Barbara. The Woman.

Barbara, the Woman from sarah pappalardo on Vimeo.

Terrorist Threats: The Innocent Kind

There is a fair share of crazies on my ride from the northeast edge of Brooklyn to downtown. Most of them are picked up on a long ride through Bed-Stuy, which seems to be gentrification-averse and charmingly violent in the evening.

I know I’m in for a treat when I hear the grovelly voice of a woman in gold or silver sweatpants talking to the closest stranger. She rides to her “meetings” in downtown Brooklyn once a week, and has an uncanny ability to tell her life story to anyone within five feet of her, in 40 minutes or less.

After hearing the standard “I-was-a –junkie-and-now-I’ve-found-the-Lord” story (cliché) over a handful of bus rides, I overheard her in the rear of the bus this morning while I was reading. “No, I’m not suicidal, I’m homicidal. Some days I could kill this whole fuckin’ bus!” she tells the bus. And just in case the people with iPods didn’t hear, she says, “I think about it every day! Do you know how hard it is to think about killing a whole fuckin’ bus every day?”

That’s when I realized that her meetings were of the psychiatric variety. And I seriously wondered how many weapons could be stored in a pair of gold sweatpants.

An Open Letter to My Google Twins, Sarah Pappalardo and Sarah Pappalardo

I used to own the Google landscape. Well, at least for two searches-- Sarah Pappalardo and "Sarah Pappalardo." I even had a good chunk of "Pappalardo" until a whole lot of other Pappalardos joined the world of the Internet. My internet existence has been compromised by only two Pappalardos, though. This is my open letter to them:

Dear Sarah Pappalardo and Sarah Pappalardo,

I like what you've done with your lives. I enjoy your articles on Associated Content, Sarah. And Sarah, you've obviously done a great job in Real Estate down in the Jacksonville area. The only problem is that we all share at least a few things in common: our first names, our last names, and our jobs. I, too, am a freelance writer. And guess what, I've worked in real estate marketing for the past year. I know more about Florida real estate than my mom knows about Florida bingo locations and Florida early bird specials. I'm just worried that people from high school think I've moved to Florida. That'd be strange.

The issue here is that we are too close. We are not so different to be seen as separate Sarah Pappalardo entities, but just close enough to potentially be the same Google person. Maybe if one of us took up a career in taxidermy or applied science (there's a Pappalardo fellowship at MIT, if anyone's interested), we wouldn't be so Google-merged.

Don't think that I'm going to be the one to switch careers, just because I'm the youngest.

One option would be to add a middle initial to our Google Personas. I already snagged Sarah J. Pappalardo on Associated Content, but the initial thing never quite stuck. I don't know your middle initials yet, but I sure hope that they aren't the letter J. This would take a lot of effort, anyway, and I'm not sure if anyone is up for changing their business cards right now.

I'm sure you, Sarah Pappalardo 2 and 3, don't want people thinking you are an actor, or that you write snarky comments on other people's blogs, or that you can't really hit the high notes in "Suddenly Seymour". It's time to start making a separation between us, for the good of us all. May we hire the best Google surgeon to do this.

Sincerely,
Sarah Pappalardo 1
Brown-haired freelance writer in real estate
Chicago, IL

Birthday Suit

Putting on a new age is like trying on a new suit.

No, not a slinky dress. A suit. Age covers your arms and ankles, too.

I put on a new age today, powder blue and sort of cold-looking. It replaced the reddish-yellow getup of age 22. It takes awhile before you get used to that new suit; some people prepare for it a few days ahead, ready to slip it on before the date on their license matches their outfit. Other people are breaking in their "40" suit before they hit their thirties. One year. It's not a big change. Just the "I'm age so-and-so" instead of "I'm age such-and-such." But it's a different colored suit that takes some time before it's broken in.

Twenty-three is powder blue, and I'm still feeling fiery red.

It's Not Like I'm Not Trying

I've spent the past three of five classes with a woman who sits in the corner and never talks. She's quite a bit older; you can tell by her constant tense physical state that she's working ten times harder than everyone else, and with half the success. She used to be in the army, and has a difficult time asserting herself. And she smells like diapers all the time.

If I were a bit younger and a bit less mature, I would have named her Smelly Lady by now and would have told you how it's weird when she starts rocking back and forth for the entire three hours of class and only makes really oblique comments that never make any sense ever. I'm beyond that. Way beyond that. In fact, I developed a tremendous respect for her over a course of months, realizing how much I take my own situation for granted, and that she's probably worked ten times as hard for everything she achieved in life, even if it all came out to a C average in the end. She's the American Dream. If I were feeling especially hormonal, I might even shed a tear for her.

In spite of the many classes we've had together, we hadn't actually spoken until I ran into her at the Newberry library, searching for special collections that were mysteriously unavailable at the time. I found her hidden behind a wheeling bookshelf next to her working table, and she happened to be using every British periodical that I needed to begin our final paper.

That's when I asked if I could share with her.

That's also when I found out she smelled like diapers.

She seemed distressed about me using her materials, as if they weren't part of a public library or as if we weren't doing the same research paper. She asked me all about my topic later that week as she grabbed my annotated bibliography out of my hands before class. She seemed obsessively interested in my ideas, and I wasn't really willing to share. Something about this seemed familiar, but it didn't seem right. She was far too eager take ideas that I neither gave a crap about (Victorian literature) nor wanted to share with the world, nevermind her.

Two weeks later, I went to class hormonal, bloated, and ready to cry on someone. I also realized my research was completely wrong. For some reason, I never got the verbal memo about its specific research guidelines, and nobody let me know that I was doing anything incorrectly. The professor handed us back a response to our topics, with a grade; mine was below excellent. Lady Previously Mentioned was sitting next to me, and kept looking over my shoulder as I was reading my back page. This wasn't surprising considering our last encounter, so I put it away before she saw any of the information she was looking for.

Let me take you back to school for a moment, to remind you of the unspoken code of honor between classmates. There are certain things you never ask a classmate, especially in a class of ten students, all sitting around the same rectangular table.

She wasn't looking at anyone else's but mine. And she asked the question:

"WHAT DID YOU GET?" As if this annotated bibliography was a testament to all our intellectual, moral, and spiritual merits and faults and the single defining moment of our lives.

I narrowly avoided having to give an answer, since class had started. Nevertheless, three hours later, the same thing came out of her mouth. "WHAT DID YOU GET? I GOT A B-PLUS" without a breath in between, and with a satisfied smirk on her face. As if she beat me at a game that I didn't know I was competing in. I was losing the B-plus game, big time.

As I said, I was feeling very, very bloated and hormonal. I could have bitten the head off of a kitten if it looked at me cross-eyed. But, I am a rational person. I can step back and say, "Sarah, it's not you talking, it's the estrogen." And so I thought about how proud Smelly Lady must have been for achieving the best grade she's had in her entire career. Even though it was a small victory, she could cherish it forever, because it was a testament to her hard work and uncompromising character. I should just bite my tongue and be happy for her, in spite of the spiteful comparison she was trying to make with my only-slightly-above-average grade on a project that is only worth one-tenth of a grade for a class that is in a graduate program where grades don't really matter anyway. No, I'm not bitter. I'm gracious. I'm a gracious human being full of grace.


I'm pretty happy with myself, regardless. At least I don't smell like diapers.

I'm Taking the Goddamn Train

It seems like people will never be satisfied with the fact that transportation is, and always will be, a bitch.

In the midst of a CTA apocalypse, people are afraid that they may never get to work on time, or that they can’t afford inevitable price hikes, or that city taxes are going to all the wrong places instead of the CTA itself. Right now, the CTA is like a dream to me. A prix fixe, maintenance-free dream.

I have owned a car for two-and-a-half months, and have managed to get towed, booted, and ticketed within 50 feet of my front door. Every morning I sit in an hour of traffic and listen to the NPR morning news, which reminds me, as I’m driving, that oil prices are rising again. I also have a slow leak in my tire, which I would easily fix by myself if this wheel happened to be on a bicycle. But fixing big motorized things is complicated and costs money, and as you may know, I am a female. My mother still insists I take a man to the repair shop with me. To protect me from myself, I imagine.

Aside from the obvious absurdities of owning a car in the city, there are plenty of benefits. I never have to wait for a bus, I can transport large objects, and take road trips to reclaim my reckless youth. But I can do all of these things while leaving my car parked for most of the week. Unfortunately, it is as much of a liability when it is parked as it is when it is actively combusting and destroying the environment.

I don’t regret acquiring a car as much as I regret actually using it, anyway.

For a few days a week, I’m switching to the Blue Line and PACE buses to get to my lovely job, situated in No-man’s land, IL. I get to read, or sleep without worrying that I might kill a cyclist, and I save at least two dollars a day (which will inevitably increase as oil prices rise due to rising oil production costs due to rising oil prices) . It might take an extra half an hour, but I get to do absolutely nothing on the way.

For those of you complaining about the CTA: try driving. It’s ridiculous.

Shoe-Gentrification

My neighborhood is evolving!

The Aldo shoe outlet is being replaced by....an Aldo.

Now I can go to the same store and pay more for the same product!

Soon enough, Village Discount Outlet wll be replaced by...Village Discount.

This will inevitably phase into Village, which will only sell the designer-thrift "look."