"Oh, Honey." Why I Hate Having "Stuff" So Much.
I was about to enter the elevator, two bulging blue IKEA bags in my arms, when I heard my mother’s voice coming from the apartment.
“Masha! You’re not leaving again, are you? Come back inside and let me see what you’ve got in there!”
Damn it. Caught. My mission to Goodwill had been foiled.
My mother frequently gets upset with me for getting rid of things too often.
“Materials have value!”
“Your room looks like a prison cell!”
“You leave no room for memories!”
“Someday, you know, you’ll wish you’d kept that!”
My personal favourite is: “You can’t get rid of your past by giving it to charity!”
For me, there isn’t all that much philosophy behind it. If I wanted philosophy, I’d crack open a book, or smoke a little green on a sad evening. I like thinking. I just hate stuff.
You don’t need to spend a year living out of a large paper bag to stop feeling love for trinkets, but it admittedly doesn’t hurt. At some point, it became evident to me that I recalled good memories often enough without the help of knick-knack’s to help “bring them back” Other things just got in the way, or fell suddenly off of high shelves, forcing an uncalled-for trip down memory lane and making a rainy evening that much more gloomy.
Like that stupid green leotard.
I’d had to stand on a chair to shove it so high up in the closet. I figured that sufficient to ensure it wouldn’t pop out to bother Busy, Moved-On, Future Masha when she goes looking for an eraser.
Guess not. It’s 2017 in New York City - I guess everything gets to come out of the closet.
I cradled the shiny spandex thing in my hands, like it was going to break. Clearly, Calculus Homework would have to wait a minute.
Five years ago, a twelve-year old girl with a messy ponytail and with chalk smeared under her nose had sprinted down a soccer field, smiling wider than looks good in photos, She didn’t have a cell phone, didn’t own a single item of makeup, and didn’t have much of a social life. Spending five hours a day in a gym can do that. But, she had a back full. Landed. A five-month-long fear, overcome. A ticket to the state team, (the most important part of which was the chance to have “New York” spelled out in rhinestones on her flat chest and to have her name in the paper of some small town upstate.) She’d heard they even let them stop at Starbucks before the championship. Years away from getting any sort of driver’s license, she felt that she’d earned a permit to dream of an NCAA scholarship.
So she clambored into the back seat of her father’s car, more ready than ever to talk his ear off. There was news to share and plans to make - training plans to be increased and Frappuccinos to be dreamed of.
“I can wake up at 5 AM!”
“What does Java Chip mean?”
“Why aren’t you excited for me?”
Let’s just say, ten minutes later, she threw her book at the rearview mirror. She said the worst curse word she could muster at the time, back when those were still exciting, and started crying.
It took fifteen minutes to run from the blue gym floor to the backseat of the blue Infiniti. It took five minutes to write: Dear sir, She’s good. Too tall. Too much homework. Thinks too much. So, not good enough.” Three seconds to press “Send” on an email to daddy.
Yeah, fuck that leotard.
The girl who was wore it until the sparkle wore off, however, intrigues me.
She didn’t have a cell phone, so calling her up from my iphone wouldn’t do much good.
But, if I could, what would I tell her?
When she was even younger, she would occasionally push really hard on the top of her head, wishing she could stunt her growth. The first time her coach told her she was too tall, she bought a bottle of Vitamin A pills and tried to swallow the whole thing, since she’d read that too much of it could cause a decrease of growth hormone. Vitamin A. Jesus, I wish I’d just tell her to eat her carrots - maybe they’d help her eyes enough to see how unchangeable that all was.
See, she doesn’t know that I’ll be writing this at three in the morning in the middle of New York Fashion Week, having stumbled home in a pair of 6-inch heels. After taking off my fake eyelashes, I could tell her that yes, she will still grow. That she’ll grow to be a model. To walk in New York Fashion Week. And then to walk into her room, collapse onto her bed, and peel off her stilettos. That there will be days filled with glitter and camera flashes and cool ripped jeans and clothes that cost more than tuition. Days when she feels like a princess. And that there will sometimes be days when she’ll sit on the floor at a photoshoot with an open Calc 2 textbook and wonder if she’s happy to be a “Hot Body.” Or a warm body, that can walk and pose. Or a cold body, because we’re all skinny as hell.
I guess I could thank for not dropping out of school. And for carrying a solid thirty pounds of textbooks to the gym every day. That studying science is the best for creating oodles of pick up lines. Just for fun, I could give her hope that “That shirt would look much better accelerating towards my floor at 9.81 m/s^2” will work someday. Tell her about DNA Helicase, and unzipping genes. Maybe she’ll even find chemistry one day.
Maybe mention that, by getting A’s, there’s a path to college without the great N C double A. I’ll let her keep some hope and not mention that double A’s are going to stick around for a while…
I could admit that she’ll continue to think too much. That she’ll forever cringe remembering that day when her teammate read her notebook aloud to the whole gym. That she’ll keep writing, and that she’ll discover the wonders of the internet. Why worry about middle schoolers reading your nonsense when you can share it with complete strangers in hopes that they’ll glance over it?
Some miscellaneous things. Buy a construction work vest. It gets you into more interesting places than that ID from Rhode Island. To wipe that chalk off her nose - it dries out your skin. That putting other white powders up there doesn’t solve as many problems as she’d think, Tomatoes don’t belong in the fridge. And her keys are probably under her gloves on the dining table.
Too many things. I’m sure we’d all say more or less the same thing to our twelve year old selves though. The selves that think they know an awful lot about the future.
“Oh Honey.”
And yet, I don’t really want to tell her anything. “Oh Honey” or not, she’s definitely a lot sweeter than I am. She knows how to train 5 hours a day and then come home and do physics homework. She spends hours teaching herself how to count cards. And she doesn’t say “Fuck” when she drops a pencil. She wasn’t afraid of having “stuff.” Besides, who on earth would want a 4’11’’ kid walking around spouting unenlightened wisdom everywhere? Sounds like a bloody nightmare. She’d be fun at parties.
Besides, I’m sure there’s a lot she’d like to tell me, too.
“You should draw more!”
“Stop cursing in front of your parents.”
“Make sure Warheads don’t get discontinued.”
“Get your nose out of your smartphone.”
And, of course, “Put the stupid leotard down and do your homework!”
It’s not as if I could change twelve-year-old Masha by telling her anything. So I keep her around. She’s good for a chat every now and then when making big decisions. Or on rainy sundays when I can’t make myself get off my butt. Those leotards might fall out of my closet, but she sets me straight.
I’m sure we’ll sit, and have coffee. She’ll beat me at Blackjack, and I’ll ramble about finance and tell her that her side part looks ridiculous.
I’m sure she’d look at me and think.
“Oh Honey.”
Probably tell me to put some goddamn honey in my stubbornly-black coffee, too. We all need a friend who doesn’t care what a Glycemic Index is.
