Hey, that's me!
Hi, I’m Sophie! Welcome to my brand spankin’ new blog, The Cupcake Life: the random musings of a 20-something student who is easily distracted by shiny objects and who has an insatiable sweet tooth. So expect sugared up, nonsensical stories about whatever interests me at that fleeting moment, plus some pictures and recipes of baked goods that I will be inevitably cooking up.Unfortunately, I am not sugar addled (though a bag of Swedish fish nearby call to me) but unable to sleep. My sleep-deprived brain says that writing about my bus adventures right now would be a good idea and I concur, brain. Though may I suggest another swell idea, sleep? No? Alright, fine.
This summer, I often took the city bus to my summer job because it was free and convenient, with a bus stop literally outside my family’s front door. This was all mighty fine except that riding the bus exponentially increased the number of times I got hit on by creepy men. Somehow the equation of Sophie + public transportation inevitably equals me apparently giving off pheromones that are interpreted as, “I would really, really like you to hit on me no matter what I’m doing. All ages, level of sanity and degree of hygiene are accepted! Act now!”
To combat this, I armor myself with headphones, an iPod and reading material. In any other social setting, nobody would talk to me because of my clear please-t0-fuck-off vibe. However, social conventions are not followed by most of the fine fellows I met this summer so I was pestered regardless. I swear I am otherwise harmless.
The best example of this came one day while I was waiting for the bus, as usual blasting music and reading to ward off boredom and weirdos. No such luck on the former. A man who looked old enough to be my grandpa and who was missing more than a handful of teeth approached me and yelled, “MISS? MISS?!?” I ignored him for a moment, pulling my, “Lalalala, I can’t hear anything for my music is so very loud and my book oh so engrossing. Nope, can’t hear anything at all, lalalalala” routine. But he was persistent so I eventually made some clipped conversation with him as he hit on me until he said this, something no person has ever said to me before:
‘Has anybody told you that you have real pretty toes?”
I was stunned into silence. No, nobody has and for good reason. While on good days I consider myself, say, cuter than a gargoyle, my feet are definitely the least cute. The are small and fat (shoemakers politely call them ‘wide’) and sometimes painted but on that particular day the polish was weeks old and clinging to the random nail in desperate, patchy spots. Is it possible to have a fetish for ugly feet? I didn’t wait to find out.
Because I’m sure you’d like to read even more about my feet, and because I am so baffled that this man would say they are in any way attractive, here’s some more info: my left pinky toe is in particular rather creepy. The Creepy Toe is not straight but kind of curled up on itself, the Hunchback of Notre Toe, if you will. Somehow or another the nail on The Creepy Toe fell off years ago and now doesn’t anchor to the nail bed. The cherry on the creepy cake is that I don’t have normal sensation in it; one my friends in middle school once stuck a tack in it without me noticing. I’m not condoning using my feet as pincushions, I would just like to emphasize how not pretty they are.
I managed to run into another guy on a number of occasions who, to be fair, was definitely in the top 5 least creepy men (almost all his teeth! Within a decade of my age! Bathed recently!) but was still clueless and unshakable. One day, he asked if a ring I was wearing was a wedding ring. I was wearing it on the middle finger of my right hand. Another day I made the mistake of wearing a white trench coat, which he thought was a lab coat, and had to endure 50 questions of places I possibly worked (surely a doctor’s office? An EYE doctor’s office, then?). My personal favorite is when he told I was, “….real pretty. You could be a JC Penny Model.”
Guffah, guffah. A JC Penny Model? Oh, the honor! It was very much like that Flight of the Conchords song, “You’re so beautiful/you could be a waitress. You’re so beautiful/you could be a part time model.”
Luckily I have a boyfriend who is very much non-creepy/attractive/follows social norms (although he is studying opera.) Now that I think about it though, he is actually missing a tooth but with a stand in tooth glued in. I wonder if I attract these guys because I had an extra tooth that had to be surgically removed? I can’t single handedly fix the missing-tooth gene pool, people.
Welcome to my life.
Sidenote: Can I take a moment to comment on how especially awesome my blog design is? I wish I could take credit for it but I can’t, that credit goes to the lovely Rachel. Please go immediately to http://www.rachelfinley.com/ and give her lots of money because she is a super talented web designer and cool to boot.
3 comments:
Ahhhh, Sophie. I, your very own mother, am proud to leave you your very first blog comment. I am sooo sorry if I am responsible for the extra tooth gene highly sought after by Anchorage's dentine-challenged drifters. I gave birth to you (almost 21 yrs. ago!)and can personally testify you had NO teeth until you were almost 15 mos. old, and then promptly tried to knock them out! BUT, oh so proud if I had anything to do with your chromosomes for writing about it all. Brilliant, hilarious and I can't wait to read more.
You have cute elbows.
sophie, mia showed me your blog, and i must say it's pretty awesome, and i did. not. need. another. food website to look at chronically and compulsively while i should be working. at work.
but still, while i should be working, i thought i'd share this little story with you:
last week i was on my lunch break and i was sitting near a fountain, pleasantly chatting on my cellphone, a book open in my lap, in the plaza across the street. i was obviously very busy. i go there every day. it's my safe and happy place. it was later in the day, so there were only like 3 other people in the football-field-sized square.
and then, then i saw a man approaching me, just a regular guy, but then i noticed he was trying to look up my skirt as he got closer, so i shifted myself so as not to be revealing and i increased the volume of my conversation so as not to be disturbed. he sat down, right next to me, of all the places to sit in that empty plaza, and told me he wished he had learned to give foot massages so that the one he gave me would be nicer.
i told him no thank you, i'd rather accept candy from strangers.
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