Overshare 01

Babe, I promise you, I’m trying.

Last week I was waiting for the drop-off line to crawl forward, leaning into the backseat to hand a tissue to Clementine who’d suddenly sneezed a copious amount of snot on herself. I was mid-handoff when I heard someone honk at me. Not a polite “you’re up” honk, but an honest-to-god laying on of the horn. Deranged.

Line-up starts at 7:45 a.m., school starts at 8:00. The closer I arrive to 7:45, the better of a mother I am, the better my day is going to be, we are crushing it, we are in the beginning of a revenge movie, the living embodiment of the perfect wife and child about to be ripped away from someone. If I arrive at 8:05, I’m a monster, an animal, a failure. But you know who I’m surrounded by? Parents that would never honk at me. Trust among outlaws.

It’s ridiculous how much of my identity is now tied up in school drop-off. Should I start the second line of cars now that the first line is so long? Will that make the cars in the first line feel like I’m cutting them? Will this blonde teacher who is there every morning, opening and closing car doors, ever like me? Is the residue from the mango popsicle that fell in the door months ago visible to her when she lets my kid out of the car? (Yes.) Do I drive the grossest car of all the parents in the entire school? (Maybe.) Can the person behind me please give me ten goddamn seconds to hand my six-year-old a tissue? (No.)

Ominous.

This is how my brain works.

Some links I read on the web this week. Not a single one is from this decade. You’re welcome.

The song “Kate” by Ben Folds Five came up on shuffle recently and kind of blew me away. I think I become ambivalent about Ben Folds as I aged because “Brick,” a song about his high school girlfriend’s abortion, is mostly about her being an albatross. But then he supported Kesha on piano at a stunning performance of a Bob Dylan song at the Billboard Awards in 2016—she was wearing a Manuel suit, by the way—and gave an interview hyping her up and I was kind of back on board.

So I started listening to Whatever and Ever Amen, the debut album that those songs are from. “Song for the Dumped” has such a good moment of silence followed by a loud fret noise as the song picks back up at the end. (Yes, the link cues you right up to hear it.) That made me think about fret noise in general, something I used to list as an interest on my Live Journal profile. Apparently I’m not the only fret noise fan, because I found an old Ask Metafilter post seeking songs that contained it. (“Jumper” by Third Eye Blind is another one that comes to mind.) I had to sort through so many results about reducing fret noise before I found an appreciation post.

On the Genius page for “Kate,” Ben Folds said he wrote the song for his ex to prove that she didn’t have a non-musical name. I wanted to know more so I kept poking around and found this delightful fansite that doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2012. I miss these little web passion projects.

Speaking of “Brick,” do you remember that time Daniel Lavery wrote about songs he didn’t know were about abortion until someone told him? That was fun. I also think about this piece about what abortions should be like all the time. Pour one out for The hyphen Toast dot net.