It has been the kind of week they write songs about, songs with names like "The Sound of Silence" and "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay." It's been a boring enough week to make me wish someone would break up with me again, just so I'd have something to occupy me. My new pet fish has actually started to behave like a living thing, but seeing a little black blob eat a week's worth of food in a day is, like dreams and baby pictures, only interesting to the person who has them. Even my fascination wore off after about ten minutes.
April Fool's Day even passed without incident at work. I was stunned, considering that just about every day is April Fool's Day where I work, but maybe I've just gotten acclimated to being tricked. We have a couple of zany pranksters on the staff who are fond of that old form of April Fool's "joke" that I've never understood. Maybe you're familiar with this hilarious, knee-slapping joke: see, what they do is, they come up to someone who trusts them, see, and then they tell that person a reasonable, perfectly believable and usually horrible thing, that isn't true! And then the stupid idiot believes it and reacts with shock and horror! Isn't that hilarious?!
(furrowed brow) "Hey, Jim. Did you hear about Shari?"
"Shari? No. What about Shari?"
"She… she just got back from the oncologist. They found a tumor in her lung."
"Oh my God! That's awful!! She has two small children! And she just quit smoking like two weeks ago…! That's the worst thing I've ever heard. I'm going to go kill myself."
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha! APRIL FOOLS! HA HA HA HA HA HA!"
"Wha… oh! HA ha ha ha ha! You guys! Ha ha! I get it! You violated my trust! That's hysterical! Ha ha ha! That'll teach me to form relationships with other humans! You scamps! Ha ha ha!" (punch)
I think the prank as a concept has deteriorated since Prankathon 97, also known as the Cuban Pissant Crisis. Long story, shortened:
Dan retaliated by going to the grocery store and buying a straw and a bag of frozen peas, which he then shot at us blowgun-style for the rest of the painful day.
Tammy retaliated for that by going upstairs and removing every single screw from Dan's chair, leaving it precariously set up as if all the screws were still in it. Dan came back and sat down in the chair, which disintegrated beneath him. He escaped with only minor hilarious injuries.
Dan retaliated by pretending he had broken his arm and preparing to file for worker's compensation. He came to work the next day in a sling.
Tammy was emotionally overwhelmed with guilt until she figured out what was going on, at which point she retaliated by pretending to quit and hiding in the closet.
My boss then locked her in until she promised to come out and do actual work at her job.
Meanwhile, all I could do was sit there and think, "I'm new to this whole job thing, but I'm pretty sure this stuff doesn't happen in other offices."
Since then, it's been pretty quiet. Especially this week.
The overall stillness of the past few days is probably what made me so scrappy with the Law Student as I approached the weekend.
I have a friend who I have known for about eight years. He transferred into my high school, joined me at college, and went on to law school when I went on to my career in unemployment. In high school, he may have very well been one of the most interesting people I knew. He was a living non sequitur. Being around him was like living in one of those bad teen comedies from the eighties (without the gratuitous nudity). He was always trying to do things like dressing up and going to some hotel and crashing whatever wedding reception was being held there, just to see if anybody would figure out we didn't belong there. He became infatuated with the city of Florissant my senior year and for no real reason prepared a completely bogus documentary about it and one of its residents, who I believe was named "Wilderness" Jim Puckett. On my 18th birthday, he and another friend went around town with a camcorder and asked complete strangers on the street to tell their favorite stories about me. David Letterman hasn't had a funnier piece of tape on his show in five years. Mr. Law Student was a lot of fun.
But that was then.
In recent months, probably because I've seen a lot more of him since everyone went away, I have watched the color bleed from L.S.'s life. I can't remember the last time I went out with him when he didn't get so mad at something that he had to get up and storm off for a few minutes. The thing is, the things that get him this mad are things like his girlfriend tipping the waitress too much. Spending time with him is often like playing "duck duck goose" with dynamite plungers. You know an explosion is coming, just not when.
He's the type of person who wears a tie to bed. He's the type of person who has khakis grafted directly onto his flesh. He's the type of person who, when he was nineteen and you would go into his dorm room, would have leather furniture and oil paintings of sailboats on the walls. He had a framed picture of the Kennedys. I remember just looking at him one day, taking him by the shoulders, and laughing, "Look at me. Look at me! You are not forty. Do you understand? You're not forty! When I come back here, I want to see a Ren and Stimpy poster stuck up on that wall with gum and masking tape! Do you hear me?!"
Of course, I was only joking. How other people want to live their lives is really none of my business. That's where he and I differ. But more on that later.
At some point, L.S. stopped doing things like making Florissant documentaries and started saying things like, "I have a career to think about." To a certain extent, in my weaker moments, I can understand that way of thinking, but when he says "I have a career to think about," it's always the prelude to controlling or changing someone else.
"I have a career to think about, and I can't be seen around town with someone who acts like that, so stop enjoying yourself!"
"I have a career to think about, and I can't be seen around town going to… science fiction movies! I can't be seen at animated cartoons!..."
("Did you give any thought to that attorney I recommended?"
"Yeah. I was going to hire him, but I did some checking, and apparently he was seen going into A Bug's Life when he was 23 years old. I really don't think that's the kind of man I want representing me."
"A Bug's Life?! I'd better call all my friends and warn them!")
It breaks my heart to see someone go from being spontaneous and clever to being such a dull white that I bring silver polish to our dinners just to see if it will help. Normally, though, I give it very little thought. "Oh, that's just L.S. bein' all L.Ssy again." This week, though, he said something that changed everything.
He called me up to invite me out this weekend as he often does, and having the life I have, I of course said yes. (I had been planning to count the bumps in my ceiling all weekend, but I figured it could wait.) As the call was concluding, he said, "This place we're going is a good place. You'll like it."
"Um… good. I like going to restaurants I'll like."
"Now, I'll be coming from a meeting at a big law office that day, and Frederica will be joining us straight from work…"
"Well, ya know," I said, "I'll be coming straight from work too."
"Yeah," he replied, "but she'll be coming from a real job."
I… did you just…? I know I didn't hear that right.
"All I'm saying is," L.S. continued very pointedly, "we'll both be dressed accordingly. So, you know, no Hawaiian shirts."
I can't remember the rest of the conversation. I can't remember the rest of the evening. I've never been so angry at another human being without infidelity being involved. I had a very, very heated conversation with my fish.
I was told how to dress!
"By your mother, when you were five?" you ask. No, gentle fish! My mother trusted me to dress myself when I was five!
It's a scientific miracle! I would have thought that all the darkness and alcohol would have stopped the photosynthesis, but the tree trunk up his ass is actually growing!! I guess anything can grow surrounded by that much bullshit! Grrrrrrrr!
Actual adults don't need to play dress-up to prove themselves.
The thing is, I noticed recently while doing my laundry that I have about fifty shirts that I wear on any regular basis. Of those fifty shirts, four are Hawaiian. Four. This means that, on any given day, there is a ninety percent chance that I will not be wearing one. L.S. didn't like those odds.
Which was a real shame, considering that by opening his big jackass mouth he made my wearing the loudest, ugliest Hawaiian I had an absolute certainty. It's too bad I don't have any jeans with holes in them.
I was feeling delightfully confrontational; it was like being in dorm government all over again. It's always interesting to see L.S. deal with someone getting in his face. As volatile as he is, he's also devoted to the concept of staying on everyone's good side all the time. If he says something and reads in your face that you disagree, he will immediately say, "Kidding! I'm kidding!", even if what he just said was the least humorous utterance ever spoken, even if he had just been talking about puppy murder. When I came into the restaurant and he saw what I was wearing, all he did was smile though his teeth and say, "I love it! I love it!" even though it was quite obvious that he could not have loved anything less. He never said another thing about it. Don't want to rock the boat, after all.
The whole incident has brought me to a rather unnerving threshold. I started spending more time with L.S. because I have fond memories of our high school years together, but also because everyone else vacated the city like it was radioactive. He became one of the Only People Left. The Hawaiian Incident, however, got me thinking that sometimes having no friends can actually be a desirable option. I mean, if they're my friends, shouldn't I have something in common with them?
As we ate, someone brought up the legal profession and my various hangups, and L.S. said, "In law, you can't be a nondrinker. Business is done over drinks in bars. One of the first things they tell you in law school is, 'Find a mixed drink you like and stick with it!'"
I replied, "What about knee pads? Did they tell you to find a brand of knee pads you like and stick with them?"
L.S. grinned and said, "I'll be making twice as much money as you by this time next year." And the look on his face told me that was supposed to settle everything.
So I jabbed him in the eye with a fork.
Not really, but I think the level of palpable disgust in my head rose so high that some of it squirted onto the table. He must have noticed, because he immediately said, "Kidding! I'm kidding."
I've never dumped a friend before. This should be interesting.
one day Dan was rather harmlessly pelted with rubber bands by Tammy.
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As I write this, two little girls are roller-skating in my parking lot. They're wearing what look like ten-year-old Barbie plastic skates, and the wheels don't really seem to turn, so the girls are just walking with these things on their feet, kind of pushing the wheels into movement as they drag their feet on the asphalt. They make a scraping sound that sounds like someone digging into a headlight with a garden spade. For entertainment, the girls are "skating" from car to car in the parking lot and examining their contents, pointing things out to one another and balancing themselves on the rear view mirrors.
Little kids shouldn't have to grow up without yards. I'd feel bad for them, except I'm pretty sure they were the kids who used to yell at me when I went out.
When I was growing up in Catholic schools, the makeshift theologians who used to teach us always used to say, "God always answers your prayers; sometimes, he just answers 'No'." I'd like to see some references on that piece of dogma, but I did have it on my mind this week as I went to yet another wake for a long-suffering old relative.
ME: Dear Lord, I've been about as depressed as I can remember being. Is there any end in sight to all of this?
GOD: Yes, if by "end" you mean death.
ME: What???
GOD: Oh, haven't you heard? Half the people you know are going to die this month. Sorry.
Between the Hawaiian Incident and my recent funereal experiences, I have finally decided that I just give up on clothing. I surrender. I try to be reasonable; I try to wear what I'm supposed to wear where I'm supposed to wear it; I value comfort over superficiality and appearance, generally, but I try not to embarrass anybody who isn't in law school. Apparently, though, I will never, ever get it right no matter how hard I try, so the trying portion of my life is over.
My aunt passed away over the Easter weekend after a long bout with cancer. (The Big C has put away every single deceased member of my family. I am never happier about my adoption than when I'm at a family funeral, splashing my feet in someone else's gene pool.) Since it was a family funeral, my dad came by after work to pick me up. I put on the nicest shirt I have, some nice dress pants—no denim or anything!—and my jacket. I opted not to wear a tie. And my dad arrived to pick me up, and I climbed into his luxury honkymobile, and he looked me up and down and said, "You're going like that?"
I said, "I… I dressed up! A shirt with a collar AND buttons! Nice pants! My sport coat! All the pieces are there, man!"
He looked at me liked I'd just spilled ketchup on my crotch. Didn't say a word to me for the rest of the evening. Mixed blessing.
(By the way: "sport coat"? What sport would this be, exactly? Jogging? Touch football?)
(Maybe it's called that because, like a sport, wearing it leaves you sweaty and uncomfortable. Or maybe wearing "professional" clothing is a sport in itself. "Okay, everybody! Put on your stranglehold ties and jackets! Ladies, heels and hosiery! Whoever can bear the discomfort the longest without a shooting spree wins! Go!")
I tend to have a hard time with funerals for extended family members. I will miss my aunt, by all means, but I'm afraid I just don't grieve like other people. Wakes are silly. The deceased is laid out like a buffet table to demonstrate that she really isn't alive, just in case there are still a few mourners showing up expecting her to jump out from behind the door and yell, "Surprise!" The majority of the conversation around this morbid display is essentially an artistic critique of the embalmer's technique, as if the deceased were made out of pipe cleaners and papier-mâché (which, at that point, they occasionally are). The family's inheritance is spent making the deceased look as alive as possible in ways I don't even want to think about for the two hours people will be looking at her before they throw her down a hole. To say nothing of the fact that, when the deceased is thrown down the hole with a new hairdo and outfit, she will be thrown in a varnished, polished, velvet-and-silk-lined box nicer than the vast majority of my furniture, a box that can only be described as comfy. It's not as bad as the pharaohs or anything—we're not sending her down there with lunch and her three favorite servants or anything—but either way it all seems pretty close to denial. If we spent that much money, attention, and concern on people when they were alive, maybe we wouldn't have so damn much to grieve about.
I realize that, by the time I'm dead, my opinion in these matters will not matter a whole lot. Still, if I had my way, my family would not go through the painful and exorbitant process of throwing me down a hole. Hopefully, if I ever have children to eventually bury me, I will have raised them to be intelligent enough to dispense with all the ridiculous trappings of our culture and just have a nice party somewhere, telling stories and probably even reading this if it survives. As for my body, they can put it in a refrigerator box and leave it on an enemy's porch, ringing the doorbell and running. I don't know why I think that's funny, but I do.
My real problem with this particular funeral was that the only person I knew there in the entire room was the lady in the comfy box. And I mean, I spent some time mourning her there, but no differently than I had at my apartment when I first heard the news. Theoretically, you're there for the family members, to show support and all, but Betty was my grandpa's sister. Grandpa died (of cancer!) when I was four. I never knew any of her kids except Marty, her mentally handicapped son for whom she cared and who was dealing with the loss so poorly that he wasn't even there. I just felt awkward. I didn't even know who to console.
"Hi. I'm sorry about your loss."
"I was just about to come over to you and say I was sorry about YOUR loss. Who are you?"
"I'm… I'm Jim, Di's son…?"
"Who's Di?"
"My sister was a flower girl in Margie's wedding back in 1983…?"
"…"
"Margie, Betty's daughter…?"
"Margie? Betty? Is this the Colman funeral?"
"No. At least I don't think… no, that's next door."
"Are you sure? That sure looks like Myrtle Colman in the casket. I was just saying what an excellent job the embalmer did. She looks so… natural."
A favorite funeral phrase. "She looks so natural." In what way? As if any of the bereaved had ever seen her lying asleep in her nicest outfit with her hair done.
(When I went to Russia in high school, my friend Brian almost got arrested by armed guards for bursting into laughter in Lenin's Tomb when, shuffling past the solemn display, I leaned over to him and whispered, "He… he looks so natural. So peaceful." They confiscated my camcorder.)
I found myself thinking a lot about family as I sat surrounded by people I was related to but had never met, as my mom spent the majority of the evening pointing and saying, "That's cousin Patty; she's Betty's daughter-in-law who lives in Nebraska. That's Sue; you would know her from…" and on and on. I thought about the fact that, if pressed, I couldn't really come up with a story about the deceased to remember her by. I thought about my little cousins, Timmy and Adam and Sean and the whole brood of like fifteen little kids who I only see on holidays lately. And my godchild, who drives a car now and works at Dairy Queen and is thinking about college. She's so old! I'M so old! And I thought, "When I do end up in the comfy box, and all those guys are sitting around at my wake, I hope they know me well enough to have stories to tell."
Now, I just have to spend the next fifty years being interesting.
|
Well, the law student came over and asked me to move in with him.
That's what I said! He came over and explained the whole thing to me. For a good long while, I was even considering it. I wrote down the pros and cons and everything. But the cons section was pretty hard to ignore.
PROS:
*an actual house, in a decent neighborhood I could take a walk in without little children shouting, "Hey! Gay Dude!" (Ironic, considering I'd actually be living with another man.)
*central air and heating (not that I don't love my window unit in the living room and all, but thinking, "Summer's coming; better get a bed made up out on the couch" gets a little old.)
*Jim Space would be more room than my entire apartment now, NOT counting the kitchen and communal living room
*covered, guaranteed parking (no more Jurassic car!)
*cheaper than even my current place
*storage space for all the stuff currently being carelessly treated in my
parents' basement
*my section of the house can be completely locked down, away from the other
half, and I would have an outside door of my own in my section.
*washer and dryer
*decent cable (my current cable provider doesn't offer Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, the Sci-Fi channel, or E!, but they do offer three different types of porn)
CONS:
*having to live with someone else in the other half of the house
*having that someone be a Law Student
*sharing a garage with L. S.
*having to work out a bathroom cleaning schedule with L.S.
*having to share dishes and their cleaning with L.S.
* having my whereabouts known by L.S.
*"Knock knock! Anybody home? It's me, L.S.!"
*paying rent to L.S.
*dividing utility bills with L.S.
*having to conceal L.S.'s body in the crawlspace and misleading police after finally killing him
I weighed things carefully. I thought about how nice it would be to go back to a quiet neighborhood.
Then I thought about last weekend, when he wanted to take me out for my birthday, because my birthday was my special day. Where did I want to go? Well, I couldn't decide, so I gave him a choice between Mongolian barbecue, Lebanese, or Thai. We went to TGI Friday's.
I thought about not having to go to my parents' every time I wanted to wash my clothes. I thought about his assurance that I could go days without seeing him, his promise that he would respect my privacy, knowing that I am a very private person.
Then I thought about the fact that, even though I have made it clear that unannounced visits are a big Thing with me due to the weirdoes who roam my neighborhood and my general antisocial nature, when L.S. decided he wanted to offer me the place he just drove over and started banging on my door, waking me up. When I didn't answer, thinking, "No one I know would come over without calling; clearly it's a serial killer," he began banging on my window and shouting my name. "I can see your car! I know you're home!"
That was the clincher.
He cares how our high school football team is doing.
The dilemma isn't whether or not to take the offer. The dilemma is, how do I tell him no without causing him to turn into the Incredible Hulk? I can see his khakis ripping away, his skin managing to look pale even when green. I mean, nobody's told him "no" since 1987. My life may be in danger. Watch the papers for the next few days; if I turn up missing, tell my folks not to blow too much money on the casket.
He cares what Phi Beta Kappa is, and he reminds me that I threw their letter away without reading it every single time I see him.
He knows the names of more than four flavors of beer.
He can never, ever be my roommate. I wouldn't last.
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Hardest thing about having a fish: keeping that damned water clean. I'm not worried the fish is gonna die anymore; I just don't like having a bowl of urine in my living room.
I've also been told that my fish and I have something in common, namely both of us tend to hate all other members of our own species. Apparently, I can put a mirror up to the bowl and he'll fight his own reflection for my amusement. I don't think I'll be cruel enough to make an enemy spontaneously appear in his bowl too often; if I wanted him to fight with people who weren't really there, I'd just get him an e-mail account.
This week, I have generally been incredibly, incredibly angry at nothing. I don't really know how to explain it; I guess I just went from being down in the dumps because nothing seems to be going well to being p#$$ed off for the same reason. I've spent the last few days with a knot of frustration in my stomach and a "dare me to punch you" look on my face. After a few weeks of feeling like the people I want to befriend don't want me around, and the people I want to date don't want to date me, I just woke up some time this week and thought, "What's so f@%#in' great about people, anyway?"
So I got on the phone with a friend of mine the other night who called because she knew I was in a bad mood. She decided to cheer me up, I guess. Unfortunately, she decided that the best way to do this would be to explain to me that all my problems weren't really problems. I guess the idea was that if I had it explained to me that things really weren't bad, I would logically have no reason to be upset. My ex used to do it all the time. Note to the would-be counsellors: this approach is BAD. She was essentially arguing with me about my life. It was like she was picking a fight, and this was not the week to pick a fight with me.
"...and so I have to tell the Law Student I'm not moving in with him, and he's gonna go ballistic... he's so tantrum-prone. I picture him holding his breath and stomping his feet to get out of parking tickets...."
"I know what you should do! Don't tell him no. Move in with him."
"I... wha?"
"I think it's a good idea. You need to live with someone to be around people and have some companionship for a change, and you've known him for a long time. It would pretty much solve everything."
"But... such a bad idea... does so many bad things... just gave long, well-prepared monologue about it... are we even having the same conversation?"
"I think it's a great opportunity. He's been a very good friend to you, if you think about it."
"!!! The thing with the shirt! And talking about how much money he's gonna make! I saw him last night, and every time his girlfriend disagreed with him about something, he said, 'Let's not forget who's paying for dinner'! Small doses only!"
"Well, it's a shame that you aren't tolerant enough of a few character flaws, as if you don't have any."
"Okay. Listen very carefully. I am going to hang up the phone and go to your apartment. I will have a Louisville Slugger. You will have a ten-minute head start. Goodbye."
Hell. I don't know why anybody would want to live with me, anyway. Having me in your home is like keeping the rat poison next to the breakfast cereal in the cupboard.
Remember when it was okay to get excited?In recent months, I have been overwhelmed to the point of speechlessness--no small feat, that--at what an incredibly jaded, aloof, cynical, invulnerable, emotionally bulletproof culture is being nurtured and cultivated all around us. Nobody just unabashedly loves stuff anymore. You can't. People will eat you alive. It feels like enthusiasm has been outlawed. Every anticipated event or feel-good story is delgued with a time-release feedback loop of gossip and backlash until you just find yourself unplugged from joy.
I've been thinking about it a lot lately, partially because of Kosovo. I actually find myself listening more intently to the Eeeeevil Serbian state-run news stories about the "NATO aggressors" because, these days, I just don't feel comfortable believing anything my own nation has to say. Patriotism? Is that something like trust? I'm not ready for a serious relationship with any one country right now. I've been hurt so many times before....
I think I blame sitcoms. Every typical sitcom you watch is based on one-liners and one character ripping on another. People have started to associate cruelty and verbal abuse with humor, and everybody likes to be humorous, so you get torn down like a slum full of asbestos practically every time you open your mouth. I mean, have you ever listened to the kids on Home Improvement talk to their parents? If I'd talked like that to my dad, they'd have had to put me back together using tweezers.
Then again, maybe it's just the people I hang out with. I really don't know.
The death of enthusiasm has also been in the forefront of my mind because the new Star Wars movie is coming out in about a month, and I want to get excited, but I can't. Every time I find myself wanting to give in to the geeky urges, I find myself thinking, "It could very well be an awful, awful film." And I mean, I've been looking forward to it in one way or another since I was eight years old.
I was online yesterday and was shocked, though, just gasping in civil horror at this piece I read in the Detroit Free Press entitled "Star Wars Fans Need to Get a Life." It was about these people who have already started waiting in line to buy tickets, and it was just the most uninvited cruelty against these people for the sin of excitement. It was like the writer was offended that they were happy. The tone of it was fantastically depressing. "George Lucas doesn't care about you! Harrison Ford doesn't care about you! Nobody cares about you!"
And these guys in line do arguably give a bad name to fandom at first glance, and one's thoughts do turn to the issue of bathrooms and showers (as a former movie usher I shudder at the thought of what it must be like to work at these nerd farms), but when you see them, they're just so friggin' happy to be dorks. They just nakedly don't care, and it's very, very threatening to people. Like the whole facade is going to come tumbling down if people are living happily in a world of their own instead of the bitter little pill the rest of us dwell on.
I mean, listen to me. "Nerd farms"? I have 100 Star Wars figures in my bedroom and a framed picture of Darth Vader in my living room, and I'm talking like I'm a beach volleyball player or something.
I do not want to be like that. I know I have it in me, but I don't want it to be who I am.
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I have this friend named Bart.
Bart is an easy person to be friends with, because he is easily one of the nicest human beings on the face of the earth. And not "let me give you a ride to the airport" nice. "I have spare bone marrow if you need it" nice. I have noticed in my lifetime an inverse proportion in how nice people are and how nice people have any reason to be; considering Bart has had the kind of life that would have sent me to the top of a clocktower with a rifle years ago, I suppose his kindness should come as no surprise.
Bart, you see, is a ward of the state. His mother is not well, and he has a potpourri of several medical conditions that pretty much ensure that he can never be left on his own for as long as he lives. He's diabetic. He tends to have seizures. He tends to lose consciousness. Although I'm sure Bart would be happy to drive you to the airport, I'm not sure you'd want him behind the wheel.
(The saddest part of that is that all Bart ever wanted was to be a priest, but orders in the Catholic Church won't take him because he'd be too expensive. Like so many people are in line to be priests that they can hang a "no vacancies" sign. Also, they apparently have a problem with the thought of Bart having a seizure and collapsing in the middle of the consecration of the host or something. It was only after knowing Bart that I realized I'd never seen a priest in a wheelchair, and that this probably was not due to a series of miraculous healings across the nation.)
So, Bart lives in a group home full of people who think the television is telling them to kill their children. He helps out the staff where he can and lives quietly, applying to monastic orders (which are apparently more accepting than the priesthood). Through various -cares, -caides, and stipends, Bart accrues a whopping total of $90 a month to buy groceries and extravagant luxuries like gum. Four days a week, he volunteers at a hospital, visiting the sick and reassuring their families in the waiting room. Checking up on people the doctors are too busy to look in on, baking cookies, things like that. To get to the hospital, he takes the bus to the Metrolink. Round trip, this journey takes him about two and a half hours.
Yesterday, Bart was running a little late, so he hurried to board the train in order to keep from missing his curfew at the home. He made it in time and went over and sat down. A moment later, he realized, "Oh no! I neglected to pay the fare! That's dishonest. I had better do something to rectify the situation. That gentleman looks like he might be able to help me."
"Excuse me, sir," Bart said to the transit cop. "I was wondering if you could help me. In my rush, I neglected to pay my fare. Is there any way I could pay you?"
So, because he had so honestly come up unprompted and attempted so earnestly to make things right, the transit cop wrote him a $47 ticket for failing to pay his fare.
Isn't that heartwarming?
I wanted to give the story a hyperbolically awful ending, like, "and then the train was hit by a comet, and the space radiation made Bart's arm fall off, and just when things were looking their worst, he was eaten by a bear," but I really can't think of a worse way for that story to end than it actually did. I assume Bart will be able to live on half his normally lavish income. We told him to fight it in court, to go in with a suit and an autobiographical manila envelope and hope that the judge is so impressed by his preparation that he at least reaches a cheaper settlement or something.
God knows he won't take any money from any of his friends. He's too nice.
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Throughout my life, I have been surrounded by people who have devoted themselves to the further understanding of human feelings and behavior. Whether through the priesthood or conventional psychology, a remarkable number of my friends have dedicated themselves to counseling, comforting, and studying the things that make us how we are. How we feel. What we think. I am glad to have these people in my life, not only because I know I will be in good hands when I do finally go bananas, but because with the help of these people I feel that I, too, can unlock the mysteries of the human psyche and answer eternal questions.
I will soon be enlisting the help of my trained friends, because today I was quite unexpectedly confronted with one of these eternal questions, one that has plagued me as well as scholars, behavioral scientists, and poets throughout the ages. One of humanity's oldest mysteries: what is with these people who flip out when you try to take their pictures?
I was at work today, and Steve came in with his stuffed dog in one hand and a Nikon in the other. And he said to the people in the room, "Turn around!", and three of them turned and smiled, and one of them acted like he was Medusa with bad breath. She put her hand up in front of her face like he was an old boyfriend she was hoping to avoid at the mall, and as he tried to cajole her to turn around, she started to insist, "No. No. No." very tersely as if he had advanced upon her with a tarantula and said, "Pet him! He's friendly!"
"Oh, come on," Steve said, snapping the people around her. "I'm going to get you eventually." (I can only assume he meant with the camera.) At this point, I was as amused as I was bemused to learn that she was one of Those People, the photophobes. I felt strangely comforted; all the women in my family are photophobes, so whenever somebody starts to pull the old duck-and-cover routine it always feels just a little bit like Christmas to me. I began to hum "Silver Bells."
"Steve, I said NO," she shot back with enough unexpected force to surprise pretty much everyone in the room, never once moving her hand away from her face or her eyes away from the ground. She was tense and angry just at the suggestion of a photograph. She had been jolly a moment before. And here she was, dressed smartly, makeup on, hair lovely, very photo-friendly in appearance, just a shutter click away from sending Steve to the Big Darkroom in the Sky. She was very sincerely going to murder him.
It was all lost on Steve, who giggled eerily and walked away only after saying, "I had to wait and get Oliver coming out of the bathroom. I'll get you, too." But I, for one, was a little upset to see her snap at him like that.
"Why did you do that? Why did you react to him that way?"
She was so angry she didn't even answer me. Later, she apologized, saying, "I do not like to have my picture taken" the way you might say "I do not like to have my children kidnapped."
Why the hell do people do that? What goes through your mind? Hasn't that whole soul-stealing thing been settled? Would the world really end, really, if somebody you were maybe three years from never seeing again had a bad picture of you in an obscure album in his basement that neither you nor anyone you cared about ever had to look at or even know about for as long as you lived?
You're not a federal witness! It's not like he works for USA Today! There are no plans for a billboard!
You don't like yourself on film? You photograph terribly?
Of course every picture of you is terrible! Every picture of you is a blurred shot of you flailing your arms and running out of the room, you nitwit! If your face looks bad to you on film, it's probably because your face is always photographed either in a mid-rant contortion or after an extensive chase! The best anyone can hope for is a shot of you grinning through an expression that says, "I hate you for doing this and will have my revenge"! Instead of holding still and smiling for two @$#%# seconds and then having the picture out of your life, you protest and stall and call so much more negative attention to yourself as a self-hating vainglorious peacock that people are on the phone with animal control by the time the flash goes off!
You don't want to run the risk of being remembered badly with a poor photo? Suit yourself! The only other way people can remember you is by what you looked like in person, and the easily-misconstrued mug you try to hide from Kodak is the one you stick in everybody's face every single day, all day long. And it certainly isn't going to improve with time. Think about that the next time you duck and cover, sassy.
I didn't realize it today, but… have I ever mentioned that the things that annoy other people usually don't bother me, but there are some random things nobody cares about that completely piss me off? Turns out, this is one of those things. Who knew?
I mean, Steve just graduated and will probably get a full-time job somewhere else soon. He's been working for us since he was in high school. He is on a sentimental journey and, horror of horrors, wants to remember us in his own twisted little way. He's not asking for a lock of hair. He doesn't want urine or fingernails (at least, not enough to say so out loud). He wants to take a stupid friggin' picture. That someone would deny him the right to remember is unconscionable to me. How terrible would you have to think yourself to not want to be remembered? Seriously, God forbid anything should ever happen to my mother. I have no evidence she's been seen since 1986. I picture myself showing the family album to my grandkids.
"This was Christmas of '92… now, that was the third year they tried to make me dress as Santa for the kids, and I had to beat up your uncle Johnny pretty bad to make them let me eat dinner in peace…"
"Grampa, why weren't any women allowed to celebrate Christmas in the twentieth century?"
"Oh, no, sonny, there was Christmas for the womenfolk too. They were just invisible to film back in those days. There were actually thirty-seven people at this Christmas dinner, but only four of us would consent to photos."
"Grampa, what did aunt Susie look like?"
"I'm not really sure anymore. I think she was blonde."
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