Stephen Coppola

Every day in first grade my mother would lovingly pack juice, a diagonally-cut sandwich, and several snacks in a brown paper bag for me to take to school.  Around 10:00 each morning I would pull out one of my treats for snack-time and eat with my fellow classmates.

One day, I was particularly excited for snack-time because I knew that my mother had packed the hostess chocolate cupcakes which I had begged her to purchase for me the day before.  All morning I daydreamed of the moment when I would finally pull out the heavenly treats in all of their glory; I imagined the look on each of the faces of my less fortunate classmates when they realized that my snack was topped with choclate icing and filled with frosting and joy. 

When our teacher finally announced it was snack-time, I sprinted to my backpack to reveal my chocolate goodies.  Unfortunately, the journey from my house to the school had been rough that morning (I decided to drag my bag behind me rather than wear it on my back) and my precious cakes were slightly squished; frosting stuck to the wrapper, cream oozing out of the sides. 

Earlier that morning...

The state of the cakes was, of course, not going to stop me from enjoying every bit of them. Just as I began licking the wrapper; however, a very squeaky and high-pitched "EEEEEEWWWWW!!!" abruptly ended my enjoyment. I looked up to a young boy with his finger pointing directly at me and a look of disgust on his face. His name was Steven Coppola, and from then on, he would be my nemesis. 


"Look at Jaimie, she is so GROSS!!!" he continued, beckoning for others to stare and laugh at the scene until my teacher finally came over to quiet him down.  It was too late though, the damage had been done.  With my eyes welled up with tears and my face red with shame, I hung my head low and stared blankly down at my sticky fingers.  


Then I threw out my cupcake. 


When I went home that afternoon I told my mother I never wanted her to pack another cupcake for me again because I hated them and then I ran upstairs.  Once in the safety of my own bedroom, I grabbed my diary and poured my emotions out onto its rainbow-colored pages.  The humiliation felt earlier that day had turned into rage, and from that, a clever new nickname I had thought up for my newfound enemy: "Step-Hen the Hen."

See how I brilliantly split up the spelling of his name to make fun of him? Even as a six-year-old there was evidence of my ingenuity.

Now, I should point out that, up until then, I had been using all my wishes for two ferrets which I had planned to name Honky and Stinky. My uncle larry kept two of them illegally in his basement and, although I only caught a few glimpses of them (the lights never worked and I was always too afraid to go down there), I liked to listen to them from the top of the stairwell.  I imagined them as cuddly creatures who wanted to be my friends; playing freeze tag with me by day and cuddling with me at night. 

That Said, I owed it to myself to put that dream aside and get some serious revenge on Stephen Coppola.  After the cupcake incident, I took every opportunity to wish that  something horrible would happen to him.  It’s important to note, however, that I was humane enough to ask for something horrible, BUT NOT DEATH.  I had my limits.  

And then it happened.  In 5^th Grade, a teary-eyed Stephen Coppola announced to the class that his family was picking up and moving to North Carolina. His dad was being transferred and he had to leave all of his friends!  Four years of wishing had finally paid off.  

Now, I’d like to say that I was grown up enough to feel a little remorse for what I had done; that I hugged him good-bye and told him good luck on his last day.  However, this was not the case.  Instead, I ran home and celebrated that my wishing had paid off and was also pretty excited to start wishing for Honky and Stinky again.  Life was good.


Years have passed by and, with the invention of social networks, we’re now “friends” in cyberspace. I’ve cleared the air (he claims to have no idea how horrible he was as a child), and even accepted his apology (let’s face it, I got even when I wished him away to NC).  Although I cannot confirm, I imagine he eventually hit puberty and lost the squeaky, high-pitched voice that caused so much emotional turmoil during my childhood.  (Truth be told, it's still all I can hear when I view his 28-year-old Facebook picture.)

I never did adopt Honky and Stinky.  After finding out my younger sister was allergic to them, I was too afraid that my supernatural wishing powers would somehow kill her off in order for me to obtain the furry pets.  (You're welcome, Molly). Thanks to Stephen, I learned how to be more responsible with power.

The End.

Naked Ninja

Why am I telling you this?

Okay, Pop Quiz: I created the above picture in order to:

A.      Point out that I am either wearing a black turtleneck with matching gloves in all my PN posts to date OR I have been drawing myself as walking around topless

B.      Tell you to follow me on twitter @twitt_ninja because sometimes I say things there that are funny or awesome or both... usually both.

C.      Both A and B

The Answer is C, but even if you guessed incorrectly, I still got my point across.  WOOT!


**Side story: At first, I decided that I should not sign up on Twitter because I like to refer to it as "twitting" instead of "tweeting" and I was afraid that eventually someone would point at me and laugh like I was some sort of twitter-fool.

Sure, I could explain to the laughing person that I don't like the term "tweeting" and have decided to make up a new word for it, but who would believe me?  I would lose my twitter credibility and no one would want to be my friend anymore.  I would have to move far away and start my life over somewhere where no one knew my name or had ever heard of a tweet.  Canada? A nursing home? Canadian nursing home?

Anyways now that this post is out in cyberspace, I can use it as proof:  I realize "to tweet" is the correct term, but I prefer "to twit."  If you have been sent to this post for doubting me, you probably feel pretty stupid now.

The end.

One Thumb Up

Today I fell down a flight of stairs.  I did not enjoy it.  I fell because the totally bitchin' boots I was wearing have high heels and I forgot how to walk in them.

The whole thing left my legs covered in bruises and my thumb swollen and achey, but it could have been worse -- I could have cracked my skull open and knocked all my teeth out.

For some reason I imagined myself smiling after cracking my skull and having 2.5 teeth left...

My thumb hurts so much now that I think I may need to have it amputated.  This will suck because I will never be able to give a double thumbs up again.

I hope the doctors let me keep the removed thumb as a souvenir so I can have it bronzed and place it on my mantle. 

Pyro

When I was eight years old, my cousin Katie taught me how to light a match.  My parents had gone out for the day and turned to Katie as a suitable baby-sitter. 

Together we sat on my front porch striking matches against a box, blowing them out and tossing them over the side of the house into the bushes below.

…Recipe for disaster, right? 

Actually, no.  My house did not go up in flames that day.  Instead, a spark ignited in my heart for all things ablaze; candles, bonfires, grill lighters, magnifying glasses in the glistening sunlight, I wanted a part in all of it.  

I am sure that when Katie was teaching eight-year-old me the ways of fire-making she had a good reason for it.  She probably wanted to increase my chances of survival should I ever be trapped alone in the cold wilderness with nothing but my wits and a box of matches.

But if at some point during her lesson she revealed her rationale, I wasn’t listening.  My undeveloped child-brain processed nothing but the magical glowing flames that I was now able to create with a box of matches and the mere flick of my wrist.  Something inside of me changed; a sense of power and awe took over.  Fire good.

Fast-forward a few years to a cool breezy Columbus Day weekend when my cousin, Jillian, and I were roaming the streets of my greater-Boston hometown with a neighborhood friend, Cherise. 

The boredom of an unsupervised twelve-year-old can easily turn into catastrophe. We soon proved this after deciding on a plan to keep ourselves entertained.

Together we had great fun lighting the candles and blowing them out, dripping wax on logs and throwing burnt out matches on the ground until, surprisingly, one of our used matches sparked a flame among some of the many crunchy dead leaves littering the floor of the woods.

After about ten minutes, however, we had mistakenly lit one too many leaves at a time and not even our awesomeness was able to destroy the flames that ensued. 

Luckily, Cherise ran to her house to grab something to put out the flames.  Unfortunately when she left the fire looked like this:

And then she came back with this:

But by then the woods looked like this:

Then, appearing out of no where, a short, hairy man came to the scene and started beating the flames with a broom.  I am not sure what he was thinking this would do, but clearly it wasn't putting the fire out.

At that point, we did what any responsible preteen would do:

We ran to my house, sirens screaming past us in the opposite direction.  Inside, my mother and her friend were quietly catching up on each other’s lives before the three of us came barging in; rambling and out of breath like three incoherent meth addicts who just ran a marathon after getting their teeth drilled.

This was the obvious moment where we had to deny our responsibility.

Strangely enough, my mother was onto us.

Jillian had cracked.  She couldn’t take the guilt of lying for more than thirty seconds and spilled everything.

Cherise continued to lie out the door and ran home while Jillian and I were left bracing ourselves for a punishment that never came.  It turns out that my mother also lit the woods on fire as a kid while playing with matches.  Clearly it was in my blood-- and you can't blame a girl for something in her genes, can you?

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