Scored on an Error

“Hey Ali, I suggested that the girl who has the internship position you did last summer set up a meeting with you,” my boss mentioned as he passed by my cubicle. “I thought you could give her some advice on how to leverage an internship into a full-time job.”

“Sure thing! I’d be happy to!” I chirped before turning back to my Post-It note-covered desk, thinking, how on earth am I supposed to explain fluking my way into this job?

---

“Hey Mom, there’s that company I’m never going to work for.” I pointed at a logo along the Rays outfield fence.

Mom gave me a tightlipped smile. I think it only hit her that year that her daughter would be graduating from college with two majors – one in journalism and one in creative writing.

To borrow a joke that I’ve only heard a thousand times, that means I didn’t learn anything in college, except how to communicate that very clearly.

And I had just blown my one chance for a well-paying summer internship.

For one thing, I didn’t learn about it until after the application deadline had passed, so my application was late. Plus, confused by the mad juggle of summer internship applications, I sent in the wrong cover letter, so the first paragraph explained how deeply I wanted to work for another company.

Not surprisingly, they never contacted me, so I was pretty confident when we went to a Rays/Blue Jays game during spring break my junior year that I would never work for the company whose logo I had just laughed at.

I think we all know where this is going.

Fast forwarding, the girl who did get the internship dropped out, so they gave me a call and asked me to resubmit my resume and cover letter. After that, I had a couple interviews with an HR rep and one with a communications manager, featuring my well-rehearsed spiel on how a creative writing major actually teaches valuable skills (most notably, how to think of arguments for why creative writing isn’t a useless major), and for a little bit of personal flavor, I also sprinkled in the story of how I accidentally killed my goldfish in a car accident.

In a shocking turn of events, they decided to hire me as the corporate communications intern.

Considering the fact that when I showed up for my first day, everyone in the office already knew the story of my late goldfish, I can only assume that somehow clinched it for me.

Through no fault of my boss, I really didn’t know what I was doing the entire time. But I read once that one of the reasons Ronald Reagan managed to inspire people was because any time someone asked him a question, he would sit up straight, smile, and say, “I’m so glad you asked that question,” even if he had no idea what to say after that. So, I decided to try that little presidential fake-it-till-you-make-it policy. My boss would ask me to do something, I would give a cheery affirmation, then I’d go to my desk and quietly sweat.

The second semester of my senior year of college, my boss emailed me to say that they wanted to hire me; all I had to do was submit my resume and cover letter.

As I uploaded my resume and cover letter, onto my account on the employee portal, I noticed something – when applying for the internship, I had uploaded the wrong cover letter the second time, too.

Error 404: brain not found.

On my first day after graduation, I showed up at the office sporting a new ID badge with an employee picture that was somehow worse than my intern photo (although at least they spelled my name correctly this time). My supervisor showed me my cubicle, introduced me to my new team members, and then we went out to lunch.

“So, Ali,” he smiled slyly as we took our seats. “Do you have any pets?”

After explaining how I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half debating whether I have the time and resources to give a fish the care it deserves, I turned to tell the story to the new hires and learned that they had already heard about my poor goldfish.

The only bad publicity is no publicity, right?

Last Wednesday was my one-month anniversary as a full-time employee. To celebrate (or maybe coincidentally), the company gave us free baseball tickets and a half-day. Lounging on the Tropicana Field party patio with my coworkers – right next to the logo I had pointed out to my mom about a year ago – it really hit me how inexplicably everything had come full circle.

Public seminars are a $400-500 million industry. We read self-help books on setting goals, watch TED talks on exuding confidence through power poses, and paste together motivational vision boards. We all want to know the ten steps to success or how to improve your life in just five days.

But sometimes we don’t get an instruction manual. Life doesn’t always operate in a linear, logical way. It’s messy and imperfect and sometimes there’s no single magic key that unlocks success.

Maybe we really don’t have control over what happens in our lives. I guess all we can do is have a good attitude, do our best, and trust God to work everything out in the end.

And maybe have a killer fish story.

(Oh wow, that was too soon.)

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Why I Will Never Have a Wedding

Premise: Weddings are freaking nightmares.

Yes, we’ve seen all the movies. My Big Fat Greek Wedding taught us that true love can withstand even a tightknit family. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers taught us that the best way to get a woman is to kidnap her and cause an avalanche so she would have nowhere to go if she did escape. The Princess Bride gave us the most iconic line in the history of romantic cinema: “Mawwiage is what bwings us togewah today,” which is such a great line because you can use it for any occasion – graduations, birthdays, funerals… But whether it takes standing outside the girl’s window blasting a boombox or riding into the a sunset on a lawnmower, they always get their happily-ever-after.

I’m talking about real-life weddings in the late 2010s.

Point 1: Dresses are expensive.

In high school, I bought all of my formal dresses at one of two places: Goodwill or Salvation Army. I think the most expensive one set me (read: my mom) back $40. (That may seem tacky, but to be fair, the only dance I ever went to was the Governor’s Ball hosted by a statewide government club and held inside the Tallahassee Antique Car Museum. Every year, I took a photo next to the Batmobile and a display case of pocketknives.) In college, on the rare occasion I attended some fancy soiree, I usually borrowed a dress from one of my sorority sisters.

Well, now, I’ve graduated college. I’m a 22-year-old working as a corporate communications coordinator in St. Petersburg, Florida, so the odds that I will invited to the Met Ball Gala – or any gala, ball, promenade, sock hop, or disco, for that matter – is extremely slim.

Some would say nonexistent, but I’m still holding out hope that I will one day run into Dan Stevens, and he will realize that we are meant to be together.

But unless – or until (Simon Sinek says positive thinking is the only way to achieve your goals) – that happy day comes, I will never have an excuse to wear a fancy ball gown again in my life, ever.

So not only does that mean that I already have two floor-length dresses that cost upwards of $250 hanging up in a closet in my parents’ house, but, if I were ever to have a wedding, I would (easily) be spending upwards of $1,000 on a dress designed for me to wear only once in my entire life.

Call me a Goodwill-hunting pack rat, but I honestly cannot wrap my head around that.

Point 2: Pre-wedding hoopla is insane.

The first time I was a bridesmaid, I twisted the combination of my school mailbox, opened the metal door (probably on the third try), and invitations to five wedding showers fell out. Five. For the same girl.

Now, I don’t think she reads this blog, but in case she ever does, I want her to know that I don’t judge her; I know that she didn’t plan them. And, to be fair, she had just graduated college and was working at Starbucks until her wedding. But as an introvert with a full-time job, I can’t imagine doing a bunch of pre-wedding shindigs.

And it’s not just the showers. Proposals have to be such an elaborate affair – emotional and intimate (but with a photographer close enough to capture everything) – plus a surprise engagement party with family, friends, balloons, cake, and a photo booth (pics or it didn’t happen). It is such sentimental rigmarole. Whatever happened to the days where a man just offered the girl’s father a goat? When did we decide we needed to bring pageantry and romance into this transaction?

And it isn’t just the future bride who gets proposed to anymore. Now there’s “bridesposing.” This is when the bride-to-be woos her friends into being her bridesmaids by presenting them with a small gift, typically jewelry.

Literally. It’s proposing to your friends.

(Although, as a bridesmaid, I realize I probably shouldn’t complain about this.)

Point 3: Lingerie showers.

Listen, we lived together three years, I never learned what type of underwear you like, and I don’t want to know now.

Point 4: The ceremony is just a freak sideshow in the social media circus.

I already mentioned the engagement brouhaha. So, let’s talk about the big day.

It takes a least three Facebook albums to capture the average wedding day: the pre-wedding primping, the family/bridal party/groomsmen/couple pictures, and the ceremony (which, honestly, are the least exciting pics). Not to mention all the wedding countdown photos (I know one girl who started post 400 days before her wedding – you read that right, a four followed by two zeroes. That is over a year!), the “I said yes to the dress” picture, the snapshot when you get the marriage license, the wedding hashtag, the bachelor/bachelorette party pictures, the wedding video, the anniversary video…

Conclusion: Let’s just get away.

Beneath all the Pinterest-inspired table settings, when photos are sucking at every gigabyte of phone memory and the send-off sparklers are nothing but ashy metal sticks, the important part of the wedding is that two people have vowed to love, honor, and cherish each other for the rest of their lives. I understand that it’s an important day, but in the grand scheme of things, it is one day.

Plus, I know a lot of people who say they don’t even remember the wedding. I recently had dinner with a friend who told me the only thing she remembers from her wedding is that one of the guests ripped his vasectomy from dancing. (I’m working on selling that story to Hallmark.)

All that to say, I’d rather save money for the honeymoon, so we can go somewhere exotic and start our life together with amazing memories and peeling, sunburned shoulders.

So if I ever get married, I’m going to elope. But not in an unplanned, harum-scarum, run-baby-run, kinda way. (Hello, it’s me.) We will be organized and logical about this. We’ll make travel reservations and toodle down to the courthouse on a pre-arranged date.

Heck. Maybe it’ll even be an excuse to wear one of those bridesmaid dresses again.

Sounds like happily-ever-after to me.

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A Rapunzel Story

My sister just locked me in my room.

Ok, she didn’t LOCK me in my room. She shut my bedroom door on me as I was industriously making my bed (which I hadn’t done in about a week).

The locking was implicitly implied.

It was explicitly stated when I promptly opened the door and walked into the hall.

“ALI,” Mackenzie said with her trademark calm and tender manner, “THAT WAS A SIGN TO STAY IN YOUR ROOM.”

With my trademark pluck and valor, I immediately turned tail and closed myself in my room.

You may be wondering what grievous crime I had committed to deserve banishment to my room.

Well, my little sister had a boy coming over. And she didn’t want me to meet him.

“Why don’t you want me to meet your boy?” I asked as we discussed this yesterday.

“You’re too weird and awkward,” she threw back at me, beating a retreat into her room so I couldn’t ask follow-up questions. And I had a lot of questions

I’m not sure what she meant by “too weird and awkward.” Granted, I have spent the majority of Christmas break slouching around in my XXXL “I support the right to arm bears” t-shirt (I’m a size small, if anyone was wondering). And the only person outside of my immediate family I’ve interacted with is the man who delivers the books I order.

I was so upset I almost didn’t invite her to help me and our cousin Brittney build our Christmas-themed blanket fort.

I made the best of being “locked” in my room, which, thankfully, overlooks the front yard.

“MACKENZIE. HE’S PARKED AT THE END OF THE DRIVEWAY.”

“What are you yelling about?”

“YOUR BOY IS IN THE DRIVEWAY, BUT HE ISN’T DRIVING UP.”

“He texted me to ask if he should park in the street…What are you doing?”

And that’s when she opened my door to find me peeking through the slitted window blinds.

“You’re the creepiest person ever,” she said, shutting my door for the second time.

I didn’t reply because I was sending the Snapchat video of him walking up the driveway to our family group message. (You couldn’t really see him though, because of the palmettos.)

I can say with certainty that if she had been born in the right time period, my sister is the type of person who would’ve stuck me in a stone tower and used my hair as an elevator.

Does that make me the sweet, innocent princess?

You can draw the comparisons.

Except the closest thing I have to prince is the Amazon delivery man.

Life isn’t like the fairytales, kids.

If it was a fairytale, we would fall in love at first sight and expeditiously ride into the sunset in our gilded carriage. Sure, we may have to elude a murderous stepmother or disgruntled witch, but we could blithely skip over the harrowing experience of bringing our significant other to family game night.

That’s the true test of love. Any guy in his right mind would rather battle a fire-breathing dragon than duke it out at Renckens Family Game Night.

But we can’t lock our relatives away forever just because they’re weird or awkward or wear shirts five sizes too big with baffling political messages or give us a sharp kick in the shin during an intense game of Uno…right?

Oh well. If I actually was in a tower, I could probably get a better video.

And with drone delivery, life wouldn’t be half bad.

An artist rendering. Not actual footage.

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A Girl’s Mancave

Have you ever had a moment when you realize that you completely missed a crucial phase of life that all of your friends have already gone through?

Not only did that happen to me, but it happened to all of my roommates. All four of us missed the same critical part of life.

You can tell the second you step into our room.

Somehow, we all missed the magical moment where girls just inherently know how to make their living space home-y, chic, and/or cute.

Maybe it’s because we spend too much of our time on Pinterest looking at Myers-Briggs charts and not enough time looking at dorm rooms. Maybe it’s because we aren’t crafty.

Our interior decorating go-to: superhero posters.

We now have seven superhero posters: one Marvel, six DC. (We have very strong opinions on the Marvel vs. DC debate.) Above our snack shelf is a dartboard. Next to Melvin the Drunk Christmas Tree, we have a light-up Christmas reindeer that was stolen from one of the frat houses. Recently, we bought a large TV, which, immediately after setting up, we used to watch Youtube videos about llamas wearing hats.

We call our dorm The Mancave.

There is no “woman’s touch” to our room. It’s more like a slap on the back.

The only relatively feminine aspect of the room is a collage of canvases featuring our sorority. (They look particularly out-of-place next to our poster of the Joker.)

It may not be the cutest dorm on campus. (In fact, it definitely isn’t.) But it’s a place we can put our feet up at the end of the day, crack open a soda, and watch all of the “Superman” movies, including the bad ones.

And in a weird sort of way, it fits us. It’s quirky, eclectic, nerdy, and one-of-a-kind.

And, most importantly, we love our Mancave. To us, it’s home. It’s perfect.

Or, it will be, as soon as we get some well-stuffed recliners. And our Xbox.

Melvin the Drunk Christmas Tree and Giorgio the Pilfered Christmas Reindeer

Model Employee

There were red flags the size of Kansas waving at me from the beginning.

For instance, the fact that it was almost an hour away.

But I’m stubborn and in college (i.e. broke and desperate), so I told the kind lady at the temp agency that I would work – for one day – at a model home.

Again, being in college (i.e. having never bought a house and knowing absolutely nothing about real estate). I’ve never done sales, either, but I can’t blame that on college.

By purposeful speeding, I arrived at the home about 25 minutes earlier than I expected. I swung out of my car in my houndstooth pencil skirt, oversized bag (stuffed with books and pens) hung over my shoulder, and sauntered to the side of the house. I had been given the combination to a clever key-holding device that hung from a spigot protruding from the house.

(Did I say “key-holding device”? I mean “key-jail.”)

I crouched in the shrubbery and dialed the combination. There was a button on the side of the device that looked like it needed to be slid up to release the key, so I tried to push it up.

Repeatedly.

Hard.

No key.

I like to think of myself as a resourceful person. The name of the company that manufactures the key-maximum-security-prisons was on the front of the lock. I pulled out my phone and looked it up. I found some advice for resetting the numbers. I tried it.

Nothing.

I was sweating by this time, my blonde curls sticking to my gray cardigan.

Finally, I called the agency. I won’t go into all of our little back-and-forth – me to the agency, the agency to the saleswomen, agency back to me, back  to the saleswoman, the saleswoman to the construction worker – suffice to say, by the time a gaunt, white-haired angel named Jerry turned up, I had actually rubbed the skin off my thumbs and had tiny paint flecks on my fingers.

I had arrived 30 minutes early. Jerry let me in 30 minutes late.

Thankfully, no clients had come yet. Which pretty much describes the day.

In the eight hours I worked, a grand total of four people showed up. They all asked questions I couldn’t answer and after I found the answer, no one asked me that question again. The entire time I was with a customer, I felt stupid, inadequate, and frustrated.

The remaining seven-and-a-half hours, I stalked everyone I’ve ever met on every social media site in existence, read an L.M. Montegomery book, and wrote a short story, as well as most of this post.

The saleswoman whose desk I occupied had a few nicely written sticky notes on the side of her laptop. One read, “Always REMEMBER DAY 1: excited, nervous, ‘goosebumps,” ½ starved, happy, proud.” From a plaque or two in her office, it seems she ended up doing very well.

Granted, the lady did come in later and verbally roasted me, but she helped me realize something.

I want a job that I’m so excited to have, the first day makes me sick. I want to feel proud of my work. I want to be happy to come in and do my job every day. (Well, every week day. With plenty of vacation.)

And I don’t want to go into real estate.

Or sales.

And I want my own key.

How College Made Me a Criminal

I am an accessory.

And I don’t mean that as a metaphor, like, “I am a silver necklace in a world of oversized t-shirts.”

I mean like the criminal kind.

In the past, I have been what laymen commonly refer to as a “Goody-Two Shoes.” Or, as my more technical-speaking sister called me, a “Goody-Goody.” (I never saw the insult in this statement, which is a defining characteristic of the Goody-Two Shoes species.)

But, as I’ve said before, college changes you.

It gives rise to crimes of desperation. Sheer desperation.

I mean, there’s no thrill or glamour in stealing toilet paper.

Sometimes, it’s just kind of necessary.

Coming out of class today, I saw my friend, Lydia. I ran up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hi,” she said, taking out her earphones. “I’m going to the PAC to steal some toilet paper.”

That’s the thing about Lydia. It doesn’t matter whether she is watching Netflix or planning murder. She will tell you exactly what she is doing in the same frank, outright manner.

“Oh.” I looked up at the building. “I’ll go with you.” We live in the same dorm building. I figured we could walk back together after stealing a roll or two.

But Lydia was a woman on a mission.

We went to. Every. Single. Bathroom. In. The. Building.

It isn’t actually that dramatic. There are only three bathrooms, all on the same floor.

And we walked away with only one roll.

My roommate did the same thing once, when we were out of toilet paper. And, to be completely honest, I have, too. (Fine. I’ve been an accessory twice and perpetrator once.)

Still, if the punishment fits the crime, I cannot imagine we would have a harsh sentence.

It reminds me of a case in New York where a man was found guilty of stealing a loaf of bread. The judge fined everyone in the courtroom for living in a city where a man had to steal a loaf of bread, then gave the collected money to the man.

I sympathize.

Though, thankfully, we’re not starving. Thanks to mandatory, pre-paid meal plans, we feast like kings on greasy cafeteria food.

We just need something to clean up with.

Merry Christmas Eve

The children lay awake all night,
Listening for the clack of reindeer hooves,
Straining for the sight of a jolly old man
As he silently steals to the snow-capped roof.
 
When the dawn at last broke into the room,
They sprang up like prisoners set free.
In a sugarplum rush, they ran down the hall
Onto their parents’ bed with squeals of glee.
 
Sleepily, dad stirred under the sheets,
Wondering what they let their kids believe.
“Children…it’s time you know…
The difference between Christmas and Christmas Eve.”

My College Addiction

You know how when you spend a lot of time with someone, their habits start to rub off on you? And when you live with them, becoming them, even in every terrible way that you swore not to, is inevitable? (Since going to college, I’ve discovered that I am/will be exactly like my mom. Completely unrelated to the previous comment.)

I think that is one of the most potentially dangerous things about college. It is nearly impossible not to be influenced by the people you live with, and in college, at least your first year, you are likely living with someone you have never met before in your life. Who knows what habits they have that don’t show up on the room request form? I won’t even dive into all of the horrifying possibilities. And, despite the well-intentioned, valiant effort that your parents made to raise you right, sometimes you cave.

But I have decided to get myself back on the straight and narrow. I am staging a self-intervention. I am completely cutting myself off. No gradual decline, I am just ripping the bandage off and exposing a dark, ugly wound for the world to see.

My name is Ali Renckens and I am a popcorn addict.

I blame it entirely on my roommate. She has a love for microwave popcorn, so our dorm room always smells like a movie theatre. When the smell of butter and salt greets me before I even put the key in the lock, I know Hannah is home.

Naturally, with Orville Redenbacher as a third roommate, I started buying popcorn. And consuming several bags a week. Kroger was my enabler, being open 24/7 and selling Skinny Pop for $1 a bag. (As a college kid, I have a new appreciation for sales.)

If I get the freshman fifteen, it will be entirely due to popcorn.

The situation came to a crisis one day when I strolled into Kroger, basket over my arm to fill with bags of air popped goodness. Turning into the aisle, I stopped. There it was, or rather it wasn’t: the red sale sign.

I’m a broke college kid! I can’t afford full price at the dollar store!

Foam pushed out of the corners of my mouth. My eyes rolled back for a view of my convulsive brain. I realized then and there that I had to quit before it destroyed me.

Then I saw it: 479 degree popcorn on sale.

That’s right; I’m typing this in between handfuls of artisan popcorn.

I suppose it could be worse. I could be addicted to marijuana. Or One Direction.

People Jam

There’s a traffic jam of people,
Filling up the street.
No car can detour past,
That sea of rushing feet.

The traffic light told them to stop,
The red hand tried to hold them back,
But the people kept pushing past,
In stampeding, unstoppable pack.

The police came out,
Sirens wail, whistles scream,
Irate drivers are honking horns,
But the people rush on full steam.

Finally, the cars were crowded out,
The police grew tired of being mocked,
The traffic lights fell asleep,
And still – the people walked.

Inspired by my trip to New York City.

Bad Manors

I am the Lord of Bad Manors,
Beside the Immaturi Sea,
A splendid place without silly rules,
Where everyone is free,
To do whatever they want,
And never give an apology.

We never cover our mouths when we sneeze,
Say “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” or “please”.
We lick our fingers and have a food fight,
At precisely 6 o’clock every weekday night,
We burp and brag and hit and holler,
Never wash our shirts or tuck our collar,
We scratch and sniff and slap and scream,
And get away with anything.

There are no rules at Bad Manors,
Everyone is as rude as they want to be,
Without being bossed by a parent or teacher.
It’s wonderful! But strangely,
Everyone who is here lives here;
No one ever visits me.