I Have Apparently Set My Internal Controls To “Self Destruct”
Oh Lord. On one hand, I should be happy because two whole entries in two days! On the other hand, the only reason for this particular entry is that I am so profoundly stupid and have had such a disheartening morning my choices are to blog or weep. And while I am still not entirely counting out the crying thing, it is also extremely out of character for me, (unless I am watching Little House on the Prairie), so I’m going to go with blogging.The first bad decision came into play last night. I am exhausted, I am sick, and I had to get up at an insane hour this morning to go to the doctor. So… perfect night to get drunk and stay up until after 3 am, right? Needless to say, morning came far too quickly and I slumped out the door and headed for the doctor. Which, seriously, is never a pleasant experience. No matter how great my doctor is or how many times I talk to myself about prevention and tests and how this is good for me, I can’t help but feel more like it is punishment. Anyway, everything went fine and I had at least achieved the main goal of the entire morning, which was to get a prescription. That taken care of, feeling a little vulnerable and out of it, I grabbed my iPod and headed for the metro.
I was happily bopping along at the metro stop, and then the train came, and I was walking onto the train, and then… and then, for absolutely no discernable reason, I felt a tug at my side, and the music cut off, and I looked down…
And my iPod was gone.
My iPod had somehow managed to leap off of my body, where moments before it had been firmly attached, and fall in the ITTY BITTY gap between the train and the platform. I just stood there, stunned, with several other commuters all looking at me with a mixture of sympathy and disbelief, as the doors closed.
I got to work, and immediately called the metro people, where the lady at lost and found managed to tell me that I had to actually physically talk to the station manager in a way that was completely polite on the surface while also conveying the exact level of moron that she thought I was. Unfortunately, I could not go at lunch, because I have another appointment booked for then. (I hate my life. Really.) Luckily, yesterday my office was In Crisis, and I was feeling Unusually Helpful, so I had build up a lot of cred with my boss. This, coupled with the fact that he has known me for years and is used to my occasional, if spectacular moments of idiocy, meant that he had no problem with me going to retrieve my iPod.
So I head back to the metro, and I am reading my book, and as I am getting on the train I hear a very nice British voice saying, “Excuse me, excuse me”. I turn around to see who was ignoring the nice British lady, and realize… me. I am ignoring the nice British lady, who is trying to give me back something that I dropped, and that something happens to be…. My prescription.
Y’all? I cannot even tell you what would have happened if I had gone through everything this morning only to lose the prescription. Instead of retrieving my iPod, I would have been joining it, it is safe to say, only much closer to the third rail.
So I get off the metro and look down, and sure enough- there is my iPod. Encouraged, I went to the station manager, who was very, very nice to me and promised he would get someone to jump down there and get my iPod. So I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally, I looked up on the floor above me, and the Station Manager was talking to a Nice Man With A Stick. “Yay!”, I thought, “What a brilliant idea! A STICK! Maybe the stick is grabby, or sticky, or something, but the nice station manager is pointing me out and in just a few minutes I will have my iPod back!” Not so much, people, because Nice Man With A Stick… never came down. He wandered the floor above me for awhile, then he just sort of… stood there. Not looking at me. He was not so much nice, as Useless Man With A Stick. So I continued to wait, and trains continued to come, and the small amount of self control I had began to fray, and I began to think Very Bad Thoughts in the general direction of Useless Man With A Stick while trying not to cry. At this point, I was probably lucky that my cell phone doesn’t work in the metro, because I was THIS close to calling A and asking him if I could come over to his office and cry for a bit. Which would have scared the everloving shit out of him, because in two plus years, I don’t think he has ever actually SEEN me cry, except that one time he made me watch Nip/Tuck, and that doesn’t count, because EW.
Anyway, I am standing there, beginning to despair of ever getting my iPod back, when I look up and notice… Useless Man With A Stick, now has… two sticks. Well then. He wanders around awhile longer, and then, to my utmost joy, actually came over to me! And I realized that the two sticks were actually a broom and a dustpan. And I sort of saw the problem, because the dustpan was actually on the end of a very broken stick, and it appeared to have been scotch taped together, which… Come on, Metro. Couldn’t you at least spring for the duct tape? Anyway, scotch tape notwithstanding, the Now Very Useful Man With Two Sticks, One Of Which Is Barely Functional swept up my iPod, and I recanted every bad thought I had had about him.
The iPod works, which is very good. And I am not even going into detail about how I went to get coffee and left my card at the register. Or about how I am wearing a favorite new shirt, which is white, and how I maybe spilled coffee all over it. Or about how when I went to dab the coffee with cold water, I grabbed a Subway napkin, which has red ink on it, so now I have coffee AND red ink on my new shirt. No, I can’t think about all of that, because it is only 12:30 and that is just too much, people.
I am clearly not ok. Send chocolate. And wine.
posted by Citycat @ 12:56 PM
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