Feeling better. Woke up this morning and felt as though a little bit of the fog of the past few days had lifted.
Things of the day stuck in my head:
1. An old man and his wife came into the department this morning. I asked him, "How are you?" He said (in a cute, smiley old man French accent), "I'll have to go into deep communion with myself in order to answer that question."
Five minutes later, he walked by and said, "So-so."
Five minutes after that, I took he and his wife to find a Pete Seeger cd and he said, "Fantastic."
Then, five minutes later, as he and his wife came to pay, he said, "Overflowing with happiness."
I don't know. That little snippet doesn't do justice to the guy. I just liked his answers. They weren't standard "How are you?" "Good, thanks." answers. They had thought behind them. Which is more than I can say for my questions, and as a result I put a little more thought into my interactions during the day.
2. At about 11:30 this morning I confronted a shoplifter who was trying to steal some blu-ray DVD's, and when I told him that he needed to give me the DVD's back, he said, "ARE YOU ACCUSING ME? ARE YOU ACCUSING ME OF STEALING? CAUSE IF YOU ARE I WILL FLATTEN YOU!" And then I said, "Yes. Yes, I am accusing you, and I need you to give me those DVD's back. And I was very genuinely scared, because this was a big guy, about 6'3", muscular, 220 lbs, and an asshole. And a thief. So I was scared, and he tried leaving so I followed him out of the store and then down the street, and I asked him where we were walking to, and he said, "Someplace quiet so I can kick your ass." And I said, "Oh, OK," and kept following him. And I don't really know why I kept following him, because I really seriously thought that he was going to at least punch me in the face. And I was still scared. But for some reason (and I will interject here [in admittedly stolen DFW fashion] that a weird reason that I kept following him had something unexplainable and very much in the back of my mind to do with how my head has been screwed up over DFW's suicide, and getting my ass kicked really didn't sound all that bad at 11:30 this morning) I kept following him and trying to annoy him by asking his name and making stupid small talk, making him painfully aware that I would follow him wherever he decided to go. And after a little bit of that, he eventually took the DVD's out of his cargo pocket and threw them over his shoulder, and I got them and went back to the store. And for the first time in a very very long time, I felt brave. And I felt good.
I have two days off starting tomorrow, and I'm hoping to get some laundry done, but other than that I don't know how to spend my time. Cleaning? Working on music? Running?
or E) All of the above?
