An alphabytes entry.

H is for Hero

People throw the words heroic and hero far too easily. They apply them to people like those who died on September 11th 2001. These people were not heroes. Forgive me if my statement appears to be disrespectful. I have nothing but respect and sympathy for those who died and the loved ones who they left behind. But to me a hero is someone who makes a choice to do something above and beyond, to risk so much of themselves to help another. The people, as a whole, who died on September 11th were tragic, innocent victims of a horrible, disgusting act of terrorism. They did not deserve to die. But heroes?

No doubt in the over 3000+ people who died there are indeed many stories of people acting in ways that indeed do make them heroes. I believe I read somewhere about two or three men who took the time to carry someone in a wheelchair down the stairs. I’m not sure if it’s a true story, and if it is, if any of the individuals survived.

But I think we should reserve the word hero for people like that.

I is for Impulsive

I am not an impulsive person, although I admire people who are.

In fact, I cannot even go to catch the bus on an impulse, I have to go to the website and check the bus stop I catch it at and check the exact time the bus is due to arrive. I also check the times for the trip home.

Many times when we were first hanging out together and becoming friends, I had the impulse to make a move on the woman who is now my partner. I never did though, because I am a gigantic chicken shit. In the end she was the one who made the first move, on an impulse, at a pub one night while we were having beer (“Is it just me, or is there sexual tension between us?” – best relationship beginning line ever).

I can impulsively meet someone for drinks, but I rarely call someone up to chat based on an impulse. In fact, I detest the phone (maybe I’ll save that for the letter ‘p”).

I certainly cannot impulsively move cities and jobs and lives. My girlfriend would love me to, and I wish I could be that much of a risk taker, have that much freedom, gain that much experience, but in the end the little voice in my head tells me I would be absolutely insane to do so, and that someone who is currently being treated for anxiety would have a heart attack the second she handed in her resignation.

I plan every thing. Well 99% of things. While I admire the idea of acting impulsively, it also makes me shudder and wonder how people can live that way

J is for Journal
3rd grade was my first experience with a journal. They had given us a small notebook and we were supposed to make daily journal entries. I did some of that, but for some of them I wrote “made up” journal entries, like talking about thunderstorms that knocked over telephone polls and such dramatic events. I remember my teacher taking me aside and asking if they were true, and when I said no, she gently advised me that the journals were only supposed to be for true stories. How disappointing. But I would kill to see that journal today.

The next one I remember was one my teacher bought for me in the 8th grade. It was pink and had teddy bears on the front (oh yeah!). I wrote in it fairy regularly until my mother read it and then told me she read it. For a while I write in it in code, but that soon became too much effort. I still have it, but I have no idea what the entries written in code say. Probably just drama about hating my mother for reading my journal.

I tried keeping a journal in both grade 9 and 10 and was only partially successful. I wrote off and on throughout the first couple years of high school, but dropped it after that. And I didn’t start keeping a journal again until I was in first year University. I met a girl who became my best friend who kept a journal, and it reminded me that I used to as well. I picked one up for myself, and my writing became my lifeline, particularly when I discovered I was falling in love with her.

Our “love story” aside, because of all that emotion, I believe I went through 14 journals (of various shapes, sizes and colours) throughout the 4 years I was in University. I have kept every single one except for the very first university journal, which I ended up ripping up after the above-mentioned friend, and later, girlfriend, dumped me.

The last journal I’ve written in is this lovely green covered, handmade journal my girlfriend brought me back from Italy when she went there 3 years ago. My paper journal writing tapered off quite a bit after I started my online journal in August of 2001 (still trying to move the diaryland archives over. But moving years worth of entries over via copy and paste, one entry at a time, is very tedious).

Despite the fact that my journal doesn’t take the form it once did, I love online journaling. I’ve been pretty dedicated to it. The most private stuff I keep to the paper and pen way still, just because I am far from anonymous, and just don’t feel like sharing all the time. But that doesn’t happen very often.

I love my journals. And while I never go back and re-read, I love the idea that I could if I wanted to. My life, in words.

K is for Kool-Aid

This was one of the drinks of my childhood. We had very little money, so it was the cheap stuff for us; Kool-aid, Freshie and Tang for the most part. You couldn’t beat the price at 25 or 35 cents a packet. Of course I’m thinking the big cost of Kool-aid was the cup of sugar you had to add to each packet. Thinking about that many years later, I can’t believe that we drank anything that called for a cup of sugar. It seems obscene. Of course I have no idea how much sugar I drink today, but having to physically add it yourself just makes it seem more obvious.

I’m jealous of the kids today because they have cool favours (none that I can currently think of, but trust me), and we just had the basics. Cherry, Orange, Lime. Oh my god, the Lime Kool-Aid was horrible. It was like liquid death. I wonder if that’s what they used at Jonestown?

An alphabytes entry.

Growth is really the only thing we have going for us, and it is the growth that happens when you’re not looking that matters the most. It is only by marking the milestones on door frames across the country, by noticing that their pants suddenly seem too short, that children know they are growing; emotional growth happens much the same way. It is only when we stop to really examine ourselves that we see how much we have grown, matured, changed.

Growth happens at night when everything seems to be hibernating. Growth happens when history doesn’t repeat itself.

I would wager to say that even in her 80s, my grandmother is still growing – she has a gay granddaughter, probably something that would never have entered into her imagined visions of the future when she was my age. She appears to be dealing with it just fine.

I am far from the person I want to be. I still have problems that I am working on, faults I am trying to get rid of. But when I look back at myself at 19, it amazes me just how different of a person I am.

And thank god for that. I live in fear of the day I stop growing.

An alphabytes catch-up entry.

I have a good life. I have a job I generally enjoy, with coworkers I like, and a great salary and benefits. I have a gorgeous apartment for extremely cheap rent. I have a family who loves me, and plenty of good friends.

But I still get envious of a lot of people. I wish I didn’t, I wish I could be better than that. When my friends have parents who pay off their student loans, it makes me green with envy. I likely have another 2.6 years left on mine – ick. When my friends get gifts of thousands of dollars from family members, well it’s hard to see.

Which is strange. Like I said, I have a great salary – I really don’t want or need for anything. So I wish I could get over myself, but I supposed envy somewhat of a natural reaction. It’s not that I’m not happy for my friends’ (or mosty of them, anyway), it’s that I wish I had what they had.

On a more emotional level, I also get envious of people in relationships that seem so sure of each other. The ones who get married after 1 year and a half of dating, the ones who want that commitment. Lately my girlfriend and I have been having trouble. We’re working on it, in both active and passive ways, but sometimes I wonder if we’re going somewhere. I wish we had that commitment.

Sometimes I think it would be good to know if there are things in my life others are envcious of. Perhaps it would teach me to count my blessings.
———
When I was a child one of the ways my mother would splurge was to bring home Fish & Chips from a local restaurant called “Norfolk Fish & Chips”. They were the old school kind, the fries in a paper box (complete with grease soaked spots) and the fish came wrapped up in paper.

My mom loved fish and chips, I think most of my siblings liked it, but I loathed it. Never ate the stuff. It was the batter that I hated, I think I had too many bad experiences with the horrible captain highliner fish sticks my mother would buy and make us eat (lord those things were vile), so all breaded fish was out.

Indeed, it wasn’t until last fall, when a friend of mine ordered the beer battered fish and chips at a pub that I even tried battered fish. But her food looked so good that I tried a bite, and I was in love. Now breaded fish and I are friends – but only the restaurant/pub kind – Captain highliner is still on the blacklist of foods.

Man that shit was gross.

An Alpahbytes entry.

I am the most cluttered person in the world. Or at least it seems that way a lot of the times. For example, let’s look at what is currently on my desk:

- a box of hanging folders
- a spindle of used and unused CDRs
- 2 empty glasses
- a full glass
- a pack of matches
- my watch
- my smokes and lighter
- a cloth to clean my glasses
- the phone
- my palm pilot
- more CDs
- an empty journal
- pen, nail clipper
- bus pass for May
- a pile of random books and papers
- Vitamin E oil
- ink refills
- a tampon (unsed, just FYI)

Ok, that’s actually only the bottom half of my desk. I’ll stop with the boring/horror. My desk at work is similar, but not quite as bad. I like to say that clutter is the sign of a creative mind, but frankly it’s really just a sign of the fact that I am a very lazy person with space issues. I need a basement where I can store (read: toss) stuff. That doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon though.

I’ve always been like this, much to the frustration of many. My two sisters are extremely neat people (my brother not so much), so my Mom kept expecting that when I hit puberty I would turn into a neat freak as well. It never happened, and I think she’s still confused by it. It messes with her whole view of gender (it’s ok if boys are messy – but girls nooooooooo).

I’ve learned to live with it, and so have most of my loved ones (reluctantly).

Confidential to A Just Society: Ear length is when my hair is jsut slightly over the tops of my ears. It’s in need of a good trim, really.

An Alphabytes entry.

When I was a child I wore Laura Ingalls braids all the time. I had long brown hair, very thick, and my mother would sit me down on the floor in front of the couch and braid my hair nice and evenly on each side of my head. I remember being amazed at how snug she was able to make them, and I remember trying to braid my own hair and failing miserably. For the longest time I made the newbie mistake of taking only 2 plaits of hair. This always ended up in a slightly disappointing twist, rather than a braid, but it was pretty as well. At least to 5 year old me. Unfortunately with the twist as soon as you let go and tried to put an elastic on the end it would untwist, leaving just normal boring straight hair behind.

I wore braids quite a bit when I was a teenager, too. Well, braid, singular. The thick ones that hand low down your back. There was something about that look with the bits of hair that hang about your face (tendrils?). Wearing my braid was a saving grace when I had thick hair almost down to my waist, especially in the humid heat of July.

When I was in University I cut my hair off. First to chin length, then ear length, then eventually a buzzcut (almost). It’s near ear length again, and it looks pretty good and I generally love it. But occasionally I miss wearing a braid. It’s always the only reason I ever think about growing out my hair again.

So June is the month of Alphabytes, monthly collab that started at last year. The gist of it is, you write an entry daily for the month of June based on each letter of the alphabet. Today, being June 1st, is of course, the letter A.

Being the narcissistic individual that I am, I picked the word April. April means more to me than the month of rain and blossoming flowers, and Spring. To me, the word April = myself. April is my name.

And yes, before you ask, I was indeed born in April. I can only imagine that because of the fact that I was born 3 months premature my mother didn’t have a named picked out. She’s told me she thought April was “pretty”, so there it is.

I hated my name when I was a kid, because no one else had them name. Even worse was the fact that I could never find any pencils or toothbrushes or magnets or, well, anything with my name on it. You know the stupid little things that kids like to buy with their name on it. Mine was absolutely nowhere to be found in the 80s. Now it’s pretty much always available – much to my bitterness.

And of course there were the stupid jokes. Is your middle name May?; You can’t be named April, it’s September! or the woman at work who says to me every.single.month It’s April in January! and It’s April in February!. I’m sure you can guess the rest.

As I got older I really began to like my name. It felt unique, yet not weird. And ever, dare I say it, “pretty”.

In the end, it’s me. I’m April.