October 13, 2005
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While I Don’t Want to Start Any Blasphemous Rumors…
© The Author, 2005I am an actress. What am I doing in Chicago? I should be in New York, especially since I live there and everything! Haven’t you seen me in that one comercial? Well, you should have. I was hot.
On my way home from work yesterday evening, I ran into a chica on the corner of Michigan and Chicago who I apparently went to high school with. She cheerfully stopped me and informed me that we were classmates (“we totally had English class together!!!”). I vaguely remembered her nose—a cute, mushroom shaped dollop sitting perky on her sweet, clean face—but aside from that I can’t say that I have any memory of her at all. This is not to say that she is unmemorable—I’m sure she is quite a catch. This is to say that I was an extraordinarily noticeable high school-er (what else do you call a 6 foot tall girl who wears 5 inch platform shoes and mini skirts to school and befriends every queer guy within a mile radius because no one else will belt out show tunes and torch songs with her quite like they do?), but I had a very limited social life and friends nonetheless. After all, being noticeable in high school does not necessarily make you popular. In my experience, it was exactly the opposite.
Anyhow, the chica who recognized me was a sweetheart. I’m not sure that we had too much in common (a conclusion I came to after noting her brimming Neiman Marcus shopping bag and subsequently listening her drone on about fashion designers as if they were her best friends. Also, there were comments she made about how her parents will financially support her while she does her internships until she is ready to move in with her boyfriend—things that are completely beyond my comprehension), but it was nice to be surprised with a bit of conversation with someone so friendly.
One particularly interesting bit of information that this lovely gal gave me was that in my hometown, it is rumored (mainly among people who I apparently graduated with but have no recollection of) that I am an actress living in New York.
I wish my life were that glamorous (well, not really, seeing as how I got out of theater and into writing because I was fed up with memorizing other people’s words and I got much more of a kick out of having people recite my writing. Plus, the life of a theater actor is really not all that glamorous: the shitty pay, the working nights and weekends, the schmoozing, the day job waiting tables…it’s really not my bag). Instead, I’m just a Chicagoartgirl with a job and some writing projects up her sleeve.
When I set my cute ex-classmate straight about my mythical life, her face fell a bit before doing the socially obligatory, “oh wow—that’s great” bit. It’s funny—the things that other people find impressive about me, real or imagined, are not the things that I dig most at all.
For example, during college I had an internship at a very famous television show that I can’t name explicitly because I singed a legally binging document that specifies that I can’t. But if you know anything about Chicago and the shows that are made here (trust me, you do), you’ll know what show it was. Everyone was (and still is) floored by my internship there. To me, not quitting it the first day was the most sell-out, degrading, and unimpressive thing I have ever done.
People have also been wooed by my acting, even though I’m not a genius actress. My worst scripts are ten times better than my best acting. But scripts never seem as impressive to people, I’ve found.
Maybe I just don’t want people to like me. Perhaps there is a sick part of me that likes scorning their awe.
What a pig I am.
But I’ve got to say, the role of misfit has always just been more fulfilling to play. Don’t you agree?
I gave the hometown chic with the good intentions my number and told her that we should eat lunch together sometime, since she is interning just a few blocks east of where I work. We rode the bus home together and I looked at pictures of her boyfriend on her phone and at her new sweater from Neiman Marcus. My phone does not take pictures. My clothes are from the thrift shop. Will we dine together some noontime? I don’t exactly know why, but I hope so.
Even though I had to unbury my yearbook and turn every page in search of her face in order to discover the name of the person’s number I had plugged into my cell phone, I’d like the chance to have another girl friend in this city, especially one as open and charming as her. I’d like to let her get to know the real me; I hope that she will enjoy my reality more than my rumors. And I hope that I will be able to see beyond our differences in class/place in life and fully enjoy her company as well.
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So, what is rumored about you?*
To give purpose to all the idiosyncratic things I scribble down over the course of a week but that really have no place in my writing, I bring you a new segment of the Chicagoartgirl23 blog entry, the Random Tangent.
Random Tangent of the Day
There are two types of people in this world—those who love Neapolitan ice cream and those who are constantly bitching that there is always too much strawberry and never enough chocolate.I’m proud to say that I am the former. You?
Comments (9)
My job often involves checking — and often disproving — rumors about campus, since there are losers out there who have nothing better to do than start them. My life at this time is way too boring to start any personal rumors.
It is funny how one’s post-high-school years are the great leveller. All pretense toward differences in class (and ours was so small that any class structure was very malleable) seem to disappear once outside of the prison (high school) walls. It makes sense, though, from sociological standpoint: The context and reason behind social stratification disappears upon graduation.
A box of Neapolitan ice cream is my idea of a balanced meal.
You never know – she might turn out to be an unexpected friend. You two have some differences, but it might work out in a neat way. I hope she left the conversation with the same feelings you had. One of my high school friends told me she heard a rumor that I had been married twice and had 4 or 5 kids. We thought it was funny because I’ve never been married, and I don’t even know 4 or 5 kids!
As for the Neapolitan ice cream, I haven’t had it in years. I think I fall in the first category.
The strawberry is by far my favorite part of the Neopolitan ice-cream, so there can never be too much of it. But I really like the mix of the three flavors, it balances things out nicely and I can satisfy all of my ice-cream flavor cravings simultaneously.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly rumored about me. Most people in high school didn’t know who I was and I doubt even the people I considered to be my best friends at the time think about me frequently now (I don’t think frequently about them). I think all of my college friends have been intelligent enough to not assume random things about my life. There may be rumors floating around about me, but if there are, I certainly haven’t ever heard them. I’m hoping to keep it that way.
Hmm…I’ve heard two rumors about me that I secretly wish to be true but sadly are not. The first is that I’m studying at an awesomely cool school in london and haven’t been stateside for a while. (Don’t I wish) the second is that I’m a tragically hip art student studying at the one and only Art Institute of Chicago. Sadly I’m not. My good buddy is and kudos to her! I’m actually a non-hip student studying at columbia and seem to be one of the only 3 people who don’t smoke and aren’t emo.
I love neopolitan ice cream. I actually wish there was more vanilla, it’s such a neutral flavor, it goes great with anything. Vanilla and orange….mmmmm, but thats not what we’re talking about. Anyhooch, there is nothing like the combination of strawberry, chocolate and vanilla…the Last Straw at ben and jerrys comes pretty close.
-jenn
p.s.-I’ve dropped by, but you were busy
and I was on my way to work. Maybe I’ll drop by today, I’ll bring some white rabbit candy, the weird candy I promised to bring but never got around to. did you ever get my note? I was feeling particularly grade school girlie that day.
Well, the one thing I heard rumored about me was that I retired. Retired? I’m way too young for that. I think it’s because I had to take four years off due to my son’s past illness and people thought I had just quit working.
I have a story that’s a little like yours. I used to be a production assistant (first job out of college) for a TV news station. This particular newscast showed the entire staff in the background, thus every once in a while you’d see me scurrying around with scripts. Some people thought this was ultra-glamorous. It was not. It paid horribly and they treated us like slaves. Anyway, I finally got a job as at real newspaper and was so happy to finally be on my way to a career. Some friend of my father’s stopped me on day and said, “Oh I heard how you are on Channel 2 news. It’s so exciting.” I explained that I left that job and was now a real newspaper reporter. Her face fell and she said, “Well, good luck anyway…” She was really bummed out and I, in turn, felt as if I had done something wrong.
So, you see. You never can please anyone. A lot of people thought being a newspaper reporter was ultra-glamorous too. There’s no way to explain real life to these people.
I’d be happy to be your friend in town if you ever want to get together. (said in shy little voice.)
Lynn
i wish i ran into someone who had an exciting rumor about me. an old frien i ran into thought i was in carbondale. not quite as exciting as new york.
yearbooks are interesting. no matter who you openly hated or secretly loved they’re looking you right in the eye and smiling at you.
totally a latter
Part of me wishes I knew what the rumors about me were, and part of me is really happy to be ignorant of them. I haven’t lived in my “home town” since I was 17, and I rarely see those people. When I do go back to see my dad, I will see a familiar face or two in the grocery store, on the street, or at the bank. I guess I haven’t changed all that much in the last decade, though. I still wonder what they think without really caring, the same as I did then.
A guy I totally admired for all the right reasons in high school wrote in my yearbook “you should have been voted ‘most likely to succeed’, and I hope you remember me when you’re mayor of something.” It meant a lot to me at the time, and I guess I’ve kind of always hoped I can prove him right, minus the politics. I’d love to come back as the person who had most come out of her shell since high school.
Regarding the ice cream, I always start out thinking the latter… and after a few bites start thinking the former.
Great story. I’m not sure I would have had so much patience with the girl as you did. When I spot someone I went to high school with, my general inclination is to run and hide. I don’t like finding out what my former classmates are up to these days, because it’s typically something like “Oh, I’m a writer for Entertainment Weekly” when the unspoken subtext is “because even though I got a D in that junior year English class we had together, my rich publishing guru of a father pulled me some strings to get me into Columbia and then used his influence to land me this job at EW. It’s alright and whatever, but I just wish I was working on Wall Street—that’s where the real money is.”
But maybe I’m just a little too cynical.
I, for one, cannot stand Neopolitan ice cream because I think chocolate ice cream is a waste of perfectly good chocolate. Vanilla and strawberry I adore, but chocolate ice cream is just cold and unpleasant and doesn’t in any way remind me of chocolate. I must be weird. I don’t think anyone else in the world loves chocolate as much as I do, yet detests chocolate ice cream.