Category: Before

I bought lunch for the card collector at Kentucky Fried Chicken again the other day. At one point he told me that he was dyslexic and couldn’t read because his father had taken him out of school early on. This revelation clarified a couple of things. His dyslexia kind of explains his confusing word choices (like when he called the Salvation Army bell-ringer a “door opener”). And regarding his obsessed with photographs, cards, and slides: I think he likes pictures because the world of the written word is so confusing to him.

Another movie that I only saw the end of:

The police are gathered outside a house, guns drawn. Kirk Cameron walks slowly away from the house toward the police car. A small group of kids and a girl of about eighteen or twenty are watching the scene unfold from the open front door. When Kirk Cameron reaches a point about halfway between the door and the car, he raises his hands above his head.

The kids aren’t going to let this happen, they scramble out of the house and stand around him, each in turn raising his or her arms above his or her head.

We cut to a court room. Kirk Cameron is being sentenced by the judge. Everyone from the previous scene is present.

The judge is saying, “The one thing I hate about being a judge is having to punish someone for committing a crime out of immaturity rather than out of evil.”

“Wait,” one of the kids, an African-American boy of about seven, interrupts. “I come from a rough place. I know a lot of criminals. He isn’t a criminal.”

The older girl voices her agreement.

The judge considers this for a beat. He turns his attention to one of the other kids, a little girl, “And what do you think?”

The little girl manages to say, “He’s made us into a family!” through her heavy stutter.

“Well then my sentence,” continues the judge, “is that you will be required to take care of these children home which will henceforth be known as the William Preston Home For Children!”

“And you,” he addresses the older girl, “will be required to work with him.”

Everyone is excited about this judgment.

We cut to the home. Everyone is running around happy. Eventually they all converge on a barn and watch an adult pig and a bunch of baby pigs swarming around in the hay. One of the baby pigs is brown and pink, the others are all pink.

“Look everyone,” Kirk Cameron tells them, “this was the first pig born today.” He’s apparently referring to the pig with spots. “It’s the Christmas pig!”

I apologize in advance for this story.

I was having dinner with three coworkers (my boss and two of our visiting counterparts from the European arms of the company) at The Pink Door after work on a Friday. We were finishing up and I got up to use the restroom. The restaurant shares restrooms with the stores in a certain part of Pike Place Market, so it was pretty much open to the public.

I entered and due to (ahem) the nature of my business, I passed by the urinal and reached for the stall door. It was locked and a voice from inside said, “Just a minute.”

I considered what etiquette was appropriate in that situation. Should I wait out in the hallway? I decided that it would okay to wait inside, since I had to go pretty badly and he would only be a minute.

I felt optimistic about the clear skies today and wore my lighter jacket. The issue at hand is that the inside pocket of my light jacket is on the left-hand side and the inside pocket of my heavier jacket is on the right-hand side. So when I switch jackets after having favored one over the other for awhile, I reach for my wallet and it isn’t there. For a moment I think, “My pocket is missing.” Then I figure it out and fish around on the other side.

Today I payed for my tea at Vivace after going through this minor comedy of errors. And I wondered, Isn’t there some industry standard for the placement of pockets? Shouldn’t the clothing industry choose one side and stick with it, like they have with buttons on shirts (on the right for men’s shirts, on the left for women’s)? Then I remembered that I’d bought the light jacket in Edinburgh after having left my thin Goretex jacket in a Glasgow hotel. Maybe there are pocket standards, I thought, but maybe they’re different in the US than they are in the UK – like the placement of steering wheels. Then I recalled a vague memory that I’d had trouble adapting when I’d gotten the heavier coat because the jacket I’d had before that had an inside pocket on the left-hand side. Perhaps the standard is to have the pocket on the left, but perhaps Columbia Sportswear (the maker of my heavier jacket) is breaking that standard. Then again maybe it’s an anti-pick pocket device. There was a moment of doubt though, Was it the heavy jacket that I’d had trouble with or the Goretex jacket? That’s about the point that I stopped thinking about it, deciding that though I had a lot of information, it would be impossible to come to any conclusions.

I had a long conversation with Chris that wound from our views of The Situation back around to, “Would you ever think of going back to work at Amazon?”

I gave an inch: “I might consider it. It’s so hard to find work right now and it would be so easy for me to get a job at Amazon.” He said he’d learned a lot from the things he’d done in the two years since he’d quit and that it might fit in with his long-term goals.

He explained that he’d have to have a nice job, not a buying position, but something where he could really kick some ass, get some things fixed. This reminded me of the whole cycle of forgotten, unrealized, & re-rediscovered ideas.

This morning I walked over to Kinkos to send a fax. While waiting for the light to change at Broadway I saw my friend, the card collector, approaching from about a block away. We waved, and he broke into a run to meet me.

He made it across the crosswalk while the light turned yellow.

“How are you doing?” I asked him.

“Oh, I’m getting along okay.”

Since I bought him a cup of coffee awhile back, we’ve developed the routine that whenever I see him I’ll buy him something to eat at Jack in the Box. We stood together on the corner for a moment longer.

I left the apartment in the afternoon and trudged, blinking at the clouds, toward Bauhaus. I ran into an aquaintance at the stoplight on Broadway. She was hiding under a black hooded-sweatshirt and we chatted about unemployment and retread our recurring, “Have you seen Sara lately?” conversation. We said good-bye outside Bauhaus and, not knowing what else to do I guess she held out her freckled hand to shake.

It was unusually crowded, so I wedged myself into the unclaimed counter seat between two little groups and cracked open the collection of John Buchan short stories that I’ve been almost finished with for weeks. After her friend left, the girl to my right got chatty. She was approaching the end of her second cup of coffee and was probably considering a third.

What would you do, if you could do anything?

I don’t know, he hesitated then repeated, I don’t know.

His eyes were dim with concentration and defeat.

We were stunned into a painful silence as we absorbed the hopelessness of his words.

I mean I really think I could do anything if I wanted. I just don’t know what, he continued hopefully.

And despite his unconfident manner – despite his unconfident answers, I think the self-assuredness of “I could do anything” was genuine. But I have to weigh that against the way he joined “anything” with “if I wanted”. What does that mean exactly? He doesn’t like anything? He doesn’t like everything?

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, landowners forced thousands of people off their land to make way for sheep grazing. In 1845, a group of people in Glen Calvie were evicted and ended up staying their first night in the yard of Croick Kirk. They carved their names and messages in one of the church windows.

I had a brief panic when I saw this episode of Newsradio recently:

Originally aired 9/25/96
Dave (Dave Foley) has his hands full when Matthew (Andy Dick), feeling neglected at work, becomes obsessed with the worker bee comic strip character “Dilbert” and quits his job at WNYX to work at a coffee house.

I thought that I might have lifted this idea for a silly little comic strip I sketched out way back when. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that I’ve based the beginning of my silly little novel on that comic.

A quick check though, finds that I drew the comic seven months before the episode aired. So I’m not guilty of plagiarism. I’m just guilty of recycling an old idea that wasn’t even very fresh when it was fresh.