a brief sad tale...

one time, i was coming home from a production with my students. R&J by the Shakespeare Theatre Co. it was good, all male cast. interesting.

the boys on the bus were rhyme battling. like you got served, only with clever words... hilarious.

i get back to school, starving, so i order my mentor and i our usual pizza orders from the nearby ledo's and i head out. within two minutes the sky turns brackish and begins to threaten rain. it wasn't until i had paid for my pizza another 3 minutes later that it began to furiously pour. you might think i am exaggerating or bending that a bit for the sake of the story... lets say that the walk home, whilst talking to my mother on the phone, resulted in me wet down to my skivies.

i changed when i got back to school cause i was teaching yoga (shut up, its a real class!) . dry clothes = yum. ate my pizza. yum.

well, my phone is no longer in functioning order. buttons don't work, can't do anything on it.

on the way home, i stop at the mall to get a new phone and they make me sign a 2-year contract to have a free "upgraded" phone that just came out. in 1980. thanks, but no thanks, chump.

i get to my building, and i can't find my keys. oh, of course, i purposely left them at school to add to this great day! i forgot about that...

so, without keys and a single roommate's number in my phone, i luckily ran into a roommate who let me into the building. i went yesterday to get the phone switched out for anything better and he was going to give me the blackberry for $50 or let me just cancel the thing so i only had a year left on my contract. and no phone.

so i apparently what he heard was the later, cause he took back the phone.
i am phoneless and keyless. awesome.

looking for replacement phones without a plan is retarded. fyi. no- it's special needs.

I am Hilary Roddam

Hilary, I can sympathize with you. There was a point in time when I could see what was happening and knew I could reverse it too. Way to pull out the weapon of women.

A story:

When I was at the end of 4th grade, I thought I would run for student council. I had some issues with the way we as a school had dealt with the other weaker schools and I thought that I knew how to stop all of those unwanted people from leaking into our school. And I was quite sure that I really did have the connections to get the chocolate milk to come out of the water fountains.

D-Day arrived and I had prepared the political speech of a lifetime. (Ok, truth be told, my mom made up most of it, and I thought it was kinda lame, but it was all I had.) That morning, I had spoken with my campaign manager and understood what was left in the budget: we were down to the very last of it-- it was now or never. I was to speak in front of those with the most political pull in the school: the 4-6th graders... all of them... at once.

I left the speech (it was more like an extremely cheesy song) in my desk in Mrs. Conrad's portable room. I knew I could do it without help. I sat patiently as the "Egg-ceptional" Udall kid went, and then the popcorn chick (covered in kernels larger than car tires) and the Mary Engelbreit chick... I did get squirmy when the "Got Jordan" speech went.... that one is so catchy. And new.

I walked up to the stage and my shaking hands pulled the mic down two feet. Then I looked to good ole' principal Dan Young on the right side of the stage, and then to my left where PE teacher Rocky Pool smiled back. Both good friends of mine- friends on the inside.

I opened my mouth and the dreadful first line of that poor car-commercial-like jingle came out of me. Then I froze. I don't know if I subconsciously wanted to forget the bad lyrics, or if I really did at this point, but I did. I looked to Pool who returned a reassuring look... but nothin.

After what felt like about a half an hour of staring into the faces of those much older and wiser, a sound came from the very back wall. It was my mom. She had shouted the next line of the song so all could hear. No way. I can't believe it. I felt red all over, something that doesn't happen to me all that often. I ran down the stairs and out the door of the auditorium of stunned children and parents and teachers and out the door to the front of the school and hid.

Over the next few days, my fellow schoolmates let me know how they felt. Most replied, "we voted for you because we felt bad for you." I get it. And I am ok with sympathy.

I won. I think it was the sympathy and not my ideas on foreign policy that they loved. A kid in my neighborhood caught me in the hallway and snidely remarked, "you only won because you cried," (I beat him) "next year, all I have to do is cry and I'll win." With my new confidence I said, yeah- too bad you didn't think of that, huh!

So Hilary... I get you. I just hope the men do. But I don't think they do... or will.