Category Archives: All-Star Crackstar Squad

this used to be my playground

(3)BeautifulThings, All-Star Crackstar Squad

Highlight from Tuesday: Spending two hours of our break between classes at the public park.

We sat on a dry patch of green grass, in the wan afternoon sunshine, discussing witticisms and woes, primarily academic-related, because, let’s face it, our life has been consumed by nothing but university courses for the last three-and-a-half years. Somayya pointed out a frail tree that looked “like a whisper,” and I shivered within my thick winter coat and kept turning my head so that I was directly facing the sun.

The sun kept moving, and we got tired of moving, and finally I started looking over at the childrens’ swings. Somayya noticed the glances and offered, “Want me to push you?” Kicking off my shoes, I snickered at the multiple holes in both my socks, then settled on a tire swing. I screamed with laughter as Somayya shoved my shoulders, all the while singing Matchbox Twenty’s song, “Push,” in her imitation of Rob Thomas’ raspy, angry voice: I wanna push you around/Well, I will/Well, I will/I wanna push you down/Well, I will/Well, I will.

I giggled helplessly, clinging to the chains with both hands as the tire swing and I both spun around-around-around and the world twirled in a swift whirl of green-blue-browns. It nearly made me breathless, the combination of endless laughter and the cold, crisp wind and the stark, simple beauty of a not-quite-yet-spring day.

Later, L joined us as well, and we all sat on the steps leading up to the jungle gym, and still later we moved over to the concrete park bench, discussing yet more witticisms and woes, this time not academic-related at all.

But in between there was the tire swing.

step back from the ledge, my friend What freak …

All-Star Crackstar Squad

step back from the ledge, my friend

What freak of nature decided that an AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) buddy list can only hold a maximum of 200 screen names? I’m constantly thwarted in my attempts to add the 201st person with the appearance of a box stating, No more buddies can be added to your buddy list.

Man, that’s just plain wrong.

And, no, I don’t feel like downloading MSN either.

forget the village, it takes a halaqa I’ve figu…

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Rockstar and Crescent

forget the village, it takes a halaqa

I’ve figured out a great way to form lasting friendships: Go ice skating. This is especially successful if you don’t know how to ice skate in the first place. After all, it’s practically impossible to remain dignified or reserved if you have little or no skating experience. After the people you go skating with haul you around the ice while you grip their hands and repeat, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod,” after they see you fall on your ass a bajillion times, after they laugh at you and take photos of you falling on your ass and then good-naturedly haul you back up to stand on slippery ice in shaky skates, there’s really no way to keep those guards up. You’re practically forced to build lasting friendships this way. After all, don’t forget, they still have those incriminating photos of you falling on your ass, you know.

Went ice skating with the halaqa crew a couple days ago. This was my second time, the first time being three years ago. Not that I retained any skills from the first time anyway. The first ten minutes were spent holding tightly to either S or M’s hands and gingerly gliding along behind them as they hauled me around the rink. After we went down the rink once, S turned around and led me down in the opposite direction. “Oh my God,” I screamed, as we whizzed through a streaming mass of skaters, “we’re going against oncoming traffic!” She couldn’t stop laughing at me. F was involved in holding onto the wall and mumbling, “Ohmygod, ohmygod…” M patiently responded with, “Ya Allah…,” while I was far more occupied with frowning at the ice and muttering, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I’m a great role model, what can I say.

I refused to lift my feet at first, because I was afraid I would fall. Needless to say, I fell on my ass several times anyway. “Oh, I get it!” I said excitedly to M, after the first fall. “If you fall on your ass, it’s not so painful, really.” I condescendingly patted F on the shoulder and advised, “Falling doesn’t even hurt. You just need to go ahead and fall the first time and get over it.” Served me right for my overconfidence, then, that when I fell the second time, it was hard enough that I got the breath knocked out of me. That was right before I started laughing and the girls crowded around to laugh and take photos. Later, when I had decided that taking cautious, tentative steps on my own was more useful than holding on to people, I made a halting, solo trip around the rink. I got better at it after a while, too. I made funny faces at all the little kids, cautiously dodged the parents, and enviously watched the 5-year-olds who whizzed by like pros. Jerks.

I was admiring the jeans of the girl in front of me – made up of light- and dark-blue patches – and thinking, “Hey, that’s cool, I want a pair like that!” when I fell again. Along came the good ol’ halaqa crew to my rescue, once again. In the resulting confusion as they tried to haul me back up, a couple more girls fell. My sister laughed and remarked, “It takes a halaqa.” I laughed, too. “I’m going to write a book,” I said. “Forget It Takes a Village. This one’s going to be called, It Takes a Halaqa.” I’m amusing, I know.

The best part, by far, was when we wrangled a bucket from somewhere, turned it upside down, and zoomed around the skating rink. M pushed me over the ice while I hunched my shoulders, laughed helplessly and held on to the bucket for dear life. After one turn around, she stopped and looked at me questioningly. “Let’s do it again!” I said. So we did. Fun times, yo.

I’ve been paying for all those falls though. Me, I don’t even know how to sit down correctly – sitting like a lady, as more proper people would call it. This is actually a problem, I’ve realized over the past couple of days. Every time I fling myself into a chair or sofa or the front seat of my car, my butt hurts, and my leg muscles cramp up. And rotating my arms and shoulders to wrap my hijab around my head in the mornings is semi-painful, too. But it was all well-worth it, don’t worry.

This is what M had to say about our day:

Doughnuts from Albertsons: $4

Getting into Iceland: $7

Renting skates: $3

Pushing a giggling Yasmine on the ice while she sits on a bucket: Priceless

Sometimes I can’t believe I’m at least 5 years older than some of these girls.

And just re-reading how many times I’ve used the word “ass” in this post is making me giggle, too. Looks like my inner preschooler tendencies are alive and well. Then again, I would hope preschoolers had a better vocabulary than that. Based on my own experiences with them, preschoolers are far more amused by the word “underwear” anyway. Smart kids.

rain, rain, go away

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Loss and laments and letting go

I helped pick out a bouquet of flowers today.

As a single, random act in and of itself, buying flowers really isn’t all that hard. “Ooh, look, these are so pretty,” we said, and grabbed an armful of three different types. As the lady took apart the bunches of flowers and skillfully re-did them as one large bouquet, I idly wondered just how scandalized my gardening-obsessed father would be if he knew I couldn’t, for the life of me, name those flowers without their identifying tags. We remembered we needed a card, too, so we wandered over to the back of the store and stared in bewilderment at the choices available, flipping them open and reading them aloud, then impatiently shoving them back in the stacks. “What about this one?”…“Here’s one I like.”…“What do you think of this?”…“Nah…” Finally, we just grabbed the simplest and plainest card in the aisle, and ran.

We agonized over the message itself, muttering to one other, “I don’t know what to write!”, the pen changing hands as we stood in the parking lot, the car’s trunk a smooth writing surface for the card we stared at blankly.

We drove fast on freeways still drying from the morning’s rain, the roads / mountains / bridges / water passing by our windows in a blur, four close friends in a three-car-caravan, leaving behind us abandoned classes and cancelled appointments. Alone within my car, a sheet of lined paper with hastily scrawled directions lying across my lap, I glanced repeatedly at the bouquet resting on the seat next to me and wondered whether we had bought the right flowers, whether we had written the right words, whether mere flowers and words were enough. What should have been a 75-minute drive under normal conditions was compounded by some more rain, a little bit of hail, and the fact that we got lost once, too.

But none of that was the hard part.

The hard part was meeting her gaze levelly as she entered the room – was hugging her tight and whispering, “I’m so sorry about your mother” – was seeing her look so calm and collected when I can’t even begin to fathom the magnitude of the pain I know she feels inside. Later, I drove home with the beginnings of a headache, and alleviated it a bit by listening to the Burda, the moonroof tilted upward to let in cold air even though it was drizzling outside. Watching the miles of cars ahead of me crawl through rush-hour traffic, I thought of my mother and father and brother and sister, and how she has none of those now.

For the love of God, go let your mother know how important she is to you.

break time, naptime Seeing as how I’ve recently…

All-Star Crackstar Squad

break time, naptime

Seeing as how I’ve recently been accused of doing nothing more than “pulling all nighters or driving around or munching munchies,” I’ve decided to consider that a point well taken and therefore do nothing more than spend this weekend sleeping as much of my life away as possible. I know y’all must be so proud. Just try to keep the round of applause to a minimum, please.

Meanwhile, if you wish, y’all can entertain yourselves by coming up with interesting ideas and grand adventures I could be engaging in instead. Bear in mind that I’m actually going to be sleeping (for reals), so I won’t be doing any of those things. But you gotta amuse yourself some way or another, so hey, why not. The more hilarious and weird the ideas, the better. Go for it.

it’s all love (sometimes not, but mostly yes) […

All-Star Crackstar Squad

it’s all love (sometimes not, but mostly yes)

[Phone coversation, this morning:]

D: Hey, rebel child.

Me: Hey, nerd. Where you at?

D: On campus. You here, too?

Me: Aww, damn.

D: Why, what’s up?

Me: I’m studying in the library and it’s hella cold up in here. I was hoping you could bring me a sweater or light jacket of yours from home.

D: Stop worrying about the cold. Block it out and study. Use your mental powers. Remember all those concentration techniques we learned in HDE 103?

Me: Well, excuse me for not having great powers of concentration like you.

D: Hey, don’t try to get all sarcastic with me. I’ll kick your ass.

Me: Shut up, I’m more violent than you are. And why are you even the first person I thought of calling? You’re no use to me.

D: Well, it’s not like you’re any good either. Except you understand physics, and you can parallel park. Oh, yeah, and you cook, too.

Me: Ha, well it’s more than you’ll ever do, freak of nature.

D: I don’t even eat chicken. So who cares anyway.

[40 minutes later, in my car:]

Me: Leave my radio alone, woman. There’s a CD in there, see?

D: Ohh. I thought that was on the radio. Who are these people? And how do I find the hip-hop station on here?

Me: That’s the Goo Goo Dolls. And there is no hip-hop station.

D: How can you not have a hip-hop station? Geez.

Me: You know, I have twelve pre-set FM stations on there, okay? So pick one of them. None of them is hip-hop, though.

D: You don’t even listen to the same music as me. What kind of friend are you?

Me: Shut up and get over it.

D: You really are missing out, you know.

Me: STOP PRESSING THE DAMN BUTTONS ALREADY!

D: ::grumble grumble grumble::

the conversations i have

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Suckool

Somayya and I, wasting our lives away in anthro lab:

Somayya: What’s a lower molar cusp pattern? And a dental arcade?

Me: I have no idea, dude.

Somayya: Didn’t he just go over this in lecture today?

Me: Yeah, but I wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe I fell asleep at that part.

Somayya: Great, that helps.

Me: I think the dental arcade has to do with the shape. ::Picks up a fossilized jaw:: See, this is U-shaped. ::Inspects it further:: Wait, is this a V-shape?

Somayya: We’re so lame.

Me: Hmm.

Somayya: Actually, I’m the lamest one.

Me: I agree.

Somayya: You’re less lame than I am, but still lame.

Me: Great, thanks.

Somayya: Okay, so let’s move on to a different lab station. Do you want to go this way or that way?

Me: How ’bout we go this way? ::pointing at the door::

Somayya: Let’s go.

So yeah, we left anthro lab a mere ten minutes after we walked in. We just sauntered right out, looking straight ahead, as nonchalantly as we had entered. And heck, don’t tell me you could have sat there poking at Australopithecus anamensis and Sahelanthropus tchadensis fossils for an hour without getting bored out of your mind. But if you could have, more power to you.

As for Somayya and I, we went and slouched on a comfy sofa, sifted through an endless pile of childhood photos we had forgotten about, and laughed uproariously.

Good times.