All in Non-Fiction
For me, my history turning from reality to a sort-of-fiction started nine years ago when another one of my friends died. There were moments when I'd hear a joke and know he'd love it, but then remembered he was dead. I'd have a joke lingering inside of me with no one else to share it with.
My first memory of him: chasing me through the house as a child, my most cherished doll clutched close. Running, breathless, cowering into a corner as his shadow swallowed me whole. My mom screaming from downstairs that she was calling the police.
I confronted Mandy again. This time, she said Nick wanted to video chat since he didn’t know when we could meet in person. She had thrown me another bone, and I hung on for a little bit longer, talking to Nick, to Mandy.
Wow. I mean, if I have to don a siren suit during wartime, as women and children did when huddled in an air-raid shelter, I want to look good, you know? After all, when the men find my broken body among the building rubble, I want to hear, “Do you think that jumpsuit would fit my wife?”
For some reason we became obsessed with the show He Man and The Masters of the Universe, which played every weekday at four in the afternoon on TV 44 KBHK in the greater Bay Area. This was before all your Cartoon Networks and Nickelodeons and whatnot, she wrote, sounding old af.
Jane spurns the bill and takes the wallet instead. Finally, George arrives at work. He smiles, puts his feet up and goes to sleep. So is it funny because Hanna-Barbera has just called women money-grubbers and men idiots?
We watched with horror as Bugs was shot by Elmer Fudd, only to see him wink at us as he lay on the ground. Our fear was suspended for one hour each Saturday morning; no one would die and no one would suffer. There is no real pain in the world of Looney Tunes.
By the sixth grade I had devoured all of Judy Blume’s books. But I was still blissfully unaware of Forever until word got around the schoolyard that Judy Blume’s latest book had been banned by The Powers That Be. The subject matter was scandalous, filled with graphic descriptions of teen sexuality and—gasp! Birth control!
I will always consider myself privileged to have grown up during the golden age of Nickelodeon in the early and mid ‘90s.
In times like these, nothing compares to the buzz we get when we reattach our stingers and attempt to make the world a better place. Running into supermarkets and setting fire to all the boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. Because their mascot, BuzzBee, is a cruel joke. A reminder that everything is probably hopeless and we can’t live like that.
To talk to animals, I wonder if I’d have to get on all fours, hands and feet in the dirt, to make my tongue move in lion-speak, wolf-speak, hyena-speak. I wonder if it’d be as easy as Eliza Thornberry made it out to be.
And thus, we are caught in between. To be born in America is to know one has been blessed with disproportionate influence and power, to have the opportunity to manifest more change than most of the planet’s people dare to dream. Yet clinging to that promise requires active participation in a system that has insulated itself from the instinct to rebel against it. We will never acquire the money and influence necessary to pose feasible alternatives unless we play the game. And by the time we’ve won, we’re so invested in the game that it’s too late to change.
Mom closed her eyes, the Xanax helped her get through this day, and I knew what she was thinking-thanking the Madonna for protecting her husband, for giving him the chances to get out, for giving them thirty-five years together. Mom kissed her husband one last time. She recalled dad saying how in Hungary grieving family members would jump into the grave on top of the casket and have to be pulled back out. I then understood why. He was always so strong in spirit and body – I stood by his bedside realizing how quickly life had changed.
I was surprised. How could being a child make her safer? I was sooo anxious to be older to be able to hold my own ticket and be considered a grown-up. Why would she, why would anyone, want to be younger?
From “The Pledge of Allegiance”:
One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all who fall in the above-$500,000 a year tax bracket, and whose names are not too Españolé or Middle-Eastern-y.
It is an interesting thing to note that truth is a noun at this time. It is not a description of something, it is not an action of something, it is something. Around the mid 14th century the understanding of ‘something being true’ was first recorded. Truth wasn’t something, truth was a quality of something.
The term “infant” in the statue’s name gave me pause because what I saw was a reproduction of a child, not an infant. The statues were standing and holding objects while wearing crowns. Anyone who has ever cared for an infant knows that infants do not stand upright. And, no hat is staying on a baby’s head without some kind of elastic chin strap, tape, or other assistance, yet these babies were balancing crowns.
I starved outside with the rest of the dogs, staring into diner windows—mind, body, and spirit consumed—barred from entry, wanting for crumbs. The narrative’s my own, but the story remains the same.
I found her death to be depressing and frustrating. As a female fan of Marvel, I had always been patient with the Studios. To allow Marvel to grow and evolve, as it has, and to take its time doing it. Black Widow’s death for me was a loss of hope.
Not every creature can thrive in the desert. The monotony of endless steps down the same straight lines, a steering wheel stuck at ten and two, grew too burdensome for many in The Valley. Round little tablets pushed away the perpendicular lines. Fat little paper sticks sent a frenzy of smoke through the stationary air. Mike’s crystal ball banished the banal predictability of suburban life in the desert.