Out of the ordinary, into the extraordinary

Alexandra Nicolas - Editor-in-Chief

Alexandra Nicolas – Editor-in-Chief

Permanent press, medium load, eight-minute color wash. Apparently, now it only takes the length of a wash cycle to convey thought.

I accidentally received a letter in the midst of my phone bill and Popular Photography magazine. I mean a real honest-to-God letter. Someone took the time between washing her running socks and lavender panties to write a short note to her parents. This letter began and ended with details about the condition of her laundry. She told her parents about the past week; she folded the letter in quarters and put it in a card with flowers on the front, put it in a pink envelope and mailed it. It is now sitting on my bookcase waiting to go back in the mail.

It was terrifying.

An expression of her life fit into the span of a wash cycle. I never understood what it was to be ordinary until that point.

I was recently informed that most people do not have constant thoughts going through their heads; no constant inner turmoil, no rapid influx of curiosity.

I constantly get heckled and told I “think too much” and I and those like me need to go “have fun.”

If the definition of “having fun” is to do get incomprehensibly drunk, act like a complete imbecile and have unprotected intercourse with someone who: A, I have never met, B, has any number of sexual deviations and C, will not remember my name in the morning, then I do believe ordinary is highly overrated.

Thankfully, I do not speak from personal experience.

Occasionally, I envy the ordinary when trapped with it; joking about old episodes of late night television, exchanging story’s of drunken escapades or the folly of old relationships. These relationships seem to come and go as easily as the orgasm experienced during them.

Frivolity is lost on some. The J. Alfred Prufrocks of the world, those who will always watch the party from outside the window. Do we dare?

Perhaps the issue is not that we think too much. Perhaps it is that everyone else does not think enough. Do we dare?

I should probably go start my laundry. Jeans and scrubs with lavender scented detergent, eight-minute color wash, permanent press, and a cold rinse.

I’ll re-mail that letter. I’m sure her parents will be very happy to find that pink envelope in the mailbox. Who doesn’t want to get a card with flowers on it in the middle of February?