Acceptance a la mode

Ingredients:

• 1 hour stuck in traffic on the Deegan "Express"way, believing that it'd be "just OK" to drive in rush hour traffic to get to the Target that's actually only 2 train stops away. *You neeeeeeed to take the car.
• 1 conversation with the Home Depot manager who informs you that your current window locks are illegal
• 30 min searching for a "unique" restaurant to please your dad in the over-stimulating, crowded, & stressful wonderland known as Times Square, as you hold out one last time for your FindMeGF(gluten free) app to actually send you to the right location (aka breakdown #1) (ps Maps sucks)
• Apprx. 45 utterances of the word "hate", which is just unattractive 
• $20.50 for a cab ride home from your babysitting job because you are stuck (you say) in East Harlem, know of no trains in the area that can get you anywhere useful-- hearing only taxis, that strange technological city hum, and an extremely loud albeit talented church reggae band--  and, after all of the previous ingredients and ones in babysitting land not aforementioned, need to get home (aka breakdown #2)
• 2 days spent not going anywhere = 1 Saturday purposefully never leaving your apartment + 1 Sunday locking yourself in your friend's place to use their editing software. 
  The latter part of this ingredient is necessary to yield you this recipe's secret set of ingredients:
• 35 minutes waiting for the A train from 11:45 to 12:20am, throughout which you spy:

                      1 rat
                      2 homeless people
                      1 man who keeps pacing in front of you
                      2 versions of every other letter of train pass by
                      2 MTA works in the tracks surveying the track area with flashlights as if searching for a dead body
                      5-8 cargo loads of trash bags on the late night trash subway
                      1 full, full, full A train!

But all of this should bring you the following when you enter the full, full train:

• 3 important songs in succession:
  Totally F$#%ed from Spring Awakening, a Mumford and Sons song with the lyrics "you've got a chip on your shoulder", and Breathe from In the Heights. **Listen to *Totally F$#%ed twice in a row because it means so much to you right now and mentally profess that "this is the song of our generation! yah!"**
• 1 "Poetry in Motion" MTA poster that draws your eye: about how "roasted chicken and red wine" every now and then is worth having to live on coffee and bread-- written by a one and only NORTHWESTERN PROFESSOR from the English department that you use to work in!! Northwestern! There! Professor! Right on the train, right next to your face! It must be **fate!

• Laughter at all of it. 

Instructions:
It may take your dad seeing you upset, your friends assuming you'll move back to Chicago, or too many nights in a row noticing the A train really is a despicable option past 9:30pm. However, at some point, putting all of the above ingredients with a little a la mode (that's ice cream, for all of you who don't know me at all) (or have never read a menu) is going to smack you across the face with a big 'ol "whammy!, sweetie, you're in New York! You're in New York City and you're not leavin' for at least a year, so you might as well say 'whammy' instead-a 'hate' and turn that frown upside down, or else it's gonna be a long haul for all-a us!"

In the wise words of some angsty teens, namely Jon Groff and Lea Michele (does anyone actually know any of the other names of the cast off the top of their head?), "there's a moment you know  you're f#@*%d... but the thing that makes you really jump is that the weirdest s*#t is still to come." Hey. At least there are some truly horrible things that haven't happened to you yet. Guess what? It can STILL get worse! This song reminds us that: You know, sometimes you just gotta still believe that you're young and have a man to stick it to. Because sticking it to the man makes life easier. So, live in the city, smell the trash, and then completely try to erase the fact that you just smelled the trash  with your PocketBac lavender scented hand sanitizer-- without being ashamed of it. You're not gonna ride in a car. You're not gonna get home soon. Any time, any day. And you're going to smell trash everywhere. Heck, maybe you'll even befriend an underground rat. But you know what? At least you have someone to do it for: Jon and Lea. 



**In further research, I have discovered that Tracy K. Smith is NOT in fact a professor at Northwestern. This is funny, to say the least. This also seems quite inevitable. Let us all take this moment to appreciate how great this mistake is.