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I was lucky enough to have my birthday on a Friday this year, so after school my friends and I decided to throw a proper celebration in which I completely exhausted my social battery. I'm writing down some details from that day because I want to remember it years down the line.
Went to the fire hazard of a bookstore I frequented and finally bought myself Kant's Critique of Pure Reason because I wanted to annotate it, which is really unwieldy on a PDF. Then I had to lug it around for the rest of the hangout because my backpack was stuffed to overcapacity with chemistry worksheets and the chicken plush toy my friend gifted me. One of the girls in the group wanted to go to Aritzia to try on some sweatpants and the rest of us had hours to kill before dinnertime so we obliged. She humoured us with the promise that there'd be a boyfriend couch, and so we made our pilgrimage to white woman Mecca; roaming the streets of suburbanite Vancouver, passing Body Energy Clubs and overpriced gelato places until we came face to face with Aritzia's answer to Christ the Redeemer: an ugly bulldog statue.
Whan thatAprille January with his shoures soote,
The droghte ofMarch December hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
But alas! Inside the Aritzia there was no boyfriend couch to be found. My compatriots and I were forced to stand upright holding our newly acquired second-hand books with lost looks on our faces whilst women walked by in $40 plain t-shirts. It looked like such a setup we might as well have been holding matcha lattes too. I silently cursed myself for choosing to cradle Kant's massive forehead in my arms and not a philosopher that was sexier and more French (just kidding, I'd never betray my goat Immanuel) and we endured this public humiliation ritual until our friend finally emerged from the fitting room. Wow, this post is starting to sound like it was written by Greg Heffley. Enough about Aritzia.
Then I went to the ice cream parlour and got chocolate and salted caramel scoops :-DD and my friends began launching into some crazy gossip. I don't actually like ice cream that much, nor do I like gossip. To some people that's like me saying I don't like sunshine and clear blue skies or that I'm a D1 puppy kicker. Truth is, I used to pride myself on not engaging with that kind of thing until I found out that literally everyone does, and I was missing out on some pretty important information about the character of my associates. I was austere as all hell as a kid and it always seemed too underhanded to talk about anyone behind their back. Pre-middle school I'd actually chew out my parents for gossiping, until I gradually understood it as my relationships began to get that complicated too. Now I totally get the need for it. It's good to debrief once in a blue moon. You might just be the last one to find out that a good teammate and friend of yours is a menace to women. I'm not mad about that at all...
Finally we made the 20-minute trip to the Sichuanese restaurant, jaywalking all the way. At some point I was doing a (frankly offensive) impression of my chemistry teacher telling my friend to walk straight and not like a molecule with two bonds and one lone pair (side note, it's pretty great that Bent's rule applies to molecules that look bent). I stopped to point out how glad I was that peoples' Christmas lights were still up. For a second I felt like a kid again, breath visible in the air and lugging around a dollar store sled with boots stuffed full of slush, and snow up the pant leg too. Only there was no snow this time around... ah, climate change! Once we made it we were seated next to the rowdiest, drunkest Chinese uncles and we gorged ourselves on beef jerky and boiled fish. I'm so goddamn tired that I'm ending the post here but just know it was a pretty good meal and I had fun.
Went to the fire hazard of a bookstore I frequented and finally bought myself Kant's Critique of Pure Reason because I wanted to annotate it, which is really unwieldy on a PDF. Then I had to lug it around for the rest of the hangout because my backpack was stuffed to overcapacity with chemistry worksheets and the chicken plush toy my friend gifted me. One of the girls in the group wanted to go to Aritzia to try on some sweatpants and the rest of us had hours to kill before dinnertime so we obliged. She humoured us with the promise that there'd be a boyfriend couch, and so we made our pilgrimage to white woman Mecca; roaming the streets of suburbanite Vancouver, passing Body Energy Clubs and overpriced gelato places until we came face to face with Aritzia's answer to Christ the Redeemer: an ugly bulldog statue.
Whan that
The droghte of
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
But alas! Inside the Aritzia there was no boyfriend couch to be found. My compatriots and I were forced to stand upright holding our newly acquired second-hand books with lost looks on our faces whilst women walked by in $40 plain t-shirts. It looked like such a setup we might as well have been holding matcha lattes too. I silently cursed myself for choosing to cradle Kant's massive forehead in my arms and not a philosopher that was sexier and more French (just kidding, I'd never betray my goat Immanuel) and we endured this public humiliation ritual until our friend finally emerged from the fitting room. Wow, this post is starting to sound like it was written by Greg Heffley. Enough about Aritzia.
Then I went to the ice cream parlour and got chocolate and salted caramel scoops :-DD and my friends began launching into some crazy gossip. I don't actually like ice cream that much, nor do I like gossip. To some people that's like me saying I don't like sunshine and clear blue skies or that I'm a D1 puppy kicker. Truth is, I used to pride myself on not engaging with that kind of thing until I found out that literally everyone does, and I was missing out on some pretty important information about the character of my associates. I was austere as all hell as a kid and it always seemed too underhanded to talk about anyone behind their back. Pre-middle school I'd actually chew out my parents for gossiping, until I gradually understood it as my relationships began to get that complicated too. Now I totally get the need for it. It's good to debrief once in a blue moon. You might just be the last one to find out that a good teammate and friend of yours is a menace to women. I'm not mad about that at all...
Finally we made the 20-minute trip to the Sichuanese restaurant, jaywalking all the way. At some point I was doing a (frankly offensive) impression of my chemistry teacher telling my friend to walk straight and not like a molecule with two bonds and one lone pair (side note, it's pretty great that Bent's rule applies to molecules that look bent). I stopped to point out how glad I was that peoples' Christmas lights were still up. For a second I felt like a kid again, breath visible in the air and lugging around a dollar store sled with boots stuffed full of slush, and snow up the pant leg too. Only there was no snow this time around... ah, climate change! Once we made it we were seated next to the rowdiest, drunkest Chinese uncles and we gorged ourselves on beef jerky and boiled fish. I'm so goddamn tired that I'm ending the post here but just know it was a pretty good meal and I had fun.
