By the Safeway Starbucks

"Yeah, so I've been working here about a few months. It's pretty nice." He is standing with one foot perched upon the stool, like in a Captain Morgan commercial.
"Oh really?" asked the woman, leaning in. Her frizzy hair and sun-damaged skin gave way to forlorn blue eyes craving a second chance at love.
"Yeah, being the manager is great. You can set your own hours and stuff. You know, it's pretty flexible. And-" he looked down and her with a triumphant grin, "I'm not complaining about the pay."
She chuckled. "I bet not. This seems like a great job."
"But this is only one of my jobs. I work two. For awhile I worked over there at the Best Western, but then I switched to working for NetFlix."
"Oh? Wow, two jobs... that must be hard."
"Yeah, I work a lot. Sometimes its hard, but you know, I'm one of those people who likes a challenge." He straightens his posture, as if to show her the extent of his power.
"Oh...yeah" she laughs nervously, tilting backwards in her seat, causing the chair to creak slightly.
"Yeah.. NetFlix is a pretty fun job."
"So, uh, like how do you actually work for NetFlix. I thought it was all online."
"Nope. There's actually a store out in Hillsboro." He removes his foot from the stool, restlessly shifting his weight.
"Oh, yeah. Now that I think of it, I think I remember seeing one."
"Yeah, that's us. Great place to work."
Suddenly her attention is called away to a pudgy adolescent boy who has been lingering on the outskirts of the conversation. "Daniel, honey. Sit still. Stop moving around so much," she admonishes. He meets her eyes with a vacant stare, and continues in his anxious dance. She turns back to the man with a shrug of apology.
"Yeah so..." he begins, stretching his shoulder muscles, "I gotta get back to work. But I'll see ya around sometime. Nice meeting you."

The Pillars of Support

The worst thing anyone can do to me is kick me in the shins. My life's mission has been to jealously defend these pillars of support from bumps, bruises, and most of all kicks. This nurturing relationship began when I was seven years old. I stood alone in my spacious wilderness of a backyard at the foot of our CedarWorks swingset, bored with swinging and seeking a new challenge. There was a ladder positioned at an angle to give the climber access to the splintery monkey bars. As I gazed at the first rung, a wonderful idea came to me. Instead of using my hands to carefully guide me up the ladder, as my mother had always instructed me, I realized that I could jump to the first step. I assumed a half-squat to prepare my legs for the powerful leap. My pulse quickened with the thrill of danger, my eyes fixed on the goal.

I jumped.

I experienced a second of euphoria as my feet made contact with the sturdy crosspiece, and then sheer terror as my momentum caused my shins to make contact with the rung above. Immediately I fell backward as the worst pain of my life surged through my legs, immobilizing me. As I lay on the ground sobbing, the embarrassment of my sheer stupidity burned hot on my salty face. Luckily, no one saw me.

From that moment on, I vowed to always be kind to my shins. It wasn't easy, as I was an avid soccer player throughout my elementary school years, and on to high school. At recess time, even during the frigid Maine winters of my childhood, I was the only girl permitted to play with the boys. This honor meant that I was never allowed to cry, no matter how bruised and bloodied my shins would get from a misplaced kick with a slushy boot.

My shins also saw me through an important rite of passage for the preteen girl - shaving. I had begged my mother to let me remove the ugly golden hairs from my legs for months, and at last she caved in. As I stood in the shower with my freshly lathered lower leg, brand new razor in hand, I realized I didn't know what to do. I tried lightly running the razor over the skin, but the prickliness was still there.

So I pressed hard.

And removed a large, bloody sheet of the skin protecting my shin. I did not shave again for six months.

Years passed. One day my older brother discovered my weakness, and from then on he would kick me in the shins whenever I pissed him off. Which was quite often during our teenage years.

In high school, my shins got fed up with me. I had forced them to simultaneously participate in grueling soccer and dance practices with little rest. They rebelled with their own form of torture, "shin splints". Stubbornly, I refused to heed their complaints and continued with my exercise regimen. The pain became so severe that I eventually gave up soccer forever.

My shins occasionally ache today, although I no longer subject them to overuse. I have been to numerous doctors, but none can account for the lingering pain. Perhaps I shall always carry that twinge of discomfort with me, as a reminder of a broken childhood promise.

Be good to that which holds you up. Although you will be forgiven most of the time, it is not without a cost.

One Minute of Regret

I was 16 and pissed off. My whirlwind love affair with a guy two years my senior had apparently come to an end. He promised he would email me that summer while he was in Idaho, but did he? Nope! I waited patiently for weeks and weeks (ok, so maybe it was more like a week and a half) for that email to come, but to no avail.
It was obvious that I had been dumped.
It was also obvious, as my best friend and I were lounging around one afternoon, that I needed to get even. So we sat down at my computer and composed a gentle and friendly reminder email, saturated with four letter words, in hopes that that would make the idiot remember me. We giggled maniacally as I dictated the details of how I never liked him in the first place and how I really just felt sorry for him. I told him what a complete dumbass he was for not emailing me and how he had just lost his only chance at ever having a girlfriend. Upon completion of my eloquent prose, I quickly read it aloud. "Oh, that is so perfect! Send it!" gasped my friend through fits of laughter. For a split second, I hesitated. Was I being too mean? Too immature? No, I concluded, he deserves it. I hit send.

The next day, through an online conversation, I learned why he had not emailed.

ExBoyfriendsFriend: Hey, have you talked to him lately?
Me: Nope. And I don't want to.
ExBoyfriendsFriend: Oh... so you didn't hear about his little sister?
Me: No, what about her???
ExBoyfriendsFriend: I guess they went swimming at some park a couple of days ago and she drowned. He tried to save her but when he got to her it was too late... He's pretty messed up about it now

Hi, I Won't Recognize You Tomorrow

This is going to sound a little crazy, but I have horrible facial recognition. And no, it's not like I'll briefly meet someone and then forget who they are a week later. It's much worse than that. For instance, today I was in class and there was this guy sitting right beside me who I thought I had never seen before. As I got up to leave, I heard a familiar voice inquire "Hey Amanda! How are you?". I turned and was shocked to see that it was that guy! For a split second, I panicked. I wondered how on earth he could possibly know my name. As I choked out an awkward reply, suddenly I realized who it was. This was a guy who I had talked to on numerous occasions - in fact I had spent an entire evening with him this summer at his bar trying to coerce him into giving out free drinks to my friends and I.
And it wasn't his face that helped me come to this conclusion - it was his voice. Whereas my facial recognition skills are lacking, my voice recognition skills definitely make up for it. Basically, unless a person has some bizarre defining physical feature, I strongly rely on the sound of a person's voice to recognize them.
Don't get me wrong, it is not like this for people I know really well, like my parents, my boyfriend, or my close friends. I always know who they are. And if I repeatedly see the same people in the same context (i.e. a classroom) I know who they are. But if I were to see one of my classmates somewhere else, say at a shopping mall, I might not be 100% sure if it was them or not.
For the longest time I thought that this was how everyone was. In high school, I noticed that my friends were much better than I was at recognizing people, but I thought that they were just freakishly good at remembering faces. It wasn't until I took a psychology class where we learned about the brain and its different functions that I realized that I had a problem. Damage to the facial recognition part of your brain can apparently cause symptoms similar to mine (or much worse - like where you don't even recognize your own mother).
Whenever I tell people about this, they usually don't believe me. I have had so many people tell me that they thought I hated them because I would never say hi to them on campus.
To set the record straight - I don't hate anyone. And it truly was a pleasure meeting you, even if I don't remember it tomorrow.