The Mailbox Game

Welcome Back

Alarm clocks are near the top of the list of inanimate objects that need more recognition, sandwiched between erasers and trash bags. Their entire career is based off of forcing themselves to regularly do something that they know will make their beloved masters shower them with hatred, and yet they continue on through the heartbreaking agony, every day at six in the morning. Religiously. Diligent little bastards.

And mine did so much to try and impress me this morning, too. There I was, bestowed with the gift of waking up on my first day of junior year to “Flagpole Sitta”, as opposed to the low-budget car dealership ad any other alarm clock would have given me, and I reacted by handing out dirty looks to everything in sight and turning off the radio with the same motion one uses to swat a mosquito sitting on the cheek of That-Jerk-From-College.

My brain wasn’t yet at the level of functioning to be aware of what it was doing, so by the time my sluggish feet managed to manhandle the rest of me down to the kitchen, I realized that I didn’t quite remember putting on my Philosoraptor t-shirt or that red denim skirt I had found last March at the thrift store, applying eyeliner, or even brushing my hair, which only a few years ago had been a 20-inch long black puppy, until the beginning of freshman year when I had gotten fed up enough to take a picture of P.J. Harvey into the salon and politely demand that the stylist chop it all off until I matched the photo.

“You look cute today,” I heard my mother’s voice behind me just as I was stuffing a zucchini muffin into my mouth.

“Ayyyyngs,” was all that managed to fight its way through the chunks of ground vegetable. I pushed it down my esophagus and turned to face her on my way to the fridge. She was also already fully dressed. Pantsuit. The usual. Silver jewelry, maroon lipstick.

“So?” she asked as I made a grab for the orange juice. I waited expectantly. “So, what are your goals for this year?”

“Goals?”

“Yes, goals,” she affirmed. “What would you like to accomplish this year?”

“Well, I want to eventually find the money for a car...”

“No,” She cut me off. “I mean academic goals. What about your grades, or your test scores or...” she trailed off, moving her hands around in the air as if she were trying to brush past an idea. “What about student council?”

I tried to conceal a small laugh, but the movement rattled through my arm until the stream of juice coming from the carton dripped down the rim of the glass. “Mom, do I really strike you as the student council type?”

“Of course you do,” she said in the ubiquitous obligatory encouragement tone. “You’re smart and you work hard, and you’re responsible--” My right hand involuntarily froze as it held the paper towel over the spot of citrus acid burning its way into the rose granite countertop.

“Mom, there are a lot of things I care about,” I smiled, “But between world hunger and human rights, making posters for mixers doesn’t quite make the cut.”

She sighed. “You don’t have to do it because you care, Lucy; you do it to show that you have good leadership qualities. To show you’re motivated.”

I jumped up to sit on the counter. “I see, so I’m motivated to go through all that effort to put together a campaign, go to meetings, and pretend to be extraverted for an entire year just so I can demonstrate to college people who I’ll probably never even meet how motivated I am? Seems legit,” I said through another mouthful of zucchini.

“Just because you’ll never meet them doesn’t mean you don’t have to impress them,” she nearly sang with her back turned toward me, reaching into a cabinet for two identical glasses.