Love
Gooey
And
Moist
Chocolate Chip
Cookie
All
Filled Up
With
Christ.
Making No
Sense
Perhaps
Is My
Vice.
Like
Chocolate Chip
Cookie
A
Brand New
Rolls Royce.

-Heidi Fischer
Nov. 13th, 2009

Glory... purple car = me

Food

In my experience world traveling produces one sure fire result, missing food from home. I don’t just mean mom’s home cooked meals, although there is that too, but just recognizing anything in the grocery store. What I mean is being able to open your pantry, go to the store and actually appreciate anything familiar.

Junk food is always there for you though. From Norway, China to Brazil you will at least find a few familiar pops, chocolate bars, and chips. I happily bought a package of Skittles in China, and would purposely pick up Pringles in Norway and Brazil over the unfamiliar choices. It may not taste exactly the same, irregardless at least seeing familiar packaging smiling up at you will surely make your heart flutter.

Norway is the land of open-faced sandwiches. Pretty quickly I began to feel if I ate another one I would barf. Early on I came up with a calculation as to how many I’d probably eat in a year. It went something like this. 5 days a week, (times) 4 weeks, (times) 9 months, (times) 6 (2 at frokost, 2 at lunsj, and 2 at kveldsmat) = 1,080 + 288(4 on Saturday and 4 on Sunday (times) the aforementioned formula) = 1,368 open-faced Norwegian sandwiches. I don’t doubt I ate that many. Like all things though in the end I began to relish them. This was the land where I first ate brie, blue cheese, porchetta, and I’m sure other culinary delights.

I have noted that peanut butter as well as dill pickles seem to be a North American thing. Whatever you can’t have, you eventually direly want. Another thing of course is cheddar cheese… it’s just us N.A. saps that eat that garbage, as far as I can tell. Those fast-food restaurants that seem to hover around the world will still provide you with those tasty orange cheese slices, but I warn you they are not the same, and usually rather sickly. I remember trying to dive into a McDonalds cheeseburger in Brazil, and pretty much wanting to barf… although of course McDonalds can have that affect at the best of times.

Growing Up

Growing up in a K-12 school of 150 students has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantage 1; it is pretty hard to get lost. Not physically… although I suppose there is that too. With one hallway and one angle, it is pretty hard not to know where you are going. What I really mean though is, if nothing else, you are ‘known’. Now this doesn’t mean you will have friends, or have a particularly lovely time… but at least your face and your name are known by all. Not a particular comfort I suppose to the kid who goes through grade 5-12 with no friends… but I think it has to be better than complete obscurity. This being known to all though has its disadvantages too.

I recall a grade 10 day when a few of us decided to be somewhat ‘naughty’. Mr. Sharman was particularly lenient, and we didn’t really feel like going to class. So we ‘hid out’ in the library for probably a half hour or so, expecting to be eventually found. We never were. Eventually we got a little nervous about this, but didn’t want to go waltzing back into class with no excuse. So I got the brilliant idea to call the secretary, and to ask for Mr.Sharman. The plan was that upon his answering we’d scuttle back into class, and act like nothing happened when he returned. We might still get into trouble, but at least it would be humorous. Instead of Brenda picking up the phone though, it was Mr.G. Mr.G…my favorite math teacher and acting director. He immediately said, “Is that you Heidi?” I froze… and had no idea what to say… so I just admitted it. He knew what we were up and said; “Will you at least be on the line when he gets there?”… I muttered “no”. “Well you better get back to class then”; he said sternly, but with an underlying amusement. We ran out of the library and hid out in the bathroom for a few minutes laughing hysterically, and wondering what to do. We decided to just bite the bullet and walk back into class. We did so, made some excuse we were trying to find books for “reading time”… this was English class we were skipping… and basically received no reprimand. This was Perdue School for you.

I never really fit in. I got by just fine, but felt just on the edge of the outskirts. Stay in line well enough and I maintained friendships, and I was just odd enough to be true to myself. With about 5-10 friends to choose from, this was a precarious line to walk. I was the first to wear ‘funny colored nail polish’, put sparkles on my face, wear army print clothes, and so on. I was made fun of for all of it… always to see in a year or two it followed by the crowd. It wasn’t like I was a fashion expert or anything, far from it… I just liked things that were fun or interesting… they just didn’t become interesting to anyone else until it was considered normal.

When I think about it the number 1 disadvantage was the lack of opportunities. No photography, acting if there was some luck, no neat clubs to speak of. There were sports, but that just wasn’t for me. I loathed the annual baseball day. Forced to play baseball with the entire school… fricken sucked. In grade 11 or 12 I finally decided to skip it. So Tanya and I just didn’t bother to show up, and we probably hung out at her house that day. I slunk back to school at home time, and made my way onto my big yellow bus. My younger bus-friend Dustin informed me that Mr.C was pretty pissed about my absence, and I figured I’d probably get into trouble the next day... again though this was Perdue.

Mr. C met us at the start of the next day and sent us to the Principals office. We told Mr. Newton that we hadn’t gone to the all-glorious baseball day. He just responded; “You know it is mandatory right?” To which we both said; “Yeah”. And he was like; “Ok, well that’s fine”, and told us to go back to class… this had taken a total of 25 seconds. Mr. C met us on our way back and didn’t believe us that we had gone, and so sent us back following behind. Mr. Newton just sent us away again, and we heard them shouting at each other as we walked away. Nothing more ever came of it. I probably skipped a whole of 2.5 days my whole high school career… I don’t think Mr. Newton was too concerned with delinquency.

I hated grade 9. Our homeroom teacher meant well… but sadly I sucked at math and he sucked at teaching it. I don’t think Mr. Sloman had a particularly easy time of it with most of the students. What I do remember liking about grade 9 was Home Ec. Class. Our school wasn’t equipped for this, so once a week we’d be bussed off to Asquith school, about 20 minutes away. I liked the cooking… not so much the sewing. (I don’t know if the following happened in grade 9 or another year...but a good story nonetheless). Confession time. As mentioned, I didn’t much care for sewing. On one particular day we were to sew pencil cases. We had cut out the required fabric squares, and were ready to go. The teacher sewed hers together complete with zipper as a quick demonstration, and then threw it to the side. I knew what I was going to do… I grabbed it while she wasn’t looking and passed it off as my own. I smirked inside as she pointed out the flaws and gave me a 7/10. Oh yeah… I was a bad ass. Ok ok.. I wasn’t… but in that moment I really felt like I stuck it to the man. Part two of Home Ec. involved us freely (secretly) taking things back to Perdue for our own later use. We once took back ice tea crystals and a few of us proudly snorted them in Mr. Sloman’s accounting class. Yes I must admit it; I’ve snorted a substance… legal as it was. I’m also particularly fond of the time we smuggled back an entire watermelon that was also consumed in class.

In a class of 6 it’s hard not to leave with the highest-class average grades 10-12, although I suppose 5 others didn’t. I still proudly display this on my resume… they don’t know the size of the school. I would have been a “mid-student” anywhere else… but again this was Perdue.

Lazy and Hazy.
Nothing
Out
There,
To be Concerned about.

Beautiful Voices,
Joined
In
Harmony.
Guitar Strummed.

Trees
Have
Flourished.

Street Noises
Fade
Into
Nothingness.

Wasted Day
With
No
Regret.

Wasted Day
With
Select
Regret.

There is
No one
To
Hold
Me.

-Heidi Fischer

I
Miss you.

I am
Not
Suppose
To say
It.

But,
I do.

Don’t have the words.

Don’t have the words,
For what’s in my heart.

Left you behind,
When I shouldn’t have.

Heavy.

Alone.

Tired.

Doesn’t always seem
Like a free gift.

Even
Though
It is.

Looking for
Lightness.

Missing
Freedom.

Something
Not able
To
Turn.

Left you behind,
When you really can’t be left.

For what’s in my heart,
I don’t have the words.

-Heidi Fischer
Sept. 10th, 2009

The store: Part 1.5

Hot cars didn’t impress her. A car worth 10 years of education didn’t cause her any special feelings. They were just purple, red, and blue. She could only note the color and knew nothing of the make. She would in no way turn down a car ride, but it wouldn’t influence her that was for sure.

She liked to watch the streets, the real streets. Watch the drug deals and people who walked back and forth like “Flintstone houses”. It still surprised her the amount of people that still smoked, when you really watched. TV and magazines have removed all that so you forget that particular vice is still doing quite well. “I wonder how those top Tobacco guys get through life knowing they are heartily supplying the world with cancer”…. “In another age they’d be paying a lot of indulgences”; she reasoned out.

The air was dusty and dry. She had only known this dryness and it barely affected her. The dust though… the dust. She felt bathed in it. When you haven’t been ‘in the dirt’, and yet the water you washed with turns brown… the evidence is all there. She made a mental note not to forget to wash up before eating.

She watched with total emptiness as the car across the street was ticketed. The car owner was literally 10 feet away from her. Yet he was looking the other direction waiting for his family inside the business. She watched them earlier when they had left the car and had not placed any money in the meter. She felt no remorse or guilt as they did finally walk across the street and pick up the ticket from the windshield.

Regina Spektor played over her ipod that day. She didn’t typically like female artists that much. Not that she had anything against them, but long ago she had noted that her music collection rarely featured women. The ones she did like were the Jewel (pre-whore), Fiona Apple and Lauryn Hill’s of the world. The ones that have something to say and do well to put it to music, with some (or a lot) quirkiness thrown in. She more or less imagined she herself would be that way if she were a musician.

The day from her standpoint was quite a success. It was a success because she got to spend the day sitting in a lawn chair with music playing in her ear. Additionally she did get to shoo away 3 shoplifters, another favorite past time. Sadly 2 (a pair) of these managed to get 1-2 tank tops… of which she did nothing about. From a financial standpoint though the day was not a success. Unfortunately this first (and last) ever sidewalk sale pulled about $20.00 in for the store.