Test

 Test 

So far this year....

It starts off as a small news story that someone linked to on Twitter. Some kind of threat from Asia. You don’t pay that much attention.  

But then you hear in a short NPR story that it has arrived in Washington State, the first place the menace has shown up in the United States.  But you know, it’s up in one of those cold, dark places near the Canadian border.  The names all sound the same -- Marydale, Ferndale, Bellingdale, Burlingdale, Bumfuckdale -- those places you used to fly over in First Class en route to Vancouver while sipping champagne. 

At some level your sub-conscious says this is important and you need to pay attention, but you keep getting distracted by these emails where the sender knows your password and they claim to have webcam videos of you masturbating and will email them to everyone on in your contacts unless you send them 3 bitcoins.  Oh and by the way they think you have terrible taste in porn.  So rude.

It’s hard to concentrate on the news when you get emails like that.  Plus they don’t sell bitcoins at BECU. 

Oh and remember being able to drive to West Seattle?  You know, Metropolitan Market, your Pilates classes, your dry cleaners?  Jesus. 

Anyway, I hear that it can pierce the metal of your car and kill you while you are driving.  I hear it has a small shark tooth like appendage that cuts off heads. I hear it is now spreading into British Columbia even though the border is closed.  

Murder hornets?  Fuck murder hornets!

Oh 2020.  Please just go away. 



.

Urine Trouble!

On Saturday, I had just gotten home from the gym and the grocery store. I parked in my garage and was closing the garage door when a car pulled up next to me in the alley.  A woman rolled down the passenger-side window and said, “Sir, can we please ask you a question?” 

 

The car was kind of old and crappy. I knew this encounter was going to be odd.

 

She continued, “It’s a pretty weird question, is that OK?”

 

Standing there in my gym shorts I was like, are they going to ask me why my legs are so white? According to 23 And Me, I am 99.7% European. The .03 % of me that is Mongolian just does not lend itself to tanning.  I’m sorry my legs are so white, people. Please stop asking me about this!  God!

 

I pulled myself out of my self-shaming-leg-color-spiral and looked into the car. There was a man in the driver’s seat, the woman in the passenger’s seat, and several very small children not sitting in child seats.  Maybe this wasn’t going to be about the color of my legs.

 

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

 

“Do you take drugs?” the man asked me.

 

I laughed as the image of Nancy Reagan in a little red dress popped into my head.  Then I wondered if the $45 bottle of Pouilly-Fumé in my shopping bag counted as drugs.

 

“No?” I said.

 

“Great.  We didn’t think so.” The woman continued, not looking at my legs. “My husband here has a chance to get a job in construction that we really need.  He smoked some pot recently and it’s still in his system.  He has to get a drug test to be able to get the job. My nephew was not able to produce very much clean pee.”  She held up a condom.  There is a little bit of pee in the condom. 

 

Not used to condoms being held up to me in car windows, I thought about turning around and running right then.  But I looked at the kids in the car.  Smiley, happy little kids, without car seats.

 

“I don’t really have to pee right now.” I said.

 

“Please sir.  We really need your help.  We really need this job. We need your clean pee!” The woman pleaded.

 

I looked around for the camera crew and the microphones.  There were none to be seen. I looked at the little kids again, without car seats.

 

Oh man, I could see the headline: URINE TROUBLE.  Local man jailed for supplying clean pee.

 

But then I looked at the little kids. Shit.

 

“This is liberalism gone mad,” I mumbled to myself. 

 

“OK, let me go get a big glass of water and see what I can do,” I said, not quite believing that had just come out of my mouth.

 

Pretty freaked out, both at this the situation, and myself, I went into my house and drank a big glass of water.  Then I search the cupboard for a container.  I found and old pickle jar with a lid that I sometimes use to make salad dressing. 

 

So I did it.  I peed into the pickle jar.  It was that post-morning-vitamin pee that is fluorescent green.

 

Still very sure this was being filmed, I walked back out to the alley.  They had pulled over to the side and were waiting with the engine running. The little kids were still smiling and laughing.

 

“You are right, this is the weirdest thing I am going to be asked for today, but here you go.” 

 

I handed over the pickle jar with its florescent green contents, my hand kind of shaking as I wondered if I would go to jail for this.

 

The woman kind of teared up, the man reached over and shook my hand, the kids just smiled at me and waved.  I closed my back gate and they drove away. 

.

Who are my people?

I woke up Sunday morning to find that my barbecue was dead. Not out of propane, no, just rusted through and broken.

I drove to Lowe’s to buy a new one. It didn’t occur to me to think about if the barbecue would fit in my car. It didn’t. The very nice Lowe’s woman was like, “Oh honey. This happens to your people all the time! Just borrow this screw driver, unscrew those side flap things, take them off, and it will pop right in.”

I’m like, who are my people? Dyslexics? Atheists? Entitled white men with back hair?

Anyway, to unscrew I was forced to sit my fat ass down on the Lowe’s parking lot, all plumber crack like, and drop screws on the hot tarmac for nearly an hour. Several very nice people stopped to ask if they could help. I politely decline as I felt compelled to prove the worth of my people.

At some point the Lowe’s woman came back out and said, “Honey you forgot your instruction manual.  Here, catch!”  She tossed it at me.  It fell at my feet.  “My people don’t catch” I explained.  She frowned and walked back into the store.

Finally I unscrewed and the barbecue did pop right into my car

Back at home, I had to sit my fat ass on the floor of my garage, all plumber crack like, spiders everywhere, while I began to rescrew. 60 minutes later I had rescrewed.  There were 7 left over screws that I was unable to find holes for, and my butt itched badly, but I had proven the worth of my people.

My people: we can unscrew, we can rescrew, but we can’t catch. 

.