My office phone buzzed.
Telemarketer on line one.
I turned to reply.
The back of my timeworn office chair gave.
The chair tipped.
The chair fell.
I tipped.
I fell.
Somehow, I was still in the chair.
Several seconds passed.
“Send them to voicemail, please.”
Monday.
Not the most elegant of euphemisms, but effective nonetheless.
Whisper admonished me for failing to reach a zen state because I stress about things I should no longer care about.
“If you give somebody a perfectly grilled steak and they take it and slather shampoo and gravel all over it and then complain that it isn’t any good, that’s on them, not you. Meow.”
Whisper is wise.
My freshman year of college at Moorhead State University (now Minnesota State University Moorhead) was not a pleasant one.
My first assigned roommate in Neumaier Hall was eventually kicked out of the building by our third floor RA. He went on to become a wanted cult leader and was featured in the “Cults, Religion & Mind Control” episode of E!’s THS Investigates.
My second assigned roommate in Neumaier Hall was a fellow who brought and stored an AK-something and a couple of full ammo cans in our dorm room. Blah blah Russian made blah blah Chinese assault blah blah semi-automatic but blah blah filed the blah blah now fully automatic blah blah. On more than one occasion, I’d come home and open the dorm room door to find him naked on his lower dorm bunk, cleaning his rifle. Not a euphemism, although it is also a euphemism. One evening while I was at work, our dorm room was raided by a cop/fed combo and after the RA filled me in later that night, I never saw him or heard about him again.
But the worst part of my freshman year was a TV commercial for Friendly Motors that aired late at night. In it, there was a portly man wearing a white suit and white cowboy hat like Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard. There might’ve been a donkey or mule standing beside him in the car lot. The man wore a mask and opened the commercial with, “Hi! I’m the Loan Arranger!”
I still have nightmares.
They later demolished Neumaier Hall. I assume they did that so that nobody else had to go through what I went through.
Am I the only one who grew up thinking “astigmatism” was “stigmatism”?
“You have a stigmatism.”
“I have a what?”
“A stigmatism.”
“A stigmatism? Am I dying?”
“No, but when you get older, your contact lenses will be hella spendy.”
(later, to self) “…Lenses?”
While shopping on Amazon for stuff for my cats — Yes, I have cats. — a certain kitten caught my eye. And then caught my eye again. And again. And again. And… well, who know how many times it actually shows up, but here are a few I found. Truly, this is the busiest damn kitten on Amazon.
I love this.
