Age is just a number and IDs are just for show

I walk into the bar wearing khaki shorts and a butterfly t-shirt, jeans and a flirty top, a dress and high heels. The bartender (male, female, young, old, jaded or not) gives me a one-over with unimpressed, diplomatic eyes. He can't just throw me out, but I know he would if he could. I'm walking a thin line, his look says. I'm testing his patience; children aren't allowed in here. But he also doesn't want to lose a tip, so he stares at me and waits. He won't ask for ID unless I don't offer it.

I take a seat (pushing up with my arm and lifting onto tiptoe to climb onto the stool) and sheepishly reach in my pocket. The only things it contains are money and my driver's license; I hate purses. I fumble to keep the money in while pulling out proof of myself. The unrehearsed feel of the movement makes me blush, which makes him believe I'm about to lie. Possibly without speaking. I try using my "grown-up" words anyway and fail:

"Here you go..." It's high and babyish. I can't deepen it even if I try.

His bored eyes shift to the plastic card. And despite having to reveal myself in every bar, restaurant or outdoor barbeque since the day I turned 21, my stomach drops as I wonder whether my birthday really is printed on there, whether he'll see it, whether he'll kick me out anyway. In middle-of-the-road countries such as Australia, where the drinking age is 18 and they actually check ID, I still get a once-over from the bouncers who seem impressed at my non-aging. Some are even brave enough to mention something.

"You look so young!" they say. Their eyes widen, their mouths contort into disbelieving, exaggerated grins -- the looks of the people who present Publisher's Clearing House prizes. Those looks say I'm not winning this money, but I'm supposed to act happy that you get it. Woohoo!! "You'll love it when you're forty." I actually love it now, all except for the suspicion of it all.

My ID is returned. The bartender's duty is done. It no longer matters if I am a 40 year old with a baby face or a 12 year old with a fake license. He gives my chest a gander, now that he knows he can, now that he knows I'm legal, then gets my drink.

The plastic card that I carry with me, that lets me drive a car or order a drink or bet in Vegas (Sometimes getting carded at each machine and by individual guards who watch me long after I've ponied up the thing that identifies me, as if I'll reveal my true age by smearing candy on the machines or wiping a booger under the seat) is like a secret handshake between strangers. We both know the dance by heart, but still don't trust the person doing it with us.

And when I begin to sway and babble, as I always do after downing only one cocktail, the bartender watches me like an adult letting a kid touch a hot stove just so she'll never do it again. He smirks and offers me a stronger drink, then balks when I accept his offer.

I'm having an Affair...

...with movie scores. I guess it isn't so surprising -- I love everything about movies and I really do mean everything. I love the neat, the weird and the disturbing -- from the fact that the set for the main room in The Shining, where Jack Nicholson's character writes his infamous "novel," caught fire because they used 700,000 watts per window per day to make it look wintery outside and then subsequently rebuilt the set and later used it in Indiana Jones, to the fact that Alfred Hitchcock used to torture the actresses who were cast in his films. Oh, and in the black-and-white days they used to use chocolate syrup in place of blood because it had the right texture and they put milk into the rain so it was visible on camera -- so it was really Singing in the Milk. And Gene Kelly was so mean to Debbie Reynolds in that movie that Fred Astair agreed to teach her to dance and berated Kelly for treating Reynolds so poorly. Neat, huh?

But that's not what has me hooked right now, no. It's the music, man -- the sound. You see, I am not fortunate enough to have completely perfect senses, so instead I have a hierarchy. From strongest to weakest it goes: smell, taste, sound, sight, touch. Strange considering how much I love my sight, but based on capability it's true. And since you can't smell or taste movies (yet!), I let the sounds keep me riveted. From the instrumental background notes during a movie that make those not-so-seamless transitions from scene to scene seem nonexistent to the Foley sounds that get recombined and distorted and shattered to create sounds out of my nightmares and visions -- I'm in love with all of it. Perhaps that's why I fell for a musician last time around :) .

I just finished watching How to Train Your Dragon and for the majority of you who didn't read my entirely unbiased movie review, I'll just say this: Watch that freaking movie! You won't regret it! I'm begging and pleading with you to be a kid again for less than two hours and rent this FANTASTIC flick NOW. Don't wait! I'm writing in freaking Italics -- so you know I'm serious...dragon serious. :-|

All right, now that I've done that, I can say that the music for this breathtaking ride of a movie has lulled me into a completely content, almost Zen-like version of myself that needs nothing in the world except these sweet, sweet notes. On a side note, though, I just learned that the main dragon's sounds were created by combining the voice of the Supervising Sound Designer Randy Thom, with those of elephants, horses, tigers, and even domestic cats. Amazing, no?

I expect only one person of the presumed many who will read this to care, but here's a list of beautiful little diddies available through that impulsive-buying trigger of triggers, iTunes:

Forbidden Friendship - John Powell
Test Drive - John Powell
Romantic Flight - John Powell
Sticks & Stone - Jonsi

In addition I'm also listening to these:
Main Title: Nemo Egg - Thomas Newton
The Gravel Road - James Newton Howard

As the Sage of Potato Hill, Edgar Watson Howe, once said, good music makes people homesick for things they've never had and never will have. And as I say, music also has the awesome and terrible ability to eat at us after we've finished listening to it, like reading good literature does. I hope some of this gets stuck in your mind like it is in mine, so you feel the little nibbles in the homesick part of your brain tonight.

Sadistic Dental Hygienist

The other day I met with the Sadistic Dental Hygienist. I don't know her name, so that is her identifier. A sign in her office reads, "I'm not rough, I'm just thorough." It's only really readable from the chair, in a position of submission to her gloved hands and waxed thread of torture. She digs into the gum with the floss, deeper and deeper until I'm sure the tooth will abandon my mouth. Then she does it again with the next. When she pulls her hands away they're covered in blood. She tells me in a frantic whisper that I have to, have to floss. I tell her I do. She tells me to go deeper, that my gums can handle it. I wonder if her husband likes this part of her personality.

I fear going to that dentist's office. The second I enter the brown carpeted office with the broken door jamb, the stink of mouthwash and raspberry cleaning paste turns my stomach. I spin the Russian roulette wheel and fervently pray for the mousy blonde cleaner. It's her or the Sadistic Dental Hygienist.

When she pulls out the scraping needles of corporal mortification, I imagine myself on trial during the Spanish Inquisition. I am about to be purged of my sins and whatever they are, they must be tooth related. One scraper rounds my left canine and I feel pain I haven't felt since I realized the constant throbbing in my jaw was caused by wisdom teeth and not a chronic nerve problem.

My feet curl inward and I clench my fists. BUT, I refuse to let her see my pain, because I think, and I'm just guessing here, that she thrives on it. That light that she shines in my eyes to distract me is really zapping all the anguish out of her victims -- the 6 to 98-year-old cavity-ridden walking mouth-holes -- while they try to stifle their tears by staring into that blinding light.

It's a failproof system -- EXCEPT when her victims are strong enough to bottle it up, suppress their terror and pain until the exact moment when they're cut off in traffic or their dog vomits on the floor. I prevailed that day. I kept quiet. I survived and lived to tell my tale...at least for the next six months.

The floor is lava

Remember that game you used to play because you were either an only child (like me) or your mother was a worry wort who wouldn't let you go outside (also me)? I called it "The Floor is Lava," but whatever you called it, it involved the same thing -- trapezial (is that a word? it is now) leaps and bounds from coffee table to couch to doggy bed to the corner of an abstract piece of art that my mom always knew I would touch and probably knock over. More likely than not knock over. (And you couldn't touch the floor)

Well, today felt like one big game of "The Floor is Lava," but instead of a game it was a rite of passage so agonizing that if I were becoming a man, I'd be alpha male by now. I guess that's an exaggeration. You see, I'm not a trapeze swinger -- my childhood leaps and bounds were often half-hearted, tentative tip-toes from armrest to armrest. I got very little air, is what I'm saying.

I'm much more adventurous now than when I was little, mostly because I didn't know that there was so much I could do. Now that I do, I don't want to spend another moment wondering whether I should or shouldn't try something. I learned the Big Do's and Don't's of life (strangers, fires and bears should be avoided, take care of yourself, treat people with respect and kill the mean ones with kindness, don't let your possessions own you, etc) when I was little -- my parents did good.

But the problem with the evolution of my openness is that I frequently regret not being more active. I'm not going to win a marathon, that goes without saying, but my dismal state of sedentarism also means I can't climb Ruby Mountain on my 23rd birthday without numerous stops and intermittent wheezing either.

So, to bury the point of this post, two days ago I went for a jog. Don't worry, I stretched, BUT I didn't stretch nearly enough. When I woke up yesterday, my calf muscles were knotted so tightly that they felt as if someone had implanted stones in there -- boulders hellbent on making it uncomfortable for me to sit ANYWHERE.

I called my friend and running man, Patrick, to ask about stretches I could do to remove the bulbous lumps from the back of my legs. He directed me to a website and gave me hints about stretching properly this time. I failed.

This morning, my legs mutinied as if I had voluntarily decided to cut them off. The second I jumped out of bed I realized that I was not able to stand upright; my legs wobbled beneath me and I crashed on my bedroom floor. When I finally stood up again, I had to walk on my tip toes all the way to the stairs, down them and to the kitchen. Even then they didn't let up and haven't -- these semi-stretched legs are holding a grudge that I have yet to repent for.

It is painful to sit on them, it is painful to bend them, it is painful to straighten them, it is painful to walk flat on my feet. So now I look like a short drunk model walking on coals, stumbling around my house on the balls of my feet, feeling what I can only describe as the physical reaction to someone grating violin strings, wondering if crawling would make it easier.

Nope, definitely doesn't.

So, I'm sorry legs. I'm sorry that I've wronged you, abused you. Darn that terrible terrible floor and its terrible terrible lava qualities. Too bad I can't blink myself back into my semi-warm cocoon of a bed.

Wish this sad little coal walker a speedy recovery...and share some tips for reintroducing flexibility into my brittle, unyielding body.

Night terrors are awkward around other people

I sleeptalk and sleepwalk when I'm anxious and I experience night terrors on the rare occasions when I am freaking the heck out. No panic attacks for me, no. My subconscious is going to work out whatever's bugging it on its own, using my body to illustrate against my will and usually without my knowledge. It's going to smack my worries in the face, even if that means putting me in a position where I physically get smacked in the face.

When I was four, I fell out of bed while chitchatting about cherries in an empty room. When I was five, I woke up to find a blonde woman in a red dress standing over me wielding a baseball bat (she subsequently popped like a soap bubble). When I was 14 and having problems with the girls on my swim team I terrified my mother with a late night one-sided conversation. I just kept saying "I understand, I understand" and when she asked me about it, I told her I was in the middle of my talk with "a man" and continued on, as if she had interrupted. It got to the point where I wished my mom would come in one night and actually find something talking to me -- like a giant pink rabbit or a hillbilly zombie. Then I could say, "See, my subconscious isn't crazy!"

I used to think acting out my dreams was pretty cool (actually, I still do), but that was before I got to college and realized that other people would witness it. Turns out "other people" are not as impressed by the misadventures of my unconscious.

During my freshman year at the University of Richmond, my lovely and tolerant roommate Chet'la coaxed me back into bed on more than one occasion and once I woke up standing barefoot (gross) in the communal bathroom (grosser) staring at a tall young man leaning out of a toilet cubicle who seemed completely unaware that I was not conscious. Chet'la also discovered that I undergo a personality transplant in my sleep -- Dr. Jekyll and Miss Bipolar.

In my second year, I went to live in the "Outdoor House," which, had it not been for the really cool English class attached to it, might have qualified as a step down from my first year dorm. I had a room to myself and only one real neighbor across the hall. During my time there, I had two night terrors -- one in which a giant tarantula tried to attach itself to my face and another in which my floor and the entire dorm building's floor was covered in cleaning liquid bottles. In both instances, I walked out of my room and proceeded to ramble on seriously to said neighbor about tarantulas and cleaning bottles and not wearing pants (I wasn't, either time -- yay me!).

The comedian Mike Birbiglia also "suffers" from sleepwalking and in his case he jumped out a 2nd story window and hit the ground running in his tighty whities. He now has to wear oven mitts and a sleep bag tied at the neck to bed. So as long as I don't end up like that, I think I'll continue to enjoy my body's inability to tell the different between dreams and reality.

The one thing that is many things

I'm not an easy person to know. Many people -- including all of my old bullies -- believe that they know me but they really have no clue and it's only half their fault.

It's far too easy to single out, ostracize, give unspoken approval to or obsess over someone you've spared one glance. But so many qualities go undiscovered, so many possibilities are lost, much to the detriment of the planet and our chance at happiness. And though several studies have claimed that our first impressions may be spot on, I remain unconvinced.

When I was little, I had few friends and was bullied often. I spent most of my time at home creating lives with Sarah and Teddy the brown bears, my most cherish toys. I had thousands of stuffed animals (all of which had little lives of their own), but I gave most away to children at a homeless shelter when I was 12 or 13. I ran away from home at least twice -- the first time my mother caught me, the second time the neighbors called to tell my parents that I had claimed their honeysuckle bush and was living under it.

I wrote my first story when I was five and it is, I'm not joking, pretty much what happens in the book Life of Pi, except all the animals lived together in peace and we never left Meerkat Island. We spent the rest of our long lives living like the Swiss family Robinson.

I started writing with a passion when I was 11 years old. I wrote my first screenplay in a wide-ruled school notebook; it filled every page. And things sort of snowballed after that. I discovered that my heart plays percussion to a steel drum band when I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and so I do as often as I can.

I live in a world of color, sound, silence and sensation. I like talking to people, even if they don't relish talking to me. I love travel because it's nice to know that there are places as beautiful as the strange worlds I dream about when I go to sleep and because the act of physically moving, of going some place new, is awe inspiring.

I'm so curious that I often alienate my parents and peers by forcing them to take a journey with me into the warehouse full of random facts that I have accumulated over the last 22 years. I can remember those strange tidbits better than I can remember almost anything else. And I don't mind that.

I can't eat meat because I think about the animal's life and how terrified it must be when it goes through the ordeal of being slaughtered. I don't fault anyone else for eating it, but I hate trophy hunters and poachers. I hope a rhino stomps them to death. (Oh, and I'm not enlightened yet)

I shoo flies and spiders out of the house, but worms will set my heart racing and my teeth on edge (I still save them when I see them sizzling on sidewalks, though). I try to see a situation from the perspectives of everyone involved before I offer an opinion on it. I'm often wrong and I'm okay with that. My opinion is rarely set in stone, because I always have something to learn.

I have a list of things to do and see in my life and I had it long before that mediocre movie The Bucket List came out, but I encourage everyone to make such a list and stick to it. Most of the things on mine have to do with writing, travel and enlightenment.

I can listen to music made by A.R. Rahman all day and if you want to cook me something, give me dal, aloo ghobi, pad thai or vegan pizza with roasted garlic and zucchini. I love to laugh until I cry. I believe in god -- just probably not yours. I finger paint and sculpt clay masks. 'Sculpt' is a good word. So is 'perspicacity.'

And here's the philosophy: I see the universe and everything in it as a giant ball of energy. We are not only all connected to each other and this planet, we are also dependent on and directly affected by the generosity, positive intention and action that we fill the world with. I'm not better than anyone and no one is better than me. I wish everyone as much kindness as they show to others and I treat others with the same benefit of the doubt that I hope they will extend to me. Because regardless of your religion, color, creed or class, we're in this together, folks. We can create or destroy, we can hate or love, we can be self righteous or we can understand. And, maybe, we can leave some room to be wrong.

I can't be the only one who hates snow, right?

I'm trapped in a snow globe. Right now it is 23*F outside and the Weather Channel is telling me I can expect anywhere from 1-18 additional inches of snow on top of the four I already see. I refuse to go outside if it isn't completely necessary. The necessary things include getting my feeble dog when he forgets how to use the ramp we built for him and driving lessons. That's it. You couldn't get me out in the snow if I were dying of thirst...it'd take too long to melt any of it anyway.

I'm 22 years old and I dislike snow to an unconscionable degree. Rather, I dislike the cold and my dislike has driven me indoors semi-permanently this winter. I think I would love snow in summer weather, though.

Being stuck in New York State is not my idea of a good time, if only because there are very few jobs in this tiny town, it's snowing (the anti-spaghetti monster's work), and I do not have a driver's license. You see, I attended the University of Richmond in Virginia and I didn't need a car, so I never got my license. That means I'm playing catch up at 22, taking lessons and preparing for a road test during which I'll finally do battle with my cold, white, flurry nemesis.

I'm also planning a move down south and working on as many writing projects as I can dream up and squeeze into my day. And I promise that if I ever become successful as a screenwriter and offer to read scripts for people, there'll be a quick turn-around. All this waiting is more stressful than actually writing the darn things.