I started writing something a few days ago. It's coming together I guess. Today I had an idea for a conclusion and I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget. What was the idea, you ask? Well, I know that it must have had something to do with the words "inverse proportion." I’m sure this made perfect sense to me at the time, but now I really don't know what I was getting at. I don't know what I was thinking.
That last sentence? An answer to the question: Can you write your autobiography in 7 or fewer words?
I'm only about halfway sure that I will eventually remember what "inverse proportion" was supposed to mean. It's OK, though. I'll think of some way to finish the silly thing. It does bother me that I forget things. A lot.
Both, really. I forget things a lot and it bothers me a lot.
*****
The next day, I wrote down the word “banana,” certain that I wouldn’t forget what it meant, and I didn’t. A banana is a concrete thing, after all, not an abstract idea like inverse proportions. A few minutes earlier, I had walked through the lobby of my building today, past the glass case with the scale model of all of the buildings on campus. I really love architectural models, and sometimes I stop to look at this one. Today, as I walked past, I saw that someone had left a banana on top of the glass case. I’m easily amused, and that banana made me laugh right out loud. I mean, a banana, right? Even the word is funny. I don’t think that it was intended to serve as a comedy prop, but I’m telling you, a banana just left where it obviously doesn’t belong is hilarious. I imagine that someone stopped there to dig through their bag, placed the banana on top of the glass case to free up their hands, and then forgot about it. It sat there pretty much all day. It was a perfectly good banana, and no one wanted to throw it away, I guess.
Later, I had to sit through a required active shooter training video. I’d rather actually face the active shooter than watch that training again. I'm never more restless, more tear-out-my-hair desperate to escape than when I am watching a mandatory training video. Mandatory training videos serve to remind us that Annie Lennox was right: Every single one of us is made to suffer.
Well of COURSE I don’t want to face a REAL active shooter. Just a little bit of hyperbole, for effect. I really needed to convey just how much I hate mandatory training videos. I hate them a lot.
*****
It’s Friday now, late afternoon. I’m finished work for the day, though I haven’t logged off yet. I stay connected for a bit at the end of the workday, just in case someone needs me. I’m very dedicated.
But there’s such a thing as being too dedicated. For example, we’re going to the Nats game today. Not only are we going to the Nats game, but we’re leaving insanely early so that we can arrive insanely early so that we can be among the first 10,000 fans, who receive a bobblehead, which my husband is so insistent that we must obtain at all costs that you would think it was the gosh-darn tesseract. So we’ll arrive about 90 minutes early for a late-season game between the third-worst (Cincinnati Reds) and worst (Washington Nationals) teams in all of Major League Baseball. I mean, I love the Nats, but this is a game that I’d be happy to half-watch and half-ignore in the comfort of my air-conditioned house. Instead, I’ll be hustling through the Glenmont and Fort Totten and Navy Yard Metro stations, trying to catch up with my husband who will break into a full run rather than miss a train and possibly lose his bobblehead to another, more fleet-of-foot fan. It should be fun, really. He’s buying the drinks.
*****
It actually was fun. Gollum secured his Precious, which made him very happy and if he’s happy, I’m happy. There was a pre-game concert and as it turned out, we know the band, so that was really fun. Trust me, we are not cool people, but we do have some musician friends, which allows us to occasionally bask in reflected “we’re with the band” coolness.
We had seats in two separate sections of the stadium, because another bobblehead fanatic friend was unable to attend and asked me to go in her place and get her bobblehead. These people are crazy, I tell you. But the stadium was half-empty and it’s late in a now-meaningless season, so we found seats together in the much better of the two sections, sat down with our drinks, and watched the game. Stadium personnel (who are lovely, by the way) were not checking tickets last night, so people could sit wherever they wanted. Our team has the worst record in the entire league, but there’s an upside to everything, right?
*****
This wasn’t supposed to be a “that was the week that was” kind of a post, but here we are. It’s Sunday morning now, and I’m probably going to go to Mass, but right now I’m sitting in my backyard listening to cicadas and pondering a tomato. Our tomato plants have underperformed this summer. They’re not achieving their targets. They’re not meeting their metrics. And they don’t give a shit, because they are tomatoes.
The tomato that I am pondering is ripe enough to pick, I think, but perhaps it would be better to wait a bit. Perhaps it needs just a little bit more time. And it’s not the only one. Today is the last day of summer (yes, I know it’s still August but school starts tomorrow and although it’s maybe not the complete end of summer, it’s the beginning of the end), and I think I would benefit from another day or so. I think I need a little bit more time. I’m going to let that tomato sit for a day or so. The rest of us have to keep to a schedule, but tomatoes are free. I never did remember what “inverse proportion” was supposed to mean, but this thing is over 1,000 words of absolute drivel, and so there’s an inverse proportion for you. The less I have to say, the longer it takes me to say it.
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