Misapplication

I've mentioned that I am the quiet one (in my post "Defining Quiet Down") at the university's Islecom library consortium.

So it's fair to my readers to pick up the narrative where I become mildly chagrined at someone there, and then perhaps later on I'll start to brood too much, and start to see their face everywhere, like with a milk mustache on advertisement billboards (both those moving on the sides of the buses and those stationary, on the sides of the super-sonic fast freeways).

Then we'll all say bless our enemies and the Dairy Council with hot coals on their heads, conclude amen.
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I'm self contained.

But sometimes you want to tell a humorless peer to fast-forward when they're answering your understandable shop-question with remedial and maybe patronizing bloody obvious apriori (n.)

Men are inferior; they bore me except when I'm suddenly carried into the sphere of murderous thoughts. I've wished for them all to drop dead. Even my old man, though of course my feelings for him were mysterious, me wanting him back right away.

I mean men, I mean unless they're ancient. Not just the ones with neck tattoos. Not just the ones who leave whiskers in the sink and stink.

Am I alone? Don't you catch yourself sometimes daydreaming of that day one goes whoops-WOW , surprise down the chute, leaving the table to be reset, with a new table cloth and the novelty of an extra chair.

So I don't write about men very much.

Because I love. And I want this scroll to reflect that about me.
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I'll just say this about this worm tutor of mine. When I instant messaged for help one day, I typed "Watson, come quickly i need you".

Ever since, he's made me pay by teaching me my ABC's again.

I think the farker wants me to be late with my assignments. That's how it's going, lately.

I've had work tutors turn on me before when I was rude to them! It happens. Oh yes.
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I could never be mad at a woman of course. This is well known. They get mad at me instead. I love women , up from their toes. So I will write about them.

Now Janice---I'd prefer to call her Miss Applington of course because that's proper---she is congenial. There's no other word, except nice. Janice, Janice! You're nice.

Don't ever absorb these hard times we have with the bastard men here. React instead! Strike out! Stamp your feet.

Look, there goes the Albino Rastafarian, I've singled out to annoy. Praise Bush in front of him someday soon.

Miss Applington, I wish I could stay to help you this afternoon.

"Oh, but I don't know if Christopher would approve, um..., John, I'll tell you what though. I'll shoot him an email asking if you can have more hours. And I'll copy to Ann, our executive director."

Shoot him and copy Ann. Yes.

Janice is 35 or 40 and has that youthful, hearty appearance of all women who decide they like how they look at 26 and then make a bargain with the devil.

Janice. Glasses on , glasses off.

She makes me think of the identical twins, Ann and Laura , my classmates in the 4th grade. One wore glasses, the other would not.

She brings to heart forgotten losses... like how those twins ash-trayed my soul.

Or like when my brother finished the Fruit Loops one Saturday morning before I got up. May 3rd, 1970.

And I quietly wept, Miss Applington (if I can call you Miss Applington? May I? And you can call me Mr. Henky-Menkey).

You don't mind if I share with you. Someday perhaps. The tribulations.

I swallowed my grief. It's been my motto since toddler-hood to suffer in silence. Oh, I knew what my parents had to do to put Captain Crunch on the table. I grew up fast. So fast, sometimes I'd have to pretend I wasn't so mature. I had to put on a false face of lip quivering selfishness.

I'm sorely conscientious. (bzzzzzzzz! That is true. I'm terrified of offending. Return gradually to falsehood.)

I don't like to worry people. For instance this morning as I followed you up the stairs I kept my distance behind you so you would not feel hurried. And I kept my eyes on my own ankles.

By the way, I was taught to follow women up the stairs, to catch them if they fall. And to lead them down the stairs, to break their fall.
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My friends who know me would tell you I'm great to know. Now, who else can say that about their friends? I ask you. My friends would gladly tell you that.
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And God and Abraham are my witnesses... let me tell you, dear scroller. She dresses like it's 1972.

She is suite petite, little straps from her brown/orange plaid dress going over her white cotton top, and she wears flat black shoes. Her lips are soft looking and not painted.
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I type in the message box, "My application, Janice, is Sock Seven."

She steps over to my desk. We sit only 20 feet apart, separated by low cubicle walls, but we like to instant message at Islecom.

"Oh, did you get another soc 7 again? Don't worry. Some of us would like to have Soc 7 on our license plates. It's nothing to worry about, just let me see..."

"It's here." I put my finger on the computer screen and there are electronic lines rippling outward from the smudge.

"Oooh. Say, that's an interesting one I've never seen before. Gosh you make the most interesting mistakes. I like the challenge. I might have to get Adrienne to help with this but let me see..."

She'll find that the more obvious traps will get me later this summer when I actually have an idea what it is we do here, and I forge ahead from 'Go', after eight weeks bafflement at the starting bell.

"Do most people here have library backgrounds, Miss ---Janice."
"Most of us, yes. We're not programmers. You're the only programmer."
"Ha ha." Jesus, they still think that. "I was a bookseller for ten years, you know," I tell her.
"Hm, really? That would be fun. What was it, part-time?"
"Yes. Just for the book discounts of course."
"Oh god I can imagine. I'd have never collected a paycheck there. Just books. But that would be a great job."
"Yeah. And the co-workers in a bookstore, you know..."
"Hm?"
"Eccentrics. All sad in their own preposterous way."
"Spoiled brats, you mean. Right??"
"Ha, ha. I didn't want to say that." This is going splendidly.
"And you were one of them, right??"

Ha, ha! No, no not really. Maybe a little self-serious. Maybe. I was ambitious of course."
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This isn't going to last. Thanks for visiting.