My car

I did not receive my driver’s license until I was almost eighteen years old which seemed really late at the time because all of my friends were driving and had their own cars by sixteen. My parents took me car shopping in the beginning of senior year as it would be necessary for me to have a car to go to school in, drop my sister off at her school, then be able to leave during my off periods at 1:30 p.m. everyday. We looked around through several cars and came across my 1999 Gold Nissan Pathfinder with beige cloth interior, a cd player, and automatic windows. The car seemed amazing during the first few months that I had it; finally I could drive anywhere at anytime that I wished without the need to depend on anybody else to go there. My parent’s could no longer hold me on the strict leashes that they had since I was born, which was always a plus.

            The car became like a second home to me. I would keep nearly everything in there at all times as I was constantly traveling back and forth from school, to dance, to friends homes, and other social places. I loved driving around listening to music with my friends that last year in high school, some of our funniest moments were shared in car rides to Austin for parties or music festivals. For the most part I was an all right driver even though I hadn’t ever taken a formal driving course, but just learned through a home course and my dad. During the first six months of having a car I got into two wrecks both of which were my fault of breaking too late and ramming into the bumper in front of me. I like to think that these accidents were due to the breaking problems of my Nissan (it only has two front breaks or something similar), but either way I am now a far more cautious driver due to these experiences. I do not have a car at school because my parents feel the quality of my car would not be able to withstand the four hour drive from Houston to Fort Worth, though I highly disagree, so every time that I arrive home I thrive at the idea of having my own personal quarters on four wheels to take me to anywhere I want to go.

Favorite Food

Ever since I was a little girl, I enjoyed eating Palachinke or thin-Serbian crepes. My mother would stand in the kitchen preparing them one by one while my sister, my dad, and I would sit at the dining room table waiting for her to bring out the hot Palachinke. On the table, we would set up each of the spreads that we liked to eat the crepes with: My father would pour massive amounts of walnuts and powdered sugar on his then fold the circular Palachinka into fourths so that it would look like a pie slice with each layer filled with the nuts and sugar. I liked to eat this too, but I also went through a phase where I would eat them with Nutella, a chocolate- hazelnut spread which is creamy and delicious when placed within the crisp, sweet flavoring of the thinly prepared Palachinka. My sister and mom are polar opposites, however, from my dad and I because neither of them enjoy eating nuts, sugar, or any kind of chocolate. They would spread raspberry or peach jam in a line down the middle of their Palachinka and would then roll it up.

            My mother’s Palachinke are the best I have ever tasted and I have definitely gone through my fair share of tasting crepes. Both of my grandmothers prepare their crepes too thick for my liking while my mother knows that they taste best when they compliment whichever spread they are served with rather than overwhelm its flavor. My dad’s best friend from college in Belgrade is actually the closest to reaching the quality my mom has achieved in her Palachinkas, but still something is off about it. It is hard to tell whether I am biased because I grew up with her crepes and her cooking, or whether it is because they are truly THAT good because I am not the first to have said so. Nevertheless, even fine creperies in Paris or in the south of France have not satisfied me nearly as much as my mother’s crepe can leave my tongue eager to savor more though my stomach may disagree. 

Something Awful to Eat

When I was younger, if anything set in my plate was green, a tomato, or had an uncertain texture, I would refuse to eat it and would even refuse to look at it. That is how picky of an eater I was. My mother used to make up lies explaining that if I do not eat apples, bananas, green beans, and tomatoes, I will suffer consequences like living one day less of my life or becoming ill. At this time, my mother was not working because she had just had my younger sister. Therefore, she was cooking all the time. Many Serbian foods that she would make were stews containing the vegetables I hated, but even when we would go out to a restaurant I would have to ask them to take out everything in my sandwich with exception to the meat and cheese. Though my parents would become highly frustrated with me, they were not ever too strict in force-feeding me all of these much-needed, but intensely disliked foods.

            The case was different, however, when my Uncle Vlada, my mother’s brother-in-law, would come into Houston with my aunt and cousins. Each night we would sit down to dinner, especially when he cooked, if I ever denied to accept a certain part of the meal in my plate or denied to try it, he would punish me to sit at the table until I had eaten it fully. He was not as strict about it when my mother was cooking, but when he took all day preparing one of his fine meals, he felt highly insulted at my wrong-mannered approach to table sociability. One night he prepared stuffed green peppers for my family, filled with rice and ground beef, and covered in tomato sauce. This was my least favorite specialty. I despised the wrinkly nature of the green pepper and the green color it turned after being cooked, especially in contrast to the red sauce poured on top. It just did not make sense to me that such a combination could taste good. He placed one stuffed pepper in my plate in front of me and by the time dinner was over I had not picked up my fork yet. My mother tried to take the pepper apart from the stuffing and allow me to eat solely the rice and beef, but my uncle would not have it. He forced me to sit there for three hours until I attempted at a bite. 

Interesting Place I Visited

This summer two of my cousin’s friends from her school in Paris visited Cannes, where my mom’s sister’s family lives, for a weekend. One of them, Vlad, spoke perfect English as he lived in London for thirteen years until they moved back to France, and invited us to go to his house in St. Cezaire for the day and hike down to the river. His mother packed us sandwiches and we packed our bags and were on our way with the sun beaming on us with so much intensity that it felt as though we were in a lava lamp. After about an hour of trampling pebbles and navigating around bulldozers we hit the half-way point. We stood listening carefully to the loud flowing of the river and the watching closely the beauty before us of a mass of green pines placed in a concentric arrangement around the river far, far below. The abyss was unimaginable; it was perfect and we were one with nature. We quickly ate our sandwiches anxious to reach the river.

            When we finally reached our destination, we set down our backpacks on a little rock beach and the two boys Vlad and Nicolas quickly stood up (without a thought that we should rest) and said that it was time to jump off of the bridge. The bridge was TOO many meters high and to even reach it we had to walk through shallow waters which had to have been close to freezing temperatures, but all of this was worth it. I am deeply frightened of heights and at first refused to jump off of the bridge into the negative degree water, however, watching Vlad, Nicolas, and my cousin, Dina jump made me quite jealous and I was afraid I would regret not jumping. Nicolas had a very eccentric personality and kept referring to phrases from, “Into the Wild,” and finally persuaded me to make the jump. So refreshing, such a revival in my body and in my heart as though I was one with the air and the water and trees. It is almost impossible to describe the feeling of urgency that swept over my heart and mind after the hike down to paradise on Earth with two strangers and my cousin. Jumping into water more pure, clean, and jerking-ly cold than I ever felt possible was a rejuvenation and awakening.

 

Favorite Toy

When I was younger my favorite toys were Legos. I had an enormous Lego set with variations of size, color, and shape. Legos instilled in me the power to create my own cities, states, and other kinds of environments. It is cool to think that at such a young age, Legos were causing me to build things and think creatively. I mostly enjoyed building houses and enormously sized cars, probably because I would see them every day in my own world. I would even humanize Barbies and kens to interact in these environments I created to make them seem more legitimate and real.

            Each Lego was red, blue, yellow, green, and sometimes black. My particular collection of Legos came with tires and triangular Legos as well as the typical rectangular or square ones allowing for more leeway for things I could build. My Legoland was far from a real world, but more like a Disneyland with endless amounts of things to do for my inhabiting Barbies in a tiny little Legotown. My sister would join me sometimes in creating this imaginary world, but because she was younger I was constantly overpowering her in the way I wanted things to operate in Legotown, the way they should look, and how we would go about building them. She of course would give in to me as though I was a leader or superior creator of this Legoland. I cherish these times we shared together over planning our new Lego-based civilization and almost wish that we could share a moment like that now because sometimes I feel that the older we grow the more superficial our relationship becomes. 

Favorite Teacher

Last year I participated in an Introduction to Visual Communications course taught by Bill Galyean. The course consisted of the upkeep of a sketchbook in which we would collect all sorts of pieces of visual communication evident in the world around us. There were a variety of sections directing us to look for specific designs evident in society such as typography, signage, and color groups. Galyean is, I assume, nearing sixty years old, and has been involved in the advertising and visual communications business since he left college. He worked for Johnson & Johnson, has hung out with Alfred Hitchcock, and even worked in his own design firm for some time.

            Each day he would inspire us to look to the world around us for inspiration allowing us to notice that everything was designed at some point in time. Galyean served as a source of guidance to me, forcing me to recognize the inherent beauty in product designs, advertising designs, and architectural and environmental designs. He stuck it deep into my brain that the smallest details observed by a designer can make a difference. He introduced me to the Modernist Volkswagen ads and how simplicity is so essential to timeless design. He opened my eye to world as a global embrace of graphic design- Helvetica typefaces are seen through hundreds of corporate logos, street signs, and subway systems and this manipulation of our world to take on an appearance of good design is so crucial to the functionality and contemporary pace of our world.

            This year Galyean mentored me in consulting me on my portfolio for entrance into the Graphic Design Program. A meeting that could have easily lasted about thirty minutes was prolonged to two hours as we ranted on our obsessions with Helvetica Neue fonts, the importance of the simplicity of a concept, and other things, which most people outside of a visual communications career do not see and most of the time understand the beauty of. Galyean pushed me to truly take on graphic design as a way of life, not only a major, and that is what it has become to me. It is difficult for me not to notice a logo on a napkin, a billboard with wrong letterspacing, or a brilliant conceptual idea of a public service advertisement. 

Embarrassing Moment

I will admit that I was a menace in junior school especially when it came to doing anything with my mother. I remember one peculiar day that we were actually getting along like we had been close friends forever so on a whim we decided to go shopping for a white dress I would wear to my nearing eighth grade graduation. Hopping from store to store, there would always be at least one dress to take with me to try on in the dressing room, however, each dress would either be too long, too short, too revealing, or the straps would be too loose, too tight, too thin, or too thick. Sometimes the fit was just odd or the material wasn’t worth the price. It is strange how many dresses can be wrong before a girl can find the right one.

I am sure that I tried on every white dress in every store in the Houston Galleria that day. My mother and I were both on the verge of tearing each other’s heads off with the frustration; I was begging to leave the mall, to put off this misery until a later date, but she was impatient and did not want to put herself through the process again. We stood outside of what seemed it could be the last store we had not been in on Earth and she pointed to a white dress in the back. She grabbed my arm and said, “Come on NOW,” but there was no way in hell that I would dare walk into another fitting room. The way I felt at the time was that this store was one of those mommy-stores, with clothes that only moms can wear, and I was not to be seen wearing ANYTHING from there. She began forcing me into the doorway, pulling me by my shirt collar, my sleeve, and eventually she really shoved me in. She grabbed the dress, which did not come in my size and handed it to me. I placed it back on the rack. She must have picked it up again and I must have put it back again at least one hundred times.

I knew my behavior was childish and stubborn, but I also knew that her strict demand for me to try on a DRESS was insane. Eventually she began screaming at me at the top of her lungs, both of us standing in the middle of the store. When I noticed that the eyes of all of the other customers were fixed on the scene we were causing I allowed her to lead me to the fitting room, but when we got there I tried to explain I really did not like the dress and it was pointless for me to even go through the effort of trying it on. (Funny though, that I went through the effort to NOT put it on.) It was then that she pulled a water bottle from out from her purse and hurled it at my face while yelling at the top of her lungs that I felt she would break a vocal chord. All of the store customers and workers turned pale with their mouths shaped in a perfect O. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.