"The Road" in front of our house.
I did the unspeakable, and now I'll talk about it. I went looking for part-time, temporary work and was lucky enough to find some with my old team. They are wheat breeders; this week I harvested (in the greenhouse) and threshed. It's a different kind of exercise from my usual couch conditioning, so I'm tired today, but it's an exhausted tired.
It's good not to have to go through the awkward first weeks of a new job. These people already know me and seem to like me anyway. And, I don't have to get into this crazy thing I want to do with my life that puts my mental stability into question. My supervisor suggested we open a traveling petting zoo. Maybe something like this?
Oh, who's crazy now?
He imagined kibble dispensers that give you a handful for 25¢. Annie reminded me that, for kibble, customers would get cat behinds walking the other way; this calls for a blop of tuna in the palm. We imagined the cats butting the kids and knocking them down for the food, with lots of crying and yelling. The yelling part came from an actual childhood experience Annie had, with subsequent lifelong trauma. Petting zoos are not kid stuff, people!
Two of you will return from a lush, tropical paradise in the next few days, trying not to look heartsick and resentful to your friends. And, one of you two will have been thinking seriously about how you might retire early - very, very early - and return permanently. You have run the numbers in your head, maybe even on a cocktail napkin. Don't bother denying it. WE KNOW THAT LOOK.
9 comments:
I'm glad to say I've never been traumatized at a petting zoo. The oddest creature I encountered at one was a kiwi bird, which cocked its head every which way to examine the handful of dispenser-grain I was extending to it, then overcame its apparently heavy skepticism and attacked the grain with a single sudden PECK sending granules flying everywhere. It was one of the funniest things my ca. 7 year old sense of humor had ever encountered.
(That's me, SamWibatt. LJ is down at the moment so I couldn't use it for credentials, bedam.)
Ha! I would have known it was you regardless. The kiwi story made me snort before I even got to the end of it; I think your 7 year old's humor and my 48 year old's are perfectly aligned.
I also think you're the only Sean I know.
As may be, but there are a lot of us about and you never know when one might wander in.
I'm now 6 times the age I was when I was 7, and my sense of humor hasn't really changed either. Never lose that!
Cocktail napkin huh? Actually I've been running the numbers in Excel for a few years now :-)
Hope we didn't look too "heartsick and resentful"...
You managed to keep it all under wraps pretty well. Way to be strong!
You looked just the right amount of heartsick and resentful. Good job.
CATS!!!!!!
SO MANY
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