How To Get Stood Up Like a Pro

This is a subject I am unfortunate enough to write about. I, as someone who has been sufficiently stood up tonight, will take you through the motions to recover from this ego blow. Shall we?

Step 1: DO NOT CRY. This guy/gal (for confusion's sake, we will consider him a dude) is obvi a total doucher. So to cry might make it feel like, in the end game, he wins by making you feel something without ever actually meeting him. 

Step 2: DO NOT MAKE A SCENE. I hope to the son of Zuez, you don't have to even consider this step because you  were ditched prior to arriving at your meeting place. Nothing is worse than punching your Mocha Caramel Frap across the Starbucks lobby and then having to explain yourself in gross sob-y tears whilst cleaning it up. 

Step 3: GO TO YOUR HOME-Y PLACE. Okay, you don't neccesarily need to go home but somewhere where you feel 'at home'. So a friend's house, your mom's place or your local Bath and Body Works, wherever. This will not only make you feel better but also strengthen your connection to that place or person (or store employee). 

Step 4: TAKE SOME SESSUAL PICTURES OF YA BAD SELF. You may roll your eyes but take some cell phone pictures of yourself. Go all out, get your best angles. Who cares if you look like one of those spikey-haired tools on POF? Remind yourself of how smokin' you are and what a loss it is for that loser. Also, you may or may not get an excellent FB profile picture out of it. Two birds?

Step 5: CRANK UP DA JAMS, MAN. There are few times where you are allowed to publicly display your terrible taste in music. Every other day of they year, you must bite your lip when they play Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy. Not today, my friend. Let your deaf flag fly as you blare Buckcherry, Hinder, Glee or whatever else the hipsters have deemed uncool. 

Step 6: BE WITH YOUR PEOPLE. If you're not already, surround yourself with the people that make you feel like your at your best. These, are your people. Don't let 'em go. Either chill and talk about it over some Broccoli Cheese Breadbowls from the best place on Earth. Or venture into the night, find a new fellow or at least use up your allotted terrible song choices on the snobby DJ. He would just love to play Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson...again. 

Step 7: GET OVER IT. Whoa, that looks rather forceful in all caps. Here: get over it. See, that looks less threatening. But seriously, don't take it personally. It's not because he could tell that one boob was bigger than the other or knows you snore quite forcefully at night. He never got a chance to learn about these weird, beautiful quirks you posses, so fuck that guy...or girl.

(OH and if you want, you may take the high road and never speak to him again. OR you can mess with him via text. But be sure not to cross the line into detrimental, he didn't hit you with his car or anything.) 

Breaking News: Laughter Cures Cancer and Chlamydia! (Not really but a girl can dream, right?)

LOL: We all do it, if you don't you either have your jaw wired shut so all you hear is a low gargle noise so you refuse to laugh out of embarrassment or you're dead.

I hope for your sake, it's the ladder.

But for seriously you guys, laughter is the only thing in life that seems worth pursuing because there is so much power behind it. Maybe I am considered a hippy-dippy airhead for believing in strength in smiles, laughter and rainbows...or maybe just the first two? But I have anecdotal proof that humor saves lives the way lifeguards do; quickly, efficiently, wetly and entirely in slo-mo.

I owe so much to my friends who, even when I was down and crying like a drunk girl from The Bad Girls Club, cracked jokes to lighten the mood. They ignored me when I told them to fuck off or choke on it (I am not a pretty sight when upset) and kept it up until I broke and smiled. Soon enough I'd be throwing it back at them, having pretend (and real) fights over origin of commonly used phrases like 'eavesdrop' or 'tequila worm'. Giving each other shit and being general idiots brought me to life. Sometimes I wonder whether or not I'd ever feel as good and alive as I do when I'm with my best friends. Doubt it.

Or the time I was walking down the hall in high school as a Just-Coming-Out-Of-Her-Shell-junior with my new artsy friends, whose friendship with me was freshly forged and fragile and then it happened: I fell. Hard. No stumble. No trip. No slippage. Just, knees. Elbows. Face. Floor.

Panic flushed over me as I laid in the middle of the student stuffed hallway. I had two options to mull over quickly within the span of .02 seconds; either lay there and wait for death to come over me like a warm blanket or do something weird to negate the fact that I just ate shit in front of like, 1/8th of the school.
So I died.
PSYCH. I certainly considered it but I, in all my haste, struck a pose. I turned over to my side, propped my head up with my hand and clutched my hip with the other. I looked up coyly at my potential new friends and smiled. And that was it, I was never known as The Girl Who Ate Shit in the Hall. Instead I was refered to as The Girl Who Ate Shit and Struck a Pose in the Hall. Not really, but they helped me up and laughed with me all the way to class. And we are still happily friended to this day.

So whether it's having elaborate hypothetical conversations while wondering around Jewel, whispering sexually-violent-nothings into someone's ear at work, leaving voicemails from "Planned Parenthood" on a friend's machine informing them of their severe strain of gonorrhea or just stuffing Corona Lights into mailboxes at midnight, funny shit like that makes the (my) world go 'round. (Fuck you, run-on sentences.)

Help Me Dissect These Feels.

So-ho, tomorrow I start my classes at Second City in Chicago. Words fail me for how ecstatic and nervous I am. So these noises will have to do:

Eeeeaahhhhyayayayaya. Goooooooberrrngggz. Derrrrrrmmmerrrrburrrrr. Ooouuugaahhhshanburrrddgglleessss. Mmmmmchocolate.

What?

...in other news, I am all sorts of excited for the new journey. It's funny, I felt so happy leaving the orientation, happier than I felt in a long, long time. I felt so lucky to be walking down the street in my favorite city in the world on a beautiful, Indian summer fall morning.Second City a home to an insurmountable number of comedy geniuses, giants and greats; John Belushi, Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, Dan Akryod, Rachel Dratch, Bill Murray, Adam McKay, Chris Farley, etc. (Hello, name dropping?) I can't wait to work with people who I already have this huge amount of common ground with, I am so open to new ideas, perspectives and ways of thinking. 

I've certainly been feeling down lately for a number of reasons, I hope that this experience leads to some greater change in my life. Something I am in desperate need of. It's time to stop being afraid of the possibility of failure, it will undoubtedly happen. But as someone, somewhere has maybe, probably said before, it would be a bigger mistake to live in fear of failing than to actually fail. So philosophical, Google-d phrases aside, I'm gonna grow a pair (of ovaries, 'bra) and go after what I want and fight for it. 

About God damn time.


P.S. When did this become an online diary? Second post and gettin' all mushy already? Bleck. (Cue fart noise.)