Post by corah jane hurley on Aug 4, 2013 13:15:53 GMT -8
| [atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://24.media.tumblr.com/0478144b9f16c95a37367d1aca56b45c/tumblr_mkfax8tDxp1s97ldco1_500.png); padding: 5px, bTable] CORAH J. HURLEY TWENTY-FIVE | HETEROSEXUAL | PRESCHOOL TEACHER | TOWNSFOLK | EMMA STONE THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? The blonde almost bursts into the room, slightly flustered and apologising profusely. Her pace picks up upon enterance as if speedwalking across the room will make up for lost time. It's five minutes, not much in the grand scheme of things, anybody would think the interviewer had been waiting hours for her to arrive. Removing her jacket and placing on the back of the seat which has apparently been designated for her, she places her handbag next to it. She collects her thoughts before leaning over to shake the interviewer's hand. "Hi! I'm so sorry I was late," the blonde apologises again with a gentle laugh. She sits down in the chair and sits with her hands resting loosely in her lap. "That parking lot is madness! Honestly." Her eyes grow wider with exaggeration, neglecting to mention that it took her longer than anticipated to find a parking space that was a multiple of five. "I only have a Beetle and I couldn't fit it anywhere." Silver, purchased second-hand from a friend's uncle after countless weekends spent babysitting, walking dogs, washing cars, mowing lawns and anything else she could convince the neighbours to pay her for as a teenager. "Oh, you're welcome! Yeah. Maybe I should have started with that, I guess I got a little bit sidetracked. My name is Corah Jane Hurley. As far as I know there's not an awful lot of significance to either of them, my parents just thought they were nice and I guess I do too." THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? "Oh, thank you!" She smiles politely at the compliment. "I'm a preschool teacher. Some people like to blow it off as glorified babysitting but it's more than that. I love it, and I love the nincompoops that I call my class. I use that term affectionately, by the way. Y'know, how bands and things have names for their fanbases? Yeah, well my class are the Nincompoops. They're aware of it and they love it, probably because it gives them an excuse to say a word with "poop" in on a regular basis, but still. They're cute as buttons and their slightly misguided, still-developing views on the world mean they come out with the strangest things. They're so funny, but they don't even realize why all the grown-ups find it so amusing, which is possibly the best thing. Plus, snack time and nap time are regular occurances in the daily schedule which I also get to partake in. And I spend the last week of the school year watching movies. I have to do some actual teaching from time to time, obviously, but I'm one of those cheesy teachers that always tries to make it 'fun'." She makes air quotes around the word, laughing. Paint by numbers sheets help to teach them math and Disney stories help with English skills. "It's a wonderful life." INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? She looks up to the left as she considers the question. "I'm probably one of the most un-twenty-five year old twenty-five year olds in the world right now," Corah laughs, moving her fringe out of her face. "I just moved into my own place so a lot of my time has just been focused on getting that straight. I painted all of the rooms, then I got all of my furniture from different places. Some of it was basic flat-packed Ikea stuff but I also thrifted a lot of it so I could have something kind of different. I bought things that maybe weren't quite perfect and make little adjustments so they were, sanding them down and re-painting them. I like being crafty like that... No, I'll rephrase that, I like to think that I'm crafty like that." She laughs. It truth she's being modest, she's not bad at all when it comes to arts and crafts. Corah has been making and painting and lord knows what else since childhood. Her mother practically taught her how to use a paintbrush before she held a pencil. "But I probably shouldn't bore you with all of the details about my home renovations. To be honest I'm pretty happy just being a homebody if you leave me to my own devices. I'm careful to use the word 'homebody' and not 'recluse'. I leave the house, obviously, and I do so on quite a regular basis, but mainly during the day. But if nobody invites me out I'll be in my pyjamas by seven thirty watching tv or a movie, or reading a book, and I'll be perfectly happy like that. I don't really like going out alone to be hit on by strangers all night when I could be tucked away watching Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I bake quite often too, when I need a little bit of excitement in my life. I take cupcakes for the kids and we have little tea parties and things. But if one of my friends drags me out I'll happily oblidge, though even then I'm not a party girl, I prefer to go out for a meal or to a cute little bar and talking instead of dancing the night away at some club with loud, obnoxious music." As she thinks, she spends some time making sure that her sleeves are even, her bracelets and rings are all straight. One would assume that she simply pays a lot of attention to her appearance, but you would be mistaken. In truth, she's not a very vain young lady in the slightest. "I really like stationery? That sounds weird. But I just endlessly buy notebooks and sketchbooks when I really don't need them just because I really like them. Really, a nice notebook is the true path to my heart. I used to scrapbook all the time and uh, it's a habit that's kind of stayed with me over the years sometimes. They're good ways of collecting my ideas and I have no shame in that, okay? Like I said, I read a lot. Quite a lot. I have... a lot of books. I can imagine myself being on some reality tv show about me living alone my house full of books. I go to coffee shops a lot, I don't really know why, I just like them. I'm a sucker for people watching, I usually hide behind a book and just look around as people pass by. I really like silly childish things, like blowing bubbles. I hate when people say that I'm too old for that kind of thing, I really don't care. I try to spend a lot of time outdoors when I can, I like to go on walks in like, forests and things. We have one of those little butterfly things in the class, you know, when you grow the caterpillars into butterflies and then release them? I loved that. I'm a really bad dancer but I do it anyway, but usually when I'm alone... What else can I talk about now? My dislikes? Well, it sucks when my favourite tv shows are cancelled... I mean, that sounds so trivial and superficial but I still hate it. Uhm. I must really like things because I'm drawing a blank today. I quite like things to be in a certain way, organised on my desk and such, I have to spend time putting them right before I can focus on anything." At first she worries this is a little too close to the truth and could lead the interviewer to the conclusion she's trying to avoid. "Oh, and people who talk in the cinema and chew loudly. It's like, please leave. Buy the DVD and watch it at home where you can talk and chew as much as you want without disturbing dozens of other polite, courteous human beings who have paid to watch the movie in peace!" WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? The question seems to puzzle her, she shrugs with an awkward laugh. "Do I really have to like, analyse all of my hobbies and explain how they relate to me as a person?" She sighs dramatically as if you've just asked her the largest favour in the world. "I'm basically a big kid, which is probably why I choose to spend my day with like-minded people and get paid for it. I watch cartoons and colour in and get really excited about new Disney movies. I guess my antiquing-of-sorts and painting furniture is a representation of how I like things to be a little quirky and off the cuff, which could be what people use to describe me... I don't know, I guess you'd have to ask them. I never really think about things like this but now I have to give you the first answer that comes into my head, I'm so bad at this... You should have asked my class, I'm sure you would have gotten some extremely varied opinions. I like to experiment with new things I guess. I'm kind of sarcastic, which you'll probably notice, so I apologise for that. I think I'm a comedienne but I don't think many other people would agree. I laugh when I feel awkward, you'll probably notice that too. And then the rest of the time I'm probably laughing because I can't take myself seriously. Painting, I guess, is just something I've always done. I'm no Picasso. I just like to do little doodles and colour them in or paint jam jars and put tea lights in them. Again I guess it's the thing with liking things that are a little different, especially in my home furnishings. I honestly don't know why I read so much, I just like words and the way that people use them to create images and stories. They're powerful things, in the right order they can stay with you for a while. Saying I watch a lot of TV always makes me sound really gormless, I kinda hate it, but it's the truth. I watch all kinds of things. I guess it's like books, I like the way that images can be used in such a powerful manner. And baking is just because I really like cake. A lot. All the cake, all the time. If you know how to bake cake then you can eat it whenever you want without worrying if the store is open or not." A COOL CAT LIKE YOU MUST HAVE A TON OF SUITORS FLOCKING TO YOU, HUH? "Oh yeah." She deadpans, nodding. "I have to beat them off with a stick just to get to my front door because there are so many guys, even a couple girls waiting on my lawn with gifts to try and win my affection. I can't sleep because there's always somebody throwing rocks at my window every night." She feigns enthusiasm and cockiness about her mob of non-existent admirers, before returning to her real self. "I usually end up getting hit on by guys in bars because I'm blonde, thankfully I'm not stereotypically hot enough to appeal to the super creepy ones but it's not unusual to have at least one guy try some bad pick-up line on me when I go out. The kind about angels falling and rearranging the alphabet, you know the ones. I should add, they don't work - at least not on me. I've dated a few guys over the years. Some of them lasted a while, but nothing ever got too serious. I've never been engaged or anything crazy like that. I think the longest one was a year, maybe a year and a half, but we wanted to go in different directions and all that. At the moment I'm single and I'm fine with that. It's just me and my books, any guy that I go out with has to be okay with all of my books. And me spending at least one night a week watching tv in my pyjamas and preferably join in. They're parts of me that can never be removed or changed. There is... There is this one guy, but I'm not going to talk about that. It's silly, I mean, we only just met. But he seems really nice... With his stupid fluffy hair and his dumb accent..." She looks down, shaking her head and laughing at herself. "I sound like a lovesick teenager, oh my god. Can we move on?" COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? "I would agree with that," She muses, nodding. "I love my family. Obviously when I say 'family' it has quite a broad meaning given my mom, my dad, my step-dad, my step-mom and some step-siblings but I still love them all. I mean, there are some families where divorce is so messy and everybody feels like they have to take sides and there are evil step-parents that don't like the children but thankfully we have none of that. I have twin step-brothers and they could be a pest when I was staying with my dad but that was nothing. I lived with my mom and my sister after the split, then my step-dad and his daughter moved in. We all got on well beforehand so nothing was awkward or anything. It was just like having two little sisters. We went to see my dad on the weekends and holidays. I moved away for college and stayed on campus except for breaks." She cares about her father dearly, of course, but she has always been much closer to her mother, sister and her step-father's family than her father and her step-mother's side of the family. "When I graduated I moved back in with my family until I found a little place that I wanted to call my own. I don't live completely alone, I have a bunny rabbit. His name is Bruce, officially Bruce Wayne Springsteen, but I just stick to Bruce for short. His hutch is out on the patio, I have a seat next to it where we sit and talk about life. He's a really good listener." AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. This is your history. It should be one of your longer ones. First or Third person. "Eager? Really? There's nothing interesting about it, honestly. March 24th, 1988. Three years to the date after the detention in The Breakfast Club, I might add. I was born in right here, in Brunswick, not right here in this room. I was the second in my family, a few years after my biological sister. It was just the four of us. My mom didn't work, my sister and I were home at four and my dad came in an hour later. Dinner was at six. Everybody was happy, or at least they seemed it. I knew I was. I did a lot of art whilst my sister was more sporty, I think we knew even then that neither of us were destined to be wildly academic, but our parents didn't mind. And that was... really that. Not a lot happened in the early years. I was pretty average in high school, I just blended in. I existed. I wasn't super popular but nobody bullied me or strived to make my life hell. My grades were never absolutely amazing, I did better in some things than others. English and Art were my best subjects, as you can imagine. I think Gym was probably one of the worst. Me and running... it's not something you wanna see. I never excelled in languages either." She pauses and thinks back to her high school years, considering any details missed. Considering how basic it was there isn't an awful lot to recap anyway. "My parents didn't get divorced until I was in junior year, I think, but the problems started showing when I was a Sophomore." The memory causes her to frown and it's possibly the first time she hasn't been laughing. "I think they managed to hide it for a while and keep everything behind closed doors. But things got heated and tensions rose. When they argued, we knew about it because there was so much shouting. Eventually they started to disagree about the stupidest of things like they were arguing for the sheer sake of it. I always worried that they were trying to keep what they could together somehow for the sake of my sister and I but... it was kind of a relief when they finally announced that they were going to get divorced so we wouldn't have to listen to them anymore." Not just so that her parents would stop arguing, but because she thought that the habits she had developed during the time would begin to fade away now that she didn't have anything to be so stressed about. They didn't. "It took a toll on my grades for a little while when I couldn't concentrate on my homework because they were bickering, but luckily the damage wasn't too harsh. They picked back up again eventually and when that was cleared up... I just carried on again as normal, except I did my homework at my dad's house at the weekends instead of in my bedroom. I'd just graduated when my mom got married, it was in the summer. I went to university in Florida, my nana retired there so I got to go and see her at her complex. Old people have all the fun, I'm telling you. I might retire there myself someday, I think that would be a nice existence." Her voice trails away realizing that she's gone off on a tangent. "I didn't have a crazy college life, sorry to disappoint. That was really where I realized that it's not my thing. I survived because I met a lot of people who also didn't like partying, so we all stuck together like glue and hung out somewhere quiet and had cheesy sleepovers like kids. That was fun. As I've already said, I moved back in with my mom and step-dad when I graduated whilst I worked on some of my final pieces of teacher training. Then the opening came up at the pre-school and thankfully, I took it. I saved up a lot of money as well as being helped by some family members, and then I found my little place now. And that... is my life in a nutshell. I think, anyway. I've probably missed out some major life event and then remember as soon as I'm walking out of the door." What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. She shifts her chair just a little bit when she realizes that it isn't aligned straight. "Secrets?" Corah repeats, looking at the interviewer with an amused expression. "Like I said, my life is pretty boring. There's no drama, no scandal, I have nothing to hide from anybody." She's not one to lie very often, but this is one of those times. When her parents' relationship began to deteriorate and eventually lead to her divorce, Corah found herself picking up strange little habits. Everything on her desk had to be straight, the blinds pointing in the same direction. She found it soothing. It was an extremely brief distraction from all of the shouting about the electricity bill that was going on in the kitchen downstairs. But they soon stopped being habits and turned into compulsions. She found herself creating a routine and feeling panicked if she failed to carry it out or anybody changed anything. Even when her parents' break-up had been smoothed out and Corah moved to Brunswick, she found that the routine continued. She confided in her mother about the problem she felt she was having, who took her to a doctor and diagnosed the girl with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder initially caused by the stress of her parents' break up. To this day her family are the only people who are aware of her condition. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! "Whoa. Dreams! Uh. Okay. Uhm. I've already graduated college and all of that educational stuff, and I have the job I've always wanted so I've achieved a lot of my specific life goals. But I'm only twenty-five so I suppose there's still time for me to do plenty of things. I'm happy with my life where I am, I'd like to carry on teaching for as long as I can. And of course I'd like to have a family and all of that good stuff but probably not for a few years yet. I need to meet a guy first and... There are a lot of variables to that kind of thing, it's not something you can exactly plan precisely. I think travelling would be nice? I think I'd either do it whilst I was young and reminisce about it when I'm old or maybe do it when I retired. I think I'll be a cool grandma. The kind that gives them sugar even though their mom has told me not to." AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. "Thank you! You too. I hope you can actually use some of this, I don't think I make the best interview candidate ever." She arises from her seat, picks up her bag and pulls on her jacket. Like her jumper earlier, she seems to spend some time adjusting it until it's right. Her sleeves, her collar, the flaps over the pockets. When she's finally sorted, she says goodbye before walking out of the door, hoping that nobody noticed. BEHIND THE MASK PHOEBE, I THINK | SEVENTEEN-ISH | GMT, MAYBE? | ALREADY HERE | JAC & RUBY TUES.  |
