fairy tale vs. reality

*Not a journalism-related blog, btw. Contains embarrassing, but highly hilarious information about my teenage years.

As I sat in Little Italy drinking a Sweetwater 420 and eating a greasy pizza topped with slippery cheese, pepperonis, mushrooms and bell peppers, fairy tale and reality collided.

It was comical, really, with the pizza wave and everything.

When I was 15 or 16, I had a Xanga account (no, I don’t remember the URL, username or password, nor do I wish to revisit my teenage ramblings). I was already an Auburn fan, so of course I ‘War Eagle’d’ in my ‘About Me’ and had several Auburn-related posts. I got a comment on one of them from some guy I didn’t know, and we randomly started chatting back and forth about Auburn. The conversation innocently turned into AIM chatting, and before I knew it, I had  a new friend.

A 21 or 22-year old male college student friend.

I know. What the hell, right? (Cue Cliff’s scary phone alarm noise signaling, ‘RED FLAG.’)

Admittedly, it was strange, but I so wanted this to be normal. Ah, so naive. This guy never said anything sketchy to me, and looking back, I think he was just socially awkward and needed someone to talk to… but definitely… weird.

It gets better. I meet up with the guy a year or so later at what I thought at the time was the BEST pizza place ever— Mellow Mushroom in Auburn. My mom knew all about it and was OK with it as long as my cousin (an Auburn student at the time) went with me (WHAT was she thinking?!)

I totally had an Internet crush on this guy (anyone can sound amazing through AIM) and a not-so-small portion of me really wanted this guy to just happen to be my knight in shining armor. So what if he was six or seven years older than me and we met through Xanga? Meh.

Of course, the meeting was beyond awkward, and I began to realize that a college student who spends his free time chatting with high school girls is probably not knight-in-shining-armor material.

The fairy tale was nice while it lasted. It would have made a great Taylor Swift song.

Fast-forward six years.

I’m sitting in Little Italy, which I have discovered in my old age is much more delicious—and more importantly—cheaper than Mellow Mushroom, with reality—also known as Scott Gentry.

I had really forgotten about fairy tale Internet boy, granted I’d matured a lot, dated a few guys since then and have a great talent for blocking out unpleasant or embarrassing childhood/teenage memories.

The memories flooded back in the form of a burst of laughter when I saw him sit down with a large group of guys at a table in front of me. We made eye contact.

Then I did the only thing that was appropriate in such a situation: the pizza wave.

The pizza wave (replace pizza with any object, really):

1. Make brief eye contact.

2. Turn pizza so it is facing subject.

3. Move pizza back and forth, accidentally allowing cheese and toppings to fall onto plate.

4. Laugh and ignore subject.

Of course, I had to tell Scott who I was waving at, and he thought this was wildly hilarious. Because reality is amazing, this began an inside joke between us where we now wave using objects instead of hands fairly often.

This happened weeks ago, but the thought just crossed my mind as I was about to fall asleep how funny it is when parts of our lives we don’t connect cross paths. I was thinking about all the goals I made, all the guys I “loved,” all the people I thought I’d never lose touch with and just all the things I was so sure about back then. All of those were the fairy tales, and sure, I still have some fairy tales floating around in my mind.

All I can say is I’m glad my fairy tales don’t usually come true. Reality is so much more fun and so much more perfect than I could have ever imagined.

Right down to Mellow Mushroom vs. Little Italy.

adventure

When presented with a list of options, I generally seem to pick the most complicated, different and sometimes just downright weird choice.

My internship was no different. While my friends spent their summers in Rome, Ga. working for a daily newspaper or in Birmingham interning for Progressive Farmer, I was eating a lot of salad and cheese in France, crossing the Mediterranean sea on a ferry and riding camels in Tunisia.

My travels weren’t just for pleasure, however. I was writing my heart out in a blog, taking photos of strangers to be used on a website, writing a few feature stories and helping local missionaries with childcare, music video shoots and whatever else they needed.

Some days, it was hard.

The internship was a challenge because it was tailor-made for us, and there were no real requirements. No one had done what we were doing before. I was my own boss, made my own deadlines and set my own standards. There were times when it was so hard to stay motivated.

I was paired up with a girl I had never met before, and we spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks together—talk about developing interpersonal skills.

I cried a lot this summer. I missed my family, I often didn’t feel like I was being productive and I was downright lonely a lot of days.

But as I look back months later, I realize I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. I learned so much—personally and professionally. I didn’t realize until I got back what an impact my photography, writing and communication would have.

Plus, I got to do some cool stuff.

I watched the sun set over the Mediterranean with no land anywhere in sight. I learned a few phrases Arabic. I went into two mosques. I had a cooking lesson with a Tunisian woman. I went to a Tunisian wedding. I visited Roman ruins.

I ate French cheese, ratatouille, authentic Italian food, coos-coos, Tunisian sandwiches, shawarma meat and Lebanese food.

I met a couple who graduated from Oxford and drank Tunisian beer with them on top of the tallest building in Tunisia on my 21^st birthday.

I rode a camel in the Sahara Desert.

Most importantly, though, I made friends from other cultures.

Dancing on the mountain in France with 15 people from seven different countries after filming an Algerian Christian music video was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Being able to provide these people with memories of the time we spent together making the video through photography was a part of the internship I never could have dreamed up.

My photos and writing being used by missionaries on the field to show their friends and family what their lives are like everyday was more rewarding than any paycheck from a traditional internship could have been.

I’ve often wondered if it was a mistake to skip the traditional route.

Will I be able to get a job?

What does my choice about this internship say about me?

I hope it says that I often stray from the norm. I hope it says that I am independent. I hope it says I can easily adapt.

Most of all, I hope it says that I’m not going to settle for average.

I want adventure.