Creeps Like Me

You may have heard a thud around noon time yesterday-a bit muffled perhaps with a sort-of sigh smothered in disappointment to complement it. It emanated from these parts and while I should feel badly for taking credit for it, let's just say I was the precipitant.

I've worked for a very long time with someone who has convinced themselves if Gandhi had a son, I would be that son. Closer to reality, I couldn't even be that child's imaginary friend and total disclosure: I had an imaginary friend who dumped me for someone Else's imaginary friend so don't get me started on this.

Disillusionment was swift as they waited for me to get off the phone with someone, no other way to put it, who is a time sponge. The caller will take every second of the time you are willing to give without a thought or a regret and ask for more. I do all the usual stuff that people do with me (you didn't think I knew? How stupid do I look?): I make faces, I roll my eyes, I do 'wind it up' motions with my right hand while clutching the phone with my left but it never makes a difference as the caller drones on. The call runs its course as the river rolls to the sea and I always hang up frustrated as my day has been hijacked and I realize I have a hole where a half hour or more of my life once was.

Yesterday, conceding nothing I could ever do would help me reclaim the time I have lost, I resolved to stop acquiescing to my own destruction. I did one, and no more than one, 'I hate to take up your time' which is my generic white guy way of getting pests off the phone. Don't laugh, sometimes it works; sometimes. It didn't yesterday so I blurted out a mouthful and more of just how angry I was about always having to be the good person and the nice guy and proceeded to peel off a wad of sometimes poly-syllabic expletives in both English and German that may have caused ears to melt.

Confession is good for the soul. Here goes: I find cursing liberating. My father used to tell us as children that profanity was the mark of someone who lacked a good vocabulary ('goniff' had no direct bearing on his theory, but should have). Yesterday would NOT have been a good day to ask me about his thesis especially after I caught my second wind and reviewed our entire history in less than thirty seconds (we have known one another for close to two decades).

It was only after I had returned the phone to its cradle and looked up to see a stricken expression on my visitor's face that it occurred to me I might have been slightly beyond the pale. By a few megatons here or there. I think one of us was hoping for an explanation but the other one knew better-look around and you will see. The world is full of---.
-bill kenny  
.