Snuff Boxes and New Experiences

A few years ago, my dad decided he wanted to bike the 20 miles to work instead of driving. When I pointed out that he’d been driving to work since before I was born, he told me, “When I get tired of trying new things, I think I’ll be ready to die.” I’ve taken this to heart. Here’s a list of new things I have tried in the past year:

•          Indian food (2 out of 5 stars because it didn't taste like Italian food)
•         Actually answering my phone when someone calls  (This only lasted for 27 minutes, until someone called me)
•         Being assertive (Sorry to the sales associate at the AT&T store, I didn’t realize that you could be assertive WITHOUT talking at the same volume as a whale yelling into a megaphone) 

Clearly I am dare devil when it comes to trying new things. So when a local chocolate shop was having a chocolate tasting, my friends, Emmie and Maddy, and I decided to go. I signed up not really sure what a chocolate tasting entailed, but assumed there would a pool full of bubbling chocolate with people wearing crowns made out of Kit Kat bars and trained monkeys who wore chocolate aprons and served the finest chocolates from all over the world.   

We arrived and sat down at our table, where each place setting had a plate with nine bite-sized pieces of chocolate on it. Judging from the size of each piece, I calculated that the tasting would either be done in 17 seconds, or this was merely an appetizer. I then wondered if perhaps I had walked into the wrong building, and it was a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum featuring the smallest chocolate pieces. I tried to portray these feelings to the man in charge who stood in the front, but he started the class without informing me that yes, the chocolate serving monkeys were just waiting in the back room. Instead, the guy in charge started yelling. I looked around to see if there was a robber in the streets, or perhaps someone had used the incorrect spelling of ‘their’ on a store sign, but eventually realized he was yelling about chocolate because he was obsessed. There he was, standing in the front of the room, spewing off facts about French chocolatiers (Side note: pretty sure ‘chocolatier’ is a fake job. Why would there be accountants in the world if chocolatier was actually a real job?) and cacao, which is different from cocoa. (Every time he said ‘cacao’ it made him sound ultra-sophisticated in the chocolate world, but all I could think about is birds making a ‘caCAW!’ noise, and cows making a ‘caCAO!’ noise.) Spoiler alert: I was not able to ask the chocolate-crazed man why he gets to call it cacao, but I have to call it cocoa like an uncivilized moron. (In reality, this guy was seriously the coolest. He knew tons about chocolate and EATS CHOCOLATE FOR A LIVING.) 

            After giving his background on big fancy cacao words and using them cacao whenever he cacao wanted to, he told us that chocolate tasting is an art. He told us that before we even tasted the chocolate, we needed to rub our finger frantically across the chocolate and then inhale the chocolate before tasting. Super cool and sophisticated and cacao and all that, right? WRONG. This chocolatier had everyone classily rubbing their chocolate and wafting in the aroma, but there I was with chocolate ALL OVER MY HANDS. So with half the piece of chocolate melted all over my hands, I stuck the rest of the piece into my mouth. The king chocolatier guy continued yelling instructions: Soak in the chocolate!!! Become intoxicated by its fumes! Let it simmer on the roof of your mouth!! After tasting the piece of chocolate, we had to write down our own chocolate tasting journeys: what did it look like, smell like, and taste like?  The sophisticated chocolate tasters around me wrote descriptions beautifully telling the plot of their chocolate tasting: A scent of raspberry and lavender wafted into my nostrils as I breathed in the rich, birchwood colored chocolate. The bitter taste of raspberries tingled my taste buds as I let the chocolate simmer on my tongue, with a strong aftertaste of generosity. After much thought and deliberation, I wrote down exactly what I thought it tasted like.

            

      Each piece of chocolate went exactly like that. Rub it, smell it, taste it. I learned that not all chocolates taste the same. I made sure to note on my card that the Chocolate Naïve Porcini, which was made with mushrooms, tasted exactly like the mushroom spaghetti sauce I used the night before, and Friis Holm Rugoso tasted exactly like eating a park bench.  Someone in the class asked the man how he felt about Hershey’s, to which he informed us that Hershey’s was offensive to him. He then got on his Hershey’s soap box, where every other word was “FRAUD!!” or “Offensive!” (Side note: this is when I began to question whether this guy thought that fraud meant ‘tasty’ or ‘delicious’. After all, the chocolate tasting was really getting me in the mood for a Kit Kat bar.) We did our special art of chocolate tasting on a Hershey’s bar, and a group discussion followed where everyone hated on American chocolate and how disgusting it is. (I stayed at my own American chocolate tasting table and ate Reeses and reread the Declaration of Independence.)

           In just over an hour, all 9 beautiful pieces of chocolate were taken from my plate, and I was frantically licking the rubbed chocolate off my fingers, while the rest of the sophisticated chocolate tasters were listening attentively to more cacao facts. I looked up in time for the chocolatier to ask, “Who’s ready for ROUND TWO?!” FINALLY. TIME FOR THE CHOCOLATE SERVING MONKEYS. I sighed happily as I looked around the store for a good chocolate bar to dip into the chocolate pool, but the only thing that could be found was balsamic vinegar. “It’s time for the balsamic vinegar tasting,” the chocolatier yelled. (So now is he technically a balsamic vinegartier? Whatever.)

Balsamic vinegar is great. It’s great on my roommate’s salads. It’s great on my sister’s pizzas. It’s great on Barack Obama’s chicken dinners. It is NOT great on any food that I eat. Similar to bananas, balsamic vinegar is on my “only eat if you are starving in the middle of nowhere” list. But since I was there, I decided I might as well become a balsamic vinegartier. I waited patiently as he brought it around to each person. Maddy said it would be perfect on bread, but as soon as the guy reached our table there was no bread in his hands. “Hold out your snuff box, please,” he said. He explained that your “snuff box” is the side of your hand that dips down to the thumb. (I use the parentheses around “snuff box” because if you put it into Google, the first thing that comes up is NOT a part of your hand, but a tv show. He might as well have told me to pull out my "Parks and Recreation.") Literally he was just pouring this vinegar STRAIGHT INTO OUR HANDS. He used lots of phrases like, “I do this all the time” and “When I was doing this balsamic tasting in Europe…..” to make things sound legit, but inside I bet he was laughing at us as he poured vinegar onto our “snuff boxes” and we had to lick it off like cats. I vowed then and there that when I grow up and have a famous bakery, I will make people taste my delicious treats off their elbows. If he can pull off this “snuff box” charade, surely I could do that. 

Once the entire tasting event was over (not before a few more “FRAUD!!” cries and use of the word ‘cacao’, of course) Maddy, Emmie, and I classily departed the chic establishment and headed off to our favorite upscale eatery: McDonald’s. Truly the art of food tasting was not wasted on neither me, or the salty French fries. I placed a fry on my snuff box, inhaled the aromas of the salt, greasy food, and the sweaty high school football players sitting around us, and took a mental note of my food journey. Truly this new experience will take me for many wild rides to come. (And accidentally getting salt up my nose, but whatever.)       

This is Stupid: A Family Vacation

If for some reason I decided to leave my lucrative job as a teacher, I would like to be a golf caddy. Not the kind of caddy that carries around golf clubs and gives advice on shots, but the kind of golf caddy that drives around a golf cart and is really rich. If that job doesn’t pan out for me, I have an entire list of jobs I would love to have, ranging from movie critic to construction worker. (Not the kind of construction worker that actually does construction, but the kind of construction worker that gets to put up all the ‘Detour’ signs and sends everybody in the wrong direction) On this job list is also a world-famous family counselor. I would get rich by telling each family one simple secret: go on vacation. Every summer my family and I cram into our car and drive to our heart’s content, and it is what I live for. When I think about why I love vacation so much, it’s not simply because of the warm sand and salty water. Those are great moments, but the best parts of vacation are the crazy moments: the car breaks down or one family member has FINALLY HAD IT with everyone else in the car. Rarely does my family laugh together when reminiscing of beautiful beaches, but we certainly laugh when we talk about how things didn’t go perfectly.

When I was 14, my family took a trip to Glacier. Although we had enough seats for everyone in one car, we drove in two so we could fit all our bags. On the drive, one of the cars broke down. Luckily we were able to get it to the nearest city, Lima, which has the population of 8.473 million people. What a relief, right? WRONG. The city of Lima in Peru has millions of people. The city of Lima in Montana is 226 people. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY SIX. If you were driving on the freeway and sneezed YOU WOULD NOT EVEN SEE THE TOWN. So there we were, at a “car mechanics” in Lima, Montana. (Quotations used for the obvious reason that although they claimed to be a car shop, they did not have complimentary popcorn in their lobby like JiffyLube. Also, they did not have a lobby.) We were told the part needed for the car wouldn’t come for a few days, so we decided to consolidate our belongings, leave most of our things in Lima, and leave in our first car. This meant the entire family of 8 unpacking their bags on the dirt road and saying, “I can wear one shirt for the entire vacation, right?” or “I’d rather have my matchbox car collection than my toothpaste, so I’m leaving the toothpaste in Lima.”

The rest of vacation went off without a hitch. (wrong) I enjoyed everything we did. (wrong) I never said anything mean. (wrong) The next week and a half was spent with us crammed in the car seeing the beautiful sights of Glacier National Park. We would drive for a few hours, get out and hike, get back in the stuffy car and drive for a bit, hike, get back in the stuffy car, hike, etc. Eventually I got pretty tired of my brother’s feet stretching out into my face and the hikes my dad insisted were “almost done.” I finally snapped. Fortunately the only people that witnessed my meltdown were 50 trillion tourists and my mother who managed to film me snarling, “This is STUPID.” Luckily the video clip is still alive and well and is played on repeat when I visit home.

After that, we’ve all had our “this is stupid” moments. The time that we drove all the way out to the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory while we were in California, only to find out that we couldn’t even go into the factory was certainly a “this is stupid” moment. The time my dad made us go to Lewis and Clark’s Fort Clatsop and role play as Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea was also a “this is stupid” moment. (For the record, I did not participate and also refuse to call it anything besides ‘Fort Ketchup.’) The family certainly had a “this is stupid” moment when we drove to Washington to hike, only to have it rain.

Our most recent trip was no different. On our second day we were driving through Oregon when the gas light turned on. My dad assured us that we would have plenty of gas until the next stop, but the next stop seemed to be getting further and further away. Finally we found a sign pointing us to a gas station, so we turned up that road. The road was getting steeper and steeper. There were no homes, no businesses, and my family and I were practically SCALING MOUNT EVEREST IN OUR HONDA. After informing my family that I did not think there was a gas station on the moon, which is where we were surely headed, we rolled up to a lonely looking “gas station.” (Gas station is in quotations because my dad said, “Well, we’re here” and I looked out and just saw a metal box with a nozzle. Apparently Lewis and Clark built this gas station in the middle of nowhere before logic was invented. I assume the gas was a lot more expensive since I’m guessing they had to have Air Force One deliver gasoline to the top of this peak.)

The rest of the trip went swimmingly. We got sunburns that turned into blisters. We attempted to have “Kite Wars” on the beach. (This is when you fly a kite next someone and try to knock their kite to the ground. After we accidentally severed the strings on one of the kites my twelve-year-old brother was named champion and the game was retired.) We visited the Tillamook Cheese Factory where my brothers told lots of “cutting the cheese” jokes and whenever I took a picture I hollered “Say CHEESE!!” and then forced everyone to laugh at my pun. I also learned that there’s a profession called “the Cheddar Master” who apparently bosses everyone around at the cheese factory, so I added it to my list of possible job options. My younger brother won an honorary award because he was able to snag the most cheese cubes in cheese sampling line. (Two more trips to the sampling line were made after an attempt to beat him, but came up short. My mother informed me that upstanding citizens do NOT go back through the cheese sampling line more than once, but I deftly escaped the wrath of the Cheddar Master.)

At the end of the trip, my dad found a sand dollar on the beach and we labeled it with our name for the next family to find. My youngest brother came up with the quote for it, so we look like the kind of put-together family that has family reunion mottos and matching shirts instead of the kind of family that runs out of gas and goes through the cheese line an unspeakable amount of times. Apparently “This is stupid” isn’t a good enough family vacation motto, but I disagree. As a family we’ve seen great cities and rolling fields and endless oceans, but it’s truly the “this is stupid” moments that make us laugh (eventually) and bring us closer together. I’m glad when things go according to plan, but when things don’t, I’m more than happy to announce, “This is stupid!”

The Perfect Heist

     When my family moved states this past year, we discussed the idea of a clean slate. No one in our new neighborhood would know about the time when my family was convinced to do a musical number in church, which ended up being my dad singing a solo and the rest of us making impeccable eye contact with the 'Exit' sign. No one would know about our beloved family car, which was taken to the junk yard a year before. (It was only taken after I read the eulogy, obviously.) No one there would know about the time I walked into a tree and scratched up my face right before picture day, and no one would know me as the 14 year old who decided it would be fashionable to wear a different solid colored polo paired with dangly penguin earrings each day to school. We could be anyone we wanted. My little brother could show up to school, the newest student in the class, and introduce himself with an Australian accent claiming to be the world champion in tetherball. My sister could pretend to be a retired world chef, and my parents could claim to be working for the CIA. Unfortunately I stayed at college instead of making the move with the fam, but I still brainstormed ideas of my new identity as a world renowned cellist who never wears polo shirts or penguin earrings.

The whole idea about pretending to be someone you’re not is fascinating to me. When I was in high school, I was sitting in class when the woman over the intercom called for Rachel Hardy to please come to the principal’s office. Did I do something bad? Was this for something good? Maybe he just wanted to congratulate me on my flawless attendance. Doubtful, as my attendance record was actually sub-par. Maybe he found out I cut in line at the cafeteria three weeks ago? Had he finally gotten sick of my classy yet casual polo selection? I hurried to the office in my periwinkle polo, which was reserved for Thursdays. As I was walked into the office, I realized what had happened. There stood one of my teachers, Mrs. Rachel Hardy. This was the first of many miscommunications that occurred as I attended a school with a teacher who had the same name as me. The next three years in high school included the lunch ladies thinking I didn’t exist and putting all of my lunch money into my teacher’s account and me receiving countless emails regarding creating new curriculum for AP classes.

That’s not the only problem I’ve had where my identity has been called into question. A few months ago, I received an email from my brother. It read, “Thank you Rachel!! You are so kind!” I read it over a few times, trying to remember what exactly he was thanking me for. I clicked on the previous messages, and read the one that had been sent from me.

     I read the words over and over again. Sent from Rachel Hardy. When did I send that? Did I send that? How could have I sent that? Was I losing my mind? Clearly it said it was sent from me, but when in my life did I ever give up my dream of vacationing in Hawaii? Was I on one of those pranking TV shows? Did average, non-celebrities get to be on those shows anyway? Was I actually a celebrity and just forgot?! WAS I ACTUALLY SUPER RICH AND FAMOUS AND THE PEOPLE THAT MADE FUN OF MY POLOS WERE ACTUALLY MY HATERS?! Was Ashton Kutcher going to jump out of my pantry exclaiming that “You’ve been PUNK’D!!!”?!  I was disappointed to find out I am still not rich enough to build a moat equipped with alligators and drawbridge around my apartment, but impressed to learn my brother is smart enough about coding that he could figure out how to make it look like I sent that email from my account.

     When I went on a cruise for the first time this summer, I immediately recognized the scenery. Upon seeing the big casinos, the flashy paintings on the wall, and the chandelier-lit dining rooms, I knew that this was exactly the type of scene that heists take place in the movies. The bad guys come up with a clever yet dangerous plan to steal all the money, their plan goes off without a hitch, and they’re drinking champagne as the end credits roll. These are my favorite types of movies, so as soon as we boarded the ship I informed my friends Emmie and Dan that we would certainly be pulling off a heist during our stay, minus the alcohol. They suggested we go the ‘steal all the money from the slot machines’ route, but I decided that was much too cliché. I spent the next four days brainstorming different ideas for the perfect heist. Ideas included but were not limited to stealing all the tiny lights that lit up the stairways (because buying Christmas lights every year is the worst thing in the world), stealing all the towels from the ship (not just a couple, because that is the most boring heist ever. Also, I could give out extra towels to the poor. I would be like the Robin Hood of Bed, Bath, and Beyond), and taking every fifth tile out of the flooring so that I could tile my own house someday. All my suggestions were nixed because they were “lame”. (I put ‘lame’ in quotes because that is what Dan thought about them, but I expect a call from him this Christmas season when he has to go to the store once again for holiday lights.) Aside from us not agreeing on a great heist idea, the other major flaw in our plans is that we aren’t criminals, nor do we want to be. As much as I love those crime movies, the only thing I wanted to take from that ship was ice cream, which I actually paid for. There I was, pretending to be a criminal when I really am the girl who, upon receiving her first speeding ticket, started babbling, “Wait!! But I really am an upstanding citizen!! I vote! I never use the carpool lane when I’m driving by myself! I always made sure to rewind VHS’s before I returned them to the library!!” It is clear the criminal life is not cut out for me.     

     So as much as I wanted to change my identity when my parents moved, I decided to simply stick with being me. The world renowned cellist version of me may have a moat around her mansion, but I bet she is pretty boring. The other day I was checking my email when one came in with the title ‘Serve better within minutes.’

     Yes, my youngest brother thought it would be a great idea to sign me up for a weekly newsletter about ping pong under the alias of Bob the Builder. Every week since 2011 I have been receiving ‘Great tips to improve your footwork’ and ‘Bob, it’s time to perfect your topspin’. So really, I enjoy being Rachel Hardy. But sometimes, I am Bob the Builder.

     Can I do that?

     Yes, I can.  

Setting Sail (and vomiting in the ocean)

In January, with our college graduations in sight, I decided with my friends Emmie and Dan that a celebration was in order, so we booked a cruise to Mexico. This would be my first time on a cruise and out of the country, so I spent the next five months giddy with excitement, getting a passport, booking flights, practicing my Spanish (‘huevos verdes con jamón’ is always my go-to phrase. It means ‘green eggs and ham’ and is helpful in almost any setting.) and googling the weather for Ensenada. The trip did not disappoint.

 

Ty Burrell insulted me and I was thrilled: As Emmie and I boarded our flight out of Salt Lake, she stopped three rows into the place and hissed to me, “Rachel. Phil Dunphy is on this plane. TY BURRELL IS ON THIS PLANE.” Ty Burrell is the main character, Phil Dunphy, in one of my favorite sitcoms, Modern Family. I looked to the place she was pointing, where a bearded man sat. He was wearing headphones and his face was in a newspaper. Emmie had made eye contact with him, but as soon as he realized she recognized him he suddenly became very engrossed in the banana bread recipe in the Deseret News. There I was, standing inches away from a COMEDIC GENIUS. We waited as another 25 or so people pushed past us until there was a break in the flow, and then I tapped on his shoulder and asked him if he would please take his picture with us. As he started to talk to us, we immediately recognized his deep rumbly voice and I wanted to shake his shoulders and say, “You sound exactly like Ty Burrell! You ARE Ty Burrell.” But instead we just took our picture with him and I told him it was the best day of my life, to which he responded, “You must have a pretty boring life then.” And then we all laughed, and I wanted to say, “You should be a comedian! Oh wait!! Hahahaha!” but really all I could focus on was how excited I was that Ty thought that my life was boring. After the other fliers and the flight attendants were sufficiently angry, we thanked him for the picture and he wished us a good flight. The next two hours to Los Angeles were spent watching Ty from a few rows back and saying things like, “Ty Burrell just adjusted his glasses. I adjust my glasses!” and also trying to convince the woman next to us that we had actually just graduated college instead of the 5^th grade.

We explored Catalina Island: In the morning we zip lined through Catalina Island, and I decided my new career choice is tour guide, because they get to say whatever they want. Our tour guide would go on and on about squirrels roaming around that were the size of bears, only at the end to say “Just kidding! Those actually don’t exist.” Half the group had already stopped listening to the guide and were pushing their faces to the window in order to find the monster the guide had described, while parents were frantically looking in their bags for squirrel spray. We had lunch and then rented beach cruisers to ride around the island. We decided to bike to the botanical gardens at the top of the hills, which I immediately regretted because it WAS on the top of a hill. At the end of our journey was not actually a gorgeous garden, but a boring stone gate that said there were no bikes allowed. Nonetheless, biking was my favorite part of the trip.

I threw up in the Pacific Ocean: Emmie, Dan, and I decided we would go kayaking when we got to Ensenada, Mexico. Emmie and I laughed but were also terrified at the thought of tipping over our tandem kayak or getting it stuck in the middle of nowhere. Dan was paired up with random kid from the cruise, who I tried to congratulate, telling him that Dan was an expert kayaker. The 13 year old just raised an eyebrow and told me, “I kayak all the time.” Apparently he was not impressed that I guided Emmie and me into a patch of kelp. The further and further we kayaked into the ocean, the more entranced I was. The sea looked just like liquid glass, moving our tiny kayak up and down. Emmie said she felt like Pocahontas, and I felt like an Olympian, rowing away with 15 other kayaks through the waves. The further we went into the ocean, the more our kayak swayed. Was the dizziness I was feeling the same rush that an Olympian feels when they’re about to win the gold medal? Was the faintness in my head the same feeling Pocahontas felt when she kayaked just around the riverbend? All of a sudden my head was stretched out of the kayak, and I was losing my lunch. Little did the sea lions that we passed know that instead of swimming through ocean foam, they were actually wading through the croissant I had on the ship. The next 45 minutes of the adventure included me laying on the kayak and Emmie kayaking me ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN. She didn’t even complain or attempt to feed me to the sharks once. Give that girl the Nobel Prize, Oprah.

My monopoly skills came in handy: When my family plays board games, we don’t mess around. A family favorite is Monopoly, which usually takes a good five hours to finish if we’re lucky. I can’t count the amount of hours I have spent relentlessly trying to trade Park Place to the owner of Boardwalk in exchange for the Railroads, St. Charles Place, and a hefty sum of cash. I thought these skills were useless beyond Monopoly. However, after kayaking we found a place to eat some tacos and then looked around at the shops. As I looked into one of the shops, I told the man there I was looking for a bag for my sister. He held up one but I told him that was too much for me to spend, and started to leave. He called after me, lowering the price. I returned to the shop and for the next few minutes I was unsure whether I was trying to secure the pink monopoly or a bag, but I left pleased with my bargaining skills.

I found the most valuable part of the cruise ship: When we were not out exploring the cities, our time was spent on the ship. I lost to Dan playing shuffle board and then lost to both of them playing mini golf, but I still felt like a real winner because there was an ice cream machine on the cruise and no adults to tell me I shouldn’t go back for my 97^th serving.

It is suspected that President Obama tried to welcome me back: On Thursday I got through customs, got off the cruise ship and was back on American soil. We were in the Los Angeles airport, ready to take-off, when the pilot was told we needed to stay on the ground for a bit. Apparently President Obama was flying into LAX. I listened as people sighed unhappily, realizing they would miss their connecting flights. I could hardly hear them and I pressed my face to the little airplane window, searching for Air Force One. President Obama was flying into the Los Angeles airport. And there I was, sitting on the runway in the Los Angeles airport. OBVIOUSLY THIS WAS NOT A COINCIDENCE. BARACK OBAMA WAS COMING TO WELCOME ME BACK TO AMERICA. But minutes later the pilot was on the intercom again, announcing we could take off. Amid the cheers from the passengers my shriek of “But the president!! He probably saw my tweets I sent him!!” was hardly heard. It is still unknown if when President Obama took the first step off his plane he heard me calling down ideas about education reform.

Although I was sad to return to normal life, I am slowly coping by eating large amounts of ice cream and correcting people on their Spanish. (Do I speak Spanish? Of course not. But I usually follow up my correction with “I was just in Mexico, so I would know.”) Adiós amigos!

How to be an Adult (And Also Super Popular)

     

Although I am a middle child, I hold the prized calling of an older sister. I have older brothers, but my only sister, Katherine, is younger than me. This is something that I don’t take lightly. I am constantly trying to pass my life advice onto her so she never has to make the foolish decision of getting locked out of the house or accidentally leaving moldy oranges in her backpack for a semester. It must have been this sort of drive that urged a 10 year-old me to sit Katherine down upon her kindergarten graduation and insist on teaching her how to be popular. I am unsure whether it was my Harry Potter-like glasses or the fact that I frequently taped the misspelled ‘Do not distrb, scintist at work’ sign on my bedroom door that made me feel so qualified. (I hope that those who attended school with me are now in hysterics because instead of being popular I actually walked around outfield while the rest of the kids played kickball and would run to the opposite side of the field where the ball was coming so I wouldn’t have to make an attempt at a catch.) I lectured her on the importance of picking popular friends, wearing cute clothes, mastering a hair flip, and being occasionally bossy.

Not much has changed since then. My sister graduated high school and moved in with me last week, and I am still trying to use my wealth of knowledge to drench her. Upon arriving, she turned to me and said “Okay Rachel, teach me how to be an adult.” Although I am clearly more qualified to be a mentor of popularity, I finally gave in.

Rachel’s Guide to Being a Grown-Up: Part 1

1.     8 am college classes will always come too early. 12pm classes are during lunch. 2pm classes will interfere with an afternoon nap. 4pm classes are in the hottest part of the day, so if you walk to campus your back will be covered with sweat from your backpack. 6pm classes are too late. I have found the only good time to take classes is between 10:24am-11:09am. All other class time is spent googling where the nearest vending machine is.

2.     Coming up with excuses is hard. Before I was an adult, I always avoided activities that I didn’t want to attend by swiftly saying, “My mom says I can’t go.” There is a group of people who will read this and think, “Just be completely honest! No need for excuses.” Wrong. Until there is a way to politely inform someone that you will not be attending their party because you think it will be super boring and you would much rather stay in your pajamas all evening while taking 700 selfies on your webcam trying to see how many double chins you can make, there is no way to be completely honest. A completely adult way to address situations like this is to kindly say, “I won’t be there, but thanks for inviting me!” or pretending that you can’t hear the person inviting you and continue to say, “What?!” until they’ve repeated their invitation so many times that they decided they don’t want a person with that caliber of hearing problems at their party anyway.

3.     Learn to say no. Why am I on the Famous Footwear email list? Why did I let that guy at the mall take 15 minutes of my time trying to convince me that I needed a nail buffer? Why have I watched one zillion of those videos shared on facebook that has the caption, “You’ve GOT to see this, lol”? Because I couldn’t say no. Now that I’ve learned to say no my nails are certainly not as nice, but I do have more time to do great things like eat ice cream.  

4.     Learn to say yes. Sometimes you have to say ‘yes’ to things you don’t want to, like flu shots or going in to talk to your school counselor about changing your major. Other times you have to tell yourself that yes, you will buy spinach at the grocery store instead of eating out. Sometimes you have a bad day and you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself that yes, you really are an incredible person. But there are also lots of great things that you get to say ‘yes’ to, which include but are not limited to: wearing pajamas all day, choosing the least gross fluoride flavor at the dentist’s office, and deciding to eat out instead of eating your spinach that’s in the fridge.

5.     Celebrate. Being an adult can be hard. One day you’re hanging out with your family and the next day you have to do your own laundry and go to the bank and buy your own groceries and be financially responsible and know how to get grape juice out of new shirts and talk to strangers at the grocery store about tomato prices. Whenever I do something that is particularly adult-like, I congratulate myself. Sometimes I celebrate my transition to adulthood by doing things I couldn’t do as a kid, like eat food in the living room or pillow-surf down the stairs.

6.     Be yourself. My sister Katherine is always full of an infinite amount of love. (Except for the time she told me I used the word infinitely incorrectly.) Her constant desire to help others inspires me. Not only does she help edit and revise my blog, but she also came up with the name ‘Sense and Sarcasm.’ One day I was looking at the stats of people who had viewed my blog, and was quite pleased when it looked like a huge number of people were reading it. I made immediate plans to call Ellen DeGeneres and tell her that of course I would love to be featured on her show as the newest internet sensation. When I opened up my sister’s laptop later that evening, I saw that my blog had been opened on enough tabs to cover the whole screen. The more I deleted, the more appeared.  Not everyone has a sister that opens your blog a zillion times to make you think you’ve gone viral. So as good hearted (and super relevant) as my popularity advice was to my sister, I sure am glad she didn’t take it. I’m glad that instead of selecting elite friends and bossing people around, she was simply herself.

(But let’s be totally honest. With glasses like these, I actually was the coolest person in elementary school.)

Good Intentions and Dead Rose Bushes

      I believe it was Augusten Burroughs who said that “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions” (Of course I use the word ‘believe’ here because I found it on the internet. For all I know that could be Kanye West’s pen name.) Anyway, the saying does resonate with me. I resonate with it so much that I should probably have it cross-stitched and hung above my bed. Sure, I don’t always have the best intentions. When I’m subbing for a sixth grade class that is trying to play ‘Yankee Doodle’ on their recorders and I remark to myself that it sounds more like a prison soundtrack, my intentions aren’t always the nicest. When my friend and I tried to sneak a pizza into the movie theater perhaps our intentions weren’t as good as they should be, but in our defense there was no sign outside that read “No pizza, even if it is disguised in your purse.” However, for the most part, I do have good intentions. It used to be my belief that if you have good intentions, everything will work out perfectly. It was only just recently that I realized that I was very much wrong.
     When I was 12, I was called to be part of the presidency over my church group. One of my jobs (which I took incredibly seriously) was to call and remind the other girls in the group about our weekly activities. This was in the pioneerish days when my parents still had not agreed that me having a cell phone would be a good idea, so I called everyone’s home phone. One particular girl never answered, so each week I would leave a message. “Hi! This is Rachel. I just wanted to let you know about mutual tonight. We are meeting at seven o’clock at the church. I can’t wait to see you there! Wait…did I say that this was Rachel? Because it is. Just in case I forgot to say that and you thought a stranger was inviting you to mutual. But even if a stranger was inviting you to come to mutual, you could do that too! Well, maybe not. Anyway. 7:00. Mutual. Church. Actually, I think we’re meeting at 6:45. Not really sure to be honest. Nevermind, I know it’s 7:00. Ok, bye!” Needless to say, leaving messages has never been my forte, and if I’m ever falsely incriminated and forced to go to prison and have the chance to leave a message for my parents, it will probably sound something similar to “Hi Mom and Dad! How are you? I’m good. Well actually bad. Well I guess I guess it’s a half empty/half full kinda thing. Perspective, right? This is your daughter, Rachel. Anyway…” and that is approximately when my parole officer would slam down the receiver. (It is now apparent to me that I have been watching too many crime shows.) Anyway, my phone messages are lengthy and boring, and I left one on that girl’s phone every single Wednesday for an ENTIRE YEAR. Not once did she pick up. But, continuing with my good intentions, I valiantly called every week to remind her. It took more than 52 of these long, rambling calls to realize that I had THE WRONG NUMBER. Yes, I had left a year’s worth of annoying messages on someone else’s phone. Good intentions, though.   

      Last month I had some letters to send. Because I am not an original member of the Pony Express, I usually text or email people, but these were some thank you cards that I wanted to be handwritten. I felt very mature as I went to purchase thank you cards, and even more grown up when I purchased stamps for the very first time. (I had to be less grown up for a span of two minutes when I asked my roommate where to get stamps at, since the only place I’d ever seen them was my mother’s desk.) I wrote out my notes and felt very sophisticated as I addressed my letters. (Except for the one I accidentally addressed to myself.) I walked out to the mailbox with my letters, surprised no one was stopping me for tips on how to be as elegantly mature as me. I got to the box, found a slit, and tossed my letters into the locked box. Yes, this is what true adulthood feels like. True grace. Truly refined, seasoned--amid my self-gloating, I floated past the other mail boxes. I PUT MY MAIL IN THE WRONG MAIL BOX. Yes, instead of putting my mail in the box reading ‘Outgoing Mail’ I placed it in the box reading, ‘Please use other door towards right’ which should probably be labeled ‘Only a fool would put their mail here.’ I hurried over to the box I had slipped my cards into. I jiggled the door. Locked. I tried putting my mail key in. Locked. I tried fitting my pinky finger in the centimeter sized slot. Locked. So there I was, about to accept a Nobel Peace Prize for being the most mature human ever, with my finger stuck in a mail box that apparently was NOT for outgoing mail. Fortunately it only took a week, a pair of tweezers, three emails with ‘URGENT’ as the subject line, and two phone calls to the post office to get my letters out and sent. If you have received one of these letters, feel free to have it framed because I assume they are worth millions by now.   

    

The month of May has been full of good intentions, as Mother’s Day fell on May 10^th. I decided that I was going to surprise her the day before by showing up at my family’s doorstep in Idaho. I am not really one for surprises, because I have a difficult time keeping a secret, but this was one I was very excited about. By the time I had left for Idaho the only people who didn’t know I was going were my mom and Michael Phelps, who apparently “never got my text.” Whatever. I stopped on my way to Idaho to buy my mother some flowers. As I looked around at the flowers, I decided I wanted to get one that hadn’t quite flowered yet so that my mother could watch it bloom. I selected a plant that promised to turn into yellow roses and got back in the car for my trip. I spent the next four hours feeling so excited and proud of myself. I had thrown my mother off the trail and there was no possible way that she could know I was coming. I had texted her earlier that day, telling her I would call Sunday afternoon to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. I had told her I had to be at a wedding shower on Saturday, and my day was pretty packed after that as well. I even talked with her on the phone on my way to Rexburg, claiming I was driving back to Provo. My plan was flawless. Four hours later, I arrived at my home and rang the doorbell. My mom opened the door and was truly shocked to see me. We both happily hugged each other and I felt a certain pride inside that this was my best Mother’s Day gift yet. Truly I had outdone myself. She placed the not yet bloomed flowers on the coffee table and for the next 24 hours my family talked, laughed, and celebrated my mother and all she’s done. Yes, this was the best Mother’s Day to date. On Sunday night I drove back home, pleased that my surprise had gone on without a hitch. A few weeks later, I got to see my family again. As we were driving the topic of plants came up. My mother started to laugh pretty hard, and then said, “Rachel, I have something to tell you.” She then proceeded to tell me that the flower I had gotten her for mother’s day was dead. “Oh dear,” I thought to myself. “Mom has forgotten that flowers need water. I didn’t think my parents would already need my support since they certainly aren’t elderly yet, but I suppose if they need me…” I finished listening to my mom. She was saying something about water and dried up leaves. Then she told explained to me that she did all that she could, but they were already dead. The flowers were already dead when I bought them. I BOUGHT MY MOTHER DEAD FLOWERS FOR MOTHER’S DAY. There I was at the store, specifically picking out a flower pot that had DEAD flowers in it. I had stepped over other bright blooming petunias and blushing peonies to pick up deceased perennials. There I was, grinning from ear to ear on her doorstep, surprising her with a PASSED AWAY PLANT.

     So yes, I am stitched together with good intentions. Sometimes I order a drink at the drive thru with my friends and then drive away without picking it up, and other times I sit down in the movie theater and realize that this wasn’t even the movie I paid to see. Sometimes I buy a fan for my car because I am not yet a rich heiress who uses her husband’s money to buy a new air conditioner, but all the fan does is push around more hot air. Yes, I am certainly stitched together with good intentions. However, when I do decide to cross-stich that saying and put it above my bed, the quote will read something more like, “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions, refusing to ever buy a dead rose bush again.”     

To Graduation and Never Driving People to the Airport

Congratulations, graduates. I sit here today, not addressing you from the podium of the Marriott Center, but from the comfort of my kitchen table. Apparently the fact that your greatest feat from college was that you stayed awake during the entirety of a Statistics lecture one Friday morning does not get you the right to speak during your own college commencement. Of course, I’ve never let that stop me anyway.

Coming to college is very similar to having amazing retinas. I would know, just ask my eye doctor. For a person under the age of 80, I spend a tremendous time getting my eyes checked. Every time I go in, my doctor raves about how great my retinas look. “Rachel, your retinas are incredible,” he says.  “Rachel, your retinas look fantastic.” And every time I leave the eye doctor I feel extra special inside. Not everyone is as lucky to have retinas as ravishing as mine. I make sure to share the good news with my siblings, along with the cashier at the local grocery store and the pizza man, because I am under the impression that yes, my retinas really are that great. It is always a surprise to me when someone rolls their eyes (probably destroying their own chance of having retinas like mine) and tells me, “Nobody cares.”

College is the same. Your freshman year you show up to college, straight from your mother’s SUV with a brand new comforter and matching dorm decorations, ready to tell the world how great you are. Did you mention you were part of the National Honor Society? And the debate team? And on cheer? And Prom Queen? And valedictorian? And you singlehandedly got rid of ebola? Frantically you try to let the whole campus know exactly how incredible you are. But, just like the news about your retinas, people don’t care. Suddenly you’re part of a crowded campus where everyone is the same. Everyone was part of the National Honor Society. Everyone was the valedictorian. Everyone played a cello suite that brought Barack Obama to tears during his 2013 inauguration ball. And you don’t ask around, but probably everyone has extraordinary retinas as well.

However, being at BYU taught me a lot. It taught me responsibility. This includes but is not limited to the many times I accidentally made pasta for 8,000 people and ate all of it anyway, stayed up in the early hours of the morning with an 8am class on the horizon, telling myself that this is what “real” college students do, and the time I hit off my side mirror from the car my dad lets me borrow. (For the record: I had to go a small time without my mirror before getting it replaced, during which I found other great uses for it. If this has happened to you before, you know that people will see your car and try to lecture you on the dangers of driving like that. I highly recommend making quips such as, “Yeah, I never used that thing anyway. What a waste of space.” The bad news is you have to endure people trying to sentence you back to driver’s ed, but the good news is that people will stop asking you for rides to the airport.)

     Being at BYU taught me about communication. Upon one of my failed attempts to make the world’s best quesadilla, I went to my bedroom to let my roommate know there was something wrong with the stove. I told her the stove could erupt into flames any minute for all I knew. Her eyes flickered up just for a millisecond before they returned to her studies as she said, “Okay, cool.” I shook my head. “No. Not cool. You. Me. Our Apartment. FLAMES. FIRE!” It then dawned on me that she thought I was being sarcastic. Since then I have adapted a few strategies to make sure people know I am being serious, which include standing on my kitchen chair and talking with the kitchen lamp under my face, talking loudly, and ending conversations with “I AM BEING COMPLETELY SERIOUS.” With communication skills like mine, it is still unknown why the dean consistently thought I was joking when I suggested that they make me the dean instead with the explanation that I would be a great dean if I just googled how.

     A commencement speech isn’t a speech without thanking people like you’ve just won the Nobel Peace Prize, so thank you to those who support me. Thank you to those who helped fund my education. Thank you to my mom for consistently sending me freezer meals so I could eat like a sultan instead of a college student. Thank you dad, for reminding me it’s okay to be different and to laugh at myself. Thank you siblings, whether you were at BYU helping me connect to the best WiFi or setting an alarm on my phone that rings every day during the middle of class reminding me that I have the best siblings ever. Thank you grandparents for your sage advice and always caring about me. Thank you roommates for always putting up with my insane amount of tortillas in the fridge: 6 or 7 bags wouldn’t seem too much if I were a sumo wrestler. Thank you to my friends, thank you to my family, and thank you if you’re reading this. Thanks for being you.
     

Thanks to Aubrey Jo Young for her incredible photography.

And finally, thank you BYU. Thank you for your sometimes self-righteous yet incredibly kind students, thank you for your absurd belief that there is no demand for caffeine on campus, and thank you for planting those trees that bloom beautifully on campus in the spring but have a stench of a stink bomb. I couldn’t have thought of a more hilarious plan myself. Thank you for being built next to what my freshman-self proclaimed the ugliest mountain I had ever seen, and thank you for being built next to the mountain that I now walk out to every morning and smile because my perspective has changed. And lastly, thank you for helping me see beyond myself. Thank you for helping me see the good and the bad in the world. Thank you for showing me that there are people in this world that need our help. Thank you for providing ways to give that help. Thank you for helping me to see that there is more to life than excellent retinas. Thank you, Brigham Young University.