Sitting in an establishment while karaoke caterwauled in an adjacent room. My companion took time from her busy day to gander at one artiste before commenting,
“That’s wrecking a perfectly good song.”
To which I asked,
“Isn’t karaoke Japanese for wrecking a perfectly good song?”
A simple (or theoretically simple) story can really get some heft to it.
And that leads to trouble because my default listening time is less than it’s taken you to read this thus far.
So I came home with a surprise one day. A chess clock.
You start talking the clock starts, you stop it gets pressed again. If the clock runs out of time you’re done speaking.
I thought it was genius.
She thought I should be hit over the head with it.
Guess which one of those last two sentences actually turned out true?
A person I’ve never had one scintilla of enjoyment with sends an IM inviting me to a BBQ.
This is the correspondence:
Them: I’m having a pre-4th BBQ on the first! Would you come?
Me: Whether permitting.
Them: What does that mean?
Me: Whether I’d want to go or not.
I’m sure this says something more about the people who pass through my day than I want to know. Now, in their defense, it could have been the slip of a tongue. At first I thought maybe I’d misheard it. But when, without my attempting to embarrass them, they seemed to realize what they said so quickly and without other words gathered themselves up and beat a hasty retreat, I knew they’d indeed said it.
Fully set up, let’s go to the adventure, shall we?
A woman is telling me about her day off. She said she had a very nice day. Her and her significant other spent a day in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Having been there many times (the parade bit in this story took place there) I knew some of the places she mentioned visiting.
Mostly the bars but let’s not pick nits here.
By her recitation of the story it did seem to be a fun time. She’s fairly new to the area so this was her first visit. Being a fan of the movie, The Perfect Storm, she made a trek into The Crow’s Nest. But they also made it to some of the more refined locations of Gloucester.
She was very excited when she ran across Gorton’s, the company made famous via TV commercials over the years.
“It took me back to my childhood!” She exclaimed. “I even took a picture next to the Gorton’s fisterman statue!”
I’m pretty sure that’s not on the official chamber of commerce photo ops list.
. . .she was a vegetarian. I didn’t ask her. We weren’t near food. She had the need to share. I did’t bother telling her I was pretty much a militant steaketarian because, well, why the fuck would she care?
She went on to say she didn’t eat meat because she loves the cute and fuzzy little animals that delicious substance is made from.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “If you really loved animals you’d stop eating all their food.”
. . .missing his left ear. I don’t know about you but that’s something I notice. He tells me how he lost it. I listen. Then I ask if I can ask a question. By the eye roll I know he’s thinking I’m going to ask if it effects his hearing. Dah! The words don’t spin down the ridges! Everyone knows that.
But because of his reaction I now have to ask a question he’s never heard before. No pressure.
“So,” I begin once again down that slippery slope. “When it’s windy does your head snap to the right?”
. . .was near the end of a long-winded, befuddle, yet highly agitated rant from a paranoid dweeb, I thought,
“I wonder what he would do if he knew I was having mind tourettes right now.”
A woman was chattering on about an utterly impossible to follow story line. It ebbed and flowed in a desert of non sequiturs. Sadly, because politeness was a necessary evil and, besides, I had no easily accessible implements to fashion into a shiv, I listened. Not interjecting or, heaven forbid, interrupting until she said,
“Am I crazy here?”
“Not just here.” I said ending our relationship.
See, it’s all about having the patience to wait for that perfect out.
. . . next to me ogling this woman. He sticks his elbow in my ribs in the time honored a little too familiar, the next thing out of his mouth is going to be smarmy move while saying,
“I wonder if her carpet matches the drapes?”
I look at him, pulling his elbow out of my side, and say,
“Dude, her eyebrows don’t even match the drapes.”
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