(no subject)
So around noon today I already had plans for what I was going to write about tonight. This is because I accidentally walked into a top-brass meeting at work, thinking it was a different meeting that I was supposed to go to. I walked in about 30 minutes after it had started, and quickly realized that 1) only high-level execs were present, 2) everyone was wearing full suits and I was very underdressed, and 3) the event was being fancily catered. Even worse, the door had a sign on it saying, "Meeting in Progress, Do Not Disturb," and I walked in anyway.
Once I was in the room, I had a split second to decide if I should go sit down at the table and act like I was invited, or to apologize and leave immediately. "Decide" doesn't really feel like the right word, though. Are those "split-second decisions" actually decisions at all? I don't remember deciding anything; I just remember walking over to the table and sitting down.
I sat down in the only free chair, which was next to the company's number two. Everyone kind of looked at me strangely, but I pretended like I was supposed to be there. I wondered briefly if anyone would ask me to leave, but after the first two minutes I was certain that each individual in the room had assumed that everyone else understood why the 22-year-old in a t-shirt was attending the big fancy meeting, and therefore they didn't need to worry about it.
Of course, they could have just been being polite, but overall it's not really a polite group, so I don't think that was it. I really think they just all believed that I was supposed to be there because I acted like I was. And so while I listened to the presentation I thought about con artists and poker players and how human beings think they're so logical and so rational, when really they are primarily animals who sense fear, weakness, or confidence in others instantly and make their decisions based on those readings. And this is a good thing. I can appreciate both the historical/evolutionary purpose of this faculty and how it helps me today. If anyone had asked me why I was there, I wouldn't have known what to say. But their reading of my comfort being there removed the need for them to ask and spared me the potential embarrassment of being asked to leave.
So I was feeling all cocky about how I handled the situation and thinking up clever little phrases for this entry. And this evening I was reminded of the flip side of this animal coin. On the way home I stopped to buy some food. I wasn't really hungry at lunch today, so by the time I got off work at 5:20, I was starving. I went into the little health food store on the way home and bought some larabars, soy yogurt, apples, hummus, almond milk, and dark chocolate. I have a lot of real food at home right now, but all of it takes effort to prepare, and I needed items that could be consumed immediately.
So I ate a banana larabar (the second best flavor after key lime pie) during the first three blocks back to my apartment. Still hungry. So as I neared my street, I unwrapped the dark chocolate and broke off a piece. It was the very dark, 70% cacao kind, the Green and Black brand. Very good, very melty in the hot sun. Suddenly it was all over my hands and my lips. You know:
I got home and tried to park without anointing my steering wheel with my delicious chocolate. Then I had to get out of the car with my purse, groceries, water bottle, and melty chocolate. Yep, I put the bar between my teeth for this, just in time for a not unattractive guy who lives in my building to show up and see me looking like a greedy four-year-old. He had apparently just finished his run and was super-cheerful from the endorphins.
As he unlocked the door for me and made general small-talk, I was suddenly struck by a thought: what if this is the male half of the sexually prolific couple who lives above me?
A man and a woman who live directly above me have loud, loud, LOUD sex. All the various thumping and pounding I hear up there is not so bad because it's so impersonal. I mean, it might not even be sex; they could just be hammering a nail into a wall for 15 minutes or something. Who knows? It's the moans that get on my nerves. The moans leave no doubt as to what they're up to, and these are the moaniest lovers I've ever encountered. It's a moaning/screaming competition. For whatever reason, the building's acoustics are so good that if I closed my eyes I would think they were in the same room as me.
I think it is because I hear this guy getting it on so much that I suddenly could not think of anything but sex, sex, sex. The childish part of my brain began insisting that I ask him, "Do you live right above me?"
The smarter part said, "Don't ask it! Whether he says yes or no, he'll follow it by asking why, and then you'll have to say it's because you wondering if he was the male half of the sexually prolific couple that lives above you!" The rebuttal: "Just ask it! You'll be able to think of a fake reason by the time he answers, and besides, you're curious, aren't you?" I smiled awkwardly at him and said nothing, waiting for one side to win.
"It's getting hot, isn't it?" he said.
I am such a child in some ways. It takes so much effort for me not to giggle at some dumb thing like that. It reminds me of one of the executives at my company who (I suspect) has dyslexia. He needs help with everyday writing, and so he always calls my extension and then when I pick up the phone, before saying anything else like "Good morning," or "Hi, it's Thomas," he says in a quiet, secretive voice, "I've got a hard one for you."
The quiet, secretive voice is because he doesn't want others to know that I'm his grammar deputy, and it's always a "hard one" because he can never get close enough on the spelling for the automatic spell-checker to recognize it. But every time I have to stifle my giggles so that he doesn't realize what I think he's been saying.
Anyway, the runner is nice-looking and all, but normally I probably wouldn't be checking him out like this. Well, maybe I would, but I would have handled it better. But because I've hooked onto the upstairs apartment connection, I'm pretty much only thinking, This is that guy! This is that guy who screams when he cums! And so on.
We walked up the first flight of stairs, and I stopped at my door. He walked behind me to keep going up to the next floor while I tried to jam my car key into my door. He was only a few feet away when I realized my error and he totally saw me change keys. And then he caught me looking at him across the landing. Oh my.
And so, being an animal goes the other way too. Being an animal also allows you to stupidly shove the wrong key into a lock, get tongue-tied for inane reasons, and generally just make a fool of yourself.
Once I was in the room, I had a split second to decide if I should go sit down at the table and act like I was invited, or to apologize and leave immediately. "Decide" doesn't really feel like the right word, though. Are those "split-second decisions" actually decisions at all? I don't remember deciding anything; I just remember walking over to the table and sitting down.
I sat down in the only free chair, which was next to the company's number two. Everyone kind of looked at me strangely, but I pretended like I was supposed to be there. I wondered briefly if anyone would ask me to leave, but after the first two minutes I was certain that each individual in the room had assumed that everyone else understood why the 22-year-old in a t-shirt was attending the big fancy meeting, and therefore they didn't need to worry about it.
Of course, they could have just been being polite, but overall it's not really a polite group, so I don't think that was it. I really think they just all believed that I was supposed to be there because I acted like I was. And so while I listened to the presentation I thought about con artists and poker players and how human beings think they're so logical and so rational, when really they are primarily animals who sense fear, weakness, or confidence in others instantly and make their decisions based on those readings. And this is a good thing. I can appreciate both the historical/evolutionary purpose of this faculty and how it helps me today. If anyone had asked me why I was there, I wouldn't have known what to say. But their reading of my comfort being there removed the need for them to ask and spared me the potential embarrassment of being asked to leave.
So I was feeling all cocky about how I handled the situation and thinking up clever little phrases for this entry. And this evening I was reminded of the flip side of this animal coin. On the way home I stopped to buy some food. I wasn't really hungry at lunch today, so by the time I got off work at 5:20, I was starving. I went into the little health food store on the way home and bought some larabars, soy yogurt, apples, hummus, almond milk, and dark chocolate. I have a lot of real food at home right now, but all of it takes effort to prepare, and I needed items that could be consumed immediately.
So I ate a banana larabar (the second best flavor after key lime pie) during the first three blocks back to my apartment. Still hungry. So as I neared my street, I unwrapped the dark chocolate and broke off a piece. It was the very dark, 70% cacao kind, the Green and Black brand. Very good, very melty in the hot sun. Suddenly it was all over my hands and my lips. You know:
I got home and tried to park without anointing my steering wheel with my delicious chocolate. Then I had to get out of the car with my purse, groceries, water bottle, and melty chocolate. Yep, I put the bar between my teeth for this, just in time for a not unattractive guy who lives in my building to show up and see me looking like a greedy four-year-old. He had apparently just finished his run and was super-cheerful from the endorphins.
As he unlocked the door for me and made general small-talk, I was suddenly struck by a thought: what if this is the male half of the sexually prolific couple who lives above me?
A man and a woman who live directly above me have loud, loud, LOUD sex. All the various thumping and pounding I hear up there is not so bad because it's so impersonal. I mean, it might not even be sex; they could just be hammering a nail into a wall for 15 minutes or something. Who knows? It's the moans that get on my nerves. The moans leave no doubt as to what they're up to, and these are the moaniest lovers I've ever encountered. It's a moaning/screaming competition. For whatever reason, the building's acoustics are so good that if I closed my eyes I would think they were in the same room as me.
I think it is because I hear this guy getting it on so much that I suddenly could not think of anything but sex, sex, sex. The childish part of my brain began insisting that I ask him, "Do you live right above me?"
The smarter part said, "Don't ask it! Whether he says yes or no, he'll follow it by asking why, and then you'll have to say it's because you wondering if he was the male half of the sexually prolific couple that lives above you!" The rebuttal: "Just ask it! You'll be able to think of a fake reason by the time he answers, and besides, you're curious, aren't you?" I smiled awkwardly at him and said nothing, waiting for one side to win.
"It's getting hot, isn't it?" he said.
I am such a child in some ways. It takes so much effort for me not to giggle at some dumb thing like that. It reminds me of one of the executives at my company who (I suspect) has dyslexia. He needs help with everyday writing, and so he always calls my extension and then when I pick up the phone, before saying anything else like "Good morning," or "Hi, it's Thomas," he says in a quiet, secretive voice, "I've got a hard one for you."
The quiet, secretive voice is because he doesn't want others to know that I'm his grammar deputy, and it's always a "hard one" because he can never get close enough on the spelling for the automatic spell-checker to recognize it. But every time I have to stifle my giggles so that he doesn't realize what I think he's been saying.
Anyway, the runner is nice-looking and all, but normally I probably wouldn't be checking him out like this. Well, maybe I would, but I would have handled it better. But because I've hooked onto the upstairs apartment connection, I'm pretty much only thinking, This is that guy! This is that guy who screams when he cums! And so on.
We walked up the first flight of stairs, and I stopped at my door. He walked behind me to keep going up to the next floor while I tried to jam my car key into my door. He was only a few feet away when I realized my error and he totally saw me change keys. And then he caught me looking at him across the landing. Oh my.
And so, being an animal goes the other way too. Being an animal also allows you to stupidly shove the wrong key into a lock, get tongue-tied for inane reasons, and generally just make a fool of yourself.