What Drugs Will Do to You

So, I did take a couple of the Tylenol-3's, just because, you know, I had them. I don't think I slept at all, the whole night. I sort of drifted in and out of consciousness and would have these startling moments where I would jerk awake in that way that feels like you've just been dropped from a ledge onto a mattress. Lots of vivid dreams/hallucinations, mostly about vampires, for some reason. Maybe because of all of the blood. In the morning, I flushed the rest of the Tylenol down the toilet to prevent myself from become an addict and showing up on the new season of Intervention. I don't know that I could ever get addicted to painkillers; they make me move too slow and don't knock me out. I have had the same experience every time I take Nyquil. It makes me feel like I'm floating on this endless raft between cognizance and sleep, very unsatisfying and weird and you end up sleeping in these weird positions but not realizing it until one half of your body has gone numb. For instance, at one point, I realized that I was lying on my stomach with one of my legs crooked up into the air as if I were dreaming of ballets. Don't know how long I had been positioned that way, but my leg sort of aches, so it was probably a substantive period of time.

Went with Lisa Marie to Rittenhouse today so she could complete her writing assignment for her screenwriting class. We watched an old lady lurch across the pavement and then collapse on the grass and pass out. She wore an old white t-shirt that was not only inside out, it was also on backwards--you could see the tag flapping just below her neck. She was also carrying a brown paper bag with what I guess must've been a liquor bottle inside of it. Every once in awhile, she would attempt to pull herself together and stand up, but she couldn't do it. She would get up on both knees and then try to stand and roll over on her back and sort of struggle for a second and then give up again. It reminded me of watching a bug or a turtle trying to right itself. We did nothing. I asked LM if I should call 911, but she said, What would they do? Arrest her? Is it better for her to be free range or locked up in a cell? Plus, I guess the cops probably wouldn't do anything. Doesn't she have a family? Someone? Who lets a 65 year old woman out of the house and get drunk at 3 p.m.? Well, clearly, she doesn't have a family.

Have been exchanging emails with someone I know from high school, thanks to Facebook. She moved to Florida from Texas with her family when I was in 11th grade and was in the drama club with me. She also became a cheerleader, possibly even the captain of the team. She wrote on my Facebook wall the other day; something about how she was looking forward to doing community theater when she retires and that reminded me of a bunch of the plays we did together in high school, including one where she played this vampy alter ego in a red dress and I played this wallflower type, studious, nerdy, just like I was in real life. But there was this great scene where my character got to be the sexy one, lost the glasses, wore a sexy dress, and shook her hair out--the whole ugly duckling to swan transformation. I had completely forgotten about that until she wrote. We also competed in drama competitions, including doing a two person scene from The Miracle Worker at a national (?) drama competition. No dialogue, except for at the end, where Anne Sullivan says, "Good." It's the scene where Anne Sullivan (the blind teacher, played by Margaret) tries to teach Helen Keller (deaf and blind, portrayed by me) how to say or spell water. It was a very physical scene. I think I even got to slap her or I was slapped, can't remember. I had to flail around on the floor and act like a maniac. I was very, very good at playing blind, particularly since I took out my contacts and so really was in danger of falling of the edge of the stage. We received a superior. It did not change my life. I also used to do musical theater scenes in competition, which, in case you're not familiar with the genre, requires you to dance and sing and act. We got a superior for a scene from Chicago, "Cellblock Tango," to be specific. I was Squish. I had a line that was something like, "And then, he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife 9 times." I think we also did a song and dance number from Company, "One," maybe. I learned how to do step-ball-change and something de poires. And yet last night, while walking in the rain after a dinner at Eulogy with a very nice man, I almost fell down (note: had only had two ginger ales with dinner). Life lesson: you can lead a nerd to grace, but you cannot make her graceful.