Things that make me say "Eh."

When your office pal approaches you to buy some candy in oversized packages for his kid’s school fundraiser. You jokingly bargain and scoff at the price. He’s not amused. It’s for his kid's summer camp. He calls you a dick, and while paying 4 bucks for a candy bar, you lament the fact that you will never go to summer camp again.

When I quote a movie line from a cool but obscure flick as if it’s my own. I always fear the recipient has seen the movie. What was I thinking anyhow? How well could it have gone?  Did they watch the movie? Fuck!

On a Friday night you wait for the barrage of phone calls and text messages that never arrive. The deadline for doing something and sitting home like a loser is close, but it could go any way. You decide you’ll let it figure itself out, get dressed to go, but turn on the Dog the Bounty Hunter show on A&E. Have a beer. Someone calls in an unattractive offer and you turn it down.

I look up an old classmate who I always hated, more secretly than openly. I wish to myself that he were doing badly, with nobody who loves him. Turns out he works an average job, and has a perky looking wife, great rack, who he takes nice pictures with. But you can see the tension there, underneath, I think.  Smoldering tension.   

You think of a great idea for a short story and begin writing it. You’ll adapt the screenplay later. All at once you realize your great idea is two great scenes, and is naked and threadbare without context and support. You believe the drudgery: the editing, poroofing, rewriting, the nuts and bolts, of a short story are below you and you say fuck it and bail on the project. It would certainly take an astute and thorough individual to recognize your genius. 

While watching TV in the waiting room at Jiffy Lube, another customer around my age makes a snide comment about the show on the courtesy TV set. I laugh and make a follow up joke. He reinforces it with a separate but similar example. Then we both look and wait for an opportunity to be funny and smart at the show’s expense. Oddly, it never exposes itself in the same manner. Like it heard what we had said. We are nervous and the other customers seem to be waiting on us. The pressure is too much. Man, when will they finish my car, he says. Seconds later a technician comes in. “Fox?” he announces. I rise and finish my oil-change business normally and say nothing else to appease the group. The bumper music plays, and then the voice-over announces what is coming up next. “This show isn’t so bad” my partner in crime says. “Yeah” I say.