2008-12-27 12:08:27 PDT
I'm sitting on my balcony having a smoke, and some old man, who is dressed pretty nicely and looks a lot like Wilford Brimley, is standing in the alley. He starts farmer-blowing.
I mean, really farmer-blowing. He's snorting and blowing and repeatedly rubbing his hands on his pants, blowing snot out everywhere and wiping what he gets on his hands onto his pants. It's disgusting.
Finally, the fucking guy takes a Kleenex out of his pocket and daintily dabs his nose. He had a Kleenex in his pocket the whole time.
2008-10-29 22:19:50 PDT
So the other day I was sitting with some classmates waiting for class to start, and I was prattling on as usual about Samuel and how beautiful he is, and how excited I am to meet him at the end of November. None of these people know Bone or Martin, but I don't care; they talk at me about going out drinking. They talk good-naturedly at me, I talk the same way at them, and then the teacher comes in and we all shut up and never have to have anything to do with each other in real life, so no harm done. It's benign self-centredness. Before the election it got a little bad sometimes, but now it's harmless, generally. Except there's this one chick who is always correcting me, and that shit has got to stop.
We've been in a few of the same classes for two years now: used to share a desk. I've always found her abrasive and thick, but managed to ignore her for the most part. But then this one day in the Fall 2006 semester, right at class intermission, she slid a pile of looseleaf towards me and started packing up her bag.
Me: Oh that's okay, thanks, I have lots of paper.
Girl: These are for notes.
Me: Um. I don't take notes, actually, but thanks?
Girl: No, I'll need you to take notes for me-- I have to pick up my kid from daycare.
Me: Oh, right. No.
Girl: Look, I need notes to study!
Me: *shrug*
Girl: But I have to pick up my kid.
She said this with a lot of emphasis, as though her picking up her kid is inherently more important-- because of the magic "kid" obligation-- than anything I might want to do, on an objective scale. Do you know what I mean? I get that her kid is priority one to her, and it should be, but I don't think that I should shuffle my deck of plans for that, even if my plan is to rest my orange-peeling hand, because I'm about to eat a delicious orange. What is it about some people that don't get that their kid is of relative importance? Project Pat reminds us, after all, that one can hardly be expected to spend cheese fa tha baby.
Before I sound like a total dick, I'd like to point out that if she'd asked me nicely-- or asked me at all, instead of telling me-- I would have happily taken notes for her. I have for other people. It was the brisk assumption that I'm somehow responsible for her kidplans that got me, and made me so determinedly unhelpful. Anyways, I just pushed her papers back and went back to not note-taking, and she stormed off after giving me the intimidation-eye for awhile, which I can tell you is really effective on someone raised by Heather Ross. So yeah, she hates me, which she should-- I mean, I was consciously kindof a bitch to her, though it's always best to go Buffy-style on a presumptuous vampire-- and after that would make a point of contradicting anything I said in class and taking really weird personal digs. I ignore her. Except when I was talking about Samuel the other day, she butts in.
Girl: Wait, I thought you hated kids.
Me: Oh, I do.
I don't. Mostly. But I long ago started just validating everything she says, because it seems to drive her nuts.
Girl: So what's up with talking about one, then?
She's got this really funny habit of pouncing, cross-examination Tim Meadows-style, on things I say. it's seriously one of my favourite things.
Friendly Acquaintance: He's her best friend's baby!
Me: She WAS my best friend. Then she had a baby.
She also can never tell when anyone is joking, so while she digests my awfulness I go back to talking to the classmates about this little bear hood I got for Samuel, and another girl talks about getting her nephew a tiny Marilyn Manson t-shirt, which is lame but she's nice, so I said that I'd love to find a baby Radiohead shirt for Sam because Martin loves them. And...
Girl: I don't like those shirts.
Friendly Acquaintance: What, kids' band shirts?
Girl: It's wrong to project your tastes onto your kids.
FA: Well, they're not, like, Nazi slogans...
Girl: It's important to allow babies their dignity.
Me: Babies wear diapers.
Girl: You're a really bitter person, Fiona.
Check and mate. Girl wins again!
I am really looking forward to meeting Samuel, though, because he obviously holds great importance for me. And also, maybe he can get me out of some homework sometime. (As a bonus, he made really cute sounds on the phone the other day.) But see, Bone and Martin are not the kind of people who would ever use "But I have a kid!" as an excuse for commanding other people to do stuff for them! Is this entitlement a major cultural thing, now?
