The Best Purchase I Ever Hated

This is for the Molly Weasley's in the world. 

The people that have two priorities in life: 
1) To make sure that every person within a 10 mile radius is fed.
2) To make sure that everyone within a 10 mile radius is warm enough.

When I got a dog walking job my freshman year, I encountered a Molly Weasley. 

She learned that I didn't have a pair of "good winter boots." This is apparently one of the cardinal sins in a mother's book. In fact, I got scolded. 

This woman was very generous and offered to pay for half of a pair of good winter boots for me. Well, half of the price of a pair of good winter boots. I only agreed because back then I was even more of a people pleaser than I am now. 

We went to Nordstrom and I felt sick to my stomach. The only thing I had ever bought from Nordstrom was nothing because I was too cheap/poor. 

I spent 20 minutes deliberating over the boots on sale. (By the way, on sale was $100) When I came home with my purchase, I tried them on again and wept. There were four thoughts going through my mind.

1) These make my feet look big. 

2) I will look ludicrous if I wear these.

3) I just payed $50 bucks for shoes that make my feet look big and ludicrous. 

4) Because I just made an expensive, "unnecessary" purchase, I will be in debt for the rest of my life, my children will have to scrimp for clothes and I will never have peace of mind about my finances. 

I didn't consciously flesh out the last thought into words, but that is how my mind was reacting. It felt that terrible. I hope you don't think I was ungrateful. An OCD mind just tends to overreact.

I put the boots in my closet and would only bring them out to walk the dog. And not because I wanted to keep my feet warm, but because I was a people pleaser. I would get the dog, wave to the woman, point to my boots smiling, give her a thumbs up and walk away scowling at my big ludicrous feet. 

In case you can't tell, I have a tendency to be hypersensitive. God bless you if you have a child like this. 

It took me 4 years, but I slowly eased up on the "I HAVE TO MAKE SURE LIFE IS PERFECT" pedal and I wore my boots even though I still kinda thought they made my feet look big. Then I started to wear them even when it wasn't snowing, then I started to wear them because I thought they looked cute. Then I realized that I actually love these boots and I am so glad that I bought them. They have lasted me 6 years and they still look brand new. They have kept my feet warm and dry through many a Utah winter. They give me peace of mind in bad weather. I hope that they last me many more years.

Turns out I didn't know everything at 17 like I thought I did. 

Down Once More

When I was 13 years old, I became fascinated with a 30ish year old French man named Erik. Although I didn't know him by that name at the time. He mainly went by "The Phantom." Also sometimes "The Opera Ghost." If he was feeling really fancy, "Angel of Music." It helped that he was played by Gerard Butler who still looks dang good with half his face covered up.

The first time I was introduced to the Phantom was in 2004 when the film adaptation of the musical came out on DVD. From the moment that the organ music started to play, I felt all the mystery, emotion and imagination that has captivated Broadway audiences since 1988.

I could not stop talking about it to my friends or singing all of the parts of all of the songs. My mom, brother and sister did not understand this obsession, but my dad, he understood. He was the one who introduced me to the movie and was just as enthralled as I was.

Part of what is SO GOOD about this musical is that you are simultaneously repulsed by and rooting for the phantom.

"You are a sadistic freak, BUT I WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY."

"Christine, run as far as you can. Yes, go with Raoul. That's all he's asking, BUT GIVE POOR GERARD A BREAK. THE MAN HAS BEEN ALONE HIS WHOLE LIFE."

And then there's that part where she takes off his mask and you just feel depressed for everybody.

I don't cry over very many things, but after the 16th time of watching the movie and listening to the ending song "Learn to be Lonely." I sobbed in my room. Sobbed. Leaning against the unbroken mirror in my room thinking about the phantom's broken mirror and broken life........

All the feels.

My dad and I have both had opportunities to see the musical live, but they got away from us.My dad's opportunity was back in the 90's. He bought actual nice tickets for a show in Los Angeles, but didn't get to go. My opportunity to see it was at BYU my sophomore year. The guy I was dating bought us tickets but I broke up with him before the show so I didn't get to go.

The years passed and I didn't think of my first musical anymore.

Recently, my obsession has been Hamilton. The cheap seats to that show are $900.  I started to look at the other shows on Broadway and after scrolling past "Kinky Boots" and "Cats" I saw my old Middle School crush "The Phantom of the Opera." The wheels in my head started to turn and after realizing that New York City is only (hah) four hours away from where I live, I decided to get tickets to the show for me and my dad for Christmas.

We were a tad bit excited.

My dad likes to change the lyrics to songs. Either that or he just doesn't know them in the first place. It's hard to tell. The morning of our trek to New York, I could hear my dad singing from the catacombs of the bathroom to the tune of "In sleep he saang to mee, in dreeams he caame." Except his version was, "I like the waaay you think. You stink, you stink." He sounded so happy and I could tell he was excited for our trip. I asked him later if there was any particular reason for his choice of lyrics and he said no, it just rhymed.

Having never been to New York, everything was new and enthralling. Plus, when you are in an iconic place, suddenly everything becomes iconic to you. "Hey! Look! It's the Omega-1 Barbershop!" Really, we had no idea what was famous and what wasn't. Probably most of it wasn't.

You also think that you see celebrities. I swear that Kenneth Branagh was in front of us in line.

We entered the Hamilton lottery and didn't win tickets, but by happy, serendipitous circumstances, our parking space was right across from the Richard Rodgers. 

I've never gone hoarse from shouting at a football game but I did get hoarse from belting Broadway tunes with my dad in the car and from laughing and squealing. As a piece of trash floated gently through the window of our car in Times Square, I took it as a sign that the city had accepted us and wanted us to come back. 'Til we meet again New York.

Roommate Battle Tactics

Roommates. They are a wonderful invention. They lower the cost of housing, they give you someone to come home to after a long day of school, they have kitchen supplies that you don't have. It's great.

Most of the time.

Sometimes they come straight from Hades.

The particular roommate I'm thinking of actually came from a city on the east coast, but close enough. She and her boyfriend were both 17. They were madly in "love" and they didn't care who knew it. My other roommates and I had been good friends for a long time and we had a system going. This roommate, we'll call her "Trudy," clearly did not realized that we had a defined system that was going just fine, thank you very much.

Trudy and her boyfriend had a system of their own that became defined to us very quickly.

They would come home, sit on the couch, put on a sci-fi show like Firefly or Dr. Who and then proceed to make-out for 2 hours. Sometimes they ate Chinese food beforehand, but usually they just went straight to making out.

I like to think that I am a patient person.We gave them their space, we stayed in our rooms and only crossed the muggy, dark living room when we absolutely needed to get to the kitchen.

They started off only taking over the living room once a week or so. They were testing the waters to see how tolerant we would be. Once they realized that we wouldn't fight back, it was like we never had a living room in the first place.

At first, we adapted. Then we got angry.

I would shout things like "I JUST WANT TO FEEL LIKE A DECENT HUMAN BEING AGAIN!"

Never in Trudy’s presence of course. Because openly communicating would make too much sense. Instead I opted to glare at them as I scuttled through the living room. This did not work because

a) It was not only dark in the living room, but hazy. Somehow they always made it hazy.

b) They were locking lips vigorously, so paying attention to my even squintier already squinty eyes was not the highest thing on their totem pole.

(Side note: I heard somewhere that we’ve had this totem pole thing mixed up for years. It’s actually the lowest carving on the totem pole that is most important. Can anyone confirm or deny this?)

Low or high totem pole, the point is, they didn’t care about what I thought. 

One day, I decided that enough was too much.

I was in the kitchen making food when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I checked my microwave clock. It was Firefly time. Then I heard the sickening, coo coo-ey, googly-eyed laughter. In a fiery-eyed decision, I ran to the back bedrooms to my roommates and said "TODAY, today we are taking a stand! Everyone on the couches!"

My roommates, startled, but sensing that I was not to be messed with, extricated themselves from their rooms and quickly came to the living room. We had to be quick and we had to be quiet.

We rushed in, leapt onto the couches, and spread out nonchalantly and very widely, so as to make clear that there was no available space.

Trudy and Mr. Lips came in laughing and then stopped when they saw us all on the couch. We slowly flipped our magazine pages and raised our eyebrows like we were thoroughly absorbed in our articles.
What we were really thinking was "Please work. Pleeeaaassee work."

Trudy sipped on the straw from her Panda Express cup and pulled honey bunny out the door. If I'm not mistaken, I saw her raise her cup ever so slightly and nod her head in defeated respect. We watched with bated breath as they walked past the window and down the stairs and then heaved a collective sigh of relief.

We all went back to doing whatever it was that we had been doing before with our self-respect and our living room reclaimed.

British Curse Words

Sometimes when you have OCD you worry about saying weird things out loud.

And sometimes when you have OCD, because you worry about it, you do say those weird things out loud. At the sensitive age of 10 years old, I was in the kitchen with my mom talking about a class project. My class project was on fertilizer. (Don’t ask me why, I probably picked the topic and was for some reason interested in the dangers of eating chemicals).

Now – before I go any further with this story, I need to explain my family’s idea of open communication. When kissing came up on a movie, my parents would say “Close your eyes!”

My dad’s idea of talking about the birds and the bees was to covertly ask me, “Soo. Do you believe that Mary was a virgin?”

,

"Yees"

 “Do you know what that means?”

"Yees."

And that was the end of that.

Well, except that from them on I assiduously avoided any topics that might feel as intensely awkward as that did.

Ok, back to the kitchen when I was ten. I was talking to my mom about my project and practicing it in front of her. When it came time for me to say “fertilizer,” I said “testicles.”

No other context or reason other than my OCD brain made exactly what I was afraid of come true.

My mom:

“Do you know what that means?”

Me: 

I think the subconscious thought process in my mind was something along the lines of this:

“Ok I’m talking about fertilizer……roosters fertilize eggs….how does that work?…..testicles….That would be SO awkward if you said that out loud.”

And then the word came out of my mouth like a gymnast sticking a perfect landing on the mat. Loud and proud for all the world to see. Unmovable and unmistakable.

I considered trying to pretend that I had said another word similar to that. Festival, cubicle, anything but what had so very horribly come out of my mouth. I quickly realized there was no recourse and said something like, “IIIIIII have to go arrange my American Girl dolls now.”

14 years later, I was on the phone with someone from Great Britain. I used one of the exclamations that I like. Something like “man alive” or “jeezy petes.” That started a conversation about what exclamations Brits use. There was a girl from England in my ward and she would always say “bollocks” when she missed the ball during volleyball. She seemed like a nice, normal girl, so I didn't think the word would have any bad connotations. I brought up this word to my friend and he lost it on the phone. At that moment, I knew I had made a tragic mistake. How grave a mistake, I wasn’t sure, but definitely a mistake.

He composed himself, explained what it meant, and I realized that my old "fertilizer" friend had come back to afflict my life. Except this time the word was wearing a Union Jack. Loud and proud for all the world to see.

Julia Vincent Hetherton