Kitten Heel 'Cat'astrophe

I have always been a believer of the "If you work hard enough, you can achieve anything" school of thought. But as I grew older, I realized there were a few clauses missing from this statement. For example, I wanted to be a rock star... or a pop star... or anything that resembled Madonna. My parents must have picked up on this because they put me into piano lessons. At first I caught on extremely quickly, learning the scales through and through. Then I started learning songs; my teacher liked Simon & Garfunkel classics like "Scarborough Fair" and "Feelin' Groovy." I was having a great time. But when she evaluated me, she told me I had severe problems with rhythm: I couldn't keep a steady count and my rhythm was sporadic and out of sync. And that's not all. I had additional problems with my ear... There wasn't anything physically wrong with it, just that, musically speaking, I had none. I could not discern an A from a B, and I couldn't recognize minor keys at all. So I practiced for a while, and soon got annoyed at my lack of talent.

Then I decided I wanted to be a writer... and I'm still working on it.

Next came becoming a model. I'd always wanted to pose in dramatic positions for the camera. Something about having all the attention on me seemed exciting. I was not very attracted to the commercial modelling industry, but rather the fashion model scene, where everyone pouts and extends their hips. They all just looked so powerful. I thought they were beautiful, powerful, independent and artistic looking. Unlike the commercial models, they looked like they weren't posing for me or anyone who might look at the picture, but rather for themselves... they just always posed like that, with a look at the camera that said "I don't care what you think: this is me, take it or leave it." So I looked up agencies. There's Ford, there's Next, there are many... and I looked up their criteria for models, because I truly believed I had a shot. I didn't and don't think I am beautiful; I just like the spotlight sometimes. Often the criteria were listed as follows:

1) 5 foot 8 or taller (I'm 5 foot 7)
2) proportions of 34-24-36, or parallel (I'm not)
3) symmetrical facial features (I've broken my nose, I have the slightest hint of jowls, my cheekbones are invisible, my teeth are beastly)
4) must be able to pose and photograph well (CHECK!!!)

So three out of four ain't bad... except when it's three wrongs out of four. Whatever happened to my "if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything" belief? If I worked for the rest of my life at growing, I don't think I'd ever reach 5 foot 8 or taller. I had come to a realization: some things are out of my control.

But let's get back to that writing one. I tried writing in elementary school and found success: "Natalie, you are a very descriptive writer." Then I tried it in Jr. High: "Natalie, your poem is simple, yet clever." High school: "How you wrote five pages describing one bite from an apple, I don't know." And then I began writing articles and essays and short stories for about six years. I often wrote about music, movies, plays and other various thoughts and events and cultural phenomena.

One area of the arts I didn't tap into too often though was fashion. I had always wanted to be a fashion writer. I had always wanted, deep down, to be one of those girl writers with all the clever repartee and sass that they fuse into their fashion police or collection review columns. They are witty and cheeky and they have a way about their writing that makes them impossible to argue with. I love fashion... I read the magazines, I watch Jeannie Bekker, I keep up with the times, but I've always had some sort of insecurity when it comes to fashion and style. Although I'm interested in it in general, I seem to quickly lose interest in it when it becomes the focal point of a conversation. I also find it fun and amusing as sort of a marginal, unnecessary indulgence. I just can't seem to wrap my head around taking it too seriously. Having posh clothes and make-up, though fun, is not a necessary thing. It is just something to think about on a Saturday shopping trip or when hanging out with girls - after all the important things in life are taken care of.

But sometimes I forget how I feel about fashion, and dream about being a fashion writer just the same.

On those days I usually look the part. I try to dress up a bit, in something that is stylish, though not necessarily comfortable or utilitarian. Take for example, that day last week when I was in one of those moods. I dressed up in a swanky little dress with an expensive cropped jacket and wore the cutest little kitten heels. I went down town as usual to conduct some interviews; I had three in total: two bars and a new shoe store. I was feeling pretty confident in my outfit so I walked like I owned the sidewalk. After about two blocks, the widest part of my foot started to feel the extreme pressure of the cute kitten heels. I turned up my ipod and ignored the pain. After my first interview I moved on. I looked down at my sore feet and I could see that near my toes, my feet were turning red and a bit blotchy. Ow. I hadn't even walked as far as I normally do. They were really sore by now and no volume of my ipod could drown out the pain. These shoes had a little strap in the front and they were open-toed. By now this strap was digging into my flesh and I could feel it chafing away at my skin. I wondered how so many women wore shoes like this all day long. How could they stand the pain? I didn't know whether to respect them or fear for their podiatric health. By the time I had reached the street of my final interview—a shoe store, ironically—I was unable to conceal my pain and I was practically limping. But I refused to walk barefoot on rue St-Denis. Women were floating by me, leaving a gust of Dior’s latest poisonous scent in my nostrils and disappearing behind the narrowest of tree trunks; that’s my way of describing how beautiful, stylish and thin the women in downtown Montreal are. I was not about to walk barefoot among them.


I was just about to march into the shoe shop when I stumbled and almost did the splits right there on the sidewalk. My right foot skidded forward at an accelerated speed while my left foot remained planted behind me. My right foot just kept sliding forward until finally it slowed to a stop. And there I stood for many seconds, like a tee-pee. My a-line skirt was now stretched across my a-line leg position. I felt something on the right side of my face. I turned in that direction and saw that it was stares. Yes, my kitten heel catastrophe had occurred right in front of one of the many street-lined Montreal terrace restaurants. And it was on St-Denis no less, one of the coolest places to see and be seen. I was definitely being seen at that moment. The moment was frozen. Even if I tried to laugh it off like I would have on PEI, I knew that on St-Denis, in Montreal, this was no laughing matter. I had committed some kind of cardinal sin of walking with grace. I was sure everyone who had stopped eating to stare at me was thinking, "Boy, isn't it obvious that she is not from Montreal? Where do you think she's from? Probably PEI, eh? Yeah, that would be my first guess."

When I finally started to feel the heat of my face go down a bit I swallowed my petrification and slowly pulled myself together. I pulled my lags back into position. But something was wrong. My right foot was feeling strangely comfortable and pain-free. I glanced down at it almost apologetically to the people on the terrace. There it was: my cute little strappy kitten heel, dead on the sidewalk. My right foot stood naked and flat on the pavement, while my shoe lay mangled and destroyed on its side. To be exact, the strap had been severed, rendering the shoe unwearable. For some reason when I saw this dead shoe, rather than feeling sad, I felt a sick kind of pleasure, like I was glad this shoe was destroyed, like it deserved it after the Hell it had put my feet through. Its death had given me some sort of newfound energy and power. Ignoring the terrace people, I slipped out of my left shoe, scooped up the heels and marched into the shoe shop for my interview. I told the owner my story and he offered to glue the shoe back together with some sort of high-end glue he had. "No," I said, "I won't be needing these shoes anymore." And with that, I bought a pair of much more comfortable, equally stylish—though less girly—flats.

I turned on my ipod and walked home. I had learned my lesson... Even if I fantasized about being a fashion writer or a fashionista, becoming one was not worth my comfort and freedom of walking as far as I liked. When it started to rain, I—without thinking—took off my cropped jacket and wrapped it around my ipod. I didn't want my music to get damaged!

Only after I arrived home and realized I might have destroyed the material of my jacket in favour of my ipod did I realize that maybe consciously I like the idea of fashion, but obviously it is not one of my priorities on a subconscious level. The ipod was less expensive than the jacket, but all I cared about was the music. It was a moment of clarity.

A few days later I was editing a Spanish student's English paper. I came across a word I had never seen before, "ouroboros". I asked the student what it meant, to which he said, and I quote, "Oh, don't worry, you don't need to know. You will never have to use that word in shopping situations." He thought this was hilarious. But I wondered how he had gotten the idea that I am some sort of shopping addict when I think of myself as having an awkward style. I told him that yes, it's true that if I haven't used the word yet, I probably won't use it much in the future, but it won't be because I am too busy with shopping.

It's funny how we don’t really know who we are, or even what our dreams are. Dreams cannot be about something we are merely interested in, they have to consume us. I cannot be a rock star because I love escapism, or become a model simply because I love attention. And I can definitely not become a trendsetter or a fashionista just because it would make me feel feminine and pretty. Because these are interests that fulfill something that’s lacking in me. They make me feel better because of the associations I make with them. But they don't consume me.

So from now on I'm going to stick to the things that have always been present and obvious to me, these are the things that consume me. Things that are so important that I don't have to think about them or try to make them happen. For example, I write for work, I write for hobby and I write about other people's writing for school. I'm beginning to see some consistencies here. Also, I don't try very hard to socialize or spend time with my friends and family, I just do it. I guess it is the things that are natural and automatic about me that make me who I am. Making music proved that I am tone-deaf, becoming a model would have required extreme surgery and wearing kitten heels was pure masochism. To me, those three realities do not scream "natural". (But I still pretend I'm a rock star or a model or a fashion icon in front of the mirror once in a while.)

Giving Up or Giving In

I’ve always had trouble with labels. There are so many labels that correctly apply to me in at least one way, but there are no labels that completely apply to the entire me. I am a “student”, for example. But I am not solely a “student”.
I am also, a “sister”, a “writer”, an “aunt”, a “girlfriend”, an “Islander”, an “Anglophone”, a “university graduate”, a “high school graduate”, a “twenty-five-year-old”, a “sister”, a “woman” and many other things. Yes, I am all of these things and yet, somehow the sum of their description is still inadequate.

And it is not just these titles that are inept in describing the whole truth about who I am, it is also that I never seem to fully fit any one title in a normal way. I always manage to alter these titles in some way. It’s as though I get anxious when the confines of one particular title feel a little too tight. I have to wiggle around in them until they become titles that are completely my own, titles that are somehow different for me than they are for all the other “students”, “Islanders” and “sisters” out there.

Take, for example, this very blog. The fact that surely no one else has the title and description, “Natalie, Sans “H”, A Digital Diary: Documentations of one woman’s adventures in and Around Montreal” notwithstanding, the actual content of my blog does not really fit. In truth, the blog is too big. It spreads and bleeds and oozes and leaks out of this title. It cannot be contained. I don’t just write about my experiences in Montreal. Far from it. I write about anything and everything that crosses my mind.

Another example: When I worked at the Dalhousie Gazette, I often got criticized for publishing articles about artists outside of the realm of the campus. Since we were a campus newspaper, it only seemed natural to keep the paper’s content exclusive to campus affairs. But something inside of me felt uncomfortable with these strict boundaries. I needed to feel freer, to expand. And this is what I’m like in all areas of my life.

So when I recently took several government tests as part of the protocol for entering the government job selection process, I figured, yeah, maybe I’ll work for the government. Who cares? I won’t be a typical government worker, I’ll just make the job fit me and my way of doing things; as I have done with everything else.

But shortly after I got into the testing room I realized that “government worker” was no ordinary title.

The truth is, I usually find a way to serve my best interests. And my best interests include moving to PEI sometime in the future. When I saw the PEI government job opening, I knew it was an opportunity for me to have some stability and therefore, a reason to move back. There was only one problem: The job was only open to people currently residing on PEI, and I live in Quebec.

So I lied. I gave my mother’s address as my own on the application, and figured they’d never know the difference.

And they didn’t. But they probably will now, since I’m writing about it on the internet. They are the government after all; it’s their business to find out secrets about potential employees.

But honestly, I couldn’t care less if they found out I lied. I almost want them to have a reason to drop me out of the running. The tests were a nightmare. I hated every second of them. The first one was a “General Competency Test”; which tested one’s ability to logically solve problems in an administrative environment. Please. I don’t have time to sit around thinking of who deserves more overtime hours, Larry or Susie. Because that’s the kind of questions the test asked. There was no option of “What do I care? Let them work it out for themselves”.

The second test was a French writing evaluation. And this one was very simple. I whizzed through each question with such flippancy I was sure the test supervisors thought I was cheating. Here’s an example of what a French writing test question looked like:

« Il y aura une réunion demain à 9h00. » This statement implies that:
a) there will NOT be a meeting.
b) the meeting will be at 11:00 today.
c) you have been asked to work overtime.
d) there will be a meeting tomorrow at 9:00.

In short, it was a joke.

The third and final test was a French reading evaluation. During this test I almost fell asleep at least three times. The questions each included a lengthy paragraph, the purpose of which I can hardly imagine had much to do with anything other than rendering its readers unconscious. They used up about half le Petit Robert just to communicate a simple message. It was ridiculous:

(In French): “Given the extreme weather circumstances of several rainy days in a row, and as you know, the fact that the three managers in sector A have been car-pooling, the result of which includes the breakdown of manager 1’s 1996 Honda Accord, it has come to our attention that the annual Sector A, B and C July Strawberry Social or—as some have called it of recent—the picnic that includes strawberry shortcake, similar to the shortcake that was popularized in the Anne of Green Gables series, thanks to, and we all know and love her dearly, L.M. Montgomery, without further ado, must be postponed until the weather improves.”

In the above paragraph, the picnic has been cancelled due to:
a) Anne of Green Gables.
b) a shortage of strawberry shortcake.
c) the absence of Manager 2.
d) the rainy weather.



So those were the tests on which I wasted 6 hours of a beautiful day on PEI; and after which I got to thinking. Do I really want to be a Bilingual Administrative Support Representative for the Government? I decided the best way to find my answer was a good old-fashioned pros and cons list:

Pros:
-great salary
-great benefits
-stability on PEI

Cons:
-excessive boredom
-lack of freedom
-zero passion
-job hatred
-zero creativity
-sedentary lifestyle
-wasted education
-loss of soul

So there you have it. Even if I gave up and gave in to an easier financial time working for the government, I would be a complete sell-out on my own terms and I would hate my life. There is no way I could have any wiggle room with a title like “Bilingual Administrative Support”. How do I spin it so that something like that fits me? How do I make a title like that my own? I guess the answer is, I don’t.

So I’ll keep having the collection of titles I have. They may not represent my entire identity, but they at least show some part of me, and I don’t have to feel like a total fraud by calling myself a “sister” or a “student”. Until I find a better one, I suppose the one that best suits is, “Natalie, Sans ‘H’”.