Quiz: Am I Pretentious?

Please give yourself a point for every affirmative response. ed note: Don't be offended, I even used myself as inspiration for some of them.

1. I bought a subscription to the New Yorker, just so I could be one of those people.

2. I write gchat/Facebook statuses in French or any other language that I do not actually speak (Hakuna Matata is exempt).

3. I can't leave the house without my Ivy League hoodie. I knew someone who wore a Columbia sweatshirt every single day. In the summer.

4. While I am speaking English, I suddenly say words like "rigatoni" or "Guatemala" in a foreign accent. ed note:N/a if the word is actually in your native language.

5. I travel abroad and spend the entire time either shopping or at bars. When I return, I tell everyone who asks about my trip, "The thing I loved the most about _____________ was the people. I felt like we really had a connection that surpassed language and culture." ed note:I have even heard people say this about Spring Break in Cancun.

6. When I go to lectures or films, if there is a Q&A section afterwards, I ask self aggrandizing questions to make myself look more intelligent instead of to obtain information. My friend told me that at one Q&A, the director nipped this in the bud by responding with questions that he knew they wouldn't be able to answer.

6. I describe everything slightly ruthless or conniving as Machiavellian.

7. I call my group of friends a "veritable United Nations." ed note: I want to know which one of your friends is filling the role of Ahmadinejad.

8. I hate romantic comedies and only watch documentaries or slow moving foreign films where everybody dies. ed note:Miss Jill: 1. I keep trying to like rom coms for social reasons, but they are so boring. On Thanksgiving I went to "Morning Glory" with my friends and I couldn't take it and just got up and left halfway through.

9. I use seasons as verbs. For example, "I summer in the Hamptons."

10. I say that I am a writer by profession when the only thing that I have ever published was a Twitter update.

11. I am in my late twenties and I am proud that I hang out with the self-proclaimed "cool" group. Manhattan single Mormons take heed-the rest of the world stopped having a "cool" group after high school ended.

12. I use big words without knowing the definition and correct other people's grammar. I may or may not excuse this by giggling and saying, "I'm an English major," but it is only my first semester of college.

13. I compare my lifestyle with "Sex in the City," because I have brunch with friends sometimes. I am a single Mormon, so an important factor is missing.

14. I am upper middle class or upper class and take advantage of all the benefits of the United States, but I defame it at any opportunity possible. ed note: I am all about thinking critically about everything, but I have heard rich Upper West Side residents sing the praises of socialist dictators on several occasions. We need to deport all of these people to the streets of Havana. As soon as they notice the dearth of vegan organic food, they will start to construct rafts.

Scoring
2+= Congratulations! You are well on your way to becoming a celebrity who spends $10,000 on hair extensions and then appears on a commercial asking everyone else to donate money to fight poverty.

Sorry, You Just Got MTAed, Son

You know that you just got MTAed when......

* You went to Harvard Business School and the man sleeping behind the booth makes more money than you, and has better benefits.

* CELEBRITY SIGHTING: You aren't positive, but you think that maybe you recognize the passenger next to you/climbing all over you as you peacefully sleep from An American Tail.

* You ride the same train so much that you notice that the homeless guy who was rejected from his family after being diagnosed with HIV last month is now a tourist from Philadelphia who was robbed.

* It's a weekend, so it takes you an hour to go a mile.

* You board the train and realize that the car is empty due to the overwhelming smell of human waste mixed with cheap rum. You quickly change cars, and just as the doors close, another homeless man looks up at you and asks, "Can you spare some change?"

* You just bought a DVD that someone made on his home computer in Chinatown.

* Service on your usual train has been replaced by shuttle buses, so you walk for 15 minutes to an alternate train. You think that you are so smart until you try to enter and are met with a facefull of caution tape.

* The conductor of the train leaves his little room to try to talk to you. This happened to me last week, hopefully these trains drive themselves.

* Someone proclaims that he used to be high on crack, but now is high on Jesus.

* A teenager tries to sell you a bag of Skittles for $5.00 to "keep [him] off the streets."

* It appears that a future Section 8 resident was just conceived on the seat next to you.

* You would be tempted to call Child Protection on a daily basis, if only you had cell phone service down there.

* The only time that you are happy that your tax money goes to this entity is when you don't want to pay for air conditioning in the summer, so you chill on public transportation all day.

* The bus driver lowers the wheelchair ramp so that a homeless guy can board with his cart (Thanks for this one Josh)

* You are three stops away from your house and suddenly the conductor announces, "This is the last stop."

* The service keeps getting worse, but you keep paying more for it.

A Proletariat Uprising of One/My Ensign Story Submission

When I was a kid, I always got so excited about the first day of school that I couldn't sleep. Except for seventh grade, I always really, really loved school. Now that I am on the other side of the podium, I spent a night of fitful sleep, waiting to know if school were canceled today. I'm pretty sure that they didn't want to call it too early, because last time there was a snow day,they told us the day before. The next day it was snowy, but the streets were clean enough that we could drive to the mall in Long Island although we supposedly could not drive five minutes to school.

Now that it is only 6 a.m. and I have the entire day at my disposal, I have decided that it is time to share one of my favorite inspirational stories. Since I moved to New York without a job at the start of the December when the recession hit, my employment options were somewhat limited. My basis for moving to New York was that I saw someone's pictures and it looked fun. My job search strategy was to spend around 14 hours a day applying to every job possible and to not be picky. I had an email address exclusively for job applications and in total I had sent out about 1500 resumes. This worked and I acquired a job the first week of January.

It is probably not in my best interest to share too many details about the nature of my work, but I was someone's assistant, let's call him Boris. My first indication that something was awry was that Boris only asked me how I was doing once in the entire time that I worked for him. He always talked to me with contempt, like I was the stupidest person he ever met (even though he had yet to master there, their and they're). He loved to say things like, "Wow! It is hard for me to imagine anyone thinking it was ok to staple papers like that." He was so lazy that he called me into his office to pick up papers from the fax or to get water from the water cooler. We shared a suite with some other people and when I told them some of the things that he asked me to do, they always stared at me incredulously. And he was super cheap. When he interviewed me, he told me that a perk of the job was that I would get a monthly unlimited subway pass, but after I started, he took the cost of it from my meager paycheck. I am sure that part of our relationship problem was that I have been spoiled by having my life filled with nice people, so I was not ready for him.

The weirdest part of all was that somehow he managed to be some kind of Casanova and love crazed women called the office all day. He would leave at intervals during the day and come back with rumpled clothes and reeking of alcohol. Once he told me to tell his wife that he was in meetings when I was pretty sure that he was actually meeting his lover "Babs" (who the receptionist told me was really hot). That afternoon he called me and asked me to get a phone number from the drawer in his desk and it was for a romantic spa. Although I had to fight a rising tide of nausea, it was better that he was there than in the office.

My worst surprise came when Boris asked me to set up something in Outlook. WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT As I opened the program, I saw several messages from a yahoo group called "nycswingers" with titles like "Men/ Woman Couples Wanted." There was even an evite to a swingers party. I started dry heaving and I called my mom during my lunch break. Telling her what a swinger was was a little awkward, but it was good revenge for when I pretended that I did not know the facts of life in 4th grade because I wanted to make her uncomfortable.

Every day on the day to work, I silently wished that the subway car would explode so that I would not have to go. I went to the Catholic Church nearby almost every day to pray for deliverance, but I kept feeling like I should keep working there. This continued for 7 months. Then one day he was harassing me and I thought, "This is your last day." At the end of the day, I gathered everything I had left in the office and went home. Then I crafted an email detailing the human rights violations that I had endured under his tyrannous rule, including examples and quotes. I started out by telling him that working for him was the most dehumanizing experience of my life. I concluded by saying that I was not in the position to have to put up with him anymore and bid him adieu. It was a masterpiece.

I did not send it, but rather sent it to my friends for review. My parents were on a month long pleasure tour of Europe, so I called my perpetually pregnant younger sister, Jr. for familial support. Everyone encouraged me to send it (easy to say when they had jobs or sugar daddys). I didn't know what to do, so I prayed and prayed and experienced one of the clearest feelings of peace that I had ever felt in my entire life. I thought that it was kind of weird that the Holy Ghost was endorsing my hate mail, but that was all the encouragement that I needed and I sent it.

The next morning I received a text from Boris that said something about preparing for a client who was coming in the morning and I responded, "Check your email." Then I freaked out and ran to the temple, where I again felt a strong feeling of peace. When I finally returned home, I nervously checked my email for Boris' response. In spite of current circumstances, the worst thing he could think of to say about me was that I asked an inordinate amount of questions. He also asked me if I was familiar with the phrase "Don't burn your bridges." Although I was surprised and a little disappointed that he was not eager to serve as a reference, I cut my losses and found the Turkish school two weeks later. I had quit at the perfect time. And I realized that I needed to stop fighting the fact that teens are my destiny.

In Which Miss Jill Unexpectedly Succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome

My school is really small and we don't have any substitutes, so we have to substitute for our co-workers. This is ok if someone has a cold, but very annoying if a co-worker is entrenched in a torpid battle against the forces of INS. On some days I only teach three or four classes, so I was asked to cover two periods of fourth grade. It was springtime, so we went to the park. There happens to be a deli on the way to the park, so I bought a few boxes of cookies and we had a great time.

I didn't know that such a small act of kindness would engender such fervid devotion, but two weeks later, a group of fourth graders showed up at the door of my classroom.
Their leader, a staunch Bieber devotee, asked, while trying to lovingly caress my neck, "Can you be our substitute?"
"Your teacher is here," I responded. "How did you find me so easily? (I was on the high school side and we change rooms every period)."
"We went into the Vice-Principal's office and looked for you on the security cameras."
"Great."

A few weeks ago, I heard some weird noises during my free period and I followed them to find the now fifth graders without a teacher. They greeted me with the familiar, "Will you be our substitute?"

I responded with a nervous laugh and said, "I think that your teacher is probably here, just late (as I imagined a bubbling teapot)."

They insisted that I was their dream substitute and as we street smart people would say, got up in my grill. Before I realized what was happening, they wrapped around me in a vice-like Ring Around the Rosy. There was no way out of this situation- lamentably, fifth graders are about my height, so it was impossible to nimbly dash under them. And it isn't like I could forcibly destroy the circle Red Rover style. My threats of punishment were fruitless, because I kept accidentally laughing, so I began to pitifully beg. I quickly realized that this could go on for a very, very long time, so I did the only reasonable thing-screamed for help.

After several grueling minutes, the Vice-Principal heard my screams and came running to my aid. He surveyed the astonishing scene with remarkable composure and the sight of him was enough to make my captors release their hands to set me free.

Photographic Evidence That I Always Choose The Cheapest Phone at the T-Mobile Store

Sorry for the bad quality, but at least I upgraded from the trusty RAZR that I used to use.

My friend's son casually helping himself to the tip jar:



Friendly Floridans:


No Pets Allowed
Except Seeing Eye Dog

But At Least I'm Not Afraid of Clowns

Public speaking, living in a building where someone was stabbed, moving alone to a crime ridden foreign country: what these things have in common is that they don't even make me a little bit nervous. And they probably should. I don't have any illusions about my rationality-at times I will be pontificating about something and interrupt myself to say, "This is not rational." For that reason, whenever I think about my worst fears, I can quickly identify a common thread-they are ridiculous.

Evidentiary Support

I am deathly afraid of....
* A hairdryer exploding in my face. I thought that I made this up, but my friend Tiff claims that this happened to her. Whenever I am using it and it sounds a little weird, I become nervous.

* Lighting matches (I always have to ask people to do this for me). My sister, on the other hand, is a pyromaniac who went through a whole box of matches in third grade when my parents weren't home. When my mom found all the evidence, we were all grounded, in spite of my exonerating phobia.

* Becoming brainwashed and entering into a polygamous union.

* The current Pope. I don't mean this in a disrespectful way and it has nothing to do with theology. When I was doing some research on the Obama as Antichrist movement, I came across some videos where the Pope had lasers shooting out of his eyes. Sometimes when I am walking in the dark,the image enters my mind and I get scared.

* Having a rat on my face. One used my friend as a launch pad in 2002 and I am not over it.

* Being surrounded by ham sandwiches with Miracle Whip on Wonderbread. The only thing grosser than that is bologna. I had to switch train cars once when people brought out their lunches. The #1 benefit of working with Muslims is that I never have to smell ham. I also hate the smell of Cheerios-this is not convenient. Sometimes my siblings hide them in my luggage when I visit, so I return home to that unholy stench.

* Suddenly becoming a boring conversationalist. If any of you ever hear me start a conversation with, "There are so many awesome girls in the ward who never go on dates" please verify that I currently have health insurance and then beat me until I am unconscious. I will not press charges.

* Having a lifestyle that can only be made interesting by attending theme parties (pimps n' hos, ugly sweater, 80s clothes). Real life friends, don't be offended. I don't judge your parties, they are just not my thing.

Does anyone else have irrational fears?

I don't even know what to say about this

Extracurricular Pedagogical Pursuits

Sometimes I read stories to my landlady's six-year-old daughter and the other day she excitedly handed me a book and said, "This book is really good. I love it."

It started by weaving a fascinating tale about the lives of penguins. I turned the next page and read, "Penguins love to play in their room. Use your mouse to point and click to discover all of their favorite pastimes. With each discovery, you will earn 50 points." Then I read a chart of what you could purchase with said points. I asked skeptically, "Isn't this boring?" She shook her head with conviction and said, "No, it is great." Since then, she has asked me to read it every time I have been there. However, she has never played the actual game.

*************************************************************************************
Warning, this is a little off color..

The other day, my friend said, "Can I ask you the meaning of a word?"
I replied, "Of course."
"I hear the kids saying this a lot. I think it is something like 'dutch bag'?"
"Uhhh..."
"I looked it up and I think that it must be a medical device. Why are the kids talking about that?"
Awkward Silence

In Which the Villagers Should Probably Stick to Pet Franchises

I am no stranger to vermin invasion-you can read about it here if you are curious.

I think that there is about a .000009% chance that this story is not a Turkish wives' tale, but lots of you are bored enough at work to read this, so I will continue. Today the girls were telling me that there are rats in the Turkish countryside that are big enough to devour unattended babies. One girl said that a friend of her cousin adopted a stray cat and lovingly raised it, along with a chihuahua. She loved the cat so much that they slept in the same bed every night, wrapped in a loving embrace.

One day the dog went missing and the girl became suspicious that the cat had eaten it. She was horrified, so she took the cat to the vet. On inspecting the cat, the veterinarian informed her that her beloved pet was actually a gargantuan rat.

Confessions of a Mormon Catholiphile

First confession: sometimes I passionately dislike people based solely on a ten second Sunday School comment. Example: "Gosh, I saw Angels and Demons last night and after I learned more about the Catholic Church, it strengthened my testimony of our Church so much. I just couldn't believe that they do so many evil things."

I just couldn't give her a chance after that, especially since I am pretty sure that she is the type of person who would spam her whole mailing list with Big Love boycott emails. Maybe it is because I am half Mexican (thanks to 19th century polygamists on the lam), but I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Catholicism, in spite of having read an early edition copy of Mormon Doctrine. I don't exactly want to cancel the Reformation, but I am a fan of a lot of things.


Shrines

My Catholic friend from Honduras came to visit two summers ago and she told me that there was a shrine that she wanted to visit in upper Manhattan that showcased the preserved body of a saint named Mother Cabrini. I couldn't even invent something that I would like to see as much as that, so we went immediately. And returned the next year when she visited again. And maybe I dropped in every once in a while before I moved to Brooklyn.

For some reason the head is in Italy, but allegedly the rest of the body is preserved at the church:




The Art

If I had a real house, I would decorate it like this-





I don't know where I got this taste, but I love Medieval and Renaissance religious paintings and I always have. My sister's best dis (or diss, not sure how that is spelled) was born when we were in college and we were talking about someone that we didn't like and she said, "That girl looks like a Renaissance painting." Here is a good example of what she meant:



Cathedrals and Churches



When I used to work for a verbally abusive swinger, I would get so stressed that I went to St. Francis of Assisi church almost every single day. I guess it doesn't bother me that much that their churches are so ornate-there are way worse things to spend you money on in New York than creating a building for worshiping God.

In Which Miss Jill Is Once Again Irrevocably Linked With Turkey

This is an interesting map I saw in the Economist this morning. It matches the states with a country with a similar GDP. Check out my home state of Illinois.

The Taking of the M116 Crosstown Bus

Despite the fact that I have been mooned on a subway platform and hit by a massive loogie (these stories are in the archives somewhere, but I forgot how to link them), I remain a devoted fan of teens. They teach me new slang words, keep me constantly supplied with Anatolian evil eye jewelry and always know how to do stuff on my phone. However, I think I might be missing something (like the two times when I didn't notice that people were missing limbs), because I don't think that the rest of society holds them in such high esteem.

The other day my former roommate, "Anna" told me a haunting story that perfectly captures the dark side of adolescents. She went to Costco and took the bus home through Harlem. At the stop after she got on, a huge group of teenagers charged onto the bus and surrounded her. During the siege, her foot was trampled on and she said "Ouch" loudly and they responded by laughing at her. Then, she found herself sandwiched between two girls who embarked on a careful analysis of her purchases:

"Why she got all that food?"
"I bet she gonna to sell it."
"Oh no, I bet she a teacher."

When Anna failed to reply, one of the girls started poking her to get her attention and she said, "Stop touching me." The teen responded by gently caressing her arm. This must have been a signal to the rest of her coven, because they launched a massive Cheeto assault from every corner of the bus. Anna sat there bravely, trying to ignore the fact that her clothes had quickly developed a thick cheese dust coating. Meanwhile, their leader stood menacingly above and taunted her with a tilted cup of soda. Luckily, most of them got off after a few stops, but as Anna left the bus, a girl attempted to trip her. When she told me this, I shuddered, thinking of what it would be like if the teens in my life ganged up on me like that, but I quickly breathed a sigh of relief because I am pretty sure that Cheetos are not halal (permitted in the Muslim dietary code).

Boring Soapbox Part
P.S. (not relevant at all, but as long as we are talking about dietary codes): I don't remember where I read this, but I read a blog post by a Mormon girl who decided that she should drink coffee because she didn't want to offend the Moroccans (I think) who offered it to her. She should have just told the truth and said that she wanted to try it, because that was a total cop out. Tea and coffee are a big part of Turkish culture and no one has been more understanding of my religious dietary standards than the Turks. They are always nice enough to offer me juice or something else to drink. They wouldn't respect if I were flexible about my religion just to be polite. It is silly to assume that they would judge us for not drinking coffee, when I doubt any of us would be offended if a Muslim or Jew did not want to eat our bacon. I can honestly care less what people do (I'm liberal about certain things), but don't come up with some lame reason. Take responsibility for your actions, thanks.

In Which Miss Jill's Baby Brother Accidentally Became a Priest of Ba'al

My aunt was a missionary in Norway and when she returned, she gave my mother several troll dolls that looked something like this:



My mother put them on the mantel above the fireplace. When he was little, my youngest brother, Baby Troy, created an obstacle course for himself and his final move was to lay across the couches in prone position, with his hands clasped and lowered over the side. One day on completing his course, he looked up from his prostration and realized with horror that the troll statues loomed above him. He looked at my mom and said tremulously, "I do not want to pray to idols." Someone was approaching the Old Testament storybook with a little too much zeal.



READER HELP SECTION
I started with that idol story because I get complaints when I write serious posts. The following is what I really wanted to talk about today. I know that some of you have lived in non-Christian countries, so maybe you have some insight into this.

In the past, I have always approached religious discussion as the Mormon point of view in an inter-Christian dialogue (not sure if that term is correct, but I mean that all the other participants belonged to other Christian faiths). Now that I live in New York, work in a Muslim school and am surrounded by Orthodox Jews, I have found myself entering conversations as a representative of Christianity instead of specifically as a Mormon. This presents difficulties because I always have to say things like, "Some Christians think this, but other Christians think this.... and I think this..." Last summer I became curious and started researching the history of Christianity and it was pretty interesting, but all of this has made me really wish that there was only one Christian church. So I have a few questions for you guys:

1. Has anyone else been in a situation in which you were asked to explain what Christians believe in general terms? How did you present your answers?
2. Why does Christianity have so many more variations than Islam and Judaism (I know they have their own divisions, but I can think of eight Latter Day Saint movements off the top of my head and we are not even very big)?
3. Has anyone read a book or collection of books that gave a good overview of the history of Christianity?

One Thousand and One Classes of Miss Jill

Although I have improved somewhat since I started, discipline has never really been my favorite thing about teaching. Especially my Achilles heel: middle school boys. Even though the students at my school are exceptionally well behaved, there is one middle school class of boys that is a little high energy. Last year they deployed an atomic stink bomb and were subsequently locked inside the classroom to enjoy it. They banged on the door with their little faces pressed against the window, suffering from the fruits of an Old World castigation.

In most of my classes it is possible to spend about 99 percent of the class time learning (I told this to a public school teacher in Washington Heights once and she was shocked), but in this class it is significantly less, as you have to constantly push against a tidal wave of irrelevant and "humorous" comments. It has always been a struggle, and I know that I am not alone because every time a teacher leaves that class, their lifeless eyes reflect the atrocities that they have endured.

Before Christmas break we watched a movie about the Salvadorian Civil War and after it was over I explained the political history of El Salvador in more depth. They were fascinated. Someone asked about the Cuban Revolution, but we were out of time, so I said that I would explain it the next class. The next class came and they begged for me to tell them "The Story." I told them that if we did everything that I wanted to, The Story could continue at the end of class. Each time someone talked out of turn, someone said, "Shut up, or we won't get The Story." They sat there, riveted by the tale of Che Guevara's early life and travels and eventual meeting with Castro in Mexico,staring at me like I was the World Cup final match. The bell rang before the Granma made it to Cuban shores and some of them screamed, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!" "Ok, next time at the end of class, if you are good," I promised incredulously. As I left, I was silently grateful that Latin American history provided me with enough dictatorships, violence and revolutions to last until the end of June.

The Disorderly Conduct Incident that the Tabloids Forgot to Cover

This morning I asked the seventh graders what they did over the winter break and two of them told me about a religious retreat that they had gone on. The started bragging about all the crazy things that they had done and reported that they "totally trashed a hotel room."



I immediately started thinking of a Charlie Sheen or Amy Winehouse magnitude disaster and suspiciously asked, "What exactly does trashing a hotel room entail."

One of the girls replied, "It was crazy. We ate some candy and dropped the wrappers on the floor."