In Which Miss Jill Find Herself in Classic Literature

Monica Lewinsky, Britney and Justin, AOL - I'm sure that I'm not the only one who feels pangs of nostalgia for the late nineties from time to time. Unlike lots of people, I loved high school and would rather be there or in college than being a lame working adult. If you are a student and reading this, I am going to give you some sage advice-do not graduate, under any circumstances, trust me. Take two classes a semester if you have to, but working = not fun.

Anyway, I saw Dante's Inferno at a bookstore the other day and was reminded of officially the shadiest school project of all time. Our assignment was to create an inferno with high school related levels of Hell. Most people just made a poster showing different groups, i.e. suck-ups, hoochies, thugs, etc. However, one group took it to a whole new level. Throughout the week they brought their cameras to school and randomly took pictures of people. I myself was photographed and as it was happening I thought, "Wow, how nice. We are graduating and they want to remember me." Ummm... no.

A few days later we presented our projects and they displayed a poster with pictures of people from our class in the category of Hell where they belonged. Included was my smiling, naive face under the word "Gossips." I was a pretty self aware teen and the picture was good, so I could not bring myself to be angry about it. The finishing touch was their own pictures in a celestial hot tub at the top. Yes, this is reflective of the high level of scholarship found in my A.P. classes.

In Which Inebriated Men Yell Stuff in Miss Jill's Face

Last night I got off the subway and a man approached me, got all up in my grill and yelled, "You are beautiful, just like my fiance!" Ok, where is your alleged fiance at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night?

Five minutes later another drunk/high individual (I'm not good at discerning that) approached me and I braced myself for another romantic comment, but he just randomly yelled "Have a blessed day" and ran away.

In Which Miss Jill is Semi-Socialist

When we were leaving the Harlem Chapel on Tuesday night, a man approached my friend and me and asked, "Who is in charge of those surveillance cameras? (there are some on the chapel) I think that there may be something on those tapes that would help some guys I know. They're in trouble." After my friend went back into the building to find an authority figure, we started having a heart to heart. He was monologueing me about his love for Sylvan learning center when he suddenly said, "Ma'am, I think that you should stand closer to the building. There are some wild kids in this neighborhood and you could get hurt." After I acquiesced he said, "Since the change folks like us should look out for each other. Doesn't matter if you're white and I'm black, I should try to help you." The change meaning:



At first I laughed to myself about it, but then I started think that maybe there is seriously something wrong with our country if it took Obama for some people to start feeling enfranchised. The older I get, the more angry I am about the economic and educational disparities that I see here in the United States. So much in life is affected by who your parents are, who your parents know and what your parents taught you or didn't teach you to value. My MBA friend says that moving to New York has made her start turning socialist, because the economic stratification is so blatant. Seriously, you can get from the Bronx to the Upper East Side in twenty minutes. It reminds me of this movie I saw about Israel. The Palestinian side looked like a sketchy part of Honduras and the Israeli side looked like an affluent part of the United States and I thought, "No wonder they are mad!"

I think that the only way you can be blind to inequalities is if you are a suburban upper middle class white guy, living with your parents (yes, I am thinking of someone in particular) I realize that no one reads this for my social commentary, so that is all.

Happy Birthday Abby!!

I hope that it doesn't cause too much jealousy that I am going to unveil the identity of my true bff. Especially since she is a 13 year old in Honduras.



Abby and her brother, Little Mikey, came to my house for piano lessons one day, but the electricity went out. I don't know how to light a match, so I had to call my neighbor Monica to come help me. We realized that it was the perfect time to roast marshmallows on the flame of the candles. In retrospect, it is kind of weird that I already had all the supplies for s'mores in my house.

In Which Miss Jill Experiments With the Occult

Just as a disclaimer, I'm not an apostate Mormon. This was just for fun.

March 1996, Bus En Route to Disneyworld

I held my palm out expectantly. Sheryl's* eyes narrowed under the crusty, fortified dome of her bangs. "I have a gift for this," she assured me. "Oh it's very clear. The love of your life is a redheaded boy who you will meet at the zoo. Let me know when it happens."

2009

Sorry Sheryl, still waiting. I decided that I needed to seek spiritual guidance from a more reliable source and was happy to discover this woman charging $5 in the West Village:



It seems like the economy has hit the astrology industry hard, because people are constantly handing out pamphlets with discounted reading rates next to my work.

Anyway, I entered a small room with a Saints decorating motif and sat down. Mrs. Donna, the psychic, pressed a $20 bill into my hand and implored that I squeeze it. I squeezed with all my might and she began to prophesy. I learned:

* I am going to be the Chairman of the Board of a large charitable organization.
* I am going to soon be offered two jobs by people with a J in their name. In one, I will earn three times my current salary and in the other much, much more. However, the company with the more lucrative offer will go bankrupt, so I should not accept.
* I have loneliness that I am hiding from myself written in my hand.
* In 2 1/2 years I will be very rich and successful and in 5 years, my life will be perfect (that doesn't seem very soon).
* My friend Sally* will become very sick, be hospitalized and the doctors will want to perform a hysterectomy. She should not let them, because she is destined to have twins.
* My friend Cindy* had an opportunity to become famous, but she lost her chance and will remain anonymous for life.

We are skeptical of these predictions (although me becoming rich is a given). However, she successfully identified:

* My ulcer problem.
* The fact that when I try to decide what I want to do in the future, my mind goes blank.
* Sally's fiance's name. She said, "It's George, but I keep seeing a J for some reason." His name is Jorge.
* Cindy's issues with her man's lack of a skincare routine and his current location.

I will keep you posted as these events unfold.

* Names changed

In Which Miss Jill Finds Her Soulmate in the 42nd Street Subway Station

For years I have been collecting dolls from various countries and my family has been very unsupportive. When I went to London in high school, I happily purchased King Henry VIII and all of his wives. Most families would be thrilled to have such classy collectibles in their home, but not the Wagners. I came home from college once and found Anne Boleyn hanging from a noose (someone in the family needs history lessons). Another time someone microwaved Anne of Cleves. I thought that no one would ever understand me, until I came across this man in the Times Square Subway Station (he is also in Penn Station most Tuesdays):

In Which Miss Jill Is Too Confused to Think of a Title for This Post

I just received this email from an anonymous friend.

Subject: My Ability Documented

Remember the day I ate 60 cookies with ease...thought you might enjoy this. I knew I was good, but not this good!!!

Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies, 60 cookies Cal: 8,958 Carb: 978 Fat: 498 Protein: 198

Look Carefully

Can you tell what someone has righteously placed on a Michelob ad on the subway?

Photo Shoot on the Red Line

This is too sick for words, but I am going to write it anyway. I was sitting on the subway today and this 60ish man with grease laden ringlets plastered to his scalp was sitting across from me. I would have assumed that he was homeless, but he was playing with a pretty expensive looking phone. However, it took me a minute to realize that he was using his phone for pure evil. He was pointing it at me and I kept hearing a clicking sound. Then I looked into the reflection of the glass behind him and saw my image trapped inside the screen. This is my last blog entry, because I will now commit suicide.

In Which Miss Jill Gets Punk'd By A Homeless Man Yet Again

When I was younger, about once a month I would have these epic crying moments and they were really, really loud and dramatic. My dad would sympathetically tell me to stop so that the neighbors wouldn't think that he was beating me. However, somewhere around 25 or 26 I completely stopped crying. I'm pretty sure that the last time I cried was last August when my grandma died, but there have been two times in New York where I came really close.

The first time, I was waiting for the subway and I was standing next to a young, Muslim pregnant woman. Another woman came down the stairs with a child and she suddenly stopped and started yelling in his face, "Youse stupid, you hear me!" It started getting really bad and I glanced over at the expectant mother and tears were streaming down her cheeks. My eyes suddenly got misty and I started sniffing, but I managed to pull it in because a crowded subway platform is a bad place for a meltdown.

A few days after that (I think that I might have mentioned this before), a homeless man got up and shared this story about how his family kicked him out when he was diagnosed with A.I.D.s and that made me start to tear up and I gave him $1.00. For some reason I thought that that was just the saddest story. So last night, I saw the same man on the subway and thought, "Oh no, this story is so sad, I don't want to hear it again." Then he stated, "Ladies and Gentleman, I'm out on the street because my wallet was stolen and I can't get another i.d." Ok, so he not only changed his story, but he changed it to a stupid one!! I bet those people with a sign, "I'm deaf, please help me," aren't really deaf either. I need a refund!

The Age of Vegetarious

Going to the grocery store in my neighborhood is a precarious task, because it is difficult to predict when it will be too busy. When I first moved here, I went to the local Pathmark at 11:00 a.m. and it looked like WalMart in Appalachia on Black Friday. I was in line for 38 minutes, eavesdropping on profanity laced cell phone conversations concerning the crowd for the entire time. My roommate's boyfriend said that the best time to go was during prime time television, but that's a little late for my taste, so I have been going on Saturday at 8:00 a.m. This has proven to be a smart move.

This morning I was waiting to check out with the following items (I promise that this is relevant): bananas, spinach, peppers and wheat bread. The man behind me eyed my purchases suspiciously and asked, "Is you some kind of vegetarious or something?" "No," I answered. "I just don't like cooking meat." This is true. Once I helped my roommate separate chicken for Hawaiian haystacks (of course this was for church) and I started dry heaving. Admitting that probably adversely affects my marriagability, but it is true. My new friend continued, "Once I went to my friend's house and I started looking through his kitchen and I realized there wasn't no meat there. And I was shocked and asked him, 'Is you some kind of vegetarious or something? Why wouldn't you tell me that before I came?'" That is an interesting friendship deal breaker.

Since I had been subjected to his judgment, I looked over to see what he was buying and rushed home so I could write this while I still remember:

6 2 liter sodas
5 cans of Spam
2 boxes of generic brand Cap'n Crunch
Entenmanns Coffee Cake
Entenmanns Pound Cake
2 boxes of Chips Ahoy
Potato Chips
Bagel Bites (ok I was jealous of that one)

Maybe I appear to be a vegetarious to the untrained eye, but at least I'm not one bite away from insulin shock.

APRIL FOOLS

February 2003

It was a bitterly cold morning in Provo, Utah, and I rushed out the door, late for my 8:00 a.m. class. I ran down to the parking garage below my building and realized that going to class was not a realistic goal, because my car looked like this:



No graffiti could be more painful to a single Mormon girl the week before her 22nd birthday. I knew that the perpetrators must be punished and I started to plan. My roommate called this really attractive guy from her class and I started cooking. As many of you know, my domestic skills are questionable, so I had a head start. I quickly emptied almost a complete container of salt in my quest to make the most disgusting food of all time. I even had tater tots floating in jello. Our heartthrob went over to my friend's apartment and they introduced themselves as new neighbors who wanted to get to know girls in the complex. The girls didn't suspect a thing and excitedly let them in. As expected, the food was not a big hit, but they continued eating it, lest they hurt their new friends' feelings. One of the girls later told me, "I was feeling so sorry for them, because I figured that they always ate food like that." They finally made it to dessert, and when they looked at the cake they realized that I had punk'd them (I can't remember what I wrote on it, help me out girls). Although their digestion was a little off, no permanent damage was done.

The next week, on my birthday, I was innocently eating lunch at Chili's with my sister, Jr., and my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, so I shot it to voice mail. When I retrieved the message my face fell as I heard the voice of the scariest professor in the Spanish department, "Isabel." She was monologuing me about my research on her hometown and I had no idea why. She even included several helpful websites for research. I appreciated the gesture, but was unable to forget the time that she cornered my tough as nails friend on campus and made her cry. I couldn't believe that my voice mail had been violated by such a character. I quickly got to the bottom of it and found out that my friend had called freaky professors that I hated, saying that she was me, and asked for research ideas on their pet topics. Happy Birthday to me.

So, Happy April Fools Day! Does anyone else have any good prank stories?