Inner (child) Monologue

Oh wow! Lookit...Over by the dumpster.

What? The box? Yeah, somebody must have gotten a new refrigerator.

Let's build a fort.

Excuse me?

Let's get the box and build a fort. You could totally fit in that thing.

I'm not building a cardboard fort. I'm 27 years old.

C'mon. It'll be fun. And whimsical. You like whimsy.

I think I can safely say that I have already fulfilled my whimsical obligations for the summer. I went to the zoo no less than five times, fed ducks at the pond, AND I built sandcastles at the beach last month.

You only did that because you were hoping some bohemian artist type would see you grubbing around in the dirt wearing a bikini, and fall in love with the "glow of child-like wonder" in your eyes.

Shut up!

Please. It wasn't even that great of a sandcastle.

It had a moat.

You didn't even do anything when those little kids stomped on it while their mother cheered them on.

What was I supposed to do? Yell at a 5 year old? Yeah, that'd be just great...The scary tattooed lady makes a pair of toddlers cry and slaps their mother for not teaching them to stay the fuck off other people's sand property. Whatever.

So you gonna grab that box, or what? I figure we start by cutting a few circular holes down one side...Upright, it's a spaceship. On its side, a submarine!

I'm not getting the box.

And we could run down to Walgreen's and buy some markers, make it look really sharp...

Listen, that box has been sitting in a pool of alley water and garbage juice for god-knows-how-long, it's dirty, it's damp, it's...

Or, or, check this out: We cut out the top so it looks like the turret of a castle, spend the day defending ourselves from the Gauls. Huh?

Listen. I CAN'T do this. I can't anymore. This cutesy-little-girl shit is killing me. I don't want to look at the world as something new and magical everyday. I don't want to be the breezy free spirit living on a different planet. I've got a lot of shit going on and all the fucking cardboard forts in the world aren't going to change that. I'm tired of being "delightfully eccentric." I want to be like everybody else. This is just...I can't anymore. It's just too hard.

Okay?

Okay?

It was a good box.

Yeah, it was. I know. I'm sorry.



So I didn't get the box.

I still wish I had.

Ode to a Suburban Red Lobster

Don't worry Rebecca, as soon as I can fit -

24oz "Alotta Coladas"/ Going to Skokie even though the one downtown is closer because we wanna be kitschy/ Scampi juice/ A table of women dressed up for a night on the town that may or may not be sisters (they're all ugly in the same sort of way)/ Free half pound of crab legs/ A scenic view of The Olive Garden

- into one story, I'll get it to you.

Yeah, it'll be great.