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I’m different! I’m different!

Alternateens are evil. Yes, every fifteen year old who ever existed or ever will exist thinks that they’re experiencing things that no one has ever experienced, thinking things no one has ever thought, and in general being Different and Avant-Garde. I’m convinced that this is why certain religious groups send their teenagers out into the world in order to experience what it’s like, so that they can turn twenty and come running back, saying, “Gawd, that was embarrassing. What was I thinking?” I quite clearly remember having a conversation with my British aunt in which I was protesting my amazingly unique perspective on the world and all the ways in which I was not a typical teenager, and she said, “Oh yeah? What’s so different about you?” and all I could come up with was the fact that I liked to listen to jazz music.

But no teenage group has ever been quite so annoying as the current crop. (There, that’s something they can feel legitimately proud of.) It has not yet ceased to amaze me that corporate America set out to make a trend out of being “not trendy” and got away with it. (Excuse me while I proceed to be stereotypically twenty four and use phrases like “corporate America”…) Which is why this weekend when we walked into a thrift store I just about walked right back out because the place was crawling with them, all competing to find the ugliest piece of clothing in order to show how immune to fashion they were. (The ones in the neon orange knit winter hats won hands down, if you want my opinion.) We were there because on Saturday morning we’d decided to go to a relatively nice restaurant for breakfast and I realized that I only owned one shirt with no holes in it, which normally wouldn’t bother me, but can get rather risky when one does not own a bra. Aside from my almost uncontrollable urge to pick up the second-ugliest piece of clothing in the store and run up to the Alternateens and say, “Here! Now go home!” we had great success and came home with silverware, the Tears for Fears tape “Songs From The Big Chair” (we’re trying to build our music collection back up to its pre-sell-everything-to-pay-the-bills glory) ten shirts and a pair of jeans for Todd for a grand total of twenty eight dollars.

Obligatory Film Critique:

Christopher Eccleston once again plays a Paul in the based-on-fact film “Let Him Have It”, in which the audience learns that it is a bad idea to say ambiguous things to your potentially insane friends. If you see this movie prepare to be in tears for the last fifteen minutes, but it’s worth the anguish for the first half hour, in which the audience also learns how to do the Paul Waltz, a dance which consists of a shy smile, swaying from foot to foot, and small arm movements.

Last night we found a message from my aunt (not Martie or my British aunt, but a different aunt altogether — in all I have five on my father’s side) who’s staying temporarily within driving distance saying that she’d love to get together, which was wonderful. I haven’t seen any of my relatives for many years, most of them not since my father’s wedding, and none of them have even met Todd. So hopefully we can figure something out this weekend or the next. Todd was asking what they were like and I thought about it for a moment and said that they’re missionaries who embraced religion and instead of finding reasons to hate people, they found reasons to love people. Which is something I very much admire. My aunt is also one of the only people in my family I can claim a resemblance to — I even realized last night in listening to the voice mail message that she has the same light, high voice that I do. Todd is nervous about making a good impression, but I told him not to worry, that one of my favorite things about him is how similar he is to the rest of my family, which is to say goodhearted with laugh lines that have seen a lot of use.

Barbie had better luck driving that RV than I did this weekend…

and what WERE they doing with that figurine