Arianna Georgi

Over the weekend my friends and I took a trip to Arizona.  One of things we did, in addition to drink many beers and attempt/fail many times to sing Alicia Keyes’ part in “Empire State of Mind” very loudly in the car, was take a trip to Sedona.  Sedona is very beautiful, but it is also is considered to be a “spiritual vortex” which means it is totally full of weirdos.   Walking down from a hill we hiked up (side note: not a good idea the day before a marathon) we were passed by a woman in full Native American dress leading a bride and groom up (side note: the bride was not even wearing tennis shoes).  We were also accosted by several young men who tried to ask if we “felt the energy man.”

We went to get coffee in town and ended up at what was the world’s creepiest strip mall.  A young girl on a bike circled the coffee store endlessly, saying each time she passed us “catch me if you can.”  An old woman came rushing out of a restaurant and then stood on the sidewalk.  When we passed, she stopped us and said, “I don’t know how to get back in…. they just told me everyone was outside and so I came, and now I can’t get back.”  Everything was adding up but luckily I watch a ton of movies so I saw the very clear writing on the wall.  We were definitely about to be serial killed/trapped in some sort of bizzaro-world for all eternity.   I got us the hell out of Sedona (and I am pretty sure I did so right before we were scheduled to hit an old vagrant in a rain coat and then all make a pact to never speak of it again until next summer). 

Since you may not have friends as awesome as me, I decided to put a list up, for the public good so everyone knows what to watch out for to avoid being serial killed/trapped in a vortex.  They are the Three Cs of Serial Killing Danger.  Enjoy and BEWARE!

1.        Creepy children:  You can tell creepy children from regular children because they are creepy.  They are most likely pale, although if your car has broken down in the middle of nowhere and you are about to be serial killed by mutant hillbillies, they may might be tan.  The say creepy things like “you shouldn’t have come here” or even just “play with me.”  They are also sometimes ghosts.  Creepy children are a good early warning sign that serial killing may occur.  If you see one, get the heck out.

2.       Cabins:  Cabins can be fun and just the mere presence of a cabin doesn’t always indicate you will be serial killed.  Unfortunately, 99% of the time it does.  And if you are headed to a cabin for the weekend in the middle of the woods with a bunch of your young promiscuous friends it definitely does.  Beware anyone that suggests a weekend to a cabin and if you do end up going to one, do not, for any reason, allow anyone in your car to utter anything like “this is going to be a weekend we’ll never forget.” 

3.       Car Trouble:  You don’t necessarily have to worry every time you get a flat tire, but if this flat tire occurs when you are in the middle of nowhere, or during a lightning storm, or just after you have had an encounter with a creepy child it’s bad news.  Pretty much when you get out your car you are very likely to have something either jump out of the woods at you or attack you.  Even if you manage to get the tire fixed, you are very likely to get back in your car and start it up only to have someone in your backseat.  There’s not much I can tell you that can save you in this situation.

Tags: creepy kids, Sedona, serial killers

Apparently today was Bring Your Child to Work Day.  Fortunately, this did not really seem to take place at my current work, but I guess it did at my old job at Mitchell 1 because my friend Misty told me about it during out multiple daily emails.  I have never really gotten the point of the whole exercise of bring your child to work, unless you are trying to convince them NOT to go to college and become a delinquent so they don’t have to work at a job.  First of all, if your child is at work you aren’t really going to do real work so its not particularly informative for them.  In fact, I would argue that having a child is actually an advantage for once because you basically get to goof off all day with your kid while people with no children have to do actual work.  I should ask to bring my cat to work and then play with it all day to make things even.  It’s stupid.  Second of all, why would your child want to come to your work in the first place?  Here’s what the Bring Your Child to Work Website has to say about it:

“Designed to be more than a career day, the Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work^® program goes beyond the average “shadow” an adult. Exposing girls and boys to what a parent or mentor in their lives do during the work day is important, but showing them the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future and begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment is key to their achieving success. Each year, development of new interactive activities and partnerships will assist us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.”

Yeah, because most children really dream of going to work everyday 9-5 in an office and filing things.  I’m sorry, but unless you’re an astronaut or a cowboy, your job is probably not the future your child dreams of.  It may not even be the future YOU dream of.  Dangling the possibility of having your shitty job in front of a child as a reward for working hard is sort of like offering them some stale crackers as a treat after they finish their dinner.  I don’t remember anyone ever taking me to work, but if they had I probably would have thought “holy shit, I have to go to boring school for 20 years so I can go to boring work?  No thanks, I think I’ll just drop out and rob banks instead.”

Ashley is whining, Misty emailed me towards the end of the day.  She says its boring. 

In her defense, I wrote back, it sort of is.

I live across from a high school which as far as I can tell has no real plus side, but endless disadvantages.  Among these include the fact that I can’t really leave my house without being run down by parents dropping/picking kids up, I am constantly honked at when jogging around the neighborhood by people ten or more years younger than me, and my local CVS is constantly crowded with teenagers, lounging around and texting other teenagers who are probably also in the store.  Anyway, lately the biggest disadvantage is that when I come home I have to see two of these teenagers walking around, all in love with each other. 

                Basically, this started about two weeks ago.  Coming down my street I noticed two teenagers, some really tall girl and her dorky, slightly awkward boyfriend standing on my corner embracing.  I should mention that I come home at 3:45 in the afternoon.  This was the sort of embrace that you would normally expect to occur on ship docks before people ship out for a war, or in a romance movie when two lovers that haven’t seen each other for ten years are reunited and run across a field into each other’s arms.  It was not a 3:45pm embrace.  Crawling past them in my car, I gawked openly.  Their eyes were squinted, he was picking her slightly up of the ground.  It was ridiculous.  Maybe this is his last day of school before he goes to a juvenile detention center or something, I tried to justify, maybe they just took a pregnancy test and found out they are in the clear.  I wanted a reason that an embrace this passionate would occur less than a block from house in broad daylight.  I chalked it up to extenuating circumstances and left it at that. 

                But I saw them again the following Monday.  This time, they were walking hand and hand down the street.  The tall girl had her head thrown back in laughter.  She pretty much looked like she was laughing at the funniest thing in the world.  It was that kind of laughter.  They had their hands in each other’s back pockets.  Then I saw them again on Tuesday.  And then again on Wednesday.  On Friday they were sitting on top of the power box on the corner sharing an ice cream cone.  I don’t even know where you get an ice cream cone around here.  It was disgusting.  On the following Monday they were having some sort of play tickle fight with each other.  I was very close to throwing something from my car.

                The worst thing about these teenagers is that it doesn’t matter what time I leave, they still manage to be magically there on the corner, being in love.   I’ve tried stopping at the bank, running errands, taking alternate routes home.  I still manage to see them.   At this point I think it may be some sort of social experiment to infuriate me.  Like some eccentric billionaire arranged to quietly drive me mad by hiring two amorous teenagers to stand on my corner every single day being so crazy in love with each other that it makes me want to throw up.  They could also be ghosts or something, like in this Twighlight Zone episode I saw and vaguely remember where some lady was haunted and keep seeing some strange man on the corner waiting for the bus every single night and then when she asked about it, it turned out everyone on the bus had died in an accident or something.  Except if these kids are ghost, they are the least scary, most ridiculous daytime ghosts ever. 

                Look, I have no problem with people being in love… in theory.  I was an English major, I spent a lot of time reading about people in love doing ridiculous things, or betraying each other, or (in Jane Austen books mainly), pining silently away until someone noticed them.  The problem with these teenagers in that their love is that they look amazingly happy and it pisses me off.  I spent a lot of time in high school lying around and reading books and lamenting how much smarter and awesome I was than my peers.  Never once did I walk around eating ice cream and making out with a guy in over-sized shorts.  In fact I am 26 and I still haven’t done that.   I would like, just once, to walk by and see the girl sitting there with her arms crossed sulking while over-sized shorts boy talks to his friends, or the boy standing alone, looking forlorn and waiting for the bus.  Instead their teenage love is so blatant it’s overwhelming.  Witnessing it is the love equivalent of staring into the sun. 

I am sure some people will think I am jealous, but this isn’t really the case.  I have no desire to be a 16 year old in love and even if I did, I would never fall for a guy in over-sized shorts and I don’t really eat ice cream.  I just want those two teenager/ghost/hired to annoy my actors to do there being in love somewhere else.  Otherwise I may have to move.