Just Another Manic Monday

Life IS Stranger Than Fiction

Observations from a busy Monday at work.

My boss had a seizure at work. It's not the first time it's happened, but it's always scary when it does. I really like my boss, so I volunteered to ride with the paramedics to Mercy Hospital and stay with her until her husband could meet her there. It's funny what you think about at dramatic times like this, when your senses are working overtime and seem to pick up every little nuance in the air. Sitting in the ambulance waiting for the driver to finish up in the back, I noticed the usual gaggle of unemployed loiterers hanging out in front of the library. Then an attractive Indian girl walked by (simulated at left), her buttocks rhythmically moving up and down like the bouncing ball in a singalong cartoon as she swayed down the street in her form-fitting jeans. With all due respect to my girlfriend, this young lady was a headturner - maybe not enough to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window to get a better look at her (as Raymond Chandler famously put it), but a headturner all the same. Enough to elicit wolf whistles from the Alpha Male Posse leaning against the book drop box.

Then I saw something even more alarming than my boss's seizure. Instead of blowing off the young men's overtures (as had the previous woman who had been ogled by them), she stopped, turned around and smiled (also simulated below).


"You talking to me homeboy?"

Encouraged, a runt-sized guy in a wife-beater and those droopy "shorts" that are so long they scrape the sidewalk raced over to her with a grin as big as Norbit's Rasputia. They walked down the block together, where I saw the young lady pull out her cell phone and press some buttons. I do believe she was punching in the lout's phone number! I was amazed. Whenever I see a construction worker whistle at an attractive woman passing by, I always think to myself, "Has that Cro-Mag approach ever worked with a babe?" and yet here my preconception about the futility of caveman courtship was just shot to hell. And the punk made it look so easy, so easy that even he looked surprised when he went back to high-five his mates.

Mercy Me

Later, I was at Mercy Hospital, where a nurse was rather short with me, banishing me to the world's noisiest waiting room. It was actually more like an amusement arcade.


Mercy Hospital's Waiting Room

You're supposed to listen up when they announce that visitors can visit whoever you came in with, but with three TV blaring full bore, it was hard to hear anything. I initially sat in the Scholar's Corner, where it was a slow news day on the CNN News Channel. The Iranian President was at Cornell to give his usual Jews Are Bad lecture to the students. Nothing new there, so I switched over to watch Ellen Degeneres talk to Wolf Blitzer about his facial hair and how much he reminds her of former Surgeon General C. Everett Hoop, followed by Oprah Winfrey talking to an soap opera actor who's portraying a real-life schizophrenic in a made-for-TV movie. Or something. A young girl and some intellectually-challenged adults sat in front of a third TV set, which was tuned to The Cartoon Network. There were lots of explosions on the screen.

Then a slacker-looking Abbie Hoffman-ish dude came in with his drowsy, but not all-together unattractive girlfriend. She staggered to the women's bathroom, where she remained for about half an hour, until the guy knocked on the door and asked if she was OK. Then he went into the bathroom with her. What are they doing in there, I wondered? Did she have diarrhea? Were they having sex? Was she shooting up? Later I heard him say he had gotten the woman registered and admitted. A hospital aide came out witha wheelchiar and wheeled her away. I think they were druggies. The girl looked fucked-up, and not in a three martini lunch way, either.

I eventually was let in to see my boss, who seemed much better than she was a few hours earlier. They were still doing tests on her, but she was OK and looking forward to going home as soon as her husband got there. She said her doctor allowed her to drink a glass of wine for special occasions. "Have a relaxing glass of wine tonight," I told her. "I think this definitely qualifies as a special occasion!"

Nothing left to do, I bid her adieu and headed home to get dinner. Stopping back at work, I remembered to finally take home a coveted kitsch artifact that a friend had given me: a discarded American Library Association poster featuring Michael Bolton in his full-on mullet glory days promoting reading. The poster was huge and, unfortunately, I had to lug it several blocks to get to my car, hurriedly power walking past onlookers. I mean, kitsch is all fun in the privacy of one's home, but walking down the street with a big picture of a mulleted Michael Bolton - like you're a fan - well, it's as bad as wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt (full disclosure: I gave mine to my girlfriend). Anyway, I got it to the car at last (it's now sitting in my living room, next to a picture of Beck, who would surely enjoy the irony, but I plan on giving it to a Bolton-hater to use as a dart board) and headed off for food.

Blue Monday
Stopping at Eddie's supermarket store, I immediately saw Richard Sher grocery shopping (the silver Jiffy Pop hair is unmistakeable!) - while wearing one of those hideous Bluetooth phones in his earlobe! I hate people who wear Bluetooths. I don't care what the technological benefits are of them, their reception, frequency, bandwidth, all that yada yada yada crap. They look dorky, period. They make you look like some Klingon creature from Star Trek. Anyway, this chance encounter at Eddie's was another chance Richard Sher had to win me over and like him. But he blew it. Or should I say, he "Blue" it? Sorry, I DO judge a book by the cover. There are certain bold truths that are non-arguable. If you drive an Oldsmobile, you are old and a Republican; if you drive an SUV, you are self-centered and arrogant; if you drive a Jetta, you are a young attractive, female who I would like to know better (that is, if I was single, which I'm not); and if you wear a Bluetooth, I am laughing at you along with the rest of the world because you look like a fool.