Oct 26, 2023
Groups of teenagers are scary. Are they making fun of your car? Probably. Do they think your pants look stupid. Likely. Is that short one with the weird haircut gonna egg your house to prove to the tall one in the jersey that he's "not scared of sh*t" and post it to TikTok, memeifying your reaction—fists in the air, rollers in hair, braless—for eternity? Honestly, it's possible! Teens assembled in groups are one of the most frightening forms of H. sapiens documented to date, and yet, on the ~*sPoOkIeSt*~ night of the year, I believe these mercurial goblins and ghouls deserve to roam free! And not merely roam free, but knock on doors and ring bells in search of All Hallows' Eve's yearly promise of saccharine treasure: candy. [Continue reading]
June 20, 2023
I bought my diaper bag when I was barely five months pregnant. It was the one everyone seemed to have, and it was on sale. I kept it in a closet with all its packing tissue untouched until the baby came. There would be times in my pregnancy when I would need some sort of large vessel to ferry goods from my Brooklyn apartment across the East River and several New York City blocks toward the Hudson, but the diaper bag never crossed my mind. It was a diaper bag. Not a computer bag. Not a sack lunch bag. In a sense, the bag didn’t even belong to me. It belonged to diapers.
When the baby came, I was deeply in love but also deeply in shock. The hospital was really going to let us take her home? Did they not understand that we, like, didn’t know how to do anything? We drove 18 miles per hour the entire way back to our apartment. [Continue reading]
Jan 17, 2023
The older I get, the more Judy Blume fascinates me. Growing up, she was an uncontroversial (in my house, at least) figure. The author of, like, every other young adult book ever written, Judy Blume was less a real-life woman, and more a benevolent bookshelf spirit who traveled between the adult and tween worlds. But decades later, and with the upcoming theatrical release of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, I felt a need to revisit my memories of the author and the effect her works had on me. And one thing came to mind: Ralph. [Continue reading]
Aug 12, 2019
I originally came up with the idea to wear Crocs everywhere for a week—work, dinner, gym—because I thought it would be funny. Because, well, they’re Crocs.
For the uninitiated, Crocs are clogs made of a proprietary foam called Croslite, which makes them uniquely comfortable, durable and something you would never want anyone who could pass as a cast member of Euphoria to catch you wearing. Commenting on their hideous appearance, Tim Gunn (the voice of reason in fashion) once said that the Croc is akin to a “plastic hoof.” [Continue reading]
Dec 4, 2018
Did you know Kimmy Gibbler is dead? The rumors swirled in my pre-Google tweenhood. How? I wondered. Anorexia.
I thought about her body: She had been so thin on that show.
…But she did have boobs. Or maybe she had been wearing a padded bra? I wondered if I could get my mom to buy me a padded bra. (I was mid-puberty. Boobs, specifically boobs in comparison to my own developments, were how I evaluated the world around me.)
Somewhere along the line, perhaps when Google happened, we learned that Kimmy Gibbler’s death had been only a rumor. A hilarious one, because c’mon: It’s Kimmy Gibbler we’re talking about. Kimmy Gibbler is a joke.
But she’s not only the joke—she’s also the punchline. The perpetual foil to D.J. Tanner’s Full House bildungsroman, Kimmy Gibbler walked into our collective kitchen 20 years ago without knocking, and we couldn’t look away. [Continue reading]