Diastema

I have a rather sizable gap between my front teeth. This gap is in fact so sizable that it is not unheard of for me to occasionally whistle as I speak. Growing up, I was mortified by the prospect of having to recite the tongue twister "Sally Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore." This was not a result of the common concern that I would be unable to perform the lingual acrobatics involved in correct pronunciation, but rather out of a fear that listeners might mistakenly think that I had adapted the work into a musical performance piece for piccolo and voice.

Thanks to my recently kindled love affair with This American Life, I discovered today that my dental shortcoming has an official medical name: diastema. It is very reassuring to know that if anyone brings up the subject of my front teeth, I will now be able to say that I am a diastematic. Telling them that I suffer from Rescue Ranger Dale's Syndrome is getting a bit embarrassing.
-TC

Dull, Dull, Dull...

When I first started this blog, I had intended to use it as an impetus to write on a regular basis. I figured that I might not have something interesting to say every single day, but that I should be able to come up with a pithy observation about life in big city (or how much I hate my own life in the big city) at least once a week. However, in making this assumption, I hadn't accounted for one tiny detail: I'm an extremely dull person who thrives on a healthy mixture of monotony and tedium.

The other day, I called my grandfather to wish him a happy 90th Birthday. After the conversation had drifted to a lengthy analysis of which foods taste good with salt on them, it struck me that this was probably the most interesting discussion I'd had all week. The stage set, we upped the ante by moving on to naming states we'd driven through but not stopped in, and fans of witty banter everywhere rejoiced as the art form was was taken to a whole new level when my grandmother chimed in with an annotated oral history on how much more expensive onions are than they used to be. The riveting revelations just would not end.

I live in one of the busiest and most exciting cities in the world. I'm constantly surrounded by all forms of culture, debauchery, and insanity that the mind can conjure. You'd really think I'd have more to show for my day to day existence than the ability to avoid eye contact with performance artists. Perhaps I need to get out more. Or talk to strangers more. Or talk to people I know more.
-TC

Woodside Story

Something unusual happened the other night while I was enjoying a leisurely stroll home with some Pakistani take-out that I hoped to get very well acquainted with. As I neared my house, I saw a group of young, urban toughs moving rather boisterously in my direction while speaking Spanish. Ordinarily, I would think nothing of this. I've lived in the city long enough that such sights aren't uncommon, my neighborhood isn't a particular hotbed of violent crime, and I'm large enough to fool most strangers into thinking that I might not be the single biggest coward in the history of time. Plus, having been raised by hippies, I've had the importance of not judging people based on appearances drilled into me since birth.

However, in spite of all this, I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with the feeling that I was about to be mugged. I don't know what made me so certain of the inevitability of my fate, but there was no doubt in my mind that things were about to get ugly. I didn't know what to do, but I was relatively certain that dropping my dinner and running away as I shrieked like a schoolgirl with a frog in her dress would be at very least undignified, if not actually counter productive. So instead I decided to proceed to my front door as though nothing was wrong.

What felt like a very long, very tense moment passed as I walked on and tried to remember the exact series of muscle movements involved in looking cool. I was about to turn and walk up the front steps of my building when suddenly and without warning the gang linked arms and began Wizard of Oz-style skipping down the street.

At that moment in my life, I was prepared to be mugged, and I was prepared to not be mugged. But I was definitely not prepared to walk into an impromptu reenactment of West Side Story.
-TC

The Continuing Adventures of Oatmeal Girl

I woke up the other day and found my house infested with young people. I wasn't especially thrilled about this development, as I dislike youth on principle, what with their vitality and hope for the future and all. But I assumed they belonged to my roommate somehow and thought nothing of it. After a quick shower, I wandered into the kitchen to get some water and found myself confronted with a young girl, maybe 16 or 17, who as best as I could tell was wearing nothing more than a blanket. I think she was my roommate's sister, who I'd only met once in passing when it was very dark out, but I didn't have time to confirm this suspicion. As I entered the room, she held out a bowl and asked, "Is...is this what you use to make oatmeal?" Extrapolating from the packets of oatmeal on the counter and the almost boiling pot of water, I read the intent of this question as "is this what I should eat oatmeal out of?" Horrified by the prospect that I was in the same room as a half naked and potentially underage girl who hadn't mastered such complex concepts as how a bowl works, I said "it could be," and left.

That was my first encounter with Oatmeal Girl. The next day, I was getting out of the shower when I heard the bathroom door creak open slightly. Again, I thought nothing of it, as the door hasn't closed enough to latch since I moved in, so I figured a draft must have nudged it a bit. But when it creaked further still, I decided to have a peek outside to make sure nothing was out there preparing to murder me or sell me encyclopedias or anything. Peering around the edge of the door, I found myself face to face with Oatmeal Girl, who appeared to have been spying on me as I was toweling off. She apologized and asked for a bar of soap, which I awkwardly handed her while hiding my shame behind the door.

When you realize that the only person to have seen you naked in the last few years is quite possibly the dumbest, unskilled, underage voyeur alive, it's difficult to argue that life is going according to plan.

-TC

Hockey

Last night I joined some friends in watching the Olympic gold medal hockey match between The United States and Canada, and I must say I found myself astounded. Just when I thought sports couldn't get any more boring, I was amazed at how incredibly little I could manage to care on the highest of international stages. It took many years of hard work and dedication, but I think I have finally reached the apex of human achievement in putting on such an unparalleled display of herculean disinterest. If only there was a medal for that.

-TC

Snow Storm

I lived in Phoenix for about eight months, and it was probably the most consistently awful eight months of my life. I had no friends. The ceiling in my cockroach infested apartment leaked rusty algae from time to time. My job involved destroying people's lives by looking at pictures of backed up toilets and decapitated horses all day long. I went on a single blind date with a woman who turned out to only have a single leg. In short, I came away with absolutely nothing positive to say about the American Southwest.

And yet somehow on days like this when I never see the sun, can't control the heat in my apartment, and am plagued by an ever increasing number of wet socks, I can't help asking myself, why did I leave the desert again?

-TC

Valentine's Day 3: Day Harder

When I was a boy, Valentine's Day was a day for friendship as much as for love. We'd tape brown paper bags to our desks, and walk around giving Ninja Turtle themed cards to anyone we could stand. I'd always open the package of cards, pick out the second best card for my best friend, keep the best one for myself, and divvy up the rest amongst my classmates, less as an exercise in appreciation for the people I gave them to than an exercise in spite for the people who weren't even worthy of false sentiment.

But oh, how times have changed. As adults, Valentine's Day is exclusively for the purpose of showering appreciation on people who have low enough standards to take their clothes off for us in hopes that they will continue to do so. If you're in a relationship, it's a day of love, sex, and rapidly depleting cash reserves. For me, it's usually a day of twiddling my thumbs while I have no one to talk to because no one else in the world seems to be single. But this year, I don't want to be left out of the festivities, so I've been trying to come up with a series of activities for one that will be both productive and romantic so that I may make the best use of my alone time without feeling like I'm the only person in the world who isn't in love.

Thankfully, another flash of inspiration struck when I woke up this morning. I live in New York City, where the opportunities for romantic activities are endless. But one of the time honored traditions for young couples in this city is the good old fashioned horse drawn carriage ride through Central Park. So, as a token of appreciation for myself, I'm going to get gussied up, head on over to Central Park, rent all the horse drawn carriages in the city, and pay them to run over anyone they see holding hands.

And then, if I'm in an especially jaunty mood, I might steal their chocolates.

-TC