It’s an empty computer room packed to the walls with computers with large blank screens. I’ve adjusted the setting on mine to allow for maximum screen efficiency. It’s almost too big and I’m sitting too close. I am the only biological person in my family who doesn’t have glasses. My parents told us that they adopted Martha but they didn’t tell me they adopted me. My aunts tell me I have too many of my dad’s personality traits to not be his. I guess I agree. I’m so much like him it’s a little scary. There are differences between my dad and me though. Like my dad showers regularly and I don’t.
I didn’t shower for the entire month of December. It was actually pretty freeing. You go a whole month without a shower and the only thing you miss is warmth. I used to take showers all the time; when I was bored, when I was cold, when I wanted to shower, and the whole month of December I thought to myself, “why ever shower at all.” I’ve since started showering due to the demise of my emotions and the birth of my friend’s nostrils.
The funny thing is that I didn’t stink that bad. You might think that I wouldn’t have been able to smell how bad I stunk, but I could and it wasn’t as bad as you might think. Some classes of people smell more than others.
Fat people for some reason smell particularly bad and it’s always the same type of smell, that moist, I can’t reach all the places on my body, smell that makes your stomach wish it hadn’t eaten for the past month.
Hippies, who probably have gone my route of not showering but just never started again. I’m not sure what being connected to the Earth in a free-spirited love ever had to do with not showering. Perhaps it’s the fact that most of the Earth is covered in dirt and the thought of smelling like the Earth (even though hippies don’t smell as good as dirt) appeals to the whole connection thing.
Then, of course, there are old people, whom I can’t quite put my finger on. If you’ve been around an old person, you know what I’m talking about. Don’t worry, you’ll smell like them when you get older. It’s kind of like me saying to my brother, which I’d never thought I’d say to anyone, maybe you shouldn’t come to Boone for the weekend, I’d heard it’s supposed to snow a lot and I wouldn’t want you getting stuck. Never mind the fact that I hate myself for thinking about safety over fun and hanging out with my brother but keep in mind that when you get older you do things that older people do. It’s just a force of nature, or God.
I don’t fit into any of these categories. No one has ever thought I was fat. People have on very many occasions said to me for no apparent reason, other than to point out how shocked they are when they noticed, “Wow Page, you’re really skinny.” This fits into the category of people saying to me “have you always worn earrings,” or “when I first met you I thought you were drunk.”
Also, I haven’t ever been or wanted to be a hippie. Not because I don’t like juggling or slack rope walking or wearing clothes that don’t even match a little bit but rather because I don’t buy the whole connection with Earth thing. I don’t believe in Mother Nature anymore than I believe in Man-made global warming. I think most people’s view about Christians is that they don’t care about the Earth and therefore they use the argument “doesn’t the Bible say that you should be good stewards of the Earth?” But I’ll tell you that I’m a Christian and I love the Earth. I love using its resources for my personal consumption: food to eat, oil to drive, light to live, but I also love the things that I can do on Earth that make life worth living: hiking up profile trail at Grandfather mountain, jumping off 60 foot waterfalls (7 waterfalls within a 30 minute drive), and sitting in the grass reading a book with someone you love while the sun beams down on her face. The Bible also says that the Earth is here for human beings and for us to use it. Genesis 1:29: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Being a good steward can be seen in a lot of different ways.
And no I’m not old, quite the opposite actually, even though I feel old being 24 and still in my undergrad, which brings us to the moral of this story. Do things and experience life. It might not mean taking a month to not shower (I wanted to go 6 months) but I challenge you to go a week without showering. I hate to sound like all the old people out there but what they say I’ve found to be true. Get rid of your phobias, play a board game you’ve never played, be socially awkward just for the fun of it, try out for a play, experiment with nature, and go camping. Be different from the way you are because you’re uninteresting and you’re boring me to death. love. war.
Things to read:
The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose
Things to think about:
-adultery sneaks up on you unless you put things in place to not allow it to happen
-which one of your friends is keeping a secret from you that you should know
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