Rock, Paper, Scissors

I was always confused by the game “rock, paper, scissors.” Why is a rock vulnerable to a piece of paper? Even if a piece of paper can successfully cover a rock, why does that leave it incapacitated? The rock could still be used to smash a pair of scissors. And the same rock could be placed on a piece of paper – which could scuff up the paper or cause it to rip if someone tried to slide it out from under the rock without first lifting the rock.

It all became clear to me on my last ski trip though. I was at Snowshoe Ski Resort with Eric and Brent and we were riding a lift up when I noticed why rock is inferior to paper. It’s not exactly that rock is inferior to paper, more like rock is inferior to the maker of paper – the tree. But, “rock, paper, scissors” has more of a ring to it than “rock, tree, scissors” so I suppose they had to go with the former.

I saw several trees growing through rocks causing them to split, and lose the battle. So, in a game of “rock, paper, scissors” you should always assume the battle is between a rock that was damaged by a tree that then was turned into paper, paper from the tree that damaged the rock, and any pair of scissors.

Now I feel bad that “scissors” doesn’t have a special background story.

The Island of Robotica

I generally come up with amazing ideas. This is one of them.

Eric and I were at lunch discussing the (then) upcoming appearance of Watson on Jeopardy. We both agreed that we wanted to see Watson win. Who wouldn’t cheer for the machine? Then we started discussing the computer that beat Garry Kasparov at chess. Eric made a great point, machines are better than people.

I decided to take that great point and run with it. What if I created a robot that was an awesome runner and it could beat all runners? And I created a robot that was an amazing swimmer, even better than Michael Phelps? And I created a robot that could jump twice as a high as any person can jump?

If I had all these amazingly talented robots, I’d want them to be able to compete in events and win. Let’s be honest, there’s no reason to be that great at something if you can’t win to assert your dominance. The ultimate sports competition is the Olympics. So, naturally that’s where my robots would compete.

But in order to compete in the Olympics, you need to be from a country. My robots would be shunned out of every other country since they’re not “people” and allowing them to compete would be “unfair.” I would need to create my own country, with my own rules. So, I would need to purchase a small island where I would store all my robots. I would name that island Robotica.

Unless the world wanted to embark into WWIII: The Robot Wars, I would be allowed to bring my robot athletes to the Olympics.

Every two years I would take my robots to the chosen country and collect my gold. Initially I planned on all Robotica’s profits coming only from gold, but as I’m writing this I realize that I have the perfect country for producing anything. If I had robots that were better than people at everything imaginable, then I’d have robots that were the best at sewing, soldering, organizing flowers, cooking, jumping on trampolines (I’m not sure how I’d make money on that one yet, but can you imagine a robot jumping on a trampoline? That would be entertaining!), the list goes on and on.

I just need to figure out how to make a robot now.

Bears

I know there are lots of different kinds of bears, but I’m going to focus on three types of bears: the black bear, the grizzly bear, and the polar bear. These are the bears that I feel like I understand the most through my extensive bear research. I consider myself a bear expert even though I haven’t studied anything remotely similar to “Bear Studies” (that must be a real thing right…like “Women’s Studies?”). I might be more of a bear enthusiast. The point is, the idea of a bear incites a level of excitement in me that is unmatched by anything else. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a painting of a bear and a wine glass etched with a bear in my living room. I’d buy one of those fancy looking bear carvings (if you’ve ever been to West Yellowstone, MT you know what I’m talking about) if I had enough money to spend on expensive bear paraphernalia.

Before I get into the nitty gritty bear details, I’d just like to point out that grizzly bears are awesome and I have an imaginary pet grizzly.

Black Bears:

I don’t have a lot to say about black bears. They’re kind of mean. They will keep attacking you even if you are playing dead like a good bear attack victim.

Grizzly Bears:

In my extensive research about bears, which mostly revolves around the grizzly, I’ve learned that you should play dead and protect your head/neck area when being attacked by one. This isn’t groundbreaking news. I assume you already know this. However, if the bear is hungry and is trying to eat you then playing dead simply makes the bear’s job easier. I don’t think I’m qualified in determining the hunger level of a grizzly. So my request of bear researchers/park rangers is to provide a weight cut-off for bear malnutrition. If the bear is below x pounds, the guidelines should advise you to “run like hell!”

You’re probably thinking there are clearly holes in this plan. Bears come in different sizes. A smaller, healthy bear could fall into the “run like hell” category even though it shouldn’t. So, my new request is a BMI (Body Mass Index) calculator for bears. It will have to be quick to navigate, because bears are quick…and hungry bears are even quicker. This new guide could be sold at REI. I’m hoping that the makers of the bear BMI guide will do a better job that the creators of the people BMI guide. It would be unfortunate for a healthy bear to be classified as morbidly obese.

Polar Bears:

Polar bears are horrible. They will hunt people so that they can eat them. Polar bears need to understand that they are below people on the food chain. I will eat as many polar bears as it takes to make this point.

I remember a commercial for the LEAF (a car), that was all like “you should buy our car because it will be good for the environment and then fewer polar bears will die, and then a polar bear will come to your house and give you a hug…not eat you.” I didn’t buy into that commercial though. I knew why the polar bear was coming. It was going to eat the man that bought the LEAF. So, to me this commercial says “don’t buy a LEAF, unless you want a polar bear to track you down and eat your face, no matter where you live.”

Eric and I were discussing the weird shape of a polar bear head and he said polar bears are “heat seeking missiles of death.” I’d have to agree.

There is one other type of bear that I’d like to call out: the pizzly/grolar bear. You might think I’m making this up, but you are so wrong! It’s a mix between a grizzly bear and a polar bear. I don’t know whether to love it or hate it. I wonder what shape a pizzly bear’s head is.

Note: I have looked up the pizzly bear, but I don’t know that I trust the pictures since the appearance of this type of bear varies so much picture to picture.

I don’t have a bookworm in my brain

I like to picture everyone having a little bookworm in their brains. This bookworm takes in the information that is provided to the brain through the eyes and ears and sorts that information. He is very organized. He is able to quickly find that information later through a cross referencing program that he designed himself.

My brain is missing this.

I have a disorganized, grumbly bear that destroys and hides information. This bear does not believe in the preservation of knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m stupid. I know I’m smart. I just feel like my thoughts are in one big jumbled mess like a rubber band ball…or a pile of paper that has been shredded to make a bear bed.

It’s tough to say what brought on the bear. Maybe too many concussions?

112 Pounds

I wrestled for 10 years. You’re probably thinking I’m a 300 lb East German woman after reading that last sentence. But you are wrong, sir. And no, it wasn’t jello wrestling, or pudding wrestling, or any other food/substance wrestling. I wrestled from junior high through college. I was co-captain of both my junior high and high school teams. I created and was president of the club team I worked out with in college. I’m not trying to brag. I just want you all to know that I was a competitor in a serious sport and I dedicated years of my life to it.



My senior year in high school – I competed at 125 lbs that year.  I’m the girl (maroon singlet).

So now that that’s out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. It’s more of a funny in hindsight story, because I choose to think of it as funny. Other people, including my parents, would probably file this under the unnecessarily scary story category.

It was my junior year of high school and it was freestyle season (freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling occur in the spring and summer and are club sports). I say freestyle season, because I primarily wrestled freestyle and only occasionally competed in Greco-Roman. Women’s wrestling doesn’t include Greco-Roman. I didn’t typically wrestle women anyway though (there weren’t a lot of women wrestlers in my area at the time).

I decided to compete in Greco-Roman state that year. I had been wrestling at 119 all year. This was 19 lbs below my natural weight of 138. At 138, I was a size 3. At 119, I was a size 00 (for those of you that have never heard of this absurd size, it’s below a 0). I know the weights sound too high to correspond to those sizes. The Body Mass Index system would agree with you. It typically claims I’m obese to morbidly obese, even when I was at 0% body fat. I assure you that I’m not making this story up, my muscles weigh a lot!

I was cutting back down to 119 over the course of 1.5 – 2 weeks. I had had a couple weeks off from competition, so I allowed myself to put on a little weight (this is normal wrestling behavior). But, I quickly realized that the weight was coming off faster than expected. I could have allowed myself to eat and drink a little more than my current plan allowed. Instead, I decided to further restrict my diet and increase the number of work outs. I was going to 112!

After I made it to 119, the weight cutting became more and more difficult. My body wasn’t used to dropping below this weight and began to panic. It wasn’t as eager to get to 112 as my mind was. I had about a week to get the excess weight off. At this point it wasn’t an option for me to wrestle 119. Once I make a decision, there’s no going back.

I made some rash decisions and again stuck with them:

1. I would only get to drink water if I hit specific goals that I set at the beginning of the day (ex. If I make it to 115 today, I can drink 16 oz of water).
2. Food was pretty much out of the question.
3. I had to run a lot. I had to wear sweaters. I had to run in the sun (that rhymes!).

I decided that the best option to allow myself to eat was to compromise. There had to be a substance that could double as food and liquid. I found my answer: the grapefruit. A half a grapefruit a day would provide my mouth with a small amount of moisture and provide my stomach with enough substance to trick it into thinking it was being provided with enough food to avoid starvation. Stomachs aren’t easy to trick.

Needless to say, things were not going well. I began feeling a strong heartbeat in my stomach – this was new and off-putting. My stomach was very much concave – if I was lying on my stomach and someone wanted to lift me in the air they could use my hip bones as handles. I could not fall asleep no matter how exhausted I was. My body craved water. My mind began to resent my body.

The internal struggle started to unfold:

Body: I think we might actually be killing Cristy

Mind: Would you rather be alive and fail, or be dead and have been on the path to success?

Body: Well, I really don’t want to die.

Mind: Are you fucking kidding me right now? KEEP RUNNING!

Body: Jesus Christ! Ok!

My mouth was drier than it’s ever been. My lips were cracking. When I attempted to rinse my mouth with water (this would provide temporary satisfaction of having liquid in my mouth) I couldn’t stop myself from allowing a little water to go down my throat. So, one day I put some pieces of ice into a bottle and told myself that if I ran until it was melted I would reward myself with the water. It was wonderful. But the wonderfulness was short lived. I craved liquid.

Body: I’m so thirsty and tired. I just want to cry.

Mind: You should cry! We’ll lose weight!

Body: Can’t I have just a little water?

Mind: Absolutely not. But you know what would be fun? You could make some juice and save it for after weigh-ins.

Body: That actually sounds amazing. Let’s do it!

I asked my mom to buy oranges, lemons, and limes. I would juice them and store them in an old Gatorade bottle and drink them after I made weight. Life was good.

Making the juice was not as amazing as I had imagined. Remember how I mentioned my lips were cracking? Well, my hands were also cracking. I was using a handheld juicer which means I was twisting acidic fruit around a bumpy cone shaped thing and the juices were squirting everywhere. The burning sensation was awful and strong. It was like the scene from Fight Club where Brad Pitt burns Edward Norton’s hand with lye. I had to force myself to finish the juicing process so I could enjoy the sumptuous juices later.

I believe the juicing occurred on the Thursday before the tournament (it could have happened on Friday, after the following part of this story…it’s a little hazy).

I made it to Friday and I was in Spanish class. Normally this class was amazingly entertaining for me because my teacher would sit on a stool in the front of class eating a block of cheddar even though she was allergic to cheese. There was a lot of sneezing and wheezing involved. We would also watch movies with Spanish subtitles – yes the movies were in English and we were asked to read the subtitles to learn Spanish. I don’t think the teacher cared if we actually learned Spanish, as long as she had enough time to finish her cheese.

This Friday I was not feeling my best though. I was one day from weigh-ins and I was hot. My hand touched the leg of the table and it felt amazing. It was cold metal. I decided the best option at this point would be to lay my head on the cool table and get the most amount of cold against my body as socially acceptable in a high school setting. Because I looked like I was half dead and I was now lying on the table, my teacher sent me to the nurse.

The nurse’s office was air conditioned! I fell asleep and would have stayed asleep for the rest of the day, but the nurse decided my time was up and I had to go home.

Nurse: How are you doing? Do you want to go back to class or rest here a little longer?

Me: I’m doing ok. I’ll stay a little longer

After about 30 minutes…

Nurse: Hun, we’re going to call your parents to come pick you up.

Me: No, they’re at work. I can just walk home.

Nurse: We can’t let you walk home; someone has to pick you up. I’ll call your emergency contact.

Me: (Thinking to myself) I wonder who my emergency contact is

After about 15 minutes…

Nurse: It’s time for you to go home!

It turns out my emergency contact was the neighbors who lived behind me. The dad came and picked me up and dropped me off at my house. I apologized to him for disrupting his day. He politely told me it was no problem and to give him a call if I needed anything. I wasn’t going to need anything though. I was going to find a way to cool myself off and get some sleep.

I came up with the most brilliant idea that has ever existed in the world of Idealand. I would fill a water bottle with cold water and sleep on it. I did just that.

It turns out that a water bottle can not support 112 pounds for an extended period of time. I woke up several hours later to my mom standing over me with a very confused look on her face.

Mom: Cristy! Why are you home? And what’s wrong with you? Why is the floor wet?

Me: What? Oh no, the water bottle!

I spent the remainder of the day either making the juice from various acidic fruits (again not sure if this happened on Thursday or Friday), or doing something else to distract myself from the crippling hunger and thirst. The following morning my dad made the several hour drive to the tournament and I weighed in.

Me: I just made weight!

Dad: What did you weigh in at?

Me: 111.6!

Dad: What? (In a distressed tone)

Me: 111.6. (Slightly less enthusiastic)

Dad: Are you kidding me?

Me: What?

Dad: Why are you wrestling 112? Is this why you’ve been working out and running so much? You shouldn’t be cutting that much weight.

Me: I decided I was getting to 119 too quickly, so I should cut down to 112. And then I can wrestle 110 next weekend at freestyle state.

Women’s wrestling has different weight classes, and I was competing in the women’s group to qualify for nationals.

Dad: You’re not doing that. You’re wrestling at 119 or you’re not wrestling. This is ridiculous.

Me: Ok. (Pouting, but also too happy to be on the verge of eating and drinking to care about anything else)

I’m pretty sure I put on about 20 pounds that morning. I took 2^nd and qualified for men’s nationals! I have never been back to that weight again.

Oh, and about the homemade juice. It turns out my judgment skills were impaired under malnourishment. I had simply juiced the oranges, lemons, and limes. I didn’t add anything to the concoction. It was the most acidic thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, but I drank it all.


I’m the one in the blue singlet.  This is me wrestling at nationals later that year – I competed at 119 lbs.

Flower Paradise

My two brothers and I used to ride around on our little bikes and bike-ish toys. We would make the descent from our driveway to the corner of the street, climb the hill, and repeat. Brent would ride his fire truck toy and I would ride my space ship. Both the fire truck and the space ship had seats that would flip up with a storage compartment under them – this is a key detail in the story.

Eric had his own share of toys including a giant tractor and a skate board to ride from a seated position while wearing gloves. Unfortunately he had only one pair of gloves and enjoyed riding closely to the wooden railroad ties at the boarders of some yards. When he asked me if I’d like to take a ride with him, I jumped at the opportunity. It turns out that speeding down a hill with your hands rubbing against splintered wood doesn’t feel pleasant. It also turns out that Eric could not stop the skateboard no matter how much screaming came from the passenger behind him.

Brent and I took one of our daily trips to the corner and then looked down the street perpendicular to ours. The house to the left had an amazingly abundant garden of flowers. They called to us. There were so many. How could one house possibly need all those flowers? They couldn’t.

I don’t know what conversation transpired between the two of us, or if we just both automatically knew we had to be where the flowers were. We spent the next several days on a mission. The goal seemed to be to gather as many flowers as we possibly could and store them under the boat in our garage. Nobody would find them there and know our shame.

You may be asking: “Why would you want the flowers if you were going to store them somewhere where nobody would be able to enjoy their beautiful colors?” That’s a completely valid question. I’m not claiming there weren’t any holes in our plan. All we knew was that we needed the flowers.

Our missions had the following steps:

1. Ride the fire truck and the space ship to flower paradise
2. Sneak onto the yard in mid daylight and in clear view of both the windows and door
3. Rip flowers from the ground as quickly as possible until the storage compartments of both the fire truck and the space ship were full
4. Ride the fire truck and the space ship to our garage
5. Empty the flowers from the storage compartments to under the boat

This process went on until the older kids would begin to get out of school. We knew that we would be persecuted for our flower heist, so we had to do it during a short window during the day. One afternoon, a group of big kids stumbled upon us and we high tailed it to our garage and hid out for the remainder of the day.

Everything was going smoothly until the day we were caught. My mom must have grown suspicious of our behavior and so she followed us into the garage and stumbled upon the largest stash of dead flowers in the history of the world. Needless to say she was not pleased. My great grandfather that was in town visiting was also not pleased.

Once they got us to confess where the flowers were coming from, my mom took us by the hands and marched us straight to the front door of the queen of flower paradise. I couldn’t tell you what she looked like or how she reacted to the situation unfolding before her because I was completely hysterical.

My little brother apologized for the destruction we caused to her beautiful yard and I stood there in a panic induced sob. It was that day that we learned that flower hoarding was a not lifestyle befitting us.

Airing of Grievances

I was driving to Target to buy more glue sticks so I could continue making my construction paper pictures (like a big girl!) and I had one of my largest annoyances shoved down my throat repeatedly. This aggravation triggered my mind to think of several other annoyances that I regularly encounter. I then got to thinking about the Festivus episode of Seinfeld, where they had the annual “Airing of Grievances.” Because Festivus isn’t real and I don’t want to stand on the street corner ranting about my frustrations, I decided to create a list of some of the large issues.

Usage of turn signals

This is the problem that arose when I was driving to Target. Virginia drivers don’t understand the purpose of a turn signal. Do not use a signal if there is a curve in the road. I will assume that you are going to follow the curve and not veer off the side of the road, no need to give me a heads up. Do use a signal if you are changing lanes. Also, check your blind spots. I don’t want you to run into me. Driving in Virginia is terrifying. I tell everyone this, but nobody can fully understand until they’ve experienced it. Whenever someone visits me they’re clutching the seat as we drive and yelling “What is he going to do? HE’S DRIFTING! WATCH OUT!!”

When to make eye contact

This one is more of a self-directed grievance. I have a lot of trouble in determining at what point I should acknowledge that a person is approaching me. I want to time the eye contact just right so that I’m not staring too long. There’s nothing worse than walking towards someone, locking eyes, and realizing that you have 10 more seconds of walking past them to do. What happens next? Do you keep staring? Do you look away awkwardly or fumble with something in your hands pretending that you’re now too busy to recognize their existence? Or do you allow a series of uncomfortable eye contacts and hellos?

Theft detectors at stores

I guess you could say that I’m paranoid at times. And one of those times would be when I’m leaving a store and passing through the detectors at the exit. I begin to panic as I approach the detector. I wonder “What if something fell in my bag and the detector goes off and they search my purse and they find the object and think I stole it?” and “What if they left one of those sensor things on one of my items and I have to pull out my receipt to prove I’m not a thief and everyone’s watching and judging me with their eyes?” Sometimes the detector does go off and I look around wondering if I should stop or I should just tear off running even though I know I haven’t taken anything.

Similarly, when I’m in a store looking around and I get a phone call or I’ve just finished talking to someone and I have to go into my purse to grab/put back my phone, I feel like the security cameras are zoomed in on me and everyone around me is suspicious. So, I make the most exacerbated moves to indicate that I’m not hiding anything. If I was actually trying to steal I’d be sneaky, so clearly I’m not trying to steal!

People that honk at me while I’m running

I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind this action. I’ve never seen someone (I don’t know) or something and felt the need to make noise at it. It’s irritating. It makes me jump. I know that guys honk as some sort of courtship ritual. But, I fail to see why it’s directed at me. Usually when I’m running the wind is blowing directly in my face. I don’t know why that’s the case, but it is. Anytime wind touches my face, my face decides to expel all the liquids that it was storing up. So, when I run I have streams of tears and snot running down my face. The honking leads me to believe that guys are attracted to snot.

Store employees that are too interested in “how I’m doing”

I’m the type of person who likes to wander around aimlessly until I’m able to locate what I’m looking for on my own. When sales staff begin circling me I begin to sweat. I know that soon enough I’m going to be questioned on the ease of my experience and the quality of my shopping experience. One round of questioning would be okay – still more than I’d like to experience, but okay. But, I usually am assaulted by multiple waves of overly excited store employees that want to help me.

That’s why I like shopping at Target. I know I’ll be allowed to wander aimlessly to my heart’s desire. I do notice that employees take note of me though (I wander a lot).

People that make me feel embarrassed for them

I already feel enough embarrassment without the assistance of other people. Whenever I watch an awards show I am forced to change the channel during every acceptance speech because of the train wreck that is sure to unfold in front of me. I don’t believe there has ever been an acceptance speech that hasn’t made my stomach turn due to either the speech or the music beginning to queue as the acceptor is still talking. So, right now I’m sitting in the other room as someone accepts an Oscar.

This also applies to people that embarrass themselves in a group setting that I’m involved in. Because I hate to see others experiencing embarrassment and I’m already feeling it for them, I typically end up shifting the uncomfortable energy on myself.

My college asking me for money

I would donate money. I did previously donate money. That is until they allowed my personal information to be stolen from a computer. I think the story was that some employee transferred info to a computer and saved it on the computer even though student info isn’t supposed to be stored directly to a computer. And then someone took that computer.

I’m super paranoid about people getting information about me (weird that I’m now writing a blog). My college roommate, Amrita, used to make fun of me for shredding everything. And since I didn’t have a shredder this meant I was shredding it by hand. But all that was for nothing now that everything about me has been leaked. So no college, I will not give you money! I will at some point, but just not now. You have to learn your lesson.

Objects having the power to make me feel bad

After going to Target to buy glue, I returned later that day to buy a few more things. I typically forget to guy stuff even if I make a list and end up having to return to the store multiple times. This time I had to pick up more eyeliner because my Almay green eyes eyeliner was almost out. They didn’t have it in stock my previous 3 attempts, but I was lucky this time! There were 2 in stock. I grabbed the first one and put it in my basket. I then stared at the last remaining eyeliner and felt sad. It was sitting there all alone. Who knows when someone else would come along and want it. What if that person misused the eyeliner? I tried to fight my urge to take it, but I ended up leaving the store with 2 eyeliners. I am set for the rest of the year now.

This is only one example of my desire to make sure that inanimate objects aren’t left out.