How I Wish I Were a Nun

In the thralls of despair I wonder what it would be like if I became a nun. I'm criminally pathetic when it comes to dealing with boys-- I have no male friends, I don't know how to flirt, and I've been told that my academic competency and wide-leg jeans make me unattractive-- so I've considered a lifetime of spinsterhood more than once before.

I've actually googled it, and frankly, it doesn't sound so bad. You get to live with a group of like-minded women in a house, pray, fast, do stuff for charity, and maybe teach in a school. Sounds fine. Apparently convents right now are desperate for recruits since the average age of a nun is around 73 when it used to be twenty-something forty years back. That surprises me a bit because there are so many older women whose children are grown up and who are divorced and past their prime, or girls out of high school who are okay, but not cut out for school or a career, all who would seem perfect candidates for sisterhood, but instead they get into bad relationships or mope about how their life is over.

But, hey, I"m still 16 so there's plenty of time to potentially find someone, and I'm an only child so my agnostic mother would have a heart attack or commit suicide if I told her about any of this, and I'm not Catholic, although I've tried to be, so yeah...

Miscommunication

My mother has a habit of saying things half way. Sometimes she stops talking mid-sentence, or talks vaguely and expects me to know exactly what she's talking about. When she says something like, "Meet me by the piano," I wonder whether she mean the piano in the hospital lobby, the piano in the hospital cafeteria or the piano studio three blocks away?

Just today when we were in the kitchen, preparing to have some guests over for dinner, she told me to "Go clean that up." I went ahead to organize a stack of papers on the counter, when she groaned in frustration and proclaimed that that I can't do anything right. "The dishes,"she said, motioning to the sink, "Dry the dishes. You need to have everything specific, don't you?"

Yes, yes I do need some details. "You always speak in pronouns," I replied, "Well, pronouns are supposed to have an antecedent but you never say the antecedent." I'm studying for the ACT test and my mother happens to be a professional English language-knower.

"But you can guess, can't you?"

"I can, and I get it right 80% of the time, but you emphasize all the times I get it wrong."

She seemed to find this humorous, "You know, it would be nice if you had telepathy. Then you would know everything that I want you to do."

"It doesn't work that way."