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what i did for my lunch hour very much, thank you.
June 27, 2005
my energy and motivation still off and drastically insufficient to get me to the gym, i decided to run errands during my lunch hour.
i walked past the lady at work who's exceedingly nice, who, though diabetic, has become only my second significant rival in the baking arena. unfortunately, she also has the annoying habit of ordering me to smile. while the idea is nice, it's also grating and presumptious -
"smile!"
"wha? oh, wow, you're right! holy crap, that hadn't occurred to me! i should act in a way exactly opposite to how i feel! it's brilliant. ok, ok, let's see if i remember how, maybe that's the problem... oh, damn, is this it? oh, no, that's me flipping you the bird, how silly..."
today, she began singing some song as i walked by the front desk.
"don't worry, be happy."
i feigned a pained chuckle. i slowed a bit, and fought the urge to bludgeon her with a stapler. "ah. yes. ah. what's that about?"
"oh, i don't know."
"ah."
"have a good lunch."
"ah. yes."
i walked out, but the song was still cycling through my head. just a few bars. over. and over.
i got on the elevator with a lilliputian guy that looked like he was coming from the board of accountants upstairs. that is to say, he looked like an accountant, not entirely at ease in his brown pinstriped suit.
he smiled.
i smiled and nodded back.
".. worry, be..." i began to worry that she was, in fact, some kind of witch, or a vampire. yes, a vampire. you know they have a little-publicized mastery over the power of hypnotic suggestion. it would explain a lot - her imposing frame is topped by short, spiky, salt-and-pepper hair. she commonly wears a black cloak over shiny silver or shiny dark red shirts.
i got out to my car, which was sitting in the sun roasting like a dead, burgundy-colored, hail-damaged yak.
"don't worr..."
"holy f-" the alarm system chirped.
"...happy"
thank god, in so many ways, for the new coldplay album.
i cranked it up to 11, trying to vibrate any recent memory, of the song, and of a few other things, out of my skull.
thundercloud to pick up a sandwich. large smoked chicken on wheat. yum. grocery store to cash a check and pick up a few things - peanut butter for my usual toast-and-peanut butter breakfast every morning. salad dressing. chili cheese fritos.
heading back towards downtown, i opened the bag and crammed some fritos in my mouth. they made me a bit happier. the crunching added to the bobby mcferrin-disruptive effect of the stereo.
i decided to finally stop by the monolithic whole foods store, where my roommate, jane works. jane has wanted me to come gawk at a girl she thinks i should meet.
i have to say the store is pretty amazing. nice, well, lit parking garages. moving sidewalks. separate dining "venues" for everything from sushi to pizza to seafood. i mean, nothing i would like, take pictures of or take a guided tour of, but pretty impressive, still.
oh. and everywhere, beautiful women. i mean, an unnatural saturation of not only attractive, but interesting-looking women, at 2:00 in the afternoon. it defies reason, really.
i couldn't find jane at her usual spot at the pasta venue. i checked out the others, making a wide berth around the massive, but stinky, section of stinky cheeses. i fought the urge to press my nose up against the cool glass in the pastry area.
i found shannon at the tea counter, chatted with her just briefly, then a mass of people rounded the corner, coming right at us. someone was explaining tea selections. it was a tour group. a guided one.
guided tour groups. in a grocery store. exactly what is there for a guide to say?
"if you'll look to your left, down past the flax waffles, you'll see the largest assortment of seasoned nuts in the western hemisphere. of course, we like to think our tour guides are the largest assortment of seasoned nuts in the world."
the improbably easy to get tour group laughter would follow. later, they'd recount the joke to the relatives that dumped them off at the store so they could go to work. their relatives would laugh politely and wish the old people would just leave and go back to montana.
"and just down here is where joe from meats asked out donna from wines last monday, but she totally turned him down because she heard he stole a couple of tabs of x from veronica, the cashier. joe and donna slept together later, anyway."
the tour group began flowing and closing in around me at the tea counter, like the fish had that time in the caymans when i dangled a bit of crab on a fishing line into the water, as i had seen the local fishermen do. first a couple of small fish, then they got larger, and more numerous, swarming around my legs and bumping me until i dumped the line and bait and ran like hell back to the beach. i looked at shannon with growing terror. she was nonplussed. apparently, this is the norm for her workday.
"um. ok, great. well, bye."
swimming out of the flood, i immediately ran into george, a friend of jane's i'd met. he pointed down sixty or seventy yards down to the other end of the store, past the beer, past the wine, to the seafood venue.
jane described the girl to me, and where she was down front near the express lanes. i ambled through, looking for someone that matched the description. i saw one girl with the hip glasses and other features jane had described. i tried to make out her nametag, but as carefully thought-out as everything else at the store is, the nametags and the names printed on them are too difficult to locate and read for the casual stalker. it gives people the impression you're staring at their boobs.
i figured this girl was the one. she was really cute. definitely way cool, maybe even slightly hippy-y.
i couldn't let her see me in my dockers and starched shirt. i'd have to return in baggy, deconstructed shorts, a t-shirt fadedly promoting an acceptably obscure band, and, well, i guess barefoot, since all my casual shoes are made by nike.
in fact, she would probably disassemble my vast collection of nike basketball shoes and turn them into a melted mosaic protesting the exploitation of cheap foreign labor and the unrelated, but still enraging female circumcision rituals in certain countries. or, she'd soak them in gasoline and hurl them at other things that were also politically not cool.
she's probably so cool that she doesn't eat meat. this could be a problem.
my lunch hour was almost over. i rode the moving sidewalk down to the parking garage, opened the door to my car and was immediately greeted by the warm, old-world spicy aroma of chili-cheese fritos. then, it struck me. chili-cheese fritos. i grabbed the bag, shoved several into my mouth, and looked at the ingredient list.
there is no meat in chili-cheese fritos. unless, of course, disodium guanylate is meat. but, i think it's salt and something derived from guano, which is, of course, bat dung.
there is hope, after all, in the unknown. we could maybe have a life together, with me wearing the same pair of shorts every day, finding some used chuck taylors in a vintage store, working not to reveal my uncoolness, and dining together on chili-cheese fritos.
unless she's a vegan, in which case that's more cool than i care to deal with. i gots to have my cheese and my ice cream.
leaving the store, i saw the musician guy jane brought home the other night.
then, god help me, i'm sure i saw un amb-assador nominee john bolton crossing the street. i revved the engine to run him over but decided that if it wasn't him, i'd feel bad and not enjoy my brownie, and if it were him, there were probably snipers watching me. i cursed myself for not being willing to give my life for the peace and sanity of international diplomacy, but i only sat and glared and swore quietly as he walked past.
Posted by Rob at June 27, 2005 02:50 PM
Comments
Rob- hey man, thanks. Thanks a lot. I mean it. Thanks. More people staring at me while I laugh uncontrollably. Takes me back...
Posted by: Jori at July 6, 2005 04:46 PM