(no subject)
I wrote this on Friday. Wheee:
MY LIFE IS SO BORING PLEASE HELP ME
Today, after eating lunch at my desk (most of a bag of baby carrots [Question: do I leave the rest here, in the break room mini-fridge, with all the salad dressing and that one hoary old half bottle of Diet Pepsi? If not, can I even remember to take the carrots home at the end of the day? If I sneak a few on the metro, will I be arrested? Because I'm pretty hungry] and a ham-and-cheese wrap [halfway through it I thought, "My god, this tastes like a delicious Sheetz sandwich!" Three-fourths of the way through I realized why: this morning, while making the wrap, I went nuts -- just plain crazy! I mean why not! -- and added some mayonnaise]), I ventured outside to mail a couple paychecks to the bank. My destination was a post office a few blocks over, but no sooner did I step out of my building than I saw a mailbox fifty feet away. I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's memoir-thing, and in it he calls those big, blue mailboxes "bullfrogs." Says they ribbit when you feed them letters. I forgot to remember that when I put in my paychecks.
So that took all of twenty seconds. Then I was at a total loss -- I'd kind of been looking forward to walking to the post office and doing all the things I can't do at my desk, such as seeing people, or hearing sounds. As a consolation prize, I decided to go across the street to Casey's Coffee and buy my second cup of the day. Because it's Friday! It's okay to do that on a Friday. This is my new rule. I should write down these new rules. But first I need a notebook. I will put that on my "Things To Buy" list, just as soon as I find a little magnetic pad of paper to put on the refrigerator, upon which we will list all the household items we need to buy. Other things include: pepper grinder, wire, mirror, zester.
I weighed my options -- jaywalk? Don't jaywalk? -- and then walked to the corner and waited for the light to change, since that ate up more time. While I was crossing the street, I noticed a tall, beefy, football-player-type white guy on the sidewalk, wearing a suit and flailing his right arm around while his left hand held a cell phone against his ear. He was about my age, wild-eyed, clearly exasperated, wheeling about in circles and yelling at whoever he was talking to on the phone. As I approached him, he snapped his phone shut and barked at me, but he did these two things very quickly, so there wasn't much time between the end of his conversation and the bark. Like: "BLAH BLAH BLAH *click* HEY!"
"WHERE'S TWENTY SECOND STREET? I MEAN I KNOW THAT'S TWENTY FIRST, SO TWENTY SECOND MUST BE UP THERE, BUT I WALKED OVER THERE AND ALL IT SAYS IS NEW HAMPSHIRE!" He said this with much pointing and palms-up, what's-going-on gesturing. I think halfway through he realized that he was addressing a total stranger in exactly the same voice he'd been using with his friend on the phone, but decided it was too late to stop and just plunged ahead with his bellow-whine. I feel automatically charitable toward these types of people, non-sociopathic people who are still way too familiar and maybe off-putting in their assumptions of familiarity, because I like how they put themselves at the mercy of people they don't even know. I mean, this guy was being loud and socially inappropriate, and he knew it, and it would have been really easy for me to embarrass him or to be mean. But I think loud and socially inappropriate deserves props, more often than not. Also, I work in a sensory deprivation tank. Being yelled at is kind of a delightful, refreshing sensation, now.
I forget what exactly I said to him, but I was all, yeah it's over there, and he was all, ARE YOU SURE, and I was all, dude, I promise. Then he was like OKAY THANKS and speed-walked off to whatever job interview he was late for. After I got my coffee, I went over to the corner he'd been pointing to, out of curiosity. Turns out I was right, but 22nd and New Hampshire kind of look like the same street when they intersect at L, and I can see how you could get confused, at a certain angle. I kept an eye out for the guy on my way back to the office, kind of hoping I'd see him so I could be more helpful the second time around, but he was gone.
MY LIFE IS SO BORING PLEASE HELP ME
Today, after eating lunch at my desk (most of a bag of baby carrots [Question: do I leave the rest here, in the break room mini-fridge, with all the salad dressing and that one hoary old half bottle of Diet Pepsi? If not, can I even remember to take the carrots home at the end of the day? If I sneak a few on the metro, will I be arrested? Because I'm pretty hungry] and a ham-and-cheese wrap [halfway through it I thought, "My god, this tastes like a delicious Sheetz sandwich!" Three-fourths of the way through I realized why: this morning, while making the wrap, I went nuts -- just plain crazy! I mean why not! -- and added some mayonnaise]), I ventured outside to mail a couple paychecks to the bank. My destination was a post office a few blocks over, but no sooner did I step out of my building than I saw a mailbox fifty feet away. I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's memoir-thing, and in it he calls those big, blue mailboxes "bullfrogs." Says they ribbit when you feed them letters. I forgot to remember that when I put in my paychecks.
So that took all of twenty seconds. Then I was at a total loss -- I'd kind of been looking forward to walking to the post office and doing all the things I can't do at my desk, such as seeing people, or hearing sounds. As a consolation prize, I decided to go across the street to Casey's Coffee and buy my second cup of the day. Because it's Friday! It's okay to do that on a Friday. This is my new rule. I should write down these new rules. But first I need a notebook. I will put that on my "Things To Buy" list, just as soon as I find a little magnetic pad of paper to put on the refrigerator, upon which we will list all the household items we need to buy. Other things include: pepper grinder, wire, mirror, zester.
I weighed my options -- jaywalk? Don't jaywalk? -- and then walked to the corner and waited for the light to change, since that ate up more time. While I was crossing the street, I noticed a tall, beefy, football-player-type white guy on the sidewalk, wearing a suit and flailing his right arm around while his left hand held a cell phone against his ear. He was about my age, wild-eyed, clearly exasperated, wheeling about in circles and yelling at whoever he was talking to on the phone. As I approached him, he snapped his phone shut and barked at me, but he did these two things very quickly, so there wasn't much time between the end of his conversation and the bark. Like: "BLAH BLAH BLAH *click* HEY!"
"WHERE'S TWENTY SECOND STREET? I MEAN I KNOW THAT'S TWENTY FIRST, SO TWENTY SECOND MUST BE UP THERE, BUT I WALKED OVER THERE AND ALL IT SAYS IS NEW HAMPSHIRE!" He said this with much pointing and palms-up, what's-going-on gesturing. I think halfway through he realized that he was addressing a total stranger in exactly the same voice he'd been using with his friend on the phone, but decided it was too late to stop and just plunged ahead with his bellow-whine. I feel automatically charitable toward these types of people, non-sociopathic people who are still way too familiar and maybe off-putting in their assumptions of familiarity, because I like how they put themselves at the mercy of people they don't even know. I mean, this guy was being loud and socially inappropriate, and he knew it, and it would have been really easy for me to embarrass him or to be mean. But I think loud and socially inappropriate deserves props, more often than not. Also, I work in a sensory deprivation tank. Being yelled at is kind of a delightful, refreshing sensation, now.
I forget what exactly I said to him, but I was all, yeah it's over there, and he was all, ARE YOU SURE, and I was all, dude, I promise. Then he was like OKAY THANKS and speed-walked off to whatever job interview he was late for. After I got my coffee, I went over to the corner he'd been pointing to, out of curiosity. Turns out I was right, but 22nd and New Hampshire kind of look like the same street when they intersect at L, and I can see how you could get confused, at a certain angle. I kept an eye out for the guy on my way back to the office, kind of hoping I'd see him so I could be more helpful the second time around, but he was gone.