this is a summer blog

“etch-a-sketch project” by caitlin.

i plan to leave an this unreal toy on my coffee table and take pictures of what people create when they are just sitting around during evening festivities at my apartment.

this first one is mine from when i was at home in orlando.  got the idea while waiting to get my hair cut. they just had one on the table where you wait. which was great. the hair cut looks awful.  but i got an idea out the experience. and hair grows back, bitches!!!!!!!!!!!

i’ll call this sketch “mario labyrinth” !!

     This is not a love story. This is a story about the day Michael Stein touched me privately in the tent behind his tree house in the third grade. Oddly enough the incident took place the same day Ms. Rudolph, our English teacher, made me recite the sex organs of an earthworm in front of the entire class. It was a cruel sort of day to begin with. One of those days you wake up and just know things aren’t going your way.

My mother always says that cruel days like these begin as a result of people waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I’m guessing this is what happened to me, because on the day of the incident I woke up feeling as if I was going to cry – like someone was inside me just waiting to tear my stomach and heart to shreds. I didn’t think much of it at the time and went downstairs to eat the runny mess of eggs my mother prepares for me every morning with a glass of cranberry juice and toast. All was seemingly normal- the juice tasted fine, my mother was smiling, and the paper towels were folded into little napkins (which I never used). But then! Something must have gone awry because I threw the entire meal back up (red juice and all) onto my favorite yellow dress. I had to change, even though the stain didn’t bother me, mom looked as if she might cry. I was late to school as a result.

Upon arrival into my favorite third grade class, five minutes late, I felt the heat of something creep across my face. Sam Leato was laughing at me with the hideous chuckle that earned him the nickname “chuckler” and there was the oddest silence in the air as the 10 other kids stopped their third grade reading and just stared. “You are five minutes late,” rang the stale voice of Ms.Rudolph (her coffee and onion bagel breath pungent despite the four feet distance between us).

“I have a note,” I blubbered. But the sentence took what felt like hours to get out, on account of my struggle not to cry. Then it got worse: screeches from the corner made the light bulb pop: “She looks like a lobster,” said one - And everyone lost it in laughter as I realized that in fact I did look like a lobster due to the combination of Ms. Rudolph’s tone causing my cheeks to turn a glowing red and the cherry colored dress I had exchanged for my dirtied yellow one. 

The yellow dress was my favorite. Good things always happened to me in that dress – like surprise parties and big hugs from dad. Had I not dirtied my dress with upset stomach, then I would have worn it to school and things would have gone swell. Instead I was wearing a red dress – which only helped to make me feel worse – like some kind of girl lobster – that morning the incident would take place.

I often wonder if that morning’s incidents were random or predetermined by someone (if not god someone with a really kooky sense of humor) – because all the moments of that cruel morning led up to the cruelest incident in the day.

     Michael Stein touched me privately with his dirty first grade boy hands in the back of his mother’s third street apartment and when we crawled inside the tiny orange tent he had gotten for his birthday, Michael told me he loved me. I didn’t say much because I was busy licking the remains of a cherry icy we bought on our way home from school off of my lips and nose. We weren’t going to get ice’s after school because Michael and I decided in solemn agreement that we had both outgrown them and were ready to move on to bigger and better things like chocolate milkshakes, but when we saw our favorite vendor, Victor, sitting on the corner of 7^th and 5^th, with a pathetic grin on his face, we couldn’t help ourselves. The truth is when it came down to it Michael and I felt guilty leaving Victor high and dry without a final farewell. So we purchased two cherry ice’s with the money Michael’s mom gave us for pizza and informed Victor that we would not be seeing him any more on account of us growing up. He took it much better than I expected, which I found slightly disappointing.

     I let Michael touch me privately, even though he never really asked. But he did say he loved me. His hands were soft, despite the dirt that was stuck inside the crevices of his wrinkled palms. There was something even delicate about Michael Stein’s hands, and although I shrieked when his nail dug past my undies hitting places I didn’t even know were there - I think I may have liked it. I hit him anyway and ran out of the tent half smiling even though I felt the hot tears begin to swell up in my cheeks.

spontaneous road-trip to new york. may 9.

caitlin photo upload #2.

“bekie with the groceries by the garage”

caitlin photo upload #1.

some things you should know, before you embarking on the following:

1.  my name is bekie. my name is caitlin. WE ARE BAITLIN. OR CEKIE. (so sorry for that)

2.  we started a summer camp. selfishly, we are the only campers.

3.  summer is the time for fireflies, inflatable pools, and sweaty knapsacks.

4.  we almost titled this blog: “sweaty knapsacks” (you can thank branson reese for not allowing this to happen.)

5.  this is a collection of the things we may find along our way.

6.  find out what happens…when people stop being polite…and start getting real.