Most people have adversaries in their daily lives—a snotty co-worker, a shiftless in-law, or a rude neighbor. I have a whole month that’s out to get me. For some, February is the shortest month; for others, it’s Black History Month, and for others still, it’s the month of Valentine’s Day.
But for me, February is the Month That Dripped Blood.
Fact: I was working at Nice Shopper, and it was the coldest day Albany had seen in a lifetime and a half. It was close to -20 degrees with the wind chill, so naturally, I was sent out to get carts. The wind had blown all the carts to the far end of the parking lot, and I could only retrieve them in sets of three because anything more would get blown over. By the time I had finished, my hair was swept back from my reddened face, and I felt like a character from a Robert London story. There were lines at every cash register, so I threw off my coat and set to work. It took my cold-addled mind a few moments to realize that everyone was staring at me. Finally, one of the cuter cashiers said to me, “Al. Your nose.”
Visions of frostbite filled my head as I grabbed for my face, and my fingers brushed the stalactite of frozen boogers dangling from my right nostril. Sure, some of you out there might think that was pretty funny, but it’s snot.
(…Auuuuugh yourself—this is quality material here.)
That was the start of a long week.
Fact: It was my junior year of high school, and I was trying to play the field, attempting to romance both my beloved Lilly and a sophomore girl of dubious sanity but considerable cleavage. I figured if my brother and father could do it, why not me? Besides, if I was going to try and get my friends to call me ‘The Love Machine,’ I damn well better be sure to back it up.
Of course, I hadn’t actually told either girl that I was playing the field. I guess I was trying to be more or less the stealth bomber of love. It was the afternoon of Valentine’s Day when most of my friends started trying to beat me up. Now, with my friends, this wasn’t necessarily a rare occurrence, but they had never been so organized before. Finally, I confronted them, hoping to reassert my position as the Alpha Nerd with a combination of guts and memorized dialogue from Doctor Who. Then I saw each and every one of those sneaky bastards standing around Lilly. Now, this was too much. They were trying to move in on my main squeeze! I barged into the middle of them and asked what the Hell was going on.
That was when Lilly confronted me with her Valentine’s card. Well, actually, it wasn’t her Valentine’s Day card; it was the other girl’s, but I had accidentally switched them.
Yeah, that was the start of a long week.
Fact: My first bout with kidney stones came the same week that my beloved mother-in-law had a heart attack. (And that is no sarcasm; I do love her bunches.) I tried to stick it out, hoping the whole thing would literally pass, but no luck there. So, I had to have my wife drop me off at the emergency room so I could get better while she took care of our daughter; they were both exhausted by the ordeal.
To this day, I am not sure what route my wife took to the emergency room, but I can only assume somewhere, she took a side trip to the Twilight Zone because that night was one of the strangest of my life. It began simply enough, with lots of waiting, then when they finally admitted me, they had me dress in one of those drafty hospital gowns and left me sitting on a bed in the hallway.
Why, you might ask? Because it was another cold February, and all the local homeless people were checking themselves in for phantom ailments so they could stay warm. The place was packed; it was standing-room only, or in my case, trying-to-sleep-in-the-hallway-with-your-ass-hanging-out room only. The hobo sitting on a bed closest to me decided to strike up a conversation, and if I hadn’t been so tired and miserable, I might have asked him what Tom Waits song he had escaped from to torment me.
Instead, I just listened to his tale of travel, of his Native American wife, whom he only got to see twice a year or so because she lived in Canada.
And, by the way, Canadian women? Between this and all the nerds who say they have girlfriends up there, I have to say, get some standards, for heaven’s sake.
Apparently, my hobo friend took my bleary-eyed indifference as a sign of friendship, so he tried to give me one of his less filthy hats as a present, but that was when the doctor showed up to get me the medical care I so desperately needed. I was never so happy for a painful and invasive prostate exam, and yes, that includes the one at the Eden Studios Christmas party.
With a prescription in hand, I called a cab to take me home, and wouldn’t you know it, of all the cabbies I could have ended up with, I got the one who wanted to try and get me to invest in the television pilot he was trying to film in Vermont. This was not what I needed because I can honestly say that as a wannabe writer who loves to talk up his latest hopeless project, there is nothing more annoying than a wannabe writer trying to talk up his latest hopeless project.
The cab ride ended before he could get into the intricacies of his series bible, but when you’ve heard the pitch for one series that combines elements from *Antiques Roadshow* and The Indiana Jones movies, you’ve heard them all.
So I got home and unlocked the front door, only to find my wife had put the door chain on as well. I chuckled over this and knocked on the door. About ten minutes later, I remembered my wife mentioning that she wanted nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and turn in. After another ten minutes of homeless knocking, I started walking to the local 24-hour diner so I could use the payphone and wake my missus up.
It was going to be a long walk.
So, where does that leave us today? First off, I woke up feeling profoundly squishy inside, and I spent most of my shift trying not to erupt into a series of farts that would sound like an AMC Hornet drag racing with a tank full of bad gas. Then I had a training seminar in the afternoon. I believe it was focused on budgeting our time more effectively to improve shareholder value… well, at least that’s what I think it was about. I fell asleep ten minutes in because I had been up all night writing blog entries.
Somehow, I made it through my shift without skid-marking my underwear, so I headed home, but first, ironically enough, I had to stop for gas. I’d been putting off refueling because it had been so darn cold out the last few days, but there was no putting it off any longer. I got to the gas station, popped open the tank, and then realized I was on the wrong side of the pump, so I spent a few moments dodging other cars and getting my car lined up correctly. Then I went in and bought twenty dollars worth of gas. And I started pumping.
But there was something wrong with all the pumps on that side of the station, and it was pumping gas at about the speed of a penny a second. As I stood there shivering, watching my twenty dollars’ worth of gas move like twenty dollars’ worth of molasses, I thought to myself—it’s gonna be another long February.
But aren’t they all?
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