Little Weirds

by Jenny Slate

My mother thinks that there is just one of every animal in our woods. She is living in a fable world, where there are lessons and every animal means something. The Fox is a sneaky, skinny murderer who probably smokes cigarettes, can’t grow a full beard like God can, and thinks pens with naked bikini ladies on them are funny. The lawn is a dangerous place for all of the animals because humans are natural predators, like in Peter Rabbit. The Deer is a promising young woman who works in an office and the Hawk is a kidnapper who can’t control himself.

When people get a glimpse of me I’d like them to feel like it is a good omen. I want to have a face with dirt on it. I want to jump on people!

I think the air smells best when all of the tree smells get swirled up by a storm. Big old trees on my street listen to me and watch me in a nice way like I am their niece.

The planet itself saw us. I saw it see us, I think. I think it saw us while we were doing exactly what we wanted, and then it was happy. I watched my friends walk around on the sand. I would look up over the top of my book and see a woman pop up in the water. I would crane my neck to look behind me and one of them would be using an old camera to take a picture of my butt. The three of us were intensely bright in our desire for each other’s adoration and gaze, and in our appetites to be set free as a small roving herd.

One night, we roasted a chicken and had our chests bare and we ripped that hot chicken apart with our wicked little hands—we didn’t even wait for plates. We didn’t even think about plates. We were honest-to-god female animals with each other and I felt that, because of how we floored it like that, we could be animals with the other animals, too. I saw it clearly: One woman could go outside and sit on a rock and a fox could come and sit next to her and put its paw on her back the way a buddy does to encourage another buddy or to apologize for losing a temper. They would look at the sunset together, sniff the air, make a plan to meet up later on and howl.

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love.

I was drinking my beer and I saw a business lady buying a hot dog, and she was doing this in her business outfit and it was normal to her. In the USA, a businesswoman would not feel so free or dispassionate about buying a hot dog in an airport. I can’t really imagine an American businesswoman doing this without imagining her either laughing or crying about it. Her hot dog purchase would be a sign of something going on with her. This Norwegian woman was just having lunch.

The night before, the man in the room next to me snored loudly, but I wasn’t cross at all. And yes, the word to use is cross, but again, I wasn’t at all. It is so nice to be a little bit closer to other humans. No soundproofing or blocking when a hotel is just a big old mansion from three hundred years ago. It is nice to be with strangers, and everyone is trying to sleep, and we are all in nothing but a big old house. The facts are enough. And then the breakfast just pushed it all over the edge.

And I see the leaves turn a bit in the air, and the breeze coming in feels like the whole world is a pet that is breathing on me, and I think, Well, I am so sensitive and I am very fragile but so is everything else, and living with a dangerous amount of sensitivity is sort of what I have to do sometimes, and it is so very much better than living with no gusto at all. And I’d rather live with a tender heart, because that is the key to feeling the beat of all of the other hearts.