My Dear Readers,
Happy holidays to you all! As much as I’d like a grand first entry, I’m too sick right now to be too creative about it, so what you see is what you get.
So I’ve written several long notes on Facebook and was in the mood to write another one the other day, when I said to myself, “Why not just start a blog and actually build up readership in a more legitimate arena?” So I decided I would do just that. That, and I was rejected to be a study abroad journalist by my university :(. I was told that while I told a good story, the abroad office “felt pressured to choose people of diverse majors, backgrounds, and destinations.” I’m not sure how being an Asian American biology and society major going to Shanghai, is not diverse enough, particularly when there are still very few people who choose to study abroad in Asia at all. Maybe the office just said that to make me feel better. But in any case, I decided that it was in earnest when I had said that I wanted to document and memorialize my experiences abroad, and a personal blog would be an excellent way to do it.
So that said, let’s jump into my first story. So I went to see Benjamin Button on it’s opening day, but since that was also Christmas, I didn’t expect there to be any trouble finding good seats, much less a seat. But I was wrong. People apparently get very bored on Christmas. The theater was actually jam-packed, and had I gotten there a few minutes later, I probably would’ve been stuck in the first row, which would’ve sucked. But my brother and cousin and I were smart about it and decided the the best way would be to split up and look for single seats. I spotted one with coats on it next to an elderly, white-haired couple in the top row. I asked the couple, “Is anyone sitting there?” The thin-lipped old lady, who was heavily made-up replied with wide eyes, “Well we want something to put our coats on!” in a snobbish, dismissive tone. I was taken aback a bit by her rudeness, and maybe that was part of why I kind of just said the next thing that came to mind, which was, “But what about in the Christmas spirit?…” Looking back now, I sounded kind of dumb, and the situation could have ended embarrassingly for both parties. The old lady rolled her eyes and said “What Christmas spirit?!” but thankfully moved her and her husband’s coats out of the way for me, thankfully.
So I got a seat, but that wasn’t the end of it. I had a fever the eve of Christmas eve, and I’ve been sick since. So I was coughing a lot, but you know, minimizing it and coughing into my hand and being generally considerate. But every time I coughed, the old lady would lean away from me and whisper something to her husband as if I had the plague. The one time I got up to go to the bathroom and get some tissues, when I came back, she and her husband had switched places, indubitably because of me. The snobby old grinch! It was for the best though. The rest of the movie went by uneventfully, except for me silently crying at a few spots (because of the movie!). If the old lady had said one more mean thing about me, it would’ve been hard to stop me from saying something to her at the end of the movie about how rude she was. *Sigh* I guess the lesson is: don’t expect people to be angels and don’t expect an empty theater just because it’s Christmas. Those lessons aren’t the most insightful, but I feel like I should leave my readers with some new wisdom.
More from my Dorothy’s vault of “amazing” stories to come…I’d best go to bed now, since I might go to NYC tomorrow.
Dorothy
Oz Evolving 