Anything For a Blonde

I have proven myself to be a very obstinate person, to the point that, even after someone's convinced me that I'm wrong or that I should participate in whatever they've been trying to get me into, I will continue on with my refusal out of my sheer unwillingness to admit that I might not have been completely right. But now matter how pig-headed I can be, there's always one thing that's able to break through my idiocy and make me give in: a magnificent mane of blonde hair.

There was an instance, not too long ago, where my friend Silva came up to me at work and said "Lundy! Men don't walk right. Blog about it!" Now, I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but I did what I could with what she gave me and tried my best. I worked tirelessly for...I dunno, two hours or something, and shot out the draft of my post, then e-mailed it to her and asked if that's what she was looking for. Her response: "Yeah, that seems about right." Damn, Sil. You wouldn't get away with that as a brunette. Actually, you'd still be adorable, so you probably would.

In my childhood, my friend's sister Morgan and I would always find ourselves teaming up with one another in games. Truth be told, I always preferred Morgan to her brother, and I probably would never have been friends with him had it not been for her. She and I were very attuned to one another, and we would always find clever new ways to cheat in our games, no matter what they were. When we were playing card games we would often try to figure out what one of the other players had in their hand, then silently inform each other by strategically holding out their indicative number of fingers behind the cards so the other knew what number to ask for.

I've never been one to open myself up emotionally, but, apparently, all it took was a boisterous blonde telling me to tell-all to actually get me to do it. I suppose that it's easier to talk to a stranger about yourself than it is doing the same with someone that already 'knows you,' but I can't imagine having done such a thing for anyone but Liz. Even today, despite my love life being an open book on the internet, I doubt that I would do the same for anyone that I were to meet from here on.

I remember, one night at work, I wandered over to the cosmetics department to dispose of their garbage for them and found Betsy reading an Archie comic. As she and I were bonding over the fact, our angriest of supervisors wandered over and started screaming that we were taking advantage of him by slacking off and "abusing the merchandise." Betsy had a worried look, knowing that, if the cosmetics manager caught wind of her being reprimanded again, she would likely be getting a "talking to," so I stepped up and told our supervisor that I had picked up the comic on my way over to the department, as someone had left it in the aisle, and I was planning to put it back up front on my way to the garbage disposal. His yelling got slightly quieter, but he asked why we had been reading it and laughing, to which I responded that Betsy had just flipped through it as I was preparing her garbage in the bag. I'm not always so quick-thinking, and I like to think that Betsy's presence had something to do with my quick-save.

In middle school I had a massive crush on a girl named Paige; she was always considered one of the more popular people in our class, I suppose, since she got on well with everyone and was so nice that I can't imagine anyone disliking her. I admired that she didn't bat an eye in becoming friends with me, as some other people might have balked at the idea of befriending one of the unpopulars. Even more impressive was when she would immediately stand up for me, and anyone else, whenever someone would lay into us for being insufficiently cool. I would have done anything for Paige, and it was because of her that I first had the courage to (gasp) skip school. I know, that's clearly not the greatest influence, but I would have followed that girl anywhere.

Ophelia and I had a...varied relationship. There were times when I was totally into her, and she could not have been less interested in me. And then there were times that she was all over me and I wanted nothing to do with her. She had the uncanny ability to force me to do anything by convincing me that we were doing it together. In our social studies class there was a project we could do that was extremely simple to do on our own, and then, should we have chosen to do it with a partner, was given an additional task where it was far more complex. I was determined to do mine on my own because I knew I could get it done in no-time, but Ophelia pleaded with me to do the project with her, and, when I finally broke and agreed, we split up the duties to do on our own, and then we were to meet at her place on the weekend and combine them to finish the task. When I met with her on the weekend, with my half of the project polished to perfection, I found that she had not yet started her portion. I agreed to help her out with hers, again halving what we had left so that she was still doing a portion of the work, but I ended up doing the entire thing on my own and just putting her name on it in the end. She was the kind of person that you could never really be that angry with, though, so...I just kept my bitterness to myself and pretended that she did a really good job.

Astrid Sidaway-Wolf-Lundy is a devout member of the green team. I never really cared much about recycling before meeting her; I mean, I would send tin and aluminum to it's proper place, and clean cardboard as well, but I don't think I cared too much where paper went, and often just put it in with the cardboard assuming that it was the same thing, just thinner. Since she's taken over the corporation, infecting us with her environmental-thinking, I've actually started "taking care of the planet" and "disposing of wastes properly," which is, really...just monstrous. Stop trying to better me as a person, woman!

Influencing me in an entirely different way was Kaya. She was a big pot-smoker, but she never tried to push it on me. She actually would go out of her way to not have it around me because she didn't think that I would be into that scene in any way, but I wanted to impress her so badly that, when her roommate asked if I wanted to get high with them (to which Kaya's brows raised dramatically and she violently shook her head to tell her friend to keep me out of it) I accepted. Gotta say, I'm was never big on pot after having tried it, it made me severely paranoid and anxious, but I'll be damned if I didn't have the greatest sleep that night. Even afterwards she never asked me to smoke with her, knowing that I was probably still too straight-edged to be down with that lifestyle, but it was an eye-opening experience, and, overall, it wasn't all too negative.

Jill, my oldest friend, has the overwhelming ability to make me feel guilt and...other human emotions. She's known me for so long that she can just mention a name, a place, an event, even just a date, and she'll bring up some memory of something horrible I've done in my life to make me apologise for my wrong-doings. What I love about her is that she rarely uses this on me, because she knows that all she has to do is ask for a favour and I'll comply, but I think she's happy knowing that she's got that in her arsenal.

I was working with Heather one day, November 4th, 2010, to be exact, when she made a joke at my expense. I laughed, then pretended to cry, and told her that I would blog about how she broke my heart. She shot back, breathlessly, with "ohmygodyouhaveablogwhatisit?" but, since I have trouble understanding entire sentences when said as single words, I had to ask her to repeat herself, so she asked, once more, what my blog was called. I told her that I was joking, and that I didn't have a blog, which caused her eyes to narrow and she told me that I should start one so she had something new to read. So, when I got off work, I went straight to my computer, typed out my first blog post, and sent her the link. The next day at work, she told me that she enjoyed it, and asked when the next one would be written; I told her that it was a one-off thing, and she broke out the puppy-dog-eyes and said "...but it's my faaaaavouriiiiite." So I went home and typed out my second entry. She didn't work the following day, and could thusly not guilt me into writing a third day in a row, but on the fourth day she solidified my schedule of two days on and one day off. Thanks, Blondie, you really helped me get my words out.

At least I know that, no matter what endeavor I've got set before me, all I need is a pretty girl with a full head of glistening golden hair to tell me to get on with it. Should my next girlfriend be a brunette I suppose I'll have to hope that she never reads this, because...well, I probably wouldn't tell her about the blog. It's not like she could make me, what with her hair not being such a pretty yellow.