Posts (page 2)

How many pets have you owned in your lifetime? Tell us about them.
Submitted by jennajellopy.vox.com.

I'm killing time until my mom calls me to dinner...

Duke was there when I was born; a brown-and-white Springer Spaniel. I don't remember much about him but my mom told me that whenever the family moved into a new house he would "mark his territory" by taking a dump in my dad's study. Which is odd, because he would do this before the boxes were unpacked and before furniture was in the right place, so how did he know which room was my dad's study? Smart little Spaniel. He eventually got old and my mom had to put him down while my dad was on a six-month tour of duty; my dad vowed he would never leave my mom alone with his dog again.

After Duke there was Molly. My parents say I refused to move from California to New York (Navy's orders) until my mom promised that we would get a new dog when we got there. My two-year-old self was much placated. We found Molly at the local shelter; there were only two dogs there and I remember the other dog was a big fluffy collie. Molly was a huge chocolate lab-mixed-with-unknown-breed, two months old when we got her and from my tiny two-year-old perspective she was a monster. We used to tell people she was part bear and sometimes they believed us. I suggested the name. She liked to hide her nose in people's crotches. Sometimes that didn't go over so well at dinner parties.

When we moved from New York to California (again, Navy's orders) she developed a strange nervous habit of attempting to bury her bone in hotel rooms. She would rub her nose against the carpet to try to create a hole; all she got was a scraped-up nose. Molly was with us for 11, nearly 12 good years.

Nameless goldfish came to my brother and I at a county fair or something. The duo survived two hours (approx.) before they met the Porcelain God.

Yurtle the Turtle joined the family when I was in fourth or fifth grade. He was a very exciting pet for all of ten minutes; then he peed on my leg and suddenly I was not very enamored with him. Sometimes his eyelids crusted over and he wouldn't be able to find his food. Eventually he died, and two days later I noticed and buried him.

Midnight the Guinea Pig lasted thirteen days. Petsmart has a 14-day money back guarantee so once he was gone I got Daisy and Flower; we were told that guinea pigs did better when they had a companion and that females were better than males. Flower lasted eight days, so we used that money to buy Sunshine. Daisy lasted a record 16 days before she met an untimely demise--I took a picture of her and the flash gave her a heart attack.

Sunshine amazed all of us by lasting two years. By that time I was rather bored with her so I gave her to a student in my mom's class. About a year later we got word that Sunshine had passed on.

Swen isn't technically mine and isn't technically a pet in the truest form of the word, but he is an amazing part of my life. He's a 14 or 15-year old Quarter horse, I've been riding him for four years. We had a few battles in the beginning but now he couldn't be a more pleasant horse and it will really be painful to leave him behind when I go to college next year.

Ruby Belle is queen of the household and she knows it. She is a two-year-old Beagle; my parents got her for my fifteen birthday but she belongs to the whole fam. She's a little pudgy which just makes her cuter. Sometimes I swear she's the smartest dog in the world; other times I think if I hold up one ear and blow in it, her other ear will flap up. She doesn't like to be alone and likes to lay in the hallway so she can see the whole family at once; she'll scratch on my door until I open it and then lay halfway between my room and my dad's study.

There you have it, a dissertation on pets then and now. Now it's time for pansit (hope I spelled that right)!

Oreo, a chocolate sandwich cookie produced and distributed by Nabisco, used to rely on the slogan, "AMERICA'S FAVORITE COOKIE." Lately--in the last two, three, I don't know, years-- this slogan has transformed. An Oreo is now "MILK'S FAVORITE COOKIE," and it just begs the question, what prompted this change?

I see a frenzied board room meeting among the top execs at Nabisco, the guys (and gals) that first came up with the concept of taking two thin, wafer-like, nearly tasteless "chocolate" cookies, slapping some "creme" of questionable origin in the middle, giving it a strange name, and delivering them into the chubby hands of Middle America all sitting around in a panic.

"What do you mean the results of the studies are different this year?" one shouts in the face of a scared young newcomer.

"It's just that, well, since the dawn of the Great Oreo, the yearly studies have given us utterly conclusive evidence that the Great Oreo is, indeed, the favored cookie of the great majority of Americans," he explains, words tumbling over each other as he tries to save his ass while still delivering the truth. "This year, though, something's different! We're not really sure that Oreo is 'America's favorite cookie!' anymore!"

There are anguished cries. Groans of defeat. The PR department is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. What to do, what to do?! They put $75 million into that advertising campaign, and now the slogan has no basis! Oreo is not America's favorite cookie! Sales will plummet, lay offs are certain, the whole company is going down, down, down!

"But wait!" A voice calls out, threaded through with hope and confidence. "We can just change the slogan!"

Gasps of indignation and disbelief.

"No, really!" The voice continues, and no one's really sure who's speaking. Is it the voice of the Great Oreo itself?! "No need to be drastic. We'll just... we'll use a slogan that can't be proven... and therefore cannot be disproven!"

"But where will we ever find such a slogan?" Nabisco's CEO asks, morose and resigned to his dark fate. He wondered if Burger King was hiring.

"Milk's favorite cookie."

An ethereal light burst through the proverbial clouds hovering over that conference room. And the company was saved.

But then again, maybe "Milk's favorite cookie!" is only new in America. Of course they couldn't ship Oreos overseas with packages proclaiming the cookies to be "America's favorite cookie!" Was the Oreo also "Canada's favorite cookie"? "Mexico's favorite cookie"? "Uganda's favorite cookie"? Or perhaps, instead of wasting money on the production of so many different packages for so many different countries, Oreo was simply "milk's favorite cookie" when it ventured beyond the borders of America.

Then, when America's loyalty shifted and the Oreo was no longer a favorite, they were simply able to fall back on the slogan already popularized in other countries. The graphics specialists just had to do some clever cutting-and-pasting in the commercials, a quick ADR session and they looped the word "Milk's" over the word "America's," and all was well in Nabisco once more.

Of course, it will be another dark day in snack foods history when the Wheat Thins slogan, "Great Taste... Big Crunch" comes under scrutiny due to the general consensus that the crackers' crunch is more "medium-sized" than "big."

Whenever I start to think about the future, which lately has been approximately ALL THE TIME, I feel this big lump of something starting to grow in my chest. Unless it's the stirrings of a third nipple just about to make its first appearance, it must be something a little more metaphorical.

It changes shapes often. Most of the time it's blind panic, probably a psychological reflex triggered by my mind to make me stop thinking about such frightening, unknown things. Other times it's desperation, a need for the future to be here and now and not there and later.

Mostly, though, I think it's potential.

My potential greatness. My potential failure. My potential happiness. My potential achievement. My potential devastation.

I'm ready for my future to start. I'm ready to be done with high school, done with childhood.

Unfortunately, I can't speed up time. Graduation Day is getting closer, but it's not close enough, and until it's here and now, I guess I'll have to create my own future.

Really, what I'm getting at, what all of these recent posts add up to, is that I am really sick and tired of waiting, or really, I am sick of being afraid of what's coming.

So come on, life. Hit me as hard as you can. I may not be ready for you, but there's nothing more I can do to prepare except wait, and I refuse to wait any longer.

I'm restless.

I'm sick of where I am, afraid of where I'm going.

I know what needs to be done but I lack the motivation to do it.

I ping-pong between being proud of myself and being disgusted with myself.

I say, "It'll be different tomorrow."

Tomorrow has come and gone and come and gone and everything is the same.

Why do I insist on holding myself back?

What time period would you have lived in, if you could have lived at any time?

Definitely during the Italian Renaissance, and I would have lived in Florence.

A close runner-up is living in Versailles during Louis XIV's reign.

--

Nothing says "WHY YES, I AM SPENDING MY FRIDAY NIGHT ALONE, THANK YOU FOR ASKING" quite like going through the grocery store checkout line with one (1) frozen TV dinner and one (1) single-serving sized Häagen-Dazs carton.

Growing up is such a funny thing.

For approximately sixteen years it feels like it's happening in slow motion and there's nothing you can do to speed it up. Then, suddenly, here I am at seventeen and someone pressed the fast forward button and won't let it up. I've gone from Barbies and cooties to making real-life adult decisions, and it's scary as hell.

I feel like I'm stuck in the worst sort of limbo, like I'm some sort of half-child half-adult sideshow freak. Half of my brain is worrying about things like what color dress to wear to Homecoming and the other half is thinking about such life-altering decisions as where to go to college.

Part of me wants to dig out my Barbies and pretend to be six again. Part of me can't wait to finish the transformation and take a big step into a big, scary world.

Some decisions I will make in the next few weeks, months, years, will have no real repercussions. (Unless I happen to buy the same dress as the head cheerleader--oh the drama!!) Others will shape my future and dictate the success or failure of the next few years.

Only one thing is certain right now: My tanlines better even out before Homecoming.

I am slowly but surely coming to the realization that my life will not and cannot change without deliberate and purposeful action derived from somewhere inside of me.

It's one of life's harder lessons to learn. I'll take it as a good sign that I'm coming to this conclusion at a mere seventeen years of age.

The great question is, now that I have achieved this level of enlightenment, what will I do?

The answer to this question will hopefully be answered here and now and tomorrow and ten years down the line. Watch me soar or come crashing down or both, all at once.

Big thanks to Jen for the Vox invite.

All right, Stacy. Commence life-changing.

(Yes, I did just refer to myself in the third person. In case you were wondering.)