Notes to My Future Se f From the Diary of a Gir S out

76 Short Story January 27, 2008 It is forty degrees in Florida and you are wearing exactly four layers of clothing: A tank-top tucked into your underwear, a turtleneck tucked into your jeans, a sweater, a coat, and somehow you’ve managed to bend your arms enough to shrug into the mint green vest that gives you license to be standing outside Wal-Mart with a box of cash and a sign that proclaims: It’s Cookie Time! Joanna Gladys is wearing only a pressed white shirt under her vest, shivering over a pyramid of Thin Mints as she wrestles her fly-aways down with bobby-pins. Your mother—the troop leader—tells you not to slouch and you begin to regret your decision to join up. You will remember two things from this day: That Joanna got pneumonia from standing in the cold half-naked, and that looking miserable and pathetic while holding cookies makes old people take pity on you.

June 3, 2009 You take up photography and force all your friends to be your models. Sitting, standing, up a tree, on a fence. Groups, singles, doubles. You take mostly black and whites. You zoom in too close, focus on eyes. Every week your mother picks up a new role of film for you. She insists you start paying with your own allowance. The prints clutter your bedroom walls, the bottom of your desk drawer, your vanity mirror.

You start middle school, get a bad haircut and pierced ears. Tell your mother, “The 70s are coming back!” and purchase the tie-dyed shirt with a peace-sign bedazzled across the front.

You still pick up litter on weekends and save ducklings from storm-drains in your spare time, just less frequently now that Benny Hollings sits in front of you in math class.

October 18, 2012 The troop sisters have threatened to demote you from your position as secretary if you don’t show up to meetings. You’ve skipped three this month to help your father move into his new apartment across town. You know the meetings are pointless. They’ve organized a union. They talk about animal rights and collect charms instead of badges. Maybe the hippie age really has come back. You begin listening to rock music. The harder the better. Your mother disapproves. She hides your CDs and your eyeliner. She calls this your grunge phase. You think she’s gotten the term wrong so you ask your best friend who is an expert on all things fashion. She says the 80s are in and hands you a scrunchie. Never take fashion advice from her again.

August 1, 2014 When you tell your mother that you want to study art in college, she asks you why you are so ungrateful. She will not have you living in a cardboard box, or worse, with her. Your error is evident. Never talk to your mother when there are dishes in the sink. Better yet, mop the floor and wait until she’s holding a hot cup of tea before breaching any issue of importance.

Your father offers to pay for college. Your mother suggests he pay her the money he owes her. Colorful language is exchanged.

August 15, 2015 College is nothing like you thought it would be. There are always two sides of everything: the difference between the Girl Scout promise and what your mother calls the low road; and the dorm you share with a blonde-haired nursing major who enjoys constantly pointing out that all of your classes are easy and that painting shouldn’t count as homework.

March 13, 2016 Remember how you thought going camping with your roommate, her boyfriend, and their five-pound Pekingese was a bad idea? You were right. You spend the entire time wishing you had brought earplugs and just to be safe, a blind-fold or at least a sleeping mask. Love is uncomfortably gross. Thank god for cinderblock walls in college dorms.

You date one guy for a while and break up with him when he tells you he loves you. You find another but dump him when you find out your parents are dating other people. The thought of your mother swimming around in the dating pool with you makes you nauseous. You’re liable

to bump into one another and you’ve always thought you and your mother are creatures that need their space. Like the distance that should be maintained between a coyote and a rabbit for the safety of everyone involved.

January 30, 2018 (Note to Present Self) You’re wondering if you’re going to get a job after graduation or if maybe you should start looking for a sizable cardboard box to inhabit. Your father got married and you catch yourself daydreaming about trading your tyrannical mother in for the newer model who bakes and does your laundry when you visit on weekends. You’re also worried that your mother has sensed this so you surprise her at home on a Tuesday night when you’re procrastinating your senior portfolio and she takes you out to Archie Moore’s on the lake. A treat for your grades. She tells you that one of the girls from your old troop got married. Another is studying to be a lawyer. You tell her that Joanna Gladys moved to California to pursue an acting career and got pregnant.

While you are filling your planner with lists, you stop to get a snack, reminding yourself that there are few things cookies cannot cure. You pour yourself a glass of wine and break out the Tagalongs. You eat half a sleeve while reading your philosophy textbook, then fall asleep on the couch with cookie crumbs in your hair. 77 Short Story