They say March is the month that comes “in like a lion and out like a lamb.” If you switch the words “lion” and “lamb” around in this sentence the new adage can be applied to the day President Donald Trump got elected; that is, this day “came in like a lamb and out like lion.”
On this same day, which ended with me in a cookie aisle at Wegmans feeling strangely aware of my ankles, I deleted my Facebook account. Now, I go several weeks feeling like a lamb who has never read a news article, until the occasion strikes and a sharp pain stabs my stomach as I’m wearing black Vans Atwood shoes in a diner and I hear my best friend say the word “platooned.”
I would be lying if I didn’t say that I have felt other protuberances in my innards during the past few months. I presume they originate from some nymph-like apparition with a long stick that lives in my Google Chrome search history. These disturbances in my stomach come in many mystifying forms, but the most curious of all of them occurs when I am with my friends and one of their faces light up like the boy on a box of Maypo oatmeal. I am quick to find out in these instances that the source of my friend’s mirth is a Facebook page by the name of “Ever Better Memes for Meliora Teens.”
I know what memes are, and I can piece together the elements of UR school spirit embedded in the title of the page. I presume that “EBMMT” is a page where UR students post memes about the school and some posts have about 500 likes. One time in 2014 I posted on Yik Yak that “when you smoke weed in your dreams you wake up high.” I checked the post for how many up votes it got on the omelette line that morning but the post had disappeared. In that moment I felt a sharp pain in my stomach that may have been sponsored by Pearson Education and Bob Barker Company Incorporated, America’s leading detention supplier.
I once made a meme for “EBMMT” that had images of chicken tenders and the Hindu cycle of life and death. I was sitting in my bed as I made the meme, and I didn’t feel like creativity was flowing through my veins but I did feel very happy to be alive.
Before I deleted my Facebook I would spend upward of five minutes on it and feel spiders crawling up my spine. I still feel spiders crawling up my spine these days, but less frequently and it’s usually when I’m watching the Home Shopping Network. Instead of spiders I more often experience the diaphanous nymph of seasons past stabbing my innards, and this happens when I see particularly agitating shades of red and blue on the television screen casting CNN in the campus IT Center, or when I hear the word “coal” in passing conversation.
Sometimes, on a rare occasion, the voluptuous stabbing of high tides reacts with a synapse sponsored by the GEO Group Inc., specializing in correctional and rehabilitative services in the United States of America. On such occasions my heart absorbs streams of carcinogenic red and blue light and I am free flowing into a stream of digitized Aquafina water. It might occur at a diner or a coffee shop, and when it does occur a jet in the sky leaves a trail of pixie dust that grazes but does not overlap with the blood orange sun.
In Starbucks I hear the phrases “smash,” “divest,” and “can’t even get out of bed.” A freshman boy’s slip-on Vans rattle and shake as he pushes his smartphone under a friend’s nose. His friend’s Gap slim cut jeans (nutmeg) crease in the same way that a model’s did in 2013 as his head bounces and he looks at his friend and smiles. I am wearing Adidas Joggers with Nike Air Huraches and my caramel macchiato with almond milk has arrived at the counter. As I grab my drink I hear the question, “Who would win? Physics or Pepsi?” from a girl to my left. I do not know this girl but for a brief moment all of the love in my heart is directed toward her as I remember that it’s Saturday and my friends are going out to the Cheesecake Factory tonight. I say to myself, “Who do my parents think I am,” and visualize a stock photo of a diploma. Then I say to myself, “Who I really am,” and visualize an image of a shopping list with five items but all of the items are “ice cream.” I make a mental note to love myself more when I get a C on a test. As I look into my macchiato, I swear that in the whipped cream I see the children of Jerusalem. Then I remember that a boy from my hometown saw the same thing in his jalapeño Mac and cheese and he ended up in jail that night. My nymph-like friend probes my abdomen. I feel more or less well adjusted.
