I hereby trademark the term SCHOOL DAZE
Thursday I was parched. I left my apartment late at night on a quest for milk tea from the convenience store at the bottom of the main road slope. While biking down, I noticed someone walking toward me, but it looked eerily1 like a headless figure. Okay, I'll keep moving and see that they're looking the other way or something. Kept getting closer, but there was still NO HEAD. Okay, I-uh, uh-oh. I couldn't see it until I was actually passing to the left, but it was an old man, carrying a large wooden stake, whose neck was bent so far forward that his nose met his chest2. My own neck didn't snap back forward until brakes were screeching-not my own, but a bike who would have crossed my path.
Saturday I was tired. I rode home from school after nine sticky hours in a business suit and, riding down a slope again, nearly crashed into a nine-year-old who was biking while playing his Nintendo DS.3 With BOTH HANDS. I've witnessed a variety of "while-biking" activities: listening to mp3s, smoking, phone-calling, phone-texting, umbrelling, but-nintending??! And here I can barely manage looking. Not even the active, engaged, touristy looking (tall buildings, signs, graffiti, shirt slogans, haircuts, clouds, sources of robotic voices); just looking so that I am not run over, or so that I don't kill a nine-year-old.
Today (Monday) I started work on a more official basis. As I rode up the slopes another thick layer of sweat matted my shirt to my backpack. 7:45 in the damn morning! This wasn't as surprise-disappointing as was my realization that, even though I've graduated from college, I am still a huge-backpack nerd4. I guess this is because I had to cart all my class textbooks with me, and I haven't bought a new backpack, and my posture is out of whack from living without chairs/crouching under doorways. But still, I'm even more of one than all these schoolkids I pass by on the way to work, who are tied up in class and clubs for at least.. what.. eleven hours a day? The only times I have not been the hugest huge-backpack nerd in the general vicinity were (1) after hearing Josh recount how index cards would fly out of his unzipped bag, and (2) in high school pre-calculus class, when the eleven-year-old math whiz5 sat at the desk in front of me.
Friday I wasn't in love, but: for much of my time here I've been freely indulging in ten-second crushes on almost anyone within fifteen feet6. Adorable udon shop grandma, awkward pachinko parlor employee, shy but handsome young businessman, tough-looking punk teen girl (vs. fashionable punk teen girl), li'l pudgy boy, nerdy middle school girl, super-professional female cashier, giggly high school boy, elaborate sun hat woman, Hawaiian shirt & red-haired old man, multiple old ladies sauntering around bra-less7. Well, I do think I love you, but August has indicated that Big City pace won't let me see your face ever again. I do love you, just can't say so, and there you've gone. But you live on in letters and livejournals?
I think my apartment just sighed.
Very academic footnotes
7. Makes everybody around feel comfortable. I mean this!
6. 4.572 meters.
5. I think the kid's name was Eugene. And I will forever love that mental image of Josh, much to his chagrin.
4. Usually textbooks and gigantic binders, not sandwiches.
3. Incidentally, I'd really like a DS (or DS Lite).
2. Scarier and sadder than this.
1. Please don't mention J-HORROR or JU-ON: THE GRUDGE or THE GRUDGE 2 or the hypothetical GRUDGE 3. The thought has already entered my mind, and I get spooked easily.*
* I secretly love getting spooked.
Saturday I was tired. I rode home from school after nine sticky hours in a business suit and, riding down a slope again, nearly crashed into a nine-year-old who was biking while playing his Nintendo DS.3 With BOTH HANDS. I've witnessed a variety of "while-biking" activities: listening to mp3s, smoking, phone-calling, phone-texting, umbrelling, but-nintending??! And here I can barely manage looking. Not even the active, engaged, touristy looking (tall buildings, signs, graffiti, shirt slogans, haircuts, clouds, sources of robotic voices); just looking so that I am not run over, or so that I don't kill a nine-year-old.
Today (Monday) I started work on a more official basis. As I rode up the slopes another thick layer of sweat matted my shirt to my backpack. 7:45 in the damn morning! This wasn't as surprise-disappointing as was my realization that, even though I've graduated from college, I am still a huge-backpack nerd4. I guess this is because I had to cart all my class textbooks with me, and I haven't bought a new backpack, and my posture is out of whack from living without chairs/crouching under doorways. But still, I'm even more of one than all these schoolkids I pass by on the way to work, who are tied up in class and clubs for at least.. what.. eleven hours a day? The only times I have not been the hugest huge-backpack nerd in the general vicinity were (1) after hearing Josh recount how index cards would fly out of his unzipped bag, and (2) in high school pre-calculus class, when the eleven-year-old math whiz5 sat at the desk in front of me.
Friday I wasn't in love, but: for much of my time here I've been freely indulging in ten-second crushes on almost anyone within fifteen feet6. Adorable udon shop grandma, awkward pachinko parlor employee, shy but handsome young businessman, tough-looking punk teen girl (vs. fashionable punk teen girl), li'l pudgy boy, nerdy middle school girl, super-professional female cashier, giggly high school boy, elaborate sun hat woman, Hawaiian shirt & red-haired old man, multiple old ladies sauntering around bra-less7. Well, I do think I love you, but August has indicated that Big City pace won't let me see your face ever again. I do love you, just can't say so, and there you've gone. But you live on in letters and livejournals?
I think my apartment just sighed.
Very academic footnotes
7. Makes everybody around feel comfortable. I mean this!
6. 4.572 meters.
5. I think the kid's name was Eugene. And I will forever love that mental image of Josh, much to his chagrin.
4. Usually textbooks and gigantic binders, not sandwiches.
3. Incidentally, I'd really like a DS (or DS Lite).
2. Scarier and sadder than this.
1. Please don't mention J-HORROR or JU-ON: THE GRUDGE or THE GRUDGE 2 or the hypothetical GRUDGE 3. The thought has already entered my mind, and I get spooked easily.*
* I secretly love getting spooked.