CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Courtney Got Pregnant

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

this entry brought to you by bob dylan, "the levee's gonna break"


I knew a girl we'll call Courtney. Well. Because her name is Courtney. Anyway, we weren't really friends, but she worked at my grocery store in the Kid's Corner and she was my daughter's favorite. Then she started working at MCI with me, and I had lunch with her once. She was a very attractive girl. She was 19 at the time I knew her, tall, thinnish, pretty brown hair, and, I would say, fashionable. She didn't just wear the same thing all the other girls her age wore. She put thought into her wardrobe.

Then she quit abruptly. There was a girl named Sarah who I assumed was a good friend. On breaks I saw them chatting and laughing, and saw them getting into the same car on multiple occasions. I asked her what happened to Courtney, and she shrugged and said she didn't know, as if I'd asked "Whatever happened to that guy who cleans the bathrooms?" I asked, didn't the two of you used to be friends? "No, not really," she replied. "We talked, but no, I wouldn't call us friends." But, I protested, I saw you guys getting into the same car on multiple occasions! "Yeah sure, I gave her rides sometimes," she said. "But we weren't really friends." Kids these days.

Anyway, this was about a year ago. My daughter had an assembly to go to at school last Thursday, and she was part of a singing chorus of first graders for a fifth grade presentation that was an absolute bore. I was forced to stand in a very uncomfortable place and I couldn't even see my daughter singing, and when I turned and looked to my left, there Courtney was. Except she had a baby in her hands, one that wiggled with glee and smiled at her broadly and said "MAMA! DADA! MAMA!" And a dude about the same age as her that she passed the baby to briefly when she stood to see her fifth grade brother take the stage.

But she'd gotten fat. And she wasn't wearing her fashionable clothes. She was wearing a tank top, torn off shorts, and flip flops. She had a pudgy face where was once a dapper and cute face.

It's as if she turned into a cartoon character. She was once a demure, pretty girl, tall and well dressed. Then she got pregnant and disappeared. And now, here she was, more than a year and a half later, literally in flip flops and a tank top that didn't fit her well. Maybe I caught her on a day where she didn't care what she was wearing, not thinking she'd see anybody she knew, and if she were anybody else, I wouldn't have noticed it. But this girl that I used to actively think, Wow, that girl knows how to dress herself-- and this coming from a guy who just wears black all day-- and this girl, such a little time later, looked like a yokel. She looked like a baby maker, like in terrible sexist jokes, barefoot and in the kitchen-- not quite in the kitchen here, but straddling a baby, as close to being barefoot as is publicly acceptable. And probably not older than 21, considering I think she was 19 last time I saw her. It was slightly amusing, but it saddened me. And I think it made her sad, as well, because whenever I used to see her she used to light up a little-- not a lot, I'm not pretending the girl was madly in love with me, just the "Hey, I know that guy, and he has an adorable daughter," way, and would be her demure, quietly conversative way. In fact, when she started working at MCI, I hadn't seen her in a few months, and when her training class came on the floor, she pointed at me from the whole room away and said to Sarah "I know that guy!" And yet here I was, not five feet from her, and she didn't look me in the eye. I felt like she knew what she looked like, and didn't want to acknowledge me, knowing that she'd have to acknowledge to herself how she'd changed. Maybe acknowledge how life didn't go the way she wanted it to.

We just watched The Goonies again. It's fucking awesome, I recommend it. It totally holds up. The main character, played by Sean Astin, has an older brother named Brand, and before he got stuck on a treasure hunting adventure with his brother and his Goonie friends, his plan was to hang out with a girl he wants to date, who is, at this point in the movie, stuck underground with him, being chased by murdering scum bags. There's a point where she starts to lose her nerve from being in this situation, and starts freaking out, wondering if she'll ever get out. "I'm pretty. Right? I'm pretty. Aren't I pretty?" she starts stammering. "But I'm 16. How long do I really have to rely on my looks? 20 years? How long is that? That's not very long! And then what? What'll I do after I lose my looks?"

After seeing Courtney, it kind of reminded me-- sometimes all it takes is four more years, sweetheart. It was an amusing, yet fucking depressing realization.
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with love from CRS @ 10:57 AM 

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