Category: Before

Today the card collector stopped by my apartment, repeating the words over the intercom that he’d used the last time he came by, “Jeff? This is Robert. I need your help.”

He produced a letter from his Salvation Army case worker. It was brief, addressed to “To whom it may concern”. It just said that Robert is homeless and is trying to find a place to stay. There are a few prospects, but they won’t be available immediately. “He would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give him.” I was a little confused about what it was for. Was this documentation that he’s homeless? But he seemed to think that it would explain something about his visit.

I was almost hit today, right as I was stepping out of the Japanese noodle place. I was already reeling from an awkward, “We’re walking directly toward each other – should I move out of the way or should you,” encounter and I saw something falling right in front of me and splotch on the sidewalk in front of me. It was bird poop. Another missle hit the ground to the right of me; and, to the amusement of a woman waiting for the bus, I recoiled again.

I can think of two times that I’ve been hit in the head by bird poop. There’s nothing special to report about these incidents. It happened and I either had a tissue to dab the poop with, or I didn’t. But what are the chances of being hit? When I look at a sidewalk, I can get a general map of where birds have pooped in the last couple of weeks; and there doesn’t seem to be much of it in the grand scheme of things. It seems to me that the chances of being hit – even once in a lifetime – are slim. Twice – and a near miss – something odd is happening.

Then again, it’s probably better than being that park ranger with the world record for the number of times he’s been hit by lightning. Though, now that I think about it, I was shocked awake during a lightning storm once when I was a kid. At the time I really thought I’d been electrocuted (my hair was wet from a shower and my bed was directly under the breaker box). But maybe it was a dream.

So that’s two birds pooping on my head (and one near miss – “That could’ve been me!”) and one (maybe, kind of) lightning hit (okay probably not).

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I tried to be creative yesterday with my dinner. I looked up the directions for baking a potato and cracked open the little box of smoked salmon I got from my sister’s in-laws for Christmas. I selected two potatoes – one long and skinny, the other short and fat – thinking there’d be a fighting chance that one would turn out okay. I put them in the oven, 45 minutes at 400 degrees. As they were finishing up, I put the salmon on a burner to grill. I thought I’d squeeze a little lemon juice on it while it was cooking, but I didn’t have any. I squeezed an orange wedge onto it instead, a picture of how it would taste crystalizing in my head. I finished both sides. The first side was a little burnt; that would be okay. The potatoes seemed a little hard, so I gave them some more time.

Well it was a disaster. The potatoes were cooked a little unevenly. No good at all. The salmon was not the delicate light texture that I’d expected. It was heavy and tasted like, well, fish stink.

I will be careful in the future to rely on my specialties, basic plain pasta or pancakes.

Schoolyard humor circa 1981. Sorry no swearing:

“How many letters are there in the alphabet?”

“Twenty-six?”

“No. Twenty-three, because J.R. got shot and the bee [‘b’] got away.”

Thank you. You’ve been great!

I fretted around my parents’ house trying to figure out some way to get into the car trunk that my real self was locked inside of. I was ashamed that I, the fraud had somehow gotten my more deserving self into this situation. I couldn’t find a key, there was no phone, and the nearest neighbor lived miles away.

Eventually my dad showed up and I got him to open the trunk. I looked inside and saw myself lying there, wearing an oversized shirt and pants over my regular clothes. My head was tucked inside the big shirt. My dad and I pulled the big clothes off and he/I woke up. I apologized profusely to the real me – he was quick to forgive.

Now that I write it down, this dream sounds like a plot device from a bad movie.

I bought lunch for The Card Collector at Kentucky Fried Chicken again the other day.

He told me about the $25 a night hotel he’d stayed in the night before. “It was nice because I could get under the covers and press the buttons on the TV.” He showed me the key that they’d let him keep for the day under the assumption that he’d be able to get together $25 for that night. I took this as a hint and gave him enough money for the night.

He asked me to keep him company for a few minutes, so I sat and stared out the window. He talked about how things had been going, about sleeping outside, how thankful he was for what the lord above had given him, and about the job and apartment a church had promised him weeks ago.

I was feeling a little tired and stiff. When the conversation lulled, I explained that I was a little worn out and that that was why I wasn’t very talkative. As I said that, I realized how stupid it was for me to be talking about my minor discomfort to him – using the same language that he might use when describing the effects of sleeping in a doorway.

Then he told me, “I wish there was something I could say to heal your pain.”

I tried a little experiment. I placed two pictures on Am I Hot Or Not. In the first I’m wearing a blue shirt and standing in front of a red background. In the second I’m wearing a red shirt in front of a blue background.

The results are rolling in and it doesn’t look good for me in a red shirt. As of now, his score is 6.9 out of 10 (D+). This compares to me in a blue shirt’s score of 8.3 (B-).

I am now the proud adopted father of an endangered Magellanic penguin. It’s name is Pike and it lives in the Falkland Islands. It was a Christmas gift from my friend Fiona.

In July 2000, I was up in England visiting her. Her parents and I were talking about traveling in Scotland – I had just been there and her parents were going to holiday there in a couple of weeks. At some point I said how surprised I was to find out there were penguins in the Hebrides and some of the other islands.

Fiona’s mother looked at me like a was crazy, “Penguins! Where’d you get that idea?”

“There’s a picture in my guidebook.” To defend my honor, I retrieved the book and showed her.

“That’s a puffin!”

“That’s a type of penguin, isn’t it?”

No it turns out, it’s not. Fiona and her mother found my confusion very funny. And for the last last year and a half, I’ve been reminded of my lapse by a steady stream of puffin postcards, penguin sculptures, and now a real live penguin.

[This entry came off more mean-spirited than I intended and now it’s gone. The gist of it was:
Starbucks: Bad enough.
Visiting every Starbucks in the world: Worse.]

I was just typing a sentence that included the phrase “Merry Christmas” and I wondered why I was capitalizing “Merry” in the middle of a sentence. It seems to me that that’s how it’s usually presented. Shouldn’t it begin with a lowercase “m”? Yes it should. That is what I’ve decided. “Quixotic” on the other hand should always be capitalized, in the same way that “Capraesque” is capitalized.

So anyway, thank you and merry Christmas to Carrie, my Secret Santa. I hope your Christmas is more Capraesque than it is Quixotic.

In Snoopy’s Quixotic mind his best friend was a bird named Woodstock. There were really many different bird-visitors though, and to their shared confusion, Snoopy called all of them Woodstock.