I Choose Darkness

by Jenny Lawson

If you hide everything behind the couch and then scream the name of your family member while you pull the gift out and launch it at them, it’s just as much of a surprise (possibly more if they’re not paying attention). It’s also ecologically friendly. You are saving paper—shiny, petroleum-based paper. So maybe I’m not only lazy. I’m carbon neutral. And lightly concussed from a box set of Steely Dan.

I was brought up here in Texas with an emotionally questionable but entertaining taxidermist for a father, so dead animals are in my blood. (Not literally because I’m pretty sure that would give you salmonella at least.) In fact, as I was writing this, my parents emailed me pictures of a ten-foot-tall arch they made out of skulls and antlers to welcome people to their property. In New York I’m pretty sure that sort of thing would be seen as a threat, but this is essentially Texan for “Welcome home.”

I immediately peed myself, which was not planned but recently I read that peeing yourself is actually a good thing to do when you’re being kidnapped because kidnappers are grossed out by pee, I guess? Clearly, I was ahead of my time. A second later, still mid-pee, I realized it was my father in clown makeup, wearing my discarded pom-pom on his head like a fright wig and laughing hysterically. This was the night I discovered that bored parents can be dangerous and that it is very hard to wash urine out of tennis shoes.

My sister and I remember a photograph of us in the bathroom, me sitting on the toilet as my mother painted my face, but none of us can find it and I suspect I might have thrown it away when angsty teenage me was mortified to discover a picture of myself getting false eyelashes drawn on while presumably pooping. Angsty teen me threw away a lot of stuff that I wish I’d been a little more careful with, including rationality, perspective, and my virginity.