Orange Juice

An ordinary person living an ordinary life. A single speck in the vastness of space. A single grain of sand among the billions on shore. A being trying to find her place in this world.

�Hey, Whatever�
Westlife
Well I can�t control the universe/Cause I�m only a man
And I�ve been reading the papers/But they won�t tell me who I am
If you really need a new philosophy/Well there�s one that makes sense
The one I profess but I say/Hey, whatever
Let your beauty come alive/Let your color fill the sky
And say, whatever/Why don�t you liberate your mind/Let your color fill the sky
All the world�s a waiting room/And we�re standing in line
For the answers to the question/�What makes this fine?�
Don�t let them change your story/Won�t let them change your song
Don�t let the gurus and philosophers lead you on
Hey, whatever/ Let your beauty come alive
Let your color fill the sky/And say, whatever
Why don�t you liberate your mind/Let your color fill the sky
It�s like taking a seat at the roulette table/Just spinning the wheels
Good or bad just take what comes/Don�t change how you feel
Youre a champion of science/Or are y�just some freak show�s fool
What cannot be proved, no no/Can still be true
And I say/ Hey, whatever
Let your beauty come alive/Let your color fill the sky
And say, whatever/Why don�t you liberate your mind/Let your color fill the sky
Hey, Whatever!

Lavender Walls, Bald Barbies and Painful Doses of Disney
Tales Under My Red Painted Sky


When I was a little girl, my parents must have thought that I was lacking some screws in the head. Yeah, I was that weird. Looking back, I think that I, myself, knew that I was different from all of my playmates, may they be boys or girls. I was unlike any of the other kids in the sense that I never did anything the normal way, the expected way. Whatever I do, I did it to the extremes. I guess what worried my parents the most back then was not the fact that I hated Hello Kitty but that I loathed both Hello Kitty and toy cars. Don�t get me wrong, I loved playing with my toys. Perhaps the way that I played with them was what worried my parents, particularly my mama, greatly. My favorite toy, like all other little girls, was Barbie. Whenever I asked my parents to buy me the latest edition of Barbie, instead of scolding me, they actually looked relieved. Finally, I was showing some signs of normality. I remember one time when my papa gave me this complete Barbie set, you know, the ones that came with a wardrobe, a kitchen and a car. Yeah, so anyway, I wasn�t remotely interested with the accessories to be completely honest but not wanting to look ungrateful, I smiled politely as papa enthusiastically explained how to work Barbie�s oven. Finally, when I was allowed to go play, I took my new Barbie with me and promptly forgot to bring the other toys along. When my parents saw that, they went on to take the rest of my toys inside my toy room. I�m guessing that they had the shock of their lives when they saw Barbie, all 12 or something versions of her, mutilated. I suppose that I can�t really fault my parents for being annoyed with me there and then. Barbie is not the cheapest of toys and to find all of them bald and without their limbs, well, I think that didn�t sit well with them. I have to applaud papa though, with how he handled the situation. Instead of blowing up in anger, he calmly asked me to go to the dining room and wait for them there. I knew I was in for a long sermon because the dining table, other than serving as a dining table, also served as our conference table. However, when my parents finally arrived, papa uttered a simple �Why?�. So, shrugging, I was already in trouble anyway, I told them the truth. My toy room was an asylum/hospital, the Barbies were my patients and I operated on them. They asked me if I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, I said I was too young to know what I wanted to be. Mama said that maybe I wanted to be a doctor because why else would I want to operate on Barbie. I thought that was silly and I told them so. I operated on Barbie because I wanted to see if they are any different from one another under all of their costumes, I cut off all of their hair because I accidentally burned cowgirl Barbie�s and it seemed rude of me if, upon finding out that they are all carbon copies of one another, allowed such blunder to make one Barbie different from all the others. After that explanation, my parents decided to leave me and my Barbie asylum/hospital issue alone.
Another favorite of mine was Disney. I love watching movies and when papa saw that, I think he took it as an encouragement to give �Project Normal OJ� another shot. I was about 7 years old then and I think my parents got me wrong when I wrote �Disney Movies� in my best friend�s autograph book. I guess it was my own doing when I didn�t elaborate that Disney Movies meant Lion King, Bambi and Parent Trap, not Disney Princesses. Alas, I did not have the heart to tell them I only partially liked Belle. When my 8th birthday arrived, I finally had to burst my parents� bubbles when they planned a Disney Princess theme for my party. When they asked me why I wanted a Loony Tune party instead of the planned Disney, I told them I was going through a phase of corporate disloyalty and has decided to switch from Walt to Warner. When they looked at me disbelievingly I added that I hated Arial because she was too nosey and selfish, Cinderella because she was weird (anyone who talks to rats counted as a loony in my book), Aurora because she�s so useless that all she ever did in the film was to sleep and get kissed by Phillip, and Snow White because she�s plain stupid and her voice was irritating. For my 8th birthday, my classmates ate McDonald�s for lunch, my family had a birthday dinner at Steak Town and I got hooked on the Back to the Future series.
The one last time my parents decided to try to convert me was when our current house was being built. My sister was born earlier that year and my parents decided that a change of scenery was in order. That change included having my own sleeping room and relegating the toy room as my sister�s playroom. When we were visiting the house, the decorator saw me and to my horror, enthusiastically lectured me about the different shades of pink that they would be painting my new room with. I told my parents that if they painted my walls pink, I would gladly take residence in the basement until the time they deem it acceptable to have my own say on what color my room should be. Exasperated, papa told the workers to coat the guest room pink and use the blue paint in mine. Then, he turned to me and told me, sarcastically might I add, that the color has been adjusted to my liking and that there was no need to camp in the basement. I frowned at his tone and told him that the only color I hated more than pink was blue. My mom interfered before any real damage was done. When I was given the permission to choose my room�s color, I proceeded to bug the decorator about the different shades of violet. I settled for lavender walls, mama was worried that my room might end up too dark and I suppose it was reasonable coming from a woman who agreed to have her bedroom painted egg yellow, and my poor little sister got saddled with all the pink paint.
A friend of mine once commented that I was too Emo because of my affinity to black clothes. I raised my brows and showed her my complete collection of the boyband Westlife�s albums. A friend asked me one particular question out of the blue. She asked me if whether I�m just shy or if I just don�t like socializing that much. Another friend joked that I have a superiority complex going on so I stuck out my tongue and told her that I just don�t like talking to people, except for my friends, very much. However, what my other friend said really got me thinking about my own life and it convinced my to focus about that aspect of me and use it in this reflection paper. Hey, Whatever is a song about shrugging off other people�s expectations and refusing to conform to the demands of the society. While I was pondering about my life, I think I saw glimpses of what my friend called as my �superiority complex�. Even at a young age, I thought of myself as somebody above things as mundane as Hello Kitty and Barbie. For me, there has always been a deeper purpose for why I do the things I do. I did to my Barbies what I did because I wanted to prove that behind their plastic smiles and fabulous clothes, there was something that identified each one of them from the rest. I hated the Disney Princesses not because I was a cynical brat who disliked happy endings but because they, in all their faults and artificiality, kept on convincing the world that there is always a happy ending. Finally, I love my lavender wall because it defied the unwritten rule that pink is the only color for girls and rebelling against that would require you to like blue. I realize now that all of my quirks only served to fuel my drive for individuality. As a teenager, I never followed any trends (Harry Potter is so not included �) and the only expected thing I did was when I smoked as a sign of teenage rebellion, and doing that only gave me pneumonia. All around, cultures such as Indie, Punk and Emo emerged and people were drawn towards that because they love the thought of rebelling against the mainstream of society. I scoffed at their so-called cultures because of the sheer hypocrisy of what they represent. To have to conform to liking a particular something in order to join a revolt against the very idea of conformity is, for me, simply ridiculous. Those people are so in love with the idea of rebellion that they never realize that they are only falling for another one of society�s schemes in luring her people back like sheep reprimanded for straying too far from the herd. When I think of this, I find a reason to justify my sense of superiority. I was never a part of any rebellion against the mainstream because of the simple reason that I was never a part of the mainstream to begin with. I didn�t have an urge to fight against conformity because right from the start, I never really learned the meaning of it. I am a walking contradiction because as I said, I was born to do things to the extremes. My tastes in life are all clashing and opposite of each other in the sense that I love boybands and pop music but I prefer black to pastel. That for me is the true meaning of unconformity. Under my red painted sky are tales of bald Barbies, lavender walls and painful doses of Disney. Those stories defined my individuality. I may be plain, weird, or boring, but I�ll take that any day over being a trendy carbon copy of everyone else because it means I am being me. Then again, that�s just me talking. If being a part of the bandwagon is what other people want, then what can I say but; Hey, Whatever!