pepper and multimedia ned

Friday, dec. 13, 2002   |   0 comments

I finished my paper! And I feel a lot better about it. The grade may be reduced, but the paper as it stood on the actual due date was so spastic (not the least of the problems: I’d managed to misspell “Fiedler” as “Fieldler” on three separate occasions, and Fiedler was my professor’s thesis advisor, so that would have been a stellar low) that I’m sure I’m still better off.

Anyway. With school pretty much over, I’m finally turning my attentions to the holidays. My little spinster-lady wire tree is all bent into shape and decorated with bubbly lights and I did a some shopping on the way home from work last night, but the only thing I bought was … a dozen hangers from the Container Store. (I feel like there’s some sort of profound philosophical connection to be made about a store that sells only things that you put other things in and my incredible glee shopping therein, something about the emptiness of it all? But I’m sure some other pundit or standup comedian has already nailed it anyway.) Merry Christmas, everyone! Here is your hanger.

And now I leave you with two memories, little slivers of recently recalled moments that make me happy in a small way:

At my last apartment, there was a really cute boy that lived next door, one of those awesome kids who adults love but maybe has some trouble making friends his own age? Like, for instance, he loved sushi and whenever he ate it, he’d change into his kimono and headband. And sometimes he liked to come up the stairs on his stomach (we lived on the fourth floor).

So one day, we heard this kid’s mother ask her son, “Would you like pepper on that?” (they were in their kitchen, so I’m pretty sure she was talking about some sort of food item). And he said, very matter-of-factly, “No, it makes me feel like I’m dying.” Haha! I’ve always wanted to say that at a restaurant, when the waiter presents me with the peppermill with the flourish of a new father showing off a baby, “Would you like ground pepper on that?” “No thanks,” I’ll say brightly. “It makes me feel like I’m dying!”

On a similar note, I’ve always wanted to hug a Gap greeter. “Hi! Welcome to the Gap!” they’ll say, and I’ll just be all, “Oh my god! It’s so good to see you!” And then just dive in and try to french them. What holds me back is what I learned while waiting tables and working retail: there’s nothing grosser than a customer who takes advantage of an hourly employee’s complete inability to be rude.

OK, second memory. I had dinner (steak!) at Liz and Ben’s house last weekend and talk turned to junior high, because we all went to Mill Valley Middle School together (Liz was in Sun, the college-bound school, Ben and I were in Wind, the “early drinkers” school), and someone said, remember Ned? And, oh my god, Ned! Ned, the janitor/multimedia guy (which meant he set up the projection screen television on rainy day lunches so we could watch Bloopers, Bleeps, and Practical Jokes), was this HUGE man with perma ass-crack, which is pretty much to be expected. But the unusual thing about Ned was that he always had three little squirrely boys HANGING off him like a flock of remora around the mouth of a shark. He would drag them around as he monitored the borders of the campus, looking for kids sneaking off campus without “off-campus permission” (we had a Der Wienerschnitzel a block away, so all Ned and his hang-in-there-kitty posse would have to do to catch kids was hide near the bushes along the magical path to Der Wienerschnitzel). Anyway, there’s no actual verb to this story. Just a huge man with little boys dangling off him.