Static Electricity is the Closest Thing We've Got to Magic.

Elevators.

I read once that (if you live/work in a big city) you will spend three months of your life riding elevators. And occasionally we have that sole thirty to sixty or so seconds to our lonesome. A whole moving box with just little ole you in it. But really, that brief elevator ride is just one of the many times you will be stuck alone with someone, whether you know them or, more likely, they're a complete stranger.

And how many times is that little box filled tight with awkward silence?

We need to prepare ourselves for elevator conversation. Sure we might smile, say hi, perhaps even ask "what floor?" if we're feeling particularly feisty. (PS: I can't tell you how many times I've broken the i before e except after c rule today.)

But just think about it for a second...there are billions of people in the world. When you think about the ones that actually enter your life, there are relatively few. Let's make the most of it. I know I've blogged before about people entering and leaving our lives all the time and then never hearing from them, whether it be a childhood best friend or a guy you dated for a couple of months, and how that's a shame. Well, let's bring that down on an even more miniscule scale.

The person you get on the elevator with tomorrow has the potential to be your best friend, and you don't even know it. And even if it's not a stranger, say it's your dorm room...don't you want to be friendly with your neighbors?

Let's stop being ants. I challenge you to prepare elevator questions.

Do you know how hypocritically hard it is for me, an introvert, to challenge you to this? So let's do it together. If you bump into someone, ask them a random question. When the cafeteria lady swipes your card, don't just say thanks and walk away (unless perhaps there's a line). Throw compliments at people. Approach people. Tug those headphones out and your chin up when you walk to class.

Basically, don't care what the other person thinks. Don't have expectations. Just go out on a limb, put yourself out there, catch them off guard, and break the script, just for fun. Make people think. Ask someone for their life story.

Let's get real.

Which kind of reminds me when some friends and I were at the book signing for the man who wrote Everything is Illuminated. Instead of signing it, my friend asked him to draw a five second picture, something I had joyously encouraged her to go for. Her friend teased her afterwards, saying he probably hated her, how he probably thought to himself, "I'm a writer, not an artist."

But this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I think her friend is reversing exactly what people need to be doing! When you're a writer, sitting and signing a thousand books, they have to get tired of hearing "I love your work" every seven seconds. I want to be caught off guard. People need to be caught off guard.  Because for one spare moment, something new and unexpected happens. They wake up. The routine has been broken, and you just might leave them with a smile.

I had to encourage the same friend to talk to a kid she found interesting (and by encourage I may mean slightly black mail). He sat in the cafeteria during our lunch hour by himself every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Nothing may come out of it, no, but the point is that she stepped out of her comfort zone and made a small connection to another one of the billions of people in the world. She wasn't an ant with her antennas bouncing off the colony. She stopped and talked to another ant about something other than the mundane routine of worklife. She interacted. She lived.

So if you're passing someone on the sidewalk and neither party seems to be in too big of a hurry, and you're curious to know their life story...maybe you just need to ask them: Hey...do you like flying kites?

<3<3<3

I am pissed at Hollywood as much as I am thankful for them. In one respect, I hate them for giving me unrealistic expectations and brainwashing the world into thinking people really work this and that way and that things do always work out. Which is one reason I loved the movie 500 Days of Summer...despite the lead male loving the lead female, she didn't love him back, and though they had their fun, nothing happened in the end. And in Little Miss Sunshine...Olive doesn't win, and her brother can't be a pilot. That's real. It's bittersweet. But that's a real representation of life. And it shows the beautiful bonds of a typical dysfunctional family.

But I'm also thankful of them when I'm not bitterly brooding about how no guy will ever act that way. Because like a book, movies are an escape. No, fantasy books aren't realistic, but you'd never see me criticizing them. We're silly for thinking the movies have to be realistic. That's not what they're for. They're for the extremes. It's a visual escape for people who aren't big on reading. For that 100 minutes you sit engrossed on the couch, you don't have to think about the world.

<3<3<3

I was angry to find that my milk had gone bad this morning, and I'm sitting next to a soggy bowl of Cinnamon Toasters that needs to be dumped. If you don't know, that's the cheap brand, cause that's how a college kid like myself rolls.

But I was just sitting here next to it, on this purple plastic chair the school has provided for my ergonomic comfort.

I have long arm hair. I'm a girl with hairy arms and peeling fingernail polish and faded exes on my hands, because my skin is easily stained with permanent marker. I realized that the hair on my hairy arms was standing tall, raising up to meet the purple plastic chair the school provides. With my right hand, I began to raise my hand up and down, moving the hair without touching it. I even started to play piano, watching the keys move like a ghost piano.

How I wish I could still play.