AGAIN, BECAUSE I KNOW YOU’LL MISS ME SO I’LL WRITE ABOUT USELESS SHIT YOU WON’T READ ANYWAY.

It’s so obnoxious that in any other circumstance I’ll probably gnaw the writer’s head off, but I’m leaving in a day…meaning that I won’t have any juicy tidbits for you to read for almost an entire month unless I can find some abandoned computer equipped with the working Internets and blog about how I got mugged in France and swindled in Italy.  Lovely, ain’t it?

In recent events, I met my aunt’s baby.  She’s a really sweet little girl, and I swear on my soul that Martin doesn’t have one because he said that the baby looked like she was going to kill him.  too much Assassin’s Creed for you, my friend.  Normally, I’ll go though the generic and often socially demanded protocol of children-meeting, which calls for a biased physical description in which euphemistic and heart-tugging words are used liberally and lots of heart-melting and tear-inducing effects on my part.  Nothing you haven’t been burdened through before, not that your own children-meetings aren’t full of warm fuzzy feelings and all.

I feel like I’ll violate her privacy, but I really wanted to talk -er, write- about this.  My aunt’s an amazing person- clever, street smart, fun, gorgeous, quirky, sweet.  She’s also a sophomore in college.

You hear about these social “shush shush” situations a lot; adults and children gossiping around the family dinner table or during a showing of Paris By Night.

The implications are boundless, the words sharp and full of bullshit.  You can hear it, can’t you?  Accusations saturated with whores, prostitutes,  irresponsibility, trash.  Oh god!  she doesn’t listen to her parents!  Oh goodness! she just goes galavanting off with guys!  How disgusting.  Nasty. Slutty.  Shameless. Why doesn’t she save her virginity until marriage, like a good girl?

Showtime.  The baby’s actually there, in the flesh, wide eyes staring at these conflicted and tortured souls.  She’s so cute. She’s so adorable.  Isn’t that the most precious thing?  But behind their backs, deep in the comforts of their hypocritcal minds cycles the snarling and derision. Ew, it’s trash.

Taking into account the idiosyncracies of my family on my dad’s side and the quasi perfect little angels on my mom’s side, I find it ironic that I’m so drawn to imperfection.  It’s annoying, how perfect they are.  How protected, sheltered.  Not that I find them annoying; I just find all their innocence and sheer immaculate quirks so perfect. All aspiring doctors, lawyers, corporate beasts, surgeons, world changers.  All staring so wide-eyed and hopeful.

My dad’s side.  What can I say?  Homos and hobos.  One almost has a pathological fear of talking.  They’re eccentric- in love with violence or not, in love with disgusting and dreadful thing or not.  Dirtied and transformed into vulgar figures of our world.  Maybe I’m so drawn into their oddities…their topsy turvy lives because I’m so egregiously flawed.  I identify with that- that blunt, blatant, obstreperous, flagrantly brash and flashy personality, which in pithy words means to be…human…me human.

So I am enchanted and captivated by her.  This fleshy manifestation of upcoming years of hard work and care, this object of so many conversations in which the speakers have never seen its face.  The story of someone who’s gone through life and felt its lessons for what may be for the very first time, and learned from it. There’s a beauty in it, of someone who rose up and breathed so cleanly when everyone else said it was a lost cause.

I’m inspired by that medical student who puts up with endless nights of studying, that aspiring researcher trying to find the cure to cancer, but I’m so drawn to the mother of a baby who wants to go back to school and succeed in life, to a boy who’s gone to too many parties and had too many drinks yet still offers amazing life advice.

It’s their personal story I can feel so intimately and so strongly.

So back to my aunt.  Hey, I really admire you, no matter what people may say or think. Please keep striving, please succeed, and please stay awesome and sweet.