Fireflies

My sister has adopted her peer's habit of attempting to use youtube as her own personal music library. She's a legitimate thirteen year-old teenager now, complete with a smart phone grafted to her hand, horrendous spelling, and the belief that capitalizing every other letter makes her cooler. We've settled upon some music we can both enjoy, and now the computer screen is filled with a man at his keyboard and a series of whirring mechanical toys.

	Owl City - Fireflies
	Found at skreemr.com

I smile. Before I left I had trouble enough grasping that she was eight, my clearest memories of her are when she was closer to five or six, before I got sick.

You would not believe your eyes
If 10 million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep

Cuz they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare

I can remember running through fields at that age where long grass licked my ankles and tugged at my bare feet, chasing fireflies. My grandmother brought me a jar from the kitchen and we tapped holes in the tin lid with the point of a Phillips screwdriver. I remember the sheer joy of seeing them hovering in the twilight over the quad at college for the first time, that fantastic feeling of coming home to something familiar.

"You remember fireflies," I ask her, "from our old house?"

She doesn't hear me, she's absorbed in her texting. I go back to stirring the rice pudding on the stove.

***

Even at 9 I had known something very big, and probably very bad was happening when my mother had taken me to my favourite restaurant for "special time together." I could normally count the times we ate out on one hand in a year.

"Pika," my mother said gently, "I have some very big news."

I dug into some ice cream with a spoon. If mom was going to spring bad news on me I was going to at least get a chance to eat desert first out of it.

"Our family is going to be a little bit bigger soon."

"You're pregnant?"

"We might adopt a little girl from China who hasn't got a family."

I remember being overwhelmed by two thoughts. The first was that at the point where my mother was telling me this there wasn't really any actual "might" involved here at all. The second was that my mother was in her mid-fourties and dad was scraping fifty. I couldn't think of anybody that age with a newborn child, and couldn't figure out why that was.

"We're going to be about 10 years apart?"

"Yes."

"Are you...expecting me to help raise her?"

"Only as a sister."

I took another scoop of ice cream, thoroughly unconvinced.

***

By mid-high school my sister was calling me "Mom" by mistake more often than I was comfortable with. I remember doing the same thing in early elementary school with my Waldorf teacher, first calling her mom once by accident and then repeating the "mistake" because a part of my head really liked that idea.

***

My memories of being sick are blurry, but I distinctly remember finding and watching Grave of the Fireflies. More friends than I could count had told me I would bawl like a child at the end, but instead I couldn't remember being more enraged at a film. The boy had an obligation to his sister before his personal pride, and no matter how wretched his aunt was being I felt he should have stayed there until the food stopped, in order to try to provide for his sister. At 10 years apart he needed to care for her and put her above all else, as she'd never be able to look after herself at that age. Just looking at that little tin of candies in the grocery store made me mad for months.

***

Leave my door open just a crack
(Please take me away from here)
Because I feel like such an insomniac
(Please take me away from here)

***

I went to college more resentful of my parents than you'd believe, and every time I thought about them I worried for my sister. Issac and I were too close in age for me to protect, and my mother had always gotten along very well with him, but my sister I could do something about. All I had to do was graduate well-decorated, land a steady reputable high-paying job in a very good school district and get a chance to take care of her during her high school years. This desire stemmed from very simple logic: either my parents were not as bad as I thought they were, or I would be a terrible person to leave my sister to the same fate when I had the capacity to do something about it.

***

But I'll know where several are
If my dreams get real bizarre
'Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar

***

"Why don't they light up?" a six-year-old me asked, shaking the newly-re-purposed peanut butter jar.

The jar was hastily steadied by my grandma, "Don't shake it, you'll hurt them. I guess they just don't feel like lighting up right now."

My cousin Tom taught me how to kill the bugs when they lit up and smear their color on the pavement, but this was not what I wanted. I wanted a living, breathing nightlight which I could care for and in return could light my room.

Leaves, sticks, more air vents, I even once opened the jar after mom tucked me in to let them roam my whole room, but the results were always exactly the same. The next morning I had nothing but dead fireflies.

"Well, maybe they are just fragile," Mom offered.

Almost fifteen years later I am standing in the Torii lobby asking out of the blue if anybody ever mastered this.

"I just don't think they survive the night," Jen offered, "they are probably short-lived..."

I sighed, "I just probably never knew how to care for them."

***

There are curling irons mixed in with the rockband controllers. She's fooling with the wires and a little upset.

"There was a man outside when I was walking the dog," she informs me. "He was smoking and drinking."

I smiled a little bit. My sister was still untangling the cords.

"He asked if he could pet the dog and I was scared, so I said no because she bites and came back."

Thirteen. What does a good parent of a thirteen year old do? Certainly no drinking, no hardcore partying, limited going out late, having to stay out of trouble, and forget doing any serious dating... I'd essentially skip the lifestyle of my early 20's for four years, followed by another four years of being careful and financially stable to provide her a good college education. I'd need to move into an apartment with space for her and shift my work hours so I could be with her. Would the company feed her like they feed me? Otherwise I also need to make meals for her...

Even if I could do all that, could I provide her a good home? Would it be any more realistic or do her any more good than the stick and some leaves in a jar with air holes did for the fireflies? Single working parents have to be nearly heroic to raise children well...and here I've barely figured out all the stuff I have to not do, let alone be sure to do.

"Shit," she says, tugging on the cords.

"You're getting a little gratuitous with the swearing." I add, "It doesn't mean a lot if it's every fourth word."

She looks up at me with an expression I cannot quite fully read, but it definitely says "but you swear."

I'm not sure I can do this.

A Brave New Job

We're being taught how to write and how to speak.

"Never say we would crush the competition, we have only the utmost respect for our competitors..."

The desks of the hall form a large semi-circle and we're all seated quietly, each clutching an identical bookbag, a gift from our new employer. We also each have a laptop, a shirt...

"And now it is time for lunch," the orientation lead smiles and leads the 20 of us to a cafeteria. We're all the people who began work on this day, they call us a class.

"Ribs or salmon?" the cafeteria employee asks me.

I stare at him blankly before finally managing an "uhhh."

The employee looks concerned, "You know...if you don't like..."

"Oh no! I like!"

***

It's a few weeks later and another smiling cafeteria worker is holding a lobster claw in a pair of serving tongs. I'm immediately struck with the realization that I have no idea how to eat this item and that I will be figuring it out in front of a large number of coworkers.

"It's ok," I tell her, "I have enough food, no thanks."

***

"You're so lucky," my friends told me.

"Is it true they feed you three meals a day?"

"Is it true they do your laundry?"

***

I roomed with a bunch of people from this place briefly years ago. Their refrigerator was eerily empty save the bunny food which contented Carne. I worked for the feds, she worked for something similar, and we use to talk about how the way our other housemates were so dependent on their workplace was a little creepy.

One of these housemates, Sharpie, fell off his bike and skinned his arm. The company nurse fixed him up, but he wore the bandage in the shower. Seconds later he came running out of the bathroom in a towel talking clutching his burning injury.

Carne and I laughed at him for wearing his bandage in the shower and expecting any differently. He laughed too once we pointed it out, "you know, I use to know that."

"They all drink some hardcore kool-aid over there," Carne shook her head, "bet you it's something they put in the water."

I laugh, "So that is what the cafeterias are for..."

***

The sign above the ribs says they were cooked in molasses. The meat is tender and falls off the bones, and a touch sweet. I assume that's from the molasses, though I have never had anything like this before so I wouldn't know for sure.

"You'll never be far from food," the orientation lead tells me, "we have snack kitchens..."

***

"Don't you think this is all a little excessive?" Giraffe asks me.

"Yeah, but it is how it is around here I guess."

***

I'm sitting at an awards dinner, courtesy of the feds, earlier this year. Sys's dad is sitting nearby and laughing with us.

"I wonder sometimes," I said, "if I could just hop from company to company on crazy employee benefits and just outrun the rate of reality catching up to these places and them realizing it isn't affordable."

His dad throws back his head and roars, "You missed out on the real chance for that, kid. This is nothing compared to how it was in the 90's."

***

"It's just like A Brave New World," Giraffe said.

"Isn't that about some crazy dystopia where everybody is oppressed?"

"Well yes, but it's completely voluntary and they are all happy."

"Then home come are they oppressed?"

"The book talks about that a lot."

"What?"

***

I'm walking through the halls for what turned out to be my final interview. A perky HR lady is asking me my least favourite interview question.

"And do you have any questions for me?"

My eyes clutch the walls, searching frantically for something which will make me sound smart yet curious.

"You changed the brand of juice in these refrigerators since I was here last, didn't you?"

"Oh," she smiles, "Yes, well we have panels here which study things like this, and if they changed it I suppose that means that the new one is healthier."

There is a brief an awkward pause where the HR woman innocently smiles, and then adds, "You really do learn something new every day here."

***

"When you start work," Doug said, gesturing to the Torii building, "We'll miss you."

"I don't understand."

"Well you'll never leave work there. You'll never come here anymore."

"That's silly."

"Well, why would you want to leave?"

***

I sat down and looked back at the mental list of things I wanted when I was homeless and compare them to the things I want now. While I still want a car and maybe a boyfriend or some other form of social ties to this place, pretty much everything else has been taken care of: food, shelter, medical insurance, free time, and respect for my work. I find it odd to realize that the list is a lot shorter but I am not a much happier person, in fact in some ways the optimism afforded to me when I was homeless of rapidly becoming un-homeless and general excitement probably meant I was happier then in my day-to-day life then than I am now.

***

"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel–and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill... they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave."

The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies."

"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead..."

The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand..."

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

A Brave New World, Chapters 16-17

"You're still coming here," Doug smiled.

"Yeah. I think it's not good for me to spend all my time there."

Google Suggest

So, many of you have probably noticed by now that when you type a query into the Google homepage it will suggest queries to you to complete your search. While I'm not sure of the exact algorithm...knowing Google it is probably based on what users type. This means that some of them are curiously insightful and some are just flatly terrifying.

I have, for your amusement, collected a sample of sample query beginnings and the suggested query results.

As you might guess, this isn't probably very safe for work.

"Is it wrong"

• Is it wrong to sleep with your cousin
• Is it wrong to sleep with your step dad after your mom dies
• Is it wrong to sleep with your sister
  
• Is it wrong to like your cousin
• Is it wrong to live together before marriage
  
• Is it wrong to question God
• Is it wrong to be bi
• Is it wrong to cheat
  
• Is it wrong to be strong
• Is it wrong for a Christian to get a tattoo
  

"Is it true that"

• Is it true that the world is going to end in 2012
• Is it true that your heart stops when you sneeze
• Is it true that Miley Cyrus is pregnant
• Is it true that the world will end in 2012
• Is it true that if you die in your dreams you die in real life
• Is it true that when you sneeze somebody is talking about you
• Is it true that lady gaga is a man
• Is it true that robert patterson proposed to kristian stewart
  
• Is it true that if you don't use it you lose it
• Is it true that Rhianna gave Chris Brown herpes

Is there

• Is there anyway I can get this popular guy to get me pregnant
• Is there a god

(What the fuck? Did things really just show up in that order?)

How should

• How should I cut my hair
• How should I get a haircut
• How should a condom fit
• How should a suit fit
• How should we then live
• How should I do my hair
• How should a bra fit
• How should the intergral in Gauss' law be evaluated
• How should I cut my hair quiz

(One of these things is not like the others...)

How can I stop my wife

• From divorcing me

There was actually only one result for that one...

Nice girls

• Nice girls don't get the corner office
• Nice girls finish last
• Nice girls don't have fangs
• Nice girls don't explode
• Nice girls don't get rich
• Nice girls don't date dead men
• Nice girls swallow lyrics
• Nice girls don't change the world
• Nice girls finish fat
• Nice girls images

Why does

• Why does my eye twitch
• Why does my vag smell
• Why does asparagus make my urine smell funny
• Why does poop float
• Why does love always feel like a battlefield
• Why does ice float
• Why does my dog eat poop
• Why does Kim Zolciak wear a wig
• Why does hair turn gray
• Why does google have two l's

Thanks for tuning into this week's edition of "the world's got issues."

Edit: turns out there is a whole website for this stuff: http://autocompleteme.com/

Peter Pan

Its Saturday morning at my grandma's house. She only has probably five or six movies for children, but her version of Peter Pan the musical is the newest so we're watching that again. Mary Martin is bouncing through the woods singing while the lost boys echo her. Issac is on the couch near me singing and dancing along.

"I won't grow up!"

("I won't grow up!")

"I don't want to wear a tie,"

("I don't want to wear a tie,")

"Or a serious expression,"

(Or a serious expression,")

"In the middle of July."

("In the middle of July.")

"And if it means I must prepare,
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,
I'll never grow up,
Never grow up,
Never grow uuuuup..."

I was extremely young at that time and decided that day that I would never grow up either. I was completely determined.

Our parents were painting the house and so my brother and I were sharing the guest bedroom for the time being. As my mother tucked us in I explained to her that I would be leaving to go live with Peter Pan in a few years. I needed to wait a few years so I could always be a cool older kid and able to use tools and know enough to be really useful in Neverland, but I did need to go even though I would miss everybody very much.

"I see," my mother said, "and when will you go?"

"When I'm 13 I'll prop the window open with a stick and Peter Pan will know it is time for me to leave." I said. 13 seemed unimaginably old at that time, and it was about the age some of the older lost boys were to my knowledge. Thinking on it for a moment I asked, "When do children become adults?"

"When they turn 18."

"Ah, so I'll go right before then I guess."

The next day I selected an appropriate stick from the yard to hold the window open and brought it inside. No use in not being prepared and all.

I thought vaguely of my intentions once when I was 13 and again when I turned 16 and laughed on both occasions. On the eve of my 18th birthday I looked out the window to see a fallen tree branch in my yard. The whole question was framed a little differently in my mind then, as the thought of running away from home was never too far from the horizon.

***

At 14 we can work, at 16 we can drive. At 17 we can see R rated movies. At 18 we can smoke, buy porn, sign papers, vote, and die for our country. At 21 we can toast its victory. At 25 car rentals and many forms of insurance begin treating you as an adult, and at 35 you can run for president. When are we grown up?

***

"So," the same grandma asked, "You're 10 today, a whole two digits! How do you feel?"

My grandma asked me this question every year she saw me for my birthday. The answer was always the same.

"Erm...about the same as I did yesterday."

When I was young this statement made me nervous. Birthdays were suppose to be days of change, but I never felt my growth or maturity was so cleanly marked by the strict regiment of the Gregorian calendar. To be honest, I'm not totally sure it does now either.

***

The train leads to a monorail to a plane to a subway and up an escalator to a bus platform where Ginger is waiting for me. He looks different, even only after not seeing him for five months, in a way I can not quite put my finger on. I think I have changed too.

I hold our spot in line for the bus while he goes to get water. He returns and hands me mine.

"How much do I owe you for this?" In undergrad this was an important question.

Ginger shrugs, "Forget it, we're both adults with jobs, a few dollars between friends does not matter."

The eagerness to catch up spills right into the line for the bus and before I know it we're gathering stares and glares as I joke with Ginger about being homeless and the various other adventures which have filled the past 5 months.

***

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them. ... I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.

The Little Prince Chapter 1 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

***

"Did I ever tell you," I'm still laughing with Ginger, "about the time a policeman tried to throw me out of a tree for supposedly being drunk?"

The man in front of us and the man in front of him are increasingly gaining credibility with one another by taking turns glaring at us less and less subtly.

The bus engine shudders on, and all of our faces snap to look at it. A young man dressed in green is painted on the side above the bus logo of "Peter Pan." I grin and the lyrics from the television set in my grandmother's house so long ago echo back to me

If growing up means it would be
Beneath my dignity to climb a tree
I'll never grow up
Never grow up...

I suppose I found how to live in Neverland after all.

The outside world can keep its matters of consequence.

Engineer Logic

"We're having a party tonight," Giraffe says, "We need to swing by a thrift store for a piece of Ginger's costume, do you have yours?"

"Erm, I will shortly?"

Fifteen dollars later I'm wandering the house as The Cat in the Hat. A significantly larger number of dollars later we are leaving the liquor store ready for a Halloween party.

It began as very excellent party but, for whatever reason, a shocking number of people there did not understand their alcohol limits. Soon people are clustering around toilets, sinks, bathtubs, trash cans, and other receptacles depositing a wide variety of dinner items. The effect cascades, with first one party-goer kowtowing the porcelain throne and then others, either smelling the offering or perhaps just out of sympathy, following suit. The air is filled with the sound of people retching and spewing.

This party is officially not any fun anymore.

I am standing in the kitchen, realizing that the only people currently not throwing up are the hosts, Ginger, and myself.

Sam stands up from the sink, which he has hung to with a death grip for some time, and carefully wipes his mouth. "I feel better," he says.

"Yeah," I said, "well, I think you had a little too much..."

Sam turns to another male who is also clutching the sink, "Go on," he says, "just do it, you'll feel a lot better."

His sinkside companion adds to the mess. I lean over and begin running the water to reduce the smell.

"I do feel better," the second sinkclutcher agrees.

"Throwing up," Sam reasoned, "makes us feel better."

This is where you can tell the difference between a highly inebriated engineer or scientist and a highly inebriated sane person. The sane person might accept this fact, drink some water, and go to sleep. The engineer needs to analyze this data and use it to extrapolate greater patterns.

"If we throw up again," Sam pondered, "We will feel even better!"

"Uhh....no I..."

My words fall upon deaf ears as both boys simultaneously lean over the sink and jam their fingers down their throats. The behavior spreads like wildfire until a large number of party-goers are trying to follow the completely logical assumed data pattern. I'm left standing in a kitchen witnessing another round of retching.

"Pika," Sam calls, "you're sober!" I'm not, but it seems a silly argument.

"You need to go to the store and get us some Ipecac."

"No." We're already reenacting Family Guy here.

"Aww, come on, you want us to feel better right?"

"Uh... I don't think..."

Our disjointed argument continues for some time. Neither side is really making a coherent point, and after enough wasted time I simply leave the room. In Giraffe's bedroom another party sufferer is adding his vomit to a bowl which already contains contributions from two other people and an unfortunate mouse. There comes a point where things get bizarre enough that I feel like my grip on reality is slacking. The kitchen posse eventually realizes that nobody threw up throughout the entire debate and a relatively not-ill party member looks up from a chess board.

"You guys seem good, who wants to do shots?"

Sam and his compatriot look at each other for a second and then simultaneously hurl into the sink at the thought.

With ideas this good, who needs Ipecac anyway?