Luckily, (maybe to make up for scalding me with coffee as an infant) my dad would sneak me sips of his when my mom wasn’t looking.  Eventually, I got older and it became my morning routine, as many people’s is, to stop for coffee on my way to school.  To this day, regardless of my state-of-the-art, high-tech coffee maker (and regardless of my bank account), I still stop for coffee on my way to work every day.  It used to be about the coffee.  Then it was about the routine of drinking coffee.  Now it’s about “the way I see it.”

For avid Starbucks fans like myself, the most exciting part about grabbing one of their coffees is the cup.  On every cup they have quotes by various authors, actors, athletes, poets, etc.  Just quick little quotes about life, love, friends, family, titled “The Way I See It.”

Today’s cup was “The Way I See It” #282:

Childhood is a strange country. It’s a place you come from or go to – at least in your mind. For me it has an endless, spellbound something in it feels remote. It’s like a little sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you’re dizzy.

-Lyall Bush

I didn’t think much of it at first but as I continued my ride to work, I started thinking about the way my life is at this exact moment.  There is a pile of bills on my kitchen counter.  I have a list in my head of people I need to call before tomorrow: landlord, comcast, electric company.  I’m in the process of helping people move in and out of my apartment.  I have paint swatch colors bookmarked on my computer.  I have an email minimized with instructions to set up my 401k.  No wonder I’m allowed to drink coffee on my ride to work, I’m a grown-up now!

But the part that struck me about today’s coffee cup, is that I realized regardless of how old you are, there are always remnants of childhood that sneak into your life everyday.  Things that make you feel like you’re in that “sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you’re dizzy.”  Those moments sneak up on you and you don’t even realize that the reason you’re so content in that moment is because it’s so simple; it’s a glimpse to your childhood.  Usually they’re masked by something, a task, an event, a person even, that covers it up and disguises the moment so that unless you’re really looking for it, that little glimpse of your youth is hardly even there.

On Sunday night I sat in a park in downtown Boston with friends and a bottle of wine.  As we sprawled out in the dark, drinking wine and tossing a ball back and forth, we all watched as a 4-year-old boy a couple hundred yards from us ran in circles around his family for no apparent reason, and someone asked,  “Remember when it was fun to just run?”

But there we were, laying in the grass and throwing around a rubber ball.  Maybe we weren’t running around aimlessly like that 4-year-old boy, but a glimpse of our past was there, disguised by wine and our selected topics of conversation.  We certainly weren’t paying bills, shopping for groceries, or sitting in an office.  We were playing catch in the grass, and we were content.

So maybe those moments we have that strike us, the moments we feel the most content, are times when the past has caught up to us for a brief second, as if to remind you it’s still there.  Jumping in a pool, watching fireworks, eating ice cream – all activities that we still do today but are often covered by so many other things and events and people,  it’s hard to see the reason they make you so happy.

Ironically, my coffee that I wasn’t allowed to drink until I grew up brought me to thinking about childhood this morning.  What did your coffee do for you?

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.

If I wanted to live to be a hundred, here’s a bunch of things I’d have to give up:

What would you have to give up if you wanted to live to be 100?

Pause. What did you just imagine when I said that?

My guess is you pictured one of two images.  Either this:

Or this:

Wrong.

My high school experience was nothing like either of the two images above.  (Sorry to disappoint if you pictured the second image.)  For an all girl’s catholic school, my high school was very liberal.  And that’s putting it lightly.

We had no dress code.  In fact, it was a tradition to go out and buy new pajamas pants for the first day of school.  Most catholic schools reward students with “dress-down” days where they get to wear jeans to school but not Notre Dame Academy – we had “dress-up” days where we were required to wear anything besides jeans.

Another oddity about my school was that we had no cafeteria.  Well, we had one…it was a converted classroom.  Granted my school was no bigger than 300 students, we certainly couldn’t all fit in that “cafeteria” with 3 tables.  School lunch was a one-woman show.  A one-woman show that involved grilled cheese made with mayo, frozen moldy bagels, and salads with limp and smelly lettuce.  Sounds appealing right?  Needless to say,  most people skipped the cafeteria experience all together.  The only other option was the hallway…so that’s where everyone ate.  Sitting on the floor in the hallway, camped out, eating food off the ground. Picture something like this:

The other option, if you didn’t want to eat off the floors that were only cleaned once a week by the really attractive 22 year old male janitor who wasn’t allowed to speak to us, was to go out for lunch.  (PS.  In retrospect, we can’t figure out if Janitor Ryan was actually attractive or if it was just our lack of other options.)  We were allowed to leave campus at any point, as long as we weren’t in class (and even that rule wasn’t very stressed).  The only place we weren’t allowed to go was the all boys school in the next town over.

Another extremely liberal aspect of my little catholic school was the sex-ed class.  In most catholic schools that I’ve heard of, sex-ed is none other than one word: abstinence.  At Notre Dame Academy, all sophomores met once a week with the school nurse to discuss not consequences of pre-marital sex, but rather, methods of it.  We were taught about contraception and literally shown how to use it.  They shoved images in our faces of STDs to scare us out of neglecting it, but we were never taught to abstain.  I’m sure the nuns who originally founded the school were rolling over in their grave every year during sex-ed time.

I could go on and on and on about the odd traditions at Notre Dame Academy, about the legal freshmen hazing that occurred every year led by the teachers, about the monthly school picnics and volleyball games, about the strong and very interesting personalities of the teachers who work(ed) there, the narcoleptic one, the one who didn’t speak english, the 400 lb nun… but I’ll spare you and leave it all to your imagination.

What I will stress is that the aspects of my high school that seemed different than other schools are the parts that made my high school experience different than many other people’s experience, an experience that I still value to this day.  We were allowed to express ourselves, taught that being different is okay.  The girls who wore all black to school every day were treated the same way as the field hockey stars, who were treated the same way as the drama students, etc.  We had our 5 year high school reunion last month, and it didn’t surprise me to see that many people, although more mature and grown-up, were very much the same as they were in high school.  And that’s not a bad thing.  The girls at Notre Dame were allowed to be themselves, allowing them to figure out who they were early enough to stay that way without much confusion.  So I’ll always value the experience that I had there, no matter how weird it was.  (It was very weird.)  But to the strict, conservative all boys high school in the next town over, Notre Dame will always just be “Camp Sweatpants.”

Sure, that didn’t really answer any questions…but that’s what I envisioned in my future.  I had no clue what I wanted to do to get there.  Honestly, I don’t think I actually wanted to do anything; I just wanted to sit there, in my corner office and high heels and have people cater to me.  Let’s be honest, I’d still enjoy a career like that.

So, when I go into work every day with my high heels making no sound on the carpeted floors, walk into my corner cube with no view, check my messages, and go downstairs to buy my own coffee, I figure I’m at least heading in the right direction of younger Tessa’s ambitions for the future.  The process of getting there is just a little longer than I originally anticipated.  Unfortunately, the problem is that I still don’t know what I want to do once I’m sitting in my corner office with a view and people catering to all my needs.  I’m really terrible at making decisions, so maybe when I have people doing all my dirty work for me, they’ll make that decision for me too.

Yesterday, my neighborhood didn’t lose a neighbor – we lost a family member.  He was our Mr. Rogers, our Wilson, and our Mr. Fix-It.  He was the glue that held his family, my family, our families, the neighborhood, his friends, his kids’ friends – he was the glue that held it all together.   It was a recurring theme in my family that if something was broken, Stacey was there to fix it.   It was not uncommon, in fact, it was expected, that if you looked out the window, Stace would be out there mowing our lawn, cleaning our pool, snow blowing the driveway, power washing the house.  He didn’t want anything for it – he just did it; it was second nature to him.  He was always rescuing the family from toilet leaks, car troubles, tough decisions that none of us could make – he was there fixing it, being the glue, holding my family together. Literally.

Last Christmas, my Dad collapsed and passed out at a restaurant.  It’s not at all surprising that Stace was the man who took charge and instinctively performed CPR on my Dad until he regained his consciousness and the ambulance arrived.  He fixed our house, he fixed our cars, he fixed our pool, and he fixed my dad.  He was our Mr. Fix-It.  He was the glue.

And now we find ourselves in this situation that we all want fixed.  And Stace isn’t there to fix it for us.  We so intuitively relied on him to solve it all but now it’s our turn to pull ourselves together and help to do what he did every day – it’s our turn to fix it.  We need to do what we learned from our neighbor and friend.  We need to be the glue.  And we will because we are among the luckiest people who knew there wasn’t only an extra carton of eggs or cup of milk next door, but just another close family member who lived in the house across the street.

Rest in Peace, Stace.

Since then, I’ve found better ways to make friends, but the most successful endeavor was during my junior year of college, when my roommate and I went around to all the rooms in our brownstone dorm and introduced ourselves.  Living in one of the rooms we stopped by were two girls who have since become my friends to the greatest extreme.

“So,  how long have you been married?” is not an uncommon line for us to hear.  And it certainly makes me think.  If I could marry my best friend(s), life would be a whole lot easier.  They would make the best husbands for me.  There are so many things they do that a husband would do, but they do it better.  When I ask, “does this shirt make me look fat?” depending on the situation, I’m looking for one of two answers: either a reassuring flattering comment (“Not at ALL, it actually looks really good on you!”) or a brutally honest answer (“Yeah don’t wear that you look fat, it doesn’t match your shoes, and your hair’s a mess.”)  The thing is, a husband doesn’t know when to tell me which answer.  My best friends do.

We argue, we bicker, we make comments so brutally honest that if anyone overheard, they’d be appalled.  Example: “We couldn’t decide what to get you for your birthday – we almost got you a weight watchers membership.” or “Stop eating that; you’ve gained a lot of weight this week and you’re starting to look fat.” But we appreciate the honesty, because ultimately, if everything is out in the open, there’s no speculation involved and there’s nothing left to fight about.

We know how each of us will react in different situations and how to judge our own reactions accordingly.  We know when to tip-toe around a bad mood and when to interfere.  We know when to be concerned about something and when it’s better to ignore it.  We know what the other person is going to say in a specific situation, and more importantly, we know what she isn’t going to say.  When we go out together, we order everything on the menu, eat off each other’s plates, make a huge mess, talk with our mouths full, eat so fast you’d think we just came from a poverty-stricken country and haven’t seen food in months, and then we debate over dessert. When it comes to paying for things, one of us just picks up the tab.  We don’t have an organized way of taking turns with paying, we just do it.  It’ll all even out eventually.

The thing is, all of that what I just described is exactly what you’d find in a well-maintained marriage.  A good friendship is essentially a relationship minus the romance.   I can find romance anywhere, but for someone to know me that deeply and care about me to that extreme?  That takes a lot of time and effort.  It’s not as simple as just “accidentally” kicking someone and hoping it’ll turn into something.

If I could marry my best friend(s), my life would be a whole lot easier.

24 hours later I found myself in Border’s Cafe writing a 3 page paper. Single spaced. What did I get myself into??  I quickly found myself constantly distracted, easily irritated, bored, and frustrated.  A feeling that felt all too familiar to me…but one that I hadn’t felt in a good year or so…oh wait, senioritis.

Anyway, as my self-diagnosed ADD came in waves throughout the day, I found different ways to distract myself.  I took a lot of bathroom breaks, food breaks, shopping breaks, and eventually I found myself talking to people in Border’s Cafe.  Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I like talking to people and this was no exception.

I started talking to the friendly looking girl next to me.  We needed to share an outlet for our computer cords.   Always taking an opportunity for a conversation, I did just that.  Within 30 minutes, we were deep in conversation.  I had already learned so much about her – she is 29, has her MBA, single, big into philanthropy, and is currently a nanny.

Two of those five facts about her stood out to me.  First: Single.  This girl was strikingly pretty, well put together, incredibly sweet and genuine, etc.  How could she be single! Second:  Nanny.  Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nanny – that’s something I know I would love doing with my time.  But she has her MBA…why wasn’t she working in a big corporation with a corner office and a view?

Upon further conversation, I realized we both have similar outlooks to life that all come down to one thing: expectations.  Sure, she has her MBA, she’s intelligent and certainly put a lot of money into her degrees. But she wasn’t willing to settle for a job she didn’t love to the greatest extreme.  The same goes for being single – why would she settle for someone just for the sake of being in a relationship?

Every time you settle for anything, no matter how minor it may be, you are lowering your expectations. As you go through life settling on the most minor things, you ultimately end up in a life with lower expectations than you once had for yourself.   The first day you start making excuses for your expectations, you are lowering the bar for yourself.  Who wants to end up in a life of failed or diminished dreams, as small as they may be?

So, ultimately, that’s why table neighbor was a single nanny, as smart and as pretty as she may be.  She refuses to settle for a guy who decides that he’s comfortable enough in his relationship to stop opening doors for her, and she refuses to settle for a job that doesn’t make her feel like she’s doing something beneficial and worthwhile every single day.  Why settle if you could have more?

My conversation with this perfect stranger lasted at least an hour.  But by the end she wasn’t a stranger anymore.  We were new facebook friends and had made plans to get drinks later in the week.  Oh, and my friend’s paper wasn’t even close to done.

So. Lesson learned.  Never settle for anything. Always push for more.  Never lower your expectations.  And always talk to strangers.

It was Christmas break of my senior year and my friend and I had ventured into Boston for a little city getaway from our families and some quiet in our dorms before everyone returned.  We went out with one of my friends from high school who brought two of his friends he knew in college.  Afterward, we all went back to my dorm for a major snow battle and some cheesy bread.  What I didn’t know at the time, was what that snowball fight outside my dorm would turn into.

As we sat around my table eating Dominos’ heart-attack-on-a-plate, I got to know the two randoms in my apartment a little better than just by shoving snow in their faces.  They went to Suffok, they do something involving money and numbers and things I don’t understand in the Financial District, and oh wait, they own their own business at 24.  When they found out I was in advertising, they suddenly seemed veryyy interested.  I like to think the great friendship that our night turned into was more to do with the time we spent going out on weekends, weekday dinner dates, afternoon coffee breaks, etc., and less to do with the beneficial ways in which they can use my knowledge about advertising/marketing…but we may never know.

Anyway, their internet start-up company started doing pretty well and being the most energetic, zealous, driven duo I know, the two couldn’t just sit back and watch their company grow peacefully.  They had to stir it up and do more.  Fast forward months of hard work, late nights, and Indian programmers, and here you have the product of their restlessness….Peekaboo.

Peekaboo is a free mobile app, currently available for iPhone and iTouch that uses the GPS in your phone to find the discounts and deals that are surrounding your exact location.  It’s beneficial for two groups of people:  Users and Businesses.

Users:  It’s lunchtime.  You’re hungry.  You have $5 in your pocket.  You’re a broke college student and that’s all you can afford to pay for lunch.  What do you do?  Open Peekaboo, search the deals within a mile (or 5 miles, 10 miles, etc) from your current location and find out that your favorite sandwich shop has $2 off subs.  Bingo.

Businesses:  It’s lunchtime.  Your restaurant’s empty.  The place next door has a line out the door.  Probably because their food is cheaper.  You don’t want to cut the prices on all your food…so what should you do?  Easy.  Sign up for Peekaboo for free and add a coupon.  $2 off any sub.  20% off a combo meal.  Anything.  Suddenly, you’re giving that place next door a run for their money.

The best part about the app, and the thing that makes it different from other discount apps like this, is that these deals you receive are unique to people with the app on their phone.  Nobody can walk in and receive $2 off their sub. It’s not like just walking in with a newspaper ad.  You have to show the coupon that is ONLY available on Peekaboo.

I’m really glad I met the two of them.  They’re great people and wonderful friends and even better, thanks to them, I’m getting 20% off my haircut next week.  So here’s my shameless plug for them.  Because they deserve it, because they worked hard, because they’re bound to be successful, and because soon they’re going to support me and bring me on exotic tropical vacations.

www.peekaboomobile.com

So why does everyone go on cruises? Nobody really cares where it stops.  I mean, unless you’re going on an exotic, European cruise, or something like that.  But the Caribbean ones/Bahamas ones are all pretty much the same.  You stop at an island, go to some highly populated resort area where you can eat/drink/swim and do anything else you virtually could have done while you were on the boat.  Few people wander too far out into the less populated, high poverty areas of the islands (I’m talking about people my age generally).  So why doesn’t everyone just skip the cruise and go straight to the island?? Here’s why:

The people.  Seriously, it’s the funniest thing.  It’s like a Noah’s Ark of people.  A couple of each kind of person.  Throw them on a boat with limited space to move and limited things to do and see what happens.  Here’s a few types of people who stood out to me:

• The parents who booked a Carnival Cruise for the family during the week of spring break. They sit on the deck with their young children shooting daggers to the groups of students hosting their own booty shaking contests and waterfalling their daiquiris.  Part of me feels bad for you because you’re stuck on a boat with 3000 drunk college kids.  Part of me thinks you should know better because you probably were once one of those 3000 college kids.  Even if you weren’t, you have kids, you should know when students are typically out of school and then you should plan accordingly.
• The nervous guy who’s trying to propose to his girlfriend. …You’re on a boat in the middle of an ocean.  What are you going to do if she says no?  Awkward.
• The sea-sick one. This poor guy saved all his money to go on a cruise and spent the entire time throwing up over the edge.  His friends felt bad for him for a day, but then they gave up.  Sorry guy, next time look into the Dramamine Patch.
• The older couple celebrating an anniversary. These are the only people who rent a tux and buy flowers from the Carnival store.  They think they’re on some real classy, ritzy trip, but they’re so much in their own world that they don’t even realize that 2 decks above them people 3 or 4 decades younger than them are drinking any possible combination of alcohol that will make the average-looking person standing next to them look like great company for later in the evening.
• The 40-year-old mom who came on spring break with her daughter. She’s 40 going on 22.  She’s buying rounds of shots for her daughter’s friends.  She’s shamelessly passing around pictures of her 8-year-old who’s stuck at home for the week while her Mom is off celebrating her 20th spring break.  She’s the cougar of the cruise, or at least that’s what she aspires to be.
• The Returning Passenger. This is the guy who’s been on the ship before and becomes the Cruise Connoisseur for his friends for the week.  “And here’s the pizza place.  And here’s the pool.  And here’s the casino.  And here’s how the phone works.  And listen to the sound the toilet makes when it flushes.”  He wants to do everything on the cruise itinerary so he can prove to his friends just how FUN the cruise is.  He flickers all the lights at 7:30 am to wake up his friends so they can be the first ones off the boat and do EVERYTHING.  Quick tip: the Cruise Connoisseur is the typically the Karen of the group.
• The frat guys.  Little explanation required.  The guys you can’t miss.  They fist pump, chant their frat name, they’re obnoxious, drunk, and they love themselves and each other so much that you’ll rarely find them with on the boat with girls.  They THINK they’re getting a lot of attention but if they stepped back to look, they’d notice that there’s not a single girl hovering around their big group of bros.  But they’ll still go home and tell all their friends about their successful endeavors with every girl they noticed.
• The young couple. They’re in their 20s or early 30s.  They’re on their first trip together.  They’re not sure what to expect.  They try to participate and fit in with the rest of the people on the cruise but they just look awkward.  They end up ordering room service in their cabin by 11pm and fall asleep discussing the crazy times they had that night.

All in all, cruises are quite an experience.  If  “life is about the journey -  not the destination,” well, so is a cruise.  It’s funny to watch people live in a 10×10 space with 2-3 other people and make it to the end of the week with a success story.  Whoever came up with the idea is brilliant.  Cram people on a boat and watch  them survive.  If you can treat a boat as a hotel and make it work, would it be the same thing in an airplane?  An airplane cruise.  That’s my next idea.  Don’t steal it.

When you park on the street & don’t pull up close to the car in front of you, leaving enough room for half of a car to park. I’m usually that person trying parallel park my full size car into a half-size car parking space.  Because you didn’t pull up.  Because if I can’t park there, I can’t park at all.  Because if I can’t park, I get a parking ticket.  Because if I get a parking ticket, that gets added into my monthly parking ticket bill that already exceeds $100.  Because I make an entry-level salary and cannot afford to keep paying parking tickets. Thanks, asshole.

When you don’t say “thank you” when I hold the door for you. I heard you coming behind me.  I opened the door.  I held it open.  I stepped aside.  You walked on through.  Hello? I just held the door for you? Acknowledge, please.

When you’re asked a question and you give a crappy answer that you think makes yourself look smart/good. I was watching the Oprah Oscar Special last night.  Halle Berry  was interviewing Penelope Cruise & vice versa.  Halle asked Penelope, “What is your favorite place to be?” Penelope answered, “The beach.  What’s yours?” Halle answered, “I don’t care where I am in the world as long as my daughter is somewhere with me.  As long as I have her and she has me, we are perfect.” ….That wasn’t the question.  The question wasn’t “who do you love being with?”  In an attempt to mention your daughter and make yourself look like a good mother, you didn’t even answer the question! Just say “Italy” or something, and move on.

When you walk/speak/eat/drive/do ANYTHING slowly. There are things to do and people to see in life, people.  Move FASTER.  And if you’re really not going to, then move out of my way.  Or I’ll step on your heels.

When you leave enough coffee in the coffee maker for 1/2 of a cup of coffee. Nobody ever needs 1/2 a cup of coffee.  You usually need 3 cups of coffee.  (As misleading as the size of the styrofoam cups in the break room may be.)  If you’re going to leave a little coffee, make MORE for me! Don’t make me go in to the break room to find 1/2 a cup waiting for me.  That is not beneficial & is a poor use of my time.

When you say “good” instead of “well.” See your 7th grade grammar teacher.  She’ll explain.

When I make it very obvious that I don’t feel like talking/listening to what you have to say & you continue to talk to me anyway. I know that sounds super bratty.  But come on, everyone has those times in the day when they just want to be left alone.  If I’m just nodding and walking away as you speak, or saying “yup” “seriously” and “jeez” every once in a while to satisfy your needed responses, or if I turn on the TV mid-conversation, etc, take a hint! I don’t want to hear what you have to say right now!  If you save it for later, I’ll probably give you a much better reaction.

When you have something to say to me but you’re too scared so you decide to tell me in email. Ah, confrontation of the 21st century.  I don’t need you emailing me all of your complaints just to then smile at me 4 minutes later when you see me.  Suck it up and tell me.  I may be super annoyed with you but at least I’ll respect your efforts.

There’s plenty more but I’m trying to learn how to censor myself.  If you have something that’s super annoying and you think I’d agree, please post it in a comment.