My first medical procedure plus reasons not to tell your 5 year old about melanoma

I can remember driving around with my mom and older sister when I was younger. My older sister was probably around 13 years old, so I was 5 or 6 years old. I remember my sister was trying to convince my mom that moles give you cancer. She emphatically exclaimed, "No mom, I'm serious, cause like this girl at school, her mom had this mole, and the doctor told her it was cancer, and they had to take out this like humongous chuck of her skin." My mom was dismissing her nonchalantly. I'm sure my mom knows that skin cancer can develop from irregular looking moles, but she was just trying to make sure her kids wouldn't go into a cancer fearing panic every time they saw a freckle on their skin. At this point, I was already panicked in the backseat. I could remember seeing kids with cancer on TV and some B list movie star telling me to donate money or these kids would die - they would die! I sat there starring at the moles on my forearm, simply terrified. I listened to my sister make her next argument from the front seat, "Really mom, if you have a mole that looks funny, it's probably cancer, you have to go to like the doctor right away."

Then I saw it, a funny looking mole. It was small and the same brown color as all of the other moles on my skin, but it wasn't perfectly round. I didn't want to die, so I knew what I had to do - I would have to excise the mole. I started to pick at the offensive mole and soon drew blood. After I removed a good section around the mole, I was satisfied and held my sleeve to the wound to stop the bleeding. The section of skin never really healed properly - it's a small bump that's barely darker than its surrounding skin. It's amazing how unfiltered information can influence a young mind. Actually, it's amazing how unfiltered information can influence an adult mind. Have you ever tried to explain antibiotic-resistant bacteria to the average mom? I'm not even sure I've convinced my own mom. Oh well, it's been almost 20 years, and (knock on wood) I've been cancer free! The procedure was a success!

--By Farrah, who is already tired of Thanksgiving leftovers, and it's only been one day!

You Think You Know Someone

In Conversations with Other Women, a man and a woman, who were once married, reconnect at a wedding. The director uses a pretentious, film-schoolish split screen for the entirety of the movie. While sort of annoying to watch, the point he is trying to make by separating the screen is that men and women never inhabit the same physical and even mental and emotional plane. I think this idea is applicable to all people - that we are fundamentally disconnected from each other mentally that we can never know anyone in his or her entirety.

Of course, the very definition of behavior is predictability, but knowing someone is like having a very sophisticated computer algorithm of if...then statements of all of one's"close" friends. For example:
If Farrah gets salad with meal,
Then, Farrah gives away salad.

If Bushra sees the pisiform bone,
Then she yells at offending person.

Of course, algorithms aren't infinite, and we can't always guess what people will do. And when they surprise us, it's like we have a week's worth of gossip to disentangle and analyze.

When I was in the Upper School, there was a super cute guy in my class, who we will call Duke Orsino (Twelfth Night has some relevance to this story, I promise). Duke was slightly on the weird side, but he was such a sweet guy who had a random sense of humor (i.e. he liked to give people the finger in class and giggled anytime the teacher said to turn to page 69). Duke was popular (all the girls swooned over him), and you'd never figure him for a sap or a sucker in love. Duke Orsino was, in short, a heartthrob - Carlisle's very own modern-day, chivalric Freddie Prinze in She's All That.

Unfortunately, after he broke up with his girlfriend, Olivia (name has been changed to fit my Twelfth Night metaphor), she was really sad, but also became really revealing about the relationship. After a football game, we went over to Olivia's house, and she got out her box of memories. Now, I'd like to think that Duke and I were fairly good friends; we weren't braiding each other's hair or anything, but I felt like I knew him.

But - I guess I didn't. Inside the box were crappy poems he'd written her. I felt like I was in a really shitty teen romance novel written by Francine Pascell or something. The poems were horrifically bad as one would expect from an unworldly 17-year-old Lothario. Unfortunately, I wasn't exactly the romantic type, and all I could think about my friend Duke was how fundamentally lame he was. We all had a good laugh on his expense as he wrote things about how having Olivia in his life "was the best thing that happened to me."

Then, came the horrific yearbook entry. He should have stuck with "Have a good summer"; instead, Duke wrote a three-page diatribe on how Olivia had "saved" him from depression and that "my heart beats for you," things you'd never expect the coolest guy in school to write about. I felt strange as if my conception of good and evil had been destroyed. If popular guys were insecure, lame, and horrifically bad writers when in love, then what could be said about the universe and it's strict paradigms of who was popular and who wasn't?

After that, I never looked at Duke the same way, as he lived up to his pseudonym by being in love with the very idea of love. In Twelfth Night, Orsino says, "If thou ever shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me; For such as I am all true lovers are." And so, Martinsville's own Duke was such a "true lover," who we privately made fun of by yelling out random lines of his poetry in class as he sat there confused.

--By Mariam, who is super-excited about her My So-Called Life Date with Bushra and Nameless Friend.

Art and Voyeurism

The other night I was watching Grey's Anatomy, even though the show is an absolute crapfest that makes people want to go through four torturous years of medical school, just so they can become bed-hopping interns, who have implausible, inappropriate relationships with their attendings.

Anyways, as I watched Izzie and George awkwardly banter in bed about their sexual incompatibility, I had a feeling I had never felt before while watching TV - utter discomfort. Why was I watching these interns deal with such a private matter? Relationship issues and matters dealing with chemistry were so utterly private in real life, and here I was, actively engaging in whether Izzie and George would make it. And then, I realized, serialized dramas transformed the average TV viewer into a typical voyeur, our 40-inch flat screens becoming a surrogate window into peoples' secret lives, truths they didn't even share with themselves.

For example, I knew more about the interns of Seattle Grace than I did my own friends because with friends, there are certain things you just didn't discuss. For instance, I knew the elaborate sexual circle of the characters, and the intimate and embarrassing moments that had transpired between the sheets. These were things I didn't even want to know about many of my friends as there are certain, sensitive matters that are better kept away from prying eyes.

Nevertheless, all art is essentially a voyeuristic journey into both the artist's psyche as well as the fictional world he or she has created. For example, Look Homeward Angel is a novelized autobiography of Thomas Wolfe's life - Asheville, North Carolina became the mountain town Altamont, and UNC-Chapel Hill became Pulpit Hill. In one incident, Eugene Gant (Wolfe's thinly disguised alter-ego) visits the local brothel to lose his virginity and contracts syphilis from his habitual visits. While I was reading Wolfe's autobiography, I read that this actually happened to the author, and I found it shocking that he included it in his first novel. And I realized that while I know that North Carolina's most famous writer had an STD, I will probably never be sure which one of my friends ever had one - I don't think anyone would like to admit to that (unless forced to do so by the Department of Public Health).

E.O. Wilson, a professor at Harvard, examines what the scientific evolutionary purpose of art is in his work in a field of Biopoetics. Perhaps art's true purpose is that it appeals to our voyeuristic sensibilities. Maybe we realize that we can never know anyone fully (pride often gets in the way of embarrassing confessions), and art satisfies that curiosity by providing surrogate characters/artists we can engage ourselves with rather than real people, who are secretive and disconnected from each other.

And even famous art force many of us to engage in conspiracy theories about the nature of the subject to the artist. We have an obsessive desire for these paintings to reveal some hidden truth about the artist's secret inner life. For instance, many conjecture that the model in "The Nude Maja" was Goya's secret mistress. At the Prado, I was told that Goya did two paintings of the same model - one clothed for the subject's husband and a secret, nude portrait. While this conspiracy theory is rejected by art historians now, it reveals an inherently human need to find secret meanings in art - so that we can become Peeping Toms of even history.

However, to be fair, though, artists (and even bloggers) are to some extent narcissists and exhibitionists, inviting the viewer to take time out and marvel at and speculate about their rich, inner lives through their cryptic, symbolic art. After all, ask yourself, why are we so angry at J.D. Salinger for disappearing into anonymity and not becoming a flamboyant equivalent of Truman Capote?

--By Mariam, who still thinks art is, like, way cool!

The Time I Almost Died

My class was going on a field trip to Wilderness Adventure. The name alone should have been a clue for me to stay away. I wasn't exactly sure what an adventure in the wilderness would entail. All the girls in my class were viscerally surprised at this development because I wasn't exactly the picture of rugged, outdoorsy athleticism.

As we hopped on the yellow school bus to head for northern Virginia, all of the preppy girls waved me off as if I were a brave G.I. heading off to the unknown terrors of war. I was secretly happy that the girls weren't coming; the guy: girl ration was in my favor and to be the center of attention of so many boys was truly a treat. On the way there, Rob, Nathan, Greg, and Adam harassed...er flirted...with me; they said disgusting things, poked me, and generally acted like idiotic five year olds - in other words, business as usual. Of course, me being a adolescent, I was secretly excited. (In retrospect, I wonder why I didn't learn self-defense at the local martial arts center, like Ashot, and make those guys a knuckle sandwich, but I digress).

Nevertheless, Nathan spent most of the ride giving me the finger and dropping the f bomb, while Rob kept poking me aggressively from the seat behind me. For the next three days, we camped and did outdoorsy things. After spelunking, a horrific experience that is even beyond words, Wallace, a tall hulking guy of 6'4, said to me, "Wow you look like you've been raped." Thanks, Wallace.

The low point of the trip (excluding all that awesome harassment) was when we went kayaking. I was under the mistaken impression that kayaking included a group of us in a boat, rowing in perfect harmony as the setting sun tanned our weathered arms. I was wrong - kayaking is a solo activity that requires a lot of upper body strength, which I tragically did not have.

As we kayaked miles down the river, I was so far behind everyone that a special guide had to stay with me because I was obviously a legal liability. The guy was chatty enough and asked me what I liked to do for fun. I bitterly replied, "Shopping."

Then, my kayak flipped over. I knew I was supposed to extricate myself to save myself from a watery death. But I saw the guide's face looming over me and felt that it was his responsibility, no duty, to save me. But he just stood there, and I just stared at him from beneath the water, trapped in my damn kayak, and I remember thinking, This is it - this is how I'm going to die - on a stupid, class field trip? The urge to live was strong, though, and I wanted to see another day, where Nathan would make obscene comments, and Greg would tell me the disgusting things he had done to dogs. I extricated myself from the canoe and gasped for air, as my classmates looked on with amusement.

I realize now that that moment could have been symbolic of female empowerment - I didn't need no man to save me from drowning! I could do it myself. But in actuality, that time in my life symbolically doesn't really represent the go girl mentality or how I battled with the Great Outdoors and came out triumphant. In reality, this time lets me pinpoint the exact time I realized how much I hate the outdoors. And how the outdoors hates me. We will never be in harmony with each other as are the protagonists of Hemingway's novels - man at peace with nature. We will always be at odds, antagonists, trying to triumph over one another. Me - by pouring fluorocarbons from my air conditioner and gallons of gasoline from my huge SUV into the precious ozone, and nature, sending me obnoxious fliers about the Big White Water Rafting Trip this weekend! And so, next time, dear blog reader, you want to ask me to go rowing on Saturday morning, think better of it.

--By Mariam, who thinks that she has ESP with Farrah because we blog at the exact same time. What next? Matching outfits? P.S. Farrah, I'm wearing my blue hoodie Monday, so coordinate!

Pre-test Preparation

I have three big tests fast approaching, so I spent my Saturday at home preparing. Before I could actually start studying, I first had to prepare for studying. I slept in, obviously, so that my mind would be well rested for my academic pursuits. I decided to start my day off with some pilates to get my heart pumping, and send blood to my brain. After finishing a pilates video, I decided that maybe I should get some laundry done. I could study while the loads were in the machine. I gathered and sorted my laundry, but once my floor was clear of debris, it was really obvious that I needed to vacuum. Oh, but I couldn't vacuum until I cleared away the piles of paper on the floor near my desk. I filed away all the papers in neatly labeled binders and filed them away on my shelf. As I took a look at my shelf, it was amazing how dusty it had become since I had never dusted it before. I went on a search for pledge and paper towels to clean off the offending dust. By then my first load of laundry was done, and I had to put it away. Finally, my room was clean, and I had my second load of laundry in the wash - it was time to turn on my computer. The computer brought on a whole new set of necessary tasks - like playing my scrabulous games, online shopping, and blogging. Now, it's after 10 pm, and I've yet to open my notes.

What is it about studying that makes the most inane tasks appealing? Would I really rather dust my shelf than learn about urinary tract infections? Well, the answer is yes, yes I would. If I'm going to distract myself, why wouldn't I pick something more exciting? I could play my most intimidating guitar riffs and scare my neighbors, or play my new Zelda game. The thing is I know these are my favorite things to do, so I've banned them to focus on my studies. With my most delightful distractions out of the way, the only things left are cleaning and cooking. I often make my most elaborate meals during test time as well. In a normal week, I might get take out or make some sort of instant frozen meal. In preparation for this test week, I made a whole wheat pasta with fresh spinach and onions sautéed with chicken breast and toasted pine nuts. So if anybody is wondering where to find the homemaker in the modern, empowered, successful woman, just give her something to study, and you'll have a clean house and food on the stove in no time. Actually, I've heard of guys doing the same thing, so give a guy something to study if you want him to cook and clean too.

--By Farrah, who pulled her notes out of her organized binder on her dust-free shelf and put them on her desk. Even if she hasn't looked at them yet, hey, progress!
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Now playing: The White Stripes - Little Cream Soda
via FoxyTunes

My First Crush: Jordan Catalano

My first crush wasn't some scrawny white boy in my class, who loved college basketball and Manchester United (that would come later) - it was a guy on TV. My So-Called Life came on when I was in the fourth grade. I didn't really watch it then, because I was more concerned with battling my crippling fear of crossing the monkey bars rather than watch Claire Danes deal with teen angst. I started watching it after it had been canceled and it reran on MTV a few years later.

I instantly became obsessed with Jordan Catalano, the dreamy, James Dean-like, rebel character played by Jared Leto. He was so misunderstood, so troubled, and the way he slouched against the lockers fundamentally screamed bad boy. An ongoing theme for me is that I desperately want art to imitate life (as Wilde asserted in "The Decay of Lying"). And I wanted a Jordan Catalano-like character to appear in the hallways of Carlisle School, a guy who had really blue eyes, who was battling dyslexia, played Ramones' songs at divey bars, and wore fraying flannel. Of course, life never meets the heightened drama of art, and all I ever got at my school were over-privileged guys who liked to wrestle each other (in a very homoerotic way) before homeroom.

Jordan Catalano was such a dream boat that I was completely oblivious to how dimwitted the writers characterized him as. Instead, I found his lines to have an inherent profundity that unlocked the meaning to life, love, and the universe. For instance, I wanted some dreamy guy to say to me at the school dance, as "What is love? What is love? Baby don't hurt me..." played in the background:
Jordan: Why are you like this?
Angela: Like what?
Jordan: Like how you are.

Who knew what Jordan even meant by that? It didn't really matter much because Jordan Catalano was really dreamy, and I desperately wanted him to be real. The closest equivalent I ever got was a guy who was only half as cute and was slightly off mentally.

In retrospect, though, it's funny how you idealize and obsess over (real and fake) guys that you think are the epitome of perfection, but when you re-examine your experiences or re-watch some My So-Called Life episodes, you realize how much your perceptions change, and you ask yourself incredulously, "What was I thinking?" I watch My So-Called Life now and think what an ass tool with no future Jordan Catalano is. It's like kids who idealize Disney World and Magic Mountain as this pure moment of unadulterated fun, and then, when they come back, as adults, they find the place dingier and less magical than it once was. But at the same time, though, I can't help but watch the scene where Jordan acknowledges Angela in front of all his cool friends as Buffalo Tom plays in the background and smile.



--By Mariam, who really should be studying instead of blogging.