The earth is one crazy, unpredictable planet. And it scares me.
Here in the Midwest, we’re in a season of thunderstorms. The other night, I saw tornado warning maps on TV and heard the strong, gusty winds shake up my windows. I pressed my face against my glass sliding door and looked out nervously. Californian weather just pales in comparison to Wisconsin. The rolling thunder and flashes of lightning woke me up a few times in the night (I now fully understand how annoying paparazzi are).
Please thunderstorm lightning, I know you love me let me sleep!
I do recall one bad storm growing up in San Jose. The winds were so bad that it knocked over our neighbor’s 50 ft tree, damaging our roof and splitting our orange tree in half. That also meant the fence that separated our two families was now nonexistent, which made it really awkward at times. The morning after it happened, I came downstairs to the kitchen and saw my middle-aged Filipino neighbor out in his backyard, wearing striped boxers and a wife-beater that didn’t fit him (half his beer belly wasn’t covered).
Our interaction basically.
He stood there, frozen, just staring at me through my kitchen window. I, was of course, really creeped out. As I tried to quickly toast my brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tart, I realized his eyes weren’t fixed on me at all. He was in shock, taking in the fullness of the damage that was done. I don’t remember why I decided to go outside to say hi, but the only words he could utter were “Oh man, it’s really bad.” My dad was especially angry because our neighbor had been advised to cut down the tree a few weeks back, but obviously did not think it necessary. We were left to pay half the damages (pretty unfair huh?). In protest, Papa Hu would passive-aggressively clean up our yard only when my neighbors could see him breaking his back because of their carelessness.
It seems silly to really fear the weather in a time where we have plenty of people all over the nation devoting their lives to keeping an eye on it. The hard work of meteorologists allow me to lay my head down in peace most nights, but something recently has both baffled me and made me appalled at the structure of the earth. Something neither I nor anyone could ever get used to.
Picture this: It’s Tuesday night and you’ve just put the kids to bed. You made sure the doors were all locked, the stove is turned off, and toys are not in walking paths around the house. You set the security alarm for the downstairs area and climb into your bed looking forward to a good night’s sleep. You feel accomplished at what a great parent and spouse you are, being cautious in all the right ways. THEN THE EARTH OPENS UP AND DEVOURS YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE AND ALL YOUR EFFORTS WERE FOR NOTHING.
Sinkholes. Freakin’ SINK. HOLES.
You can’t beat them or join them. You can only be digested by them.
Just a couple of weeks ago in the South Side of Chicago:
If you still aren’t frightened and in awe of the power of the earth, please browse through this slideshow from NBC.
This natural phenomenon, though exacerbated by humans, is scarier than a clown with a “mandatory hugs” sign. That clown has the potential to be sucked into the core of the earth. The third rock from the sun wins.
I wish there was a support group for “sinkhole paranoia.” We’d probably meet in a plane or a space shuttle.
It’s a new acronym I came up with. SWTTM will now stand for “strangers who talk too much.”
Now don’t get me wrong–I am totally that person that loves to talk to the checkout girl, barista, butcher, mechanic, your third cousin, or the creep at the party (partly because my intuition somehow failed me pre-conversation). But what I’ve found is that there is a threshold that some folks cross and end up breaking certain social boundaries. Whether it’s time, the content shared, or something just feels funny, I’m sure many of you out there can relate. I will now proceed to give you three examples of what I mean by this (all with names I’ve assigned to folks):
1. Talking Tollbooth Tonya
One of my favorite pictures of Michelle. It’s her “IMA KILL U” face. You just don’t mess with that.
On the way back from dropping off Michelle (who came ALL the way from California to visit me for my birthday, ugh I love her so much), I was exiting the Milwaukee airport garage and stopped at the tollbooth. A beautiful smile greeted me as Tonya took my ticket and put it in her machine. Noticing that I spent some time at the airport, she asked me who I was seeing off. I told her that it was a best friend, and she then immediately asked “Oh, guy or girl?” For some strange reason, I answered “guy” on accident. Big mistake.
Her eyes lit up, knowing that there was potential for juicy drama in a cross-gender friendship. She proceeded to ask me if it was more than friendship (oh, but of course). This is a prime example of where I fall short as a decent human being at times, because I decided to go along with this for fun. From her interview, I had managed to create this story: we were just friends, and his wife was absolutely okay with our relationship to the point where he would come alone to visit me. She was not convinced, and this is where she began to break the threshold.
Tonya started to share about her own past relationships, especially her current male friend who she desired to be her beau and not bro. A good two minutes with me giving (quite honest) empathetic “mmm”s, “ohh”s and “wow”s, (the punctuation there needs major work sorry), I began to feel that the appropriate time I could be at her booth was expiring. This especially was felt when a car unfortunately decided to drive into our line.
With Tonya still rambling for another couple of minutes, and the man in a fancy sports car looking out his window slightly impatient but very confused, I just didn’t know where to cut the woman off. The words coming out of her mouth were just getting more and more vulnerable. The more I let her go on, the harder it was going to be to put a loving cork in her so she could do her job. I passively hinted at her by turning around dramatically at the man, but only to get a reaction of “Eh, it’s okay. He can wait.” Oh boy. My eyes opened even wider and realized I was going to have to just drive away and not worry about hurting the many feelings of Tonya.
SHE’S STILL TALKING
I lifted my foot off the brake and began to inch, trying to leave the situation as smoothly as possible. She finally ended her story with something along the lines of “Yeah, but he’ll never know because I’m not confident and he’s so oblivious.” Still inching forward, I told her I appreciated her sharing with me and that things would get better. I hit the gas and I think it actually scared her. Not so smooth after all, Hu.
2. Lenscrafters
An rare normal photo of myself with my new red glasses. Just in case you were curious.
I had been itching to get a pair of red glasses for a while, and so I hit up my local Lenscrafters who was having a 50% off sale. I saw my winning pair and as I was trying them on, a rather flamboyant and talkative employee approached me and said “Oh my God honey, those look so good. Aren’t they cool? They’re totally cute, but still make a statement, ya know?” I affirmed his comments, pretending I was going for what he was saying. I obviously liked them regardless of what he said, and decided to make them the latest addition to my face. While he was getting down the details of my prescription and frames, I was trapped in the world of Jerry.
Jerry kept going on and on about how he and his boyfriend just “burned” $500 at Express because they were building an entirely new “preppy but chic” wardrobe. He then added that his man just bought his second Audi, and that tonight they were finally going out to some fancy shmancy restaurant they’ve been dying to try out. I obviously could neither relate as a single, not-wealthy woman, nor understand how these kids had so much money to spend.
A lot of my gay male friends would laugh at the stereotype my local eyeglasses salesman fell into, and I admit I was rather entertained. He was talking a million miles an hour, showing off his other job at Coach. He loved venting about how he had to work so many hours at both of his jobs (while a good amount of others in this economy are unemployed).
NICE THING NICE THINGS I LIKE NICE THINGS
To be honest, I didn’t really care about Jerry’s materialistic and somewhat naive outlook on life. But for some reason, people like Jerry feel that in conversations with complete strangers, it’s necessary to show off all you have, and shamelessly share details about your love and work life. Even as an extrovert, Jerry tired me out in fifteen minutes. I wished him a happy Friday and hoped that his dinner date would be fun.
3.Mallory Most Wanted I used to work at a private postal center that did shipping, mailbox rentals, and other basic copy/printing needs. You can imagine the variety of characters that came in, and how much I hope to write a sitcom with such a premise.
We have a lot of regulars, but Mallory was not one. She came in panicked and frazzled, gripping a large envelope in her hand. She began to explain the most bizarre situation–how she was friends with a leader of a country I will not name, and that people were after her. She had to mail it as soon as possible, and that this international piece of mail was of utmost importance. Inside, I obviously had a million of emotions and thoughts, ranging from skepticism to confusion to worry about my own safety in assisting with such a task.
Mallory started telling me details about what they had done to her apartment, and how she was now on the run. She even spilled to me things she had talked about with the leader of the country–my average citizen ears were sweating nervously. I tried to be calm to keep her less stressed, but it wasn’t working. I wanted to quickly do my job so she could get out of the store and not have some hired men coming after me as well.
What I should have said.
Why do I look like someone you can trust? Why do I have that face that says “please, tell me everything about your life because I don’t know you and want to.” I have a genuine interest in people, but with limits. To this day, I have no idea if Mallory had some mental struggles or if she was telling the truth. Either way, I am saving up for a Mongolian dagger to keep under my pillow.
In conclusion, SWTTM’s are everywhere. You can tell me how you can’t wait to get off your shift to go see your daughter’s ballet performance, or that you love the same author of the book you are ringing up for me. That is wonderful human interaction and I enjoy that. But when you tell me your relationship history and disregard other customers, show off your materialistic lifestyle and luxurious lover, or include me in some dangerous foreign operation, that is when you have become a total SWTTM. You have crashed through the appropriate thresholds of stranger to stranger interaction and need to GTFO.
This is Amy Hu signing off for April 20th, 2013. Hope you made wise choices today.
I know, I know. My birthday was a couple of days ago. But didn’t you hear? It’s a birthday season. And I’ve been celebrating since last Friday.
As I’ve become older, my birthdays have definitely become increasingly more to my liking. It’s mainly because my friends (not my parents) actually know what I love. For example, during senior year of college, my friends threw an “Undead” party for me where they lit a dorm room red, baked zombie cupcakes, and scared me by dressing up like a mummy.
Looking back on celebrating such a day, I decided to share some old photos in order for you all to understand me a bit better. Over a laugh-filled Skype session, my sisters managed to help me find some rather hilarious photos. Let’s go back in time:
Amy’s 3rd Birthday:
The biggest 3 year-old you’d ever seen getting her own birthday. The golden years of living with Grandma, Grandpa and cousin Tina in San Francisco before being reunited with my family. Soon I would discover that my birthdays would need to be shared.
Amy and Tammy Turn 6:
This change not only affected me of course. As you can tell from this photo, my clone, Tammy, is not very happy (that’s our older sister Vera lurking in the background). Sorry beb, we gotta share this Simpsons-themed birthday together.
How to Blow Out Your Candles If You’re a Twin:
Step 1: Gear up for the big moment by inhaling as much air as you can like a friggin’ maniac.Step 2: Be too busy being dramatic about the whole thing and let your twin do the job without you.
Damn. So close.
The ridiculous face I’m making in this photo is probably the beginning signs of me using humor as a coping mechanism for, in this case, missing out on extinguishing my shared birthday candle.
Here’s our 11th birthday:
I think that may have set me up for being less enthusiastic about cutting the cake with Tammy in years to come. Having to hold the knife together annually just isn’t that effective. I am too cool for school with my two nasty 90s spaghetti-like “bangs.”
I haven’t shared a birthday with my sister in a few years because we haven’t lived in the same city since college. As nice as it is to get your own cake and presents, only your name on a poster, and have a party all for you–it’s just not the same. I haven’t mastered using a big knife to cut a cake on my own yet.
Well, I’m excited for year 26. Still in my mid-twenties, and still look like I’m seventeen. May more ridiculous things to share with you all come about!
This is Amy Hu signing off for February 21st, 2013.
Jerry kept going on and on about how he and his boyfriend just “burned” $500 at Express because they were building an entirely new “preppy but chic” wardrobe. He then added that his man just bought his second Audi, and that tonight they were finally going out to some fancy shmancy restaurant they’ve been dying to try out. I obviously could neither relate as a single, not-wealthy woman, nor understand how these kids had so much money to spend.
JUSTFIVELETTERS 