Yesterday morning, I watched an older lady painfully collect her bags from the EZ Mart counter. When I left, I rolled down my window and offered her a ride. I could see the look of distrust in her eyes. She said thank you and immediately turned away. She struggled with the bags as she walked.
Today as I left the worst convenience store in the history of mankind, another older lady seemed to be talking to me from a distance as I drove away. Because my car has ancient roller windows (even though it’s a 21 model), I leaned toward the passenger side and rolled down my window. She asked me if I could give her a ride. Honestly, assuming she wanted a ride to a nearby location, I had time. It’s rare for me to hesitate. But something about her seemed off. I told her I could not. She smiled and said thank you. And then she added that she loved my purple glasses. Something about her saying something nice and adding a smile after she realized I wasn’t going to give her a ride banged a gong in my head. I’ve given plenty of rides to questionable people if I’m alone because the risk is only to me. Or them, if you know me well enough.
Love, X
PS The picture is unrelated to my story. I took it Saturday. My cat was rolling around under the tree debris as if it were catnip. He’s on lockdown again after yesterday’s shenanigans. .
I’ve irritated some people in my life. Especially those who are arrogant or irritating about the culinary world we experience subjectively. Pineapple on pizza. Ketchup on steak. How meat should be cooked. Whether painted-on eyebrows look strange. I grew up listening to my Mom say, “You don’t know what’s good.” She could eat some things that the vultures would shriek and fly away from. My Dad forced me to eat some nasty stuff; I can laugh about it now. But a part of me laughs and rejoices because I now know he was among the worst to fail to appreciate all the kinds of foods in the world.
There is no right and wrong regarding what you eat or what you like. It doesn’t work that way. And, of course, everyone knows this. For some, the idea of eating fish eggs or oysters, aka snotshells, is as repulsive as watching a 6-year-old pick his nose and then salt and pepper it.
Whether you like your steak bleeding or burned to a crisp, it lies with each person to decide what they like. I watch people argue and criticize what other people eat. The ones criticizing tend to eat some of the most outlandish and nasty stuff on the planet. My brother Mike liked to dip. He’d mock people’s food choices relentlessly. He didn’t take it kindly when I pointed out that it looked like he had let a raccoon poop inside his lip.
If you want to put chocolate pudding on prime rib, fire away.
If you like fresh jalapeños on vanilla ice cream, pile them on there.
And if you like head cheese or liver and onions, I will gladly watch you smile and burp appreciatively as you consume it. Don’t get me started on raw celery, aka The Devil’s Anus.
But if I’m eating burned popcorn or a steak so well done that the fire department is about to come in and you make snide remarks… you’re going to find head cheese or pineapple pizza under your pillow later that night.
Everything about what we like and dislike is subjective.
There are no rules.
We can’t even agree that ties are a stupid anachronism that should be discarded. Or that shrimp are the cockroaches of the sea. But we can mock someone eating fried bologna as we gleefully munch on foie gras as if our choice is superior to theirs.
If you like to eat literal cockroaches, you’re in luck. In my world, I’m going to be fascinated by anything that I consider unusual. But I’m also going to bite my tongue because I embrace the difference in taste that we all experience.
I’m judging you if you judge others for what they put in their mouth. You better check your pillow if I hear you doing it.
It is the lowest form of mockery to mock or attempt to humiliate someone for what they eat or how they enjoy eating it. This is doubly true if you do so in front of other people while they are doing it. I don’t tell you that your pants make you look like one of the mentioned symptoms in a WebMD article; the least you can do is bite your tongue.
“Hunger does not need a cookbook.” – X
“In matters culinary, there is no greater arrogance than objecting to what someone chooses to eat or how they season it, sauce it, or flavor it. I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t an idiot with their food, and the feeling is undoubtedly reciprocal.” – X
I’ve been surprisingly under the weather with some strange virus that’s left me with intense fever and body aches, ones similar to those felt after listening to a co-worker talk for fifteen minutes about how busy they are. I went to the doctor twice. It’s better to have a javelin protruding from your leg than to suffer from a virus. At least you can take the javelin out and go about your day.
Because people tend to dislike the stench of body odor, I opted to take a shower. Even though it was the last thing in the world that appealed to me. Yes, even behind voting sensibly.
I entered the bathroom and asked Alexa to play “Passera” by Il Divo. As the song began playing, Guino jumped up on the counter, expecting me to trickle the faucet for him. The song lifted my mood.
I stepped into the shower, being careful for once to keep my balance. I stood unusually close to the dual showerheads for the same reason. That’s when the fun commenced.
Being feverish causes forgetfulness and inattentiveness, not to mention really terrible hair.
I pulled the round knob out on the old assembly. It’s tricky because it can often come off. One of the many advantages of living in an older building is that you learn tricks. One of my learned tricks is to pull the control knob away quickly and with full water pressure. I always remember to check to see if the control valve is down.
Almost always.
Instead of the water coming out of the bottom spout as god intended, it came out of both shower heads at full force. With my achy skin, to say that the torrent of water that came out was cold would be the grossest of exaggerations. Because I was standing so close, the full force of the arctic blast of water covered me immediately. I tensed up as if I’d been tased. I’m not sure how I avoided falling. Had there been a window in the shower, one thirty feet above the ground, I would have gladly hurled myself through it.
Instead, I stood in the freezing water, convulsing like a suburban Karen complaining about the cheese on her Big Mac. While I can’t remember the words I shouted, they were new to me. My recovering, feverish brain opened a new portal to surprise and unhappiness as it created on-the-fly curse words for this special occasion. I shouted so loudly that I might have triggered an alarm on the vehicles outside. While I don’t remember what I shouted, the words sounded foreign and deeply insulting. Complete gibberish, as if I’d recently graduated from an Effective Management course.
I had no choice except to stand and wait for the water to warm up.
“What could we have done?” This is often the go-to response after a tragedy. About 3 weeks ago, an innocent person was killed during a high speed drug-related car chase here in Fayetteville. The driver of the car already had multiple charges but was free.
That’s not the worst part. The Northwest Arkansas drug task force knew about him more than 2 years ago. I had posed the hypothetical scenario of what might happen if they didn’t take appropriate action. And this is the answer. What’s worse is that there was another individual who had engaged in much more sinister behavior. The authorities had his activities handed to them on a silver platter and still didn’t take action. I’ve told a lot of people that this is why it’s hard to have faith that the right thing will be done when it needs to happen.
I’m a complete liberal when it comes to drugs. But I also have a keen radar and when it triggers, it pisses me off when I make the effort to intervene before something terrible happens. More often than not, nothing will be done. The other person is still out there. I hold my breath because I know that someone’s life will be ruined at some point. Much like the innocent person who was killed in the high-speed car chase. Or victimized on a personal level. I am 100% certain that it will happen, more so than I was before.
I will get off my soapbox now.
The person who was killed in the high -speed chase died for no reason. We can’t blame everything on resources or bureaucracy. In this case, people who knew failed to act.
I drove the roads at 2:00 a.m. . I didn’t have to worry about lanes because there was no other traffic to impede me. I swept my stairs again and salted them because, well, no one else was going to do it. Wearing knee-high boot covers, I didn’t have to worry about wet or cold feet. It was a balmy negative two so I didn’t have to worry about overheating as I swept some of the areas around work. I love the abandoned world that snow brings. But I did take time to stamp ribald messages in a few places with undisturbed snow. To imagine the consternation of anyone who reads them this morning. At one point, my laughter was uncontainable. My voice carried and echoed strangely across the snow and in the undisturbed world. It was beautiful, but also a bit lonely.
In the earlier hours this morning, it was one degree. With winds of about ten mph, it was breathtaking. I once worked in a -40 work environment. If you’re lucky enough to have trees with leaves still on them, you know that the melody the wind creates sounds like falling rain or heavy snow when it’s this cold. Unlike most post-midnight Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, traffic was non-existent. Everyone was huddled inside somewhere, undoubtedly with blankets piled and tucked. I walked to the road and watched and listened as the dead leaves above me rustled. It was a beautiful, abandoned world with just me in it to observe it. The crosswalk and street lights shone vividly in the air. Color in this cold takes on a new life. I stood there until the bottom of my legs began to ache from the cold. A cup of bitter coffee and another cup of hot cider waited for me back at the apartment. But still, I stood there, waiting for some unidentified moment to propel me back inside. Nothing happened. Sometimes that’s the most beautiful thing.
Someone asked me, “X, why haven’t you been making solar bottle lights lately?”
I was certain that the grin I gave shouted the obvious answer: “I haven’t stopped.”
In the last few months, I’ve left several in front of people’s houses with a note attached. The Johnny Appleseed of decorative solar light bottles. A few more, I’ve left in odd places where I knew they would be discovered and taken by someone interested.
I didn’t want all the bottles that had been saved and given to me to be wasted. So for anybody like Jay or Burke or others who shared their bottles, just because I haven’t mentioned it doesn’t mean I haven’t given new life to the bottles given to me. To strangers. It’s a pleasure to give one to someone personally, something I’ve made. But it turns out that it is equally fascinating to put them out in the world without having any idea about the lives of those who receive them.
This afternoon, I walked behind a building and looked over the fence. The bottle I had left on their front porch weeks ago sat facing the sun, charging as much as possible in the low winter light so that it can later add color however the new owner sees fit.
What makes going to the movie so special? It could be the excessive butter that leads to gas-propelled walking and making you regret every decision you’ve made in your adult life by eating too much of it. The kernels that plague your teeth and make you reaffirm the decision that, yes this year, you need to go to the dentist. It could be the occasional narcissist who thinks that we need their phone lit up in order to see that they are checking their Tinder for people who are really into selfishness. Rarely do you see a brain surgeon at the theater. I really doubt that Chad or Karen needs to check their phone every 16 seconds.
And that leads me to one of the most joyous things about theaters. It is one of the last remaining places that we are supposed to pretend that our life doesn’t require our personal and immediate attention. We get to focus on a fantasy world, feel our heart race, and even feel a tear sometimes form in the corner of our eyes. Without the distraction of devices. We’re just sitting and absorbing a collective story that brings us happiness.
I’m old school. I want to see and hear the nuance on the screen and to dive in to an alternate reality for a couple of hours. To feel the spark of creativity and originality fire in my brain as I watch and listen. And that requires focus. No matter how people defend their restlessness, entertainment without focus is a diluted shadow of the experience when you aren’t aying attention.
I know people roll their eyes at me when I tell them I don’t get bored. There’s no secret to it. Even if you’re sitting alone on a quiet porch, there’s an entire world within your view. And another one inside of your head to match it.
It’s being in the moment and giving each moment your attention. I can’t help but think that so many people are sitting in the passenger seat of their car ignoring the world as it passes by. At the fulcrum of most people’s lives are their phones. They are the best communication and entertainment devices ever invented. But you have to remind yourself that for every second you are distracted by your phone, you are missing the world and the people standing right next to you. If if first come first serve is truly important to us, then surely it follows that the people already with us deserve our undivided attention.
And that’s one of the reasons I love movie theaters. We haven’t quite lost the expectation of being in the moment and focused.
Like all experiences, a great movie that is shared takes on new life. Much in the same way that doing something together has the same result. All of us can list seminal movies that changed us in small ways. None of it could happen without allowing the magic of imagination and focus to envelope us.
Yes, we also get to eat a bushel of popcorn and drink so much soda that we are afraid we might not make it to the bathroom before the movie is over.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 