Snap, Crackle & BTK

Until very recently I thought that the zodiac guy, the BTK dude and all those criminals on SVU were "cereal killers." It turns out they are actually serial killers, as in a person who attacks and kills victims one by one in a series of incidents. I was always a little confused as to why a common breakfast food would have anything to do with murder but I guess I never stopped to think about it for too long. Whenever I thought 'cereal killer' I just pictured
some twisted mug shot pasted to the side of a Rice Krispies box, like a mix between those missing children's pictures they print on the sides of milk cartons and "wanted" posters in a wild west saloon.

Now obviously there are several things wrong with this picture. To begin with, this isn't Oklahoma in 1860. If we know what the serial killer looks like/who he is, chances are we aren't going to wait for a concerned civilian to identify him in a grocery store, only to turn up as the dude's next victim. Not to mention that cereal is a very family-friendly thing. I'd imagine that Kellogg's stock would significantly drop if they started posting frightening pictures of rapists and murderers on a product targeted mainly at children. Oh, here is a maze, a picture of some cute little elves and the bind, torture, kill guy. Have you seen him, Jimmy? I have never seen a mug shot on the side of a box of Frosted Mini Wheats or Coco Puffs and yet to this day when I hear the words "serial killer" I still picture something along the lines of this:

Go figure.

Track and Field

Today when I was walking back from the clinic I passed by the track/soccer field near my house. I usually walk through that field to get home but winter is track and field season and all of Dhahran Middle School was there. In other parts of the world, track and field is a sport that athletic, motivated kids take up maybe shortly before high school. But in Aramco track and field is a sport for everyone, fat kids, short kids, chain smokers, drug addicts, and one or two people who can actually run.

When I attended Dhahran Middle School track and field season was one of my favorite times of year. Of course my track and field experience consisted of maybe 6% track, 4% field and 90% walking around talking about boys. Practices officially started at 3:15 but it was much more fashionable to roll in around 4:00 because that way you missed pretty much all of the scheduled activities. So my friends and I would change clothes, eat some french fries, then I would sit around awkwardly while my friends smoked cigarettes (I was really into those Truth adds...) and then we would wander over to the track.

Maybe I would run a lap or sprint down a lane, and by sprint I mean take a short jog but most of the time I just sat around pretending to stretch. Of course there were a few kids who were naturally very fast and they would run around and around because our team needed them for when we participated in one of our three meets. There are only four Aramco middle schools and one of them had a graduating class of four girls last year (seriously, no guys.. ouch) so with around 120 kids in each grade, our school won everything based on sheer numbers.

So as I walked by that field today I watched the slender, athletic kids running around, followed by the far less motivated mass of walkers and then the occasional chubby asthmatic kid behind them. I watched the high jumpers rolling around on those comfortable blue mats and the shot putters trying to hit each other with those heavy balls. And in good DHS fashion, they could only really throw the thing 2 or 3 feet which quells a lot of safety concerns (still, our school never really did trust us with javelins).

As I watched them I smiled to myself and a good memory popped into my head. I was practicing my high jump by bouncing up on down on the big blue mat while three of my friends lounged around gossiping under the thin mat that lies on top of it. I was never a very coordinated person and somehow I managed to slip, rotate 180 degrees in the air and fly headfirst into the ground. I probably should have broken my neck doing that but I think when you're thirteen years old you have a magical ability to do things that would seriously debilitate normal people and end up perfectly fine.

I remember when I first got to boarding school I went to the first day of practices for Choate track and field and to my surprise, the coaches actually expected me to run... fast. It was a strange concept to me. Needless to say my short affair with track and field ended in high school along with my basketball and volleyball careers. It's really too bad because I always enjoyed sports before then, at least the Dhahran Middle School variety. I think it's a beautiful thing when you're a slow, overweight, uncoordinated 11-year old girl and you go to your first basketball practice and the coach (who is also your math, science and geography teacher) enthusiastically greets you with, "hey there! Thanks for coming! Go shoot this ball for a little while and then we'll play HORSE!"

Make Duplicate Keys

So I have written some papers in my life, a few works of fiction and usually I like to wait until after I write something to pick a title. Blogspot.com apparently does not share my enthusiasm for this practice because they made me pick a title right off the bat without writing a single word. I like to wait until after everything has been said, when the end is near in sight, to reflect back on the journey that brought me to this point and pick out a theme that ties everything together in a way that makes readers think 'well if that isn't the meaning of life...'

Blogspot would rather I look around the room and land on a random phrase to describe everything that I will write in the next four months. Well, fine. I started this blog because I am studying abroad in Jordan and my program recommended that I do this but instead of finding a theme and formulating a beautiful title I looked at the wall in front of me and found a flier titled "99 Ways to Cope with Stress" that I stole from the Returning Student Center in Dhahran about three years ago. The suggestion I like best at the moment is "Make Duplicate Keys," thus the title of my blog. Not that there aren't other gems on this list that some Aramco employee drafted as a second thought, never suspecting that it would undergo the scrutiny of a 20-year old college student and anyone who reads her blog. These suggestions aren't even numbered 1 through 99 and I have never bothered to count them but just glancing at the list leads me to suspect that Mr. Recreational Services Employee stopped around 50 and figured no one would notice. Lets take a closer look at some of my favorites and just to make things more organized, lets number them. Also I would like to mention that maybe for emphasis, the author hit caps on a lot of few of these:

1. AVOID TIGHT CLOTHES 2. Make Duplicate Keys 3. Tickle a Baby 4. Teach a Kid to Fly a Kite 5.DEVELOP A SENSE OF HUMOR (ouch) 6.Rub a Worry Stone 7.Dance a Jig 8.Breath slowly 9.Buy a Flower 10. SMELL FLOWERS (those two were right next to each other) 11.Do it today 12.HUM A JINGLE 13.Maintain your weight 14.Say "Have a good day" in pig latin 15.Learn a joke 16.GET TO WORK EARLIER 17.Leave work early(how contradictory) 18.PLAY WITH A CHILD 19.Quit trying to fix other people 20.LOOK AT PROBLEMS AS CHALLENGES 21.Look at challenges differently (also next to each other)

Needless to say this list is a mix of benign suggestions, probably formulated in a similar fashion to how I developed the title for this blog, creepy references to pedophilia and unnecessary insights into the life of its author, who is probably an overweight, socially retarded 40-something with far too many cats. It is also unintentionally hilarious, which to me, is the best kind of humor. Those last two suggestions really leave you wondering, if I look at my problems as challenges and I look at my challenges differently... then what the hell does that mean? I think that thought sums up a lot of why this list is so great. Another good question you might ask about some of these suggestions, especially "Make Duplicate Keys" is how exactly does that help me cope with stress? Personally, I think it was on the author's to do list and he was desperate to fill those 99 slots before 5:00 rolled around. But I suppose the real reason I finally decided to use this list to begin my blogging career is that the author added an inspiring little note at the end. It reads, "P.S. Relax, take each day at a time... You have the rest of your life to live" I like that he added it as a postscript, like a letter addressed to a suicidal friend. But yes, those are wise words and perhaps good ones to keep in mind as I count down the days until I am in yet another foreign country.