Edition #169: Out of The Box
And I don't mean the show. Plus, why dining rooms are disappearing in American homes, is dating a total nightmare, and a very funny podcast
A Note From the Editor
From the outside, it looks like your standard box. Brown cardboard, clear packing tape, nothing to see here. Mine is a medium-large size but I’ve heard they come in other sizes, too. Super small, regular small, medium, medium large, large, gigantic, you get it. Inside of The Box, the one I’m in, are two sides, the Bad Side and the Good Side. I made those classifications up once a long time ago but they still feel pretty accurate today when I don’t think too hard.
The Bad Side is where I started. No matter what sized Box you’re in, you probably fall under two camps: you either think the place you started is the Worst or the Best. For me, it was the Worst, hence, the Bad Side designation. The specifics of the Bad Side aren’t all that interesting except to say that, while there, I spent a lot of time thinking about how awful it was and fantasizing about what might exist elsewhere. It made me antsy, itchy, which is how I landed on the Good Side. More to come on that after this short commercial break.
Accents! Twang, slang, shrill, tinny, deep, gentle, harsh. Accents! Here’s how it happens. First, your brain is dipped in glue. Then, a bunch of colored confetti is blown about. Blue confetti goes east, green goes west, red goes south, purple goes north. There are about a zillion different shades within each color, and each shade comes with a slight variation to the accent. Depending on where your glue-covered brain is located when the confetti blows determines what color confetti sticks to your brain, and what accent you end up with.
Until now you couldn't choose your accent, but we’re changing all that. Unhappy with your confetti color? Tired of your throaty, cockney intonation? For just $999.99, you can get that old confetti scraped from your brain. We’ll dump some fresh glue on it and place you somewhere else. You’ll pick up a brand spanking colored confetti, a brand spanking new accent*!
*Only problem with confetti is it’s like glitter. We can scrub and scrub and still, you’re going to find little bits of it lodged in your brain. Our treatment is 45% effective, and that’s something.
Oh, the Good Side. What can I even say about it except that, in comparison to the Bad Side, it was bliss. Ok, maybe it wasn’t bliss. It was quite dirty, actually, and the people could be a bit judgemental. Not in the traditional way but in all sorts of ways that were novel to me at first—about the books you read, the work you did, the political ideologies you held, the causes you pretended to support immediately after everyone else started pretending to support them. Also, about where you came from. When they found out I came from the Bad Side? They had a field day with that news! It was fine, though, because I always introduced my Bad Side origins with a self-deprecating joke. Don’t worry, I hate it, too! I’ve hated it since I was a kid! Haha! You can’t be laughed at if you’re laughing together.
The Good Side was expansive—that’s an accent, folks, part of the language I learned when I paid $999.99 for a brain glue scrape—in that there was so much of everything. People of all shapes and sizes and colors and backgrounds. Every type of alternative milk you could imagine, opinions so varied it made your head spin. It’s one of the draws of the Good Side, people say it all the time, Access To Everything. But something funny happened on the Good Side, despite how massively huge it was, how expansive. I’ll get back to that story after this brief commercial break.
Shoes! You know them, you love them, you can’t stop buying them. Shoes! The earliest known shoes were made from tree bark and they had a purpose; to protect the sensitive soles (of feet). Any modern day citizen knows shoes are a big deal nowadays. Huge! Shoes don’t just cover your feet, they tell a story. They set a scene, paint a picture with you as the subject.
What story do you want your shoes to tell? Are they Sambas, saying I’m On Trend A Little Bit Late But I’m Still Cool Because These Are The New Yellow Sambas? Are they knockoff Yeezy Slides, saying I Prioritize Comfort But Also Fashion But Also I Don’t Support Kanye Don’t Worry These Are Fake Yeezys? Or are they Bare, saying I Like Recharging My Physical Battery From The Earth’s Electrons But Also I’m Walking Around A Nightclub Barefoot, Pretty Disgusting Actually But I’m Getting A Lot of Attention?
If your footwear of choice is the ladder, try our brand new Overnight Foot Soak. For three payments of $259.99, your raw tootsies will be submerged in a bathtub full of freshly hatched baby alligators, epsom salts, starving piranhas, and Holy Water. This proprietary formula sucks all of the demonic toxins out of your soles, leaving your feet primed and ready to trudge around the sticky floor of a nightclub once more. A handful of our customers even say the overnight soaks shrunk their ego by 20%!
To explain what happened on the Good Side, I have to share something else with you. It’s sort of a secret, and I have a feeling I could get in a lot of trouble by sharing this so please keep it between us. I was starting to get tired of the Good Side. By tired I mean physically tired, mentally tired. I was Depressed! Nothing new on the Good Side. My doctor once told me everyone on the Good Side is a little depressed, so nothing much to worry about.
One day, tired as I was, I looked up and saw the edges of the box. I don’t have great vision so I thought maybe I’d imagined it, the sharp angle of the folded cardboard crease, the thin strip of clear tape where the top folded flaps met. I went to bed and forgot all about it. But the next day I looked up and there it was again, even more visible this time. I had a hunch: maybe I wasn’t feeling so good because I had been breathing in circulated air all along. If, in fact, I had been existing inside this Box without knowing it, that would mean I’d have been breathing in the same stuffy oxygen for, gosh, my whole life! I had to find a way to open the top of The Box.
I only meant to let some fresh air in. And when I gulped in a few lungfuls of that fresh, delicious air, I wondered how it might feel to breathe it in for a few days, maybe a few weeks, so I decided I’d slip outside The Box, just to see. I don't want to get into too much detail about this next part of the story because it is quite involved, a whole journey through wicked, whimsical lands. It went something like this. More to come after this final commercial break.
Boxes! They’re cardboard, they’re simple, they’re functional. Boxes! You can do so much with boxes. Pack up your books, make a fort. You can even transport your pet bird in a box, just don’t forget to poke some air holes at the top. Around here, we know a thing or two about boxes, and we can tell you that boxes are the best solution for containment. They can contain anything you put inside of them. Our competitors, Big Plastic Bin, didn’t believe us. They claimed there was a limit to what our product, Box, could contain, so we did an experiment to prove them wrong. Believe it or not, we got the idea from them. Clever concept!
First, we created The BBE, Biggest Box Ever. Then, we slipped the BBE over a town and waited to see if anyone noticed. Nobody did! The BBE did its job beautifully. It contained. People lived in The Box, laughed in The Box, they even loved in The Box. They breathed in air only from The Box, ate food only found in The Box. We started getting calls from other places, big wigs asking if we could come Box Up their town, city, state, country. So we did, and soon everywhere worth going was contained within one of our BBEs. Take that, Big Plastic Bin!
But we know the modern day citizen has been met with new, unprecedented challenges. And that’s why we’re launching The IBB, The Itty Bitty Box, right in time for Apocalypse Season. In exchange for your current Retirement Account funds*, we’ll give you exclusive access to an IBB of your choosing. The IBB is compatible with all other models of Box.
*If your current retirement account is valued at under $499,999.00, talk to one of our specialists about our We’ll-Take-Your-House-and-Car, Too financing options.
Being out of The Box was disorienting. Imagine, everything you thought you knew about how things worked, about rules and norms and people, all gone just like that. There were some other visitors I met along my journey, people who came from The Box who were also just slipping out for some air. I liked running into these people. We’d sip cider around the fire and talk about our Boxes, resisting the urge to compare everything here to everything we knew back in The Box. People outside The Box hated when we did that.
The longer I remained outside, the more unsure I became. There was so much out there! The accents, you wouldn’t believe. The customs, some of it felt straight bizarre. No one knew about Hokas or meal prep or engagement photoshoots. I started forgetting how it felt to be tucked safely inside The Box, to know nothing different. I met a girl, also Outside, whose therapist told her that the more open minded you are the less happy you are. Something about too many options. I felt that, sometimes, but I also felt like being away from The Box was helping me see myself. Not Me, Ms. Box Patricia Palmer, but Me, Out of the Box. Whoever was hiding under all that decoration. Thing is, you don’t realize the full impact of The Box until you’ve spent some significant time out of it.
Here’s where I tie it all up for you. I returned to the Good Side after my grand voyage and realized what I’d been learning the whole time I was away—the Good Side was just as much in The Box as the Bad Side. Imagine my shock, for I had built my entire identity around hating the Bad Side and being a proud citizen of the Good Side. And yet, without realizing it I had adapted the tastes and traits of the Good Side. The preferences, the vernacular, the style, mostly harmless stuff, but also, the mindset. Some of those traits I liked but others, let's just say they weren’t so good. And maybe, I thought when I returned, the Good Side wasn’t so expansive after all, for I realized just how small I’d been living within it. The same neighborhoods, the same people, the same outfits, the same, same, same.
Turns out, the Good Side was never good and the Bad Side was never bad. They were just two different sides of the same Box with the same recycled air. The Box isn’t bad, either. It works for a lot of people. Some pretend to not know about The Box, others really don’t know about The Box, and the majority are too tired to care. Very few spend much time outside of it, because leaving is scary and maybe life is easier the less you know. As for me, I’m meeting myself along the way, inside and outside of The Box, and the girl I keep running into is saying, I don’t know if we’re meant for all this Box business. Good news is, The Box will always be there. All roads lead back to the same place.
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Cheers, my dears, and as always, thanks for reading. I had the most incredible two weeks in Uganda, which is now my favorite country I’ve visited. I have so much to say and to write about that trip, but into then here are a few photos of the magic:
I’ll be spending this weekend visiting a dear friend in Philadelphia. We’re going to hike, cuddle with her dog, visit the farmers market, and catch up for hours and hours. Have a wonderful weekend! Light up some Palo Santo, drink a glass of freshly squeezed juice, go on a bike ride. Until next time!
Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming
Why Dining Rooms Are Disappearing From American Homes. It’s always interesting to consider how environment impacts the ways we live, from urban planning to the standard blueprint of the modern day home. They say Americans are lonely, and that definitely checks out—the image that comes to mind is a single person eating dinner in front of the TV compared, starkly different than the long, noisy dining room table of generations past. If our homes reflect our societal values, the disappearance of communal spaces within on own four walls isn’t a great sign in my book.
Love After Love (A Poem). I recently sent this old favorite poem to a friend who is going through a breakup and it is exquisite. I derive a fresh meaning reading it today than when I first read it a few years back, and that is what makes poetry so transcendent.
Is Dating a Total Nightmare For You Right Now? This caused quite the stir in certain corners of the internet. Lots of women (and men) say dating is absolute shit right now. Is it, or is reality whatever you think it is? I suppose it all boils down to the expectations you have, and the amount of patience with which you date. I’ve met so many interesting people dating, some of whom were more ready for commitment than I was and visa versa, others who I wasn’t compatible with, other who I gently ghosted and who gently ghosted me, who I rejected or got rejected by. That’s what dating is. Maybe it’s because I’m enmeshed in a friend group where about 90% of my friends met their wonderful partners on a dating apps, but I feel mostly positive about dating both online and offline. Curious to hear your takes.
Perhaps You Should…Listen To A Very Funny Podcast
I don’t use podcasts as a form of regular entertainment, but that is changing thanks to Lemme Say This. I listened to this episode on a walk to a friend’s house the other night and I was laughing so hard that several people stopped and gave me a look.
I probably loved the episode because I can’t get enough of this beef. I’m big time Team Kendrick, so it was only a matter of time before I watched this performance in full. He sang Not Like Us five times. FIVE TIMES! Each time a new person came out and joined him on stage, I got more amped up. Even North West was in the crowd.
**Bonus Content** (The Most American Recipes For Your Fourth of July Cookout)
I laughed so hard at this, especially the Texas-Style Guacamole.
Also, I’m a decade late but can’t wait to start watching this show, superb summer eating advice, forgot how good this song was, and this was cute.
A Quote From A Book You Should Read:
“And that,” put in the Director sententiously, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue—liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley