I’ve been living in my current apartment for almost ten months, but only recently did I learn that the monstrous church kitty-corner to my front stoop is abandoned. I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: I, too, had no idea I was this interesting.
anecdote
Community Service
The walls of the school enclose a large, overgrown courtyard choked with ivies and brambles. A glossy emerald carpet of pachysandra washes over the stone tiles on one end, like a receding tide, and a few students are pulling at it with rakes and sheers.
“We’re not supposed to go past this,” says one student to me as I walk over to supervise the community service. ‘Supervise’ is my assignment, but really I am just curious, and I’d sooner like to find myself sitting in the sun with my book open in my lap. The student goes on, “Because there’s poison ivy.”
“I’m immune to poison ivy,” I tell them.
Chocolate Therapy
So a few nights ago I was working at the ice cream shop. A grandmother brought in her two little girls, and the older one ordered the flavor called Chocolate Therapy. Seeing this, the younger one also ordered Chocolate Therapy, to which the grandmother (who had the best, bright red blow-out since David Bowie), gasped and said, “Why, I didn’t know you were a chocolate therapy girl!” The little sister seemed to read a pejorative meaning into the exclamation (shame on you grandma!) and so, thinking I’d be helping, I whispered huskily over the counter, “I, too, am a chocolate therapy girl.”