I thought I'd find my voice in a college classroom; but in the end I was much happier scribbling down my thoughts and discussing them in the relaxed atmosphere of a coffee shop.
In other words, if you yearn to be someone quite unlike your high-school self, be fearless. Try whatever you can imagine until you find something that really fits. But in the meantime, go easy on yourself and others who are shopping for a new identity. I remember cattily criticizing a very straightlaced friend who had bought herself a motorcycle jacket. "How tacky," I told someone. "She's trying to look so tough, and she's so premed."
"You got a crew cut and dyed it blond," another friend pointed out.
Yeah, I thought, I did. Maybe I should give her a break.
After all, my friends and family gave me many breaks. They kneweven when I didn'tthat somewhere amid all these shifting ambitions and new outfits, the same person still existed. And at graduation, as I was looking around the campusmy hair had almost grown outit finally became clear to me why I'd come all these miles. It wasn't to become a completely different person. It was simply to figure out how to be comfortable with the person I wasnot only at a huge university in an edgy city, but inside my own skin.
Wendy Marston
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Hanging Out to Dry
The straight-laced theology student raced home and quickly parked in her garage. Her mission was to hang the wet wash to dry in the garage and make it back to class before her break ended.
She smiled as she hung up the last of the wash. Made it, she thought, proud of her ability to handle more than one thing at a time. She climbed in her car and headed back to class. As she waited at the red light, she thought about her final exams. But a feeling of being watched caused her to glance to her right. The young man in the vehicle parallel to hers gave her a devilish smile and winked at her repeatedly. Then he pointed to her car and winked three more times.
Her back stiffened and she stared ahead. The light turned green and the young man raced off. Was he trying to pick me up? she thought as she shook her head with disbelief.
After many strange looks in her direction, she pulled her car over and checked the tires. Then she spotted the problem. Oh, my goodness, she thought. No wonder he had the wrong idea. She then pulled her dangling wet bra from the antenna.
Paul Karrer
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Wranglers and Stranglers
Years ago, a group of brilliant young men at the University of Wisconsin seemed to have amazing creative literary talent. They were would-be poets, novelists and essayists. They were extraordinary in their ability to put the English language to its best use. These promising young men met regularly to read and critique each other's work. And critique it they did!
These men were merciless with one another. They dissected the most minute literary expression into a hundred pieces. They were heartless, tough, even mean in their criticism. The sessions became such arenas of literary criticism that the members of this exclusive club called themselves the "Stranglers."
Not to be outdone, the women of literary talent in the university were determined to start a club of their own, one comparable to the Stranglers. They called themselves the "Wranglers." They, too, read their works to one another. But there was one great difference. The criticism was much softer, more positive, more encouraging. Sometimes, there was almost no criticism at all. Every effort, even the most feeble one, was encouraged.
Twenty years later, when an alumnus of the university
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conducted an exhaustive study of his classmates' careers, he noticed a vast difference in the literary accomplishments of the Stranglers as opposed to the Wranglers. Of all the bright young men in the Stranglers, not one had made a significant literary accomplishment of any kind. From the Wranglers had come six or more successful writers, some of national renown, such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who wrote The Yearling.
Chicken Soup for the College Soul Page 12