I think I'm going to end up living in my mom's basement after college. I've already picked out wallpaper and purchased a contemporary casual coffee table. "Contemporary casual" means it's made of plastic but costs an arm and a leg because "Ikea" is Swedish for "devil."
So I only have two appendages now. I mean, I thought about using someone else's arm and a leg to get my coffee table, but people are usually pretty attached to them.
My preoccupation with basement interior design is a new obsession. When I was in kindergarten, I dreamt about becoming a productive member of our society and joining the work force. I would pick up the barnyard noise Tonka Toy phone and yell, "BUY! No, no, no you putz! Sell!" Then I'd get mooed at.
I would follow my intense stock conference call with eating green Playdough. I spent naptime lazing on my blue futon and thinking about how I would stage my first corporate coup as a free-wheeling executive type with gelled-back unisex salon hair and a stylized off-white business card. But no more! I have been disillusioned by a summer excursion into the working world.
After a one-month internship at the Pentagon, I had an epiphany that presented itself to me in the form of a hallucinatory encounter with Statler and Waldorf, who would chill in the balcony on "Muppets Tonight" and heckle Fozzy to tears -- "wakka wakka wakka."
When they appeared to me as apparitions dancing in fig leaves around my room they were just as brutal, only sexier.
"You call yourself an intern! BAH! Look at you -- you're wearing a clip-on tie!"
To put it quite bluntly -- and believe me, Waldorf did (can I get a forlorn "wakka?") -- I was the worst intern ever. Check it: Not only did I wear clip-on ties, but I also leaked top-secret information to Russian spies about my department. My codename was Cough E. Tableau, and I compromised our nation's security by smuggling out naughty photos of the Bush daughters.
Just joking. Yeah, I kept the Bush daughter photos for myself. The only thing I ever smuggled out of the Pentagon was a pen. It's not even ballpoint, so don't write your congressman.
Sometimes, though, late at night when I can't sleep, I wonder if that pen is bugged, and if it's got a tiny camera with a tiny tourist taking even tinier photos of me for the Bush twins. I suppose it's only fair. You know, "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours." That sort of thing. Oh, snap! Did I just go there?
Anyway, I realized that the work place and I clash. We just aren't peas and carrots. I like wearing flip-flops and chilling. The workplace likes memos and time management. I like "The Facts of Life," and those sensors in bathrooms that you can stick your hands under and not even have to touch the faucet. It's like, "Whoa! technology is groovy." The workplace likes killing puppies.
We're very much the odd couple. Sure, throw us in a sitcom together and watch as hilarity ensues. But throw me into the workplace? Watch me become an alcoholic and have an affair with Deb, the temp.
All I'm saying is that I don't want to do anything for a living. I tried explaining this to Statler and Waldorf, but their fig leafs distracted me.
My mom isn't exactly thrilled either. She had plans to turn our basement into a disco roller rink. I was like, "Mom, you can totally hurdle my coffee table."
She is really supportive, though. She's always telling me to follow my heart, but what she doesn't understand is that my heart is stuck in my rib cage and can't go anywhere. My dad on the other hand thinks that I should be a writer. Ha. Who would read anything I write?
No, if I were forced to get a job after college, I'd probably infiltrate my way back into the Pentagon under the pretense of some memo-loving, water-cooler-chatting hermaphrodite, but then, when they least expect it, I'd go battle-whoop crazy in a fiery storm of protesting, Norma Rae style. I'd draft up a poster with some razzle-dazzle markers, and then lead a tie protest where I'd burn bras.
"Hey, we won't wear your stinkin' ties ya Johnny Noosenecks!" Yeah.
That's probably when my supervisor would fire me.
So, either way you look at it, I'm destined to sit in my mom's basement and play myself in thumb war for eternity. Which is ridiculously depressing, because of course I'd lose every time. Sure, I might win too, but I'd only rub it in my face. I can be so insensitive ... and sensitive.
My only solace will be found in my wee coffee table. I can see myself 20 years from now -- a peg leg, a parakeet on one shoulder and a patch over one eye -- sadly reminiscing about the day when my coffee table ceased being "contemporary casual." I'm still looking with a single optimistic eye towards the future. A bright day it will be when my coffee table becomes "retro-revival chic."
On second thought, scrap the basement prophecy. My mom is passionate about her disco roller rink, and who am I to defecate so openly on her dream? Defecation is wrong. Next summer I shall intern at the White House and wear patriotic ties with flags and forego gyrating my pelvis and winking at the Bush twins, in favor of writing memos to Alan Greenspan about time management. Oh, and one more thing before I start my life anew and practice tying that Windsor knot: I hate Vin Diesel.
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