Today we are eating potato chips.

Today we are eating potato chips. Baked Lays for the Redhead and Dad. Sour cream and onion or salt and vinegar for me and Mom. Decisions, decisions! I think about eating some of each.

Today we are eating potato chips in the dining room and watching as the crumbs fall in the cracks between the giant leaves of the table. I try to pick them up but my fingernails are too short to fit between those sheets of wood, so I shove my hand back into the sour cream and onion bag and more crumbs cling to the sides of my fingers.

Today we are eating potato chips with sandwiches that Dad picked up at the deli around the corner. Mom and I have BLTs with too much mayonnaise, even though he told the man at the deli no mayonnaise at all. Dad has some gigantic sandwich but it’s gone now and he is inhaling each scrawny piece of lettuce off his plate. I would, too. It’s good lettuce. The Redhead is announcing things and I am trying to pay attention but really I would rather focus on delivering that last salt and vinegar chip safely from the claustrophobic blue bag to my cavernous pink mouth.

Today we are eating potato chips and talking about people I don’t actually know, and that’s frustrating, so I pretend I know them, too, and make up stories about our long conversations in the elevator. These stories are clearly lies. I never talk to anyone in the elevator, except Hector and Johnny, but only because I have known them since I was six. Johnny is perpetually talking about “the game.” And by “the game,” he means the game I didn’t watch or listen to or hear about until he told me the score. 1-5! Ouch. I think I have met one of the five people my parents have mentioned. They are all colleagues in that foreign yet oddly familiar book- and brick-lined world of academia. Academia! I am struggling to find the motivation to flip through the last few pages of my social studies textbook. At school, we don’t learn about history. We learn about social studies.

Today we are eating potato chips and I am studying how my family socializes. The Redhead somehow decided that the family cell phone was her personal cell phone, and she has placed it rather territorially on her side of the table, next to her plate with the little bits of lettuce strewn about and an empty paper wrapper rustling quietly in the breeze from the air conditioner. She is announcing things again, and the words are flowing so eloquently out of her mouth like the breeze out of that air conditioner, and I watch her be a great public speaker in that annoying way of hers that I have recently discovered is only annoying because I am jealous of it. The announcement reminds Dad of something So-And-So said at a thesis defense and suddenly we are back to discussing people whose names I hear every day at this very table. He makes a generalization that Mom disagrees with, and she tells him so and corrects him, and I nod vigorously and scrunch my eyebrows at random intervals because it is fun to pretend I understand their conversation. I am getting antsy from all this talk, so I shift around in my chair and think about propping my legs up on the arm rest. But we are having a family lunch! So I hunch over a bit and press my fingers into my plate to collect the remaining potato chip crumbs.

Today we are eating potato chips and it is my turn to talk about something important. And by “important,” I mean not very important and not very relevant to any of the conversations that have previously been thrown out onto the metaphorical and physical table. My general store will be open starting next weekend and it will be located between the living room and the dining room. I will be selling stamps, customized drawings, and so much more. Read the brochure I printed out earlier today if you’d like more information. Also, I am writing a book! I have several chapters so far, and it is about twenty-three pages, double-spaced, two columns, 12 point Garamond, landscape-style in Microsoft Word. It is slightly more ambitious than the sequel I wrote to Mr. Popper’s Penguins, because this one has completely original characters. The main character is a girl with glasses who is in middle school. No, it is not me. This is a work of fiction. No, her parents are not professors, and she has an older brother, not an older sister, who is away at college and obsessed with astronomy, so when he’s at school she gets to borrow his telescopes and maps and go stargazing. Speaking of stars, have you noticed how the sidewalks sparkle at night? It is magical. I could dance among those stars all night long if it wasn’t so hot and if I didn’t have to go to school tomorrow. Yes, I am done with my plate. Thanks.

Today we have finished eating potato chips and Dad is marking up students’ papers with a red pen and Mom is hanging up pictures with a yellow level and the Redhead is singing in her room with her air conditioner blasting and I am watching PBS with my legs propped up on the side of the green velvet couch and contemplating the certainties of home.

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~ by Cordelia on August 18, 2010.