and repeat

Sunday, mar. 23, 2003   |   0 comments

In 1996, I took a job at this web design boutique in Sausalito, which was about four earth inches away from the movie theater I used to work at when I was in high school. It was a little weird to find myself, ten years later, getting stuck in traffic behind the same tourists, eating lunch at the same deli, and trying to stay out of the way of the very same walking, barking anti-drug advertisement, Stigo, who used to buy us all beer (after trying, each and every time, to get us to come back to his van for some beers that he had just opened, swear to god).

Then I actually started going to my old high school after work to swim laps, and that was triple-extra weird. There sure is nothing like shivering into a not-quite-dry-from-yesterday’s-swim lap suit while standing in the very same rusted locker room that you shivered into similarly damp suits when you were 16 to really make you feel how un-far your life has come. In the list of emotionally risky locations that simply do not need revisiting, the site where I spent my most awkward, self-hyperconscious years getting naked in front of peering peers ranks right up there.

The “Bush goes to war with Iraq … again!” thing is giving me a similar uncomfortable-echo feeling. Desert Storm wasn’t so fabulous the first time around. (If only Letter Man had been there to transform the whole travesty just by adding a second “s” to “desert”! I would have been much more willing to get behind a blizzard of cakes and cookies and Almond Joys, boy.) (You remember Letter Man, right? From Electric Company? Or is this another one of these “only seen in my test market, like maybe a ‘just Evany’ test market” things?) Reluctantly circling back with yet another Bush warring on Iraq is even more unpleasant.

Aside from the incredible sadness of the bombing and crashing and prisoner-taking, which is all just heart-sickening, reliving the war has also (back to ME!) launched some unwelcome life-measuring. How far, exactly, have I come since 1991? I’m in school again, I’m still not really sure where I’m headed next, I’m spending my evenings watching almost identical footage of bombs hitting Bagdad. Huh! I am a quarter-inch taller, though. OK, an eighth. OK, I’m actually shrinking.

Anyway. Last week’s protests were pretty amazing. On Thursday all those fresh-faced hippies, whom I really do admire!, shut down Market Street and cut off my bus route, which meant I debarked right into the thick of it. By that time, most of the protesters were cuffed and lying in the street (that wave of protesters, at least), while a heavily formatted line of policemen in riot gear prevented the large crowd of onlookers from going into the street and reinforcing the protest. It was a very tense and freaky scene. But there was one silver lining: the girl in the panda suit carrying a sign that read “UNFUCK THE WORLD.” That was nice. I sure hope she does birthday parties!