Friends and Family?

Perhaps a rundown of my teammates is in order, in case I ever mention them and you’re clueless. This will be later edited to include pictures of all the folks in question.

Aaron and Will are our team’s clowns. They talk almost exclusively in the Borat voice, call each other “bra”—a strange corruption of the word “bro,” and not a ladies’ undergarment. Will is the dark-haired one, is from New York, and occasionally says something very clever I would not typically expect. They got jumped in Denver on Halloween, dressed as a banana and a fisherman, but only lost their soda and half a cigarette. The two of them are obsessed with McDonalds, and go nightly, thus violating the ‘no going outside after dark’ rule. For some reason Carmella does not mind it as much as she does if anyone else goes out.

Garrett is a pretty preppy guy, and very smart and funny. I feel like he went to a pretty upper-class university but I can’t think of which. Like Noel, he has the power to make you like him regardless of what social strata you’re in. He is most definitely a people person, and I’ve seen him joke back and forth with random people on the street, or different homeowners whose houses we work on. He enjoys The Office and jokingly called Sports Center “his meditation.”

Chris Paradis (pronounced ‘parody,’ but everyone says ‘paradise’) is a fairly skilled musician, and plays his guitar every night. When he’s clean-shaven he looks like Michael C. Hall (Dexter from the eponymous show, David Fischer from Six Feet Under), but he has some sort of no-shaving pact with Wendy. He has a novel that others have been reading that I strongly suspect reads like “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. I like Chris; he’s very smart, and out of everyone here his sense of humor is probably closest to mine.

Jeremy is tall and has glasses that make him look like Clark Kent, and in his college pictures he is long-haired and clean-shaven and looks like a whole different person. I thought he was older than me when I first saw him, and learned later that he’s not. We bonded over running; he has ridiculous endurance for it and has a hard time finding people who can keep pace with him. He is probably the quietest guy here.

Wendy Angus-Anderson (Chris wrote a song about all her names; she has six or seven of them, when all her middle ones are factored in) has asthma. She has a hard time with running. She, Chris, Jeremy, and some others back in Denver were all pretty good friends, and I like them, but they can feel very cliquish sometimes, and I have a hard time being a part of that. She used to be a dancer, I think. I would not be surprised if she and Chris got together by the end of this, nor would I mind: I think they’d make a decent couple.

Andrea is from San Diego, and as far as I can tell she never left her house, because everything is new and surprising to her and she does a lot of weird things she thinks are perfectly normal, like breaking up toast with jelly on it into her oatmeal. At first I thought she might have had an eating disorder—She is very skinny, I saw her at the gym all the time, and she seemed to eat very little. Now that I’m living with her I realize I was completely wrong; she’s always rushing for seconds or thirds at dinner and snacking throughout the day, but she never gains weight.

Haley is deaf, but apparently deafness isn’t what it used to be, because she has hearing aids that let her hear just fine. Haley is a little dense, though. There was a neon sign in a New Orleans storefront that said “No drugs or nuclear weapons allowed inside,” and she thought it was serious. The last group that was here had a plumbing problem and had to go to another house for a week because this one flooded, and when the Rebuilding Together staff member was explaining this, Haley thought she meant they left to go to Texas to help out with hurricane Gustav for a week. She is perhaps the most motherly of all of us, in all senses of the word.

Carmella is the team leader. She is a sweet girl, but she is very by-the-book, which can be frustrating sometimes. I have been told that I’m not allowed to read while in the front passenger seat because I’m supposed to be watching for road hazards (ATD, assistant to driver, this is called). I can’t read while standing around waiting for a job because it looks like I’m inattentive (while others have been standing around idly bullshitting with each other for good lengths of time). I can only wear my bandana when it is functionally necessary (keeping paint out of my hair), but she told me to take it off the moment I got in the truck. I can’t tie the sleeves of my cover-alls around my waist.

Carmella does not allow anyone out alone, or after dark. When we jog in the neighborhood, no-one is allowed to bring their iPods in case someone decides to jump the pack of ten of us. If we leave when the sun’s up, we have to be back by 10:00pm weekdays, 2:00am weekends, but we can’t walk—we have to taxi. Even though it’s only perhaps a mile to the hangouts. And we aren’t allowed to drive the trucks there. With the fence around our lot, it starts to feel very cagey.

My better judgment tells me to simply say “okay” and do what she says when she says I should do something, but part of me always wants to say “Carmella, nobody is going to tell on you for letting us do this.”

Overall, they are good people, but we are crammed in tight and never apart, and it wears thin on me, has been wearing thin on me for days. I wish I could go out at nights; I wish weekends did not seem so short; I wish I knew more than just these nine people here. I am eager for Christmas, for nothing more than to just sit alone in my own space, to have a mattress and not a cot to sleep on.