The post about Adam

I'm in a bit of a funk because Adam is in the gym, which means that I can't go.  I don't mind working out with strangers, but I can't get all sweatily into things if I'm preoccupied with not revolting friends or colleagues by my dripping redness and frizzy nimbus reflected in a thousand mirrors. It's not as if there's anything else to look at in our 500 square feet of gym, and every one can hear everyone else's grunts and wheezes, popping knees and creaky backs.  I don't mind repelling strangers with assorted sounds and ghastly visuals, but the last thing I want to do is torment the people I know and love (or know and just kinda like, or just know) with my sweatpant-clad butt doing 30 mph on the elliptical to Missy Elliot's "Work It."  There is such a thing as gentility.   So I'm being patient, and waiting for Adam to finish.

I haven 't written much about Adam yet, other than to admit to pushing him around a bit, and he really deserves his own introduction. Here are some facts about him, which, in the interests of anonymity and recurrent abuse, may or may not be true:

• he does not eat yogurt, because it is alive
• he once took a woman to a Sir Mix-A-Lot show, just to hear her sing along to "Baby Got Back"
• he knows all the lines in The Princess Bride movie, not because a girl told him but because he just knows
• he has a "slight, ever-so-slight, insignificant, really" boy crush on Michael J. Fox, ever since seeing Back to the Future.  The crush has never gone away.
• has, on more than one occasion, been caught humming "Dancing Queen" under his breath
• likes women who belly dance, but who DON'T howl at the moon
• has pink flannel sheets, that he keeps "because my mother bought them on sale, and it would be a shame to waste them" but really because he thinks the colour flatters his skin

Adam lives upstairs with Nancy, the girl who put Abby and I in contact with each other.  He's also a new PhD student this year, and as the only American in the program, he's experiencing culture shock just as much as Abby and I, except that his has to do with strange, ugly men on strange, coloured money, and cheese curds on French fries.  Anyway, Adam and Abby and I are inseparable buds, probably because we all lived in residence for 4 years in undergrad and wandering around buildings in sock feet at 11pm looking for others to join in on a Dairy Queen run seems natural.  Or maybe it's because he's a masochist, and can't get enough of our unique brand of torment.  At the very least, Adam seems to have given up all hope of finding other friends, and Abby and I are quite content.  Like most Canadians, we've become quite possessive with our new American friend, and want to be the ones to carefully expose him to selected Canadiana just so we can repeatedly experience his genuine bafflement and occasionally, his righteous indignation.  In true insecure, "love-us-Yankee-please-love-us-puh-leeeeease" Canadian fashion, Abby and I are delighted whenever Adam the American approves of something "Canadian" we show him, and often engage in political navel-gazing denouncing Ralph Klein, Joe Clark or two-tier health care simply to further his education. 

We've been trying to Canadianize Adam by ridding his vocabulary of terms like "restroom" (we think he means "washroom")and that whole freshmenjuniorsophomore thing that nobody understands, and he returns the favour by driving us places in his car.  We also feed him and abuse him shamelessly, but Adam appears happy with the arrangement. He's also a bit of a weirdo, which appeals greatly to mine and Abby's sensibilities. Here is a photo of the three of us at a Hallowe'en party:

Yes, that IS a ten-year old's superman costume he's wearing.  On his left is Abby as the Blind Melon "bee girl", and if you don't know what that is, you are either much older or much younger than we are.  On his right is me, dressed head-to-toe in vinyl.  I shoulda just strapped a record to my head and gone as great sound, but apparently I just look like a slutty, winged weirdo.

And so, having been introduced, Adam will join the rest of the Philoillogica dramatis personnae, wondering desperately what fresh hell will come next.

Here are more Hallowe'en photos: 

        

Comments

[Zhengshu]

"At the very least, Adam seems to have given up all hope of finding other friends, and Abby and I are quite content."

Selfish bastards!

- Jason

[Hilary]

That thing you wrote about Adam having a non-sexual crush on Michael J. Fox I believe comes from something I must have told you years ago about my brother. He will be pleased to know it is now on the internet.