Is it possible to die of irritation?
Never mind. Probably not. There would be far fewer people on earth. Most of us who feel these toxic doses of irritation aren’t even really having that bad a time anyway. Hell, the people with real problems--the people who live in flood plains on top of fault lines in Tornado Alley, the people with hair cancer, the people with a Siamese twin attached to their clavicle while they try to pick up women, the people who marry Eminem--those are the people who have something to complain about, and they’re typically the happiest people you talk to all day.
“Praise the Lord and give me a hug, we’ve made it to the quiet three-week stretch between flood season and twister season! Time to go out by the mailbox and wait for the insurance check!”
“Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, they figured out a way to shield my conjoined brother Steve from the hair irradiation machine! This calls for a night of clubbing, Steve!”
“Thank you, Jesus! Slim Shady went on tour for the summer! I’ll live to see another day!”
The most put-upon people are always the ones who seem to be the most at peace with life. In fact, that’s the case so often that if you are convinced the world is screwing you over, that’s probably a pretty good sign that your life ain’t so bad.
That’s how I know my life ain’t so bad. I wouldn’t be crankier if I were clothed in a swarm of gnats. Oscar the Grouch thinks I need to lighten up and smile. I might not die from my irritation, but a couple of other people have come pretty close this week.
This time last week, I was at an after-hours office function trying desperately to prevent sinus pressure from imploding my ears. As is always the case when I travel, I returned home from my business trip earlier in the week with a galloping, rampaging, almost vindictive strain of sickness. I could hear the germs in my head, grinding their teeth and shouting, “Antibacterial soap?! Antibacterial this, you sons a’ bitches! ACHOO!!!”
Sleeping in a different time zone
Sudden climate change
+9 hours of recirculated plane air being shared with coughers, sneezers, and dirty, dirty children
___________________________________________________________________________
10 days rasping and praying not to drown on my own mucous.
(Because, really, there’s no stupider way to die. But it seemed entirely likely for a while there.)
I tend not to be the stereotypical sick man, the one who has a tickle in his throat and immediately sets up a field hospital on his couch, moaning, “Ohhh, call a priest! Tell my mother I loved her! Billy inherits my football! Boo hoo, so very sick!” I lean towards the other extreme, drinking gallons of orange juice with grim determination and bleeding out on my way to work. You know, the jackass who poisons the entire office with the Superflu for a month because he wanted to show his glands who was in charge. That ass. That’s me.
One of the features of the work-through-it school of thought is that being around me ceases to be the jolly Oompah Loompah balloon ride it usually is. No, I am not much of a treat to be around on those sick days, whether I mean to be or not. And it gets worse the longer the cold hangs on. This cold has hung on longer than any I can remember. I was daring someone to give me an excuse to punch them, or at least sneeze on them.
Damn Southwest Airlines.
Anyway, no matter how sick I was, I was glad to ride the plane for those nine hours, just to be done with my business trip once and for all. I had missed a day of Joan’s wedding festivities to go this ridiculous seminar, from which I learned so little that it might as well have been called “Internet Strategies: Reading Jim’s E-mail Aloud Fest 2000.” As I left the seminar, I proclaimed to no one in particular, “That’s the last time I let my work infringe on my personal time!”
About a minute later, I remembered the Open House. We were celebrating the opening of our new office by throwing a party with our clients two days after I got home. The party was an all-night affair. I was expected to be there.
“Okay,” I muttered in defeat to no one in particular, “but that’s the last time I let my work infringe on my personal time.”
My mood did not improve. At least, not until the party turned out to be a lot of fun. I forgot I didn’t have any local clients, so I didn’t have anybody to talk shop with or kiss up to. All I had to do was listen to the band, drink the free soda and play pinball.
(Oh, and wear Dockers, but who’s quibbling? Considering my eardrums were as taut as Al Gore’s underpants and my nose was a spigot, the Dilbert pants were a relatively minor irritation.)
The coolest thing about the open house was that it was, for me, essentially a class reunion. We invited back every former employee except four, and the only one who didn’t show lives in another city. I think it says a lot about the place I work when almost nobody leaves and everyone who does is welcome back any time. It was great to see so many faces from the past, and it was even better showing off our escape from the little blue house. There was an unspoken sense of, “Holy crap! This nickel-and-dime sinking ship turned out to be a legitimate company!”
Of course, seeing all the people who’d come and gone during my stay with the company made me feel like the Bicentennial Man or the Highlander or something, but what can you do? Three years at an online company are like dog years filmed with time lapse photography.
Unlike the people who work “for” me, I didn’t have a Seinfeld-esque party job. I didn’t have to take people on tours of the building or help them recognize the salesperson they’d spoken to on the phone all those times. All I had to do was put directions to the office on our web site and rescue anybody who looked like the small talk had contained a question they couldn’t answer. Of course, the directions I posted were wrong, but I warned them. Asking me for directions is like the blind being lead by the decapitated.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t great at rescuing people either. Nobody had any tough questions, thankfully. One of the young ladies, however, did make a very good impression on one client, and nothing she did could get him away from her. Even though everything in her body language screamed “EWWW,” even though she did everything but hold up a Wile E. Coyote-style sign reading, “Kill me!” he just kept on hitting on her like some demented boxer. At one point, she seriously began to discuss fictional hygiene problems. All he did was act rapt, as if her mythical nose hairs were the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard.
Everyone there saw what was happening. None of us knew what to do.
“Good God, is she still talking to that guy?”
“I know! He’s bonded to her. He’s like one of those baby ducks that hatches thinking the zookeeper is his mommy.”
“Do you think we should push him in the fountain?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
And when she did break free, the guy came over and started hitting on her through me.
"You work here, right? What's the story on the blonde?"
Like I was a stockboy at Girl-Mart. “Do you work here?… Where are the blondes? Do you maybe have any more in the back somewhere? Could you check for me? Thanks so much.”
He had very obviously availed himself of the open bar.
I tried to be polite. “What’s ‘the story’? I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
“Come on, man!” He nudged my shoulder. “That blonde!” He seemed incredulous that I could do my job every day without leaping the desk to smell her hair. I think my response was supposed to be something along the lines of, “Yeah, tell me about it! Hubba hubba! Yowza!” or some shit. I’m not really sure. I don’t really have a lot of guy friends.
The response on my tongue, the one that only got as far as my tonsils, was, “Her turn-offs include smoking, rudeness, and withered creepy mutant prune men. Her turn-ons include her boyfriend of three years.” The response that made it out of my mouth was, “Her hair’s a little dark to be considered blonde, isn’t it? I guess I never really paid much attention.”
He was gape-jawed, astonished that I was without hubbas. He sized me up for a second and said, “You’re married, aren’t you?”
I coughed on him, more out of surprise than anything else. Then the band started their second set, and we couldn’t really talk any more.
The rest of the party went too quickly, and it was time to go home. When I got to my car, the clear skies and sunshine had been replaced by a moonless sky thick with black, roiling clouds. That storm smell was in the air, and I decided I’d better make haste to get home before it hit.
To say I didn’t make it is something of an understatement. About ten minutes into the drive, the lightning became so fierce that I wanted to pull over and check my headlights for strobe light bulbs. The headlights were almost unnecessary. Still, eerily, not a drop fell on me until I got exactly two miles from my apartment. That was where the formerly zippy highway traffic came to dead standstill two exits away from where I needed to be.
As I sat in my car listening to the radio, I soon learned that a power line had been completely toppled onto the highway, or more specifically onto some cars on the highway. The toppling had taken place at the very exit I was headed for. It was gonna be a while. Just as I was about to say, “Well that’s just GREAT,” the radio chimed in with some news that was even more interesting. According to the reports in the deejay’s hands, I was apparently driving directly into a tornado. And that drive would not have been a long one.
As if on cue, raindrops about the size of my old German shepherd began to plummet from overhead and an entire highway said, “oh, SHIT” in one collective breath. At that moment, everyone’s brains leapt from their windows and ran down the shoulder, and idiots galore began to scramble for the nearest exit in zero visibility. I was one such idiot.
In the half hour it took me to traverse that mile and a half, I saw a storm that will not be matched in this ‘burg for some time. I know I’m prone to exaggeration, but I feel confident in saying that if there is to be a cataclysmic Armageddon, I just got to see the trailer. I’ve never been caught in anything like it. My car was hit by hail so large, so forcefully, I thought I had been hit by another car the first time it happened. The second time, my driver’s side mirror got readjusted with a BAM so that it pointed at my tire. This was not a helpful view under the circumstances. Neither was being unable to breathe. Oh, and neither was the part where my windshield got foggier than a Reagan memoir. On the plus side, I did learn that I can drive home blind.
So, imagine what my mood is like when I’m sick.
Then imagine what my mood is like when I’m sick and I spend 13 hours at work (party aside).
Then imagine what my mood is like when I’m sick and I spend 13 hours at work (party aside) and have to drive home into a Biblical storm, dripping from head to toe because I rolled down the window in a feeble attempt to defog the car.
Now imagine my mood when I finally arrive at home and find that the power is out.
For nearly three days.
Oh, I was rabid. I know I don’t have hair cancer or anything, but for f***’s sake! Three days? Three days?! Listen, man, I’ve played Sim City. I had friggin’ Godzilla attack my town and still managed to keep the damn power grid up. It’s like the whole town circuit was being held together by my neighbor’s string of blinky Christmas lights. I guess that explains why he never takes them down.
Oh well. I guess I can ask the electric company what the situation was when they come by to reimburse me for my groceriesHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, HA HA, ha, ohhh mercy.
Seriously though, when I got home Friday and opened the door to my saunapartment and lit some candles (because really, what better way to cool down a room then by lighting a bunch of fires?) you would have enjoyed my company a lot less than usual. That’s because I went to get my mail, and the first thing in the pile was an $80 electricity bill.
I’m thinking of prorating the check.
(“Now Jim, they didn’t make the power lines fall down,” you say with patient condescension. Yeah, whatever. That’s what my friend Chris said to me until he was in one of the last 40 houses to get his power back, two days later than I did, by which point his logically considered viewpoint became something along the lines of, “Motherf***ing electric company! Do I have to come help you?! How f***ing hard is it to plug in a wire?!” So go ahead and think you’d have been calmer. You’re wrong, sissypants.)
The weekend did have one highlight: watching “Newschannel 5” instruct people on when they would get their power back and what to do in the meantime. You know, for all those people without electricity who were sitting in the dark watching television.
