My Blue Cave

Three years ago, I updated my bedroom. I painted the walls, the ceiling, and the bookshelves. My mom and I replaced all the vital organs of bedroom furniture; I got a new bed, a lounge chair, a new desk and chair set, and even new blinds. An electrician installed a more attractive light fixture. Only the ratty blue carpet stayed the same.

Our house is approaching thirty years old and the blue carpet in the upstairs bedrooms has lasted all of those years. I don’t know why anyone would install a blue carpet, especially this shade of blue; thirty years ago, it probably looked like a blue sky with the faintest haze of gray cloud, but now it’s much more cloud gray than sky blue. The heavy traffic areas are brownish. And it has stains. The walls used to be stark white, so the blue carpet gave the room some much needed color, but I intended to make my walls colorful, so I had to pick a paint that coordinated with the stained brownish grayish blue carpet. Eventually I picked “Polar Sky,” a color that harkens back to the color of the carpet in its heyday. It’s a light blue, with hardly any gray at all. It’s all awfully blue, but I like that. I live in a blue cave of the color of the sky.

The room perfectly reflects the conflict between my inner perfectionist and the carefree, careless gremlin that fights for control. The paint job on the walls is great, but since I didn’t tape the line between the blue walls and the white ceiling, there’s some blue paint on the ceiling and some white paint on the walls. The furniture all matches, in color and in style – it even matches the color of the trim – but I’ve covered every available surface with books, clothes, scraps of paper, empty bottles of lotion, old birthday cards, and other teenage paraphernalia. The desk is symmetrically framed by two stately standing lamps, but leaning against the wall, next to a pile of clean clothes I never put in the closet, is a full length mirror. I’ll hang it properly someday, probably before I go to college. Until then, I’ve draped a T-shirt over the top of it so it won’t scrape the paint.

I didn’t like my room very much before I remodeled it. It was a good place to hide all my crap so my mother wouldn’t throw it away, but everything about the room was old and ugly and boring. I originally wanted to remodel it because I thought having an organized and harmonious room would inspire me to organize and harmonize my cluttered life. Unfortunately, my life is still as cluttered and cacophonous as ever, but I love my room now. It’s a constant reminder of the first time I did something for myself, without teachers and textbooks and rubrics guiding my every move. Sure, my mom paid for everything, and she made sure that I knew how to sand and paint and use a screwdriver, and I still haven’t hung that darn mirror, but I other than that, it was all me. I’m ridiculously proud of that.

I’d be even prouder if I could manage to just keep it clean…

The Friendly Neighborhood Walmart

I loved fried chicken when I was in grade school. My desire for this greasy treat has faded with age, but last weekend I suddenly had a hankering for some. Perhaps my craving was prompted by the fact I had an interview with Big Name University that same afternoon. I don’t know, and I’d rather not dwell on the possible relationships between Big Name Universities, my preadolescent grade eating habits, and emotional regression. It seems like a way to get caught up in sticky questions that I’d rather avoid.

In any case, it was about noon, and my mother was going to Walmart to purchase the things one purchases at Walmart if one is a member of my family – things like Honey Bunches of Oats, and store-brand raisins, and toilet paper, and anticavity fluoride rinse. I don’t know where my non-relations go to deal with these things. Maybe Walmart, or maybe the more hipster types go to Strawberry Fields (can you get toilet paper at Strawberry Fields?) or the Farmer’s Market (do the marketing farmers sell dental hygiene products?). I wouldn’t know, because my mother is allergic to inconveniences, and morally opposed to hipsters. But since getting fried chicken at Walmart is both possible and utterly convenient, my mother agreed to buy me some.

The fried chicken wasn’t that good. Maybe fried chicken isn’t actually as good as I remember it being, or maybe fried chicken from the Walmart deli is subpar. The chicken's association with Walmart also troubled me, though, far more than I expected it would, and that may have been the reason I couldn't enjoy it.

Lots of people, it seems, particularly hipsters, my piano teacher, and the sort of youthful ideologues one is guaranteed to encounter at a school like Uni, object to Walmart on moral grounds. Usually I ignore these people, because they categorically state Walmart is bad but have no evidence that Walmart is an ethically problematic place to purchase Honey Bunches of Oats. In the instances that they have fact to back up their beliefs, I… well, I ignore them then too.

Well, I don’t ignore them so much as I exercise the skill I honed in school of promptly forgetting the things I am told. The fact is, I don’t want to think about why my family’s close personal relationship with Walmart may not be quite as humanitarian as it is convenient. Walmart is so close to my house, and the greeters are so nice, and everyone in the Walmart commercials is so happy…. and Walmart is just so American, and what could possibly be wrong with being American?

Ok, so maybe there are a couple of things not quite so great about being American. But let us not dwell on these dangerous thoughts.

Whether it’s true or not that Walmart Stores, Inc. violates labor laws, contributes to urban blight and doesn’t pay enough taxes, to me these accusations just don’t feel true. And feeling true is more important than being true, I think, though it shouldn’t be. (Now I feel like I’m channeling Stephen Colbert.) At least I’m aware of my denial – or maybe that’s worse. Maybe it’s worse that I know I’m deluding myself and I don’t care.