20 Things I Have Learned Recently

1) Do not buy eggs at Whole Foods. Eggs are cheapest at Target, but the quality of produce is much better at Whole Foods. They also have good ready-made dinners when you are too lazy to cook like eight salmon rolls for $10.99. So does Trader Joes, but only go there in the middle of the day because, after work, the line snakes through the aisles and makes it impossible to shop—and, if you try to shop while you’re in line, the employees will yell at you.

2) You will not be able to buy tickets to the NIT Tournament because it is no longer located in Madison Square Garden. However, you can go to Barclays Center for $40 and watch four back-to-back games of Atlantic 10 playoffs. There will be lots of summer camps there and alumni of schools that you will have never heard of, but you and your brother will choose teams to root for based on their mascots and colors and you will have more fun than if you went to a Nets game. It is worth it to call in sick to work and watch the last game, in which Duquesne University wins in double overtime, because you cannot put a price on memories.

3) Sometimes the things that bring you joy will no longer bring you joy, but that does not mean that you should give up on them. Just wait. It is okay to move past things and return to them—to write a book, hate it, and then rewrite it three years later—and it is okay to feel like life is not going your way. No one eats their favorite food every day; no one is happy every second of their life.

4) Duquesne University is pronounced doo kayn and is in Pittsburgh.

5) Don’t date someone at work.

6) One of the people who saved thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking was a Nazi. His name was John Rabe and, because his swastika armband made him immune to the wrath of Chinese soldiers, he was one of the few people who could walk the streets of Nanking safely. He would go on hour-long walks nearly every day and, when he heard someone getting raped, would rush to their assistance branding the Hindu symbol of peace.

7) In Sweden, it is considered impolite to sit next to someone on a bus even if there are no other free seats available. It is more socially acceptable to stand than to force someone to exist next to you for however long you are traveling.

8) People will not hate you if you let them read what you’ve written, even those that you love most in the world. Especially them.

9) Cry. Cry if your future slips through your hands one rejection at a time. Cry if you see someone almost get pushed in front of a subway. Cry when all of your hoodies are dirty except for the only article of clothing that you did not throw out when you broke up with your ex. Cry when the hoodie does not smell like him anymore. Cry walking home from a concert where the singer is a thirty-year-old man singing about how his inability to be vulnerable with his significant others is what has made him eternally single. Cry when you can’t think of the right word to describe something. Cry when you finish writing a story. Cry when you have to delete an analogy that you love because the plot makes more sense without it. Cry at the ending of Lilo & Stitch. Cry if your friend’s cat crawls into your lap over everyone else’s at her birthday party. Cry if you see a balding man in jeans and a blue t-shirt lingering outside of your work. Cry when you cut your palm and cry when the police tell you that, because you don’t know his name and weren’t seriously injured when he tried to grab your wrist and you fell, they cannot do anything. Cry alone in your room, into the shoulder of a friend’s leather jacket after a long day, in the morning when it rains too hard for you to leave your apartment, in the silence as you hang up on your brother, and on a bench in Central Park. Cry for no reason whatsoever or over the crippling weight of everything. Cry silent tears that move down your face in two prim lines. Cry so hard that you throw up or so soft that it sounds like a cough. Don’t think of yourself and your emotions as a burden. Take up space. Cry, if you want to. Or don’t.

10) On weekends, the Q train is, for no apparent reason, replaced by N trains that run as Q trains.

11) You cannot bring a backpack to an Islanders game. You will overestimate how much strength you need to open a heavy door on the LIRR and will end up slicing off your pinky’s knuckle. Your blood will stain your pants. The bathrooms in UBS Arena have exclusively hand dryers but if you wrap your wound in napkins that you swipe from a concessions stand, the wound will stop bleeding and you can go back to watching hockey with your brother.

12) Picking random teams in your March Madness bracket will be more successful than if you do research; your mother chose her winner in minutes and ended up 814th out of 25 million brackets.

13) Embarrass yourself in front of people that you are never going to see again.

14) When you are having a panic attack, put an ice cube in your mouth and count how long it takes for it to melt. It will distract you from wanting to scratch off your own skin, which is a fear that was tattooed into your brain inadvertently by your mother when she was having a panic attack in front of you.

15) The President’s Cup is an award given to the hockey team that finishes the regular season with the best record. Last year, the Boston Bruins won it, setting the NHL’s record for wins and points in a season, but lost in the first round of the playoffs. They have never won the President’s Cup and the Stanley Cup in the same season, nor are they the only team to wrestle with this curse; eight teams have, after winning the regular season, lost in the first round of the playoffs.

16) A chassis is the part of a car that supports its weight. Most Formula 1 teams would have an extra, but the underfunded ones do not have spares of every part. If a team can only enter one car into a race, they can choose the driver that is the reason for their entering one car (because he broke his car’s chassis by crashing during a practice session). You do not believe in rooting against people in sports, but you make an exception for the unfairness of this—however logical it may be—and you will tiredly cheer at two in the morning when Williams’ lone driver scores no points.

17) Even though a billboard outside of your work praises the Saudi Arabian city of Al-Ula as being forever revitalizing, it is cursed. Its people used to worship idols, even after a prophet was sent to tell them to correct their ways. In 2018, the House of Saud decided that they were going to market the city to non-Muslims who care more about a beautiful desert than they do an idolatry-based curse—hence the ad.

18) You are still fun sober.

19) Being a writer means that you spend days becoming an expert in everything. Facts about your neighborhood and the sports that sap up your nights muddy your thoughts, constantly wounded hands (thanks to your inability to open doors, run away from stalkers, and read Japanese history books without getting paper cuts), scratchy voice memos riddled with sirens, conversations with friends who must be sick of listening to you rant by now, and fractured dreams that you never remember. You will never be able to share everything you want to with the world but if you keep writing, hopefully everything will have a home. Perhaps the twenty-first thing that you will learn is that if you keep living, hopefully you will have a home.

20) Jonas Reinholdsson and Anne O'Leary fell in love in the late 1980’s and, when they returned to his home country of Sweden, they opened up a Boston-themed sports bar. They expanded. Now, 126 Irish-green O’Leary’s are located in 12 European countries, China, Singapore, Vietnam, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. Even though the majority of their patrons have never been to Boston (nor desire to), the walls of these bars are covered with Boston sports legends including a diving Bobby Orr, Larry Bird, a victorious Tom Brady with smudged eye black staining his cheeks, Tim Thomas, and the Swede Linus Ullmark (who is, to no one’s surprise, a fan favorite).

BÉLA SEITZ is an author born and raised in New York City who currently works as an usher on Broadway. She graduated from Vanderbilt University and has works published in Big Muddy, New Pop Lit, The Worlds Within, and others. Her passions include art history, architecture, and sports. She grew up playing ice hockey and also played goalie for the Vanderbilt club lacrosse team.