Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Panache/Spinach

"When God and the Bible were in school, drugs were not."

Or it went something like that on the bumper of ye olde gray car driving in front of me earlier. Ok bitch. I'd like to give that woman a hug, while wearing a body condom.

So an Irish fella came to my office today to teach The Good Doctor and me how to use the web-based system the journal is about to be inducted into. My ears still pulse in delight at the sound of his voice. Foreign-charmed sucker!

The event went well despite a series of bumbles...

1. The phone rang right at the beginning to a very VERY loud woman who kept fading in and out, to which I said Hello? at least ten times. I thought she was the lady from Health Benefits calling me back so I asked if I could call her back. Turns out she was wrongly transferred to me and needed to discuss "pre-certs." I felt a tad rude, and the call was volcanic, though our meeting carried on as if it never happened.

2. I have two unfortunate bright red pimples on the same side of my chin about which I feel very self-conscious today. In addition my hair is unclean; I am an oily ogre.

3. While our Irish friend was talking and gesturing he swept his arm into the picture of me and Mark, knocking it over.

4. I received another phone call, my hair and face still gross, from a secretary with a doctor on the other line, to which I stuttered: we meeting in are uh. She said she'd take a message. I rarely receive phone calls, and it's a good thing considering my business phone skills.

5. When we'd learned all there was to learn today, I offered our Irish friend a ride to the train station. Cabs suck, and that's how he'd gotten here. So we walk out to the parking lot, climb in my Gracie, engage in conversation, and take off. "Oh shit," I say, and turn to him, "Do you remember how you got here?" You see, I'd never been to the Edison train station. I had seen it once, but not in relation to any coherent set of directions from hospital. Mind you, he lives in Ireland; I'm the one who lives in Jersey. He remembers having come from the left out of the hospital, and later from somewhere off to the right. We go that way...then stop at a Shell station. A Pakastani guy putting air in his tires rattles: left, two lights, two rights, left, another two lights, dead end, two lights, right, then left, one mile. "Thank you," I smile blankly and return to the car. As I'm about to pull away, still guessing, he approaches my window, which I lower. He says, "Take this road to where it ends, turn left, and go until you see the tracks." Well, that was much easier. So we do that and, finally, reach the train station, with only a few minutes wait for the next train. All is well.

Throughout all these bumbles--yes, I know most of them are minor but I must still be high on whatever it was I smoked before work the other day that made my sensory receptors so vulnerable to the ills of traffic and office noise--things proceeded as if without them, like a pristine machine.

I feel like a droning rattler today.

I wish panache were spelled pinache; then it would be closer to being spinach.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home