April 17, 2005
Why
Why do I even bother going to Home Despot? It has become a ritual: Visit, seek, and fail. Make an offering of fruitless effort to the orange god, and only then, with his blessing, journey to the store which actually sells what you had sought. I will not bore you with the details.
Today I mowed the lawn. Soon the pollen will come, the pollen with antigens my overzealous immune system incorrectly recognizes as the Enemy, and so I must do my part now, while I am able. Before mowing the lawn I changed the oil in the mower, following like a good boy the maintenance recommendations in the instruction manual. I am so proud of myself.
Before changing the oil I ran the engine for several minutes to warm the old oil. Again, the instruction manual recommended I do so, and so I did.
Before running the engine, I pulled the starter cord handle many times. Theorizing that it was flooded, I waited twenty minutes and then returned. Three more times I pulled without the desired result. I grew despondent.
Ready to give up, I made one last effort. I reached for the handle. Holding it firmly, I crouched, motionless. I breathed deeply. And then, slowly summoning every anxiety, every worry, every fear, every bit of hatred and frustration inside my soul, I focused it all, held it in the palm of my hand — paused — and pulled that mother-fucking handle with every fiber of my being.
Yes, the engine started.
I like to think that anyone who has ever used a gas mower has had a similar experience at least once.
* * *
Saturday I attended an all-day Swing dancing workshop at a friend's request. Here is a bit of advice: If you would like to learn to Swing dance, avoid such workshops like the plague.
"OK, we're going to focus on the fundamentals. Without a firm basis in the fundamentals, you'll never look natural dancing."
This sounded promising. An image of Daniel-san waxing on and off flashed before my eyes. I am all for learning the fundamentals.
"First we're going to teach you how to crawl. Here's how you crawl. Now you try. " Five minutes later: "OK, now that you know how to crawl, we'll move on to walking." Wait! I don't know how to crawl! "So here's how you walk. Let's practice that." No! Let's not practice that, I need to practice my crawling, so that I'm not thinking about which knee to — "OK, here is how you run. Just do this, and this, it's that easy!" Stop! I didn't get that at all because, you know what? I can't walk. I can't even stand up. If only I could go back to crawling and get some help with that, that would be great, because with some more practice, I think I might just get the hang of it. "Now that you know how to run, let's work on the Charleston!"
I hate you instructor Joel. And your vampire teeth are not funny.
Speaking of teeth, an old homeless man walked in front of my car today. He was "gumming," I guess you would call it, opening and closing his jaw endlessly. Why do the people who do this do this? Is there a medical reason?
Postscript: Re-reading this entry, it occurs to me that one of you will cheerfully respond that you once attended an all-day Swing dancing workshop, and you picked-up everything, no problem. Well aren't you the bees knees! You know who you are.
Posted by cradle at April 17, 2005 11:37 PMI had a really weird experience at Home Depot the last time I was in America. I walked into the store, and there was an employee standing by the entrance. He saw me craning my neck around, trying to figure out where the hell the items I was looking for would be hidden, and asked what I needed. I told him, he took me to the right aisle, and found my items for me. I then checked out without delay or hassle. The entire trip was successful and took less than five minutes. It was like being in an alternate reality.
Posted by: Sandra at April 18, 2005 2:40 AMI don't think we medically know why it is, but people without teeth always do it. My theory is that it feels neat. The rate at which you pick up swing dancing or differential calculus depends on intelligence. I prefer the theories of multiple intelligence where you and I may be borderline retarded in the "kinetic" intelligence but just fine in other places. Just be glad that we're not a society that communicates through dance as we'd have been put in the special school with the short bus.
Posted by: Brooke at April 18, 2005 7:17 AMI had that exact same experience at a swing dance workshop. They all looked at me with such pity.
Posted by: Andrew at April 18, 2005 8:36 AMYour swing dance class sounds like it was EXACTLY like my motorcycle class. They wanted me to learn to do the cones on day 2 and I didn't have STOPPING down yet, hello!!
Have you tried the giant Lowe's in Laurel?
Posted by: Kim at April 18, 2005 9:00 AMOh, and on the home depot... I personally - being all obnoxious and progressive - prefer to boycott large stores like home depot in favor of small hardware stores, but I guess it depends on what you need... I would never get keys made at Home Depot because in my experience they hardly ever work since they have too many employees for anyone to get good at anything.
Posted by: Brooke at April 18, 2005 9:40 AMhehhe, you poor thing. I looove swing dancing. Did you learn with a partner? I never took a swing class and I learned by basically went to a swing joint one night, was asked to dance by someone I'd never met, and because I had too much pride saying I can't dance, I sucked it up and pretended I could (well ok, I tell people I've only done it once and not very good at it just yet). Then, they go slower and spin me around alot like a crazy person and by the end of the song, I get the rhythm, and by the end of the night, I learned to swing.
The mindset with swinging is that you ALREADY know how to crawl and walk, cause technically you can. It's the rhythm you need to get use to. I'll show you next time when I see you. . .which is May 6th right ;-)? at the very least you'll have fun learning it :-)
Brooke, we'd be going to the same school.
What's the deal with people who have rhytm and coordination? I have neither, and just made an ass of myself on saturday dancing with some guy from the coop at the Zap Mama concert.
The only thing I can almost do is the samba, and that's only if you've never been close to Brazil and have no idea of how it should be done, than you'll believe I'm getting it.
Oh, well. I may try flamenco sometime.
I love walking the aisles of Home Depot when I am trying to figure out some weird component for my animatronics...generally I will come across an answer to my problem, but it might take an hour.
For instance, the talking head needed wheels to keep it centered on the track, and walking H.D., I found these little wheels for use in sliding glass doors on bathtubs.
That said, I've noticed that some seem to run out of things, which is not acceptable in the modern world of inventory management.
Sometimes Adam Smith moves me with the invisible hand...right down the street to Lowes!
Posted by: Tom at May 7, 2005 3:35 PM