Whenever I find myself next to someone at the bank, filling out a direct deposit form or a withdrawal form or who knows what, I make it into a race. I want to see if I can beat that person to the teller window. Or, to the line that is quickly forming in front of the teller window. I thought it was just me that plays these ridiculous games but this morning, as soon as I picked up one of those attached-to-the-desk bank pens to fill out my deposit form, the man next to me looked over at my stuff and suddenly started writing faster. HE wanted to beat ME.

He didn’t succeed. But it was finally nice to be challenged in the Race You To The Teller competition. Usually, I feel like I’m playing a game I made up in my mind. Today, I was validated in knowing that it isn’t just me and that other people play this game too and also that tellers get startled when you run breathlessly up to their window and slam your hand on the glass screaming HIGH FIVE! YEAHHHHHHHHH.

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I live every day with the understanding that most people around me do not know my name. It’s like the theme song from “Cheers” except…opposite. I don’t know why this is. People surprise me daily—my co-workers, my mom, etc. But I find more often than not, when I’m wondering if that person in front of me has any idea who I am, I am proven correct. They have no clue.

I don’t know what it is about my face or my name that is so forgettable. Whenever I take a class, it takes approximately ten weeks for new classmates or teachers to call me by name without stumbling. And I’m always that person who runs into others on the street and I’m all, HI EDGAR! And Edgar is silently cursing, “Oh sh*t, crap, I know her from somewhere, who IS she!?”

I’m always gracious and constantly repeat, “I’m Laura!” when people blanky stare at me. It’s just getting to the point where I find myself reintroducing myself to people who SHOULD know me by now. Like, my boss. And my boyfriend.

“It’s LAAAAURA,” I say slowly, spelling it out.

And PCG is all, “Uh. I know.”

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Last night I had two separate nightmares. One was that the world was ending a la “The Road” (can you tell that movie scarred me for life? Holy, I saw that in NOVEMBER and it still plays over in my mind) and the trees were falling down and PCG and I had to save ourselves but we didn’t know how and we couldn’t get out of the city and we were going to drown in the Hudson River and die.

The other nightmare wasn’t so much a narrative as much it was the constant awareness that if I didn’t pick my purse up off the bedroom floor, roaches would surely crawl inside it and then later, when I was carrying my purse around the city, I would randomly be distributing roaches everywhere I went. This never happened in the dream, mind you. It was just a persistent haunting. “PICK UP YOUR PURSE OR THE ROACHES WILL COME.”

At one point, I sat up in bed and was all MY PURSE IS ON THE FLOOR! ROACHES?!!!!!!!!

And then I fell back asleep because all that dreaming was making me tired.

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My secret fear is that I am an expert at nothing and average at pretty much everything except for driving a car which I am exceptionally terrible at. I wish there was one thing that I did better than most people, something that made me stand out and made people say SHE IS SO GOOD AT THIS. This makes me wonder why I need people to say that I’m good at something but also why it seems that people have specific talents and skill sets and I’m sort of just moderately okay at most things.

Perhaps THIS is my strength. To be decent at a LOT of things? I mean, WHAT A GIFT, RIGHT? I can speak English coherently. I can blog regularly. I can take care of kids without killing them. I can sing on-key. I can take a ballet class without tripping. I can jog three and a half miles. I can tell a funny story. I can cook you a few passable dinners. At the very least, I can make you a snack. I am immune to poison ivy.

Is this okay? Is this enough? What if average at everything is all I will ever be? IS THAT ALRIGHT!? Well. Average at everything except driving a car because OH MY GOD sometimes I drift into lanes without even NOTICING I DID THAT.

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The great thing about being in your late 20’s is looking back at all the stuff you did and thought when you were in your early 20’s and laughing hysterically at yourself. Not in a mean way. Just in a, OH MAN! SO GLAD YOU ARE NOT LIKE THAT ANYMORE.

I wonder if this happens continually as you get older. There is a wonderful line in an Indigo Girls’ song that goes, “Every five years or so, I look back on my life and I have a good laugh.”

I am finding this to be true. But I want to know when the turning point is when you say OH I AM SO GLAD I AM PAST THAT and you start saying OH GOSH I WISH I STILL HAD THAT. Maybe it’s when you’re 85 and you’re all, OH HOW I WISH I COULD REMEMBER MY LIFE AND GO TO THE BATHROOM ON MY OWN AGAIN.

In reality, is it a bit of both? For example,  ”I’m so glad I’m not as neurotic as I used to be but oh man how I would love to have my body from high school back!” Unless you are me because I was fatter in high school. But you get what I’m saying, right?

ANYONE?

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Last night in philosophy class, a woman shared that when she’s meditating, solutions to some of her problems just seem to magically arise. All that seems to come from my meditation lately is, WHEN THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA EAT BREAKFAST? I AM STARVING. I decided NOT to share that in class because it didn’t seem very philosophical.

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I have no way of summing this blog post except I will beat you in the race to the teller’s window EVERY TIME and I’m a bad driver but I have a healthy appetite and I am sort of loving being almost 27 and I’ve been better lately about taking my multivitamin except the zinc in it makes me nauseated and why can’t they make a multivitamin without zinc? Who freaking needs zinc? More importantly, who needs zinc when it makes you BARF? And this is your friendly reminder to pick your purse up off the floor because THE ROACHES and WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT and IS IT FRIDAY YET OH MY GOD?