political correctness? no, thanks

apparently, SheBroughtMeCookies was tickled when she saw the pseudonym i gave her yesterday in a half-hearted effort to protect her identity. the particular reason she liked it? i had given my friend her "indian name." (although in reality, she said it in a much more PC way because she's a much more PC and polite person than i am.)

i, incidentally, have an indian name, too. (note: if you're upset/offended at how i'm pretty much mocking an entire culture by making fun of the way we callous land-stealing white folk stereotype their names, that's understandable. you should probably stop here though, if that's the case.) so. my freshman roommate in college - let's call her "Jasmine" - is indian in the southern-asia sense. both of us? very much not politically correct. delightfully so. one of the un-pc jokes Jasmine particularly enjoyed was the overlap of "indian" to describe both her kind of indian and the native american kind. she claimed on several occasions that the native american kind were also "her people" and that among other things, she reserved the right to bestow traditional/fake indian names on people.

important background information: i have no eyelids. i mean, i HAVE eyelids, but they disappear entirely when my eyes are open. sucked completely back into my skull somewhere. lots of people go "oh yeah! mine do that too!" and what they mean is "oh yeah! i have smallish eyelids too, so you probably are just exaggerating like i am, but you still clearly have at least a sliver of eyelid at all times." no. nothing. NO EYELID. observe:

*please ignore the wild eyebrow look. i had no idea they were so alarming close up.

as you can see, all that can be counted as eyelid is a little tiny wedge maaaaybe 1 cm tall and 2cm wide in the corner of my eye, and i'm pretty sure that just counts as "the corner of my eye." anyway, this deficiency is not something one tends to notice in an objective manner, unless it's pointed out with examples and possibly before and after shots.

unless you're trying to give me a makeover.

"Jasmine" had bought some new eye makeup, and after using it on herself, had made up our other roommate (who we'll call "Duckie" - she and "Jasmine" would understand) as well. astounded by its ability to work wonders on both her indian self and our black roommate, she turned to me to see if it would work on Super Pale people too. alas, we would never find out.

she spent several minutes meticulously covering my eyelids in heavy eye makeup, while i sat with my eyes closed, in suspense. finally, her masterpiece complete, she stepped back and announced i could she was finished.

jasmine: ok! done! open your eyes!

me: *opens eyes*

jasmine: *long pause*

me: what?? how do i look?

jasmine: where did it go?

me: where did what go?

jasmine: the makeup. your eyelids. they're gone. seriously. where are they?

and so, the indian name was born: She Who Runs Without Eyelids.