This is not about Pepsi.

Once I had this babysitter, I can’t remember her name because she only babysat a few times when I was in the fourth grade. I don’t know where my mom found her, only that I thought she was cool. She was eighteen or nineteen I think, and would talk to me about things well beyond my years. My dad did that, too, but he did it in a way that made me feel like I was supposed to take care of him. She did it like she was letting me in on a secret.

She told me making out with guys was great, and she also really liked to make out with girls, but “no one will ever get you off the way you get yourself off.” I had no clue what she was talking about, but nodded seriously because I wanted her to think I was cool, too. She also told me mixing Pepsi and milk together was the greatest thing ever, and when she found out I’d never partaken, she said she’d bring Pepsi with her next time she came over.

I’m pretty sure she was from the midwest and going to Hunter College in NYC. She called Pepsi pop and thought it funny I called it soda. The next time she babysat, she remembered the Pepsi, and after my mom and stepdad left, we went running to the kitchen. She poured half a glass of milk into a glass, and then Pepsi. It fizzed like a science experiment, and bubbled up over the sides in a way I knew my mother would find appalling, so I quickly held the glass over the sink.

Photo by Iulia Buta on Unsplash

She didn’t worry about things like spilling soda on the floor, but that was the kind of stuff that would make my mom very angry, so I worried for the both of us. Then she told me to gulp it, so I did, but I was shocked by how bubbly it was and snorted as I swallowed, and the Pepsi-milk combo came pouring out of my nose. We laughed so hard I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

Memory is so funny, isn’t it? The things that stand out, the people you remember. I think the third time she babysat was the last time. We were having a concert in the living room - her idea - getting up and lip syncing into a hairbrush. She’d let me put on my mom’s lipstick and a pair of heels, and we were taking turns singing songs when I heard my mom and stepdad coming in the front door. I knew I was supposed to be asleep, but she didn’t seem concerned.

I remember how I froze in terror and looked at her, and then stepped out of the heels and grabbed them, and raced for my mom’s bedroom, going as quickly as I could while still being quiet. Speed-racing on my tiptoes. I put my mom’s heels in her closet, right where they belonged, and then raced to my room, flipping my bedroom light off as I went, jumping into bed and pulling the covers over me, heart racing.

I heard her laughing in the living room, and telling my mom I had just run into the bedroom to pretend I was asleep. I think in her mind it was not a big deal that I was up past my bedtime, she thought my mother would laugh along with her, but she didn’t know my mother. There was just silence. I knew I’d never see her again, and I knew I would be in trouble for trying to protect her.

You did not break rules in my mother’s house. You did not spill soda on the floor, or snort it through your nose and laugh when it spilled all over the front of your shirt. You did not defy instructions about bedtime, even on a Friday night. You did not make out with boys and girls. There were prescribed things one did and did not do.

I can still almost taste the Pepsi-milk and feel the way it burned the inside of my nose, even though I only had it the one time. I can see the sitter’s freckles and curly red hair, the way she threw her head back when she laughed, the way she adjusted her boobs right in front of me like it was no big deal, and then winked. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do a lot of squealing and laughing as a kid, or maybe it’s because I needed someone to tell me it was okay to break the rules - good, even. She was something like what I imagined a big sister would be, even if I only spent a few nights with her.

She’s probably post-menopausal now. She could be anywhere. I’m not going to let my mind wander to the million things that might have happened to her, because everything feels fragile right now, and I’m trying hard to hold onto some hope. I’m actively avoiding thoughts of women walking home alone at night with keys lodged between their fingers. Maybe she’s setting the table in her house in Idaho, waiting for her kids and grandkids to show up. Or maybe her wife is singing something loudly and off-key in the other room, and she’s laughing to herself, thinking, oh, well, at least she knows how to get me off.

I’m trying to hold onto that win in Wisconsin, and Cory Booker’s 25-hour, record-breaking good-trouble-making, voice-busting last stand. He must be tired, but in that way where you feel good, like you did something meaningful. That after-a-marathon feeling. I’m trying to hold onto the wins because I know when I’m struggling, or feeling a little too much despair, and I’m teetering on the edge today.

I know how to spot the signs - when things I would normally brush off take on more charge than they should, that’s a sign. When I take something personally that I know in my heart has nothing much to do with me, that’s another one. When things that are wrong are pulling on me harder than things that are right, when I wake up and realize I’m going to have to expend a lot of energy in an effort just to be okay, that is definitely a sign. I also have my period, and I spent the last couple of days pretty much done in by a migraine, so hormones are also in the mix.

I will share that I have been on 25mg of Topamax daily for the last few months, and am basically getting one migraine with my cycle (assuming I have a cycle, which you can’t assume when you’re in perimenopause - but, Topamax has been life-changing and I share this in case it’s helpful. Have not had a migraine cluster since I started). Bottom line, the last couple of days haven’t been the easiest for many reasons, and I’m working hard to do the things I need to do.

Enter a woman I don’t know who left a comment under an essay of mine yesterday morning. She said she clicked on it because the title is/was The Eagle Has Landed. It’s about the Big Bear Bald Eagle Nest Cam - Jackie and Shadow and their chicks (who have grown an incredible amount if you haven’t tuned in for a while), but also the shit-show that is our government right now. The Bald Eagle being the national symbol of the United States, and the “accomplished mission” being the havoc that has been/is being wrought by these truly awful people and their cult leader at the helm. It wasn’t about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, so this woman was disappointed. She said my title was misleading and it felt like “clickbait” and the kind of trick used by mainstream media (MSM). Which is why I felt I’d better tell you in my title today, this essay is not about Pepsi.

I’m too tired for this kind of thing, is the thing. Clickbait is generally some salacious or provocative title designed to get people to click for engagement so MSM can prove it’s worthwhile for corporations to buy ad space from them because of all the traffic they generate. Even if I were trying to attract people to my essay by pretending it was about Neil Armstrong, that would be pretty lame clickbait. I’d probably do better if I called it How to Survive a Self-Coup or What to Watch as America Burns or Why Bernie Sanders Turns Me On.

No doubt, there are a ton of incredible writers on Substack and I do want people to read my essays, so I try to think of cool or interesting titles, but I don’t want to pick titles that are going to piss people off. What would the point be? They’ll never come back again. It’s not like anyone is buying ad space from me.

Normally if a stranger comments under a post in a way that feels odd or unnecessarily aggressive, it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to get to me, but these aren’t normal times, and I wish we could all be a little gentler with one another. But I should take my own advice, right? Be the change and all that. Maybe that woman was having a tough day, too. Maybe she can’t believe what we’re dealing with right now, and she left a kind of crappy comment making kind of crappy assumptions about me and my motivations because she was having a bad moment.

But I responded off the cuff, I wasn’t particularly yogic about it, and then I felt sorry and wondered if she was having a hard time, so I went back and softened my response a little. These are the kind of mental machinations I go through these days, maybe you relate. I worry about people. We’re all just doing the best we can. There is an autogolpe going on right here. Some of you Gen Xers may be hearing Kool and the Gang in your heads, or maybe that’s just me. There’s no song about it, nothing we studied in school that prepared us for this moment, nothing we’ve seen in the movies - not the way this one has unfolded.

There are people who are going to make you laugh until there’s Pepsi-milk pouring out your nose, and people who are going to kick you in the teeth, and when your government is on fire and it’s hard to get through the day, you probably want to head for the Pepsi-milk folks as much as you can. Nonetheless, I’m trying to give everyone extra slack. Sometimes I get into this weird thing where I wonder if I’m giving people too much slack, though. I’ve done that before in my personal life, but not for a long time. I used to have a hard time figuring out the line between having compassion for people, and accepting or justifying shitty treatment because of someone’s trauma. Say hello to every relationship I had in my twenties and thirties. Hi, let’s never do that again! I worked that out when I realized most of us have trauma - I certainly do - but I don’t use that to give myself a free pass to treat people without kindness or respect. That isn’t who I want to be.

You never know who might have wept at the kitchen sink five minutes ago, in the middle of doing the dishes, overcome by grief. I think that’s especially true in this country these days. I’d like to be someone who makes the day a little better if I possibly can, who gives that person a reason to have a tiny glimmer of hope. When I’m really on my game, I try to do that by giving people the benefit of the doubt, even strangers on the internet, and certainly people I care about.

So, there are certain waters I’ve been navigating that I wouldn’t normally, or things I’d usually perceive as signs a person doesn’t want to hear from me, that I’ve been tracking as maybe they just can’t communicate right now. Who knows what anyone is doing anymore? Also, people have their own shit going on and assuming and projecting will get you into trouble every time. I think I’ve hit that point where I just have to take things at face value, though. I’m too tired to do all the work, make up stories, make things make sense. Some things you just have to let go, and trust if anything of value is there, you aren’t going to be the only person who cares. One thing I think you can count on - people do what they want to do. If a person cares about you, it isn’t going to be hard to tell.

A lot of things become clear when you just look at what people do. Words are easy, people can say anything, but actions tell the tale. Back when I used to try to have conversations with people who voted for the current administration in an attempt to get them to please not do that, they’d say things like, “What’s so bad about Roe being overturned? We’re just going to leave it to the states now. We believe in small government, it’s good for each state to decide what it wants to do.”

Okay, so two things:

1. Georgia is now arresting women for having miscarriages and contemplating the death penalty for women who have abortions

2. The Department of Justice is investigating the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department because they’ve decided the citizens of Los Angeles County are having to wait too long for their concealed weapons permits.

So let’s get this straight. Small government, “up to the states” when it comes to what rights you have as a girl or a woman in this country, but goddammit, when it comes to the right to carry a concealed weapon, you will process those permits right-quick or Trump and Bondi will turn the DOJ on your blue state faster than you can say thoughts and prayers! God knows, what we need in this country is more guns!!! Got it.

Other new rules appear to be First Amendment rights for hate speech on X and meta platforms, but no due process for people with green cards and permanent legal residence anymore. Oops, what’s that? ICE made a “clerical error” and an innocent man is in a mega prison in El Salvador? Yikes, that is some error! Sounds like he has a five-year-old who really needs him home, and no criminal record. Surely Kristi Noem can put on a skin-tight top and baseball hat, get her extensions curled, and take another tax-payer flight to CECOT? Get all the prisoners to strip down illegally for a photo-op, and bring the man home - seeing as how he was denied due process in the first place? I’m sorry, what was that you said? You’re powerless to do anything?

The good news is I’m not spending time arguing with people who want to pretend any of this is okay. If you can watch the POTUS and crew threaten Greenland, alienate us from our closest neighbors Canada and Mexico, make the EU wonder if we’ve lost our minds, fire the scientists who were tracking measles, cut funding for pediatric cancer and other cancer research, fire air traffic controllers, USAID workers, discuss war plans on a commercial app that’s already been hacked while one person was in Russia and another in Asia (and then exchange fist-bump emojis after children died), if you can watch every single marginalized group of people feel afraid for their lives and their rights, watch the economy nosedive as tariffs are placed on everyone including penguins, and still think this is good because you are getting something you want - there’s no bridge we can stand on together. So at least I know that. I know who my friends are, and that’s always good information to have. You always want to know who has your back.

Knowing who has your back makes it easier on the hard days. You have someone to message when you get a weird comment under an essay (hi, Kate, lol). You have someone to reach out to when you have an idea for a cool collaboration (hi, Paul, see how I just threw this in here as a tiny little teaser? I’m super excited). You have people to call (hi Dani, I love you so much) when you just need a voice on the other end of the phone, someone to tell you it’s going to be okay, even if you know that they aren’t totally sure it will be themselves.

You take turns holding each other up when it gets hard. That’s what a community is, and you don’t get to have one when you only think about what’s good for you. Seems like some folks need to find out the hard way. For the rest of y’all, let me know when you need me to ride up with the Pepsi and milk. See you on the streets Saturday.

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