My desire to live in a storage unit and other bizarre fantasies…

To put it blatantly, my life is stranger than fiction. In my 23 and 5/6 years on this planet, I have been involved in quite the many odd, ridiculous, baffling, bizarre and CRAZY situations. I can blame these instances on chance, but in all actuality, I have been the one steering the wheel when it comes to the epic journey of my so-called-life. (Hi, Claire Danes!) I have no one to credit but myself, a few bottles of whiskey and an over active imagination. From cops in hotel rooms, russian ballerinas, adopting manatees, fake news stories, exploring the Chancellor’s boardroom at Wash U, befriending homeless men named Cookie, legally spray-painting a house in Ladue, to countless inappropriate encounters I should never discuss on the internet, I have experienced more  ”you won’t believe what happened last-nights” than your average 20-something. I’d like to say this is because I get bored easily and need to find creative ways to entertain myself. I also like to say it’s all for the story and one day I’ll write all about my adventures Hunter S. Thompson style minus the drugs. But whatever is the culprit, my mind comes up with a lot of silly stuff and I usually find a way to do these things by the means of fate or by sheer determination alike.

However, there is also a lot of silly stuff I have come up with that I HAVEN’T had a chance to accomplish. Yet. So in this post, I wanted to let you into my mind and share with you some outlandish notions I’ve come up with over the years. Here we go.

1. Live/party in a storage unit.

Growing up, my grandfather owned a storage unit in Arnold, Missouri as one of his independent endeavors. I never got to visit that storage unit, but the constant talk about this money-maker left me intrigued. There was also a storage unit, Uncle Bob’s Self Storage to be exact, located just a mile from my house right next to the McDonald’s. And I loved McDonald’s growing up so we would always pass Uncle Bob’s on weekly ice cream cone and Big Mac runs. Then, during the summers in college when I would move back home with my parents, I actually became the proud renter of a storage unit at Uncle Bob’s in order to store all my shit from previous dorm rooms/apartments. WIN.

Honestly, how cool would it be to actually live in a storage unit? You may not have thought about it before, but believe me, I have, especially now that I’m back home with my parents for an ambivalent period of my current/future existence. Storage units are private, spacious, safe and secure, and no one would really know if you decided to just shack up in one of these make-shift apartments. Ok, there are a few logistical problems, such as ventilation, dining, plumbing and parking, but what if you could strike a deal with the storage unit owners and have them install windows, air condition units, a kitchenette and a toilet in your new humble abode?! Think about how many poor post-grads would be saved! And if living in a storage unit turns out to be mere pipe dream, as I assume it is in a sensical world, what about just partying in one? Yeah that could definitely happen. Give your friends the access code to the main gate, tell them how to navigate to your individual unit (pink padlock, three rows down, on the right), and it’s time to get rowdy. High schoolers, I just have found your ultimate solution to avoiding parentals and the liquor patrol. Party at Uncle Bob’s next weekend? Bring the Bacardi.

Welcome home.

2. Streak across the Arch grounds.

I have never been streaking. But if I’m ever going to go streaking, I’m going to do it up Big Willie Style. (Yes, that was a Will Smith reference. Love it.) What better place to pull out all the stops than at our city’s landmark claim-to-fame? I’m taking my naked ass down to the levee one day and there better be pictures. Fuck kids jumping in front of the arch, the view of the old courthouse, or tourist portraits from across the river. I’ll give you something to put on a postcard. HOLLER!

Welcome to St. Louis. The home of exhibitionism.

3. Somehow travel to a random village in the Northern Territories of Canada and live in an igloo.

I have a slight obsession with Google Earth. It’s like the granddaddy of all things maps and I love maps and geography almost as much as I love manatees. I was a precocious little one, memorizing states and their capitols by the age of four, staring at the globe and putting thumbtacks in all the places I’d want to visit someday, including the Easter Islands and the Bikini Islands, just for their namesake if anything else. When Google Earth came out a few years back I about orgasmed in my pants and subsequently spent a great deal of time researching and finding oddities around the globe. One of my biggest fascinations would have to be with the Northwest Territories of Canada. What the fuck are people thinking living up there? Not only is it like -10000 degrees, there are no Chipotles let alone Taco Bells, and finding warmth/food/shelter doesn’t really sound like a cake walk. But people still live up there despite these depressing formalities+threats of being a polar bear’s lunch. Maybe they just decided to take a walk North one day and never stopped. Anyway, who knows how they got up there, they’re Canadian and that’s enough of an answer for me.

Polar bears wear crowns up here. Because they rule.

That being said, the one perk about living in the middle of frozen nowhere is this: IG-FUCKIN-LOOS. Every little kid has dedicated countless snow days trying to perfect the amateur igloo. Igloos are badass, no denying that one. They are like caves for humans, except man-made and AWESOME. I’d like to compare the igloo to its desert sister, the pyramid, when it comes to architectural mastery. Block after block of just basic precipitation to form a HOUSE? I think I might have found the 8th wonder of the world. So if anyone has a Eskimo cousin with a little puddle-jumper plane that can fly to Northern Canada, hook me up and let’s get our igloo on.

I did some interior decorating.

4. Seduce a celebrity.

This won’t be hard. I’m taking applications. B list and above only, please. No STDs, no one over 50 unless you are Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere or Burt Reynolds, and you gotta pay for dinner. Thanks.

5. Steal a baby for a day then give it back.

Before I go into explanation, please don’t think I’m a psycho who will eventually be seen on Americas Most Wanted or TMZ. I would never kidnap a child, ever, but I do wonder what it would be like to have a kid for a day and tell everyone it is mine. “Yeah, this is my kid, yadda yadda. Yeah, I love being a mom, it’s sooooo great!” So, in actuality, I would borrow a baby for a day, but only with permission from the real mommy. I’m getting to the age where, slowly but surely, my biological clock is starting to tick. When half of my friends on facebook are in their late 20s-early 30s and are popping them little monkeys out like bunny rabbits (I swear, every other day there is a new set of baby photos from a new set of parents on my news feed) it’s kind of a strange feeling. Part of me wants to join the crowd (only temporarily, like renting a DVD), and part of me wants to strangle every pregnant/new mother on facebook. Then I listen to Garfunkel and Oates and the world is right again.

No can steal. This chunk might be a little too hard to lift out of a stroller.

6. Know who will attend my funeral.

I’ve thought about this one for a while, since I started attending funerals myself, so I guess around 10 or so. I don’t want to die anytime soon, I’ve got a lot of things I need to accomplish, such as everything on this list, but I say I die tomorrow? (Car accident, poisoned by a deadly burrito, sleep-walking into the hole in my backyard that isn’t exactly a pool yet and cracking my head open, etc.) Needless to say, I’m insanely curious: who will come to my funeral? Will my parents go through my blackberry and facebook and post on twitter and this blog that I died? Who will give my eulogy? Will my brother be able to get back from Spain before my rigor mortis sets in? Will there be public service announcements sent out from the organizations in which I’m involved? Will Kristin Flach, the little girl from down the street growing up, know I’m dead and even consider coming? Will my first boyfriend? Will my first enemy? Will my professors and advisors from Wash U? From high school? Can prisoners get special privileges to attend funerals? Can my dogs be at the service? Will my casket be pink and bedazzled? Will you be there?  If I have a say in anything, however, I want there to be a huge party afterwards and I will mandate that every girlfriend of mine has a hayday shopping in my closets until they are empty.

I want this one. After it's been encrusted with diamonds.

7. Go gold hunting.

The San Francisco ’49ers. The Gold Rush. Strike it Rich. The Oregon Trail computer game circa 4th grade. Becoming a professional gold hunter sounds like the most fun anyone could have if they are bored out of their mind and want to keep being ridiculous for the rest of their lives. I feel like this some days, so why not be productive about it and have a goal in reach and have that goal be GOLD? I’m not crafty enough to rob Fort Knox, but I have watched a few National Geographic specials about panning for gold in the woods and I think I could definitely make a day out of treasure huntin’. The American dream at it’s finest? I think so.

If Santa helped you find gold, you'd be down. I know it.

8. Live in a treehouse.

If you haven’t already noticed, most of my bizarre fantasies center around residing in odd locations. Here’s another to add to the list: a treehouse! Koalas live in trees, so why can’t we? Aside from the obvious and necessary (plumbing, kitchen, comfort, heat), I don’t see a problem living high in the sky amongst the birds and bees. I think a lot of people also harbor this fantasy because Frank Lloyd Wright would not have been considered such a phenom in our culture today if it weren’t for some of his masterfully outlandish “tree houses” that are nestled securely in various woods around our country. But I’d like to live in a real treehouse, like old-school, really cool, no-boys-allowed style. I’ll bring my Easy Bake oven if need be.

Epic.

9. Have sex in said storage unit/on the Arch grounds/igloo/treehouse/bangbus.

There are obvious accomplishment/thrill seeking pros to this fantasy. I’m sort of an exhibitionist and my heart is racing just thinking about all the possibilities. But alas, here are the cons:

suffocation/arrest/frostbite on the nether regions/splinters/end of career in politics.

10. Keep finding more bizarre things to add to my list.

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

Word,

bingbangbus