Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…4 Month

Month the essay that started it all

Earlier this week, my coworkers and I went out for a staff dinner at The Boiling Crab. As the local driving aficionado, I offered to drive and pick up a couple people in my glamorous 2009 Ford Focus that still has the faint smell of a retired U.S. Marine with an addiction to cats and cigarettes, in that order. (I am open to any vacuum recommendations you may have.) As I was about to leave my apartment, I did my obligatory pee-just-in-case and from my more or less hygienically questionable positionality, I texted that I was on the way to pick up my first passenger.

J: okay nat can u give me like 7 minutes dhsjdbje

V: i like that verb

A: Bro fr needa talk to nat more A: I be expanding my vocabulary every time No worries I’ m meandering my way out

To be completely honest, though, my usage of the word “ meandering ” was intended to be more sarcastic. Or funny? I didn ’t get any “haha ” reactions to my message, but at least to me, I thought using an inappropriately long word to say “I’ll take my time ” was more entertaining. In my head, it sounded like I was a cowboy with a twang in his voice–“I–yim may-yan-der-in ’ mye way aht” . Honestly, writing this feels like I’ m painfully trying to explain a joke to a group of friends who are politely entertaining my incoherent thoughts, but at least I can go to sleep tonight knowing I at least tried to explain to my classmates that my intention while texting is not really to use the biggest words possible but to try to make jokes (and end up failing miserably).

Now, writing the aforementioned story within the context of an English class also feels a bit… pretentious? Grandiose? Self congratulatory? Setting high expectations that I will inevitably fail to meet?

One of the more popular (and humbling) methods of vocabulary expansion I’ ve encountered recently is wordle. I’ m someone who does the Wordle, quordle, octordle, sedordle, and semantle as soon as she realizes it is a new day (or 4pm for the semantle). Even if I feel like I have nothing to live for, my will to live can be boiled down to whether or not I have the daily opportunity to stubbornly stare at my screen and be relentlessly humbled by 5 letter words.

Today ’ s Wordle was “ month” .

Though not necessarily a marker of vocabulary expansion, it was nonetheless a humbling experience. I guessed “ monty ” before I guessed “ month” . I don ’t even know what “ monty ” means. All that comes to mind is Monty Python and even then, the only thing I’d be able to tell

you about it is that my brother likes it. Or has talked about it? Or has mentioned it in passing? I don ’t even know. I subsequently tried to guess “ monti” , “ monta ” , “ montu ” , and “ monto ” before even considering “ month” . The only reason I didn ’t max out on guesses was because, while Wordle apparently loves non- American English words (bloke and rupee were equally humbling experiences) it will not accept fake words. Thank God because I could not handle the embarrassment of sending

“ Wordle 263 X/6

to my numerous wordle group chats.

Michael from the Mailroom Inspired by “ smelt”

I once knew this guy named Michael. He worked in the mailroom, and I worked in “housing safety ” , which, for those of you unfamiliar with the housing safety community at UCLA, meant that we were underpaid security guards. During the pandemic, we were security guards, janitor proxies, covid testing assistants, and fillers for the mailroom staff when they had to go off campus to the graduate family housing. Basically, if UCLA Housing & Hospitality was understaffed, we were the bodies that were plugged in so the operation could move along.

Mailroom shifts were my favorite. Before the pandemic hit, I just had to sit at a desk and scan people ’ s cards in and make sure there wasn ’t anybody suspicious. The worst nights were the ones when residents were disrespectful or a freshman vomited at your feet, but honestly, it was a small and easy price to pay to do homework and get a paycheck for doing it. I happily paid the freshman-vomit-tax and got on with my night. $16 an hour PLUS a night shift differential made the midwestern girl I am feel like I was on the fast track to becoming a millionaire.

After the pandemic hit, though, my job became pointless. Though I hesitate to call it generosity on behalf of UCLA, I will say that I was very fortunate to keep my job and therefore a source of income. We worked at night and it wasn ’t pleasant working 30-40 hour work weeks while still in school and rarely seeing the sun, but every time I started drafting my 2 weeks ’ notice, a paycheck would drop and I suddenly didn ’t mind being a cog in a capitalistic machine. But because people moved out of the dorms and those that stayed moved into the dorms that didn ’t require my security guard presence, my coworkers and I were moved elsewhere.

Everyday when we ’d clock in at 8:28pm, 2 minutes before our 8:30pm call time, we ’d speculate about what task we ’d be given for the night. Usually it was patrolling the dorms and making sure there were no suspicious activities or broken lights (It was 97% broken lights, 2% ghost stories, and 1% suspicious activities, but that’ s neither here nor there). But sometimes, we ’d get sent to the mailroom.

I remember the first time I was sent to the mailroom. I’d heard good things about it- how, when the student supervisors were driving, sometimes they ’d stop by 7/11 on the way back and get snacks, and how it was so much more fun and easier than patrolling the hill. Everyone was sitting in the main meeting room waiting for our assignments for the night, and my name was listed under “ mailroom ” on the whiteboard. The pandemic had put everyone into a state of bored monotony, and the novelty of going somewhere that wasn ’t my apartment, the same dorms, or Ralph’ s was exciting.

Everyone hopped in the car, and we started driving. It was dark and I had no idea where we were going, but after about 20 minutes, we arrived in a large condo complex. Our supervisor said “bye ” to us, then drove away. And then it was me and 3 other members of the staff– 2 people from the mailroom who actually knew what they were doing, and two people from housing safety- just here for the vibes. The task was simple. Fedex and Amazon Prime delivery drivers would often drop packages by the P.O. Boxes by the doors leading into the condo complex, but

the packages were getting stolen. So, it was our job to gather the packages and deliver them directly to the door of the address listed on the package. Legal obligations and ethics aside, it was a decently brain- stimulating task that was different from everything I had been doing, and we knew that if we did this quick enough, we could just sit around and talk until our shift was over, or if we walked slowly enough, we ’d be able to justify staying for a long time and therefore not work later. Either way, it was a win.

Like most other jobs of this nature, the most fun parts about it were (1) when we were on the clock but doing nothing and (2) getting to hang out and talk with my coworkers. The great thing about meeting people at a job is that, unlike clubs or classes, the thing that brought you together wasn ’t necessarily a common hobby, interest or passion. Or at least not in the traditional sense. What’ s great is that the thing that brought you together is your common interest in money. Everything else is up for debate and the people I met on the job were people I would’ ve never met otherwise. And everyone was so incredibly interesting. I heard about the drama in people ’ s lives (anything from annoying roommates to shocking life stories), the covid scares, their favorite music, and everything in between. When our phones died, there was nothing better to do than to pick the brain of the person you were standing next to, and the people I was surrounded by were so incredibly interesting.

Michael was on the mailroom staff. I didn ’t know him well, but all I knew was that he seemed like a pretty chill dude and everyone got along with him. Though people would often have really interesting conversations with each other, tonight was a more reticent night when the most interesting topic of conversation were our greetings to each other and then we ’d go on TikTok or Twitter. But when we got picked up to go back to campus after our shift, everyone suddenly got more talkative. It might’ ve been my supervisor ’ s presence, or something else- I don ’t know.

But Michael’ s friend who was the other person on mailroom staff who was present casually mentioned that Michael’ s didn ’t have a sense of smell. This was before losing your sense of smell was a classic indicator of having covid- so our initial reaction wasn ’t one of “ oh shit get away from me, ” it was one of genuine interest and intrigue. And also, because it was about 1 or 2 in the morning, a little bit of ridicule. I was sitting shotgun, and my supervisor and I could just not stop laughing. Let me be clear- we weren ’t laughing at Michael. We were laughing at all the things he started telling us after his friend mentioned his lack of smell.

We were about half way back to the dorms- home base- and we started bombarding the poor man with questions. We found out that he had never had a sense of smell, so he didn ’t know that he didn ’t have that sense until well into his elementary school years. He and his classmates had gone to a museum that talked about the 5 senses, and at the smell booth, when a scent would be released, it was the students ’ job to correctly identify the smell. Something about picturing small, 7-year-old Michael looking at his options and frantically choosing “lemon ” for a smell that was, to everyone else, clearly coffee, was hysterical, and my supervisor and I cried with laughter.

As I walked home that morning, though, I started thinking of the times where the random question had been posed, “If you had to lose one of your five senses, which would it be?” And rather quickly, the answer I’d give (and hear) most often would be smell. Smell is the most

underrated of all five of our senses, and I’ll tell you why. When I think of losing my sense of smell, I think of losing my ability to smell pine trees, freshly cut grass, and the smell of the promise of rain in the midwest. I think of losing the ability to smell garlic and onions being fried up and the smell of a pie in the oven. As romantic and as beautiful as these things are, I do not think of losing my ability to smell a possible fire. Or to smell rotting food. Or the myriad of other smell- related red flags that help our survival. I also don ’t think of the prank potential that Michael illuminated to me and everyone in the car: the ability to fart around others and not suffer the consequences. To drop bombs and still be standing after they blow. Also a poetic and slightly romantic way to view it. They always say, whoever smelt it dealt it but if that’ s true, if you can ’t smelt it, you couldn ’t have dealt it.

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