I can feel the echoes of my steps in my ankles and knees as I walk across the tremendous metal pipe at least 12 feet in diameter. I'm crouched low on it, cowarded by the sheer drop immanent on either side, picking my way slowly across to the muffled clang clang of my sneakers causing echoes through its surface. The world below me is blurred by soft yellowed street lamps and the sky arches above me, alive with the tiny pinpricks of stars.
I don't know why the railings are even here. Reaching out to grab one I can shake it without even committing my weight to it, and somebody of my height doesn't even have that much weight to offer even if I wanted to.
"Watch out," he called, "it gets a little sparse out here."
Down and around and to another service ladder. The first few steps are the only ones you are moving at all. After that you might just be making motions in place as the earth drops away and the top of the building still seems hopelessly far away.
I'm sweating slightly at the switch. The two ladders are relatively well aligned but the second one arches over the dome and the very bottom ledge of it swings free. I can feel it flex under my weight and bits of old peeled paint flake off in my palms as I continue to move forward. The rungs arch over so I am climbing nearly horizontally at the top but I still cling to the bars hopelessly at the sight of the multiple story drop on each side.
Two more friends are waiting at the top. They nod to me and one of them points out to the horizon.
"Hell of a view," he says.
I swear even the air tastes better up here.
Why did I ever give this up?
My second friend sits quietly awestruck, hands wrapped around his knees curled up looking out. I am glad to share this experience with him, and yet, I know that prior to meeting me he never would have dreamed of doing this. This is, by most standards, a grossly unsafe nocturnal activity, not to mention strongly outside the taste of the cops...and yet, it is one of my greatest joys in life. Who am I to take a friend out of our statistically derived perfect lifestyle of acceptable safety threshholds?
Once upon a time we roamed the land as nomads. We hunted our food with spears, we lived on nothing, and yet we lived through it. More than that, we, as a species, thrived. Today we're raised in a society where your heart rate rises and your palms sweat a mere 3 stories up on a safety ladder on the exposed side of a building. Is this right? Am I corrupting my younger friend or freeing him?
The inside of the tank is made of beautifully welded sheets of steel. Everything is fascinating in this sphere: my voice, my footsteps, even simple laughter is amplified and echoed back to me until it sounds twisted and nearly evil. One friend whistles until the shell picks up the sound and hums it back to us, and I hold a single note and listen to it do the same. The whole group is amused by making simple clicking sounds and saying short words.
Exploration and fear leave a sense of wonder in us which is all too often forgotten. Our world is beautiful and fascinating, but sometimes you have to take yourself out of context a little to see it.
Showing posts with label adventure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adventure. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Red Stuff, Parachutes and Sneakers
"Pika Pika!" one of the girls screamed as she banked a corner of the cafeteria at a full tilt, "Kelsey fell down and there is red stuff everywhere and everybody's flipping out!"
Following her back I rounded the corner of the cafeteria to the tray return and was met with the sight of almost everything being covered in red. When I found out it was just rather thick kool-aid I nearly killed that messenger.
My first real job at the fine age of 17 when, due to a series of incredibly bizarre events, I was "2nd in command" so to speak for a middle-school girl scout sleep-away science and engineering camp. If this was the government we'd wind up with the sort of acronym middle managers find a sexual attraction to out of that mess. Something like MS GS SASEC? If it doesn't make a word yet we can always add some vowels like "Advancement" and "Achievement" and "Excellence" until fluent English speakers have a chance at actually saying it.
Anyway, long story short, I was still young enough (and looked young enough) to be mistaken for a middle school girl in the eyes of adults and yet I was responsible for taking care of them. It was rather exciting.
I can respect why taking students camping on a campsite is such a popular activity. Probably the two most dangerous things that could happen would be students wandering away from the campsite unauthorized and playing in the campfire. If you leave one counselor near the cooking fire and take frequent headcounts both these risks can be mitigated. All that's left after that is slaying spiders and convincing spoiled brats that they do in fact want to eat the food you are providing them because there won't be more coming.
This event was held at a local university. It is amazing how much trouble students can get into on a university campus. Even simple things like handing students between the ages of 11 and 13 access to an infinite supply of Mountain Dew (read: the school cafeteria's soda fountain) can have very exciting results.
The program overlapped with summer courses there and the world peace conference, who was so mad at us they were filing complaints and coming up and shouting from time to time. I guess that says something about my charges when we managed to piss off a world peace conference. Personally, I never knew repeatedly doing the Cha-cha slide was such a grievous offense, although I do understand the contempt earned when we set off the elevator alarm the fourth time in a single week.
Often enough I was left taking care of the girls entirely myself for brief periods of time.
We had just been forced to remove some girls from the program prematurely due to a disciplinary issue and to say morale was low was a bit of an understatement. The head of the program took half the girls swimming and I was left with the task of cheering up the rest.
"So," I bounced into the room holding the official activity manual, "Who wants to do some science experiments?"
The girls turned and faced me with only the most basic gesture of interest they felt they owed to an authority figure. Quickly I flipped open an activity and pitched the description. They remained completely expressionless. I tried a second one. Their eyes reminded me of laser sights on a sniper rifle, all trained on me.
"How about," I grappled with a moment for an idea, "We make some parachutes and throw things out a window in them?"
The middle schoolers tried briefly for a moment in vain to sound like they considered this idea boring too before curiosity broke them down.
"Really?" one asked.
"Can we ride it?"
"No people," I answered, "we'll only put things are ok to lose on them."
"I've got a second pair of sneakers that are ratty and only for playing in the mud, can I send those?"
"Yeah that will be great."
Two carefully sliced and taped trash bags and a ball of twine later I'm leaning out of the 9th story window with our latest creation. Far below I can see some of the girls milling around excitedly and looking along my level I can see more heads poking out windows.
"Ready?" I ask the chorus.
"Ready!"
I released the contraption and it fell a few feet before the parachute properly plumed out. I could hear the kids cheering below. For the split second before the parachute abruptly changed course I felt like everything was looking up. After that there was a lot more eye-rolling on my part.
"Alright," I said to the girl who was looking rather forlornly at her sneakers dangling someplace near the 5th story window, "go get your other sneakers."
"What other sneakers?"
"The ones that made those ones ratty spares."
"Oh," she looked a little sheepish and nervous at this point, "I don't actually have a second pair of sneakers. I just really wanted to you to choose to send my stuff down in the parachute."
I handed her a pair of my flipflops and headed to the elevator with the other students.
The 5th floor is a somewhat bad place to get something stuck. None of us were strong enough to throw something high enough to knock it loose, and the only windows we had access to throw things down from was the 9th floor. I unlocked the sports equipment and sent two of the more mature girls up with a bag of soccer balls and basketballs. The rest of us had the duty of making sure nobody was nearby when she threw.
One of the students, Alex, was leaning out the window and scouting the area when a little old lady walkered her way past. Her badge read that she was from the conference below.
"Is that little girl going to jump?" she asked.
I assured her she wasn't and she went away, seeming content. The fact that campus police showed up about 5 minutes after she left makes me believe she in fact, wasn't. The officer didn't even really try to keep a straight face as I explained to him that we were removing a parachute of shoes from a tree, but he didn't seem annoyed by our activities. He was preparing in fact to pack up and leave when Alex poked her face out of the 9th floor window clutching a basketball in two hands. She wound up her throw the whole way so both hands were above her head before noticing the officer, at which point her jaw dropped and quickly withdrew into the room, still clutching the basketball.
"That little girl," the officer grinned, finding an opportunity to give me shit, "she wasn't about to throw that was she?"
"Of course not officer."
"You'd better make sure she knows that."
"Alex," I shouted, "don't throw anything out the window."
"I'm not sure she can hear you," the officer said, "why don't you make her come to the window?"
Alex didn't want to go to the window. Alex mostly wanted to hide up there and pretend that if she acted like the cop didn't exist that he wasn't there. After some significant time she finally peered out the window and the police man shouted at her for a bit, and then left.
At the end of the week it was time to return the students to their parents. I watched the shoeless girl, still in my flipflops, run up to her parents. Following her slowly I greeted them and then chose my words carefully.
How much would a new pair of sneakers for her cost me? Poor kids don't normally go to summer camp, was it a nice 70 dollar pair I had lost? The parents were notably well-dressed and seemed the sort of people who really cared about brand names. I upped my estimate to 130.
"I'm very sorry," I said, "but your daughter's shoes seem to have been misplaced during the course of camp."
The mom looked slightly confused, "Misplaced?"
"Well, actually I do know where they are, they're in a tree near the fifth floor of the dorms. We couldn't get them down." The mother's eyebrows crashed together for a moment and she looked at me skeptically. "I'd be pleased," I added, "to pay for a replacement pair of shoes since they were lost under my supervision."
"These were...white shoes? Red stripe on the side? Pink shoelaces?"
I nodded.
The woman suddenly lept forward and hugged me, "That's WONDERFUL sweetie."
"Uh...what?"
"We bought her new shoes simply ages ago and she just insists on wearing those old ratty ones because she likes them. We've tried everything, and its just an embarssment to have her running around like that you know? Makes it look like we don't provide for her. I can't believe this...this is wonderful...what an excellent job."
"Really...uh...it was nothing..."
"Oh no, no I need to talk to your boss. You did a great job this week."
Following her back I rounded the corner of the cafeteria to the tray return and was met with the sight of almost everything being covered in red. When I found out it was just rather thick kool-aid I nearly killed that messenger.
My first real job at the fine age of 17 when, due to a series of incredibly bizarre events, I was "2nd in command" so to speak for a middle-school girl scout sleep-away science and engineering camp. If this was the government we'd wind up with the sort of acronym middle managers find a sexual attraction to out of that mess. Something like MS GS SASEC? If it doesn't make a word yet we can always add some vowels like "Advancement" and "Achievement" and "Excellence" until fluent English speakers have a chance at actually saying it.
Anyway, long story short, I was still young enough (and looked young enough) to be mistaken for a middle school girl in the eyes of adults and yet I was responsible for taking care of them. It was rather exciting.
I can respect why taking students camping on a campsite is such a popular activity. Probably the two most dangerous things that could happen would be students wandering away from the campsite unauthorized and playing in the campfire. If you leave one counselor near the cooking fire and take frequent headcounts both these risks can be mitigated. All that's left after that is slaying spiders and convincing spoiled brats that they do in fact want to eat the food you are providing them because there won't be more coming.
This event was held at a local university. It is amazing how much trouble students can get into on a university campus. Even simple things like handing students between the ages of 11 and 13 access to an infinite supply of Mountain Dew (read: the school cafeteria's soda fountain) can have very exciting results.
The program overlapped with summer courses there and the world peace conference, who was so mad at us they were filing complaints and coming up and shouting from time to time. I guess that says something about my charges when we managed to piss off a world peace conference. Personally, I never knew repeatedly doing the Cha-cha slide was such a grievous offense, although I do understand the contempt earned when we set off the elevator alarm the fourth time in a single week.
Often enough I was left taking care of the girls entirely myself for brief periods of time.
We had just been forced to remove some girls from the program prematurely due to a disciplinary issue and to say morale was low was a bit of an understatement. The head of the program took half the girls swimming and I was left with the task of cheering up the rest.
"So," I bounced into the room holding the official activity manual, "Who wants to do some science experiments?"
The girls turned and faced me with only the most basic gesture of interest they felt they owed to an authority figure. Quickly I flipped open an activity and pitched the description. They remained completely expressionless. I tried a second one. Their eyes reminded me of laser sights on a sniper rifle, all trained on me.
"How about," I grappled with a moment for an idea, "We make some parachutes and throw things out a window in them?"
The middle schoolers tried briefly for a moment in vain to sound like they considered this idea boring too before curiosity broke them down.
"Really?" one asked.
"Can we ride it?"
"No people," I answered, "we'll only put things are ok to lose on them."
"I've got a second pair of sneakers that are ratty and only for playing in the mud, can I send those?"
"Yeah that will be great."
Two carefully sliced and taped trash bags and a ball of twine later I'm leaning out of the 9th story window with our latest creation. Far below I can see some of the girls milling around excitedly and looking along my level I can see more heads poking out windows.
"Ready?" I ask the chorus.
"Ready!"
I released the contraption and it fell a few feet before the parachute properly plumed out. I could hear the kids cheering below. For the split second before the parachute abruptly changed course I felt like everything was looking up. After that there was a lot more eye-rolling on my part.
"Alright," I said to the girl who was looking rather forlornly at her sneakers dangling someplace near the 5th story window, "go get your other sneakers."
"What other sneakers?"
"The ones that made those ones ratty spares."
"Oh," she looked a little sheepish and nervous at this point, "I don't actually have a second pair of sneakers. I just really wanted to you to choose to send my stuff down in the parachute."
I handed her a pair of my flipflops and headed to the elevator with the other students.
The 5th floor is a somewhat bad place to get something stuck. None of us were strong enough to throw something high enough to knock it loose, and the only windows we had access to throw things down from was the 9th floor. I unlocked the sports equipment and sent two of the more mature girls up with a bag of soccer balls and basketballs. The rest of us had the duty of making sure nobody was nearby when she threw.
One of the students, Alex, was leaning out the window and scouting the area when a little old lady walkered her way past. Her badge read that she was from the conference below.
"Is that little girl going to jump?" she asked.
I assured her she wasn't and she went away, seeming content. The fact that campus police showed up about 5 minutes after she left makes me believe she in fact, wasn't. The officer didn't even really try to keep a straight face as I explained to him that we were removing a parachute of shoes from a tree, but he didn't seem annoyed by our activities. He was preparing in fact to pack up and leave when Alex poked her face out of the 9th floor window clutching a basketball in two hands. She wound up her throw the whole way so both hands were above her head before noticing the officer, at which point her jaw dropped and quickly withdrew into the room, still clutching the basketball.
"That little girl," the officer grinned, finding an opportunity to give me shit, "she wasn't about to throw that was she?"
"Of course not officer."
"You'd better make sure she knows that."
"Alex," I shouted, "don't throw anything out the window."
"I'm not sure she can hear you," the officer said, "why don't you make her come to the window?"
Alex didn't want to go to the window. Alex mostly wanted to hide up there and pretend that if she acted like the cop didn't exist that he wasn't there. After some significant time she finally peered out the window and the police man shouted at her for a bit, and then left.
At the end of the week it was time to return the students to their parents. I watched the shoeless girl, still in my flipflops, run up to her parents. Following her slowly I greeted them and then chose my words carefully.
How much would a new pair of sneakers for her cost me? Poor kids don't normally go to summer camp, was it a nice 70 dollar pair I had lost? The parents were notably well-dressed and seemed the sort of people who really cared about brand names. I upped my estimate to 130.
"I'm very sorry," I said, "but your daughter's shoes seem to have been misplaced during the course of camp."
The mom looked slightly confused, "Misplaced?"
"Well, actually I do know where they are, they're in a tree near the fifth floor of the dorms. We couldn't get them down." The mother's eyebrows crashed together for a moment and she looked at me skeptically. "I'd be pleased," I added, "to pay for a replacement pair of shoes since they were lost under my supervision."
"These were...white shoes? Red stripe on the side? Pink shoelaces?"
I nodded.
The woman suddenly lept forward and hugged me, "That's WONDERFUL sweetie."
"Uh...what?"
"We bought her new shoes simply ages ago and she just insists on wearing those old ratty ones because she likes them. We've tried everything, and its just an embarssment to have her running around like that you know? Makes it look like we don't provide for her. I can't believe this...this is wonderful...what an excellent job."
"Really...uh...it was nothing..."
"Oh no, no I need to talk to your boss. You did a great job this week."
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Pericles the Driver
Ten till
I'm standing in my blue interview shirt again, this time by the main entrance of campus and the math building. There is a black car idling silently by the admissions building.
Five till
The morning is so damp it feels like it might rain, or like it is actually constantly misting from the sky. The clouds overhead make the sky dark and prolong the illusion of night.
Time
A man steps out of the car in a suit and stands by the driver's side looking around. At this point I decide to come over and ask him if he's lost. He looks too important to be driving somebody like me, and in the off chance that he is here for some official school business I wouldn't want to offend him. He says he is waiting for a passenger. I tell him my name and that I'm waiting for a ride. Turns out he was the one.
I size up the car. This was my first time any sort of driver had come to pick me up. I'd ridden in cabs before, but the general rule to that is to just pile yourself in the back seat, or in Hong Kong anywhere you would fit. I notice that the front passenger seat is pushed up nearly into the dashboard and folded down, so I assumed I'm suppose to sit directly behind it to take advantage of the leg room offered. I walk up to that side of the car and reach for the door.
The driver stands there looking at me briefly for a moment and then extends his hand. The meaning is clear, Stop. I stand there, quietly wondering if I have offended him, as he walks around the car to stand next to me by the door. He opens it with a slight nod of the head and I get in.
"Thank you Ms. Chu," he says without the slightest hint of sarcasm and shuts the door.
Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.
The driver got in his door and turned the ignition. I had no idea what to do.
"Thanks to you too!" I manage to piece together as cheerfully as possible. The driver's eyes flickered up to the mirror looking a little puzzled. So, I guess that wasn't right.
"Its my pleasure, Ms. Chu."
Ms. Chu? The words seem foreign.
"You...can call me Pika if you like."
"Well it is my pleasure, Pika."
"What's your name?"
"Pericles."
"That's an awesome name, like the ancient Greek right?"
Pericles gives me his first genuine smile, "You have heard of him?"
"Athenian statesman? Founder of democracy?"
Pericles is grinning pretty widely by now, "You know, not a lot of people get that."
I laughed a little, "Well I'm a nerd. That a family name?"
"Nope, my mom just thought it sounded cool."
There was a brief comfortable silence. This time he broke it.
"So what are you going to General Dynamics for?"
"An interview."
"Really? I don't drive many interviewees, especially not this distance. You special?"
I hate that question. There's no easy way to answer it without sounding like an egotistical prick or seeming like you are fishing for compliments. "I guess they think so."
The phone rang. It was the next interview I was going to have, asking me if I could confirm a time later that week. I explained that I was away from my desk for the day asked them to email me.
Pericles grinned again, "That your next interview after this one?"
I didn't know what to say so I looked up at him blankly. Pericles smiled, "Don't worry, its the smart thing to do."
"You won't tell them?"
Pericles laughed, "No, I'm not an employee. Even if I tried they wouldn't listen to me." He adjusted the collar of his suit for a quick moment with one hand and then delicately placed it back on the wheel. It seemed a practiced motion which he meant to use to express professionalism. "Most people," he said, continuing this strange series of motions which clearly had some sort of significance which was beyond my grasp, "don't think of me as a professional because I do not have the same sort of job that they do. Some of them barely regard me as a person. They talk in front of me like a dog, like I can not understand them. You would be amazed at some of the things that have been discussed in my car."
I was quiet because there did not seem to be anything to say to that.
"So who do you drive normally?"
"Rich people," he responds, "guests for most of the major tech companies around here, and airport pickups / drop-offs for the more important employees of the same companies."
"Huh." I wasn't really confused but it seemed like the right time to make some sort of noise to indicate I was still listening.
"I have one couple who I drive a lot, the wife mostly. They have no need to work anymore so they just travel the world."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"What do they do?"
"Well they ran out of normal places they go so now they go on expeditions...they go live in the desert for a few months with the peasants...you know...get the experience."
"Sounds neat, or like a tourist trap."
"Really? I think it sounds lame. Even if you are getting the real deal you're paying a ton of money, enough to live any way in the world you want, to live like a third world peasant. Its the ultimate proof, the grass is always greener on the other side."
I'm standing in my blue interview shirt again, this time by the main entrance of campus and the math building. There is a black car idling silently by the admissions building.
Five till
The morning is so damp it feels like it might rain, or like it is actually constantly misting from the sky. The clouds overhead make the sky dark and prolong the illusion of night.
Time
A man steps out of the car in a suit and stands by the driver's side looking around. At this point I decide to come over and ask him if he's lost. He looks too important to be driving somebody like me, and in the off chance that he is here for some official school business I wouldn't want to offend him. He says he is waiting for a passenger. I tell him my name and that I'm waiting for a ride. Turns out he was the one.
I size up the car. This was my first time any sort of driver had come to pick me up. I'd ridden in cabs before, but the general rule to that is to just pile yourself in the back seat, or in Hong Kong anywhere you would fit. I notice that the front passenger seat is pushed up nearly into the dashboard and folded down, so I assumed I'm suppose to sit directly behind it to take advantage of the leg room offered. I walk up to that side of the car and reach for the door.
The driver stands there looking at me briefly for a moment and then extends his hand. The meaning is clear, Stop. I stand there, quietly wondering if I have offended him, as he walks around the car to stand next to me by the door. He opens it with a slight nod of the head and I get in.
"Thank you Ms. Chu," he says without the slightest hint of sarcasm and shuts the door.
Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.
The driver got in his door and turned the ignition. I had no idea what to do.
"Thanks to you too!" I manage to piece together as cheerfully as possible. The driver's eyes flickered up to the mirror looking a little puzzled. So, I guess that wasn't right.
"Its my pleasure, Ms. Chu."
Ms. Chu? The words seem foreign.
"You...can call me Pika if you like."
"Well it is my pleasure, Pika."
"What's your name?"
"Pericles."
"That's an awesome name, like the ancient Greek right?"
Pericles gives me his first genuine smile, "You have heard of him?"
"Athenian statesman? Founder of democracy?"
Pericles is grinning pretty widely by now, "You know, not a lot of people get that."
I laughed a little, "Well I'm a nerd. That a family name?"
"Nope, my mom just thought it sounded cool."
There was a brief comfortable silence. This time he broke it.
"So what are you going to General Dynamics for?"
"An interview."
"Really? I don't drive many interviewees, especially not this distance. You special?"
I hate that question. There's no easy way to answer it without sounding like an egotistical prick or seeming like you are fishing for compliments. "I guess they think so."
The phone rang. It was the next interview I was going to have, asking me if I could confirm a time later that week. I explained that I was away from my desk for the day asked them to email me.
Pericles grinned again, "That your next interview after this one?"
I didn't know what to say so I looked up at him blankly. Pericles smiled, "Don't worry, its the smart thing to do."
"You won't tell them?"
Pericles laughed, "No, I'm not an employee. Even if I tried they wouldn't listen to me." He adjusted the collar of his suit for a quick moment with one hand and then delicately placed it back on the wheel. It seemed a practiced motion which he meant to use to express professionalism. "Most people," he said, continuing this strange series of motions which clearly had some sort of significance which was beyond my grasp, "don't think of me as a professional because I do not have the same sort of job that they do. Some of them barely regard me as a person. They talk in front of me like a dog, like I can not understand them. You would be amazed at some of the things that have been discussed in my car."
I was quiet because there did not seem to be anything to say to that.
"So who do you drive normally?"
"Rich people," he responds, "guests for most of the major tech companies around here, and airport pickups / drop-offs for the more important employees of the same companies."
"Huh." I wasn't really confused but it seemed like the right time to make some sort of noise to indicate I was still listening.
"I have one couple who I drive a lot, the wife mostly. They have no need to work anymore so they just travel the world."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"What do they do?"
"Well they ran out of normal places they go so now they go on expeditions...they go live in the desert for a few months with the peasants...you know...get the experience."
"Sounds neat, or like a tourist trap."
"Really? I think it sounds lame. Even if you are getting the real deal you're paying a ton of money, enough to live any way in the world you want, to live like a third world peasant. Its the ultimate proof, the grass is always greener on the other side."
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Jake the Cab Driver
Its another blue interview shirt day. There is a light drizzle outside as I pick my way carefully to the cab between the puddles. The HR woman who was coordinating my visit walks out with me and leans in the window of the mini-van. She's one of those people who you meet and instantly genuinely like, although something about her simultaneously unnerves me. She is well meaning, but distinctly alien.
"Hey," she says, "This is Pika, and I just found out she hasn't seen the city yet. She's got some time before her flight, do you think you could give her a little tour? It would be nice for her to be able to see the city before having to choose if she wants to live in it."
The cab driver seemed to be in his mid fifties. He wore a red plaid shirt and a big smile. "Yeah," he said, "Absolutely." He turned to me, "Hold on a second then," and cleared out the front seat so I could ride shotgun instead of the normal ceremonial position of the same side but sitting in the back.
"Jake," he said, extended a big red hand for me to shake as he drove toward the security gate. He looked almost sunburned even though up at college it was barely spring.
"Pika," I grinned taking his hand.
The gates clattered open and Jake pulled the vehicle out. "Well, they seem to like you," he smiled. I decided I liked Jake.
"Yeah, but I think they might be trying to put me on a defense contractor job instead of one of their commercial ones."
"You don't want that?"
"No,"
"I can respect that."
Its a sad thing that I'm left with the ability to speak candidly to a cab driver but not to my interviewer. I know my interviewer will never ask the cab driver what I said. The truth is that these people have been totally forgotten, like most persons in the service industry have. Nobody looks at them like people anymore. I personally think they are the best sort of people and normally always try to make an effort to talk to them. Partly it is always entertaining to hear what they have to say. On another level I think it really makes their day to just have a few minutes when some asshole isn't condescending to them for no good reason.
Jake's from a family of three. He has been in the industry of transporting things and people all his life. When he was young he and his brothers ran a bicycle delivery service.
I looked at him thinking he had to be nuts. He was definitely not old enough to remember a time when cars were not prevalent enough for bicycles to be a competitive way to do things.
"No seriously," he said. "This city suffers from gridlock. A bicycle can pick its way along the streets between the isles of cars at a good 10 miles an hour, and can take all sorts of shortcuts a car can't. Besides that, bicycles are cheaper to repair and you don't have to pay to fuel them. They don't require insurance, and they represent a lot less overhead."
"Oh," I said, feeling thoroughly schooled.
Jake smiled. I guess he was use to people initially laughing the idea off. "My older brother ran the business," he said. "He started out with just the three of us. He was a brilliant business man you know. He bought all one-speed bikes."
"One speed..." I was confused again.
Jake had a million little stories about this, how the one-speed bikes saved on repair costs and time, how they gave kids the option to use their own bicycles, repair them themselves, and earn a little more on each delivery for doing so, how he and his brothers had purchased all the christmas presents in the family one year, how as the organization grew he found himself more and more overseeing overhead, how at that time his hands perpetually smelled like chain grease from repairing huge fleets of bicycles.
As we drove along Jake gave a narrated tour of the city. I was actually floored. I have never heard such a well-given tour. The man's knowledge of the French and Indian War blew mine out of the water. If nothing else he knew how to pronounce all the Indian tribes.
"I'm really lucky," he grinned, "I love this stuff and study it for fun, but its not every day I get an audience." We were both grinning and happy.
"I'll take you to the strip district," he said, "I bet that is exactly your kind of place."
I sort of wondered what initial impression I had given him to make him think anything called 'the strip district' was my sort of place. In reality the strip district was the name for a large international district full of foods that I couldn't pronounce but dearly wanted to try and people selling massive amounts of junk on the streets. He had completely hit the nail on the head.
We drove passing steep inclines which were navigated by cable cars. Jake explained how they use to balance the wagons on one side, horses and all with the cable car coming down full of other stuff. This reduced the effort and meant that 1800's technology could easily move the cars up and down a mountain. We drove among tall reflective main buildings and quiet market squares. I was fascinated. No wonder HR was so eager to give me a tour. I'd happily live in this city.
"So," I gestured to the car, "What happened to it? The bicycle delivery system?"
"Oh, I decided to retire into easier work," he pointed at the interior of the van. "My older brother is still doing it though, even deliveries. He's absolutely ripped, looks a good 10 years younger than me. He comes over and gives us all crap about being so much older than us and yet looking so much younger. You know how brothers are."
I grinned, "What about your younger brother?"
"He's doing a lot better. He was going down a hill pretty fast once when some asshole decided to open a big van door on him. The front wheel got jammed under the door and he went up over the handle bars, whole body upside down against the open door. Broke his lower back in two places. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet the doctors say he'd be dead. He's really lucky though, he still walks and everything. He can't do manual labor anymore though."
I was aghast. "What happened to the driver of the van?"
"He tried to leave the scene with my brother just laying there, claiming he didn't notice. Somebody got his plate and traced him back, but its claimed that he did it by accident so there is not a lot we can do. They settled it out of court recently but, not for a whole lot, but my brother appreciates the closure of having it finally be done. We all realized it really isn't worth getting upset over. No amount of punishment on that driver will make my brother's back better again."
I was amazed by his maturity in this situation. There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say so I was very quiet.
Jake looked at me and smiled, "That's the way these things go sometimes kid."
"Hey," she says, "This is Pika, and I just found out she hasn't seen the city yet. She's got some time before her flight, do you think you could give her a little tour? It would be nice for her to be able to see the city before having to choose if she wants to live in it."
The cab driver seemed to be in his mid fifties. He wore a red plaid shirt and a big smile. "Yeah," he said, "Absolutely." He turned to me, "Hold on a second then," and cleared out the front seat so I could ride shotgun instead of the normal ceremonial position of the same side but sitting in the back.
"Jake," he said, extended a big red hand for me to shake as he drove toward the security gate. He looked almost sunburned even though up at college it was barely spring.
"Pika," I grinned taking his hand.
The gates clattered open and Jake pulled the vehicle out. "Well, they seem to like you," he smiled. I decided I liked Jake.
"Yeah, but I think they might be trying to put me on a defense contractor job instead of one of their commercial ones."
"You don't want that?"
"No,"
"I can respect that."
Its a sad thing that I'm left with the ability to speak candidly to a cab driver but not to my interviewer. I know my interviewer will never ask the cab driver what I said. The truth is that these people have been totally forgotten, like most persons in the service industry have. Nobody looks at them like people anymore. I personally think they are the best sort of people and normally always try to make an effort to talk to them. Partly it is always entertaining to hear what they have to say. On another level I think it really makes their day to just have a few minutes when some asshole isn't condescending to them for no good reason.
Jake's from a family of three. He has been in the industry of transporting things and people all his life. When he was young he and his brothers ran a bicycle delivery service.
I looked at him thinking he had to be nuts. He was definitely not old enough to remember a time when cars were not prevalent enough for bicycles to be a competitive way to do things.
"No seriously," he said. "This city suffers from gridlock. A bicycle can pick its way along the streets between the isles of cars at a good 10 miles an hour, and can take all sorts of shortcuts a car can't. Besides that, bicycles are cheaper to repair and you don't have to pay to fuel them. They don't require insurance, and they represent a lot less overhead."
"Oh," I said, feeling thoroughly schooled.
Jake smiled. I guess he was use to people initially laughing the idea off. "My older brother ran the business," he said. "He started out with just the three of us. He was a brilliant business man you know. He bought all one-speed bikes."
"One speed..." I was confused again.
Jake had a million little stories about this, how the one-speed bikes saved on repair costs and time, how they gave kids the option to use their own bicycles, repair them themselves, and earn a little more on each delivery for doing so, how he and his brothers had purchased all the christmas presents in the family one year, how as the organization grew he found himself more and more overseeing overhead, how at that time his hands perpetually smelled like chain grease from repairing huge fleets of bicycles.
As we drove along Jake gave a narrated tour of the city. I was actually floored. I have never heard such a well-given tour. The man's knowledge of the French and Indian War blew mine out of the water. If nothing else he knew how to pronounce all the Indian tribes.
"I'm really lucky," he grinned, "I love this stuff and study it for fun, but its not every day I get an audience." We were both grinning and happy.
"I'll take you to the strip district," he said, "I bet that is exactly your kind of place."
I sort of wondered what initial impression I had given him to make him think anything called 'the strip district' was my sort of place. In reality the strip district was the name for a large international district full of foods that I couldn't pronounce but dearly wanted to try and people selling massive amounts of junk on the streets. He had completely hit the nail on the head.
We drove passing steep inclines which were navigated by cable cars. Jake explained how they use to balance the wagons on one side, horses and all with the cable car coming down full of other stuff. This reduced the effort and meant that 1800's technology could easily move the cars up and down a mountain. We drove among tall reflective main buildings and quiet market squares. I was fascinated. No wonder HR was so eager to give me a tour. I'd happily live in this city.
"So," I gestured to the car, "What happened to it? The bicycle delivery system?"
"Oh, I decided to retire into easier work," he pointed at the interior of the van. "My older brother is still doing it though, even deliveries. He's absolutely ripped, looks a good 10 years younger than me. He comes over and gives us all crap about being so much older than us and yet looking so much younger. You know how brothers are."
I grinned, "What about your younger brother?"
"He's doing a lot better. He was going down a hill pretty fast once when some asshole decided to open a big van door on him. The front wheel got jammed under the door and he went up over the handle bars, whole body upside down against the open door. Broke his lower back in two places. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet the doctors say he'd be dead. He's really lucky though, he still walks and everything. He can't do manual labor anymore though."
I was aghast. "What happened to the driver of the van?"
"He tried to leave the scene with my brother just laying there, claiming he didn't notice. Somebody got his plate and traced him back, but its claimed that he did it by accident so there is not a lot we can do. They settled it out of court recently but, not for a whole lot, but my brother appreciates the closure of having it finally be done. We all realized it really isn't worth getting upset over. No amount of punishment on that driver will make my brother's back better again."
I was amazed by his maturity in this situation. There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say so I was very quiet.
Jake looked at me and smiled, "That's the way these things go sometimes kid."
Friday, May 29, 2009
Warrior
"Pikachu (yeah my boss actually calls me Pikachu, even in real life) can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner," my boss Crash said. He stood for a moment at the doorway of the 10 by 13 foot single room cabin, short range radio in hand. I could see the top of the semi-auto, which was across his back, over his shoulder. A flash light was secured to the top via a large quantity of unceremously wrapped electrical tape. Odds are he was going to go sit on the roof of his own cabin for a few hours sipping a beer and thinking before climbing back down to ground level, going in his cabin, and calling it a night. After the fight that weekend he had been strangely quiet and contemplative.
I remember riding down to town earlier that day in Crash's truck. Crash drove, Wafflulz rode shotgun, and I was nominated to sit in the middle due to my short stature. Jack-of-all-trades (Joat) and his girlfriend were in another truck behind us.
Joat's girlfriend had come along on this trip to the middle of nowhere, although I am not entirely sure why. The outdoors seemed a little overwhelming to her at the best of times. However, she had reached a full-fledged breaking point after falling from a raft earlier that day and being dragged under the boat by the current.
Wafflulz got out from the car to do something and I was left there sitting with Crash.
"What's she getting so upset about," I asked. The words from my mouth were more snide and condescending than actually seeking an answer, "Falling out of a raft..."
"She thought she was going to die, and she was afraid."
"Well she didn't die, and that was hours ago! What is her problem?"
"That feeling of 'I will not live through this' probably never happened to her before"
I put my feet up on the dashboard of Crash's truck and stared at my knees flippantly. "Pffft"
I'd like to be able to offer a reasonable explanation of why I talk and act like a seven year old when nobody but Crash can hear me but I don't have one. I suspect it is mostly just because I can, and because I know he will not judge me for it. It is a rare luxury.
"Not everybody's like you and me, Pikachu."
I made another moronic and immature condescending noise, "I'm not afraid to die!"
I'd never thought about it before, and it probably wasn't true, but somehow I wanted Crash to believe it.
Crash sighed, "Yes you are."
"No I'm not! I've almost died a ton of times!"
My boss smiled a little, "I use to say that too, Pikachu."
The conversation had been cut short by Wafflulz reentering the car and muttering, "They don't have it." Crash threw the truck in reverse and shortly after we arrived at a weathered brown wooden building with the words "General Store" tacked overhead. Inside they sold pretty nearly everything you would need except clothing or alcohol. The alcohol situation was taken care of next door where a tired bar stood, constructed of the same weathered planks.
We all piled out and wandered into the General Store, including the car following us which contained Joat and his girlfriend.
Some asshole slammed the door of the shop on Joat's girlfriend. Crash asked him pretty nicely (in my opinion) to be kind to her, and said she had a rough day. The kid had turned and, without warning, slugged him.
Fights almost always start over stupid things anyway...because fights are rarely about whatever happened directly before the fight. Fights are normally about at least one person wanting to start a fight.
Crash had gone easy on the 20 something kid. My boss had not tried to hurt him, but the kid had drawn a good amount of Crash's blood via the rings he wore on his hands. Head wounds bleed like nothing you would believe and the blood had obscured Crash's vision, hampering him.
"Hah!" the kid had screamed every time he used a ring to gouge another line in my boss' forehead, "Fuck you old man!"
I remember being enraged not only that this kid was cheap enough to sucker punch Crash, who was more than twice his age, but that he was so cheap that he had done it with a fist full of rings. I wanted the whole thing to stop... or slow down, anything for a second to think. Every time I've been in a fight I've been to busy saving my skin to really be scared, but I was scared now. I wanted to run in and save Crash, but I did not do it. Crash had been a national champion once. To enter the fight and "attempt to help" him would injure his pride in ways I could never hope to repair. Additionally, to be frank, I never believed for a second that Crash could possibly lose. Crash is very much like a father to me and I suppose I had been struck by some bizarre impulse to believe him invincible and immortal.
I remember feeling very torn. The flip side of me thinking of Crash like a father was that I knew he regarded me as almost a daughter. If this unbalanced brat managed to draw a drop of my blood Crash would probably lose it and start snapping the kid's bones or worse instead of trying to just pin him down and make him stop. Then again, if I won, I could make the kid stop hurting Crash so much faster.
I can't ever remember feeling like my brain worked so slowly. All I could do was watch the fight. I never thought Crash could lose, but simply watching somebody I care about being physically beaten was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I had never permitted anybody to do this to my brother. Now I just stood and watched, telling myself that this is what Crash would want me to do, telling myself that this was his fight, telling myself that he had it handled.
I remember looking over at Wafflulz, who was standing next to me on the porch of the general store. I remember being horribly jealous of him for being male and a good foot taller than me. The kid wasn't ripped, but he was built enough to do some damage if he wanted to. Crash didn't regard him as a son. He could have walked up and trounced the kid and not feared putting Crash into such a rage should he suffer a scrape. With his size and a little training he could have beaten the shit out of that kid. At that very moment I would have given anything to be Wafflulz.
I had this terrible lurking feeling that my hesitance to assist Crash was not out of consideration of his pride but a disguise for my own cowardice, and my strong desire at that moment to be Wafflulz did nothing but reinforce that fear. If I was wishing for strength, did that mean I doubted my own? Did it mean I did not fight because I was afraid?
Wafflulz stood there expressionless and watched motionlessly except to put one arm in front of me. The gesture was clear, "Stay here." Was his judgement better than mine? Should I do as he said?
This is one of those situations where indecision is a decision to do nothing. I never really decided that it was ok to leave my friend, but my failure to decide quickly meant the fight was over before I had really concluded anything.
Our faith in Crash's did not disappoint us. Despite what it felt like, in reality it wasn't too long until the kid was sauntering back to his truck. He reminded me of a frightened cat, walking at the briskest pace possible without flat out running. His head was held high, still pretending it was going this way just because he felt like it, not because he happened to want to get the hell away from Crash. He was trying to show that he wasn't scared, that he hadn't lost.
Joat had happened in on the fight half way and not immediately recognized Crash was one of the participants. I could tell he was flustered and as guilt-ridden as I was by this entire experience. His girlfriend had progressed beyond borderline hysterical into a full-fledged meltdown. Crash coolly cleaned the blood from his face and went over to comfort her, but the cuts were still bleeding and looking at him I swear you could watch the black eye forming, causing her to cry harder.
I had tried to convince Crash to tell his story to the police but his interesting childhood had helped him develop a strong distaste for for them, and I could see he was upset. Instead he left his business card and his story with a local sheriff who arrived shortly after.
We drove a small way before Crash realized his shirt was soaked in his own blood. He stopped at another town's general store, gave Wafflulz some money, and told him to buy a shirt. He did not want to arrive back at base camp covered in blood and alarm our other coworkers.
I stared at Crash's reflection in the windshield. I couldn't help but look at the fresh black eye and the cuts. I did not want to look directly at him because I knew it was important to Crash that I act like this was no big deal, and that seeing his blood soaked face and clothes did not upset me. I have never seen him so sad. It does not matter what actually happened, Crash thinks he lost.
"You totally had him!"
I blurted these words out of nowhere as if I was already in mid argument with him.
"It's too bad that coward ran away!" I finished
Crash sighed. His voice sounded distant, "I'm getting old..."
"No! You were just in it for the longer fight! Didn't you tell me how your team always won by endurance rather than brute strength? That is how you were trained!"
Crash's response was pretty half-hearted, "Yeah."
There was a long pause.
"You did the right thing Pikachu," he said at last. "A third person has no place in a fight."
I remember staring at his face in the windshield reflection wondering if he was just saying that to make me feel better.
Crash turned his face to look out the driver's side mirror, and away from me.
"Pikachu can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner,"
There was a definite advantage's in Crash's simple instructions. In one sentence he had completely eliminated my dilemma of whether the me claiming the better spot to sleep (I had shown up first) was me abusing my privileges as Gadget's boss or just me calling dibs.
It was just the three of us up there in the wilderness that evening. Wafflulz, Joat, his girlfriend, and everybody else had gone home a few hours ago. Gadget and I had a presentation to prepare which we had planned to spend pretty much all of Monday doing anyway, so Crash invited us to do it out in the wilderness instead of in my lab.
I picked up the box with the gun and ammo in it and moved it right up next to the cabin door, which I locked. If Crash wanted to come check on us he would radio over before hiking up here anyway. Walking over to the twin bed in the corner I tossed my sleeping bag on top of it and sprung up to sit on the side of the mattress, legs swinging in the air over the edge, just above the floor.
"Hey," I called to Gadget, "you tired yet?"
"Nah."
"Me either."
It's amazing when you find yourself repeating conversations from second-grade slumber parties in "real life." I guess it is one of my reasons for wondering if most people ever grow up at all.
So, like so many girly slumber parties from eons past, we sat up and talked with one another for hours. We talked about all manner of things which I have no right to repeat here. It isn't that the events were dirty or shameful, far from it, I just have no right to try to tell you the story of somebody else's life.
Discussions ranged from life stories and eventually into just raw philosophy.
"I think," Gadget mused, "That people can be divided up into two groups pretty easily: politicians and warriors."
I was intrigued. I knew exactly which of those things I wanted to be considered. The image of Crash covered in his own blood was still very vivid in my mind. I wanted more than anything to be told I was brave enough and strong enough to protect those important to me no matter the personal or reputation cost. Gadget had not heard of the fight yet, so in this moment of weakness, it very important to me for him to say, without any prompting from me, what I wanted to hear.
Gadget laughed a little at my sudden attentiveness.
"Pika, that's easy, you're a warrior."
I remember laying in bed that night thinking. I remember wishing that Wafflulz had held me back and stopped me from fighting. It would have removed the responsibility of making that choice from me, and the feeling of cowerdance watching a friend bleed from each punch while I forced myself to stand still. Its harder to regret your choices when you can convince yourself you didn't have any.
"You're a warrior," the words echoed in my head.
Dear God, I thought, I hope he is right.
I remember riding down to town earlier that day in Crash's truck. Crash drove, Wafflulz rode shotgun, and I was nominated to sit in the middle due to my short stature. Jack-of-all-trades (Joat) and his girlfriend were in another truck behind us.
Joat's girlfriend had come along on this trip to the middle of nowhere, although I am not entirely sure why. The outdoors seemed a little overwhelming to her at the best of times. However, she had reached a full-fledged breaking point after falling from a raft earlier that day and being dragged under the boat by the current.
Wafflulz got out from the car to do something and I was left there sitting with Crash.
"What's she getting so upset about," I asked. The words from my mouth were more snide and condescending than actually seeking an answer, "Falling out of a raft..."
"She thought she was going to die, and she was afraid."
"Well she didn't die, and that was hours ago! What is her problem?"
"That feeling of 'I will not live through this' probably never happened to her before"
I put my feet up on the dashboard of Crash's truck and stared at my knees flippantly. "Pffft"
I'd like to be able to offer a reasonable explanation of why I talk and act like a seven year old when nobody but Crash can hear me but I don't have one. I suspect it is mostly just because I can, and because I know he will not judge me for it. It is a rare luxury.
"Not everybody's like you and me, Pikachu."
I made another moronic and immature condescending noise, "I'm not afraid to die!"
I'd never thought about it before, and it probably wasn't true, but somehow I wanted Crash to believe it.
Crash sighed, "Yes you are."
"No I'm not! I've almost died a ton of times!"
My boss smiled a little, "I use to say that too, Pikachu."
The conversation had been cut short by Wafflulz reentering the car and muttering, "They don't have it." Crash threw the truck in reverse and shortly after we arrived at a weathered brown wooden building with the words "General Store" tacked overhead. Inside they sold pretty nearly everything you would need except clothing or alcohol. The alcohol situation was taken care of next door where a tired bar stood, constructed of the same weathered planks.
We all piled out and wandered into the General Store, including the car following us which contained Joat and his girlfriend.
Some asshole slammed the door of the shop on Joat's girlfriend. Crash asked him pretty nicely (in my opinion) to be kind to her, and said she had a rough day. The kid had turned and, without warning, slugged him.
Fights almost always start over stupid things anyway...because fights are rarely about whatever happened directly before the fight. Fights are normally about at least one person wanting to start a fight.
Crash had gone easy on the 20 something kid. My boss had not tried to hurt him, but the kid had drawn a good amount of Crash's blood via the rings he wore on his hands. Head wounds bleed like nothing you would believe and the blood had obscured Crash's vision, hampering him.
"Hah!" the kid had screamed every time he used a ring to gouge another line in my boss' forehead, "Fuck you old man!"
I remember being enraged not only that this kid was cheap enough to sucker punch Crash, who was more than twice his age, but that he was so cheap that he had done it with a fist full of rings. I wanted the whole thing to stop... or slow down, anything for a second to think. Every time I've been in a fight I've been to busy saving my skin to really be scared, but I was scared now. I wanted to run in and save Crash, but I did not do it. Crash had been a national champion once. To enter the fight and "attempt to help" him would injure his pride in ways I could never hope to repair. Additionally, to be frank, I never believed for a second that Crash could possibly lose. Crash is very much like a father to me and I suppose I had been struck by some bizarre impulse to believe him invincible and immortal.
I remember feeling very torn. The flip side of me thinking of Crash like a father was that I knew he regarded me as almost a daughter. If this unbalanced brat managed to draw a drop of my blood Crash would probably lose it and start snapping the kid's bones or worse instead of trying to just pin him down and make him stop. Then again, if I won, I could make the kid stop hurting Crash so much faster.
I can't ever remember feeling like my brain worked so slowly. All I could do was watch the fight. I never thought Crash could lose, but simply watching somebody I care about being physically beaten was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I had never permitted anybody to do this to my brother. Now I just stood and watched, telling myself that this is what Crash would want me to do, telling myself that this was his fight, telling myself that he had it handled.
I remember looking over at Wafflulz, who was standing next to me on the porch of the general store. I remember being horribly jealous of him for being male and a good foot taller than me. The kid wasn't ripped, but he was built enough to do some damage if he wanted to. Crash didn't regard him as a son. He could have walked up and trounced the kid and not feared putting Crash into such a rage should he suffer a scrape. With his size and a little training he could have beaten the shit out of that kid. At that very moment I would have given anything to be Wafflulz.
I had this terrible lurking feeling that my hesitance to assist Crash was not out of consideration of his pride but a disguise for my own cowardice, and my strong desire at that moment to be Wafflulz did nothing but reinforce that fear. If I was wishing for strength, did that mean I doubted my own? Did it mean I did not fight because I was afraid?
Wafflulz stood there expressionless and watched motionlessly except to put one arm in front of me. The gesture was clear, "Stay here." Was his judgement better than mine? Should I do as he said?
This is one of those situations where indecision is a decision to do nothing. I never really decided that it was ok to leave my friend, but my failure to decide quickly meant the fight was over before I had really concluded anything.
Our faith in Crash's did not disappoint us. Despite what it felt like, in reality it wasn't too long until the kid was sauntering back to his truck. He reminded me of a frightened cat, walking at the briskest pace possible without flat out running. His head was held high, still pretending it was going this way just because he felt like it, not because he happened to want to get the hell away from Crash. He was trying to show that he wasn't scared, that he hadn't lost.
Joat had happened in on the fight half way and not immediately recognized Crash was one of the participants. I could tell he was flustered and as guilt-ridden as I was by this entire experience. His girlfriend had progressed beyond borderline hysterical into a full-fledged meltdown. Crash coolly cleaned the blood from his face and went over to comfort her, but the cuts were still bleeding and looking at him I swear you could watch the black eye forming, causing her to cry harder.
I had tried to convince Crash to tell his story to the police but his interesting childhood had helped him develop a strong distaste for for them, and I could see he was upset. Instead he left his business card and his story with a local sheriff who arrived shortly after.
We drove a small way before Crash realized his shirt was soaked in his own blood. He stopped at another town's general store, gave Wafflulz some money, and told him to buy a shirt. He did not want to arrive back at base camp covered in blood and alarm our other coworkers.
I stared at Crash's reflection in the windshield. I couldn't help but look at the fresh black eye and the cuts. I did not want to look directly at him because I knew it was important to Crash that I act like this was no big deal, and that seeing his blood soaked face and clothes did not upset me. I have never seen him so sad. It does not matter what actually happened, Crash thinks he lost.
"You totally had him!"
I blurted these words out of nowhere as if I was already in mid argument with him.
"It's too bad that coward ran away!" I finished
Crash sighed. His voice sounded distant, "I'm getting old..."
"No! You were just in it for the longer fight! Didn't you tell me how your team always won by endurance rather than brute strength? That is how you were trained!"
Crash's response was pretty half-hearted, "Yeah."
There was a long pause.
"You did the right thing Pikachu," he said at last. "A third person has no place in a fight."
I remember staring at his face in the windshield reflection wondering if he was just saying that to make me feel better.
Crash turned his face to look out the driver's side mirror, and away from me.
***
"Pikachu can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner,"
There was a definite advantage's in Crash's simple instructions. In one sentence he had completely eliminated my dilemma of whether the me claiming the better spot to sleep (I had shown up first) was me abusing my privileges as Gadget's boss or just me calling dibs.
It was just the three of us up there in the wilderness that evening. Wafflulz, Joat, his girlfriend, and everybody else had gone home a few hours ago. Gadget and I had a presentation to prepare which we had planned to spend pretty much all of Monday doing anyway, so Crash invited us to do it out in the wilderness instead of in my lab.
I picked up the box with the gun and ammo in it and moved it right up next to the cabin door, which I locked. If Crash wanted to come check on us he would radio over before hiking up here anyway. Walking over to the twin bed in the corner I tossed my sleeping bag on top of it and sprung up to sit on the side of the mattress, legs swinging in the air over the edge, just above the floor.
"Hey," I called to Gadget, "you tired yet?"
"Nah."
"Me either."
It's amazing when you find yourself repeating conversations from second-grade slumber parties in "real life." I guess it is one of my reasons for wondering if most people ever grow up at all.
So, like so many girly slumber parties from eons past, we sat up and talked with one another for hours. We talked about all manner of things which I have no right to repeat here. It isn't that the events were dirty or shameful, far from it, I just have no right to try to tell you the story of somebody else's life.
Discussions ranged from life stories and eventually into just raw philosophy.
"I think," Gadget mused, "That people can be divided up into two groups pretty easily: politicians and warriors."
I was intrigued. I knew exactly which of those things I wanted to be considered. The image of Crash covered in his own blood was still very vivid in my mind. I wanted more than anything to be told I was brave enough and strong enough to protect those important to me no matter the personal or reputation cost. Gadget had not heard of the fight yet, so in this moment of weakness, it very important to me for him to say, without any prompting from me, what I wanted to hear.
Gadget laughed a little at my sudden attentiveness.
"Pika, that's easy, you're a warrior."
I remember laying in bed that night thinking. I remember wishing that Wafflulz had held me back and stopped me from fighting. It would have removed the responsibility of making that choice from me, and the feeling of cowerdance watching a friend bleed from each punch while I forced myself to stand still. Its harder to regret your choices when you can convince yourself you didn't have any.
"You're a warrior," the words echoed in my head.
Dear God, I thought, I hope he is right.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Re: I'm sorry you feel that way
I have been meaning to start this blog for a while now, but I previously was waiting for the time to make a nice proper blog with my internet skills, so I just wrote some posts and stashed them away. Turns out I have yet to have time to make a nice blog, but I do feel like digging out these old posts and seeing what I can make of them. Here's one.
This blog was inspired a lot by the work of Violent Acres. This particular post was written in response to this item of her work. For those of you a little too lazy to click, its a rant about how the words "I am sorry you feel that way" are a cover for people to feel good about themselves while still being assholes.
I'm going to disagree with her. I'm not going to say that phrase doesn't mean exactly what she says it does or that it isn't insulting or degrading.
However, it is still sometimes highly appropriate for the situation at hand.
Mentoring and teaching were my formal sources of employment from ages 16 to 19. The age gap between me and my students was often as small as six months. To compound this I look very young. Tomorrow I will be 22 but even today people still ask me from time to time what high school I am attending.
I never had problems earning and keeping the respect of my students. You may say this shouldn't be something to brag about as all humans naturally deserve respect but reality doesn't work that way. As it was, I worked hard to earn my student's respect (not friendship) and to keep my classes and teams organized and well-functioning. My success in this was a source of great pride.
I had tremendous problems earning the respect of these children's parents. This was not as much so for the parents of the poor high school children. These parents spoke broken English more often than not and frequently worked two jobs. They saw the extra-curricular semi-academic club I mentored as their daughter's opportunity to make something of herself.
No, it was the suburban, white, middle-class-who-lived-like-upper-class, SUV driving, soccer mom banshees who glare at you from behind movie-star sunglasses even while indoors with a cell phone surgically grafted to the palm of one hand who gave me trouble. I taught their precious darlings in an expensive semi-academic summer camp, which many parents of this type more closely equated to babysitting they did not have to feel guilty about constantly leaving their child in. It was academic wasn't it? Surely throwing money into what might be considered their child's future was an adequate replacement for an actual bond with their child, wasn't it? Besides, they had golf games to get to or a nail appointment. Junior could cope.
I took the job because I was poor, in college, and tuition is steep. I only worked there one summer.
I was easily the youngest councilor there. Worse than that, I still equated myself to being somewhat of a child, above my students, but deferring to the power of "actual adults." I called them "Mr." or "Mrs." while still permitting them to use my first name. When they complained I would apologize that I had caused their child unhappiness and ask for their input on how to improve the situation. These self-absorbed child-parents sensed this as a weakness and fell upon it in a manner which strongly reminded me of those wildlife documentaries where a lion chases and brings down the slowest gazelle in the pack.
They complained about some fairly ridiculous things. They called and said they didn't think their child should have to share class materials, couldn't I make one team of five and leave their child with their own kit instead of using the same resources to make two teams of three? They called and claimed that the reason their child wasn't doing well was because their child was bored by my lesson plans and had not signed up to learn what I was teaching. Couldn't the child just use class time and materials to explore their own interests? The winning line was a livid call to my boss, Big Mike, from one particularly proud mother who claimed "Pika doesn't understand the unique challenge and privilege she had teaching somebody as gifted my son."
It was evident their children heard these calls, quite possibly on speaker phone as they were made. The next morning they would talk back or act out for a few hours before the normal order could be reestablished. The other students might not have noticed but I found it stressful and frankly a waste of my time.
My boss had chosen long ago to set up his office in the corner of the room I used as my classroom. He had witnessed all of this, fielding the better part of these confrontations via the phone himself. One day I found myself in a conversation with him about how he handles confrontation with irrational customers. I do not remember how it started but I will probably never forget this line:
"I stopped saying sorry. I found this afforded me a great deal of power in these conversations."
I remember sitting there not totally convinced, and I not-so-subtly hinted as much. I'm incredibly lucky I had such nice bosses early in my career who pseudo-parented me or God knows where I would be.
He persisted, making it slowly quite evident that this was intended to be a lesson for me and that he did not have some bizarre desire to recount tales of his past to me arbitrarily. "When this happens to me, I apologize that the unfortunate situation has arisen, but when I apologize for my actions I am revealing what some people consider to be a weakness." He explained how certain people cling to these perceived weaknesses and how sometimes it was unwise to expose such an opportunity to people who were essentially complete assholes. He said it all much more subtly and much less condescendingly than that. Big Mike was a very gifted communicator. I know that compliment sounds like bullshit and the skill of communication has been ramshacked by talentless dolts who believe it an appropriate major to compliment their participation in college sports but this man was the real deal.
I listened politely to his wisdom and then promptly ignored him.
Another crop of students came and went with another crop of zealous parents.
Big Mike took pity on me and at this point just asked that I forward all storming parents directly to him. Not only did he dislike watching them skewer me but he also was finding it troublesome to derail the momentum of righteous indignation these people had built up by the time they got to him.
At some point during the batch after that I was caught by an unhappy parent in person in the hallway. She was a platinum blond piece of work. I have never been much into fashion but everything about the way she walked reeked of the fact that she had paid too much for her clothing and that she was proud of it. She had the obligatory cell phone and in one hand and she would from time to time pull her overly large oakley sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to glare at me over the top of them. It was during one of these brief moments of condescending eye contact that she paused to draw breath.
"I'm sorry" I interrupted.
The woman's eyes were lit up and I watched a thin line of a smile draw across her face. Creepy barely describes the situation. I felt like a deer in headlights.
"...that you feel that way."
The smile stopped short and suddenly the woman did not seem nearly as tall anymore. As a matter of fact I felt like I could nearly watch her crumple up like a piece of paper. I had just demanded that she respect my authority instead of constantly deferring to hers. The glasses rapidly snapped up to obscure her eyes. She was talking again but instead of seeming intimidating she reminded me more of a small dog that barks too loudly. The reality was that she probably had not changed much at all, but my mind perceived all these differences because, for the first time, I was in control of this conversation.
"Do you want...to speak to my manager?"
"I'll call him later. I'm too busy right now," she announced swinging her purse and flouncing down the hallway as the cell phone snapped back up to her ear.
Big Mike says she never did.
This blog was inspired a lot by the work of Violent Acres. This particular post was written in response to this item of her work. For those of you a little too lazy to click, its a rant about how the words "I am sorry you feel that way" are a cover for people to feel good about themselves while still being assholes.
I'm going to disagree with her. I'm not going to say that phrase doesn't mean exactly what she says it does or that it isn't insulting or degrading.
However, it is still sometimes highly appropriate for the situation at hand.
Mentoring and teaching were my formal sources of employment from ages 16 to 19. The age gap between me and my students was often as small as six months. To compound this I look very young. Tomorrow I will be 22 but even today people still ask me from time to time what high school I am attending.
I never had problems earning and keeping the respect of my students. You may say this shouldn't be something to brag about as all humans naturally deserve respect but reality doesn't work that way. As it was, I worked hard to earn my student's respect (not friendship) and to keep my classes and teams organized and well-functioning. My success in this was a source of great pride.
I had tremendous problems earning the respect of these children's parents. This was not as much so for the parents of the poor high school children. These parents spoke broken English more often than not and frequently worked two jobs. They saw the extra-curricular semi-academic club I mentored as their daughter's opportunity to make something of herself.
No, it was the suburban, white, middle-class-who-lived-like-upper-class, SUV driving, soccer mom banshees who glare at you from behind movie-star sunglasses even while indoors with a cell phone surgically grafted to the palm of one hand who gave me trouble. I taught their precious darlings in an expensive semi-academic summer camp, which many parents of this type more closely equated to babysitting they did not have to feel guilty about constantly leaving their child in. It was academic wasn't it? Surely throwing money into what might be considered their child's future was an adequate replacement for an actual bond with their child, wasn't it? Besides, they had golf games to get to or a nail appointment. Junior could cope.
I took the job because I was poor, in college, and tuition is steep. I only worked there one summer.
I was easily the youngest councilor there. Worse than that, I still equated myself to being somewhat of a child, above my students, but deferring to the power of "actual adults." I called them "Mr." or "Mrs." while still permitting them to use my first name. When they complained I would apologize that I had caused their child unhappiness and ask for their input on how to improve the situation. These self-absorbed child-parents sensed this as a weakness and fell upon it in a manner which strongly reminded me of those wildlife documentaries where a lion chases and brings down the slowest gazelle in the pack.
They complained about some fairly ridiculous things. They called and said they didn't think their child should have to share class materials, couldn't I make one team of five and leave their child with their own kit instead of using the same resources to make two teams of three? They called and claimed that the reason their child wasn't doing well was because their child was bored by my lesson plans and had not signed up to learn what I was teaching. Couldn't the child just use class time and materials to explore their own interests? The winning line was a livid call to my boss, Big Mike, from one particularly proud mother who claimed "Pika doesn't understand the unique challenge and privilege she had teaching somebody as gifted my son."
It was evident their children heard these calls, quite possibly on speaker phone as they were made. The next morning they would talk back or act out for a few hours before the normal order could be reestablished. The other students might not have noticed but I found it stressful and frankly a waste of my time.
My boss had chosen long ago to set up his office in the corner of the room I used as my classroom. He had witnessed all of this, fielding the better part of these confrontations via the phone himself. One day I found myself in a conversation with him about how he handles confrontation with irrational customers. I do not remember how it started but I will probably never forget this line:
"I stopped saying sorry. I found this afforded me a great deal of power in these conversations."
I remember sitting there not totally convinced, and I not-so-subtly hinted as much. I'm incredibly lucky I had such nice bosses early in my career who pseudo-parented me or God knows where I would be.
He persisted, making it slowly quite evident that this was intended to be a lesson for me and that he did not have some bizarre desire to recount tales of his past to me arbitrarily. "When this happens to me, I apologize that the unfortunate situation has arisen, but when I apologize for my actions I am revealing what some people consider to be a weakness." He explained how certain people cling to these perceived weaknesses and how sometimes it was unwise to expose such an opportunity to people who were essentially complete assholes. He said it all much more subtly and much less condescendingly than that. Big Mike was a very gifted communicator. I know that compliment sounds like bullshit and the skill of communication has been ramshacked by talentless dolts who believe it an appropriate major to compliment their participation in college sports but this man was the real deal.
I listened politely to his wisdom and then promptly ignored him.
Another crop of students came and went with another crop of zealous parents.
Big Mike took pity on me and at this point just asked that I forward all storming parents directly to him. Not only did he dislike watching them skewer me but he also was finding it troublesome to derail the momentum of righteous indignation these people had built up by the time they got to him.
At some point during the batch after that I was caught by an unhappy parent in person in the hallway. She was a platinum blond piece of work. I have never been much into fashion but everything about the way she walked reeked of the fact that she had paid too much for her clothing and that she was proud of it. She had the obligatory cell phone and in one hand and she would from time to time pull her overly large oakley sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to glare at me over the top of them. It was during one of these brief moments of condescending eye contact that she paused to draw breath.
"I'm sorry" I interrupted.
The woman's eyes were lit up and I watched a thin line of a smile draw across her face. Creepy barely describes the situation. I felt like a deer in headlights.
"...that you feel that way."
The smile stopped short and suddenly the woman did not seem nearly as tall anymore. As a matter of fact I felt like I could nearly watch her crumple up like a piece of paper. I had just demanded that she respect my authority instead of constantly deferring to hers. The glasses rapidly snapped up to obscure her eyes. She was talking again but instead of seeming intimidating she reminded me more of a small dog that barks too loudly. The reality was that she probably had not changed much at all, but my mind perceived all these differences because, for the first time, I was in control of this conversation.
"Do you want...to speak to my manager?"
"I'll call him later. I'm too busy right now," she announced swinging her purse and flouncing down the hallway as the cell phone snapped back up to her ear.
Big Mike says she never did.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Party in the ECE building
Its 3:30 AM.
I wonder if the couches in the first floor IEEE lounge are actually this comfortable in reality or if I have only ever sat down in them when thoroughly exhausted.
There is no reason I suppose they should not be this comfortable, they certainly are of excellent quality. The pair are matching black leather and comfortably seat three people each. There are not even food stains, scuff marks, or rips in the fabric. How did we get such nice quality couches in a student lounge? We are so spoiled.
Someday if I am rich I would love to have couches half as comfortable as these.
"Its like a bread product scanner," a voice pipes up.
I turn and laugh as Ginger stares at the lightly unorthodox toaster he found in the lounge and plugged in. It has a pair of heating elements at the top. As the toaster works the slice of bread product designated to be toasted moves slowly past the heating elements into a transparent plastic chamber and out again. At first I want to belittle him for being so easily amused but only realize that I too seem to be transfixed by this simple kitchen appliance.
Ginger and I sit down with our now-toasted bagels and spread apricot honey cream cheese on them. We sit them and eat in pretty much silence.
That is one of the things I sincerely enjoy about Ginger. He doesn't feel like he has to be talking to be enjoying something. I think the fine art of shutting the hell up and simply taking things in has mostly been lost in this day and age. Instead we have to make small talk about everything. I have to wonder how much of moments you miss if you are too busy explaining to everybody that they are happening.
We were joined shortly later by a friend Purple's and my lab partner from another class. We were joined shortly later by Purple herself who had a bagel and then invited us into the Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering lounge (which is open to all, just controlled by that particular club.) This offered us the opportunity for caffeinated tea and candy. The couches are not as comfortable but it has a poster on the door with a picture of Captain Picard holding a mug of tea always makes me smile.
Tea, Early Grey, Hot
After that we back to work for another few hours.
It was 6AM. I needed to stretch my legs again.
Wandering upstairs I chatted briefly with the Vex Victim and my friend Playlist. After that I wandered downstairs. The women's lounge was open in it, and Purple and her friend were still there working.
"Hey," Purple said, "you having issues logging into the CS department network from here?"
"Haven't been trying."
"I can't get in."
I was going to go toast myself another bagel but the lights were off in the IEEE lounge and two other friends of mine were passed out cold on the couches. Instead I told my lab partner I was going home for a quick nap.
I appreciate that I can wander a random building at 6AM in the morning and still find many people to talk to, that we can share food and swap stories. They say misery loves company, but truth be told I'm not really miserable working like this: mostly just tired. The work we are assigned is quite enjoyable, its just a lot of work to do. That's how we wind up here I guess. A sad part of me knows I will miss this sort of thing when I graduate.
Perhaps if I do not find a real job instead of opening a place which delivers cookies and milk I'll make a homework cafe. It would be open from maybe 5PM until 8AM and serve dinner, breakfast, and snacks. It would have lab benches on the side so people could do lab work, and internet so people could shell into whatever machines they needed. As a matter of fact it would be designed to be just like working in a lab, except that you can eat there.
I wonder if the couches in the first floor IEEE lounge are actually this comfortable in reality or if I have only ever sat down in them when thoroughly exhausted.
There is no reason I suppose they should not be this comfortable, they certainly are of excellent quality. The pair are matching black leather and comfortably seat three people each. There are not even food stains, scuff marks, or rips in the fabric. How did we get such nice quality couches in a student lounge? We are so spoiled.
Someday if I am rich I would love to have couches half as comfortable as these.
"Its like a bread product scanner," a voice pipes up.
I turn and laugh as Ginger stares at the lightly unorthodox toaster he found in the lounge and plugged in. It has a pair of heating elements at the top. As the toaster works the slice of bread product designated to be toasted moves slowly past the heating elements into a transparent plastic chamber and out again. At first I want to belittle him for being so easily amused but only realize that I too seem to be transfixed by this simple kitchen appliance.
Ginger and I sit down with our now-toasted bagels and spread apricot honey cream cheese on them. We sit them and eat in pretty much silence.
That is one of the things I sincerely enjoy about Ginger. He doesn't feel like he has to be talking to be enjoying something. I think the fine art of shutting the hell up and simply taking things in has mostly been lost in this day and age. Instead we have to make small talk about everything. I have to wonder how much of moments you miss if you are too busy explaining to everybody that they are happening.
We were joined shortly later by a friend Purple's and my lab partner from another class. We were joined shortly later by Purple herself who had a bagel and then invited us into the Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering lounge (which is open to all, just controlled by that particular club.) This offered us the opportunity for caffeinated tea and candy. The couches are not as comfortable but it has a poster on the door with a picture of Captain Picard holding a mug of tea always makes me smile.
Tea, Early Grey, Hot
After that we back to work for another few hours.
It was 6AM. I needed to stretch my legs again.
Wandering upstairs I chatted briefly with the Vex Victim and my friend Playlist. After that I wandered downstairs. The women's lounge was open in it, and Purple and her friend were still there working.
"Hey," Purple said, "you having issues logging into the CS department network from here?"
"Haven't been trying."
"I can't get in."
I was going to go toast myself another bagel but the lights were off in the IEEE lounge and two other friends of mine were passed out cold on the couches. Instead I told my lab partner I was going home for a quick nap.
I appreciate that I can wander a random building at 6AM in the morning and still find many people to talk to, that we can share food and swap stories. They say misery loves company, but truth be told I'm not really miserable working like this: mostly just tired. The work we are assigned is quite enjoyable, its just a lot of work to do. That's how we wind up here I guess. A sad part of me knows I will miss this sort of thing when I graduate.
Perhaps if I do not find a real job instead of opening a place which delivers cookies and milk I'll make a homework cafe. It would be open from maybe 5PM until 8AM and serve dinner, breakfast, and snacks. It would have lab benches on the side so people could do lab work, and internet so people could shell into whatever machines they needed. As a matter of fact it would be designed to be just like working in a lab, except that you can eat there.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Surprise! You've Got a New Housemate!
"Oh, and Gilby moving in tomorrow," Hannalore added yesterday afternoon as she walked past my room.
"Uh...who is Gilby?"
"He's replacing you on the lease."
"I'm paid up until June..."
"Oh, well he is going to live in our living room during May, then he is going to live in your room."
"Uh...were you going to tell me?"
Hannalore looked at me fairly quizzically, "I just did."
You may think Hannalore is the resounding jackass of the century but the reality is she is not. She has a fascinating cocktail of neurological issues, a few of which overlap with my brother's, but she is not nearly as severe. This helps me understand her a little and sometimes translate her issues to the other housemates.
The bottom line is she lives in a totally different world than the rest of us. There are many things about her we will simply never be able to sympathize with: for example, she can not stand physical contact with other human beings in any form. It bothers her deeply. She is one of the most absurdly picky eaters I have ever met. I can probably count all of the food items she will eat on my fingers. These things are just how she was wired when she was born.
Just like we find her bizarre and alien, she finds us bizarre. Everything she does makes perfect sense to her. If you ask her she can even explain it to you in ways that make sense if you can accept her base premises. In her world we are the irrational and bizarre ones. I suppose if you didn't have a sex drive sex would sound pretty bizarre to you too wouldn't it?
The name I use for her here, Hannalore, comes from the Questionable Content character. Its a humorous (and hopefully not considered mean) reference to the fact that another part of her "abnormal wiring" is the fact that she is clincally OCD.
Our common method of communication is logic. Basically we both assert the premises by which we live our lives and then explain the logic which makes us feel the way we feel about things. In this way we can resolve disagreements.
This has its ups and downs. One of the major benefits of this is as long as I can explain to her just why something she didn't like happened, and why it won't happen again, she's pretty much ok with it no matter what it is. For example, the first time she met Magpie, our other current housemate, he had accidentally woken her up by drunkenly stumbling into her room (thinking it was the bathroom) and accidentally ripping the doorknob off the door. I'm a pretty tolerant person but Magpie is a pretty big guy and looks rather intimidating until you learn he wouldn't hurt a fly. But if I didn't know him and he had wandered into my room very drunk? I would have punched him and then run. Hannalore was pretty ok with this situation under the condition that I promised to show everybody where the bathroom was previous to bringing out the alcohol at parties.
The downside of her being like this is from time to time she does things which upset me greatly without having the faintest idea of why I am upset.
When she had found Gilby off some department mailing list and announced he would be replacing me when I left...I thought little of it. After all, I would never live with him right? If my current housemates wanted to live with some total stranger from the internet, they were adults, that was their choice, and I wasn't going to question it. Now, however, Gilby was my problem too. A quick call to Magpie (who was on a camping trip/picking up more crap to put in his room trip I had to skip due to finals) confirmed that he was also not expecting Gilby.
"He can't live here," I said, coming back out of my room and finding Hannalore.
"Why not?"
"He hasn't signed papers. The landlords wil be angry."
"Can he put his things here?"
"No"
"Why?"
"Where would he put them?"
Hannalore paused a moment. "I hadn't thought of that."
Bright and early the next morning the doorbell rang and I rolled over and rolled my eyes. Of course. I had explained my issue to Hannalore as "the landlords won't like it" and "we don't have space." She had, like always, taken me completely literally and probably resolved both those issues herself. She was not going to be able to read the meaning behind my words of "I don't want him here."
Wandering down the stairs I pulled the door open and found a tall dark-haired young man holding a printer in a box.
"So, you're moving in now?"
"Yeah."
"Uh..." I stammered, feeling like all of this was getting a bit out of hand and also struggling to remember what the kid's name was, "How is that going to work?"
Hannalore was standing over my shoulder, "I took care of everything. He's going to store his belongings in my room, I cleared a space. He's also going to live in my room during May as soon as finals are done. I'll be leaving as soon as finals are done so I won't need the space. When June comes and you leave he can move into your room.
"...and...you're going to pay?" I asked. Both of them nodded.
A part of me just wanted to scream and stamp "No," but I am quite short on cash right now due to being both a college student and employment impaired. Additionally, if I upset him too badly I would be screwing my current housemates out of a lot of money next year while they paid for my empty room. Besides, he didn't seem too overly creepy.
We cleared him a space in a storage area and he put his printer in it. We also gave him some keys.
"Do you guys drink?" he asked.
"Yeah, sometimes."
"Do you have a bucket?"
"What?"
"In my dorm, we had a bucket. His name was Mr. Bucket."
There didn't seem to be anything good to say in response to that.
Gilby wandered our house for a little while after that, belittled the sanitation of our kitchen, and left. We saw him again at about 6PM. He said he would be back at about 7 with a friend or two who was helping him move in. At about 8:15 he and the better chunk of a freshman floor arrived and situated themselves in my living room. They commented on how small my home was, and how ideal the back porch was for smoking weed. They then left with the living room mostly unnavigatible due to his stuff.
Gilby returned shortly later and sat himself down on the couch. I asked him to please put his stuff in the storage space he gave him so we could walk around the living room. He made fun of how I keep my room. I gave him wifi access. He complained about the bathroom being dirty. He then started eying the alcohol in the refrigerator.
"Can I have some?"
Normally I answer "yes" automatically but he seemed a little too excited about it and his perpetual whining was beginning to eat at me. "Um, if you pay me back for it."
Gilby wandered the house for a moment and retrieved a shotglass with the school insignia on it. "How much of it can I have of the Smirnoff for five dollars?"
"Um...well...a whole bottle is about 20...so you can have a quarter of it."
"Great" he said, emptying the five dollars from his wallet in my hands. He then removed the vodka from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table to pour himself a shot. I watched silently.
"Man, this stuff is QUALITY, you can see how much better is is than Gilby's just in the glass."
I remained quiet, trying to be expressionless.
"Gilby's," he announced, "Is like State vodka, but its cheaper. You don't want to try it I think."
I nodded and then returned to my room to study for finals. At least he had a nickname now. About 10 minutes later he wandered into my room still holding the bottle of Smirnoff. "Have I had my quarter?" he asked.
"Uh," I said trying to be perfectly fair, "you probably have one shot left."
"Awesome!" he grinned.
"Uh...who is Gilby?"
"He's replacing you on the lease."
"I'm paid up until June..."
"Oh, well he is going to live in our living room during May, then he is going to live in your room."
"Uh...were you going to tell me?"
Hannalore looked at me fairly quizzically, "I just did."
You may think Hannalore is the resounding jackass of the century but the reality is she is not. She has a fascinating cocktail of neurological issues, a few of which overlap with my brother's, but she is not nearly as severe. This helps me understand her a little and sometimes translate her issues to the other housemates.
The bottom line is she lives in a totally different world than the rest of us. There are many things about her we will simply never be able to sympathize with: for example, she can not stand physical contact with other human beings in any form. It bothers her deeply. She is one of the most absurdly picky eaters I have ever met. I can probably count all of the food items she will eat on my fingers. These things are just how she was wired when she was born.
Just like we find her bizarre and alien, she finds us bizarre. Everything she does makes perfect sense to her. If you ask her she can even explain it to you in ways that make sense if you can accept her base premises. In her world we are the irrational and bizarre ones. I suppose if you didn't have a sex drive sex would sound pretty bizarre to you too wouldn't it?
The name I use for her here, Hannalore, comes from the Questionable Content character. Its a humorous (and hopefully not considered mean) reference to the fact that another part of her "abnormal wiring" is the fact that she is clincally OCD.
Our common method of communication is logic. Basically we both assert the premises by which we live our lives and then explain the logic which makes us feel the way we feel about things. In this way we can resolve disagreements.
This has its ups and downs. One of the major benefits of this is as long as I can explain to her just why something she didn't like happened, and why it won't happen again, she's pretty much ok with it no matter what it is. For example, the first time she met Magpie, our other current housemate, he had accidentally woken her up by drunkenly stumbling into her room (thinking it was the bathroom) and accidentally ripping the doorknob off the door. I'm a pretty tolerant person but Magpie is a pretty big guy and looks rather intimidating until you learn he wouldn't hurt a fly. But if I didn't know him and he had wandered into my room very drunk? I would have punched him and then run. Hannalore was pretty ok with this situation under the condition that I promised to show everybody where the bathroom was previous to bringing out the alcohol at parties.
The downside of her being like this is from time to time she does things which upset me greatly without having the faintest idea of why I am upset.
When she had found Gilby off some department mailing list and announced he would be replacing me when I left...I thought little of it. After all, I would never live with him right? If my current housemates wanted to live with some total stranger from the internet, they were adults, that was their choice, and I wasn't going to question it. Now, however, Gilby was my problem too. A quick call to Magpie (who was on a camping trip/picking up more crap to put in his room trip I had to skip due to finals) confirmed that he was also not expecting Gilby.
"He can't live here," I said, coming back out of my room and finding Hannalore.
"Why not?"
"He hasn't signed papers. The landlords wil be angry."
"Can he put his things here?"
"No"
"Why?"
"Where would he put them?"
Hannalore paused a moment. "I hadn't thought of that."
Bright and early the next morning the doorbell rang and I rolled over and rolled my eyes. Of course. I had explained my issue to Hannalore as "the landlords won't like it" and "we don't have space." She had, like always, taken me completely literally and probably resolved both those issues herself. She was not going to be able to read the meaning behind my words of "I don't want him here."
Wandering down the stairs I pulled the door open and found a tall dark-haired young man holding a printer in a box.
"So, you're moving in now?"
"Yeah."
"Uh..." I stammered, feeling like all of this was getting a bit out of hand and also struggling to remember what the kid's name was, "How is that going to work?"
Hannalore was standing over my shoulder, "I took care of everything. He's going to store his belongings in my room, I cleared a space. He's also going to live in my room during May as soon as finals are done. I'll be leaving as soon as finals are done so I won't need the space. When June comes and you leave he can move into your room.
"...and...you're going to pay?" I asked. Both of them nodded.
A part of me just wanted to scream and stamp "No," but I am quite short on cash right now due to being both a college student and employment impaired. Additionally, if I upset him too badly I would be screwing my current housemates out of a lot of money next year while they paid for my empty room. Besides, he didn't seem too overly creepy.
We cleared him a space in a storage area and he put his printer in it. We also gave him some keys.
"Do you guys drink?" he asked.
"Yeah, sometimes."
"Do you have a bucket?"
"What?"
"In my dorm, we had a bucket. His name was Mr. Bucket."
There didn't seem to be anything good to say in response to that.
Gilby wandered our house for a little while after that, belittled the sanitation of our kitchen, and left. We saw him again at about 6PM. He said he would be back at about 7 with a friend or two who was helping him move in. At about 8:15 he and the better chunk of a freshman floor arrived and situated themselves in my living room. They commented on how small my home was, and how ideal the back porch was for smoking weed. They then left with the living room mostly unnavigatible due to his stuff.
Gilby returned shortly later and sat himself down on the couch. I asked him to please put his stuff in the storage space he gave him so we could walk around the living room. He made fun of how I keep my room. I gave him wifi access. He complained about the bathroom being dirty. He then started eying the alcohol in the refrigerator.
"Can I have some?"
Normally I answer "yes" automatically but he seemed a little too excited about it and his perpetual whining was beginning to eat at me. "Um, if you pay me back for it."
Gilby wandered the house for a moment and retrieved a shotglass with the school insignia on it. "How much of it can I have of the Smirnoff for five dollars?"
"Um...well...a whole bottle is about 20...so you can have a quarter of it."
"Great" he said, emptying the five dollars from his wallet in my hands. He then removed the vodka from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table to pour himself a shot. I watched silently.
"Man, this stuff is QUALITY, you can see how much better is is than Gilby's just in the glass."
I remained quiet, trying to be expressionless.
"Gilby's," he announced, "Is like State vodka, but its cheaper. You don't want to try it I think."
I nodded and then returned to my room to study for finals. At least he had a nickname now. About 10 minutes later he wandered into my room still holding the bottle of Smirnoff. "Have I had my quarter?" he asked.
"Uh," I said trying to be perfectly fair, "you probably have one shot left."
"Awesome!" he grinned.
Nothing Says "Merry Christmas" like a Dead Fish in a Jar
When I lived in Hong Kong our work there related to removing as many workers as possible from a designated market. Seeing as there isn't exactly a worker's shortage in China we had to find a place to move all these people into ourselves.
We heard tell of a group of fishermen who had turned their former livelihoods into a tourist concept. Because of tax laws in Hong Kong and the fact that their tour location was out on the ocean they hardly had to pay taxes. It seemed pretty ideal, and as foreigners we were pretty well situated to evaluate whether this would likely become successful or a larger market which we could put our market sector into.
A large flat floating dock formed a "town square" and fishing boats were parked continuously along the perimeter.
What fascinated me most about this place was the gift shop, and what
fascinated me most about the gift shop was a rack of small bird-like objects with a slick plastic coating on the outside which hung from fishing line and a key chain loop. They had small googly eyes and a straw hat glued on to them. The small beaks on them made them look nothing short of alien but obviously somebody had found them endearing to dress them and market them like this.
Picking one up I shook it. It made a bizarre rattling noise but seemed to have a significant amount of internal structure to it. Why would somebody put so much internal structure into a cheap little keychain? It could have been solid with a single plastic mold around the outside and it would have held up just fine.
"What is this?" I asked. The translator who we had access to (since this was during work hours) turned to one of the shop owners.
"They are keychains," the translator reported, "They are made from sun-dried baby puffer fish."
I thought about Americans and what those who feel a need to compulsively buy things out of gift shops expect out of gift shops. These were not shot glasses with "I love ex-fishermen" on them nor T-shirts not coffee mugs printed with the same.
They also could not pass as some traditional art form which makes white tourists feel culturally aware and superior by the fact that it hangs prominently on their living room wall at home where passers by might politely ask about it.
Visitor who has come over for dinner: oh, what is that?
Smug host: that's a hand-made Incan blanket from our trip through South America. Its made out of real Alpaca wool and dyed with natural pigments just like the native persons there have done for thousands of years.
Alternative scenario
Smug host: that's a key chain from Hong Kong. Its made of a dead baby fish and coated in plastic, just like former fishermen of Hong Kong have been doing since the invention of the plastic googly-eyes to glue on the front.
I just didn't see it going over quite as well.
It was then that I realized I simply had to have one. What would be more hilarious than to show it off with the same air of arrogance only to watch the people who cared about petty things like that recoil in horror? And it would only cost me about a dollar fifty American? Sounds like a deal to me!
So I bought it and I brought it back to my apartment and placed it in an empty nutella glass. I put the jar with the dead fish in it on the table and stared at it for a bit. The initial amusement of it had worn off and so I left it there and turned my attention to my computer. There I spotted an IM window open previously with PJ.
Every year there are people who you care about but who you don't know what to give them for Christmas. You want to give them something, but you can't think of anything they need or want within a socially acceptable price range. PJ was one of those people that year for me. My solution to this is every year I choose one of these people and give them a small cardboard box filled with small cheap items which they find amusing, and whose sum total equates about to one present. Christmas had already passed but I was scheduled to see PJ in March so I had told him I was bringing his present then. PJ's box had been previously filled with strips of LEDs, a few small parts I had scavenged which were perfect for making robots with, and other misc junk which I knew he would love.
Then I turned to the fish. Even better than me acting proud of this as my own possession, how much more infinitely hilarious would it be if I passed this off as a valuable gift?
I'm not the most rational and logical person I'll admit, but PJ seems to have an abnormally low general opinion of my common sense. Unfounded or founded, it is an awful lot of fun to mess with him using that fact. Opening the IM window again I decided this was a great time for continuing this tradition.
Pika: I got you a souvenir
Pika: hopefully they won't find it in customs, I think they would be upset with me
PJ: What have you done now?
I choose to leave the situation there for the time being and not discuss it further.
In March I brought PJ his Christmas present. He eyed the box carefully, obviously remembering the customs comment.
"Come on," I coaxed, "open it."
He opened it and found the Nutella jar directly on top of his other presents. "Huh," he asked intrigued, shaking the jar slightly, "What is this?"
"Its a dead fish in a jar!"
PJ nearly dropped the jar but instead placed it to one side.
"Come on!" I said, "Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like a dead fish in a jar!"
"You know," PJ laughed, "I guess its true."
We heard tell of a group of fishermen who had turned their former livelihoods into a tourist concept. Because of tax laws in Hong Kong and the fact that their tour location was out on the ocean they hardly had to pay taxes. It seemed pretty ideal, and as foreigners we were pretty well situated to evaluate whether this would likely become successful or a larger market which we could put our market sector into.
A large flat floating dock formed a "town square" and fishing boats were parked continuously along the perimeter.
What fascinated me most about this place was the gift shop, and what
fascinated me most about the gift shop was a rack of small bird-like objects with a slick plastic coating on the outside which hung from fishing line and a key chain loop. They had small googly eyes and a straw hat glued on to them. The small beaks on them made them look nothing short of alien but obviously somebody had found them endearing to dress them and market them like this.Picking one up I shook it. It made a bizarre rattling noise but seemed to have a significant amount of internal structure to it. Why would somebody put so much internal structure into a cheap little keychain? It could have been solid with a single plastic mold around the outside and it would have held up just fine.
"What is this?" I asked. The translator who we had access to (since this was during work hours) turned to one of the shop owners.
"They are keychains," the translator reported, "They are made from sun-dried baby puffer fish."
I thought about Americans and what those who feel a need to compulsively buy things out of gift shops expect out of gift shops. These were not shot glasses with "I love ex-fishermen" on them nor T-shirts not coffee mugs printed with the same.
They also could not pass as some traditional art form which makes white tourists feel culturally aware and superior by the fact that it hangs prominently on their living room wall at home where passers by might politely ask about it.
Visitor who has come over for dinner: oh, what is that?
Smug host: that's a hand-made Incan blanket from our trip through South America. Its made out of real Alpaca wool and dyed with natural pigments just like the native persons there have done for thousands of years.
Alternative scenario
Smug host: that's a key chain from Hong Kong. Its made of a dead baby fish and coated in plastic, just like former fishermen of Hong Kong have been doing since the invention of the plastic googly-eyes to glue on the front.
I just didn't see it going over quite as well.
It was then that I realized I simply had to have one. What would be more hilarious than to show it off with the same air of arrogance only to watch the people who cared about petty things like that recoil in horror? And it would only cost me about a dollar fifty American? Sounds like a deal to me!
So I bought it and I brought it back to my apartment and placed it in an empty nutella glass. I put the jar with the dead fish in it on the table and stared at it for a bit. The initial amusement of it had worn off and so I left it there and turned my attention to my computer. There I spotted an IM window open previously with PJ.
Every year there are people who you care about but who you don't know what to give them for Christmas. You want to give them something, but you can't think of anything they need or want within a socially acceptable price range. PJ was one of those people that year for me. My solution to this is every year I choose one of these people and give them a small cardboard box filled with small cheap items which they find amusing, and whose sum total equates about to one present. Christmas had already passed but I was scheduled to see PJ in March so I had told him I was bringing his present then. PJ's box had been previously filled with strips of LEDs, a few small parts I had scavenged which were perfect for making robots with, and other misc junk which I knew he would love.
Then I turned to the fish. Even better than me acting proud of this as my own possession, how much more infinitely hilarious would it be if I passed this off as a valuable gift?
I'm not the most rational and logical person I'll admit, but PJ seems to have an abnormally low general opinion of my common sense. Unfounded or founded, it is an awful lot of fun to mess with him using that fact. Opening the IM window again I decided this was a great time for continuing this tradition.
Pika: I got you a souvenir
Pika: hopefully they won't find it in customs, I think they would be upset with me
PJ: What have you done now?
I choose to leave the situation there for the time being and not discuss it further.
In March I brought PJ his Christmas present. He eyed the box carefully, obviously remembering the customs comment.
"Come on," I coaxed, "open it."
He opened it and found the Nutella jar directly on top of his other presents. "Huh," he asked intrigued, shaking the jar slightly, "What is this?"
"Its a dead fish in a jar!"
PJ nearly dropped the jar but instead placed it to one side.
"Come on!" I said, "Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like a dead fish in a jar!"
"You know," PJ laughed, "I guess its true."
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Stolen Burrito
Two years ago, when, I was but a wee lackey at my current place of employment (not that I'm a lot more now, it just sounds cool), the summer was ending and it was time for end-of-summer final reports. All of the interns were required to do a final presentation on their summer work for department staff.
Arbor is a good guy, a good team lead, mentored me a little in digital photography, and gave me my first actually useful photoshop lessons. At that time he was a master's student. He isn't a particularly serious guy, but sometimes I think he really wasn't prepared for the circus of shenanigans that was our program. He doesn't drink, and mostly keeps to himself in his off-hours. He's relatively quiet, and normally fairly calm. I can't imagine him getting really mad enough at anybody to raise his voice significantly, let alone punch them. He's also a notoriously picky eater.
He came in early to the presentations with them and put a white plastic bag down on the desk with a thud. One of his team members pulled the handles apart and looked inside. Arbor looked at her and grinned, "they're for when we're done, I figured you guys deserved it."
"They finally get yours right?"
"Yeah," Arbor replied grinning ear to ear, "Going to be great, with this deadline I haven't had a square meal in days."
The presentations started shortly after.
If there is something I have found it is that as seriously as some government employees enjoy taking themselves outside the workplace there are other people who delight in acting as absurdly as possible behind closed doors within the system. I think enjoy the fact that it quietly ruins the "men in black" mystique and (not so) quiet sense of self-importance that attracts so many government employees despite the low wages. They could also just be clinically insane or just trolls. I'd like to hope I'm one of the latter two.
My (at the time boss') boss Crash was, classically, a little late. He walked in while most of the program was intently listening to the current presentation and sat down briefly at one of the tables, pausing for about a five count. He then stood up again, removed his sunglasses and poked around at the contents of the table by the wall. His eyes glanced over the plate of fresh fruit provided for us to eat during presentations briefly and then turned to a plastic bag next to it.
"And as you can see," the presenting intern was saying, "by varying the shutter speed of the image we can get various portions of this darkly lit room in good quality while others are either too dark or blown out. If you combine these images with this software you can gain a single composite image with all portions appropriately lit in excellent quality..."
"Ish thaf," Crash started before thinking better of it and swallowed the portion of the burrito he was eating. He then pointed to the projector screen which currently showed a sample image the intern had taken in a dark closet to prove the software. "Is that a dead body?"
"No," the intern sighed, "its a mannequin." There was a short awkward silence before he shrugged and said, "Don't ask me, I just work here."
I found that statement wildly hilarious but felt significantly bad laughing at somebody during their final presentation. Instead, I pretended to have a slight cough and turned my head away from the presenting student in a pathetic attempt at subtlety. This was how I caught sight of Arbor.
Arbor looked like a five year old who had just been told Christmas was canceled, like somebody had just killed his puppy, like Milton from Office Space asking for his stapler back. He was just staring at the food Crash was eating.
If I thought Arbor looked depressed upon his first discovery of Crash's mistaken conclusion that the burritos on that table were up for grabs like everything else, that was fairly minimal compared to the expressions Arbor made during his presentation. Crash grilled Arbor fairly ruthlessly (as was Crash's job) about all of the work he had done. I suppose that constitutes a new low: having your summer's work publicly ripped apart by your boss' boss as he eats your dinner in front of you.
Arbor was quietly upset about that burrito for some time. It isn't that he would sit around and whine about it. Instead you would catch him looking sad, and when prompted he would sigh "Crash ate my burrito." That was probably the funniest part of this whole incident. I guess it isn't in Arbor to confront somebody on something like that, so he sulked about it for weeks on end instead. I've never seen somebody to let down over a five dollar food item.
Somebody might have told Crash, but I didn't, I figured it wouldn't get Arbor back his burrito anyway. Additionally, at the point where he is upset about it a whole week later, whatever it was that upset him so much probably didn't have a whole lot to do with the burrito anyway.
So today, almost two years later, I'm having lunch with PJ and we're catching up about this and that
Pika: Did you hear about Arbor? He's a big shot now. They were flying him to Italy three weeks ago to speak at a conference.
PJ: Seems like things have worked out well for him
Pika: Did you catch him in Atlanta? He IMed me and asked for your phone number.
PJ: Yeah, we caught up
Pika: and?
PJ: We were standing on that big outdoor escalator at Georgia Dome when all of a sudden out of nowhere he said "I still can't believe Crash ate my burrito."
Poor Arbor :p
Arbor is a good guy, a good team lead, mentored me a little in digital photography, and gave me my first actually useful photoshop lessons. At that time he was a master's student. He isn't a particularly serious guy, but sometimes I think he really wasn't prepared for the circus of shenanigans that was our program. He doesn't drink, and mostly keeps to himself in his off-hours. He's relatively quiet, and normally fairly calm. I can't imagine him getting really mad enough at anybody to raise his voice significantly, let alone punch them. He's also a notoriously picky eater.
He came in early to the presentations with them and put a white plastic bag down on the desk with a thud. One of his team members pulled the handles apart and looked inside. Arbor looked at her and grinned, "they're for when we're done, I figured you guys deserved it."
"They finally get yours right?"
"Yeah," Arbor replied grinning ear to ear, "Going to be great, with this deadline I haven't had a square meal in days."
The presentations started shortly after.
If there is something I have found it is that as seriously as some government employees enjoy taking themselves outside the workplace there are other people who delight in acting as absurdly as possible behind closed doors within the system. I think enjoy the fact that it quietly ruins the "men in black" mystique and (not so) quiet sense of self-importance that attracts so many government employees despite the low wages. They could also just be clinically insane or just trolls. I'd like to hope I'm one of the latter two.
My (at the time boss') boss Crash was, classically, a little late. He walked in while most of the program was intently listening to the current presentation and sat down briefly at one of the tables, pausing for about a five count. He then stood up again, removed his sunglasses and poked around at the contents of the table by the wall. His eyes glanced over the plate of fresh fruit provided for us to eat during presentations briefly and then turned to a plastic bag next to it.
"And as you can see," the presenting intern was saying, "by varying the shutter speed of the image we can get various portions of this darkly lit room in good quality while others are either too dark or blown out. If you combine these images with this software you can gain a single composite image with all portions appropriately lit in excellent quality..."
"Ish thaf," Crash started before thinking better of it and swallowed the portion of the burrito he was eating. He then pointed to the projector screen which currently showed a sample image the intern had taken in a dark closet to prove the software. "Is that a dead body?"
"No," the intern sighed, "its a mannequin." There was a short awkward silence before he shrugged and said, "Don't ask me, I just work here."
I found that statement wildly hilarious but felt significantly bad laughing at somebody during their final presentation. Instead, I pretended to have a slight cough and turned my head away from the presenting student in a pathetic attempt at subtlety. This was how I caught sight of Arbor.
Arbor looked like a five year old who had just been told Christmas was canceled, like somebody had just killed his puppy, like Milton from Office Space asking for his stapler back. He was just staring at the food Crash was eating.
If I thought Arbor looked depressed upon his first discovery of Crash's mistaken conclusion that the burritos on that table were up for grabs like everything else, that was fairly minimal compared to the expressions Arbor made during his presentation. Crash grilled Arbor fairly ruthlessly (as was Crash's job) about all of the work he had done. I suppose that constitutes a new low: having your summer's work publicly ripped apart by your boss' boss as he eats your dinner in front of you.
Arbor was quietly upset about that burrito for some time. It isn't that he would sit around and whine about it. Instead you would catch him looking sad, and when prompted he would sigh "Crash ate my burrito." That was probably the funniest part of this whole incident. I guess it isn't in Arbor to confront somebody on something like that, so he sulked about it for weeks on end instead. I've never seen somebody to let down over a five dollar food item.
Somebody might have told Crash, but I didn't, I figured it wouldn't get Arbor back his burrito anyway. Additionally, at the point where he is upset about it a whole week later, whatever it was that upset him so much probably didn't have a whole lot to do with the burrito anyway.
So today, almost two years later, I'm having lunch with PJ and we're catching up about this and that
Pika: Did you hear about Arbor? He's a big shot now. They were flying him to Italy three weeks ago to speak at a conference.
PJ: Seems like things have worked out well for him
Pika: Did you catch him in Atlanta? He IMed me and asked for your phone number.
PJ: Yeah, we caught up
Pika: and?
PJ: We were standing on that big outdoor escalator at Georgia Dome when all of a sudden out of nowhere he said "I still can't believe Crash ate my burrito."
Poor Arbor :p
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Respect for a dog
So I was riding the train this morning to the subway to the bus to the airport to my interview. God, the flight is two hours and covers several hundred miles, but the first 60 miles or so takes 5.5. Nobody else finds that funny?
If it makes it better it was technically more since I got a ride early from a friend when it was convenient for him then waited instead of walking a few miles to the first station.
I'm not opposed to walking. I walked three and a half each way to volunteer coach earlier this year (in the snow in the cold up hill both ways, blahblahblah). Given the chance though, I'm definitely happy to be lazy. Besides, I'm pretty wiped from karate yesterday.
Karate in a full uniform in 90 degree weather isn't my favourite thing. Karate when you have to wear a second shirt under your top because the gi wasn't designed with women in mind and is prone to wardrobe malfunctions isn't quite as much fun in 90 degree weather. Karate in a full uniform plus another layer underneath in 90 degree weather in a gymnasium where the heater on and can't be turned off due to a system error is remarkably unpleasant. I also forgot my water bottle yesterday.
Whoever installed the water fountain in the back of the gym is my new personal hero. It will make an great essay on whatever bullshit job app or grad school application I fill out next. They are probably tired of reading Lincoln essays anyway.
Anyway, so I was on the train this morning when a woman came in with a dog. It was a big beautiful golden retriever lab mix wearing a guide dog harness. Touching a dog wearing one of these harnesses isn't allowed, it messes up the absolute training they receive that says when they are in the harness they are on the job. Normally I when I see one I just ask if I can pet the dog, the owner removes the harness, and then get to play with an adorable dog. This woman shook her head at my request and spoke to an imaginary person a few feet to my left. "You can't touch him. He's working right now. He is my guide."
I nodded and then thought better of it and responded "Ok." There was a brief awkward silence before I tried to start the conversation again. "He's beautiful. What's his name?"
"I don't give out his name. It distracts him. He's working right now."
I took this as a sign to shut up and went back to work. A few minutes later another lady with a pet dog walked up and said "Does he like playing with other dogs?"
"He can't play with other dogs," said the blind woman, "He needs to work now. He needs to know he's not a dog right now, that he is working."
"But there is another man with a guide German Shepard and she plays with..."
"This dog saves my life every day! Their training is vital! You can not compromise it!" the blind lady was visibly upset by now.
"Yeah, I know," I said trying to appease the situation, "I have wanted to train one of those forever, but my current apartment can't have dogs."
The woman's whole attitude totally changed, "You should."
"I think it would be kind of hard to give it back at the end."
"Oh I imagine it would be," the woman agreed, "I'm so grateful to the people who trained my dog for me. This dog is my eyes. The people who trained this dog gave me my life back."
I chatted a little with the pet owner after that. The blind woman, however, withdrew from the conversation and was totally silent. Her dog, seeming concerned, first sat up on the train seat. When that didn't get a response he put a paw on the blind lady's shoulder, and finally nuzzled her face. The blind lady responded by rubbing the dog's ears and kissing the dog on the forehead.
I can't quite explain how this was different from the millions of dog owners who do this every day, but normally you witness this feeling of the human condescending to the dog with this action. The action fits the words "who is a good puppy huh? Yeaaaaaaaaah you're a good puppy!"
The blind lady's behavior was different. She was quiet and contemplative. At first I thought we had deeply offended her to make her tune us out, but that did not seem to be what was going on. For lack of a better word it seemed the blind woman's way of displaying respect for her dog.
I don't think your average person really stops to respect animals as peers. I'm not saying people should or shouldn't, I'm just saying people who do are rare in our culture. In most old religions mankind is the keeper of the rest of (insert relevant deity's name here)'s creations. You see respect for the animal's needs, or instincts, or space, but it is not often that you witness a human paying respect to the existence of an animal as a peer.
...and yet there it was. Somehow this was an action of overwhelming respect and gratitude. The woman honestly looked almost like she was going to cry.
Quiet raw displays of emotion are rare things to witness in strangers, but they afford these brief few seconds into the lives of that person. This was a very powerful image to witness. I almost took a photograph, but the woman seemed like she wouldn't appreciate such a request, and I didn't want to take advantage of the fact that a person is blind to get a fantastic photograph.
I suppose I had always cognitively comprehended that a blind person could live a far better life with a seeing eye dog than without one, but I guess I had never actually understood previously what a difference it makes.
So, I've made up my mind. When I move out of my current apartment at the end of May I'm going to try to become a foster parent for a seeing eye dog to assist in its training. Hope its a German Shepard or a lab...but more importantly...I hope its housebroken by the time I get it...
Whatever, it will be an adventure.
Edit: people have been asking me about what this involves so here are some links to information I found about it.
Lots of the USA: http://www.guidedog.org/Pupprog/pupprog.htm
CA and WA USA: http://www.guidedogsofamerica.org/raising.html
Mid-Atlantic USA: http://www.seeingeye.org/aboutus/default.aspx?M_ID=123
Lots of the West (as far east as AZ and CO): http://www.guidedogs.com/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_dog_puppy
Maine to Ohio to Carolinas (all states in triangle) USA: http://volunteer.guidingeyes.org/bin/manpage?0+3
Indiana Michigan and Ohio USA: http://www.leaderdog.org/volunteer/puppyraiser/index.php
California: http://www.guidedogsofthedesert.org/volunteer.html
Just google it. The term is "puppy raiser" normally. These are just a few of the results I got. The some of the Australian programs seem to call it "puppy foster parents."
And yeah, looks like housebreaking it is my problem. Joy.
If it makes it better it was technically more since I got a ride early from a friend when it was convenient for him then waited instead of walking a few miles to the first station.
I'm not opposed to walking. I walked three and a half each way to volunteer coach earlier this year (in the snow in the cold up hill both ways, blahblahblah). Given the chance though, I'm definitely happy to be lazy. Besides, I'm pretty wiped from karate yesterday.
Karate in a full uniform in 90 degree weather isn't my favourite thing. Karate when you have to wear a second shirt under your top because the gi wasn't designed with women in mind and is prone to wardrobe malfunctions isn't quite as much fun in 90 degree weather. Karate in a full uniform plus another layer underneath in 90 degree weather in a gymnasium where the heater on and can't be turned off due to a system error is remarkably unpleasant. I also forgot my water bottle yesterday.
Whoever installed the water fountain in the back of the gym is my new personal hero. It will make an great essay on whatever bullshit job app or grad school application I fill out next. They are probably tired of reading Lincoln essays anyway.
Anyway, so I was on the train this morning when a woman came in with a dog. It was a big beautiful golden retriever lab mix wearing a guide dog harness. Touching a dog wearing one of these harnesses isn't allowed, it messes up the absolute training they receive that says when they are in the harness they are on the job. Normally I when I see one I just ask if I can pet the dog, the owner removes the harness, and then get to play with an adorable dog. This woman shook her head at my request and spoke to an imaginary person a few feet to my left. "You can't touch him. He's working right now. He is my guide."
I nodded and then thought better of it and responded "Ok." There was a brief awkward silence before I tried to start the conversation again. "He's beautiful. What's his name?"
"I don't give out his name. It distracts him. He's working right now."
I took this as a sign to shut up and went back to work. A few minutes later another lady with a pet dog walked up and said "Does he like playing with other dogs?"
"He can't play with other dogs," said the blind woman, "He needs to work now. He needs to know he's not a dog right now, that he is working."
"But there is another man with a guide German Shepard and she plays with..."
"This dog saves my life every day! Their training is vital! You can not compromise it!" the blind lady was visibly upset by now.
"Yeah, I know," I said trying to appease the situation, "I have wanted to train one of those forever, but my current apartment can't have dogs."
The woman's whole attitude totally changed, "You should."
"I think it would be kind of hard to give it back at the end."
"Oh I imagine it would be," the woman agreed, "I'm so grateful to the people who trained my dog for me. This dog is my eyes. The people who trained this dog gave me my life back."
I chatted a little with the pet owner after that. The blind woman, however, withdrew from the conversation and was totally silent. Her dog, seeming concerned, first sat up on the train seat. When that didn't get a response he put a paw on the blind lady's shoulder, and finally nuzzled her face. The blind lady responded by rubbing the dog's ears and kissing the dog on the forehead.
I can't quite explain how this was different from the millions of dog owners who do this every day, but normally you witness this feeling of the human condescending to the dog with this action. The action fits the words "who is a good puppy huh? Yeaaaaaaaaah you're a good puppy!"
The blind lady's behavior was different. She was quiet and contemplative. At first I thought we had deeply offended her to make her tune us out, but that did not seem to be what was going on. For lack of a better word it seemed the blind woman's way of displaying respect for her dog.
I don't think your average person really stops to respect animals as peers. I'm not saying people should or shouldn't, I'm just saying people who do are rare in our culture. In most old religions mankind is the keeper of the rest of (insert relevant deity's name here)'s creations. You see respect for the animal's needs, or instincts, or space, but it is not often that you witness a human paying respect to the existence of an animal as a peer.
...and yet there it was. Somehow this was an action of overwhelming respect and gratitude. The woman honestly looked almost like she was going to cry.
Quiet raw displays of emotion are rare things to witness in strangers, but they afford these brief few seconds into the lives of that person. This was a very powerful image to witness. I almost took a photograph, but the woman seemed like she wouldn't appreciate such a request, and I didn't want to take advantage of the fact that a person is blind to get a fantastic photograph.
I suppose I had always cognitively comprehended that a blind person could live a far better life with a seeing eye dog than without one, but I guess I had never actually understood previously what a difference it makes.
So, I've made up my mind. When I move out of my current apartment at the end of May I'm going to try to become a foster parent for a seeing eye dog to assist in its training. Hope its a German Shepard or a lab...but more importantly...I hope its housebroken by the time I get it...
Whatever, it will be an adventure.
Edit: people have been asking me about what this involves so here are some links to information I found about it.
Lots of the USA: http://www.guidedog.org/Pupprog/pupprog.htm
CA and WA USA: http://www.guidedogsofamerica.org/raising.html
Mid-Atlantic USA: http://www.seeingeye.org/aboutus/default.aspx?M_ID=123
Lots of the West (as far east as AZ and CO): http://www.guidedogs.com/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_dog_puppy
Maine to Ohio to Carolinas (all states in triangle) USA: http://volunteer.guidingeyes.org/bin/manpage?0+3
Indiana Michigan and Ohio USA: http://www.leaderdog.org/volunteer/puppyraiser/index.php
California: http://www.guidedogsofthedesert.org/volunteer.html
Just google it. The term is "puppy raiser" normally. These are just a few of the results I got. The some of the Australian programs seem to call it "puppy foster parents."
And yeah, looks like housebreaking it is my problem. Joy.
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