Thursday, March 01, 2007

Flashlight

Here's another recycled photo from last year. This was my favorite piece of grafitti in Iowa City, and the bastards cleaned it up.

You and your cousin have been planning this weekend forever... Well, at least for a couple of weeks now. Your cousin lives in Muscatine and she is so much cooler than you. She swears more, she wears sluttier clothes, she says she knows a guy who's in the Latin Kings' gang, and her mom is rarely home, so she can do whatever she wants.

Your mom, who is always home and seems to know exactly what kind of shit you're going to get into before you even try, suggests you wait for a different weekend - one that won't include an ice storm. Your cousin doesn't want to wait. After all, you've already made all those plans. Your cousin's mom has agreed to drive her both there and back. You miraculously get your mom to relent, and your cousin arrives on Friday night.

You wake up to the storm on Saturday. The ice is already so thick, that you can't see out the windows. Your trip to the mall gets cancelled. Plan B is watching an America's Next Top Model marathon with your cousin, while switching between eating green grapes and white powdered sugar doughnuts.

When the electricity goes off, you are stunned. What will you and your cousin possibly do without it? Your mother lights about 100 candles and suggests you read, paint or make clothes. Your cousin doesn't like to do any of those things. At first, you both text your seperate friends on your seperate phones, but your friends all seem to have electricity, and therefore, better things to do.

Finally, you ask your cousin if she wants do make-overs, and that is something she's actually interested in. Your mother digs through a cupboard and finds stuff you can use to do manicures and pedicures too. At some point, the lights come back on, but neither you or your cousin can really think of anything you'd rather be doing. For the next few hours, you talk, and soak feet and hands, and exfoliate, and paint nails, and your cousin suddenly doesn't seem that much cooler than you. She even admits that being allowed to do whatever she wants, feels a little lonely.

9 comments:

booda baby said...

I LOVE this story. LOVVVVEEE it. I'd love it, anyway, but since I've been laboring to find a sweet little story to animate, I'm particuarly appreciative of the small, the short, the evocative that looks effortless.

I actually thought it was an oldey-fashionedy story (mostly because I had a cousin in Muscatine) until I hit the text messaging part. Isn't that weird, that one day, even text mssg'g will be oldey worldey stuff?

Churlita said...

Thanks. Was your cousin from Muscatine too cool for school as well?

By the time my girls have kids, text messaging will probably be as funny as eight tracks.

rel said...

Churlita,
Cool story, well told. Sometimes fate has a way of making things right. Not always, maybe notm even usuall but sometimes.... This time!
You may notice (4 dots) In the end rules rock. Did I just say that? Me the guy who just got his work evaluation and it said "hates to follow rules". Hey hey. Oh well, what can i say. ;-)
rel

Anonymous said...

Last line is the kicker.

Great story. Rock on.

Anonymous said...

Great post. I'm gonna sound old here but here goes... these kids today have no idea how to entertain themselves without external visual or auditory stimuli. Us old-timers aren't much better but we can at least remember a time without the internet, cable, cell phones and whatnot.

It's good they experienced this. It's good they saw - at least for a few hours - that you can lose it all and still survive.

Churlita said...

Rel,

I love it that you hate to follow rules. I always appreciate that in people.

Not Faint Hearted,

It was sad how she came here telling us how much cooler she and her life was, and then admitted that she would rather be less cool and just have her mom around more.

Bice,

I thought it was great that they got so immersed in what they were doing, that they didn't care that the electricity came back on.

no said...

Awesomeness.

Margaret said...

aww, what a sweet story, you and your girls are awesome. like a big graphiti smile

Churlita said...

ILYITF,

Thanks.

Margaret,

We are a big grafitti smile.