Starving: Or, Things You Are When You Grow Up and Don't Do Math

There was a night a couple years ago when I lived in Chicago that I was doing what I did best--eating Oatmeal Squares in bed after a long day at work while watching Parks & Rec--when my friend Allie called me.

“Hey,” she said.

“What,” I replied, politely (I don’t like talking on the phone) (or being interrupted when I’m doing Very Important Things).

“Remember that time that you cried in the mattress store?”

I remembered, all right. It was a rainy day right around the time I graduated from college, and for certain reasons that I’m not totally proud of, it was a Little Bit Traumatic. I didn’t know Allie at that time in my life, so I was confused as to why she was bringing up this terrible memory, let alone why I actually told her that story in the first place.

“How could I forget?” I replied, groaning a bit due to aforementioned Trauma.

“Apparently this is a thing that happens to people!” she exclaimed excitedly. “I’m reading a book of essays right now and this mom is telling about a time something kind of similar happened to her daughter!”

“No way!” I laughed, feeling better about myself. “Did she get the salesman to pat her pityingly on the shoulder, too?”

“No,” she continued, “this story isn’t quite as good as yours. There wasn’t any cradling of head in hands or a single mention of ramen. Apparently she was really sad about graduating from college and it was more of a symbolic thing…” she trailed off.

“Sucks for her,” I said, helpfully.

There was an ominous pause as I heard Allie rifling through the pages of the book.

“Kate,” she finally said.

“Allie,” I echoed, getting confused.

“Is your mom named Shelly?”

My stomach immediately dropped, and what had previously been an unconscious suspicion in the back of my mind began growing into a full-blown panic monster as I started to guess that maybe, just maybe, my Mommy Blogger Mother had potentially misappropriated an embarrassing story about my life and turned it into a Teachable Moment for the sake of the Mommies of the Younger Generatio...No no no, I cut my internal worry monologue off. She wouldn’t do that.

Would she?!

“Um,” I said to Allie instead. “Yes? Why?”

She started roaring with laughter, confirming my fears.

“ALLIE.” I barked, panicked. “PLEASE DON’T TELL ME YOU ARE READING A STORY ABOUT ME WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER IN A BOOK THAT IS PUBLISHED.”

“KATE.” Allie barked back. “I AM READING A STORY ABOUT YOU WRITTEN BY YOUR MOTHER IN A BOOK THAT IS PUBLISHED.”

“I have to call you back,” I said, tapping the end call button and cutting off her increasingly hysterical laughter. I immediately called my mother.

“MOM,” I yelled into the phone. This wasn’t anything new for my mother--I suspect I might be a little hard of hearing, and volume has always been a little bit of a challenge for me. Most of the times I call my mother I’m yelling, usually not because I’m mad but because I’m Kate Wildman and if I’m not yelling about something, I’m probably not speaking.

“Hi, Katester,” my mom said, completely unalarmed at said yelling for said reason mentioned above.

“DID YOU PUBLISH THE SLEEPY’S STORY IN A BOOK WITHOUT ASKING ME?!” I yelled, my voice approaching screeching levels.

I think at this point my mother started to realize that the yelling was actual yelling, because she started to mirror my volume. “I TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT,” she yelled back, “IT WAS PUBLISHED IN A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS THAT CAME OUT EARLIER THIS YEAR!”

“YOU MOST DEFINITELY DID NOT TELL ME ABOUT THAT!” My volume continued to climb. “AND YOU MOST DEFINITELY DID NOT GET MY PERMISSION! ALLIE JUST CALLED BECAUSE SHE WAS READING THE BOOK AND RECOGNIZED THE STORY AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN TELL IT RIGHT!” I was fully screeching at this point. “THERE WASN’T ANY REASON BEHIND THE CRYING BESIDES THE FACT THAT I WASN’T GOING TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD BOTH THE MATTRESS AND TO FEED MYSELF! AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN MENTION THE SALESMAN AND HIS PITY PAT!”

"I DID TOO GET YOUR PERMISSION!” She was also screeching, now. “I’M ALMOST POSITIVE! YOU SIGNED A WAIVER!”

“WAIVER?!” We’d gone beyond screeching at this point into full-on shrieks. “WHAT WAIVER? I SIGNED NO WAIVER! I NEVER WOULD HAVE SIGNED OFF ON THAT STORY BUTCHERY!”

I realized at this point that I hadn’t even read the story in it’s entirety, that my voice was starting to go hoarse, and that I was probably approaching hysteria, so I apologized for freaking and told her I would call her back after I read the story. Allie sent me pictures of the pages and I relived my shame, printed in 12-point Times New Roman for all the world to read if they were to stumble upon a certain collection of essays in the parenting section of a bookstore.

As I suspected, she told it completely wrong.

Well, maybe wrong isn’t exactly the right word. She told it...Shelly. The beauty and terror of creative nonfiction is that you don’t have a universal license to the truth when you’re telling a story, because your only source material is your own take on the situation.

When my mom saw me dejectedly plop down onto a (surprisingly) expensive Serta in the middle of a mattress store, cradling my head in my hands and letting out shaky yelp-sobs as it dawned on me that holy $!%#, mattresses cost approximately four times more than I had budgeted and there is approximately zero way I was going to be able to afford a mattress, my security deposit for my first apartment, and FOOD for the next three months, she saw something totally different. Instead of seeing her oldest daughter about to graduate from college come to terms with the fact that because she had made a grave accounting error, the next three months of her life were going to look a little different than she had expected and would include a lot more ramen than it would protein and produce and really anything that cost more than 75 cents per meal, she saw her first baby about to fly the nest, one who wasn’t super good at vulnerability and who usually didn’t cry, period, let alone in public in front of a nice mattress salesman named Matt who was so taken aback by the sobs that he patted her daughter twice on the shoulder in pity before saying “I’ll give you a second” and scurrying to the back room in fear that the crying girl was going to come completely unhinged.

For all my mother knew, I was terrified of the unknown future stretching ahead of me as I took my first shaky steps into adulthood. I’ll bet you she was probably terrified of the unknown future stretching ahead of me as I took my first shaky steps into adulthood. She’d never been a parent of a real adult before. She had no idea what the next few months and years of my life would hold. She didn’t even know what she wanted them to hold, but she definitely knew she had no control over what they would look like (and if anyone would have told her that three years later said daughter would be moving across the country...she probably would have plopped right down next to me and sobbed, too). I think that moment was probably pretty significant for her, a culmination of the fear and sadness that she tried so hard to hide from me as I approached a major life milestone that meant a huge, scary shift in her role in my life as a parent.

While I was crying purely about the fact that I was broke and frankly a little mad the mattress market was such an inflated sham of an institution, I think she saw something a little more dramatic and a lot more significant, meaning she saw something a lot more Shelly. By the time the story of my meltdown in a Sleepy’s made its way into the book of essays, it had taken on a whole new life, because it was told from a completely different point of view.

Although I still hold that I definitely didn’t read the story before it was published, and I definitely didn’t sign a waiver, and I was definitely peeved that she had appropriated something from my life without telling me, as time goes on I care less and less. I’m a very, horrifically, disgustingly selfish person. Adulthood, for me, has largely meant learning the world doesn’t actually revolve around me and my needs, and that even situations and stories that I thought were mine don’t really belong to me. I don’t hold a premium on being right, I don't own a monopoly on the authoritative source of all knowledge, and I’m not even truly entitled to my own opinions. My mother’s take on the story is her own, and that makes it significant.

At the time it happened, the Sleepy's Story for me wasn't about the hard task of growing up, but it is, now. I look back at that crying girl on the mattress and am proud that she didn't take the easy way out and ask her mom for money. I'm proud she adjusted her expectations, dried her eyes, and handed her card over to Matt, who had made his way out of the back room the second the crying stopped. I'm proud she ate ramen in her new apartment for three months after graduation, sleeping soundly on the mattress for which she literally paid every dollar she had to her name. And I'm even prouder that she got over the fact that her mother published that story to the world from a different point of view, enough to see that the Sleepy’s Story belongs to my mother as much as it belongs to me, and it probably belongs to Matt the Mattress Salesman more than it belongs to either of us.

Matt, if you’re reading this, I’m really sorry to have caused you alarm, buddy. Please feel free to publish the story from your point of view in whatever Going to the Mattresses: Tales from the Sleepy’s Storefront tell-all they publish someday. Consider this my waiver.