Communication: I Think I Minored in That

If you haven't noticed folks of my generation don't communicate well, at all. My friends and I talk, mostly in person, after countless texts and an ugly amount of back and forth, some confusion and cursing. We make a rare phone call to each other, usually at inappropriate hours of the day for not particularly good reasons.

Today I found out that even our backwards texting ways, our middle school speaking through other friends and the occasional email/wall post isn't enough. One of my friends failed to communicate something super important to any of his non-school friends. Those friends, including me, consider themselves too important to miss this type of thing. Not that our knowledge would make a difference in the events but because it was important to our friend.

Fuck, I received a message the other day from a friend complaining that his messages to another friend had gone unacknowledged, I had the same problem with that friend, for nearly a week. The unresponsive friend had a good reason, but we bitched and bitched and bitched at the dead silence we received in response to our hilarity.

Sorry for the assholery. Next time slap out a mass text or a two word email. We'll understand.

My uncommunicative friends and I, we do communicate with each other when need be.

Everyone has a friend they call when they're in a new relationship.
Everyone has a friend they call when they've had a rough week and need a drink.
Everyone has a friend they call when they're stranded after their car breaks down.
Everyone has a friend they call when they're using heroin, again.

And those calls always are answered.

As are the "Happy New Year," "Why the fuck didn't you give me a shout out on the radio?" "I'm so wasted" calls.

Oh and by the way, if you're using heroin ever seek help.

Mother of all Anxiety

My phone rang. I didn't answer it. My mother knew I was unavailable and called anyway. I should have had my phone on silent, I thought I had turned the ringer off, my bad. I was sweating bullets through the identification section of a midterm and didn't need her telling what I forgot to do.

I call her back after the test.

My mom states that she's nearly to the town I live in to visit my grandparents, one of whom is in the hospital, the other's mother is in the hospital and I am too sick to visit with either.

Fine, that's fine.

Then she says "So you're probably going to have a bunk mate for the next week or so." and I nearly died.

I love my mother dearly, she does everything imaginable for me. She is a neat freak. I am a slob.
I don't want my mother in my room examining everything, the pop corn kernels on the floor, the lack of visible carpet, the unfolded clothes, the piles of dirty laundry in my bathroom, the disarray of my bathroom, the beer in the fridge, the grossness that is our kitchen.

Now I understand why my sister pulls her hair out (OK that was low, my mom is not to blame for my sister's Trichotillomania). In all seriousness only a mother can have the kind of affect she has, I dread her seeing the way I live, sloppily. I feel like she'll judge me. I feel like somehow I've disappointed her, no scratch that I know that my slovenly life style disappoints her. She'd walk in and see the books and clothes on the floor and be appalled but the fact that I have sheets on my bed wouldn't matter. I have a clear desk. So what? There is nothing under my bed, who cares? Everything else is disgusting.

Last week I had a different mother run in, my roommates mother. She stayed in our apartment for three days, the entire time fighting with her daughter and making the "common areas" of the apartment impossible to enjoy. While making dinner one night a cloud of smoke covered the apartment (the pan was burning, not the food). We opened the doors and turned on the fans and before too long it was bearable again. The entire time she coughed and hacked in the way that old people do, complaining that I was cooking my food improperly, when the reality is that if I had been using a different pan, on that wasn't way past its prime, one of her daughters pans there wouldn't have been smoke. But alas I cannot use her pans because she can't clean them. But that's beside the point (it pisses me off to no end though) this woman actually went hunting for the bad smell in our apartment. She opened all of our bedroom doors and popped her head in for a sniff (I now lock my door when there are other people in my apartment so that it doesn't happen again) she later revealed the source of the smell... The Whale's room and bathroom! No surprise. None at all. It didn't need to be said out loud, in the same way that I don't need to call her The Whale. We all knew. We live there in the filth.

Mothers don't judge. Other people's mothers stay out of my room.