Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Okay, here’s some quickies.

#6 is true. I haven’t shared a residence with more than one person at a time since i was 4. My parents separated when i was four, and since i’ve gotten to college i’ve only had one roommate at a time. This streak looks as though it will be broken next year, since we’re looking at 4-bedroom houses.

#8 is true. I have never eaten a cut of steak other than filet mignon when i was little, because my mom liked it. I’ve had all sorts of processed steak and beef products, but to this point i’ve never had a piece of a cut of steak (and i never liked filet mignon either).


#19 is true. In fifth grade i was the only student who decided to drop music class in favor of private (non-musical) study. After the aforementioned Christmas show, we were all given the option to quit music class to do work during that period; this was the music teacher’s way of telling us that we should definitely keep playing an instrument. Of course, i quit without a second thought, and since i had straight A’s anyway i usually just helped Ms. Mann grade tests while everyone else was in music class. Subsequently, i was forced to teach myself to read music from the from the choirgirl hotel book at the beginning of my Senior year.


However, #10 is false! This statement is an utter and total fabrication: for the duration of highschool i claimed i had my first and only kiss to that point playing spin the bottle in 7th grade to avoid further romantic scrutiny. I’ve never even watched anyone play spin the bottle, let alone participated, and i was pretty vocal about having never been kissed all throughout highschool (probably one of the reasons no one wanted to date me… since i was almost proud of not dating anyone up to that point). I made it a point not to talk about my romantic inexperience when i arrived at Drexel, and thus i had to tell my first kiss that she was my first kiss, at which point we kissed again. So… obviously i was only supposed to gab about my romantic inexperience when i stood to directly gain pity-kisses from it (which is not to say i wasn’t offered pity kisses in high school … i was offered them left and right. However, there’s a difference between a pity kiss and kissing someone for real and then having a pity kiss.)


That leaves the requisite 9 truths and a lie. Any guesses?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3900280/

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#18 is true. The first time i was ever on stage i didn’t want to be there, and i forgot all of the words. Okay… this one is a little fudgy, but it holds up. I had obviously been on stage before this experience, whether it be to accept my treasured Christian leauge math awards (i obviously intend to bring that Christmas shows. However, that’s not where it gets fudgy; the first two times i was a featured performer on a stage was playing my recorder in fifth grade, and narrating a part of a play in fifth grade. Both events had to have happened in fifth grade because i associate them with the same teacher, and they both had to have happened at the Christmas show because the only other show was the Sping show and that was done by the middle school that year. So, i’m going on the basic assumption that the narration occurred before the recorder playing, but either way this works out because i definitely remember not wanting to play the recorder and not knowing what i was playing while i was onstage.
up once a day now), or to stand way in the background of the chorus in silly school

Anyway, there was some narration in the Christmas play about babies and mangers and love that needed to be read by someone, and anyone even remotely interested in having a part in the show had already been merrily drafted. So, the teacher in charge of casting decided that it was futile to poll the ranks of students for a reluctant actor for such an important piece of the show, but to instead draft the best reader in entire grade school. Which, happily enough, was me. However, i thought the whole Christmas show concept was incredibly silly, as we tended to do essentially the same “god is god, materialism is bad, praise the baby jesus” schtick every year, and i stubbornly refused to take the part. And, then, mysteriously, i was somehow cajoled to do it (i’m sure they preyed upon my ego, as that had to be the only way they could have convinced me).


What no one deigned to mention to me before i agreed to be in the play was that i wasn’t exactly narrating – in that i was calmly reading from a text as a narrator would – instead i was supposed to memorize the whole thing and then spit it back out convincingly while staring into the audience with a smile plastered onto my face.


I honestly tried to memorize and smile and all of that, but it wasn’t in the stars. I was terrible at memorizing things (bible verses were my dreaded nemesis), i didn’t like to be put up in front of that many people to perform (or for any other reason (other than awards, obviously)), and i had absolutely zero projection skills (i was still relatively meek, probably due to my beaver-sized buck teeth). So, when it came time for the show i was ushered out onto the stage protesting that i needed the book to read from even though they had already conceeded that i could have a microphone. So, when it came time for my moment in the spotlight (literally, right as the spotlight hit me) i gave the teacher who was on-book in the first row a combined look of imminent dread and fear, and she raced to the stage and handed me the book, and i wound up reading the narration into the microphone perfectly. The end.

(Ironically, memorization, getting up in front of people, and projection are now three of my most useful traits. I’m not sure if wound up being so performance oriented as a response to this particular incident or not, but i do always remember being vaguely jealous of the people who auditioned for parts in grade school. Also, there are lots of hints about the other truths and lies in this entry, but some of them are slightly misleading.)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3899712/

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#3 is true. In my life i have consumed under 1 gallon combined of beer and/or cola. I can tell you nearly exactly how much beer i’ve ever had… 20oz. of Old English, 16oz of Corona, 8oz at the PNE convention, and various other tiny amounts of beer that total well under an additional 20oz. That’s half a gallon. As for cola, i’m only referring to Pepsi/Coke, and not gingerale, seltzer, ect. I had a glass of coca cola once on a very hot day when it was the only thing available, and otherwise i’ve never had more than a mistaken sip through a straw once or twice a year. I’ve always hated soda, because it tastes horrible, it’s carbonated, and it has absolutely zero redeeming healthy qualities. In my mind, it should be restricted to consenting adults as much as cigarettes and beer, because as long as the government sees fit to tell people what they can and cannot do we really ought to try to make our nation’s children a little healther in the process.

When i was seven years old my grandmother offered me $20 to drink a shot glass of Pepsi and i declined. She was always doing funny things like that… in retrospect i suppose she was attempted to get me to broaden my tastes since i was a very picky eater, but everything she tried to broaden me with was unhealthy and unsavory (one halloween she somehow convinced me to have a hotdog and i think my mother stopped talking to her for a month). Except, she always tried to get me to drink apple juice with milk icecubes in it, and earlier this year i sortof unintentionally had that and it wasn’t so bad.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3899453/

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#13 is false. After my 5th birthday I have not had a birthday party every even-numbered year of my life, until this year broke the streak. Actually, after my fifth birthday i have not ever had a birthday party until this year broke the streak. Corroborating evidence can be found here, and congrats to Benjy for figuring this one out.


I went to the birthday party of a girl i really liked in first grade. It was at St. Monica’s bowling alley, and i think nearly our entire class wound up attending. I remember coming home from there and telling my mother that i didn’t like birthday parties, because they were just excuses to have people bring you gifts or for them to look bad if they didn’t. And, from that point forward, i neither had nor attended another birthday party (or any other party, for that matter) until i became less anti-social in middle school. However, i still never had a party because my birthday is so very early in the school year, and because i tend to be uncomfortable as the deliberate focus of attention of a group of people unless i’m actually doing something more noteworthy then getting slowly and inexorably older. This past year’s parties weren’t so bad, since the focus of the first one was mostly playing frisbee and the focus of the second one was margaritas. This year there’s talk of kegs of Raspberry CiderJack and relentless live music. Be afraid (or, just get invited ;)

5 truths and 1 lie are down, leaving us with 14 truths and 2 lies. More hints upcoming.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3899346/

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#15 is true. Up until i stopped knowing what i wanted to be, i wanted to be a veterinarian. I knew it, and my whole family knew it, and it was a fact. Then, high school came along. Biology… not a problem. Math… not my favourite, but doable. However, definitely the class that put me off to any career in the sciences was the dreaded Chemistry.


Granted, i actually enjoy Chemistry a good deal more than it’s ugly sidekick Physics, but our school’s Chemistry teacher was nearly certifiably insane and all i ever learned from her is how to make sourpatch kids burst into coloured flames and launch across the room. From the first quarter of Sophomore year onwards, i knew that my being a puppy-doctor was out of the question (also, my dear mother had the presence of mind to point out that i am deathly afraid of dogs over a third of my body weight or with teeth significantly larger than mine). I slowly edged away from it… first saying i would be a psychiatrist (could you picture me in med school? what a train wreck that would’ve been), then downgrading to a psychologist (i was pretty serious about that until i found out that psychology majors don’t usually wind up as psychologists), and then just winding up undecided in my Senior year of highschool (which definitely hurt my college application process, but oh well).

What i’m left with now is a patented fear of all things quantitative. Nevermind that Biology is my favourite subject and that i used to be the Christian league math champion – i just don’t feel like my head is fit to contain scientific knowledge. On the other end of things, i scoff at academians and their philosophy and sociology (and, dear god, who would ever want to be a lawyer? Not i…). So i’m left here with journalism, by default.

Of course, journalism is what i actually want to do, but i think i want to do it a little too much. My vision of being a journalist is something like someone’s vision of being an astronaut; i know i’m technically capable of it but i just can’t picture it ever happened. Add to that the fact that i really only want to be a magazine journalist and not a newspaper journalist, and that i’m going to a school that tends to graduate people into neither of the above fields, and you find out that my entire life is royally fucked and that i want to take a do-over. Or, maybe just a do-over from when i wrote undecided on my college applications, or from when i decided i hated Chemistry (and by extension all other sciences), or from when learning stopped fascinating me too early to learn the things i should’ve learned so i could stay fascinated. And here i am claiming all i could ever know how to do is just mingle fact and opinion day in and day out, and there’s not necessarily a lucrative market for that. But i don’t get a do-over, just a “please pull forward.”


Fuck. I think i’m going to go and cry now.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3891375/