The Manda Contemplates Occupational Hazards of Aging

The first week of school has ended with its customary whimper. And I am cruelly reminded of the aging process because I can't for the life of me figure out who's who in these classes. I remember a time, longer ago than it feels, that I knew the name of every kid in my class by the end of the second day. Alas, all things must pass.

They don't make it easy on me, you know. In one section I have four Brians, three Connors and two Tims. Every other girl is a Katie, Kate, and don't get me started on the many ways to spell Caitlyn (or Kaitlyn, of Caitlin, or Kaitlin, or Kaytlin, or... yeah, I'm bored with it too). And then there are the nicknames. Oh the nicknames. And they don't show up in the computer, those nicknames.

I know it's not just me and where I am. In just about every class I took in school every other boy was named Jason. And the ones who weren't named Jason were named David. And there were at least three other Amandas in my grade. This gives me a whole new respect for my high school teachers, because they were all really old. Like way older than I am now, right?

Last names are less of a problem, except for the year I had two boys in a class with the same first and last names. And they rudely insisted on sitting side by side. Lucky for me, their grade averages were also very similar.

Of course, my own last name is so laughably common that I feel like I'm adopting an assumed identity every time I have to provide it. This is especially awkward for me at hotels. I suppose I should thank my parents for not naming me Jill or Jane.*

* Meaning no offense to The Kiwi. It's a lovely name, but I think we can all agree it would seem suspicious when combined with a last name like Smith.

The Manda Laments the Breakdown of Western Culture... Again

I had to stop by CVS today to buy deodorant, because I ran out this morning and today was not a day you wanted to be without deodorant in New England. The mugginess came back with the vengeance of a woman scorned, and, despite efforts to scrape the last little bits of the remaining stick onto my underarms, that made me the woman stinky.

So there I was, standing in the longest line imaginable with the slowest clerk ever and I glance over at the photo station, where negatives are being processed through the machine and made into prints. There's a computer monitor on top of the machine so the technician can see the prints as they're being produced. They were pictures of a woman standing against a wall, and I thought I saw what I thought I saw, but I couldn't be sure until the next set of photos popped on screen. And that set of photos belonged in a medical textbook, that's all I'm sayin'.

In the era of digital photography, who exactly is sending their naked photos to CVS for processing?