Civil Neurosis

Why I say thank you when I want to say screw you.

Random grocery store encounter.  The cashier doesn’t look up, doesn’t greet, bags without seeing me, tears off the receipt and hands it to me without making eye contact and I say, “Thank you.”  What?!?  I storm out, fuming at myself.  What am I a trained seal?  “I sincerely appreciate you regarding me with the level of animosity reserved for child molesters.”  I say to myself next time I’m not going to do that.  Next time if the cashier doesn’t show me kindness why I’m just going to be just as shitty and rude.  So maybe the next time starts to unfold soon enough so I haven’t healed(forgotten) from the previous insult and  I recognize it as a possible negative encounter as it’s unfolding and I think of all the sincerely underemployed right now and I stare down this job-robbing jackass and declare, “Oh it’s on!” (in an inaudible whisper) and I stand firm and don’t say anything either and time starts to crawl, and he bags the items one by one and I stare at a pimple on his face, wondering if he has to stop ‘working’ more often than others to eat his overly processed food to maintain that unwavering icky energy. My eyes are warm and my vision has gone all tunnel, and for a brief moment I believe he has sensed my power, and right as I am about to blow air hard out of my flared nostrils, he tears off the receipt and hands it to me, and I take it silently and I turn and exit and we made the whole exchange without a word, and whatever secret tally he was trying to get on the day was busted because I got him.  I walk out of the store all jelly-legged and exhausted from the whole affair.  And strangely craving trans fats. I celebrate with a Little Debbie Nutty Bar.  It’s a win but it feels hollow.  And chocolate covered.  The moral for me is that civility, like spirituality, isn’t about a reward later on with seventy-two virgins in some place that doesn’t exist, but about how I feel right now.  I feel like being thankful.  The other just requires more calories than I am willing to eat.

Three times a lady

            Exhibit A:  November 16, 2010

    Things happen in life in threes, right?  Celebrities tend to die in threes, three strikes and you’re out, Christ rose in three days.  My own personal trilogy is I hit my head in threes.  True-- if I hit my head on something, I have the unfortunate doom of knowing I will hit my head two more times in the next 24 or so hours before the evil passes and I go another year and a half or so without knocking into something.

            So I am getting into my car Monday morning for the 7, 258^th time when my inner feedback loop mistakes me for a midget me, and I crown myself hard on the upper edge of the door cavity.  So hard, in fact that I feel my brain slosh and slam into the other side of my head, almost qualifying as an inside-out blow number two.  Natasha Richardson  tells me to go inside and get an ice pack.  The principal greets me as I arrive at school a half hour late Monday morning wearing an ice pack on my head. 

I’ve had some monumental cracks to the head in my lifetime.

            Like the faulty access ladder that’s supposed to smoothly release out of the attic, I met Jesus on that one. He speaks French.  Then there was the 1972 Oakland Elementary School failed swingset experiment (I still can’t blink in unison), the unfortunate ice-curling incident, and the numerous head landings from my competitive days as a brave and average gymnast.  In fact, my life story could really best be told as a rich and surprisingly lengthy video montage of nothing but me hitting my head on stuff.  (As a side note, I would use a Herb Alpert tune behind the video)

            But now I am thinking that all of this cumulative head trauma is starting to take its toll.  Sometimes when I’m tired my right hand shakes a little when I am trying to eat.  Almost unnoticeable it is except for the fact that a dozen or so corn kernels start out on the fork yet none actually reach their final destination.  It’s a frustrating diet that has me now smashing peas on my fork like a Brit and steering clear of certain foods.  Who needs the mess?  Take soup for example, what I find I’m looking for now in a soup is not complexity of flavor so much but rather a certain counterweight, like you’d find in a beef stew or a hearty chili.  I’ve tried to concentrate and fight the shake, believe me, like Mohammed Ali I’ve fought it, but now I must resign to my tremors and embrace them.  And now that I’ve come clean with this, don’t pity me and don’t avoid me, just keep your plate away from mine and it won’t be peppered with corn kernels or soaked with chicken broth.

            So after a long day at work and rehearsal, I get into bed, completely wiped out, feeling the lump now fully realized over my right ear, and I sink back into the pillow with much gusto, only to be four inches taller again, a discrepancy that unfolded loudly on the headboard behind me.  While it sounded worse than it was it completely qualified as number two.  Will the third be an aftershock or the capper of all?  Will I hit the left side, completing an equator of lumps around the middle of my head?  A friend offers to strike me on the head to bring the trifecta of misery to a premature fruition but I decline.   Don’t screw with destiny, I tell her.