in which I experience many awkward moments
I’m going to restrain myself tonight. I am going to have this entry finished in an hour! Yes, that means minimizing Google Maps and Wikipedia links, which are probably my favourite part about blogging anyway. Yes, some intrepid e-friends of mine such as kitkatlj will pen thoughtful, almost academic entries about the most important social and religious issues in our world today. Others such as carrieko have an exciting life abroad. But I continue to boldly forge my blog on the anvil of idiocy, in the name of having the best idiot’s blog on LiveJournal. Let me know how I’m doing if you get the chance.
Okay, 11:45pm, I’m on the clock! Paul and I just got back from groceries. It’s a shame I didn’t have my camera with me, as they’re selling buckets of chicken-bone candies at Sobeys in Clayton Park for $124. I kid you not. The scary part is, two of them have been bought since the last time we were there!
I had a few really awkward moments today (but some of them were pretty funny). Let’s start in the morning.
I’m on the bus, sitting near these two guys having a chat:
“How was the missus’ last night?”
“Oh… well, I was exhausted this morning, let me put it that way.”
They laugh.
“How’d you like her ta-tas?”
“What? … Oh, yeah she’s got really nice b***s. Really nice.”
“Yeah… so what’s her name?”
“A***l.”
“Is that really her name or just a nick-? Wow, that’s just too f***in’ weird.”
“Yeah, her family’s Portuguese but she was born in Kuwait.”
“Where is Kuwait? Is it in Iraq?”
“No, it’s another country.”
“It’s small,” I throw in. (We had exchanged a few items of small talk already, because the questioning fellow had his suit hooked on the handbar above us, which is a good conversation starter.)
He turns to me, “I thought there was a city in Iraq called Kuwait.”
“There might be, but Kuwait the country was invaded by Iraq - that started the first Gulf War.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly a woman’s voice is heard a few rows up, addressing the answering boy. “Are you A**x?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m her sister.”
The worst part, after two of the three of us stopped chortling, was that we were on the 80, and we weren’t even at China Town yet. Boy, was that ever a long, awkward bus ride.
After my fin de siècle quiz, I puttered around for a bit and then met up with K. for lunch. First she needed to bring her books to the used book buyback, and since she had so many left over from previous semesters, she was dragging them along in a wheeled suitcase. When I first saw her I thought she was going back home today. Anyway, we took care of that as much as we could, but while some of her books would fetch $50, others would fetch $.50, so we dragged most of her books back to her apartment! (I’ve never sold a textbook yet, and I’m beginning to think that I’m not really any worse off financially for my restraint.)
On our way through the South End, we met Paul (Angela’s husband Paul, as opposed to my stepfather Paul) on the street on a coffee break with his co-workers. Paul invited us to tag along, and we chatted about our travels and the new baby Zachary, and K. knew Angela, so the conversation was easy. They left, and we went on our way, eventually coming to St. Mary’s Basilica in order to complete K.’s Religious Studies homework. (By now we’re starving.) I flipped through some hymnbooks in a vain search for something familiar while K. walked around taking notes.
She didn’t get finished, though, because we were all but forced to leave early after I walked by a guy sitting at the rearmost pew, and he murmured something “Jesus… soul,” that seemed to be directed at me.
“Pardon me?” I asked him.
“Yeah, you don’t … [indistinguishable] … FRIGGING IDIOT!!!”
At this moment K. took my arm and led me behind the wall of vestibule. “You don’t want to talk to that guy.” And K. decided that rather than risk catching his notice again, we ought to leave quietly. I feel bad for being so naïve (and essentially making K. have to come back tomorrow); I didn’t know he was a loon. But I feel even worse for him, because in running away we were being rather unkind, weren’t we? I can think back to how I was so rudely treated in high school, and a lot of it boiled down to my inability to deal effectively with other people (most of the problems arose from my negligence of letting others feel important). But when people ran away from me, it didn’t teach me anything at all, it just caused me to feel even more resentment. That poor fellow at the pew must have decades’ worth of pent up rage and frustration. It’s heartbreaking. But yet we’re both unwilling and unable to do anything about it, and we go back to our own blessed lives. It seems almost un-Christian, and yet there we were in that Christian church.
So we finally eat, at the Shoe Shop. We walk back to K.’s apartment. In order to deambiguify things, let me add that she shows me a picture of her chic-looking Cuban boyfriend. =) I go my merry way, and about a frillion minutes later I’m back on the bus heading into Bedford.
Just as we’re approaching my stop, I look out the window into the Sobeys parking lot where I’ve parked my car. It’s still where it was in the morning, except now it’s surrounded by a Christmas tree lot.
When I approached my car, a gaggle of kind rednecks poured out of their trailer and offered to move some of the trees so I could get out. I thanked them but declined, and tried to get out on my own, already embarrassed for having left my car in their way for the past eight hours. I promptly back into a tree, tipping it a few degrees askance. Then I try to pull myself around some kind of rack, and by this time I’m getting hand signals, and basically by the time I got out of there I wanted me and my car to disappear into the evening mist.
I think that’s everything, and I’m way over my time limit. Tomorrow I’ll present my thoughts on the Liberal convention - IF I get my Contemporary Canadian Fiction paper finished. If not, then no dice. Also, I have it from castusalbuscor that we may hear about our Twelfth Night auditions tomorrow. I’d better get some sleep so that I don’t answer the phone, “He-uh,huh-wha?”
Okay, 11:45pm, I’m on the clock! Paul and I just got back from groceries. It’s a shame I didn’t have my camera with me, as they’re selling buckets of chicken-bone candies at Sobeys in Clayton Park for $124. I kid you not. The scary part is, two of them have been bought since the last time we were there!
I had a few really awkward moments today (but some of them were pretty funny). Let’s start in the morning.
I’m on the bus, sitting near these two guys having a chat:
“How was the missus’ last night?”
“Oh… well, I was exhausted this morning, let me put it that way.”
They laugh.
“How’d you like her ta-tas?”
“What? … Oh, yeah she’s got really nice b***s. Really nice.”
“Yeah… so what’s her name?”
“A***l.”
“Is that really her name or just a nick-? Wow, that’s just too f***in’ weird.”
“Yeah, her family’s Portuguese but she was born in Kuwait.”
“Where is Kuwait? Is it in Iraq?”
“No, it’s another country.”
“It’s small,” I throw in. (We had exchanged a few items of small talk already, because the questioning fellow had his suit hooked on the handbar above us, which is a good conversation starter.)
He turns to me, “I thought there was a city in Iraq called Kuwait.”
“There might be, but Kuwait the country was invaded by Iraq - that started the first Gulf War.”
“Oh.”
Suddenly a woman’s voice is heard a few rows up, addressing the answering boy. “Are you A**x?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m her sister.”
The worst part, after two of the three of us stopped chortling, was that we were on the 80, and we weren’t even at China Town yet. Boy, was that ever a long, awkward bus ride.
After my fin de siècle quiz, I puttered around for a bit and then met up with K. for lunch. First she needed to bring her books to the used book buyback, and since she had so many left over from previous semesters, she was dragging them along in a wheeled suitcase. When I first saw her I thought she was going back home today. Anyway, we took care of that as much as we could, but while some of her books would fetch $50, others would fetch $.50, so we dragged most of her books back to her apartment! (I’ve never sold a textbook yet, and I’m beginning to think that I’m not really any worse off financially for my restraint.)
On our way through the South End, we met Paul (Angela’s husband Paul, as opposed to my stepfather Paul) on the street on a coffee break with his co-workers. Paul invited us to tag along, and we chatted about our travels and the new baby Zachary, and K. knew Angela, so the conversation was easy. They left, and we went on our way, eventually coming to St. Mary’s Basilica in order to complete K.’s Religious Studies homework. (By now we’re starving.) I flipped through some hymnbooks in a vain search for something familiar while K. walked around taking notes.
She didn’t get finished, though, because we were all but forced to leave early after I walked by a guy sitting at the rearmost pew, and he murmured something “Jesus… soul,” that seemed to be directed at me.
“Pardon me?” I asked him.
“Yeah, you don’t … [indistinguishable] … FRIGGING IDIOT!!!”
At this moment K. took my arm and led me behind the wall of vestibule. “You don’t want to talk to that guy.” And K. decided that rather than risk catching his notice again, we ought to leave quietly. I feel bad for being so naïve (and essentially making K. have to come back tomorrow); I didn’t know he was a loon. But I feel even worse for him, because in running away we were being rather unkind, weren’t we? I can think back to how I was so rudely treated in high school, and a lot of it boiled down to my inability to deal effectively with other people (most of the problems arose from my negligence of letting others feel important). But when people ran away from me, it didn’t teach me anything at all, it just caused me to feel even more resentment. That poor fellow at the pew must have decades’ worth of pent up rage and frustration. It’s heartbreaking. But yet we’re both unwilling and unable to do anything about it, and we go back to our own blessed lives. It seems almost un-Christian, and yet there we were in that Christian church.
So we finally eat, at the Shoe Shop. We walk back to K.’s apartment. In order to deambiguify things, let me add that she shows me a picture of her chic-looking Cuban boyfriend. =) I go my merry way, and about a frillion minutes later I’m back on the bus heading into Bedford.
Just as we’re approaching my stop, I look out the window into the Sobeys parking lot where I’ve parked my car. It’s still where it was in the morning, except now it’s surrounded by a Christmas tree lot.
When I approached my car, a gaggle of kind rednecks poured out of their trailer and offered to move some of the trees so I could get out. I thanked them but declined, and tried to get out on my own, already embarrassed for having left my car in their way for the past eight hours. I promptly back into a tree, tipping it a few degrees askance. Then I try to pull myself around some kind of rack, and by this time I’m getting hand signals, and basically by the time I got out of there I wanted me and my car to disappear into the evening mist.
I think that’s everything, and I’m way over my time limit. Tomorrow I’ll present my thoughts on the Liberal convention - IF I get my Contemporary Canadian Fiction paper finished. If not, then no dice. Also, I have it from castusalbuscor that we may hear about our Twelfth Night auditions tomorrow. I’d better get some sleep so that I don’t answer the phone, “He-uh,huh-wha?”