Just Imagine Everyone is Naked

An ode to four-way stop signs.

If street signs could speak their political affiliations, four-way stop signs would be the leaders of socialist party. They eliminate any sense of hierarchy and dominance. Your street is no more important than my street, we may all be somewhat less efficient, but at least we are all equal,  we all must come to a complete stop.

Four-way stop signs create a positive human connection where few others exist.  At  other times on the road, eye contact is interpreted as…

Sleazy and Invasive: "Hey…Check you out, sweet thang."

Judgmental: "That is not someone who should be drinking a 64 oz Slurpy."

Apologetic:  "Oh! Did I just cut you off? My B."

Competitive:  "When that light turns green, my beamer is SO gonna kick your honda's ass, vroom. vroom."

At the four-way intersection though, eye contact is cordial, often accompanied by a smile; it's a conversation:

"You go."

"No, you, really, go ahead."

"No it's ok! See that pedestrian approaching?  I'm going to wait here and let him cross so everyone here knows that as someone who powers her transportation with metal and fuel, I understand that I am morally inferior to he who transports himself via his own physical exertion. So really, since your coast is clear, go right ahead."

"Fair enough, thank you. It was nice chatting (with our eyes).  Have a lovely day!"

And finally, four-way stop signs introduce a potential  for beauty and symmetry in the paths of the moving cars.  Consider the following three success states of the four-way intersection:

1)  When every car, coming from every direction , is headed straight, a certain rhythm can be achieved. North/South. East/West. North/South. East/West.  Up/down. Left/Right. Top/Bottom Side/Side. Longitude Latitude. Horizontal. Vertical.  Waves lapping.  Armies marching. Cowboys dancing.  It's electric. Boogie woogie woogie.

2)  When opposite-facing cars both  turn left, score two  for the underdogs.  "Yes!"  They shout in unison. "Without anyone heading straight (as are our typical legal oppressors) we're  free to make these turns just as soon as we've come to a complete stop. And while such victory alone tastes sweet, it's made that much sweeter by the fact that you, oncoming stranger, are experiencing the same rare glory." 

3) Yatzee! Four cars, all turning right. It's like a black jack dealer sitting in the middle of the intersection just dealt himself twenty-two. We all played, we all won, and the subtle but important corollary: no one lost.  Not even the dealer who sits in the center totally unscathed, because what initially appeared to be two crossing paths, is actually, to four right-turning vehicles, the sweet European kiss-on-the-cheek of four distinct tangential lines.

The anecdote is only one sentence long, but first, some backstory.

A year an a half ago, a man with tattoos up and down his arms chest, back and neck, with studs and bars and rings up and down his ears, face, and who knows where else, leaned in very close and told me to “breath in…and…OUT” as he drove a needle in and out of the flesh above my left eye. I faked a smile while he held the bar in place and screwed the ball in place. In the past eighteen months, my eyebrow ring has come out on various occasions, but never unprovoked: sometimes it was too speedy a removal of a shirt, sweater, or goggles, once it was a run in with a volleyball net, and then there are the less graphic occasions when I absentmindedly fiddle with the ball until the threads loosen and the screw pops out.

Unrelated to all that, it’s been well over a year since the second-to-last time I used a screwdriver. My Ikea bookcase (third picture down) requires a laborious amount of dis- and re-mantling in order to move it. Unfortunately I seem to move a lot, and also unfortunately I love that bookcase. So the second-to-last time I used a screwdriver was the last time I moved, sixteen months ago, down to Palo Alto. The last time I used a screw driver was two weeks ago when I moved again, into a new PA apartment.

Two weeks ago, I’m sitting on the floor of my new apartment, screwdriving the final screw into my beloved Ikea bookcase, when the ball of my eyebrow ring cosmically unscrews itself and falls out.

I’ve since decided this is either evidence of balance in the universe or my fairy godmother’s sense of humor. Anyway, these are the only theories I’ve come up with so far to answer the question I posed to my empty apartment at the time it happened:  “What the fuck?”

The mountains wave goodbye to our tail lights. Thank you, come again. The sun tiptoes out of sight so no one will notice he’s taking the daylight with him.

Whoa, when did it get so dark?  
Good question, and by the way, have you seen Sun? He was just here a minute ago.
Sun snickers from his hiding place – it’s a good one, we won’t find him till morning. 

The car warms quickly and we wiggle our toes because now that we’re free from our boots, we can. At the coffee shop off the highway, we order three different coffee drinks. A man with an inflated face and an unfortunate mustache asks me where I got my track jacket. I tell him I work for Facebook and he tells me, ugh! shoulda sold. I glower and start to argue, but excuse myself when the barista starts listing off our adjectives, medium, peppermint, mocha … Back at the car we have to swap drinks three times before ending up with right ones. Sip, swap, sip, swap, sip, swap, sip. sip. sip...  

Once, after I’d run farther than I’d ever run before, my legs didn’t feel strong so much as my arms felt weak. I had the urge to retrace the course walking on my hands just to achieve balance (ironic, since I can balance for fewer than no seconds upside-down). I felt something similar as we drove down from the mountains and I watch the Colorado landscape whizzing past. My whole body is exhausted, I try to cross my legs once, but can't and my arms are too tired to lift my latte, but my mind is moving so fast I have to struggle to keep it in the car. Don’t you think you’re going a little fast, brain? Someone could get hurt. Are you even wearing your seatbelt?

I am thinking about happiness, and the number of unsuspecting things that can trigger it… 

Snowboarding, obviously, Frisbee tournaments, summiting fourteeners, running farther than I’d ever run before…in summary, the limits of physical exertion. And brain exertion too. I miss math. In grade school I used to curl up in front of Saturday morning TV with the math section of the GED. x = y!  y = 42!  The trains pass in St. Louis!  The donut has more frosting than the cupcake! Colonel mustard killed Ms. Peacock in the pantry with the lead pipe! Victory! For everyone but Ms. Peacock. Or the cupcake…

Unexplainable patterns, see: the golden ratio…
Explainable patterns, see: the digits of the multiples of nine summing to nine…
Perfect squares, see: today we rode chair number 4, number 25, and number 121…
Word play, see: eat shoots and leaves…
Personification, see: the sun peaking back up over the mountains to see if we’re still looking for him.  We’re not, we’re sleeping. It’s safe to come out now, Sun…
Coincidences, see the assassinations of Honest Abe and JFK…
The meta, see: our ability to comprehend evolution…
The miracles, see: little emily’s recovery…
Accidents that turn out for the best, see: some broken condoms (you know who you are)
The unexpected see: Mili Vanili and Lance Bass. Ok, not Lance Bass.
The expected. See? I just knew you were going to say that…

***

The family welcomes us home, so glad you’re safe, and heads out to the Christmas Service.  Tony and Dan fall asleep in distant corners of the house and I don’t see either again for hours. Until now, the house has been accomodating two parents, two grandparents two cousins two uncles and two aunts (the ants go marching two by two) Now it’s mine, all mine! Hurrah, hurrah.  The silence sings to me. I start a bath, I light candles, I soak, I hum Christmas carols, I relax into my own exhaustion. After I dry off, I dress in flowing silk and cotton, it's not really like me, but neither is moving so slowly, so deliberately. I feel so light tonight I want nothing weighing me down. Just give me a sleigh and a couple of reindeer – I could fly.

On a couch by the fire, I settle in with my laptop and a blank document entitled “Resolutions.” 1. Restart piano lessons. The fire isn’t reaching my toes, so I slip off the couch and stretch out along the rug, belly down. 2. Stop using the word “should.”  Now I feel the warmth on my back my neck, my toes, my combed wet hair. I’m a cinnamon stick floating in hot cider, I’m a chestnuts roasting, I’m a happy cat. 3. Give up meat, for real this time. It’s not often I’m this warm inside, it should be more often. 4. Read twelve books. I put my laptop off to the side, and open book number zero: short stories by Dave Eggers. I have one story left, it’s told from the perspective of a dog:  Through the trees I love to run with my claws reaching and grabbing so quickly like I’m taking everything. damn, I’m so in love with all of this. I decide right then that I will have a dog one day, it will teach me. As well as my own fire place, it will warm me.  

I finish the book, and close it. I let some tears fall. The dog from before has hit his head and drowned, but discovered some news in the afterlife: Of course God is the sun. Why would there be a God and also a sun? I’m not sad-crying for the dog, I happy-cry for the book; the beauty of the story itself, and my own sense of completion, also for sleeping cousins, for Christmas traditions, for my mom’s feast warming in the kitchen, for my Jewish dad singing his heart out in the church choir*, for being simultaneously independent in this big house and supported by this big family, for snowboarding, for math, for words, for knowing for certain I want to write, indefinitely. I pull my laptop back to jot that down, 5. Write. Just then the front door opens.  We’re home! Let the festivities begin!

damn, I’m so in love with all of this.

 
*At some point during the evening someone slipped a box of chocolate stars of david into his suit pocket. Accepting diversity is out, embracing it is in.

A song I recognize. I know it, what’s that song? It continues, it repeats. That song what’s that song? that song. that song. I sing along in my head do-do do-do-do I hum, my eyelids hum. They hum and flutter open, and closed, and open. That song is not a song, it’s my alarm clock. It’s 6:00 am, the hardest part. 

On the way to the mountains, Emily points out the moon, big fat white cue ball on a slow descent, corner pocket. She points out the Starbucks, but she doesn’t need to, my nose is way ahead of her. She points out the sunrise, pretty huh? She points out that our friends from high school are still the ones we can trust. We’ve taken this drive (or one like it) many times before, since before we could drive, she and I. We’ve taken it on bikes, we’ve taken it on big wheels.   

In the Copper lot, Emily and I wiggle and squirm our way into our boots, our helmets, our mittens. Thom calls. Where you at? Emily tells him we don’t get out of the car until the last possible minute. It’s true. A moment before, my cousin, Dan, asked for the sunscreen and I rolled down the window for long enough to sling it in his direction, like the keeper of the Emerald City go away, get lost, scram, not you, Dan, but the cold. It’s warm in here, warm as emeralds, warm as Oz.  Way to be Native, girls, Thom says on the other end of the line, he’s accusing us of acting like foreigners, like Texans. Our defense: Being "native" is not having anything to prove. We turn up the heat, we shrug an apology at my cousins standing outside the car, ready to go. Cousin Dan’s wearing jeans. Good for him, whatever you’ve got. Way to be native.
 

First lift up, enthusiasm is high. 

First run down, we’re all out of breath.

Excuse me, do you have any extra breath?
Oh! I’m sorry, I’m all out. Ask that guy.
That guy shakes his head. He might be turning blue.    

Second lift up, a piecemeal analogy, about skiing and sex: Before you get out there,  you think you can go forever. but once you’re actually doing it, turns out you’re not as smooth and graceful as you thought. You look forward to it all summer and when you finally hit the slopes, your gear is a little uncomfortable, your curves are sloppy, your boot keep slipping right out of the binding. Our laughter is muffled by our ski masks, but our cheeks burn right through.   

3rd lift up, quote Demetri Martin. Bana. Bananana. Dammit!

Fourth run down, powder! I w00t  when I jump. Cousin Tony dammit!s when he hits a branch. Emily laughs when she—well, we don’t know when. It’s one of those days, she says, where I just sit on the lift and laugh.  Tony has known her for four hours, but suspects it’s always one of those days. I let him know that today’s unique because she sits on a lift and laughs. Usually it’s a chair, a driver’s seat, a floor, a rooftop, whatever. She’s a giggler; I think she gets it from me. I think I got it from her. We probably gave it to each other, back and forth, playing miss Susie in grade school, braiding it in to each other’s hair, pinning it on to one another’s prom dresses, sending it in care packages to college dorm rooms.

Fifth run down. God damn! This day is beautiful.  Is it less so if I try to capture it on a blackberry? Yes, is the answer.

Pause. Boots off, bathroom break. Drink water, people, water! Cousins Tony and Dan and I share a Pizza, family style.

Sixth run down, we reminisce. About the time we skied with a bananana (dammit!), taking turns sneaking it into each other’s hoods.  About the time Emily and Thom gave up on skiing and rode chairs down a hill instead. Chair Skis, they called them. They’re Russian, I think. About the time we spent an entire day in misogynistville comparing women to skis: I like my women like I like my skis…two at a time…waxed…straight (mostly)…It’s not that funny, so why can't we stop laughing?  It’s pretty funny; especially those analogies too crass to print, but you're creative, reader.

Seventh lift up, Emily and I start to sing Christmas carols. On the first day of Christmas my true love…Ken, between us, attempts misdirection by singing other songs, Jingle Bells Jingle Bells but we just ditch our song and sing his instead. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas tree oh Christmas tree how lovely are your jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell rock. We’re playing follow the leader. Grand Finale, sung in unison:

Dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of clay…

Long pause. What’s next?  No one knows. Shrug, carry on. Dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of clay. Dreidel dreidel dreidel I made it out of clay. Dreidel dreidel dreidel I made it out of clay. Dreidel dreidel dreidel I made it out of clay. Hey!  Pathetic, half of me thinks.

Seventh run down, Ken says, you know, dreidel isn’t spelled like you’d expect. Like I’d expect? Neither is anything else, ever. I'd probably get dreidel right by accident. (i didn't. misogynist either).

9^th, 10^th, 11^th runs down, I am alone. My turns are tight, my jumps are even. I’m fast, so damn fast, look at me go!  I’m swing dancing down the mountain, hips twisting, sweat glistening, a steady rhythm punctuated by bursts of pizazz. I swing between the other dancers because I have a beat to keep, the mountain is my partner and my job is to follow.

They say spinach is healthy. (where “they” = Popeye, the FDA, and my mom. Hi mom!). So I eat spinach. Shoot, I eat spinach like you for breakfast. But even though I’m quite proud of my spinach-gobbling ways I still find it just as embarrassing as the next self-conscious spinach-eating guy to find out, after some amount of time spent in public, that I have a little sumpin’ sumpin’ stuck in my teeth.  In case you’re not a spinach-muncher (ooh, that sounds dirty) let me fill you in on how this works:

For me, the degree of embarrassment is positively, linearly correlated with the following two variables, summed together: 1. The total number of human interactions I’ve had since the time of spinaches consumption. (that’s start time, not end time, you never know when that sucker got wedged in there)

 2.The amount of spinach stuck in ones teeth, measured in really-small-units, squared.

embarrassment

And further, the embarrassment is positively, exponentially correlated with the degree to which I care what those people think about me. Here are some examples:

Not very embarrassing: The construction worker who waves at me as I bike to work—incidentally, he also has something hanging out of his nose. Should I say something?

A little embarrassing: Marcel Laverdet. I don’t particularly care what Marcel thinks -- mostly because it’s a lost cause. Apparently I’m “at the top of the bottom” of his friend barrel.  That’s right people, Marcel keeps his friends in barrels.  So it’s only embarrassing at all because I know he’ll tease me about it later in front of more people who are higher in my friend barrel.  That’s right. I have one too. I got it at the same place Marcel did, but for cheaper because I promised to let the sales guy be on top….of the barrel, people. 

Pretty embarrassing: A date; all of my coworkers – all of them, or a support group for S.E.A.  - spinach eaters anonymous. 

Really embarrassing: Techcrunch, the New York Times, Computer World, your friends family, and everyone.

I don’t know if you noticed something about that last sentence, but it appeared to have a little segue stuck in its teeth …A couple weeks ago, I helped Facebook launch a product that tasted a lot like spinach. No, it wasn’t baby cabbage or field greens, it was Beacon: a means by which Facebook users can allow their friends to see what they’re up to in the world besides hanging out on Facebook. It's designed to increase the types of information that can flow between friends. For example – I just rented the West Wing, Season 5 on blockbuster. If my friends knew that, they would think I was super smart, and obviously not just trying to show off since I’m all the way on season five.  Beacon would let me auto-pump that information onto my profile (mini-feed) and my friends' News Feeds. I could buy a book on Ebay,  tickets on Travelocity, write a review on Yelp – and all of that can now be fed into News Feed. Way less so-and-so wrote on so-and-so’s fun wall, and way more real information. Cool, right?

Eventually, yes. But no matter how healthy this product will one day be for people, man-oh-man did we have a whole garden of  beacon stuck in our teeth when we launched the first version in front of a very large, and critical audience (see figure A above). Luckily, our friends at EVERY NEWS SOURCE EVER were nice enough to  say “Psst. Facebook-dudes, you might want to go look in a mirror – you’re usually pretty hot, but we can’t see past that big ol' piece of something.” Ok, they didn’t say “Psst” so much as “HEADLINE: “ but at least they let us know we’d messed up before too many ChrisKwanzikukkahs. (the main problem with the design was that it would happen at inopportune times, or people didn’t notice it was happening, so some mom would buy a gift on for her kid, and her kid would see that in news feed. Bummer, huh?).

Throughout the drama and following it, I went through the expected emotions. A bit of defensiveness cause we'd tried to do the right thing, some guilt because of the mistakes, some sympathy, some frustration, indignation, camaraderie with the team, determination to get it right, pride in our response, embarrassment, obvs, and ended up where we all have to, to stay sane: the feeling of appreciation for having learned something.  For example, I’ve learned to spend more time doing user testing; I’ve learned to read the mainstream news even less than I do now because I can’t discern fact from sensationalization from fiction; and I've learned that there are worse things than having a little piece of leafy green iron-rich calcium-packed veggie stuck between my teeth...

...like accidentally calling my own phone instead of this other girl's, and getting mad that she had the EXACT same outgoing voice mail message as i do" I am SO sorry i missed your call..." I got so mad, that i told Ezra, who was sitting right there, about how that b*** stole my message. He politely asked if i'd accidentally called my own phone, and i said something to the effect of "how stupid do you think i am?" soon after, i checked my one new message, only to hear my very own voice, requesting a return phone call. I crawled underneath my desk where ezra couldn't see me.