Job Interview

The old man slowly took off the small spectacles hanging precariously on the end of his nose. He put the papers he was holding down on his cluttered desk, and with immense sense of weariness and patience, he said, "Well... it's definitely a very impressive and uh... unique resume. I saw that you battled a dragon and a couple of monsters. You included in your skill set sword wielding and bashing. It's all good stuff indeed. But to be perfectly honest, I just don't think you're what Cisco Systems is looking for right now."

At which point, Beowulf started to weep softly.

Old man

Jack was slouched over the bar with his ass hanging for dear life on the old stool. There was barely any life at all in the place, just a few of the regulars tucked away at the corners, shying away to their usual crevices. In a place like this, Jack thought, you could just disappear in a matter of seconds. All it’d take would be four or five drinks tops, and then you’d be seeking refuge from your own despair in some dilapidated corner booth. Christ this place could just suck the blood out of ya. Hanging along the walls were old rock band posters, most of which were peeling off of the wall. They were posters of bands that no one who ever came into that bar would have ever listened to. Bands like Anthill March, Chicken Noodle Soup Tyrade, and The Shins, of which they had a signed poster tucked away in back, barely visible underneath the Johnny Cash poster, which is more popular among the locals. It was a slow night, but then again, it’s always a slow night in the small town. Jack was trying to decide whether he wanted another beer or if he wanted to go take a piss first. He opted for the beer.

Just then, an elderly man, dressed in old, worn denim, came in dragging his muddy boots like they were the world’s burden. He eased into the stool next to Jack’s, despite having nearly every other seat to choose from in the bar. Jack didn’t even show any indication of noticing the old man’s existence; he just kept his gaze down on his beer.

The old man took off his weather beaten cap, so used you couldn’t even be sure whether it was once a cap for a football team or Chevron. He set it down between him and Jack, and ordered his drink in a hoarse whisper. In all of the bar, there wasn’t a word said, those who were there didn’t need to utter many words to each other, they’d known each other too long to waste their time on casual conversation. The old man shifted a little bit on his stool, trying to find a comfortable position to settle into his drink. He looked over at Jack, then around the bar at the various posters. Even the rock stars in the posters had a somber attitude. He could just picture the scene when they took the picture.

“Alright, there, now for this shot, just look at those mountains behind the camera and pretend you’re bored out of your fucking mind.”

“You sure that’s what people like?”

“I swear, the more bored you look in your poster, the more fucking famous you’ll be. Now stop talking and give me jaded…”

The old man chuckled a bit at the scene playing out in his head. He shook his head and continued his visual tour of the bar. He looked at the old broken juke box along the back wall, and wondered how old it was. It was a small game he’d played recently for himself. He’d look at something, and try to guess whether or not he was older than it. He looked back down to his drink and finished it off in a quick gulp. I’m probably fucking older, he thought.

“Hey, buddy,” he called over to the bartender.

“Yeah,” the bartender responded. He kept his gaze on the glass he was patiently wiping. He’d wipe, inspect, then wipe again, going through this cycle a few times for every glass.

“Just how old is that there juke box, buddy?”

“Not sure,” the bartender said. “That pile of scrap’s been here before I started working here. And that’s about at least ten years.”

“I see,” the old man said. He continued, “Well, if you had to put a number to it, ‘bout what would it be? Thirty, fifty, sixty?”

“Huh…” the bartender said, this time putting down the glass and looking at the old man. “Sir, I really don’t know. I couldn’t say…”

“Just put a number to it, just guess for chrissake.”

“What the hell do you care?” Jack asked. He looked up from his beer and sternly looked over at the old man. “Just what the hell do you care, seriously? It’s late buddy, not everyone wants to play your game.”

“I see, I see,” the old man said. He slowly picked up his cap and started walking back towards the juke box. Ignoring what Jack said, he continued, “You see, they just don’t make things the way they used to. You see, times sometimes change so fast you’ve gotta sometimes hang on to whatever you can. And sometimes, when you’re flailing for a hold, the only thing you catch is goddamn pile of junk just because it was made around the same time you were. I’m in a different country, kid, in a different era. I’m a foreigner in the fullest sense of the word, and, well, I’m just flailing for something that I recognize.” As he said this, we began to walk towards the door.

Jack, heavily turnin on his stool to face the old man, said, “Just hang on there, bud. If you’ve gotta know I remember my dad talking about that juke box working when he was teenager. That’d put it around sixty years old, at least. Why don’t you just come back in here, have another drink. I didn’ mean to ‘fend ya or anythin’.”

The old man stood by the door way, propping the door open with his foot. He looked outside, into the desolate city streets. From where he was he could see the yellow caution light blinking on and off, on and off. “Damn it I was right. Don’ stress over it, buddy, you’ve been much friendlier than some folks I’ve come across in my day. I better get moving, thanks anyways.”

Before Jack could say a word, he was left looking at the shut door the old man briskly walked out of. “Jeremy,” he said, turning back around and facing the bartender, “I’ve decided. I’m gonna take a piss.”

Lunch Conversation

Lightly dabbing his waffle fry in the ketchup he spread over his burger’s wrapper, John Seager looked over at his girlfriend sitting across from him. They were both eating their lunch outside of their college’s cafeteria. Sitting on one of the many, uncomfortable metal benches, their attitudes gave onlookers the semblance of being complete strangers. Each was lost and engrossed in their own thoughts, Kate in the crossword puzzles she was working on, and John, well an onlooker would swear that he was trying to divine the secrets of life from his waffle fry.

“So how many more years do you think we’ve got?” John asked, breaking the silence. Putting down his waffle fry, he focused his attention on Kate.

Kate looked up from the local newspaper she was reading, and with mild confusion spread across her face, she asked, “What? What are you talking about? You mean for school? I guess one more year…”

“No, no, I mean on this earth. I mean, how many more years do we have of being around, period. I put it at around fifty years, sixty tops.”

“What are you talking about? You already worried about what’s gonna happen in sixty years?” Kate snickers as she looks back down to her crossword puzzle.

“Think about it, I don’t think it’s nearly enough time. I don’t think I’d be happy with just sixty years.”

“Uh..huh…,” Kate responded, finishing a word she was writing in. She then, with a look that clearly showed she’d rather not continue the conversation, asked, “Well, how many years would you be happy with? Eighty? Ninety?”

“No, still not enough,” John said. He looked away from Kate and started playing with his styrofoam cup, gently squeezing and releasing it in both his hands, over and over. “Here’s the thing, we, all of us, we’ve got this damn brain that can think up this one egging question: What if? It’s this question that, no matter how old we’d get, or how bad things get, it just makes us hope for one more beautiful day, one more memorable experience.” He kept on squeezing and releasing.

“I see. You know, I think Methuselah had about enough of life when his time came,” she said. Realizing John was going to continue in this line for a while; she gave a sigh and pointed her pencil at John after every sentence she said. “Besides, what’s happiness have to do with any of that? Can’t the happiness of just being here, eating lunch with me, be enough? Can’t the fact that you’ve got less than a year to graduate college be enough? Why can’t there be enough happiness in the here and now?”

“That’s just it,” John said. Oblivious to Kate’s annoyance with the conversation, he continued, “I don’t think our minds work that way. In a small sense, we’re long sighted creatures, we can’t help but think of tomorrow’s meal even as we eat breakfast today, see what I’m saying?”

“Uh…not entirely. But, by all means continue…,” Kate said. Her slender fingers gracefully picked up a piece of cantaloupe from the small Tupperware container in front of her, and, eyeing the fruit carefully, she added, “Just…gah…just don’t be so serious all the time.” Then she went back to her crossword puzzle and cantaloupe.

Ignoring her comment, he began to tell her, “Like, today, I was sitting outside of the new math building, the one with the really nice lush lawn and the new landscaping. Well, it was just…just so perfect, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, it feels great today. Wanna go joggin this afternoon?”

“Yeah, sure…,” he agreed. He put down the Styrofoam cup and shifted around a bit in his seat and. With newfound excitement, he continued, “But as I was saying, everything was perfect, but I still felt, I don’t know, sad inside, you know? It was like…like, even though in the here and now I was experiencing this great weather and pretty landscape, it was all tinged with sadness because I knew that it wouldn’t last for me. I mean, there’ll be nice days again, like today, and there’ll be nice landscapes, but how many more will I get to enjoy in my own lifetime? Just not enough.” Taking a quick sip from his soda, he said, “I could almost see myself, sitting in the same place, seeing all the same things, but as a really old person. I imagined how it would feel if that were the last time I would ever have of enjoying the day. And you know, you just can’t enjoy something fully knowing that it’s going to be taken from you all too soon. Instead of just actually enjoying it for its own sake, you begin to force yourself to ‘overenjoy’ it, or you feel bitterness or sadness for having it eventually taken from you. You just don’t enjoy it, fully I mean. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Wha, honey? Hey, what’s a four letter word for ‘Brazilian soccer legend’?” Kate asked, again engrossed completely by her crossword puzzle.

“I don’t know,” he said, standing up and collecting his things. He sighed and offered, “Maybe Ennui. I’ve gotta go to my next class.”

“Okay, honey. Have fun,” Kate said.

“Sure, um…I don’t think I can jog today, sorry.”

“Okay. You know, I don’t think it’s Ennui. The ‘E’ just doesn’t work.”

“Must be something else then, good luck,” John said, giving Kate a soft kiss on the top of her head. As he walked away, keeping his gaze intently down, he left Kate alone to her crossword puzzle, content in her diversion.

What's the word over in that Fjord?

"Every night, when I go to sleep, I die. Every morning, when I wake up, I am reborn." (Mohandas Gandhi)

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars, and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.

Douglas Adams

At the wayside

we find things like our old promises
some were hits, and some were misses.
I see our commitment to the morning swim
the whole regimen started and ended on a whim.
that friendship we both thought could persist
but did the connection ever really exist?
i come across that key to your chest
promising never to open it like it was some test.
Then I see you, with a question across your wrinkled brow
and despite the truth, i ask, "What do we do now?"
Our sighs fill the air like two cheap perfumes
and your engulfing silence tells me volumes.
I continue my own trip, but you stay,
for the time is getting late and my thoughts stray.
the melting sun says all's lost, but can be found
Because at the wayside, it's all just on the ground.

Free Coupons

Things never quite as simple as you expect it to. It’s like some law of nature I think, maybe Newton’s third law or something. But as certain as the sun rises and sets, my plans never fully go as I plan. Like that poet once said, “plans of men and mice always go awry.” For some reason it always just spirals out of my control; I swear, I’m like the freaking ball inside a pinball machine.

Like the other day, I just had a simple plan to go to the grocery store and picking up some fruit and oatmeal. I mean, what could be simpler, right? Just picking up some Granny Smiths and some Maple Sugar Instant Oatmeal (because who has the time anymore to make real oatmeal, which takes like ten minutes? Not me, that’s who!). So I drive up to the nearest Market Basket and park next to the cart rack.

Which, in hindsight, was a pretty bad idea. I mean, how many times do we finish loading our cars with groceries, tell everyone we with that we’re taking the cart to the rack, so then all think we’re courteous and crap, only to see if we can roll it into the narrow rack from twenty feet away like some game of cart bowling. And…like all sports, the rock occasionally doesn’t go into the hole.

But back to the Market Basket; as soon as I put the car in park and kill the ignition, two thoughts fly through my mind. One is, crap, why did I park next to the cart rack. And the second is: I could really marry that girl I see in the car in front of me. Why, you might ask, would I want to marry a girl who’s a complete stranger to me? Well, truth is, I’m a little crazy like that. I couldn’t even see her face, not even her whole body. All I could see was a sliver of her shoulder as she was putting her groceries into the passenger seat. I don’t know what it was, maybe it could’ve been that it was one of the best shoulders I’ve seen all week, or maybe it was the way the temperature was a perfect seventy degrees and full of sun, or maybe it was just because she was driving a well cared for old Volvo. But I had to sit for a few seconds, there in my car, just overwhelmed by this stranger. And then, I see her boyfriend strolling up with a case of Heineken. A tall, dark skinned guy with muscles bulging out of his cut off Hollister T-shirt. He pretty much looked like every single other guy that wears Hollister and goes to a gym, I seriously think they clone these guys. Well, immediately, Volvo or not, if that beautiful, gorgeous shoulder hung out with beer toting, Hollister wearing guys like that, I decided, perhaps we would’ve just never worked out after all. And so with a quick, apologetic mental “sorry” I got out and strode into the Market Basket to pick up my fruit and…crap, I had forgotten what else I was going to get. It always happened to me when I went shopping, too. I know what you’re thinking, too, “Well, if it always happens to you, why don’t you write a list, Einstein?” Well you can wipe that smirk off your face, because the truth of the matter is, I did write a list. Just so happens that I left it at my apartment, I thought I didn’t need it.

I decided the best thing to do would be to walk up and down some aisles until what I needed to buy came back to me. Again, bad idea. That’s the way supermarkets rope you in, they get you to walk up and down their long ass aisles, looking and marveling at all of their products until you forget what you originally came into to pick up, so you end up just picking up random crap you never even thought you’d need. I still have a family pack of tuna sitting in the back of my cupboards. When do I plan to sit down and make myself a meal of a family’s worth of tuna? Not really ever, but for half price with a membership card, it was hard to pass up.

So after two or three aisles, after deciding when I entered that I wouldn’t need a cart for this “speedy” trip, I had my arms barely wrapped around the 12 unit Charmin toilet paper, 6 roll Voila paper towels, and tightly clutching a small box of Tylenol with my spare pinky.

When, looking into the cereal aisle, it struck me. I came to pick up some oatmeal! I started to walk in but was saw that an Indian family was walking out. An extremely tall father (I’m a pretty short fella, so anyone above 5 foot eleven is pretty tall for me), followed by four or five kids, each clutching a different cereal and, what seemed it seemed like to me, talking about one hundred miles an hour to their own personal imaginary friends. So I stepped back, careful not to intrude or run over any of the tall man’s children. As I was about to step back into the aisle, I was blocked again, this time by an elderly couple wearing, I supposed, sweatshirts from their alma mater. You probably would’ve said they looked cute, matching and all with their college attire, if they weren’t so stinking old. I backed away immediately, I’m not one to mess with age, and let them go by.

But they, and this I blame on their age, didn’t budge. It wasn’t like they were holding their ground in front of the aisle or anything; they just looked like they hadn’t made up their minds about whether or not it would be a good idea to begin to move again. So I patiently stood in front of them, beginning to feel real bad for them. I mean, I would hate to be at a point in life where decisions as simple as whether or not to move out of aisle have to come after such intense deliberation. When, all of a sudden, from my left, I see this enormous wall of mass coming over on top of me, I look only in time to see the tall Indian man backing up into me. Walled in from the front and right with sweet old Adam and Eve themselves (God, why couldn’t they have moved away or something to begin with) I found myself with no place to go. Now, it all happened in slow motion for me, that’s how horrifying the whole ordeal was for me. Since I was still standing there, without a place to move and bear hugging my toilet paper, all I could do was observe as my hand and the tall guy’s butt came closer and closer to an eminent collision. I couldn’t even utter a word, it all happened so fast. Before I knew what happened, my hand was over his butt, the tall man was apologizing, his kids were still running around, each playing with their cereal box, and…this is the hardest part for me. The old couple was laughing at me. Five seconds ago they couldn’t make the simple decision of either to go backwards or go forwards, but they sure had no qualms about breaking into laughter about what happened to me. Gotta love old people, they really pick their moments.

Needless to say, I was completely abashed by this episode. I managed to pick up my oatmeal, only after tremendous laboring and careful balancing with my toilet paper and paper towels and what not. As I got ready to leave, surveying the different assortment of cranberry juices (They really have combined cranberries with just about everything. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one day an ad for “CRANCAR: a delicious combination of cranberries and NASCAR”) I noticed one of those ladies that give free samples. She was dressed in her little hair net/bonnet and cooking apron like she’d just come from popping blueberry pies into grandma’s oven. I make a quick beeline for her little stand. I was expecting some delectable treat sample, procured to me free of charge by my Market Basket. As I rounded her table, giving her a small, courteous smile, I then looked down at the goods. I was so crestfallen, my toiletpaper, papertowels,Tylenol,oatmeal combination almost came crashing to the ground. On her little table was no edible, savory, satisfying snack. Instead, on her table, neatly arranged, were coupons. And there was nothing special about these coupons. I think that’s actually what upset me so much. I looked back down the very aisle I came down from and looked at the little automatic coupon dispenser. They were exactly the same coupons. I mean, who puts up a table full of coupons that they already offer down every aisle? I was so irrationally angry about those dumb coupons, about not getting a tasty snack, about not having picked up a cart so I wouldn’t have to be lugging my dumb load around, by pretty much the whole Market freaking Basket. So, I picked a coupon: fifty cents off of Alpo dog food. (Even though I don’t own one, I felt obligated since I had smiled at the lady; I couldn’t just walk off after smiling at her).

Once I got home, I let myself fall onto my sofa and turned on the TV. I was exhausted from the “speedy” shopping trip and just wanted to veg out on anything, it could’ve been The View for all I cared. And then I remembered. I had forgotten to pick up the Granny Smith apples.