Hobert's Monkey

Somewhere in the midst of the chaos of 21 people trying to arrange food and bags and gear and bedding and gifts and who knows what else, I've been able to find escape in the living room (of all places) to tell you an incredible story. This is the story of Hobert's Monkey.

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My dad has a dental assistant named Jane, and Jane has a son named Robert. Robert, like many children, learned to pronounce his R's some time after he learned to correctly pronounce the rest of his alphabet. Because of this, Robert was not able to pronounce his own name correctly for some time, calling himself "Hobert" instead of Robert.

After a little while, Robert learned to pronounce his R's, but he still insisted on calling himself Hobert. In an attempt to trick Robert into calling himself Robert, rather than Hobert, his mother, Jane would ask him questions.

"What's the name of the animal that has long ears and a fluffy tail?" she would ask.

"A rabbit!" Robert would say.

"What's your name?" she would then ask.

"Hobert!" Robert would reply.

She would continue to ask him questions such as, "What are we driving on?" ("A road!") and "What kind of car drives really fast?" ("A race car!") after which she would ask Robert his name. Regardless of her attempts at tricking him into correct pronunciation, he continued to respond "Hobert!"

One day, Jane bought her son a stuffed monkey, which he liked very much. After playing with it for a little while, he decided to tell his mom what he had named the monkey.

"Robert," he said, "is Hobert's monkey!"

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Thus endeth the tale of Hobert's monkey. Hope you enjoyed! :)

Rejection

(Just so you know, I've been on a blogging frenzy today, so, if you so desire, browse about and see some of the new posts, including "Craigslist" and "Facebook Fads." Those might be the only other new ones, but whatever.)

Some time ago, Katie had a film due in her film class. Natalie and I were fortunate enough to be actresses in this film and we had a GREAT time doing it, and I'm so excited to do the real version tomorrow! Anyways, as she showed this "rough draft" to her class a couple of weeks ago, the other students were asked to fill out comment cards. One of the cards said, "I asked one of those girls out twice and got rejected hardcore :("

Now, let's just be honest here: Natalie is the dating machine of the apartment. I've never heard of someone getting asked out on so many dates. It sometimes literally blows my mind (not because there's any reason for her not to get asked out, it's just the ratio between her dating and that of like every other girl on the planet). I, of course, haven't really had much opportunity to reject people this semester, and I feel like I've been very open to blind dates and pretty much whoever whenever.

The point is, it obviously was not me.

So Katie shoots me a text, asking if I or Natalie knew this guy, I didn't recognize the name, and Natalie didn't either, but she knew that she had turned down a guy in her tap class a couple of times and she couldn't remember his name. Sad, but sometimes this happens.

Last night, at our cocoa party, Rachel brought over a gift from Katie--the stack of comment cards. They were all really nice, saying we were good actors and stuff, and complimenting Katie's choice of shots and her great idea and the funny scene where Natalie shoves me back into "my" room. We finally get to the infamous rejection card, and we decide to look the guy up on Facebook. Natalie looks at him and says, "That's not the guy in my tap class." So I start looking at him ...

... And he's looking pretty familiar.

But I'm thinking to myself, This isn't possible. This guy can't have asked me out twice. It's just impossible. I certainly haven't met him this year, and I know he wasn't in my ward, but I didn't know anyone in any of my classes LAST year that would have asked me out ... So how can this be?

Only that's where we hit the reason for the rejection, and the reason I barely even recognize him: I didn't know him. And he still asked me out. Twice. We were in a freshman film seminar my first semester, and he was an R.M., and I was not yet or just barely 19, and I was totally freaked out that he was asking me out.

In hindsight, this was silly and kind of rude of me, but that's how I felt at that time. Added to the fact that I HATED going to International Cinema for that class (we were expected to see two of the three films each week), I just wasn't happy about any of his offer. I preferred to stream the movies while I was alone in my room and laying on my bed or the floor. Of course, that semester was like the worst 4 months of my life, and at the end of it, I was sitting in a lodge halfway up a mountain in Winter Park, Colorado, sucking down a tall mug of cocoa and crying my eyes out, telling my mom that I didn't want to come back to college. I was emotionally unstable because my entire life was feeling unstable at that point, but who hasn't gone through a period of emotional instability before?

Anyways, long-story-short, I now feel super bad. I mean, I can't believe the guy even remembers that he asked me out in the first place, but the fact that he wrote that down on the comment card with a frowny face makes me feel like a terrible person. Whatever. Nothing I can do about it now, I suppose.

While we're in the subject of rejection ... I've had a funny thought today. I mean, we all know that the person who cares the least in a relationship has the most control over it. This is a truth that we've all accepted it, and many of us have striven to care less so that we can maintain control over the relationship. (Hopefully I'm not the only one who does this ... Awkward.) But have you ever let someone think that they were rejecting you because you just don't even care enough to want them to know that it's you rejecting them, and not the other way around?

I was thinking about this, about certain events in my past (how recent or not recent is irrelevant). But I think maybe sometimes you just care so little that you don't even care to bother rejecting someone. You just let them do the work and let them think that they've turned you down, when really it's just your indifference that's making them want to reject you in the first place. There's a part of me thinks, You can be angry about this. This is an absolutely valid reason to be totally pissed off. You may have been somewhat at fault, but he's definitely in the wrong here. I try to be angry. I try to care.

But 99.999% of me just doesn't.

Am I emotionally disturbed? Do I have a dysfunctional heart? (Hola, Cheesy Kayla!) Was the timing off? (Let me answer that one: YES. Big, fat, heinous YESness.) What's my deal? Am I going to be like this forever? (Heck, I hope not.)

I guess my point is this: Dating, love, whatever all this junk is, is complicated, and no matter how annoying it is, or how differently each of us handles it and ourselves... Well, people say it's worth it. Too many, in fact, for it to be disregarded. Sometimes, majority shouldn't rule, but maybe sometimes it should. And rejection, no matter how much it sucks, is a part of life. Sometimes you're the rejecter, sometimes you're the rejectee, and sometimes you're some kind of mixture of both. It's just life.

Ultimately, I'd like to sum up my thoughts by quoting myself, "Whate'er."

This Must End

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged anything in the past month. I owe this to the fact that I was overcome with some sort of self-consciousness since there were people (besides the people who always read it and/or hear about almost everything I write about anyways) who were reading it. I know you aren't judging me, so I don't know why I got so self-conscious about it, but I did and that's the truth. So I have about 50 (no actually it's only like 5) drafts piled up in Windows Live Writer that are just waiting to be finished, because I can't really compile my thoughts suitably. Basically I just didn't like what was coming out. However, I've come to the realization that I really need an outlet. I've been going crazy over the past couple weeks, and I think it's because I haven't taken the time to write my thoughts down and clear out all the excess gunk in my head so that I can actually function like a normal human being, which is what I'd really like to do with myself right about now. I can no longer keep these things to myself. The silence must end. NOW.

So I have a couple of things going through my head right now, the first of which is my sociology class. It's just Soc 111, nothing special. I mean, I really like the class and I think it's totally great, and I found out that Jake Heaps is in my class today, which is kind of interesting I suppose. Anyway, we had these big old papers due a couple of weeks ago and we just got them back today. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, except that I found out that my printer sabotaged me. For those of you who don't comprendo, here's what happened:

The Violent and Tragic Destruction of Page Four

Yeah. I turned that in. (Moment of Irony: "Dancing Through Life" from Wicked just came on my iTunes, and the line that says "mindless and careless" played right as I uploaded these photos. Well said, Fieyro. Thanks for pointing out my own idiocy.) I mean, do you see how heinous that looks?? It's so embarrassing that I let that slip under my radar. I should know better. This happened to me once in my first semester, and it was just as embarrassing, only less because I actually knew the person who was grading it. (Why is it more embarrassing when a stranger grades it??) But yeah. How could I let it happen? I remember being in such a hurry, and that I was a tiny bit late to class that day... Gosh. Lesson learned. I no longer trust my beast of a printer, not a bit.

In other news ... I had a great moment last night after Heather and I went on a walk last night. We ended up getting home at like 1:00, and I stayed up doing who knows what until like 1:30-1:45ish. I go into the dark bedroom and proceed to prepare myself for bed. Being that it was dark, I had to turn my lamp on, which totally woke Natalie up. I really didn't mean to, but I didn't adjust the angle of the lampshade as well as I thought I had, and it was terrible. To my surprise, however, she sits up a little bit and starts talking to me.

"What did you win?" she asks. I, of course, am confused as heck. What did I win? What on earth is she talking about?

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say back, continuing to change into my pj's.

"She had a Wheel of Fortune thing out there. What did you win?"

I still am extremely confused, but also extremely tired, so I kind of ignore the question and keep getting ready for bed.

"By the way," Natalie says to me, "This isn't dream talk. I'm awake."

Oh really?

I give some kind of non-committal response and go brush my teeth. By the time I'm done, she's asleep again and I go to sleep.

This, of course, is not the end of the story. As I'm putting on my makeup this morning, Natalie comes in to do the same and asks me, "When did you go to bed last night?" I tell her that it was 1:30, 1:45ish that I went to bed.

"Did I try to talk to you last night?"

Oh yes. Yes, you did. I told her this, at which point it became very funny. I admit, in the middle of the night, I was more confused than amused, though it was a funny moment. It was one of those moments when exhaustion made everything less funny rather than more funny. Once we were both fully aware that she was totally like, dream-talking to me, we both laughed. Like I said, it was funny.

This brings up something else that I'd like to talk about. Have you ever had a moment when you have been trying to nap, or have accidentally fallen asleep, or you're trying to go to bed, and then someone wakes you up or says, "Oh yeah, she's asleep," but you find yourself either suddenly conscious, or you simply hadn't fully fallen asleep? I know it's a confusing way to put it, but I think you understand. You're all intelligent folks. Have you ever noticed that whenever this happens, you often feel this sudden need to alert everyone around you to the fact that you're awake? It seems so important! They have to know that you weren't asleep. Never mind the fact that you're completely incoherent and the only thought that IS forming in your head is "I'm awake. They have to know I'm awake." All the while, you're just proving that you're totally not awake OR coherent. So silly, and yet it always seems like such an urgent matter... Funny.

In other good news, the BYU Bookstore had a $1 Book Sale! It was great. I didn't even know it was happening, and then this girl who was at a focus group that I went to (which I'll tell you about in two shakes) told us that she went to it. And I was like, "BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR? Sign me UP baby!" So I went with my awesome amiga Katie, during the time that I should have been in class... but the focus group was gonna make me 15 minutes late anyways, and I think it's so rude to interrupt class like that, especially a class with only like 30 people in it, that I just can't do it. So I skeeeeeped. Whatever. No big deal.

Anyways. I'm going around and I find all of these great books. Like FIVE great books that I want super bad. And I think to myself, "It's so great that I have been keeping my wallet in my backpack lately!" (I usually don't, because I usually leave it in my purse, also because I don't want to have money for food when I have food at home that I can eat.) And then I realize that no, I do not have my wallet. I had to lend Natalie some money last night so we could pay our electric bill and my wallet wasn't there. So I think, well if Katie has money with her, I can pay her back pronto once I get my wallet. Alas, Katie's wallet is not in her backpack either. Desperate for these books, I head to the register to beg this girl to hold the books for me. Then I see my friend Glen from Missouri who happens to work at the Bookstore. The girl, of course, tells me that she can't hold the books for me. I try to explain that it'll only be 15 minutes and I'll be back with my wallet. She still can't do it. Glen, naturally, hears my predicament and offers a suggestion: that I hide the books in a box underneath one of the tables and then put another box on top of it. So that's what I did. I then ran home to grab my wallet.

By this time, I've got a time crunch because I wanted to walk home from class with Rachel, so I needed to go and get my wallet, get back to the Bookstore, buy the books, and get back over to the sound circles in front of the JFSB at 12:50. Naturally, when I get home, my wallet is nowhere to be found. I look everywhere I can think of, including my bed and the closet where the washer and dryer are. But all my searching is in vain. I'm starting to get antsy, and my brain is saying, "God doesn't want you to have these books!" and my heart is fighting with my brain saying, "BUT IT'S GOOD TO HAVE BOOKS! AND THEY'RE ONLY A DOLLAR!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!" I start sending out frantic text messages to my roommates, trying to figure out if any of them saw it or know where it went. But it's no good. No one knows where my wallet is, and I'm starting to have horrible visions of people going under the table, pulling out the top box, and finding all five of my darling $1 books in the bottom box, then laughing as they twirl their curlicue mustaches and cradle my books beneath the sheath of their black cloak (total Bowler Hat Guy style). Terror was running through my veins. It was horrendous. Just as I'm about to give up, I see a bump under the rug. Lo, and behold, tis my wallet. So I ran back, retrieved my books from the box (you can't imagine my relief when I saw them there), purchased them, and ran to meet Rachel to walk home. It was great. Here's what I bought:

Snapshots by Michal Govrin

The Work of Print: Authorship and the English Text Trades 1660-1760 by Lisa Maruca

Sky in a Bottle by Peter Pesic

The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris by Alicia Drake

Flaubert: A Biography by Frederick Brown

Quite the mix, wouldn't you say? I'm actually really excited about all of them. The first one, Snapshots, was translated from Hebrew, and it's written by an Israeli woman who has won every single one of Israel's literary awards. The Work of Print is more historical, and talks about the changing concept of authorship and print culture during the Enlightenment period. Then there's Sky in a Bottle, which is also kind of historical, and talks about the changing understanding of the answer to the question, "Why is the sky blue?" through history, art, science, and the works of classical philosophers. Sounds fascinating, no? The fourth one, The Beautiful Fall also sounds interesting. I've never read a book about fashion and stuff before, and it looks super cool. The last one, Flaubert, is probably going to be the hardest read of all, but we just learned about Gustave Flaubert and Madame Bovary in my French class, and it sounds like he had a kind of crazy life, and I'd like to understand more about him. So that'll be cool. But yeah ... pretty fun, huh? I'm stoked to read them. Also to amass a larger collection of books. I love books. Oh so very much.

Anyways, on to the focus group stuff. Today, as I was hanging with Rachel and Katie and we were chilling on some of the couches on the third floor and I'd accepted the fact that I was absolutely not going to get to take a nap when a man walks up to us and asks us if we're doing anything over the next hour and would we like to attend a focus group with some consultants from the East Coast. We said okay and followed him into a classroom where there were a couple people hanging out in front of some blueprints of the Wilk and a computer with a slideshow going on it.

The purpose of the focus group was to discuss how students use the Wilk currently, and what could be changed to make the Wilk more appealing to students, and what might draw them to the Wilk during the evenings, most particularly on the first floor in the Post Office/Bowling Alley/Outdoor Adventures area. It was actually really interesting to think about why I go the places I go in the Wilk, what kinds of changes I'd like to see, what kind of changes they're thinking of making, and what I liked and disliked about the proposed changes.

And let me tell you, those changes look COOL. The study won't be over until January, and then I'm sure it'll be some time before they actually put those changes into action and actual construction, but I really want to be here when they happen so I can actually use them. They really look awesome, and they could make that area down there so hoppin' I would probably never want to leave. Okay, that's a total exaggeration, but it is going to be awesome. Be so excited for the future, guys! It's gonna be FLYYYY :)