learning to mask at chili’s bar and grill
plus, a pupdate and a reader poll
Storytime! I sucked my thumb until I was about 10 years old.
(Truly hated typing that, so I hope it was effective to PULL YOU IN.)
I also had a stuffed lamb — the iconic, inventively named Lambie — who, like any good lamb, came with me almost everywhere. That lasted until maybe the second grade, at which point he became a strictly-bedtime companion. By the time he was finally retired, his fleece was like 70% gone, but even after a decade of worrying, the plush on the bottoms of this poor animal’s feet was still so soft. This is probably because I had spent hours compulsively smoothing it over, luxuriating in the tactile sensation. 20 years later, I’d learn the name for this: stimming.
Another storytime!
In kindergarten, I had this dress, a pattern of magenta and purple checkers and white curlicues, with puffed sleeves and a flocked bodice. I loved it so much — the fabric, the elastic, how it looked on me, especially with saddle shoes — I had to wear it multiple days a week. My parents, who sportingly then washed it multiple days a week, referred to it as “Devon’s uniform.” When it, too, was retired, that thing was threadbare. I wish we’d kept it for posterity, but space had to be made for Beanie Babies and Roxy hoodies.
There were so many instances of dramatic foreshadowing in my life. They keep popping up in my memory, some more endearing than others. But the one I’ve been thinking about the most lately comes a little later in the game, in high school. I did theatre, choir, and competitive comedy improv for the majority of my teen years, which meant that my social skills were almost never questioned, much less relevant. I rarely had to interact with people who didn’t want to live in the same way I did, at least not in any meaningful way. We were all hyperactive little freaks trying to out-weird each other, and we loved it. (If we’d had TikTok at the time, we’d’ve absolutely done a horrifyingly cringe version of the Devil Wears Prada exchange between Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep where the latter says, “Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea, everybody wants this.”)
But then in the spring of my junior year, I got a part-time job as a hostess at Chili’s. And let me tell you, working at a restaurant, let alone a chain restaurant, is the last place you want to be known as a hyperactive little freak. I always used to say that working in the food service industry was how I “learned to be cool,” that being around twenty-somethings in repeated five- to six-hour shifts was a gauntlet that helped me navigate the kind of social environment I would find myself in the next year when I moved to the east coast for college. I used to say that if you’ve seen Waiting, it was pretty much exactly like that, minus the testicles (blessedly).
In retrospect, the lion’s share of my coworkers were probably alcoholics or drug addicts or both, at best. (A few of them were also very comfortable hitting on and following around and trying to go out with teenage girls, but who’s surprised here?) But at the time, everyone there seemed so much cooler than me. So I learned to speak their language. I learned to shit talk, to make comebacks, to gossip; I learned their interpersonal dramas and figured out how to get the people I wanted to like me to like me. Once or twice, I even partied with them (although I didn’t smoke weed until college).
This, to me, for many years, seemed like “learning to be cool.” And it really did make making friends that much easier once I’d graduated! I got on with my partying floor-mates in my freshman dorm; I eventually found my way into multiple friend groups who had little to nothing to do with theatre (okay, a bunch of them did sketch comedy, but it wasn’t improv). Even people I didn’t like saw me exactly how I wanted to be seen: as an über-chill, cool intellectual from LA with extremely good taste in music.
Hahahahahahaha.
Years later, when I was 27, I finally got an ADHD diagnosis. And I, like every third millennial woman, have been unpacking all this shit ever since. Like all those women, it’s helped me make sense of frustrations and insecurities I thought were just me, things that were weird about me because I was just awkward and maladjusted and trying to pretend it was all on purpose. Did I get amazing grades and meet deadlines and do everything I was supposed to as a kid? Of course. That was a form of masking, I guess; it was definitely a compulsive need to remain a “smart girl,” regardless of whatever else I actually wanted in life.
But the Chili’s thing? If I were one to make TikToks now, I’d definitely make one to tell the kids this: I’m not saying masking is good. It’s exhausting. It wastes your time and your energy in so many ways. But if you want to learn how to people — if you want to at least know how to fake it, should you ever need to — get a part-time job at a casual dining chain restaurant that serves deep-fried whole onions. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
(But bring mace, too. Just in case.)
An Oscar Health Pupdate™
Just a follow-up on my last newsletter. My Little Dog Whomst Has Cancer got his second of four vaccine shots this week and is doing … extremely well?? After a brief spate of petulantly flinging kibble around on the floor in an attempt to find just the boiled chicken bits (the canine equivalent of eating only the marshmallows in your Lucky Charms), he is back to his old habits. Literally — not to jinx anything, but whatever’s going on in that tiny body has taken years off the old man.
It might have something to do with his new food, too, this low-protein fresh stuff his vet recommended after noticing his kidneys were strugglin’. Oscar has decided it is his new religion and is back to crying loudly for it and inhaling the bowl the moment it hits the floor. He’s suddenly back to roughhousing and licking his paws and power-trotting through his daily walks (pictured), prompting me to expand our route beyond one block for the first time since, like, 2020. I am, as you might imagine, thrilled.
Q, re: Shadow and Bone and recaps in general
Shadow and Bone, the first season of which I recapped for Vulture, returns for a second season next month, on March 16. Tragically, I just got the news this morning that Vulture is opting for a single full-season recap (??), and that’s just not my style.
So I figured it might be worth asking here: How do you feel about recaps in newsletter form? Is it something you’d read? Something you’d immediately unsubscribe over? I typically go long(ish) on each, but I can see shortening them for MalonEmail, too. Maybe even doing screenshots, if I can figure out how to get around Netflix’s horrendous UI. I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a lil (NICE, RESPECTFUL) comment here:
Back to what you came for: THE LINKS
“Better to keep the masses calm than to give them any reason to wonder who didn’t build the levees high enough, who scrapped the pandemic preparedness plan, who didn’t fix the roads in time for the firetrucks to get through.” —from this essay against the idea that “people are stupid,” regarding this essay about “the myth of panic.” Whew, I love sociology.
The Last of Us — and zombie media in general — is deeply conservative, and I hate that this writer is correct.
I gotta plug the newsletter The Browser, which is the proof that what we all most want out of newsletters are good links, but not too many. (You’re welcome.) They send you two interesting stories in your inbox every day. On the weekends they go into “the archives,” meaning they surface old stories, like this profile of Tumblr (and David Karp) at its peak.
The Din Tai Fung drama is piping hot. (Actually, Eater’s whole package on mall food rules.)
And finally … a millennial American Girl crisis. #FreeCoconut
One more pic from the “compelling evidence” archives
please, I don’t think I’ll be able to watch the show without recaps
I found your newsletter because I was hunting for your season 2 recaps! Would love you to do them here instead