Names and Saying Them

I have the horrible habit of, in my head, calling people by the name of what I think they look like instead of their actual name. For example, there could be a person named Butter, but I think they look more like a Jelly, so I’ll call them Jelly (not out loud, of course).

I’m making an effort to stop. I consciously use their actual names in my head were I to think of them. It’s in that brief moment when you first see someone when things spiral out of my control.

ARACHNID: “Hey, Butter… elly!!”

BUTTER/JELLY glares with the fire of a thousand flaming suns at ARACHNID. ARACHNID spontaneously combusts.

It’s a nightmare when you call one of your closest friends by something other than their name (that is also not an applicable nickname).

Except for a few mortifying instances, this issue thankfully doesn’t occur often because I tend to never use people’s names when I’m talking to them.

PEOPLE: Hey, Arachnid!

ARACHNID: Hi. (Note the lack of “People”)

I never really thought about not-saying-people’s-names until a few weeks ago. I can’t remember what prompted me to think about it. Possibly someone said my name and I thought, Huh. I never say that person’s name. Or maybe I was trying to get someone’s attention and my usual methods were insufficient and I had to scream their name, and it felt awkward in my mouth. When I usually try to grab someone’s attention, I put my sock on my hand, along with googly eyes that are always conveniently located in my pocket, and throw a spectacular puppet show. Sorry, just trying to get your attention, dear reader. Making sure you’re not yet bored out of your mind and simply skimming these words for any sort of emotion to break the predictable mundaneness of daily zombie living. When I usually try to grab someone’s attention, I tap their shoulders. If that fails, I’ll wave my hand obnoxiously in their face or simply give up and flop over like a deflated version of those dancing balloon people thingies outside of car washes.

On the rare occasion that I use someone’s name, I more-often-than-not stumble over it like a bunny leaping over a boulder the size of Mount Everest (I’ve lost track of that simile. OH WELL). It’s not how it looks. I know your name, I really do! Just… AHHHHH. I can pronounce words.

I think the name I stumble the most on is my own. You never really say your own name often, and with such little practice with it, I’m terrible at saying it. I can barely eke out the traditional pronunciation, and even then, I have to repeat it back to you; I can’t come up with it off the top of my head. But, as my name is my own, I get to decide how to say it, right?

Is it A-rack-nid, like a horrible hacking cough, or is it A-rah-ch-nid like that itchy rash?

The main reason I decided to go with a pseudonym (Yes, I’ll admit, it’s a pseudonym. My parents did not actually name me Arachnid Weaver. But I will deny it if you ever ask) is because the name on my birth certificate is a pain to pronounce. It’s not the worst out there, but whenever anyone asks me how to say it, I usually have to repeat it multiple times, and even then, it’s a fifty-fifty shot.

But sometimes even I don’t pronounce it right (according to the pronunciation I prefer. If we go the traditional route, I never say it right).

I was always trying to escape my name. When I was four, I asked my mom why they didn’t name me Golden Girl (I’m glad they didn’t. And, yes, four-year-old-me wanted a superhero name. She didn’t yet realize that they had secret identities. She thought Spider-Man’s parents named him “Spider-Man” as a powerless infant). When I was in kindergarten, I’d occasionally put a name other than mine on my papers (probably a pain for the teacher to sort, but at least I was consistent). When I was ten, I wanted to legally change my name for my birthday (I didn’t).

Not Human

In early elementary school, up through third or fourth grade, I’d thoroughly convinced myself that I wasn’t human. Humans were far too mundane, to unmagical for my tastes. I was absolutely certain that one day I’d wake up and my true magical potential would emerge and I wouldn’t be a lowly human anymore. I was just waiting for that day to happen and simply passing the time in my human life. My humanity was a placeholder for my true magical self.

On top of believing that I wasn’t human, I would search for magical beings everywhere. I remember intently searching for leprechauns every St. Patrick’s Day with my friends. My house had a pond in the backyard, and of course there were mermaids in the shallow pond. They were lurking under the surface, biding their time and waiting for me to sprout my tail so I could join them.

All mythical creatures weren’t created equal. Mermaid, for instance, I’d take over human any day, but it wasn’t preferential. While mermaids did have their underwater cities, I didn’t want to leave land forever. Therefore, I would be a shapeshifting mermaid so I could still come to the surface and get ice cream on the weekends.

For fairy, which was mythical creature I most wanted to be (a human-sized one, not a small one. I didn’t want to be crushed underfoot.), I imagined having wings and practiced flapping them so I’d be prepared to fly whenever they grew. I practiced folding them away and fluttering them gently when I walked. I could feel them, and I could almost see them. I was so convinced they were real that I’d even briefly considered jumping off our second floor to test them.

In third grade, I was convinced that the existence of my canine teeth indicated that I was actually a vampire or a werewolf. I couldn’t decide between the two. I managed to persuade my friends that this was true as well. It turned out they were harboring doubts about their humanity too.

When I finally came to realize that I was a mere mortal and would never sprout magic powers or wings, I turned to writing. I wrote many “novels” about mythical creatures. I wish I still had them, but most I’ve lost and some I destroyed.

In third grade, during writing time, our teacher would give us a prompt. She usually wanted us to talk about our real lives and experiences, but I decided to do my own thing and write fiction. My novel was about these three cat-fairy sisters going on a quest of some sort to save their mother. I was so excited to reach twenty pages in my composition book.

I also wrote a picture book in third grade. It was about three friends at a vampire school going on an egg hunt for solid gold eggs. It was a competition between their whole school. A race. I remember one of the eggs was stuck on the roof of the school, so they decided to blow it down. And plot twist/cliff hanger: one of the characters is actually a werewolf. *Mind blown* This was revealed by one of the eggs having a werewolf engraved on it.

Slight detour from fairy tales: In fourth grade, I wrote about a fork who was terrified of being used. It’s about how fork are superior to spoons. I hold this belief strongly to this day.

Then back to fairy tales in fifth grade, I wrote a bunch of fairy tale retellings with the villain as the misunderstood protagonist.

I also wrote a “novel” about shape-shifting mermaids. I was super excited when I hit a thousand words. *Looks at ~800 word blog post written in half-an-hour. Looks at ~1,300 word essay written for English yesterday.* This novel was written in lieu of whatever assignment we had in the computer lab. It was also my first typed story. I deleted it after it devolved into overpowered characters, no real plot, and shell phones. I wish I hadn’t.

In sixth and seventh grade, I diverged from fantasy and wrote my first dystopian, which I didn’t finish. It was about a terrible war that destroyed human life. The main character was Annie, a normal citizen who struggled to make ends meet, whose parents just laid hopelessly in bed all day watching a blank TV, and only ate peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (except the bread was secretly cardboard). The other main character was Nikki, who was a privileged girl not really even aware of the war with an aloof, uncaring father. Plot twist: the father started the whole war. Annie and Nikki would band together to stop her father, but at the end, when it really counted, Nikki would choose her father over Annie and the war would continue. The end.

The Horrors of Highschool Homecoming

It was really loopy.

I mean loopy in all ways possible. It’s probably the only word I can use other than the ambiguous “fun”.

My friend, LeRain and I walked around from the gym to the cafeteria for the first hour, talking to her band friends while I regretted my class decisions. (I didn’t take band because I’m trash at ze flute and drawing interested me more.)

It was kind of boring at that point and the only thing that saved it from being that way was the yummy ice cones and this physical Angry Birds game. So the game basically went like this: step on the wooden thing and try desperately to knock down a tower of plastic bricks. Easy, right?

Wrong. It was so hard for me, even with my eight-inch heels (that’s a story for another post) to get the bird to hit the building. I knocked down the tower once in the twentyish tries I had. At times like this, I question why angry birds don’t have wings.   

After that, I met up with my other friend, Ash. She was dancing with her friend, Zip and introduced her to me. We danced a bit in the gym then went to the cafeteria since we were a bit tired. This was when the loopiness began.

Since the Gatorade was an odd grey color, we joked around that it was laced with illegal substances. We laughed so much that Ash spilled some of her drink on her dress. A guy passed by and said that it looked like a private part of the human body and snickered.

In an attempt to cover it up I gave her my Spanish crossword (which was due the next day) and tucked it under her dress so it looked like a bib. We walked out of the lunchroom then, Ash looking magnificent.

Outside the cafeteria, I saw a girl who had THE SAME EXACT dress as me and I just started laughing so much because of all the odd events that were somehow circulating around me. The girl probably thought I laced my own Gatorade with illegal substances because that’s what I sounded like at the time. I managed to say “Nice dress,” before promptly making my exit from her glaring radius.

Later, Ash, Zip, LeRain and I all went to the gym and played a game similar to Mad Libs. We danced more afterward, joining a dancing circle of freshmen doing stupid dances. Once in the middle, Ash danced like a goddess, but then was suddenly bombarded by two girls doing a sickening butt-slapping dance. Luckily, all was back to normal when this person went in the middle and started to do the chicken dance with incredible finesse. I think now I fully understand why people call highschoolers “weird”.

Lastly, LeRain and I did a slow dance to “A Thousand Years” since we were both third wheels to a couple. The song was a nice end to the rather loopy event.

Analyzing Nursery Rhymes

It’s raining it’s pouring

The old man is snoring

He bumped his head

On the foot of the bed

And he didn’t get up in the morning

I’m sure you’ve heard of this nursery rhyme at least once in your life. This is the way that I learned it (which means that this is the right way).

I used to sing this nonstop whenever it rained. It probably annoyed my parents indefinitely. But whenever it rained and I was reminded of this song, I used to wonder why the old man couldn’t get up in the morning.

And how did he even bump his head on the foot of the bed? Was he sleeping upside down? Who does that? Does he thrash in his sleep? If so, why does he thrash about? Was he having nightmares? What was the cause of the nightmares?

 

Let us say that when this man was nothing but a mere child with about eight years under his belt, he loved the jungle. He wanted to grow up to be a scientist, scouring the Amazon for new plant and animal species. And this eight-year-old Old Man had to practice. How else would he get ahead of the game? So Old Man decided to swing with a rope off of the roof of his barn to practice his vine-swinging. However, Old Man lacked the upper-body strength required to swing from a rope and he immediately slid down it, earning rope burns on the pads of his fingers.

Now, while we wait for Old Man to fall, let us talk about his little sister, Annie. Annie was a pretty little thing with about six years behind her and she adored nothing more than her stuffed animals. She stored her large stuffed animal collection in a wading pool beneath the barn to protect them from the rain.

Some would say luckily (and others would say unluckily) for Old Man, Annie’s stuffed animal pool was positioned directly underneath the rope from which he fell and Old Man, therefore, fell into the wading pool instead of onto the unforgiving ground. While Old Man was thrashing about in this wading pool, blood pumped with adrenaline and surrounded by the glass eyes of stuffed animals, Old Man believed that this was his end and that he had reached his untimely death. This supposed death was not due to his large fall. Rather, it was due to his little sister’s stuffed animals.

After this curious incident, Old Man had developed a fear of stuffed animals. It didn’t affect him much, though, until he had grown middle-aged and had a daughter of his own. This daughter of his adored stuffed animals as much as, if not more than, little Annie. But Old Man was careful in avoiding his daughter’s toys and he managed to hide his fear.

But in his ripe old age, Old Man’s daughter thought that piling his bed with her old stuffed animals would bring the old man some comfort. How wrong she was.

Instead of the intended comfort, these stuffed animals plagued Old Man with terrifying nightmares. But no matter how much he might’ve wanted to, Old Man could not remove the stuffed animals from his bed as he was a kind and gentle soul and he could not bear to hurt his dear daughter’s feelings.

And this is the reason the old man’s head was near the foot of the bed.

 

Now as to why he didn’t get up in the morning.

I think he died due to the bumping of his head.

Growing Up: Some Random Thoughts

Growing up is hard, as many people often notice. For example, after one is grown, there is less fun, more work, and less free time. When most people become old, they reminisce their younger days when their joints didn’t hurt and they had time for fun and they didn’t know swear words.

But when most people are young, they cannot wait to become old. When they are old, they can have jobs, they can change the world, they can be tall. They wait in anticipation for the days when they are the firefighters rescuing cats, the police fighting bad guys and saving the cities, or the famous singers whose names everyone recognizes.

I was the oddball of the group. I wanted to stay young forever and I dreaded growing up. (I did want to be taller, though. But not too tall. I was terrified of how the banisters on stairwells would then be shorter.)

But one cannot help but grow up as it is in one’s DNA. However, even if you were to stay in a kindergartener’s body forever, you would still grow in experience. (Would it be acceptable to relate one’s age to the number of swear words they know?)

A negative side effect of growing up, besides banisters being shorter, is the loss of magic. I love fantasy books now, but I didn’t when I was younger. Maybe this love of fantasy is like a vitamin supplement to make up for the lack of magic in the real world.

When one is young, one believes in a whole variety of magical beings and one puts absolute faith in their existence. Such magical beings could include (but are not limited to) leprechauns, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, other fairies, cats, gnomes, elves, Santa’s elves, Keebler elves, etc.

The uncertain existence of these magical beings brought a sense of excitement to otherwise mundane kindergarten life. I say uncertain for two reasons A) you never see them, even though you know they exist and B) the doubters out there always said you are wrong, even though you know deep down that it was they that were wrong.

When I lost my first tooth and I put it underneath my pillow, ecstatic for the soon-to-arrive tooth fairy’s arrival, the tooth fairy forgot my house. Predictably, I was quite upset that morning. I couldn’t believe that the tooth fairy had forgotten me.

My parental units sat me, the five-year-old without front teeth, down and told me that the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and leprechauns and other fairies and Keebler elves were all lies. They were stories and they were fake. This shattered my little heart. I don’t remember my reaction, but it was probably along the lines of screaming and/or crying.

But, of course, I wasn’t crying because I had discovered that Earth was populated solely by human beings (among plants, animals, and microscopic life, of course) instead of being inhabited by mythical all-powerful beings as well. I was crying because my parents had lied to me.

Second Grade Stories

Once upon a time, many years ago, in a land that is fairly close, there lived a second grader named Arachnid Weaver.

Arachnid was an averagely normal second grader; average height, average amount of letters in her name, average age (7-years-old).

Now, Arachnid Weaver was different in one way. She had misread the school supply list, so instead of having one 48-pack of crayons, she had two 24-packs of crayons. Arachnid, being a kind second-grader, shared her crayons with her friend, Ava, who hadn’t read the supply list at all and had no crayons. What was Arachnid to do with her second pack of crayons anyway?

Ava was a very nice second grader as well, and she treated her friend’s crayons with respect, using them for coloring purposes and nothing else. Since Arachnid always got her crayons back at the end of the day all in one piece, she didn’t mind Ava using her crayons.

Until one day.

Ava returned her crayons to Arachnid as usual, but when she opened the box, one of the crayons were missing.

“What happened to the bubblegum pink?” Arachnid asked. Maybe it had rolled under the table or Ava had misplaced it.

Ava held out a decapitated bubblegum pink crayon in her palm.

Little Arachnid took the pieces and clutched them in her hands, tears welling in her eyes. “What happened?”

Ava replied, “I dared Luke to bite the pink crayon in half.”

Arachnid yelped and thrust the potentially slobbery crayons into the nearby Luke’s hands and stomped away, ferociously wiping her eyes and mumbling, “You can keep it.”

It is safe to say that Arachnid refrained from sharing her crayons from then on for the fear of saliva contaminating her possessions.

And they didn’t live happily ever after.

The end.

Babies: Some Random Thoughts

When you think, you usually think in words. For example, if you are planning to eat pasta for breakfast tomorrow morning, you would think, Hey, you know what? I think I’m going to be crazy and eat pasta for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Personally, I prefer breakfast foods for dinner over dinner foods for breakfast, but that’s getting off topic. The main point is that those thoughts were in English, or whatever other languages you think in for our bilingual nonexistent friends.

Babies cannot speak, it’s one of the things that make them babies. But before they learn to speak, or even before they learn to recognize language, how do babies form thoughts? It wouldn’t be in words, as they don’t know any words. Would they think in colors? Images perhaps? Sounds? Sensations?

Well, they must think somehow. Babies may not be able to do math, but they aren’t daft. They certainly can communicate in their own way. But if they do think in images, let’s say, then how do these images come about? How do they identify the images without words? Language is such an important part of our lives, it’s hard to imagine what it was like before we knew any.

Everyone was a baby at some point or another, therefore everyone had the ability to think without words at some point in their lives. So do we still have this skill? Can we imagine an object in our minds and not give it a name?

And what would a baby even think about? It would certainly be different from what an adult thinks about as babies don’t have to worry about taxes quite yet.

Weird Things I used to Think

When I was a child, like most children, I didn’t understand every single aspect of the world I was in. So, to solve this predicament, I created some theories about the world I was in that I was fully invested in.

What is the Universe?

Before I start answering this question, I would like to remind you, dear nonexistent reader, that I completely believed all of this.

So what is the universe? Why does it exist? Why does space exist? Why does anything exist? Why can’t it not exist? What is existence?

There is nothing but imagination. We are actually a world inside of a world. We are the figment of the imagination of some other being we cannot see or interact with.

We are inside a crayon-drawing on a sheet of lined notebook paper, and if one were to take a spaceship to the end of the universe, the spaceship would hit the edge of the paper and stop. It would not be able to go any further because the paper had ended.

Where do Clouds Come from?

The clouds are actually made by planes. Every morning, before I wake up, planes fly through the sky, creating the fluffy wonders we call clouds.

When pilots take the day off, we have cloudless days.

This is also how meteorologists know what the weather is going to be.

 

Meteorologist: “Hey Pilot, what’s the weather today?”

Pilot: “I made some storm clouds earlier. It should rain.”

Meteorologist: “Great. Thanks. I’ll call you back later. Want to go out for some coffee?”

Pilot: “Nah. I’m good. I don’t drink caffeine.”

Meteorologist: “What about cake? Brownies?”

Pilot: “I actually do drink coffee. I was just trying to politely refuse your offer because I don’t like you and would rather do anything else than spend more time with you than I have to.”

Meteorologist:

Pilot:

Meteorologist: So cookies?

Pilot: ——

Where does Fog Come From?

When the clouds are too heavy are for the sky, they descend to Earth as fog.

Duplication

You know how when your eyes unfocus you can see double? I thought that things would actually duplicate themselves for the longest time and once, I spent the entire day thinking that I had switched my feet around.

Driving

You know how when it’s dark and you squint at lights the lights kind of spread out? I thought that the light actually got brighter for the longest time. Whenever it was dark and we were driving, I would squint to make the lights brighter and help my father drive.

Characters on TV

We had this large, boxy TV, not a flatscreen, and I used to think that the television characters lived in the TV. Read more about this here.

Magical Car

Small people today have electric cars that can move by themselves when you press the gas pedal. When I was a kid, we had these plastic cars which were like bubbles on wheels with a hole in the floor. So you were to sit in the car and stick your feet through the hole and walk. So basically, it was just walking, but less efficiently because you had to lug a plastic car around you.

Well, this was the type of car the other kids had. My car was powered by magic and moved by itself.

But this “magic” was actually my parents pushing from behind.

 

What crazy stuff did you believe in as a kid?

My Favorite TV Shows as a Small Person

This post (obviously) discusses my favorite TV shows as a small person.

For all of you nonexistent readers out there who don’t know what a “small person” is, I’ll elaborate after the colon: A small person is a human being who has not existed as many days as a medium or large person.

When I was a very small person, my absolute favorite TV show was Dora the Adventurer. I just couldn’t get enough of it. All of my things were Dora-related, as well. My bed, my backpack, my clothing, my pencils, my toothbrush, my plate, my silverware (which was actually plastic, not silver), my placemat, this cushion thing that I put on my dining chair so I could reach the table, a little chair/couch thing, my bike, my bedspread, my toys, my shoes, my socks, my hair accessories, etc. But then, one day, I decided that I hated Dora more than anything else and I kicked all my Dora-related material possessions down the static escalator.

But before I hated it, I adored it. Back in the olden days, we used this big, boxy television set, not the thin flat screens that small people today get, and I thought that Dora lived in the television and she would come out at specific times to have an adventure.

Dora the Adventurer is one of those small people-shows where the characters ask the TV-watchers for help to answer questions. When I was a small person, I thought that I was actually communicating with Dora and that she really needed me to help her answer the questions. Until one day, when I wasn’t quite sure what the answer to a particular question was and I was still thinking when the allotted time to answer the question ran out and Dora started speaking again. She told me that I was right and that I had done a good job, even though I hadn’t said anything. My small person heart was crushed. Dora couldn’t really hear me. She was a liar. (Although this does not correlate with my future hatred of Dora the Adventurer.)

When I was a slightly less-small person, my favorite TV show was Danny Ghost and after that, it was Generator Dex.