At the beginning of this semester, in my first class, an exceptionally old person strolled in (with the help of her walker). I would have been perfectly okay with this had she not sat in my line of sight. And by "line of sight" I mean in the seat DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME. Not okay.
The scariest part about the exceptionally old lady is that her makeup is always exactly the same. Like it's tattooed on or something. Her eyebrows are painted on, her lips are painted on, she doesn't even look like a person. Which is freaky. She seems very nice, but there's something about her where she looks a little like a corpse already. Just having her in the class freaks me out, for two main reasons:
1) I'm terrified that she's just going to stop showing up to class one day. Because she's dead.
2) I'm afraid that NO ONE is going to mention the fact that the freakishly old lady in our class has suddenly stopped showing up because no one wants to bring up death.
And that just plays into my fears of dying alone, etc etc.
This lady never speaks in class, she nods and smiles, and seems perfectly coherent, but still somehow, absent. Or already dead. She might be a zombie! I wouldn't be able to tell because of all the makeup!
Does that make me terrible? I should probably just make an effort to talk to this woman , as we sit very close to each other twice a week, but I'm afraid to. There's another aspect of it where I'm afraid to talk to her and make a connection if she's going to kick the bucket in the next five minutes.
And the worst part is that I can't tell if that makes me a terrible person or simply a cautious one.
On a completely unrelated note - please read David Sedaris's piece about undecided voters in the upcoming election:
I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
You can read the rest on the New Yorker website, or in this week's New Yorker Magazine.
Also? I have a pimple INSIDE MY NOSE. It hurts like hell.
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