A stranger punched me - the way a friend would punch.

I've been writing every day since I was ten and I don't look at the old parts very often. When I do I find things like this:

“Also I am planning on hosting (is that a word?) a circus.”

- age 10 

“A stranger punched me in the hall today, the way a friend would punch! I need to find them.”
- age 13

“Don’t treat me like a child. I am two months away from possibly having a learner’s permit.”
- age 14

“Three wishes: lots of money, be really pretty, don’t really need a third wish.”
- age 15

“I feel so lonely and angry and no one understands me. I also have a pretty solid tan.”
- age 17

10 million things in Portland: the great outdoors edition

I like Portland. Some people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are five of the ten million reasons you should.


Two different people who do not know each other told me that they’ve found a naked man following them around Forest Park but I’ve been there many times and this has never happened to me. I have seen a wedding, and a picnic, and once there was a weird smell and someone said it was sulphur. Maybe those people were talking about sulphur. Maybe it was a metaphor.



Are you incredibly excited by roses? Neither am I. Neither is anyone. But, Portland has a rose garden. Possibly because Portland’s nickname is “City of Roses” or possibly it’s a front for a black-market fertilizer operation.



Just a city block covered in cement with a giant fountain in the center, and a few inches of collected slush from human/fountain residue. One of my friends says Jamison Square Park is “the best birth control ever” but he isn’t a doctor. If you asked a doctor about Jamison Square park they would probably take your blood pressure. Doctors love doing that.



The river might be my favorite great outdoors area. Not the river in the center of Portland, another one. This river is just infested with trees and nature and you can go swimming in it and get carried off in the current and lose your sunglasses and cut your feet but who cares, because swimming in a river is amazing. My friend was in a movie once that was shot at this river and all the actors were naked the entire time. Lots of nudity in this post. I guess that’s a common theme in the great outdoors.



Laurelhurst park has an off-leash dog park, and often men in dresses dance around in the open areas, holding small pieces of wood. Once when I walked through it there was a businessman standing in the middle of a patch of grass, holding a push-broom and staring at me. The leaves are amazing right now.

Why my first email address was brookestia@hotmail.com

Did you create an alter-ego goddess persona when you were 13? So did I.

A brief period of infatuation with Greek mythology and a desperate need to boost my self esteem got together and out of Zeus' head snuck Brookestia, Goddess of Fun.

In case you're not following, here is an excerpt from the beginning of an 8th-grade English paper:

"Brookestia is the coolest goddess on Mount Olympus but she doesn't brag, that's how cool she is." (Brookestia obviously had next to nothing in common with Brooke, who had to worry about people tying her shoelaces together during Wildlife Sciences and who didn't know how to open a pop can without getting blood in her Sprite.)

Legend had it that Brookestia unseated Norman, God of Boring (not the most popular god) and also totally swagged out his throne after she took it over. Her first miracle was the water slide.

In her notes my English teacher reccommentded I join the extra-curricular writing club or see the school counselor. I did both, because they sounded exciting. And exciting is fun, and fun is something Brookestia knows a lot about.

Yesterday the mail woman called me "hey little one"

More things I thought of while I was scanning: holding doors for people, the Olympics, socks.

Things I love about getting older

Here's a tip: if you write something wrong try writing over it and if that doesn't work add dots around it.

 

the email equivalent of watching a kitten fall down a flight of stairs.

A cruel twist of fate caused me to meet my favorite nine-year-old in the world just before I left LA, and we only got to hang out once. When I emailed her parents to tell them I was moving her mom emailed me back a reply of congratulations that ended with this:


(p.s. I'm going to wait a couple of days to tell [most beautiful name ever spoken] since it's her birthday tomorrow...after I tell her I'll let you know, and then would you mind sending her a little email to say goodbye? I know you didn't spend a lot of time together, but she had such a great time - you really made an impression on her! Thanks so much.)


Dear favorite newly-ten-year-old in the world, please convince your family to move to Portland, this week if possible. We can climb trees and never brush our hair and I just found a new kind of Skittles that will change everything you think you know about candy.

"Do you think anyone will ever pay you to do anything?"

I brought up my latest anxiety to the 8-year-old I babysit. We were walking and borrowing/stealing flowers from yards. She can name every type of plant in Southern California. It's a cool skill. She isn't paid for it.

"No. Probably not." she answered "I want to be an actress, but I don't think anyone will give me money to do that."

Almost every kid I've met in LA wants to be an actor. We'd been practicing her lines for her a play she's in, Little Women, speaking in a different accent each round. The only accent she can do is New York, and she does it so well that it makes up for not knowing any others.

"When I start my job it will be the first time someone will be paying me to do something. I'm a little scared." It was a good opportunity for her to point out that I'm paid to spend time with her and she missed it.

"What are you gonna be doing?" asked the girl who may not realize I'm paid to spend time with her.

"Writing commercials."

"You can do that, you've done it before. Remember, you wrote 'Choosy moms choose Jif.'"

"No, that was on the side of the peanut butter jar."

"The jar came with that on it?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Well, the peanut butter jars you write will be even better. They're going to be so funny and weird."

She handed me a sprig of lavender, switched to a New York accent, and continued:

"And now, every time I see anything, I'm going to know you made it. I'll think of that every time I miss you. Ya knaw? Ah mean Gawd! His pawr motha!

I'd pay her to say things like that.

We are going to be friends

Now that we've established how cool being a babysitter at age 24 is, I have an awesome babysitting story. I got a new (client, but my friends tease me for calling them clients so I'll say) family last week, and went to meet them for the first time Friday. I kind of hate meeting a new family, it's like a first date and once on a first date I hid behind a buffet table until the guy thought I was lost and wandered off.

This family had an 11-year-old girl. As I biked to their house I thought about what I was like at 11, just for reference. I was weird at 11. I know a lot of kids and I have yet to meet one who is as weird as I was as a child. All the kids I babysit are put-together, own iPhones, avoid carbs, and are a bit too cool for school. Sometimes too too cool for school in my opinion. Until Friday when I met the best 11-year-old in the world.

She answered the door wearing a shirt with a picture of a cow holding a loaf of bread and it said "Paris." I had that shirt when I was little. I wore it with a "Got Milk?" hat because I felt like they went together.

"Do you like chocolate?" she asked.

I didn't have to answer. As soon as we made eye contact both of us knew that we had finally met our best friend, a person who was exactly like us in every way.

Alright I did answer. I love chocolate.

But this girl has the most beautiful off-kilter sometimes-hilarious-sometimes-hopelessly-bizarre sense of humor. She has hair so thick it goes past her shoulders. She painted a life-size portrait of Obama and hung it over her desk. She is obsessed with baseball. She speaks French. "Why don't we decorate the kitchen like it's a café and invent every kind of hot chocolate we can think of?" she asked.

While watching her cat pee in the yard she sighed and announced "I pretty much live in denim." Not because it was relevant. Just because she had a thought and felt like she needed to say it. Where have you been all my life, 11-year-old girl? Love has a name, and it won't be revealed so as not to put any children in danger.

But I love this girl.

She is exactly like I was at age 11, and exactly how I guess I still am except now I'm slightly taller. She times her showers. Have you ever met anyone besides me who times their showers to see if they can set a personal record every day? I haven't. If you have, I'd like to meet them. I have a shirt with a cow and a loaf of bread on it they can borrow.

now I know what they she feels like when I watch Disney channel while eating tofu ice cream.

Last night the 7-year old-girl I babysit let out a perfect "Man that is HEAVY" when she had to draw 32 cards in Uno. Ignore the fact that we had obviously changed the rules enough to make the game completely unrecognizable, and imagine a 7-year-old mini-Brooke playing card games and building hamster traps. I'm molding minds here.

It is HEAVY.

you'd better go in disguise

The best party I ever threw was "teddy bear picnic" themed, the year I turned five. The whole idea was a combination of bears, the woods, and food, which I guess were all things I liked.



This only scratches the surface of the weird things I liked as a child.

The year I turned five I celebrated my birthday a month early because my family was moving to Australia, a place where, my mom informed me, I would have no friends. I knew nothing about Australia besides the fact that no one there was going to want to come to my birthday party and that it was in books. Also in books: bears eating toast and jam in the forest.

After the party when most of my friends had gone, my friend Jonathan and I stood on my porch waiting for his mom to come pick him up. It was quiet, and we were solemnly watching children playing on the swingset across the street, remembering when we were four and enjoyed activities like that.

I remember Jonathan said "Well, another year, huh?" and I said "Another year." And I felt so very, very old.

Do you feel wise beyond your years? Have you ever been to a teddy bear picnic? Or any sort of casual meal with wild animals?

I hope there's not a test

A couple months ago I enrolled in a night class my neighbor teaches, entitled "Things that do not work to calm a screaming baby." I had never been super eager to learn these skills, but the course comes with an apartment, which is something I was looking for anyway. Here are my notes from last night.

shut up
be quiet already
stop it already
shut up already
stop it
quiet
shut up
quiet
shut up
be quiet
quiet
shut up
AAAAAAAAAAAA
shut up
I can't take it anymore!
stop crying
stop it
shut up already
you know better than that
calm down
shut up
stop acting like a crazy person!

Changes color in sun!

TIME MACHINE POST

Look out world - it's April, it's sunny, and my skin is changing color. And there are four hundred French children that have four hundred questions about it.

This isn't the first time my genetics have fascinated French children. I have a freckle on my arm that kindergarteners try to lick for good luck. I have done everything in my power to discourage this, including wearing sweaters in extreme heat, and doing a lot of dancing where my arms are above my head, but I think the fact that it's hard to get to makes it even luckier.

Anyway, color-changing skin freaks people here out.



Alright, admittedly it's kind of freaking me out too.

French people do not seem to tan. They start out dark, or they tan very slowly, or they don't consider 80 degrees warm enough and constant sunlight sunny enough for skin to get darker.

Are you wearing make-up?
Have you been on vacation?
BEACH? (This one was in English! Accompanied by putting both his hands behind his head and smiling happily.)
Oh, you've put on some tanning cream?
The fake tan looks great on you!

Why is my skin changing color? Because we live on the Mediterranean. The weather here is pretty-close-to-literally tropical. No one believes me until I show them my watch tanline. Then they say "Wow!" which means "So she isn't lying, she's just some freak of nature."

And yes, that makes licking me even more enticing.

Peaches and Ketchup

Are you still using petfinder.com to look for unfortunate dogs? Because I am.

(Goodness I just typed "I ham" instead of "I am." You can take the girl out of France but you can't take ze crazy French pronunciation of words that start with vowels of ze Hamerican girl!)

Back to dogs that will make you cry:



This is Peaches. She's looking for a place to spend her senior year. I would be all about her spending it with me, but I have a feeling that year has more nasal bleeding than all the other years combined.

The combination of French accents and dogs reminds me of the day I taught my kids the word "dog" last year. Among the delicious American cuisine that has been brought to France is the hot dog, which the French didn't feel deserved a French translation, and kept its original name, 'ot dog." A lot of food words in France have American names: chicken, fillet-o-fish, cheeseburger, brownies etc. This made my kids learn food and animals easily. Except for dog. They were all confused by dog.

The day I taught it, one kid raised his hand:
"Wait... if 'dog' means dog, what does 'hot dog' mean?"
Well, it actually means a hot dog.

We all joke when we're little that hot dogs are made of dogs, or maybe vice versa, but it's never a huge problem. We learn both words at about the same time, a time when we're still learning about cars and gravity and how our hands move, so it doesn't seem like the craziest thing.

Imagine just getting slammed with this information at age ten.

OH MY GOSH ARE THEY MADE OF DOGS?!?
AH I'M GOING TO VOMIT!
THIS IS WHY I'M A VEGETARIAN! THIS IS WHY!
THERE ARE DOGS IN MY STOMACH!

I miss those guys.

I can think of witches good and bad

I decided to go out like a champion and make all of my students peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches on the last day. And I since I found peanut butter at a French grocery store, I thought most of them would have tried it before, and it wasn't going to be that impressive.

Wrong. I have never been so impressive in my life. "Where did you find peanuts, and what did you use to crush them?" was the most-asked question, especially by children holding a paper and pen.



And out of 400 kids, only one was allergic to peanuts. When I asked his teacher if anyone in that class had allergies and she said his name, he got defensive.

Michael:  "WHAT? NO. NO. No I'm not. I am not allergic to them."
Teacher:  "Your mom wrote on a form at the beginning of the year that you were?"
Michael:  "NO NOT TRUE. I am not allergic, absolutely positively am not allergic to them."
Teacher: "Alright, I guess if you want to eat it you can."

Me: "What?"
Teacher: "He's an adult, he makes his own decisions."
Me: "Isn't he seven?"
Teacher: "Yes."

Another teacher explained to me why, aside from that boy (may he rest in peace), no one is allergic to peanuts - peanut allergies are a European thing. It takes a minute to make sense, but most of the students are from Africa, where peanut allergies aren't as common. And every kid double-checked with me that there was no meat in the sandwiches, because not only would that not be halal, that would be disgusting.

I thought peanut butter would be an acquired taste - but the kids either so respectful or so excited to try something new, that in every class they waited until everyone had been served, then ate the tiny little things in about thirty bites, chewing very slowly and whispering "C'est trop bon..." (It's so good) like it was the finest delicacy in the world.



Anyway, my job is over now. I still have a couple more posts about teaching that I guess I'll put up later. Some might be more relevant to my year as an ex-pat (don't love that word) than one about sandwiches.
If that's possible.

does such a sport exist?

Nothing drives home how bad my French is like 400 children who speak way better than I do. It's not always their grammar or pronunciation, but it's the way they always know what word to use, and when, and I'm so jealous of them for it.

I was running in the neighborhood where my kids live the other day, and I saw almost a dozen of them. So the next day I was expecting to have several come up and say "I saw you running yesterday!" Instead ten kids stopped me in the hall and announce "I saw you doing sport yesterday!"

"Doing sport?" Why is your language so strange and how do you keep track of it all?

My only consolation is that maybe none of them were positive I was running. They decided to keep their options open with the verb "doing sport." Maybe I was playing a city-wide game of soccer, where one goal is the sea and the other is Aix-en-Provence. Maybe I had just gotten a text that the ball was over by the Castellane metro stop, and was racing six blocks to make it there before the other team's forward. Maybe.

I just remembered

This is my new favorite outfit AND the reason I have this blog instead of a fashion blog.

Also, the hair on the sides of my face doesn't grow longer than a couple inches and is not interested in gravity. My mom says there's nothing worse than having a kid with hair like that. I can think of something worse and it's spelled b-e-i-n-g  t-h-a-t  k-i-d. But now I'm an adult.

Also, while doing crafts this afternoon a girl licked some paste and told me "it tastes like the sea!"

Also, every day I get a hundred requests for kisses, which I change to "How about an American high five instead! Yes!" because I'm not interested in a lawsuit or a virus sampling. Today while I was sitting down, a six-year-old boy sprinted over, grabbed both of my ears, and tried to kiss me on the mouth. I used my lightning-fast reflexes to jump away, and then yelled "How about a high five!" with way more enthusiasm than usual. "You're so beautiful." he answered.

Also, after sing-along in kindergarten, I started to roll up the rug before leaving, but a five-year-old (named Wally) stopped me. "Leave the rug out," he explained, "it's Philosophy Workshop Hour."

Also, my second-favorite class is throwing me a going-away party next week. They're each going to bring in a favorite dessert or beverage to share and we'll have a "light tasting." They're seven years old.

Please don't leave me France.

attention parents:

If you have a beautiful six-old boy with beautiful shoulder-length hair, I am going to accidentally call him a girl. He will not like it. I'm sorry.

Fortunately, he has a very short memory.

Unfortunately, so do I.

next week I'm requesting an iPhone.

I hit the jackpot today, gifts-from-five-year-olds-wise. Let's start with this sexy portrait of me:



"Those two circles are for you to color, when you get home," the gift-giver informed me. THANK GOODNESS. Yesterday I finally wrapped up every season of CSI, baked the last recipe in The Joy of Cooking, and read polished off the Library of Congress' collection by authors whose last names start with Z, I was really hurting for an activity tonight.

And then there was this awesome home-made envelope. What could be inside?



THIS could be inside:



Count them, seven silly band drawings, seven trompe l'œil envelopes, and one creative spelling of "Brooke." Maybe.

And here's the best present: a brand new cell phone.



The great thing about this one is - oh excuse me, someone's calling. I wonder who it is?


Oh it's my friend!


She has shocking news!


What, she was just kidding! My friend is so hilarious!!


Man, it would be cool to have friends in real life.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some circles to color.

quack quack quack quack

Today one of the kindergarten teachers was so moved by my rendition of "Five Little Ducks" that he slowly stopped grading, quietly came closer to the group, and sat staring at me in awe until his eyes got watery.

One of the kindergarteners was so moved that he began quacking loudly, making the noises increasingly guttural until it sounded like he was dry-heaving.

We all show our emotions differently I guess.

I still love technology

Me: (holding bus flashcard) What is it?
Class of four-year-olds: Buuuus!
Me: Good! In English, we say BUS
Class: BUS!
Me: Good! (holding wheel flashcard) What is it?
Girl: A DVD!
Me: No, it's on a bus...
Girl: A CD!
Me: It looks like one, but it's on a bus - it's une roue.
Class: Oh! Une roue!
Me: Good! In English we say WHEEL.
Class: WHEEL!
Girl: A DVD!