I was an angsty six-year-old

I spent the last four days at my mom's house in Chicago. The day I got there, my mom presented me with a binder in which she had collected some of the highlights of my childhood writing.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you an anthology of works by Alison, ages 3-6.

I want to assure you all that I have improved since then.

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"Mr. Green Pepper" (dictated at age 3)

Once upon a time, there was a green pepper named Mister. That Mr. Green Pepper liked to eat other green peppers and also liked to go to museums for ice cream. One day, he typed on a typewriter that was left outside. She was a very good typer that could type on broken typewriters. One day, she decided she would get a notebook for her own. The end.

"Mr. Pizza" (dictated at age 3)

Once upon a time, there was a Mr. Pizza named Albert. One day, he died, and he didn't want to die very much. He couldn't see, he couldn't do, he couldn't move. What was that Mr. Pizza to do? So he had an idea. He tied a rope to the end of his box, and he tied a rope to himself, and he tried to move. And that didn't work. His hands were down by his sides, his legs were curled around his head, and his hair was fluffying in the box. His body was on his back, and he didn't want to be that way. The end.

"Mrs. Cake" (dictated at age 3)

Once upon a time, there was a Mrs. Cake. She went to a friend's house. She wasn't careful about electricity. She went up, and then she zapped her finger into the socket. Is that a very good thing to do at all, Mommy? The end.

"Celery Wears Overalls" (dictated at age 4)

Celery wore overalls,
Celery wore pants,
Celery wore a suit of gray,
Celery learned to dance.
Celery learned to do the things
That people sometimes do,
But OOPS! But CLUNK! But BOOPS! But DUNK!
This is the work of you.

"I'll Give You?" (age 6)

I'll give you a nickle if you give me a dime.
I'll give you a lemon if you give me a lime.
I'll give you an apple if you give me pie.
I'll give you you if you'll give me I.

And now for my all-time favorite. I typed the following on my mom's typewriter when I was 6. I have left all line breaks and spelling intact.

---

i wish
i wish
i wish
i cod
do lots
ov hard
things
that ill
nevr be
abol to
do i
wish things
wood hapin
wen thay
wont a
lot ov hard
things hapin
wen i dont
wont them to
life is
vary hard

My farewell to the Metropolitan Opera

Me with some severed heads. Like you do.Much to the dismay of everyone who likes my #overheardatwork tweets and bizarre opera stories, I have only four more days of work left at the Met. After that, there will be no more photographing neon boobs and severed heads. No more sneaking down to the props room to pet the sparkly blue Cadillac. No more watching Placido Domingo lip-sync, getting flashed by Anna Netrebko, or watching Bryn Terfel play Angry Birds while dressed as a Norse god.

Except for the time I fell through a piece of scenery and nearly died (<--not hyperbole), the Met has been a fabulous place to work, and I will miss it. As a tribute, I give you a collection of some of my favorite Met quotes. Enjoy, and cross your fingers that I find a suitably strange part-time job soon.

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"I hear we have to drain the blood pool every night."
"Well, otherwise it might grow mold."

"We want to wrap the dancing girl in mummy wrapping, okay?"

"The stripper's legs are missing, but everything else is working."

"This is, like, a love hexagon. Triangles are for amateurs."

"Oh, that was MORTIFYING, wasn't it? To have the head of the design department be legally blind?"

"The pimento in the martini is not responding."

"You can unpark the nipples."

"I liked the self-immolation, but the rest of it was kind of boring."

"Monkey looks too fake; refurbish."

"If I needed to lift a flying mermaid, could I do that with eighth-inch cables?"

"You can come in. I'll stop taking my pants off for a minute."

"In terms of the collapse of the snake, we'd like to see it at agonizing speed. Would you like to put the sword in its neck first?"

Random dude: (pokes his head into my office and stares intently at the ceiling for about 30 seconds
Me: “Hi, can I help you?”
Random dude: “I think I left my hammer in your ceiling last week.”

"We're going to try to fly the jungle, but first we need to know how much it weighs."

"The lady's boobs aren't working. Oh no, wait, they are, they're just really dim."

Stagehand 1: "The minute I wake up, I'm, like, THINKING. I can't turn it off.
Stagehand 2: "Yeah, god, I have that same problem."

"MY HAND IS ON FIRE!"

"Two super sluts downstage, please."

"How's our lactating maid today?"

"Would you like me to call this color Mussolini, Hitler, or Stalin?"

"Can we bring the dragon in so it looks like it's going to eat the prompter?"

"Um... can you raise your hand if you're wearing a costume right now?"

Person dressed as a monk: "Hey, do you need a monk?"
Me: "No, I've already got one, thanks."

"Sorry, I had to go watch some shirtless men covered in dirt hit some anvils for a minute."

"... and then the cadaver spontaneously disintegrated..."

"Operator who's doing tiny fog down by the eyeball, are you there?"

"Jack the Ripper to stage left, please!"

"Wanna fight?" --guy in the Met elevator carrying an extra-strength bottle of Fabreze to guy carrying four swords and guy carrying two leaf blowers

Me with the dead bull from Carmen"Is there room for a three-dimensional nose behind the house?"

"We are investigating the possibility of the burning hat scenario you mentioned. This should not be a problem."

"Thank you for the sex club. This should help with the budget."

"Can you give us any information about exactly what you did regarding the speaker in the baby?"

"Please print the exploding chandeliers."

"The money has to be boob-friendly."

"We're going to get rid of the body. Can someone open the trunk of the car, please?"

"Caution: no floor beyond this door."

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Bye, Met Opera. Thanks for the extraordinarily bizarre memories.

A brief introduction to my nutball neighbors

I absolutely love my little Brooklyn neighborhood. It's full of restaurants and brownstones and trees and places to buy delicious baked goods. However, it is is also full of crazy people. And since I live in an apartment building, many of them share walls with me.

Here, for your reading pleasure, is an introduction to my neighbors. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

JENNIFER (upstairs)

Jennifer is probably in her late thirties or early forties. I'm pretty sure she has a job, yet she always seems to be home, clomping around in her heels and throwing a ball for her dog. (Let me tell you how much I love that awesome BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE skitterskitterskitterskitter sound at all hours of the day.) Despite these things, I have never met a person who is more sensitive to noise than Jennifer. She frequently leaves passive aggressive notes under my door letting me know that my air conditioner is making a weird sound or asking me not to talk on the phone in my bedroom or close my drawers too loudly. Once I returned from a three-week trip to Europe to find a note complaining about noise. Lately, she has taken up a campaign to get me to pay for half of a $2000 sound-proofing project between our apartments that will involve drilling lots of holes in my ceiling. Jennifer's finest moment was the time she asked her next door neighbor to please stop pressing her microwave buttons so loudly.

CHARLIE (downstairs)

Charlie is around 70. A few years ago, he became obsessed with the idea that my radiator was leaking into his apartment and causing his ceiling to drip. He kept asking if he could come upstairs and look at the problem. Since I was a bit hesitant to have some random strange man in my bedroom, I tried my best to avoid him. He was unbelievably persistent and continued to request access to my apartment, even during the summer, when the radiators were not on. When I finally told him I'd feel more comfortable if the super looked at the problem, he became extremely cagey and told me we couldn't involve the super. According to him, the problem with the radiators was all the fault of the management company—to pay him back for not complying with certain building regulations, they were conspiring against him and CAUSING the leak in his apartment. You know, LIKE YOU DO.

THE ENORMOUS FAMILY NEXT DOOR

I have lived here for four and a half years, and I still have absolutely no idea who actually lives in the apartment next door to me. There are so many people coming and going at all times that it's impossible to tell. I'm pretty sure they're all related. On the weekends, they throw these enormous, loud family get-togethers—once I came home to find the door wide open and a live mariachi band playing inside. (I also noticed that they have covered over their gorgeous hardwood floors with sea green linoleum.) None of the children who live there seem to have a bedtime, and they love to play a game that involves crashing into my bedroom wall with so much force that the entire room shakes. Sometimes they do this as late as 2 AM.

ANNE (across the hall)

Anne is the crowning glory of our building. She is—and I do not say this lightly—completely batshit crazy. She once posted a long diatribe on all the elevator doors, accusing her next door neighbor of the following transgressions:

1) erasing songs from her CDs
2) disconnecting and blocking her phone calls
3) throwing liquids through her kitchen windows
4) turning her computer on and off remotely
5) causing her desktop icons to move around
6) messing with the volume of her tape deck
7) causing her to "hear the sounds of birds"
8) working in league with the police so that none of this could be stopped.

A few weeks ago, she plugged in her vacuum cleaner, turned it on, and left it running FOR SEVERAL DAYS. When people complained about the noise, she left the following note tacked to her door:

"To anyone who reads this note: Should you wish to complain about the sound of a vacuum cleaner it is because I am trying to cover an unrelenting bombardment of noise in my ears which prevents me from sleeping, gives me a headache and makes me dizzy. It is real and not a figment of my imagination. The police is not able to investigate because they are prevented from doing so from "higher up." Unfortunately, the board refuses to accept that what is going on is intentional. The police told me equipment being used is sophisticated and Homeland Security uses it. How did it get in the building? Sorry about the inconvenience. It's been like this since last night."

Guys, I could not make this up if I tried.

Fortunately, I live in the corner of the building, so I share my remaining wall with the elevator. It is a very quiet and considerate neighbor.

Jobs I'd be great at... if they existed

As many of you have gathered from Facebook and Twitter, I gave notice at my day job this past week. My last day at the Met Opera will be May 24th, and then I'll find something part-time so I actually have time to write that other book I'm supposed to be writing.

*happy sort-of-full-time writer dance*

I've been at the Met for four years now, and it's incredibly strange to be back in Job Hunt Land. According to Craig's List, I am qualified to do practically nothing, despite my Ivy League education and eight years in the work force. (I am qualified to sell my eggs, but $8,000 seems like kind of a rip-off considering you have to give yourself hormone shots in the stomach.) Nobody seems to have a use for my skill set.

Here are some jobs I would be FABULOUS at, if only they existed:

1) CRAZY PERSON MAGNET

Need a fool-proof way to find out if there's a crazy person in the room? Put me in the room, and the nutball will come STRAIGHT TO ME. I have no idea why this happens, but it happens constantly. It's like I'm walking around with a giant tattoo on my forehead that says, "GREETINGS, WHACKADOO. TELL ME A STORY." I was once sitting on the floor in the corner of a Barnes and Noble, reading a book and minding my own business, when this guy came over and sat down RIGHT in front of me, trapping me in. He proceeded to tell me a lengthy saga about how he'd been shot in the ear the night before. His ear was indeed stitched up, and he had blood on his pants. What kind of guy gets out of the hospital and goes straight to Barnes and Noble instead of going home to change out of his bloody clothing? THE KIND OF GUY WHO LIKES TO TALK TO ME.


2) SONNET-WRITER

I can write a sonnet about any topic—in iambic pentameter, with the proper rhyme scheme—in 20-30 minutes. Unfortunately, this has absolutely never been useful.


3) BABY SEX PREDICTOR

Predicting the sexes of unborn babies is my superpower. I have guessed the sexes of eleven of my friends' children, and I've only been wrong once. Had I lived hundreds of years ago, people might actually have paid me to do this. Now this job is called "ultrasound technician," and I am totally unqualified to do it.


4) ANTI-GPS

I have the worst sense of direction known to man. This is one of the reasons I live in New York City; the streets are numbered, so I always know within a block whether I'm going the wrong direction. Yesterday, I walked back and forth past a building I was trying to find for fifteen minutes before I noticed it—and I'd been there at least five times before. When I went to Europe with some friends in the summer of 2002, they actually navigated the streets by asking me which way I thought we should go, then going the other way. It worked EVERY TIME. I could even do it at three-way intersections. I'd say, "We should either go that way or that way," and it would be the third way. People always ask why I don't just always go the way that feels wrong to me, but for some reason, that doesn't work. No matter what I do, I'm still wrong.


5) HUMAN MOSQUITO REPELLANT

Apparently, my blood is DELICIOUS—when I'm around, nobody else ever has to wear bug spray. Maybe I'm extra sweet because I'm constantly eating cookies? In any case, I'm better than a citronella candle. There's a photo of me dancing at my friend's wedding a couple years ago, and you can see at least thirty bites on my legs. The people I'm dancing with are completely bite-free.


If you think of a way I can get paid for doing any of these things, please let me know immediately. I wouldn't complain if there were health benefits involved.

In which I make a complete fool of myself (five times)

I am very easily starstruck, and when I meet authors/editors/agents I really respect, I sometimes get so excited that I forget how to act like a normal human. There was that time I told Sara Zarr that Holly Black was my agent. And that time I started babbling about Schoolhouse Rock to Libba Bray. And that time I asked Kathryn Erskine to sign a book for me... which she had ALREADY SIGNED on a previous occasion. And that time I met Stephanie Perkins and was trying so hard not to be a ridiculous fangirl that I completely failed to mention her books AT ALL. (Stephanie Perkins, I love your books with a love that is deep and real.)

The day I met my agent for the first time was equally ridiculous.

In January of last year, I got an email from my dream agent, Holly Root (who is, shockingly, not the same person as Holly Black.) She'd read the manuscript I'd sent her, and although she wasn't sure she could sell it, she was enthusiastic about my writing. She proposed we meet and talk about how to proceed.

I will thrilled out of my mind, but I was also beyond nervous. It was my first time meeting with an agent, and I wanted to be Prepared-with-a-capital-P. I reread my manuscript and got ready to discuss its intricacies. I did research on Holly. I studied photos of her online so I wouldn't idiotically walk up to a random bystander and introduce myself. What could possibly go wrong?

I should have known the universe would find a way to throw me a curve ball.

Everything started out perfectly. Holly and I chatted about my manuscript for a while, and then we got down to the serious business of recommending books to each other. I raved about my favorite John Green novels and about Jellicoe Road, which I'd just finished. She told me about her clients' exciting new releases. Then she said, "I just read this really fantastic book by Jandy Nelson. It's called This Guy is Everywhere. You should definitely check it out." At least, that's what I thought she said. And like the good little potential client I was, I wrote it down and promised to read it immediately.

The meeting left me in a haze of delirious excitement, and as I always do when I have something to celebrate, I headed straight for the nearest bookstore. I waltzed through the aisles of Barnes and Noble with a goofy grin on my face, piling up a stack of Holly-approved books. But when I looked for This Guy is Everywhere, it was nowhere to be found. I asked about it at the information desk, but they couldn't find it in their computers, either. That seemed strange, but maybe it was just too esoteric for a mainstream bookstore. I went home and looked it up online—nothing. For a guy who was supposedly everywhere, he was proving pretty difficult to locate.

I wrote Holly an email, thanking her for meeting with me and proudly listing which of her clients' books I'd just purchased. "I looked for This Guy is Everywhere, too, but I couldn't find it," I wrote. "Maybe it's not out yet?" Then I went to bed and succumbed to happy dreams of representation.

That is, until a sudden realization jolted me awake at 4 AM. Holly hadn't said THIS GUY. She had said THE SKY. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE.

Oh my god.

I scrambled out of bed, blushing like crazy alone in the dark, and wrote Holly a panicked, middle-of-the-night email. I told her I felt like a moron of the highest degree and begged her to pretend my first email had never happened.

She wrote back in the morning, and to my vast relief, she found the whole situation hilarious. I ordered The Sky Is Everywhere. As promised, it was fabulous.

Six months later, I signed with Holly.

We have never spoken of the incident again.