For the record, gas station lighting really does something for me ... and the fumes must really work on the men who frequent these places.
This is my thinking.
In a previous post I admitted that taking a compliment is something I don't do well. I'm learning to do it better. When someone tells me I look pretty, I've stopped saying, "Ha!" and instead have started using "Thank you." Granted, the first few times I tried using this phrase I sounded like Stands With a Fist when she re-learns her native English.
It's never a good thing to talk like you're walking on thin ice.
Anyway, in accepting "You are pretty" from something other than a fortune cookie, I discovered thisalso came with a phone number.
Awesome. I can text it without having to do the whole let me breathe and say two words so you can breathe and reply and this can all go down in my ear that hates being breathed into and I can avoid getting so distracted by all of this that I wind up having the most terrible conversation ever.
I text. He texts. He's at work. I'm at work. I'm thinkin' I'll holla when I can holla. He calls. Leaves a message. I call back on my way home. It was a boring first conversation, but to demonstrate how taking things out of context sometimes generates somethin' outta nothin' (and to help the 3 o'clock hour pass by), I present the following comments that occurred during the 10 long, 7th-grade-esque minutes of this phone call that actually made my commute feel longer:
Him: "Are you all black?"
Me: "What?"
"I said, are you all black, like are you mixed? You look mixed."
"I'm all black."
It felt like I hadn't bubbled in the black circle on the Census form all the way or something. What? The cute li'l doo rags protecting my headrests aren't indication enough of my blackness? Oh and this is just a prelude to my sort of coming to the realization that I've been joking about for the past, oh, 10-15 years ... how Black is Danita ... no, really? Not young, hip-hop black, I'll tell you that. (And I'll tell you that because I'm Captain Obvious.)
Moving on, I realize that I am not even black enough to handle this kid:
"You wanna come to the crib and watch a movie?"
(Why the crap am I saying that? I'm not going to go over there. Man, my mom has got to move out if I'm ever gonna make it because you know how she is about me leaving after it's dark. Nope. Not going. Even though I'm old enough to bypass my mother's wishes, I like my sleep and I can't be showing up to work busted ... wait. I'm almost always feelin' busted at work ... ahahahahaha.)
"Midnight."
"Aw, hell naw, I gotta work. How old are you?"
First of all, it's not like this is a Demi-Ashton situation. Three years separate us, but obviously those three years are still significant enough to make me be like, "Nuh-unh." And as someone who's getting themselves back on track, I respect it when other people are doing the same, so I'm not holding his gas station/security guard status against him. I've watched enough black lady movies to know that a job - any job - is a wonderful must-have in any man.
But it immediately reminded me of a conversation I had not a day after I'd met him about the importance of an education and how, as far as I can tell, either having one or not even pursuing one indicates how people can be very different at a fundamental level. You don't have to be aspiring for a Nobel Peace Prize, but aspirations, for me, are a must.
* * * * * * *
Other things I've been thinking about:
This one lady that works "with" me has a bad way of turning the corner and staring me down as she idly drops stuff in my inbox. I'm on a 3-cube street and I'm in the middle and I can see her coming, but I rarely look up at her because it usually invites her to open her mouth and drone out some drivel. She sighs SO much that I'm convinced someone with an oxygen tank would throwit at her and kill her for all the air she consumes and then expels. Every breath is like the end of a yoga exercise.
It's annoying because she's lazy and walks/talks/glares as though she is disgruntled because all of her energy has to be expended to bring me some really poorly stapled/clipped papers.
Lazy. How hard is it to staple three sheets of papers together so that they don't look like a friggin' Kabuki fan?
And she pats the paper when she puts it in my inbox ... or shall I say, WHEN she puts it in my inbox. Why are you patting paper? And there's a little head bobble, a snooty one that immediately makes me twitch.
* * * * * * *
People who don't pick up their feet are killing me. I feel very strongly that the whole mule/backless/croc shoe phenomenon is just another way that people have become too comfortable with being lazy. There is no reason for you to sound like Quasimodo approaching.
A lady just schlumped by and I seriously had a vision in my mind of knocking her over, removing her shoes, hitting her with one of them, throwing it far, far away and then giving her a sermon about all the people that don't have shoes and wish that they did and how they'd value them enough to not drag them everywhere, followed by hitting her with the other one for good measure.