Morning People
I am decidedly not a morning person. Being alert and part of the world is a gradual process for me every day. I simply don’t understand the people that are out of bed and happy about it. Beds are so comfortable, I can’t think of many good reasons for getting out of them. Certainly getting dressed and going to work is not one of those good reasons.
Morning people make me angry. I am perfectly content to still be legally brain dead when I arrive at work. I don’t complain about it, I just go about my business. If someone asks me why I look like hell, I tell them I’m tired, but I rarely whine about it. What irks me about the morning person is their unquenchable desire to deride the early morning zombie for being in such a state.
“Why don’t you get to sleep earlier?” Because I felt the need to stay up late. I understood the consequences and did it anyway. Get off my back. ”Maybe you should go to bed earlier”. I didn’t want to go to bed. I didn’t stay up late involuntarily. It was a conscious decision.
These sort of questions would be annoying at anytime of the day, but at 7:45, when I woke up at 7:25… only my extreme fatigue is keeping me from doing something irrational and violent. Plus, when I’m in a foul mood, especially an early morning foul mood, someone trying to make me feel better only makes me feel worse. I am not trying to bring you down with my bad mood, don’t try to bring me up with your good one. Leave me alone, and we shall both be happier.
Another really bad time to be a prick is extremely late in someone’s shift. Imagine it is 10:30 P.M. on a Saturday evening, and you are nearly finished changing over all the sale ends. When I ask “Can you give me a hand” lifting this pallet into an awkward position, do not, do not, DO NOT clap your hands! That is not being clever. Neither assisting me, nor clapping is actually giving me a hand. Wanna be clever and literally give me a hand? Chop one off.
Also, to the aforementioned prick: ”Making money is good. I know you don’t understand, ‘cause you still live at home”….. ?!!?@#!@$ Just because I live with my parents, do not assume I do not know the value of money and work. If I didn’t know its value, I wouldn’t work in a grocery store, dealing with morons like you all day long, earning a poor imitation of a paycheck.
To the customers: Any place where customer service is integral to your job description is a bad place to be early in the morning. Old lady, do not point at the cream cheese and ask me if it is the cream cheese. If you couldn’t read the sign to begin with, you wouldn’t assume its cream cheese… and you shouldn’t be doing your own shopping!
Do not look at my name badge with a store logo, then look at the other store logo on the other side of my shirt and ask me if I work here. No, I do not, I’m just stocking this store brand cereal with this store’s logo all over my clothes like a giant grocery store billboard cause I look good in blue and khaki.
This seems like a lot of complaining, and I suppose it is. I do it here because if I were to start screaming these things at customers and coworkers, I’d probably get fired. In fact, I would most definitely get fired. Thanks, internet.
Oddities
What are your oddities? I surely have mine. It may be difficult for one to recognize one’s oddities, but that is simply because most do not think that anything they do is strange… or they simply accept that it is strange, and do it anyway. I think I do that often.
I have many rituals and habits. Some of them are so silly I often wonder why I am doing it… and do it anyway. You may call it OCD… you would be right (I like ellipses, if you can’t tell… also, parentheses, because they allow me to digress and let my thoughts flow in the natural way they occur in my brain). I was particularly aware of my strange habits today whilst preparing my dinner. Nothing too complicated, just a taco; chicken and cheese (I have plain tastes).
What struck me as odd is the way in which I went about making it. I do the same thing every time. I take out the container of chicken, the tortillas, and then the cheese and lay them out on the counter. Now, of course, that’s not odd. If I didn’t do that, I couldn’t make my food. Nor is placing all those ingredients on a skillet and cooking them odd… altho, I do follow a strange pattern. The chicken must always be in the center of the tortilla, and the cheese evenly proportioned… otherwise I get… antsy.
When I began to put away these ingredients, I noticed something odd. I found myself removing all the air from the packages by squeezing them. They’re going in the fridge, where they will be preserved by the cool air, yet I could not stop myself. I had to make sure there was as little air in each package as possible. I mean honestly, what’s the point? Yet still, I continued removing the air, even as these thoughts occurred.
Oddities arise all the time. Hand washing for me is a difficult thing. It’s not that I don’t wash my hands; on the contrary, my hands are dried out from too much hand washing. I do it all the time. I look around and see that people’s hands are filthy, and they don’t seem to mind, so why am I so strange that I must have sparkling hands… seriously, they’re crazy clean.
At work, as I remove boxes from shelves, or whatever is I’m moving, as I do it, I find myself counting each container. 1, 2, 3… and so on and so forth. I don’t need to count everything. When I must keep count, obviously I do, but most of the time, I don’t need to. I’ll be rearranging a pallet of this or that, and as I move them, I’ve counted seven boxes of cereal, and eight of ketchup, and whatever else comes next. It’s not important, no one knows but me, and yet, I’ve done it anyway.
I don’t try to change my oddities most of the time. I just let them be. They don’t bother anyone… most of the time, and if they do, I try to repress them, but they still occur in my head. I live with my oddities, and sometimes embrace them. They can be helpful. They can, of course, be a nuisance as well. However, whatever they are, they are mine.
(Let me just say, I like punctuation in general. A lack of punctuation irks me, which I think is why I use so much, to make up for all the people who use too little… see, you just got to experience one of my oddities: useless information spouting at random times. You’re welcome)
How exciting
I’m slowly realizing that I have almost no use for a PC, and I don’t mean its time to switch to an iAnything. My phone has everything my computer has, except Netflix and art related things. If I can use my computer for only those things, I will be a happy man. Sweet.
Depending on how you look at it, the moon is either really close, or really far. I like to think of it as close, because everything else is just really, really, really, really, really, really far away.
Thoughts
So, I had some thoughts before, about what I wanted to write, but I sort of forgot. I tend to do that quite often. I hope it wasn’t anything too important that I forgot. Now, I have nothing interesting to say. Although, perhaps what I forgot wasn’t all that interesting anyway. Maybe I’m the only who would have found it interesting. So perhaps in forgetting what I was to write here, I have done you, the reader, a favor. You’re welcome.
Well until I remember, I suppose that’s all there is to say.
Growing Up
Growing up is a weird sort of thing. Or rather, accepting the fact that you have indeed grown up is a weird sort of thing. It seems to creep up on you, and before you know it, you’re sitting at the adults table, whereas the year before you were at the kids table, wondering when you would get the promotion. Maybe it doesn’t happen exactly like that for everyone, but that moment comes for most: hey, I’m a grown up now… weird.
The things I associate with being a child are no longer available. I can’t just go outside and play. I’ll be looked at very strangely if my friends and I simply run around the back yard screaming. As an eleven year old, its cute and harmless; as a twenty-four year old, its behavior that brings police.
Even though the outside is still there to be experienced, the carefree notion of just going outside is gone. It must be planned, because you have to work later, or tomorrow, or you have to pay this bill or that one. As an eleven year old, dropping everything and going outside is healthy; as a twenty-four year old, its irresponsible.
I have none, but many of my friends have children. As an outsider looking in, it is strange to think that the people I knew in high school are parents, that they must care for another life. I have no responsibility so great, and therefore can only wonder what it must be like for them who have children. I’m sure their moment of “hey, I’m a grown up… weird” came the moment they met their progeny.
Perhaps I’m not entirely grown up yet, but I’m closer to that than being an adolescent. I’ll accept it some day. Maybe. I’m gonna go outside. Don’t call the police.
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