I like Your 'Socks'

I'm sort of having a love affair with each day of the week for totally different reasons, and no, I don't think they know about each other. But more on that later.

Wednesdays particularly weaken my knees because instead of going for a run on my lunch break, I go to the oasis of groceries: Smith's Marketplace. I love it here at this time of day because there are two groups of shoppers and two groups only: those who are on their lunch break, and those who are on their life-at-the-retirement-home break. Or as I like to call them: cadavers on Rascals.

The dynamic causes a ferocious climate around the store due to agendas. Group A would like to get out as soon as possible to move on with life, and group B (for obvious reasons) would not. And can not.

I'm indifferent because my main objective at Smith's is just to eat as many grapes as I can before they are weighed and paid for at the counter. But I feel as though I will be forced to choose sooner or later, and I'm afraid I'll have to turn my back on my fellow lunch-breakers. Because the last thing a lunch-breaker said to me was, "excuse me" so she could better be heard when barking, "hurry up, Buddy!" to Cute Corpse counting his dollar bills at check-out; and the last thing one of the cadavers said to me was, "I like your socks!" And I love it when old people refer to things like tights as things like socks. It's just endearing.

Sorry lunch-breakers. I respect you for your efficiency, but I'll probably be hanging in the incontinence section deliberating patterned tights and the ethics of eating candy out of the bulk bins for the next hour.




**Illustration/photograph by an ex-lover of mine. You don't mind, do you sweetheart?

Dear John(ny)

I was four years old when my parents told me they were expecting their next and last baby. I remember being so repulsed by the whole idea that I swore off completely all the making out I had been doing with my three-year-old neighbor, Michael. Lest I find myself wrapped up in the same kind of "trouble."*

It wasn't a good start for Johnny. Before he was even born he had already robbed me of both my befitting role as youngest, and my pre-mature sex life. Thus the resentment roller coaster was born. On October 12, 1990 (1991?).

Resentment waned and morphed into amusement when he picked up the endearing habit of putting socks into his pants as a tail and growling at strangers in the grocery store. In third grade I wrote a poem about it and entered it into the young author's competition. When I lost, it was time for my muse to become the object of my resentment again. (Had I kept my rightful role of youngest, we'd know that blaming others for my personal rejection is just an unavoidable character flaw obtained from my birth order.)

Resentment probably flared back up again at 15 when he started dating a girl named Maggie born on June 16 (hey that's me!), but then burned back off again when he managed to be the only teenager in this decade to get arressted for stealing music by taking a CD from Best Buy in the greatest age of online music piracy. Since, my winning approval has been sealed by similarly cute little stunts I just can't help but h-e-a-r-t.

It's been a significant stretch since I've last resented the little compact disc, birth order bandit, and perhaps I'm adult enough to say Johnny, two thumbs up.  Welcome to adulthood.  If you weren't already there.  Again, I'm not sure.

*I think finding out you're pregnant at four and 40 are probably equally as horrifying... And insulting to nature.

Let's Stay Together

I find it appropriate that my love for my new Costco membership also comes in bulk and can't be found at Wal-mart.  

They even use my preferred type of photograph: B&W, heavily pixilated.  You know me so well...

This is the beginning of something that matters.

Friend, Best

Wesley David Joseph.

3 First names
2 Much fun
1 New job.

My friend Wes just got a job at AIG*. We're all really proud of him. He pix texted me later to show me his new grown up name badge. In last-name-first fashion It read: Wesley, Joseph. But that's ok. When you have a different first name for 42% of the week, it's hard to keep track of which one is supposed to go last.

You may have three first names, Wesley David, but you're one step closer to moving out of your parents' house.

Congrats!

**Wes, they should have lots of great liturature and advice for you on corporate bailouts and the new stimulus package!

It's Cool

It's cool when someone holds the door open for you on the elevator.

It's even cooler when someone asks for your floor, and then pushes the button for you.

It's the coolest when someone remembers your floor from sharing the elvator maybe once or twice with you and pushes the button accordingly. 'Five, right?' Magic.

Floor Two Lady, you are the coolest. I don't even care that you don't take the stairs like you probably should.

For a Limited Time Only

Today at lunch I saw a homeless gal exhibiting a sign that read:

"Need help, this month ONLY"

Maybe it was the endorphins from my run, or maybe my fatal fondness for both homeless culture and Billly Mays, but whatever the case I found this extremely irrisistable.

I didn't have any cash on me and had Kryptonite not been playing*, I would have found it difficult not to unstrap my ipod and throw it to her; not because I believe she would/could reform herself, but because I love a limited time offer, because I have a weak spot for the homeless and homeless-inspired fashion, and because yeah, September can be kind of hard!

Homeless gal, A+ in advertising. Looking good in those Addidas pants, too.

*Three Doors Down, I hate myself so much for loving you and your appropriately titled hit, but you truly are the inhaler to my asthmatic runs.

Did I Do That?

I like social experiments just as much as the next person, (probably the reason for my twin-fetish season), so this "broken-toy experiment" caught my eye this morning during my daily perusal of the news.*

Researchers put a toddler (usually two) into a room and gave him a toy, warning him to be very careful with it. The toy is engineered to break as soon as the child picks it up, causing the little guy to think he disobediently destroyed the object. Mean. But scientifically invaluable. What would usually follow is "surprise [in the child], a mild discomfort, a sheepish look, and attempts to repair the toy." Breakthrough! The test suggests that in the second year, humans have already developed a basic springboard of morals to prepare themselves for a life of breaking things, discomfort, sheep and trying to fix problems with the effectiveness of chubby, underdeveloped fingers and limited dexterity.

I think the parallels between researcher and cell phone distributors needn't be drawn here. And the sheepish look we all get on our faces when we realize we can't Ctrl+Z a text mis-fire, (no, no, it was about you, not to you.) And cue mild discomfort.

*A 30 second look at NYTimes.com, giving me the pseudo-confidence I need to face the day full of political questions and mini current events quizzes. "Did you see that angry guy with the turban in the news today?" "Yeah, he looked angry."

**Shauna, these asterisks are for you.