I Know That I Like Tomato

“I can’t help it if I know what I like, and I know that I like tomato.” 🍅🥪📓 -Harriet The Spy

When I took these pictures last October, at the height of a tomato-and-mayo sandwich fixation period, I remember planning to post them with this caption — sans attribution, to see if anyone would recognize it. I wondered if another ‘90s kid with continuous film quotes in their head also heard this refrain / felt the urge to seal their sandwich down with a punch every time it involved tomato. 

I couldn’t have imagined that by the time I actually got around to sharing this idea and these pictures, circumstances would feel so very different from last October.

Michelle Trachtenberg, the actress who played Harriet The Spy, died yesterday, barely four decades young. This distant-yet-still-feels-personal news is coming at the close of a dismal February which has brought an uncanny amount of death to my community — and that’s aside from the more metaphorical deaths those of us in the US are collectively watching plague our democracy.

Meanwhile, I’ve passed five unplanned weeks off social media, awaiting some clarity in my presence and complicity in these afflicted spaces. I wish I had a concise answer and plan for myself, but that fog still lingers.

One thing that continues to be a north star through it all? On which I’ve focused my free hours offline — yet which also spurs me to connect here with you more than any outfit sharing or thrift tip — that which offers unlimited room to ask and ponder my unlimited questions — and what was, in fact, inspired by Harriet herself all those years ago? Writing. It’s the only devotion that persists from my childhood (evidence below), and the only thing that’s made sense to me this whole time. Whether online or off, I’m going to keep writing.

 

I’d love you to write me too; let me know how you’re doing in the comments if you have some words & brainwaves to spare.