With the official halfway mark of this project whizzing along behind me, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a halfway-point reflection; now seems as good a time as any, especially considering how contemplative I tend to grow while packing for travel. (I’ll be traveling from tomorrow ’til Sunday the 22nd, btdubs, but don’t abandon the blog in my absence I’ve scheduled some rocketsauce guest posts from my favorite real-life people. TKOG Mom fans rejoice.)

If you’re not in the mood for schmoop, feel free to check out my SSoL nostalgia bomb of Toys I Coveted as a Kid and still desperately want instead.

A Disneyland reference, just for Sister. Also? A pretty good motto, if you're not crazy-strict about "live in the moment" stuff.

I’ve got a confession for you guys. It’s become difficult to write this blog.

It’s not the actual writing, of course — that’s the reason I’m here. I haven’t run out of inspiration — there are about a dozen completed NTKOGs on my to-blog list. It isn’t my social anxiety or the increasing amount of time I spend living online or my having realized the sheer enormity of the number of challenges I have left. (250?! What was I thinking?!). The problem is that the whole premise of this blog is doing things that Old TKOG couldn’t have done and — I just really don’t remember who that girl was.

Snapshot of the effects of this project, more or less halfway in: Last Friday I found myself standing on a street corner, blowing bubbles, listening to Stevie Wonder, and high-fiving a Save The Children campaigner. I was on my way to a blogger meet-up, where I would voluntarily interact with strangers. In my bag, rolled posterboards with which I planned to ask out a man I’d never met in front of six thousand people, on the Jumbotron of a hockey game. Who the frig is that girl?!

Weirdly, all of it felt normal. I don’t remember who I was before this project, but I seem to remember feeling afraid, feeling judged and unhappy sometimes. No, my problem isn’t thinking of NTKOGs to do — it’s confronting how very much of what I accomplish on a daily basis is now something I’ve never before been the girl to do. Complimenting people who walk past me on the street, dancing to my music at a stop sign, trying new foods with new people. I mean, dude, five months ago, drinking a beer was an NTKOG; now I can spend an evening sitting on the curb, drinking wine out of a bag with a Jordanian immigrant and talking about French film and not even think to blog about it.

There are two comments I frequently hear about the project, one from friends and one from strangers. Friends ask me, after a typical whirlwind TKOG monologue, equal parts vitriol and cheerleading: “When did you get so damn self-helpy?” Um, since I had a dishwater life and with nothing but a free Wordpress account and sheer force of will, made myself a little bit extraordinary every single day.

The other comment has cropped up on the blog, in Twitter DMs, my email and gchats: “I love this project. I wish I could do something like this.” Yes, because I’m working with such a huge budget and have received years of project-intensive training, so — are you crazy? Do it do it do it! To me, the greatest aspect of this project is that it isn’t esoteric or time-consuming or even all that scary.

We’ve already established that I’m a big ol’ self-helpy cheerleader, but honestly, I think people might be happier if everyone tried something uncharacteristic just once a week. You don’t need to hurl yourself out of a plane (well, you do, sandyb) — just order the dang beer. Bake some bread. Try something.

I can’t believe I’m already halfway through this; I can’t believe I’m only halfway through this. It’s impossible to convey how completely this has been the best year of my life so far. And a huge part of that has been due to you guys. Depending on my blog philosophy of the moment, sometimes I’m kind of hands-off with commenters, but I want you to know that I read every single comment and they all make me smile (especially the ones that make me cry — yes, there have been a few).

I used to think that bloggers were being glib or disingenuous when they said that they loved their readers. Then I started this blog. I love you guys. Thanks for sticking with me. And prepare, if we ever meet, for a rib-crushing bear hug — fear of touching be damned.

Now go do something awesome and scary.

NTKOG #128: The kind of sunny-hearted pollyanna who turns to the simple joys of childhood  by making her world effervesce with a thick foam of bubbles.

I am: whimsical, it’s true, but try to express it in ways that won’t convince pedestrians I’m developmentally challenged.

I am not: a manic pixie dreamgirl. More’s the pity, right?

The Scene: Roaming the streets of Boston, Brookline and Brighton, a crazed stream of bubbles floating in my wake. When I posted about quitting smoking, reader Danielle suggested I take up bubble-blowing to occupy my widowed hands when I went outdoors. Cute, huh? At work the next day, I picked up a 75-cent package of bubbles from CVS and during my mid-morning lull, left the office for a few minutes to take a bubble break.

I assumed I’d be the victim of some derisive snorting or eye rolls, but the vast majority of people didn’t even notice me — or at least pretended not to. Those who did only smiled or shouted: “Bubbles!” One Basset-eyed middle-aged man sat on a park bench watching me totally intent on my task, then said, as I walked away, “I wish I could do that.” I turned around: “You can, dude. You’re an adult. You can do things that make you happy.” I offered him my own bubbles, but he declined. Sad. Sad.

I thought this would be a short-lived lark, but the bubbles have been my constant companion for the past several days, and I don’t foresee a lull in the near future. Like smoking, bubbles give me something to occupy myself while I walk, force me to focus on my breathing, offer an excuse to get out of the office for a few minutes, make a nice conversation starter.

Unlike cigarettes, you can blow bubbles with impunity around children, pregnant women, and open apartment windows; instead of smelling like musty old death, my winter coat is now strawberry scented; when’s the last time you were out for a quick puff and a group of high-spirited undergrads shrieked, “Blow smoke on me!” or “CIGARETTES!”?

You know what it's nigh impossible to take pictures of? Friggin' bubbles. Pic borrowed with love from weheartit.com

The bubbles started as a cigarette replacement, but I think they are turning into something else entirely.

On Friday night, I walked from my apartment to my sister’s, and left a mile-long trail of bubbles throughout the streets of Brighton. It was that most vibrant time of a Friday night, when settled couples stroll home from dinner while animated undergrads troop out to begin their pre-pre-partying. Bubbles floated in front of me by the hundreds, limpid and eerie in the streetlights. I must have passed sixty people on Commonwealth Ave, and, weirdly, not a single group passed without comment.

“That’s beautiful,” a pretty 20-something girl shyly smiled. “I like that.”

A mustached hipster guy just pointed at me: “Cooooool.” A big bubble clung to the top of his houndstooth-print trilby hat.

As I walked down Harvard Ave, I eventually became aware of two sets of footsteps shuffling behind me. A cute young couple walked a few feet behind me, and obviously had been for at least five minutes. I imagined their date-night clothes stained all over in bubble-sized daubs and immediately apologized. No, the guy told me, keep going, please. She likes them.

For ten minutes, they walked a few paces behind me, downwind (or, more accurately, downbreeze) while I blew thousands of bubbles. Finally I paused at a stoplight and, when they didn’t come abreast of me, turned around to see whether they had left. The couple was standing under a streetlight a few feet behind me, surrounded so thickly by bubbles that the whole night was a Monet.  In this iridescent haze, they kissed.

I looked away and crossed the street to continue my reign as the Mad Bubbler of Brighton.

The Verdict: So very yes. I couldn’t have imagined how deeply this strange hobby would resound with me, but once you do it, it becomes addictive. There are so many things I love about weaving through the drab streets, blowing bubbles by the thousand. I love that it’s sort of an absurdist commentary on smoking: it is a pleasure, yes, but instead of destroying your lungs, it creates an ephemeral moment of beauty. I love how being constantly preceded by streams of bubbles makes you feel like the grand marshall of an endless fairy parade. I love the way that the breeze can conspire to fill a whole alleyway or courtyard with a swarm of bubbles so thick that you can’t imagine it looking any other way. I love how bubbles, like a treasured friend or a tarnished memory of a lost love, never stop being beautiful.

If you happen to see a girl in Brighton, deeply focused on filling the streets with strawberry-scented bubbles, feel free to stop me and ask for a turn. I can almost definitely guarantee it will give you too a quick shot of joy.

Intended NTKOG: The kind of brave, lovelorn soldier who — like a shining beacon of cinematic romance in our grimy  reality — proclaims her adoration in a grand friggin’ gesture.

I am: shy; indifferent to every many currently in my acquaintance. (Call me, Alec Baldwin.)

I am not: sure I could imagine anything more romantic than an afternoon in bed, eating peanut butter toast together and making fun of movies in which people indulge in precisely the sort of grand absurdity that I now propose.

The Scene: Agganis, over the course of the last couple hockey games, stalking a fairly charming dude who sits in the student section. When it comes to hockey, as far as I can tell, there are fans and then there are SUPERFANS. The kind of guys who spend more time just scraping team-color paint out of their chest hair than most fans spend watching the dumb games — we’re talking hardcore commitment.

The victim of my attempted gesture obviously falls into this category. He sits at every game next to a guy dressed as a giant hot dog; this guy wears a BU-red beanie every game and choreographs elaborate dances to all of the band’s standard songs. Totally worth gazing at across an arena and sighing over, is what I’m saying.

Friday’s game was the last home game of the season, and Sister and I had the good fortune of snagging tickets in the student box, which — aside from offering a great game vantage and free Snapple — boasts the advantage of being extremely attractive to the jumbotron camera-man. Between this and my two-time iPod-winning dance moves, a unique opportunity to become the stuff of legend.

The night before the game, Sister and I got together to write a message on both sides of two sheets of highlighter-yellow fluorescent posterboard:

Hey jitterbug guy in the red beanie…

Yeah, you! Next to the hot dog!

Dance-off! After game! Snapple Box!

L♥ser buys drinks?

I know, I know, how embarrassed are you guys for me? But imagine it! Total-stranger ask out, in front of six thousand people — completely out of a movie. Who wouldn’t want that to happen to them? Who wouldn’t be telling the story for years?

Readied my signs in the Snapple Box during the second period break, when the dance-off usually happens. Everyone else in the box whispered, then asked outright, wtf was I doing? I’m on a hero’s quest, I told them. They rooted for me bemusedly while I shook so hard I almost ripped the sign. Near the end of the break, I timed my heart against the huge letters of the countdown clock. 140 beats per minute, then for another minute, and another and … the break ended. No dance-off. No ‘tron-portunity.

“Maybe they’ll do it during the third period,” Sister told me, but just then, Red Beanie locked the Hot Dog in an embrace, put on his jacket, and started to leave the stands. Is he leaving for good? people in the box asked me, as though I knew absolutely anything about this guy.

Sister, in an epic act of sisterly support, dashed out of the box (while she was on a date, mind you!) and ran all the way across the arena to try to intercept him. Alas, she told me upon her return, he had left for good, taking my movie moment with him.

The Verdict: Maybe next season? At least we won the game and secured our spot in Hockey East.

I waited in the box in case they offered a mid-period dance-off or some other opportunity to hold up the signs anyway — why waste a good set-up? — but none arose. After the game, one of my sister’s acquaintances asked me, “Look, why don’t you just talk to him sometime? You can probably find him on facebook.” But that wasn’t what this was about.

I am, of course, less interested in connecting with another human being (pleh! who needs ‘em?) than finding a victim for my overblown cinematic cartoon-heart eyes. I’ll just have to be on the look-out for a new opportunity for wonderful, ridiculous stupidity.

Share/Bookmark]]> http://www.notthatkindofgirl.net/2010/03/08/tkog-asks-front-thousands-screaming-spectators-ntkog-sadly/feed/ 19 http://www.notthatkindofgirl.net/2010/03/05/tkog/ http://www.notthatkindofgirl.net/2010/03/05/tkog/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:08:31 +0000 That Kind of Girl http://www.notthatkindofgirl.net/?p=1152

NTKOG #127: The kind of everyday philanthropist who proves there is such a thing as a free lunch. By buying it for you.

I am: broke. Also? I may be nice, but…

I am not: that nice.

The Scene: Hole-in-the-wall pizzeria (is there any other sort worth going to?) on Comm and Harvard Ave. in Allston, intent on nursing a slice for an hour or two over a good book while waiting for Sister to get her hair cut. I get through fifty pages of “The Confessions Of Max Tivoli” (a must-read) and am finishing the last few cold, greasy nibbles when an Oscar promo starring my imaginary boyfriend Alec Baldwin comes on. I laugh a little too loudly right as a guy my age walks out of the restroom, and to apologize for my social transgression, I lock eyes with him and smile.

The second I smile at him, he magically levitates six inches closer to me. The man is hungry for human contact. His eyes rip from me to the mangled scrap of pizza in my hands, shimmering with congealed grease, and the big vein in his throat pulses. Oh. Oh, maybe he’s just hungry.

He asks me what sorts of movies and TV I watch — oh, not many; no TV, no DVD player — and he touches his forehead with contrition. “Oh, a girl like you, of course you read all the time. I’m bothering you. You want to get back to your book. Just tell me — is it a good book?” While he says this, he backs away a few feet, but his face is so vulnerable it reminds me of a big pimple on the verge of popping.

“Would you like a slice of pizza?” I ask him. “I was going to get another one. I’ll get you one, if you’d like.”

I order and pay for the slices; while I’m at the counter, I set my Fake-A-Call app to rescue me in fifteen minutes. By the time I come back, he’s written down the title and author of the book I’m reading on a scrap of paper and shoved it in his pocket.

He tells me he’s been on a reading binge lately, and starts describing the plot of Catch Me If You Can in detail; his words are well-chosen but each one spews out before the previous one is half-finished. He’s too lucid to be drunk; his manicured beard and clean clothes tell me he has a home; I’m beginning to wonder if he’s just a person who’s lost his ability to recognize the social conventions that mark us as “normal” when he starts touching his face.

Just his nose at first. He reaches up to brush it with the back of his wrist once, twice, three times while he tells me about his first time reading a Raymond Chandler novel. By the time he mentions reading Catcher in the Rye, his pizza is forgotten and he alternates between hands, scratching his arms, his thighs, reaching under his shirt and scratching his belly. He tells me about a memoir he read last week.

“I got so into that book that I stayed up thirty-seven hours straight just to read it,” he says, ripping his fingernails through the skin of his neck with such a fervor that I can practically see the addict bugs crawling under his skin.

I ignored the Fake-A-Call savior call when it rang, and did not reset it. I talked to the guy and let him talk at me for forty-five minutes, when I really did have to go meet my sister. His slice sat there, still half-eaten.

When I left, he reached out to shake my hand, and that’s the moment my grace failed me. “Sorry,” I told him, “pizza grease. I’m kind of a germophobe.” Then said goodbye and walked away.

The Verdict: Because of the nature of my job, I spend a lot of time working with mental illness, drug addiction and anti-social behavior. And maybe familiarity will just never breed comfort, because it still spooks me. This is the kind of thing I wish I had nerves to do more often though.

I don’t know. I can’t sit here in my comfortable, good-smelling life and rate my facile little field trip to the outer edges of human suffering. It’s too cynical. Just give someone a big fucking hug today. That’s what I want to do.

NTKOG #126: The kind of steely-nerved oversharer who opens the vault and tells THE STORY. You know, the one that makes her shake and blanch, the one that was not intended for other ears.

I am: prone to writing y’all lengthy passages of prose-poetry about mucous bubbles and the teeth of institutionalized poverty — what to TKOG could be untellable?

I am not: sure you’ll still like me afterwards.

The Scene: Rebel Mel’s lovely blog a little lady’s thug life! That’s right, I’m excited to be able to host my story over there, because I’m a stickler for my fairly rigid entry criteria. Doesn’t leave me much room to dig into my vast and storied vault.

In re: this story, all I can say is: you know how sometimes friends get together and swap stories? Casually at first, then — as the competition mounts — with ruthless intensity, digging through every scrap of their experience and observations, drawing on the tales of friends and distant loved ones, locked in a ferocious, blood-thirsty match to be recognized as the alpha humor at the table?

When a girl and I are talking about bad hook-ups, this is the one story I will never repeat. Not even if it costs me the win.

So click here to read about The Least Hygienic Hook-Up Ever (and how it made me momentarily internet-famous).

The Verdict: Ugh, not sure it feels better to have that off my chest. Just don’t hate me, loves, and happy TMI Thursday!

Also, not to be totally sad? But take a look to the Google Friend Connect box on my left sidebar. Notice it’s not looking particularly … robust? If Google Friend Connect is the sort of think you’re occasionally obliged to participate in, and if you’re signed into google already, perhaps you wouldn’t mind joining up? The combination of seeing the number 13 and feeling friendless is totally giving me PTSD middle-school cafeteria flashbacks to being the chubby braces girl knocking back Orange Drink while the skinny-bitches-in-training sipped Diet Cokes and judged judged judged.

HOLY FRIG, GUYS! With today’s post, we are halfway through the NTKOG project! This is unbelievable! And to those of you who have stalked the full archives (I love you.), you have read the equivalent of A FIVE-HUNDRED PAGE BOOK. Am I blowing your mind a little?

Also! Do check out Secret Society of List Addicts for my post today about celebrities who look sexier when they’re carrying some extra weight. I promise I didn’t just write Alec Baldwin five times…

NTKOG #125: The kind of future ex-smoker who, beaten down by years of Big Tobacco, self-helpily turns to nicotine crutches instead of manning up and walking her path alone. (Also, breathe one word of sanctimonious anti-smoking lecture to me and so help me god I will photoshop pictures of you giving Hitler a blowjob and SEND THEM TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, so put that in your pipe and you know what to do with it.)

I am: strong like bear.

I am not: one to admit my shortcomings, even if they’re puffing me in the face.

The Scene: The office last week, eight hours after my (allegedly) last-ever cigarette. I’m about ready to punch a nun in the face and my lungs are whispering up to my brain, it’s okay, dude, we support you – sacrifice us to that most pure and noble love. I’m going insane for a cigarette in, really, the most literal of ways. I excuse myself to run an errand and, during what would usually be my mid-afternoon cigarette stroll, sprint to Walgreen’s and pick up a box of … nicotine patches.

To me, the patch had never made sense. Nicotine’s fine and dandy, but when I’ve tried to quit before, the thing I miss most is the ceremony, the feeling of taking seven-minute intervals to meditate, the sheer sensual pleasure of drawing smoke into my lungs and then releasing it into a slightly improved universe. Even the gum I understand – they make it extra complicated to chew just to approximate the ritual nature of smoking! – but what good could a passive patch do me?!

Fast forward to twenty minutes later, I open the first patch and adhere it directly over my heart. Within thirty seconds, my pulse has amped up 20 beats per minute, my irises have flared out to anime proportions, my hands are trembling – oh sweet jesus yes, once again poison courses through my veins! Half an hour of junkie-ish delight and then … I feel normal. I feel like I’ve just smoked a cigarette. The craving is gone.

The thing that isn’t gone, of course, is my psychological desire to smoke. When I’m bored or restless, I now have no excuse to pop outside. Need some fresh air? Fuck you, sit in your dank little cell like everybody else. Sometimes the urge is more vague. I’ll experience a moment of physical ennui and, just for a moment, some sweet voice in the back of my brain will whisper, Dude, remember, just try to remember, there’s something so good you can do. It will make you delirious with happiness, if you just do it. All you have to do is remember what it— and then I do remember. It’s smoking. And I can never do it again.

But I do some other stupid thing and eventually the urge passes until the next time. And because I’m already stocked up with nicotine, these urges do not rip me to shreds.

The best part about the patch, though, is the dreams. Have you heard the phrase “nicotine dream”? It’s apparently the most common side effect: intense, vivid all-night dreams brought on by the steady influx of nicotine while sleeping. Every night, I can scarcely wait for the moment my eyelids start to flutter, because I know I’ll be exploring some horrifying or wondrous new world in intense detail.

They come from a different part of your brain, these nicotine dreams. They feel more like memory than imagination. There is none of the discombobulation or pinball-fast tangenting of normal dreams (“Where am I?” “Why is my third-grade teacher my sister?!” “WHY DO THE CHILDREN HAVE NO MOUTHS?!”) – for me, it’s like loading a forgotten but perfectly preserved reel of some experience and replaying it in real-time. Everything makes sense; even when things are bad, they click along too steadily to be nightmarish; the story can go on hour-long banal tangents then return to point. I dream now in narratives.

The other thing, if we can be totally serious, is hands-shaking rush of sheer nicotine. I love cigarettes, I trust them, we have a history together. Cigarettes are a relationship. The nicotine patch is just fucking. And cigarettes? I love you, but I’ve got a serious crush on the patch.

The Verdict: I think — I think quitting smoking is making me go insane, a little bit. But my clothes smell better and in a few weeks when I get off the patch, I’ll be saving a lot of money every month. And that whole not dying thing, eventually, I guess.

Man, though, I wish I’d known about the magic powers of the patch when I was a brash and distractible youth. I totally would have done this shit recreationally. It’s amazing. Even writing about it sends my pulse racing.

NTKOG #124: The kind of hopelessly romantic computer geek who braves the sketch-haze of Craigslist and actually tries to meet a human being there.

I am: continuing yesterday’s post, so go ahead and catch up if you haven’t. (If you’re too lazy, the basic gist: a lengthy Craigslist personals ad requesting that a man be, in short, brilliant, weird, and wonderful.)

I am not: cheating by making this a second NTKOG! Deciding to write the post was scary enough, but answering the emails? Whew.

The Scene: Having decided it’s even a remotely good idea to turn for romantic support to a website that’s basically an online halfway house for the criminally insane, I logged into gmail and waited for emails to show up. I figured one or two guys might email me (“u r zoooo prentenshus! y u hate men?!” “z0mg lezbian u r a dick ‘n’ u have a dick 2!”).

Within ten minutes, I already had five emails. A couple of them were obvious cut and pasters who don’t even bother to personalize their typical responses (6′2″ SWMs who play chess on their BlackBerries while mountain-climbing — sure.), one or two badly punctuated emails from guys who clearly thought I was joking about the intelligence thing. And then –

AND THEN. The best fucking reply I ever could have imagined.

My name is Gregory House, though my underlings just call me House (that’s right, I have underlings). I work as a diagnostician, and exclusively take on cases resembling an impossible medical nightmare; perfect for my brilliant mind. By the way, did you know that people often mistake inductive reasoning for deductive reasoning? The difference is actually pretty significant, yet I continue to make that mistake on my show all the time!

I could keep going, but I just had to respond to your post. I got a good laugh from it and thought I’d return the favor. Plus we’d never get along, not a fan of Gatsby.

Sister complained I don't have enough pictures, so here are a few of my imaginary boyfriend in the bath. Isn't he dreamy?

As emails continued to flood my inbox, I received dozens more missives like this — men who weren’t right for me, who knew there’s no chance of us being a fit, but who saw in my message a kind of outsider yearning to which they could relate only too well.

I’m not the weird, wonderful, brilliant guy for you, and I don’t think you’re the girl for me, but I hope you find him. There’s someone possible for both of us. Thanks for writing something honest, and something that didn’t bore the fuck out of me.

You ask for a great deal, but I did date a girl once who knew somebody who had Carl Schmitt’s ex-dentist, so if Nazi ex-dentist jokes qualify for pedophile ex-dentist jokes, we might get along.

In fact I’m a leader like Leonardo, I do machines (the spirit of invention) like Donatello, I’m cool like Raphael (but not as rude), and I can be a party dude like Michaelangelo.

JFK said this whole thing more concisely. Oh well. (He’s not available.  I am.)

NTKOG #123: The kind of  destiny-flouting control freak who, not content to simply cast her romantic fate to the winds, sets about constructing it an elaborate friggin’ parachute. On Craigslist.

I am: drawn to maybe one in five hundred men I meet. In turn, only perhaps one in five hundred of those men is drawn to me. My situation is tenuous.

I am not: giving up. I may not be like other people — in some ways that are important, and some ways that are not — but what can I do? Just die alone?

The Scene: Craigslist, that favorite hidey-hole of the skeezy, the irrepressibly insane, and — occasionally, one hopes — normal, great people who just occasionally … wonder. For the first time in my life on Sunday, I skimmed the personals section and, because I am TKOG who would usually consider it beneath her, decided to test my assumptions. That’s what this is all about, right?

But as I read through both the M4W and W4M sections, a disquieting realization: men described all the qualities they wanted in a woman; women described all the qualities they possessed. But nowhere did anyone make any demands on men. That’s not right! I’m a woman! I have demands, goddamnit! Hence my quest to write the most absurdly specific personals ad ever…

Must be brilliant, must be weird, must be wonderful. – 23 (Brighton)

You are: very, very, very smart. Do not trifle with me about this. I don’t mean smart compared to your dumbass friends – you are smart compared to the general populace. And you’re kind of a jerk about it sometimes, but that’s okay, because I like you a little better for that. You’ve got a four-year undergraduate degree from an elite or at least top-tier institution; maybe you’re in grad school, maybe you’ve just considered it. If I catch you off-guard you will admit, non-ironically, that there is something about tweed…

You read for pleasure, during your commute and before bed, although not, you’ll admit, as often as you’d like. You hang out in bookstores sometimes, and not just to pick up girls. You will recommend books to me, immediately and fervently, and I will quickly come to respect your judgment. You will learn interwar British slang after meeting me, and begin using it inappropriately much; your friends will question the additions to your vocabulary and you will be self-conscious at first, then realize, screw ‘em, words make life taste better.

You know interesting things about science and philosophy, and will teach them to me in small nibbles. I might ask stupid questions or I might ask brilliant ones, depending on so many factors.

You make jokes about US Presidents, Paris Hilton’s latest hair extensions, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, factor trees, programming languages, quirks of Latin noun declensions, your pedophile ex-dentist, the social contract. Every time I get off the phone with Wells Fargo, I sigh to you, “Just call me Andrew Jackson, ‘cause I’m at war with the banks,” and you smile at me regardless of how many times you’ve heard the joke, and it’s okay because you always make that same Anne Frank pun and those are just things about who we are that we will find at first endearing, then annoying, and eventually endearing again.

You do not play World of Warcraft.

One night we are lying down, not talking, then inexplicably start singing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song together. Afterwards, more silence. Isn’t it funny, the trivial ties that bind two people?

You are an old-fashioned gentleman, in that you don’t mention your psychological diagnoses or your life-saving relationship with your psychiatrist until several months in, when I already care for you too deeply to extricate myself because of the knowledge. We all have baggage. If you have hidden yours successfully for this long, then I commend and respect you. You drink too much sometimes, but this is not psychological. This is merely because sometimes the world is a shit place and you nurse the secret hope that if you drink just the right amount, somehow you will find yourself in a Fitzgerald novel. Of this, I also approve.

You are mid-30s or younger. You are taller than me, and big-framed. If you are not spectacularly attractive, you have the look of someone who once was. Maybe you smoke. Maybe you are a former drug addict. Almost definitely, once or twice, you have thought about swallowing bottle after bottle of cough medicine to make yourself temporarily dumber to see if you can whittle yourself into a form that fits this world better. If you tried it, it did not work. If you haven’t tried it, then don’t, please.

You are otherwise a happy, successful, passionate person with many friends and interests. But there is a voice within you that whispers: “were a woman possible as I am possible…”

The Verdict: After my failed Craigslist Missed Connection posting, I assumed this one would be a misanthropy-feeding wash, receiving at most two responses. I was completely wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I’ll save the rest of the story (and some amazing email excerpts) for tomorrow…

Oh heck yes, guys. TO BE CONTINUED. Also, I’m totally going to count tomorrow’s as a separate NTKOG, because, dude, I’ve got a deadline here. So you can start drafting your letters of complaint.

NTKOG #122: The kind of extravagantly whimsical girl who makes a promise in a moment of jest, then moves the earth (or at least incurs some $$ shipping expenses) to make it be so.

I am: always one for cute plans and dreaming up over-the-top gestures.

I am not: organized or sweet enough to actually bother pulling them off.

The Scene: A flashback to February of 2006, reading The Ex’s blog. One of his loyal commentators was a college friend who’d made a big impression on The Ex, but graduated and moved to (his non-native) Japan before I ever got a chance to meet the guy. During a discussion of Easter candies, he lamented the lack of Cadbury Creme Eggs in Japan.

“You should get someone to send you some!” I commented.

“Are you volunteering?” he joked.

Two days later, I bought a few four-packs of Cadbury Eggs, but they sat on The Ex’s desk for a few days before I forgot about the idea and ended up distributing them to the quadful of boys across the hall. And alas, Old College Friend never received his care package.

Now, four years, sixteen Creme Eggs, one awkward letter of explanation, and like $20 in shipping charges later, I have finally made good on my glib promise.

The Verdict: Doing this definitely made me feel extra happy for a couple of days. Not because it was a nice thing to do, but because it was such an off-the-wall thing. It wasn’t an actual act of kindness (it was just some chocolate, and it’s not like he and I were ever friends, so it wasn’t about letting someone know that I love and care about them) — it was truly an act of SHEER WHIMSY. Clearly I need to act on my whimsical thoughts more often. Although I’ll admit I also enjoyed the extremely sweet note of thanks he wrote. And, even better, the joy of indirectly spreading pro-Cadbury love/propaganda to his wife, who has never tasted this most sacred of Easter confections.

Not a thrilling story, kids. BUT, I do have a little question that I’d love for you to weigh in on! While I was putting the package together, I was wracking my brain to think if there was any more American stuff that I might as well include while I was putting together a care package. Something totally American that you’d miss sorely after a few months or years away in a foreign country. My co-worker told me the food she missed most when she was away from America is ice-cold milk; for me, Skippy Super Chunk peanut butter. If someone were sending you an overseas care package, what would you need in it?

NTKOG #121: The kind of modern-day shaman whose purse rattles with pillboxes because, dude, whatever ails you? There’s a cap(sule) for that.

I am: a total seventeenth century French peasant when it comes to treating illnesses.

I am not: sure what I’d do without my friends. I can’t count the times I’ve lay in bed with a multi-hour weeping headache before one of them gchatted and asked, “Uh, did you take an aspirin?” NO GUYS THAT DID NOT OCCUR TO ME! It never occurs to me.

The Scene: Magic School Bus voyage into my body, which apparently knows I’m jaunting off to Barcelona in two weeks and is determined to kill my pre-trip productivity with a two-week bender. Headaches, lucid fever dreams, sore throats, congestion — I’ll spare you any further details. Unless you urgently require a lengthy discussion of mucous, in which case, you can gchat me or just cut right to the chase and marry me already.

But instead of ignoring my symptoms this week, as physical side effects cropped up at work, I’d pop out to Walgreens and buy the appropriate OTC drugs for my symptoms. Headache? Aspirin! Muscle ache? Aleve! Sore throat? Oh blessed life-giving Dayquil. And what do you know — this was actually going pretty well: symptons were under control, my time-of-sickness Twitter obnoxiousness was an at all-time low.

And then.

The problem with trying to thwart your body’s attempts to torture you, it seems to me, is that symptoms are like puppies. If you crate the little fuckers, the second you let them out, they will throw a rampage the likes of which cannot be controlled by god or man. Thursday night, I got home — beaten down by a few days of work drama and too little sleep — and passed out around 6pm, without dosing up. I awakened twenty minutes later WITH MY THROAT SEALED SHUT.

Oh yeah, guys. My whole throat, completely constricted. For four minutes, I drowned in oxygen, pulling so hard for a breath that my eyes went blodshot from straining. Fortunately, right as I was googling “emergency tracheotomy,” my throat finally relaxed.

Googling narrowed my symptoms down to some combination of allergies, acid reflux, fungal infection from improperly stored wine, and just watching too much House. When I went into work, I told my co-worker the story, and she immediately asked: “Well, you took a Benedryl, right? You should take a Benedryl.” Perfect for my week of NTKOG! I popped down to Walgreens, picked up a package, then laughed at the wimpy little pills and chugged back three of them with a can of Fresca.

An hour later, I learned what everybody else in the world already knows: Benedryl is basically a sleeping pill with allergy-relieving side-effects. Holy shit. Five hours later, my boss finally peeled me out from my under-the-desk naptime and ordered me to drink some espresso until the effects wore off.

I’m still not sure they have.

The Verdict: Dude, this whole “modern medicine” thing is a total crock — if it were really modern, the manufacturers would have tweeted me the damn dosage and side effect warnings and saved me from this horror in the first place. Still, I’ll grudgingly admit that actually medicating an illness is better than my usual hippie strategy of just waiting for it to go away. Fine, modernity. You win this round.