Better People

The "Help Wanted" sign did not stand out among the peaches. At first I mistook it for one of the price signs. I stand staring at it for a long while, thinking to myself that farmer's markets were nice places.

Exupery waits tables on Sundays in a little Chinese cafe because she's in the same position I am. She is always amused and a little pained when asked if she is working her way through college only to explain that she has already graduated with her degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Stanford, thank you very much. I know other coworkers have been considering things like this.

Curiosity finally catches me and I asked one of the girls working behind the stand about the little red sign.

"Paul!" she shouts, not bothering to turn her head, "We have one for the help wanted!"

Paul looks to be in his early fourties, or at least old enough to thoroughly misjudge my age. He smiles at me like I was a child and my brain immediately clicks into the conclusion that he had one. It was probably one of the other girls working the fruit stand. I smile, this act was never too difficult. Paul fits the description perfectly of somebody who I could manipulate pretty easily.

Paul looks at me like I am a child with a big grin on his face, "Can you be outgoing? Aggressive... but friendly?"

"Yes." I say. It isn't until after I said it that I realize I was probably suppose to say something more to prove I was a good salesman.

"This is a hard job," he returns, "some people really aren't cut out for it you know."

I'm not entirely sure what to say. I want to tell him I'm a professional, that I graduated fairly well decorated, and that this job will supplement a fairly respectable job in a federal agency, but he didn't ask that. If I told him these things I would sound pompous, and I know the only reason I want to tell him is because I'm a little ashamed to be in this position. A very ignorant and selfish part of my mind tells me that I did everything right, and that I somehow deserve something better than this, that work like this is for somebody else.

"You think you can do it?"

"Yes sir."

He hands me a bucket of grapes and a pair of plastic salad tongs, "I'll give you five minutes and see how you do." He nods to one of the girls at the stand, "She will teach you. She is one of our best."

I look at the grinning 20 year old. If she even goes to college I bet she majors in some unemployable bullshit like women's studies. I'm taken aback a moment by the ignorance and irony of my own mental statement.

"Alright," she says to me very sweetly, "All you have to do is smile at the people and give them free samples. Just say nice things and keep their attention, like 'fresh seedless grapes, super sweet!' and 'once you try you have to buy!' and whatever else you can think of."

This is so cheesy.

She assists me in handing out a few of the grapes and then goes her own bucket of Pluots to hand out. I stand there, salad tongs in hand, still wearing the backpack I brought to the market, asking each passersby if he or she would like a grape.

There is a small bubble of people around my teacher, all enjoying the Pluots and talking to her. Pluots (apricot plum hybrids) are larger than grapes and take longer to eat, but there is still a skill in getting people to stand and talk as they finish their food. I should be able to do this at least as well as she can, my mind tells me. The girl looks wholly unruffled and uncompetitive. It suddenly occurs to me that she might have begun handing out fruit as well not to provide a benchmark for Paul to grade me against, but to provide camaraderie in a new situation which Paul thinks might be frightening for me. It occurs to me that by most measures of being human she is probably a better person than I am. I viewed her as a competitor, somebody to be beaten and she viewed me as somebody to be kind to, to be taught.

The next ring of people clears and she smiles at me to offer some cheerful help, "Always keep talking." I smile back at her and tried a little louder, "Fresh seedless grapes!"

People don't go to the farmer's market to be in a hurry. They don't drag crying children or complain about the service, instead they smile at me and thank me for the grapes. I was standing in the sunlight on a beautiful day doing easy work which leaves me plenty of time for my own thoughts. I will not have to wear a suit, there are no meetings, no deadlines, and no overtime. The pay will be abysmal and I know it, but it isn't like I'm quitting my real job. Really, this is not so bad at all.

"And one for you!" I say, holding the tongs above a small child in a stroller. "Open your hands!" He did and I drop the grape into them. While he pops it into his mouth I hand one to his mother.

"Mmm!" he says, waving his hands in the air with delight. His mother, evidently pleased with her son's interest in fresh fruit, reverses the direction of the stroller in favor of the cash register.

This is a pretty good life.

I hand out every grape and bring the empty bucket back to Paul. He smiles at me. "Did you like it?" I nod. He hands me a slip of paper. "Write down your name, a phone number, and that you handed out Pluots."

"I handed out grapes."

"Write Pluots anyway so I remember."

I do as he asked. I find it amusing that he didn't ask for my card. I realize how set in my ways I am, at only 22, seeing only one way to behave, one way to be taken seriously. When I was first introduced to the business world I abhorred it. I claim I still do and tell myself that I would never buy into it, never be a part of it, but here I am as prejudiced as any of them. I am so glad I did not go into defense work. We believe we are strong enough to resist our environment, but in reality we are weak and impressionable things. I never wanted to be that asshole who hides behind her degrees and honors as an excuse to be a miserable and condescending person, but I can see now that that is who I am becoming.

I waved goodbye to Paul and thanked him for the hefty bag of fruit he has given me. No other employer has ever paid me in any form for my interview time. I have one interviewer who has been interviewing me since April and 13 interviews later can not even be bothered to tell me when a final decision will be made. I went to an interview once where they sat 12 of us in a room and announced they would only be hiring one of us in an attempt to pit us against one another. The oddest part was Py was one of the 12. Paul handed me easily 10 dollars of fruit for under half an hour's work, which is more than what he normally pays I am sure.

As I walked down the row my teacher extends an arm with her own salad tong and a juicy Pluot on the end.

"Fresh Pluot?" she asks with a smile.

"Don't mind if I do," I laugh, taking the fruit from her. I realize I feel terrible for not knowing her name.

I won't tell them about my other job unless they ask. I decided, walking away. I will stay and learn from these people. The work is good, and I could stand to be like them. They are better people than I.

My Brother's Keeper

The basement was where my mom did laundry. We could always hear her voice at the top of the stairs but normally she tried to shut the door so my brother wouldn't fall down the stairs.

I found my brother crawling on the edge of the stairway and my mother's voice and grabbed him by his overalls to drag him away. He looked bewildered to be sliding backwards, little baby knees sliding fruitlessly back and forth trying to crawl the other way. Issac looked up at me bewildered, but I didn't let go of the red little overalls.

"I saved him," I exclaimed to my mother when she returned up the stairs.

"Oh?"

"He was going to fall down the stairs and I saved him!"

It hadn't been that near a miss in reality but my mother was immensely pleased with me and wanted to encourage this behavior. She picked me up and hugged me, and presented me with a copy of "Babar and Father Christmas" as a reward. I would still pick up the tattered VHS box years later with pride and remember how I had nobly saved my brother.

"Issac will need a lot of protection and teaching," my mother said, "you will always have to be a good big sister and look out for him...keep him out of trouble."

I beamed. I felt important.

***

"Hugga hugga hugga squeeeeeeeeeeeze," my mother would say, holding my brother in her arms. On each hug she would give him a strong hug and on the word squeeze she would hold him as long as the word lasted and kiss him on the head. My brother found this comforting when the world became overwhelming, which was often. This was the age where firetruck sirens were terrifying and we couldn't play music on our speakers because it was all overwhelming.

Keeping my brother out of trouble had been a great game when I was five and he was two, but as I neared seven I began to understand that my friends did not need to do nearly as much protecting of their younger siblings as I did, and I grew tired of the game of being important because I looked out for him. It became a chore. He worshipped me, and he wanted to follow me everywhere. As time progressed I just wanted to get away from him.

***

Sunday school was difficult: not in an academic sense, but in a behavioral one. I had to wear a dress for one thing, and patent leather shoes which always seemed to come home with scuffs on them, much to my amazement and my mother's distain. I never cared much for my teachers, and I felt like they always taught the same things over and over, but at 8 I was really too young to have much in the way of religious opinions or disbelief in what figures of authority told me was true. Hell, I'm not sure if I had even sorted out Santa Claus yet.

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth...

Genesis 4:9-11

"That's wrong!" I said. I didn't understand at the time that God was upset with Cain for killing his brother, I thought he was mad about Cain not looking out for his little brother. Its amazing how sanitized the world presented to me at that age was.

"What's wrong?" the Sunday school teacher asked.

"Abel wasn't Cain's problem! What if Cain had other stuff to do? Why did he have to be Abel's keeper?"

The Sunday school teacher shook her head, "we are all our brother's keepers, Pika."

I was cranky the whole way home. When I got home I threw my patent leather shoes in my closet and my littly frilly dress on the floor to put my normal clothes back on. Then I pulled my stuffed animals off the shelves and sulked. God seemed pretty demanding and pretty eager to take the fun out of most things.

My brother's head cracked in the doorway and a big pair of blue eyes looked at me.

"NO!" I shouted, "You can't come in here. This is mine. I'm playing by myself."

My brother looked baffled. I sat there for a moment. I knew this wasn't how I was suppose to behave.

"Alright...you can play with one." I presented him Blue Bunny. He grabbed one ear and a foot and started pulling. I could almost hear the little stitches pop.

"No!" I shouted, "stop that! Blue bunny doesn't like that!" I tugged at the animal in his hands and he held on harder. Eventually I extracted it from his hands and stormed back into my room, leaving my bewildered little brother outside the slammed door. There was a few second pause before he started bawling. I could hear my mother's voice outside the door comforting him, and I felt very bad. Mom said I had to be patient with him until he was older and he could learn better. I felt like I had, but apparently it wasn't enough time.

***

"Pika's little brother is weird," Carolyn said to the group, making a funny face. The bus rattled and clanked off to Girl Scout Camp with all of us bouncing along inside.

"So what?" I asked.

"He acts funny!" she said, "he rocks back and forth and he talks to himself."

"Oh yeah? Well my brother is smart. He can name all the fish in the aquarium. Can your brother do that?"

Carolyn was quiet for a moment.

"That's right," I said, "and your brother is annoying too."

***

"What..." Mime said, looking at my snowpants and big rubber boots.

"My mom made me wear them. She says I can't go sledding without them. I asked not to...I know they aren't cool..."

Mime rolled her eyes a little gesturing to where my little brother was running around a tree shaking snow off the lower branches. He wrung his hands and rocked and muttered to himself in delight. She sighed, "and you brought him?"

"He's ok. I told him he isn't allowed to talk to anybody."

Looking back on it you may fault me as cruel for making this rule for my brother, but sometimes I did not have the patience to explain the complexities of things and did not want to spend all afternoon justifying him to my friends. My brother lived for black and white rules, and this simple one made so much of my life easier.

Mime, her sister Plato, Issac and I all headed for the sledding hill, but when Mime saw that Laura and her cronies were already at the hill she nearly turned back.

"Whatever," I said, "there is room to share."

Things went fairly peacefully for the first hour. Laura and her friends from time to time would say rude things about my brother, but neither of us rose to the bait. After growing board of this she switched tactics.

"Nice snowpants, Pika," she grinned. None of them were wearing big bulky snowpants.

"Yeah, my mom made me wear them."

"Hah, you always do whatever your parents say?"

"Invariably," my brother nodded, "Pika always honors our father and mother. She is the best."

There we go. In one line my brother had demonstrated his habit of reading the dictionary and saying words no eight year old knew, and also quoted the black and white rules of the Bible to win an arguement. It was very noble of him to stick up for me, it just happened to be the last thing we needed.

First she was mocking, then her cronies were mocking, and then my brother was shouting, and then they were pushing him. I ran up and joined the crowd, but couldn't think of anything better to say than "Knock it off!"

Laura was sneering. My brother was theatening that I would beat her up, just like I fought other kids who pushed him around. I was petrified.

Somehow it was agreed that I would fight Laura in a snowball fight. I asked for a moment to build a fort, but I knew it was in vain. Laura would run up, tackle me, and jam snow down my clothing, and then beat the shit out of me. I was weaker than her, smaller than her, and far slower in these God-awful snow pants. The fort was important though because it kept my brother occupied to build it while I tried to figure out a plan.

"I hope you appreciate," Mime said a few hours later when we were wrapped in blankets and drinking hot cocoa, "everything I did to get you out of that."

"You didn't do anything! You sat around with Laura's cronies and you were going to let them pummel me. Plato saved us because she's the only one who threw a fit to stop the fight."

"Plato lay on the ground and cried."

"Yeah! And it worked! And it was a lot more than you did!"

"You are so ungrateful," Mime said.

"Pika, is not! Pika is the best!" my brother shouted.

"Oh will you shut up!" I snapped. "This is how we got into trouble in the first place."

My brother looked upset to hear me shout at him like that for giving me a compliment. He didn't understand.

***

"Is this a bad time?" I'm sitting in a bar with some coworkers in Arizona after another equipment test."

"Uh, no" I said, hastly making my way out with my phone in hand, "What's up?"

"Well I wanted to apologise. We found a lot when we were teenagers, and I... want to make it better. I blamed you for a lot of things which aren't your fault."

"Oh."

"And... I never really thanked you for everything you did for me when we were really little. You tried really hard, and I appreciate that a whole lot, and I never thanked you."

"Forget it," I said.

"What?" he asked, taking me literally, "but it was really..."

"I mean... don't worry about it. Its what a good big sister should do... keep her brother out of trouble. I'm sorry too that I didn't do better sometimes..."

"Its ok Pika," I could hear the innocent smile through the phone line, "You're still the best."

In Plain Sight

"I think you live here," Java said.

"That's absurd."

"No, you sleep on the lab couch, you shower upstairs and you eat the food," he pointed to the lab refrigerator, "right there."

"Why shouldn't I eat food which came from academy? Its communal, I brought it here for all of us."

"Do you have an apartment? Like one not here, that you could go back to if you wanted to?"

"Yeah."

"I don't believe you."

"It doesn't matter if you do," I said, picking up a clean ceramic bowl and a package of ramen from one of the bins of food we inherited. Sunlight hits me, first in slivers and then finally bathing me completely as I walk from the lab to the kitchen. Its not a kitchen in the strictest sense with only a microwave and a coffee maker, but for anything more I have to walk a few blocks and get into the short-term housing kitchen. I fill the bowl with water, add the brick of ramen, and put it in the microwave.

"Oh hello Pika!" a friendly voice asks behind me.

I turn to see one of the grad students smiling at me over her cup of coffee.

"You work weekends?"

"When I have a deadline," I smile.

"I saw you earlier in the lab," she smiles. She takes a Britta filter from the refrigerator and pours herself a glass of water, still grinning at me. I'm having trouble taking my eyes off the Britta filter. Has nobody really found it odd that there is a small filter pitcher in the refrigerator in a building that's completely stocked with those giant blue tanks of purified water? "You work a lot of hours," she offered as a chipper sort of compliment.

"I suppose I do."

***

I've never personally read Edgar Allen Poe's The Purloined Letter, but I do know the plot of it from watching Wishbone as a child. I'm not sure which of these facts would slay my mother more. The concept, however, of hiding things in plain sight, is something which remained dormant with me in my mind for many years. It wasn't until a dotted lined boss in college who did not even know of the term's origin became fond of the phrase that it returned to my mind.

The water filter came from Bobby who gave it to me when he moved out of Delta. It, along with many other kitchen supplies, had been dragged into the university "kitchen" and hidden, in plain sight, around the time of the new student's orientation week. The students did not know what did and did not belong, and I assume the professors thought the new students or the orientation staff had brought the supplies. Nobody was going to suspect anything until I moved them all out again into my next home.

My clothes and other blatantly domestic items were hidden as well, in nondescript cardboard boxes with the words "fiscal reports" or "short-term engineering sample, retain packaging for manufacturer return." Many people walk in and out every day, and none of them notice.

***

The building my lab is in was, according to popular legend, once a military base morgue. I'm not sure which portions were the hospital and which were the morgue, how showers appeared on the second floor, or if in-depth knowledge of this would make standing at the edge of the shower any better. I'm trying to ignore the cool slick tile under my bare feet. I'd kill for a pair of flip flops.

I can feel the edges of the tiles and little scraps of the grouting between them against the balls of my feet and my toes. How many bodies have been washed here? Do they even wash dead bodies in the shower? They probably have to wash them someplace. I curl my toes against the floor a little and apply pressure. In karate we use this to grip the floor, but right now I'm mostly forcing myself to touch it and feel it, and get over the skin-crawling feeling this place gives me. Honestly, I should probably be more concerned for my health with the amount of bleach they probably dumped on this place when they converted it to a university. I hung up my clothes and took my shower. It was easier the next day.

***

Its been on the order of weeks since I moved into this life. Java is the only one who seems to have noticed, and that's because he likes to escape to the lab on weekends to do work and always finds me here. If I lived at home I probably would too. If I could do this again from the start I would make a greater effort to leave conspicuously promptly from time to time at closing instead of "working late" and in reality just go off for a downtown bike ride. The rest of the plan was executed nearly perfectly. I told people I was living with an imaginary boyfriend and I got a male friend of mine to agree to receive mail on my behalf. I learned the janitor's schedule for cleaning so that I know which days I can sleep in and which I have to be up and working extra early.

If there is any practical advice I can offer to anybody stupid enough to try this, I'd say don't wear your pajamas ever. Sleep in normal clothes so you can always claim, if found, that you were just working late laying on the couch and fell asleep. You may want to print out a research paper and highlight portions of it, then leave the highlighter and some assorted pages of it right next to your couch as you fall asleep. Make sure whatever you write on your boxes is deadly boring so nobody wants to open them. Wake up earlier than anybody would arrive every day to tidy your space and remove traces of your presence. If you ever do oversleep and somebody comes in and wakes you, you should consider pretending to go home. Take a small bag (which you should always have packed with a spare set of clothes etc) and go to the nearest place with a bathroom that isn't your work. Clean yourself up and change your clothes, then waste about 30 minutes and go back.

I'm a little frightened by not entirely knowing what road has led me here, aside from turning down military jobs, which we all know will always be funded. People think the feds always have money, but its always about what project you're assigned to really. If the funding stops to your project and your boss is too proud to disband the project and transfer you...well sometimes the paychecks stop coming. Thankfully mine are still only "delayed" although some days I'm not sure what difference it makes in the end. I've been hunting for a new job pretty hard for about a month. I'm very hopeful about some things coming through soon. Still, I would like to derive how I got here so I can make sure to not go here again.

Thank you to Violent Acres for this post, because honestly, prior to reading that I didn't quite have the balls to think like this. I didn't know stuff like this could be pulled off. Even now, I still find it amazing and hard to believe how people can live like this with nobody knowing, right on top of their workplace illusions. I wonder how many empty offices every night aren't empty at all. I wonder how many people there are who are just like me, living completely unseen in plain sight.

Lipstick

"Its time you started wearing makeup," my mother said.

"Its kinda a hassle in the morning...and you can smell it all day when you wear it."

"Here," my she said, plunking something down in front of the keyboard I was typing at.

"Huh?"

"Its lipstick."

That much was accurate, it was technically lipstick. It was an appalling shade of light red that flirted a bit too dangerously with orange tones. I didn't hate makeup, I just mostly didn't care enough to bother with it. I sat there with the item in my hand thinking of the most delicate way to phrase this: if I was going to wear makeup I wanted to wear something subtle and...while I wasn't keen to go shopping for it myself it was pretty evident that I would need to in order for anything I actually wanted to wear to appear in.

"This is really nice Mom, but you don't need to do this for me."

"Somebody's got to or you'll never grow up."

I let that comment slide and ignored the statement. My mother seemed displeased with my silence.

"You know," she coaxed, trying another tactic, "the reason everybody thinks you are so young is because you don't wear makeup...come on, put some on...the boys will love you...that is if you would just stop scaring them off..."

I was a little annoyed so I didn't respond to that either. I'll spare you the details but Mom got progressively ruder from that point until I got fed up and started being rude back. This didn't result in anything positive as the situation escalated and she finally screamed at me, "Listen! You take this gift, you ungrateful little brat, and you are going to use it do you hear me? I don't care what you think! You are going to use this!"

"Fine!" I shouted, picking up the lipstick and storming off to the downstairs bathroom. In proper 16-year old style I slammed the door and then slunk down along it so I sat leaned back against it, feet flat on the floor, knees curled up, glaring at the bottom of the sink cabinets.

I sat there for a good five minutes before I procured a multi-tool from my pocket and opened the blade. A few good slices and the lipstick had a point on it.

F=ma

I grinned at my work on the mirror. I felt like an important scientist writing on a really expensive blackboard, and I enjoyed watching the copy of myself in the mirror reach forward to write in the same fugly orange-pink color.

A free-body diagram followed, and finishing the physics problem I sharpened the lipstick again to go for another round on my skin. Leaning between illustrations of the force vectors I started writing physics equations on my arms and face until the majority of my exposed body was covered. I wandered out of the bathroom with the remains of the lipstick in hand.

"Where are you going?" my mother asked, getting a look at my war-paint.

Prior to that question it hadn't occurred to me that I would go anywhere. I was just wearing the lipstick, and technically you could say this was just as I had been instructed. I paused for a second before testing a response, "Out."

"You can't go out like that."

"Why not?"

"You'll embarrass yourself."

"I'm not embarrassed."

"You can't go out, it would be embarrassing." She looked genuinely concerned and nervous.

It was then when it truly struck me. My mother found me an embarrassment. She wanted to help me be what she considered a presentable person, but moreover she was embarrassed that I might be any sort of reflection on her. Image meant a great deal to my mother, and I was ruining it.

"Ah," I said, weighing my options. I could go embarrass my mom or deal with a war...or back off and see if she did too. There did not seem to be any negative to backing off, as I could always re-cover myself in lipstick if I really wanted to piss her off.

"I'll stay inside," I said.

My mother looked relieved and past then took a tone of condescending dismissal. She made me clean my artwork, called me hopeless, told me I would never have a boyfriend, that everybody would always treat me like I am young, and that it was my own fault if I didn't know what was good for me.

I felt it was pretty worth it though. At the very least she never told me I didn't have a choice about wearing lipstick again.

America Loves a Man Who Served?

Every election everybody is abuzz over who "nobly served their country in its time of need," and how a candidate's military service (or lack thereof) will impact the election. Parties, for as long as I have lived, have had groups come out every election to tout the extent of their candidate's military service or their opponent's lack thereof. The question really is: are candidates who have convinced the public that they served really any more successful than their peers?

Lets look at recent candidates who have flamboyant war stories...such as getting shot or tortured. Who would that be? John McCain (2008), John Kerry (2004) and Bob Dole (1992). All three of them, as I am sure you know, lost their elections.

So, the question comes from this, does military service in general indicate a losing candidate? Lets look at the records. The 1992 and 1980 elections must be skipped for now because they were between two candidates who won at some point. Al Gore (2000) served in the Vietnam war, while Dukakis (1988) and Mondale (1984) served in Korea. Ford (1976) served in WWII (remember, he was president but he never won an election, which is what is in question here). McGovern (1972) also served in that war. Prior to that a good chunk of the baby boomers were not even of voting age, and it gets a little hard to consider everything one contineous culture.

So, now lets examine the other side of the coin. What are the military histories of winning candidates?

Carter and George Bush Senior each won and lost one election. Both of them won against somebody with equal or less military experience, and both of them lost to somebody with no combat experience. Carter (1972) served on a submarine. He won against Ford, who had a considerable record of service, and lost against Regan who never saw battle at all and couldn't serve overseas. George Bush Senior (1988, 1992) served active duty Navy and saw combat. He won against Dukakis (who served) in 1988. Its reasonable to say this didn't break the trend because when both candidates in an election served they can not both lose. He lost to Clinton, who had no record of military service.

George W Bush (2000, 2004) worked first in the Texas Air National Guard and then was discharged to inactive duty in the Air Force Reserve. Various forms of the National Guard have been socially seen as a great way to draft dodge, and were a popular alternative to serving in the Vientam War for particularly well well-connected people. Since social perceptions directly influence elections, its reasonable to say that is what matters here, and that against the candidates George W Bush faced it isn't unreasonable to say that the majority of the public considered him the figure with less military service.

What about the rest of the candidates? Obama (2008) has no military history. Clinton (1992, 1996) employed significant shennanigans to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. Regan (1980, 1984) tried but never saw battle and couldn't serve overseas because of his nearsightedness. Nixon (1968, 1972) was exempt twice over from service, joined anyway and requested multiple times for more demanding duties but retired never seeing combat. This history brings us neatly back, once again, to the time before the baby boomers were of age to vote.

So what can we scientifically conclude from this? Nothing: this is just a statistical correlation. It is, however, a very strong correlation that United States presidental elections have, for the past 40 years, tended very strongly to favor the candidate with less military service.

So, why is this? Hippy baby boomers won't vote for "baby killers" they spent their college years protesting in the streets? Maybe, after all it really does fit the timeline, but I have never heard of a generation who sold their beliefs out so rapidly and wholeheartedly as the baby boomers (upcoming post). Atom proposed that the numerous foreign interests which contribute to our election campeign funds might be more likely to financially support a non-military candidate. That sounds very plausable, but I haven't been able to discover enough election campeign contribution data to really draw correlations either way. Personally, I'm not really ready to break out my tin foil hat quite yet.

What are the odds of this happening by accident? There have been 9 elections since 1972. If for each election a winner was selected at random from the two major parties the odds of it lining up with this exact correlation by random chance would be .19% or just a touch more unlikely than 525 to 1. So, its fairly likely that there is something mathematically to this, but I really haven't a clue what it is. I'd welcome any thoughts on the topic.

Visitors

This mortarboard was easier to keep on than the one for my highschool graduation, but I still fidget with it in line. Hundreds of the little black hats and robes dot the chunk of the road just around the bend from the ceremony.

My freshman roommate's now ex-boyfriend is at the front of the line which will eventually become our row of chairs for the duration of our graduation ceremony. A former housemate is standing directly behind me. I realize I haven't had a serious conversation with either of them for over a year. Events like this shuffle people back together, and remind you of people you didn't even remember you missed.

I'm wearing cords, they're wearing cords, seems like nearly everybody's wearing cords. Some are for graduating with honors or making an honors society for the student's respective major, yet they are fairly indistinguishable from the ones which are given for participating in Greek Life. I realize that my pair will only be worn by five students, and wonder quietly if that in reality makes them look more or less credible to an outsider. The wide array of colors remind me of being seven and attending the awards dinner of the soccer season. We all got shiny trophies for participating. The parents ooohed and ahhhed affectionately over them, but the kids were disinterested or even ashamed looking to hold them. They knew that these meant nothing, that they had no value, because they were given to everybody for just existing.

"Heh," I said, turning to my former housemate and trying to make light conversation, "they give these out for everything, huh? Look, they even seem to have one for...what is that yellow one...the asian students minority recgonition club?"

The housemate turns to me and glares with an expression that clearly says he took my mistake as a malicious slur, "That's the designation for somebody who is graduating with a masters."

So much for small talk I guess.

***

"Call me Oliver," he said.

"Oh...alright..."

"My real name is difficult for Americans."

I'd seen the boy in class before but never talked to him much. Now that I had joined the master's and Ph D student poker nights I was getting to know some of them a little better.

"So who knows how to play?" he asked. A smiling Indian boy and the wife of one of the Ph D candidates raised their hands.

"Ok," she said, turning to me, "He's going to explain the rules to you in English and I'm going to teach everybody else in Chinese."

I wonder sometimes if this is what a brain drain looks like. Then I hear them talk about missing their families, or even for those who want to stay how difficult it is to get a work visa or citizenship in America, and how they may never be cleared for high government work due to their foreign connections. All and all America doesn't graduate a lot of engineers, and these are normally counted as American engineers. We celebrate the fact that we have a Chinese brain drain, that we are getting intelligent and hard working students into this country to help develop new products that will help America profit, and then we legally make it difficult for them to remain here to execute the plans we help lay in their minds. I wonder who profits from this system. I do not think it is anybody at this table.

***

Same group, different day. We're all lined up along a table in a Thai place. One of the master's students has produced a pair of wooden chopsticks from his pocket and is eating with them. I guess he's more comfortable that way. The conversation remains mostly in English, and as it continues I gather scraps of understanding that the boy with the chopsticks has not been to America before.

"Have you seen fortune cookies yet?" Pei, who is teaching the class, asked him.

"No, what is that?"

"Ahh," Pei begins. The voice isn't unlike the one he uses to lecture class, although he's nearing a lethal dose of sarcasm as he gestures to explain, "They are an ancient Chinese tradition... you open up a cookie, and inside, you find..." he waves his fingers and opens his eyes wide for effect, "your fortune!"

The whole table laughs for a short while. I now remember reading The Joy Luck Club in highschool and learning that fortune cookies were an American invention, but somehow I had forgotten it until that moment.

Oliver laughed too, turned to me and smiled, "Americans, so crazy."

Professional

"Tuck up," she says, "we're going to get hit with the sprinklers."

I turn in the sleeping bag and pull the edges up, tucking them under my feet. Through the holes in the mesh I can see the wood-chips on the ground about 8 feet below me, although I can't feel the mesh through the sleeping bag.

We must be quite a sight: three college students and one graduate camped on a children's playground. We could see the lights from the road and hear the cars shuffle past. Most of the noise came from the unevenness of the road.

Drummer was sprawled across a bridge between two of the sections, Jesh had yet to settle down but was enjoying running along the tops of the structures in the dark. Tiffany was curled up next to me. I could almost see the smile on her face in the dark.

At dawn we awoke to a rosy sunrise and two dogs running in the park. The husband and wife walking them had obviously seen us and were skirting the entire structure. My bare feet could feel the grain of the rivulets which made up the structure surface and my blue plaid PJ pants ruffled slightly in the morning breeze. Oh well, this isn't going to get a whole lot weirder no matter what I do...

"Hello!" I called, "Good morning to you both!"

The husband looked a little baffled and puzzled on how to respond but the wife grinned widely and waved to us.

"Can I pet your dogs?" I asked.

"Of course," the wife answered.

In seconds I was down the fire pole and across the mulch into the grass which licked the hems of my pants as I ran, leaving them wet with dew.

"What are you doing up there?" the wife asked as I arrived.

"Camping out," I smiled as I worked to extract a bright green tennis ball from the mouth of an excited golden retriever.

"Why?" her husband asked.

"I don't know," I replied, winding up and chucking the ball as far as I could. The golden retriever streaked out in pursuit, front and back legs together in a bounding gate, "Why not I guess?"

"I know how that is," the woman said turning to me, "you wouldn't believe the half of the crazy stuff I did in college."

The husband's eyebrows crashed together like waves for a moment before he raised one in puzzled alarm and looked at his wife.

***

They weren't in front of the iron gates of the school we had selected. They weren't in the subway station. They weren't picking up their cell phones. They weren't anywhere I could figure out.

The day was cold enough to see your breath, and I was wrapped tightly in a baby blue coat. An equally bright and clashing orange piece of poster board with the words "Free Hugs" written on it in foot high all capitol black letters was rolled up in my hands.

This had seemed a simply grand idea in a group, but standing alone I felt nothing short of absurd on that street corner. I stood alone for nearly half an hour, sign half unfurled in one hand, looking somewhat dejected.

"You're giving out free hugs?" a voice asked me. It belonged to a girl who was probably still in highschool. Black lipstick, black skirt, dyed black hair, some sort of intricate black shoes, and even the obligatory hot topic spiked bracelet made me feel like I had just met the walking personification of people who need to prove their uniqueness by all acting the same.

"Uh...yeah," I said non-commitally.

"I love that video," she grinned, "can I have one?"

"Uh...yeah!" I said a bit more brightly.

I'm never going to be able to explain what exactly happened in that moment when the girl who I was so busy looking down on came up and hugged me, but like so many other endeavors in life, the first step was the hardest and the expression of confidence is often what makes you succeed. I held my sign high above my head, grinning at incoming pedestrian traffic. The people came in streams, they would see one person hug me, and then another person would follow suit, but at no point did interest hold strongly enough to form a line.

"You're doing a psych project?" a man asked tenitively, pointing back to the gates behind me.

"No, just for fun."

"Oh," there was a long pause before he produced a rather nice camera from his coat and extended his hand once more toward the intricate iron gates, "I go there. I need an art project. Can I photograph you?"

A street preformer came up to me at one point and said that everybody walking from my direction was smiling, hugged me, and left. I hugged the photographer, but sadly I never got to see the result of his project (if you're out there Mr Photographer Man, I'm rather curious how that turned out), as a matter of fact I'll never find out if I made much of a difference to anybody that day, and honestly I don't expect I did. It was, however, one of the most heartwarming and rewarding experiences I have ever participated in. People in groups are miserable creatures, but from time to time if you can manage to take them and yourself our of the daily environment you'll find something in them which makes you both smile. It was also really healthy of me to get over my self-consciousness about the absurdity of it all and just enjoy myself.

***

The big lab with the best toys in it, naturally, is the one which I must share with a variety of characters. One of them is standing in front of me wearing a suit.

"You have to wear shoes in here,"

I want to ask him why, but I already know why, and its not something he's likely to say out loud. There is no heavy machinery here, no serious danger, Florian just believes its unprofessional to not wear shoes at work. Nothing has changed since I started doing this more than two years ago, Florian is just new and believes he can help me by teaching me to grow up. Maybe he can.

I find this interesting. Personally I define "being unprofessional" as "not doing a good job," but in reality the act of "being professional" in this day and age seems to have taken on a significant amount of unrelated baggage. I understand that sometimes we need to put our best foot forward to impress guests and potential sponsors, but why must we keep up this facade with one another? Why are we trained to be so fearful of the judgement of total strangers we will never see again and will have no impact on our lives, and of our own teammates who are suppose to be our allies? Perhaps this insistance on stupid and trivial childish behavior is stupid, but this other option of a culture just slays me.

***

"Punch buggy green, no punch back," I tap Corey on the shoulder. Corey is a professional, both in my eyes and in Florian's, and ten years my senior. If I am where he is when I am his age I will be very proud. He looks at me for a moment slightly bewildered, then smiles and shakes his head.

"Pika, are you ever going to grow up?"

"I was considering maybe starting on that in like 10 years..."