I have been suffering lately from an acute fear of becoming twenty years old.

Which is very strange, since I only turned nineteen ... now ... but it seems that I have been thinking about the big two-oh (you people twenty and one twelfth and older can stop sobbing now) for so long now that it feels though I am already atop it, instead of having yet another year to apprehensively watch its approach, be momentarily distracted, and have it leap over and sink its insidious age claws into my boney shoulders.

I think, if I was as mousy a social misfit now as I was a few years ago, leaving my teens behind would not be a significant change. At this moment, however, the ages from thirteen to nineteen represent to me a time of my life when I am allowed -- indeed, expected -- to be uncouth, tactless, awkward, stupid, inarticulate, ignorant, and otherwise offensive for the fact that I think highly enough of my uninformed and unoriginal opinions to actually express them to other human beings for nutritional consumption. Those qualities -- performed at an obnoxiously loud volume -- collectively make up my idea of "teenager." For a time, I revelled in this lack of responsibility.

After having endured the first quartern of my life, I do believe that I will be expected to show something for it. Say ... intelligence. Knowledge. Taste. Wit. Composure. Social grace. The ability to suppress chronic girlish giggling (a sore affliction of mine). A non-seasonal job.

Granted, I am probably grossly overromanticizing adulthood. I'm sure it is all too easy for many post-teens to stumble into cracks of indignity ... suffering demeaning work normally associated with dopey, low-skilled high-schoolers ... being unable to define 19th-century laissez-faire liberalism on cue (how embarrassing!) ...  

I have also lived much of life building myself up by exceeding expectations. There is of course a flaw with this strategy, as it relies upon relativity. An Average Effort can seem Excellent if all others are Shit; similarly, however, an Excellent Effort can seem Average if all others are also Excellent. Luckily, expectations for and the output of the average teenager are both so ridiculously low that exceeding them had been very, very easy.

Now with adulthood on the horizon, doubtlessly these standards will be finally raised to a realistic level, rudely jerking me out of the fog I have been living in for the past nineteen years, and I will be found out for the fraud I am. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw.  

Happy birthday, ol' girl.

Is there anything more Gothic-Wrath-of-Old-Testament-God than Sergei Prokofiev's "The Montagues and Capulets" from Romeo and Juliet (Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" being just a tad too John Williams in comparison)? It's good listenin' for the iron-fisted fascist within.

We've had a fly problem around the house this past few weeks, and after a lot of swatting and cursing, we finally hung up some unsightly but admittedly effective flypaper.

There are now some twenty flies trapped and dead, after one evening.

The creepiest thing is that I can hear some of them screaming as they slowly die. No, I really mean this. For a few minutes before their death, there is this loud, constant, futile buzzing. Then ... silence.

I feel almost guilty. *Swat.*

After having made my noble promise several weeks ago to paint the porch -- left to fend for itself for some seven years, so you can imagine the horrid state of it -- I got around to it at last today, pitching in after about forty percent had been completed by my family. I spent about two hours on my elbows and knees slopping paint about on the deck, side panels, and various nooks and crannies.

Casual requests had been made of me earlier to pick a colour, as I was the "artist" of the family (that is, being the one able to distinguish a Matisse from a Rembrandt) and thus regarded as most capable of such matters. While I was mulling over the ideal shade of green to spruce up the boring cut of wood, my father the pragmatist went out and bought the paint himself. He specifically chose what he did because it was being sold at a reduced price, due to the fact the original customer had rejected it, or failed to pick it up.

The shade -- I hesitate to say "colour" -- was grey. While I like grey in my clothing and think it a neglected part of the visual palette, sloshing it over half the front of the house was not particularly gratifying.

I am not a very hardy person, and when I lurched to my feet at the end of it, I nearly collapsed again -- embarrassingly weak in the knees. Luckily no men walked by then, or they might have taken my structural deficiency as a sign of passion.

New boots! Consumerism triumphs again.

The footwear is, of course, too hot (and too hot) for the current season, being a pair made of a synthetic material in imitation of a dead animal's chemically treated hide (henceforth known as You-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Cowskin Cowskin).  

Ignore the mundane setting -- the corridor outside the family bathroom, in dire need of a dusting and new paint job, yeech -- and feel free to imagine something more appropriate ... say, a leaf-covered concrete sidewalk on a crisp autumn day, topped by a modest corduroy skirt ... what were you expecting? Keep yer mind outta the gutter, mistah.

(But I admit, I do get a strange, perverse pleasure each time I zip them up and down ...)

And indeed, the mysterious doorway beyond leads to, of all places, my bedroom! My devious plan of mass seduction is all coming together! I am a minx!  

Aw, fucking hell.

For once, a news agency that celebrates the difference between Greek and Roman cultures -- note the use of "tunics" near the bottom instead of the oft-misused "togas"! Richard Galpin, BBC correspondent in Athens, come here and kiss me!  

As you may know, it is extremely typical for a teenager to claim incompatibility with the thought processes of her parents ... usually the fault of the senior party. I have already spelled out difficulties with my well-meaning but still socio-politically traditional mother. My father, dare I say, is actually a worse offender, as not only does he not understand my beliefs, but he shares my mother's penchant for overachieving gadgets and ... wait for it ... has no flare for style.

Today I had to venture up into the horrors of suburban Toronto (henceforth known as the Land of Suffering and Much Gnashing of Teeth) to have a ringer replaced in my new telephone. It's a modern appliance, done in a retro style with sweeping lines, in turn juxtaposed with a matte metal finish. When I plugged it in triumphantly, it worked in making and taking calls, but naturally could not inform me when these occasions might arise. 

The trip up there via public transport would have taken more than an hour; via chauffeured vehicle it was perhaps twenty minutes, if even.

So about forty minutes later -- there was a bit of a queue in the store -- I was back in my father's car, sans telephone but with a pickup invoice filled out by an apologetic but skeptical-it-might-could-be-done clerk. I had left half hopeful, half heartbroken. I sat glumly by the window. My father decided this was a good time to assert his superiority.

Him: "What took so long?"

Me: "Nothing. Just a line. They're going to try and fix it."

Him: "Is it going to cost anything?"

My father doesn't believe there is such a thing as a good deal, unless he himself personally procures it, and even then, the party from whom he obtains it is still a bunch of conniving, thieving bastards out to murder his sons and rape his daughter ... especially if they are not Chinese. Yes. He is also somewhat racist ("somewhat" being "extremely", but he is my father, after all; I'm going to cut him some slack, even if I retract it a moment later). He may not be always be hateful, but he makes absolutely horrendous generalizations. I have already omitted his snide remark about Indians working at the store because it fills me with almost physical shame.

Me: "No, because it came with a 90-day guarantee. If it can't be fixed, it can't be exchanged either, because mine was the last one in the entire company. I already knew from the onset that they don't do refunds. They'll give me store credit."

Him: "[Derisive snort] Oh, that's very clever. So you have to shop at their store."

Me: "I don't mind. They've got a few cheaper phones I like, and I can use the remaining amount to get something else extra."

A brief silence passed.

Him: "So how much did that telephone cost, huh?"

Last time he drove me to the location, I had wisely rushed in, grabbed the phone, paid for it, and rushed out before he sauntered in, precisely to avoid questions such as these.

Me: "..."

Him: "How much?"

Me: [Muttering] "Twenty dollars." Which was still a very fair deal, having seen the same phone for fifty elsewhere. Bah!  

Him: "How about that phone we just got? It was under twenty dollars, and it does all sorts of stuff!"
Besides simple, mundane functions such as redialling and holding -- which to my knowledge neither of my parents knows how to utilize anyway -- this "stuff" includes: Displaying the current date or whichever date you wish; calculating sums (that old song again), and producing an ultraviolet beam to detect counterfeit currency (according to it, half my personal fortune is fake). And yes, it is also a fantastic cook and lover.

Me: "..."

Him: [Watching the trafficlight, with his customary two fingers on the wheel]

You see, I regard my father as somewhat fearsome. He does not take dissidence very well. Therefore, this is what I wanted to say:

Me: "Mine makes and receives telephone calls, Dad. That's all I need a telephone to do. If I want to know the date, I'll check my calendar, alarm clock, wristwatch, computer, or the television. If I need to figure out my taxes, I'll use the scientific calculator I already have, or better yet, use your accountant. If I need to verify the legality of my tender, I'll use the more expensive and more reputable UV device Mom has at work.

"The phone you and Mom purchased, while a good deal and very functional and futuristic-looking, is very ugly with no sense of original design or class. It has an awful-sounding ring and a handset the size of a Snickers bar. You have little taste in aesthetic matters and your disregard for their importance in life has offended me, not in just this instance but over several in my lifetime; this includes your obvious distaste for fine art, which you express boundlessly even when you know I have a fervent devotion to it. Also, you should stop wearing so many polo shirt and shorts combos; you used to be a fairly stylish and studly man, yes, I've seen the photographs, and what the hell was up with that perm in 1981?"
 
Instead this is what I actually said:

Me: "Hmmmm."