Welp, to quote the belly of that girl Jerry once dated in a (middle-series?) episode of Seinfeld, “HELLOOOOOOOOOOOO! La la la la!” and welcome to the fifth week of Leah Lugging Crap Around the World. The first notable event from the week occurred just after I sent the last addition of LLCATW (yes, I agree, that IS a nice acronym, thanks for mentioning it). As has become the weekly ritual, I sent off my last email, went home to dry my laundry, ate dinner, and completed a number of other menial tasks, all a part of my evil narcisstic plan to allow my parents the time to read my ten-paged novels before I call so that the following praise-filled conversation can ensue:

MOM: Oh Leah, I loved your blog. BEST ONE EVER!
ME: Oh stop, please, you’re making me blush.
MOM: It was fantastic. Dad even laughed!
DAD: I laughed.
ME: Did you laugh?
DAD: I just said…
MOM: Oh honey it was so good. It was funny, it was deep, it was just fantastic.
ME: Oh please, it was just something I came up with at the last minute. Tell me more about how well I can write and how funny I am.
MOM: Oh Leah, I was reading the blog and I just thought to myself, “Where did this hilarious person come from? And how she can write!”
ME: You’re going to make my head big. But Dad liked it?
DAD: I laughed. It was very good.

I’ll stop here, but this conversation generally goes on repeat for the next ten or so minutes- mom proclaiming my brilliance, me pretending not to like hearing approval, dad saying, “It was good.” Approval! Approval! Leah morphs into a 5,000 pound Jaba the Hut and starts stuffing blocks of approval in her mouth, growing more and more with each round of saliva. “LEAH LIKE APPROVAL.” As much as I like to deny it, this has always been my nature, so much so that, during my junior year of college when I jokingly suggested that we have a “Star Chart” at work like they used to have in school for whenever we coded another subject’s data (we would receive a star per subject, and whoever coded the most babies first got a pizza party with Julie, the lab manager), I was the only person who actually got into it. “LEAH WANT MORE STARS.” It actually got so bad that a rivalry began to arise between me and my friend Kelley, who also worked there, except that Kelley was joking and I was not. “Hey, Kelley,” I’d “jokingly” say in a mocking tone of voice. “How many stars is it, exactly, that you have? And how many stars is it, exactly, that I have? I can’t quite remember, I’m sure it’s pretty close, let’s take a look at the star chart and…. Oh would you look at that, Kelley, I have five more stars than you. Oh that’s just because I put in more hours. Oh you put in more hours than I do? Well, what can I say, survival of the fittest!” Kelley then would make several inappropriate jokes about “infantile behavior” and “having a life”, but I rarely heard more than these few key phrases. By that point, I was busy thinking about the pizza party that was sure to be mine.
Obviously, this clear need for approval and praise has carried over into my present pseudo-adulthood. Even my friends are well aware of this. I eat up praise, even if it’s obvious people are just saying whatever they can so that I’ll finished getting dressed and we can go out a little sooner. At school, this would often result in scenes where I would be fretting in front of the mirror, only have Katie come in and say, “Um, Leah? What happened to your ass?” And I’d say, “I don’t know, where did it go?” “It’s just disappeared, Leah, I don’t know where it’s gone. Where’d it go?” Katie would then repeat this last line as if she were addressing a puppy as I proceeded to act like one and spin around in a circle searching for my ass, which of course just couldn’t be found. Such techniques quickly spread through my good friends and before long the secret to getting me to feel good and subsequently do things for them was a well-known joke on campus. In fact, as I write this Arthi has just posted on one of my online photos, “You so skinny and hot.” (Aw, shucks, Arthi, you’re going to make me get full of myself. But seriously, do you think I’m skinny and hot? Why don’t you tell me about it for awhile). I joke about all this praise addiction, but deep down inside I’m still that good little girl whose life goal is to get the most stars, to get the pizza party at the end of the star chart rainbow. And I don’t even like pizza.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that conversations like the ones I have with my parents every weekend (centered around how awesome I am) are essentially the same as the ones I’ve had throughout my life with them about my writing. “Did you like this? You do like it? Say it again. And again. And again. Oh stop, I’m going to get a big head!” Some people have cocaine, coffee, or cigarettes. I have knee-jerk praise. That, and gum. I do love gum.
But I stray from my original point. These conversations with my parents each Sunday are the key stabilization point of my week. No matter what happens during the days that come before it, no matter how little and insignificant I feel in a big fast-paced city, or even how amazing and invincible I feel whirling about on the dance floor of a classic Indie club, at the end of the week mom and dad are there to say, “Oh my God you are the most AMAZING THING LIKE EVER!” and I can go away thinking, “Welp, I can’t help it, I just am what I am” and my confidence is full and firmly anchored. At least for that coming week.
However, last week the Leah Is Amazing Bow Down To Her conversation was nearly jeopardized by difficulties on my parents end of the line and the result was as hilarious as it was frustrating. My mother would be in the middle of making (what I believe to be) a very astute comment about my genius when the phone would cut out and I’d be listening to dead air rather than information on how to apply for a Pullitzer. Just as I would just about be on the brink of giving up, the phone would cut back in to my mother shouting, having gotten herself into a proper state of panic. The scene was something like this.

MOM: And your comments about how you’ve matured were just so…
[The phone cuts out and there is an eerie dead silence. Leah lays out on her leather couch, calling out her mother’s name from time to time, her heart clenched with the sorrow of a praise-addicted girl prematurely wrenched away from her weekly fix.]
LEAH: Mom? … Mom? … Mooooooom?
[The phone cuts back in after about a minute. Mom’s voice is panicked, much like Meryl Streep’s in Sophie’s Choice when she is deciding which child of her she will choose to live and which one she will send to die.]
MOM: …EAR ME LEAH???!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME? I CAN HEAR YOU CAN YOU HEAR ME? MAYBE IF WE SHOUT LOUDER SHE’LL BE ABLE TO HEAR US. LEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!
LEAH: Mom! I can hear you. Jesus Christ.
MOM: Oh.
[Several seconds pass in silence as both parties attempt to fathom the events that have just unfolded. Finally, DAD pipes up on the other phone in his best old Jewish man voice.]
DAD: Can you hear me? Vhat about me?

This scene essentially went on repeat for the next hour, but in the end we somehow managed to have a fairly complete conversation (not as much praise as I would have liked, but not a wash out, either). The most notable section of the conversation was when mom proceeded to butcher every phrase applying to my life, managing to call my blog a blob (“Leah, I love your BLOB!”) and, in an attempt to sound like a Brit, asking me if I was “proper knackered”, but pronouncing “knackered” more like “kn-o-ch-ered,” as in, “May your new son give you much nachas