Echo

So my roommate has been out of town for a few days. Rather than inviting over all of the internet’s sexual deviants and the freaks waiting at 3 am bus stops for debauched orgies and crack parties, I’ve been rather mellow and tame. But I’m wondering if being left to myself has brought out the neurotic in me.

I wanted to go to Best Buy after work to get some digital 8 tapes. I thought I might go to the gym afterwards, so I was dressed down in warmup pants, a t-shirt and a baseball cap. I was getting ready to go but didn’t like my t-shirt. I changed into a different t-shirt and got into my car. But then I realized that I was wearing flip flops, but needed to wear gym shoes. So I went back upstairs and changed shoes. While changing shoes, I decided that I didn’t like that my t-shirt was slightly wrinkled from being lumped inside the clean laundry basket. I threw the shirt into the dryer for a few minutes for a quick-fix to ironing it out. It took me another test run, but I figured out that the dryer was broken, so I put the shirt back on. Looking in the mirror, I decided I could live with the wrinkles, but then noticed that my bra could be seen quite clearly through the white shirt. I looked at it for a while, then decided it looked gaudy, so I headed into my closet to change my bra. At that point, it hit me that this was fucking insane. I’d suffered an anal-retentive implosion while trying to make a jot around the block to Best Buy for video tapes.

So I left, got in my car, and headed to Best Buy. Two blocks out, I decided I was lazy and didn’t want to deal with the traffic of the less-than-two-miles-10 minute-drive-away store. So I turned back and said to myself, I’ll go to 7-11. If they don’t have them, I’ll get them some other day. I passed by a park and was suddenly hit by the urge to take an evening stroll through a park, something I haven’t done since my family did it together back when I was really, really young. I walked through the entrance and immediately experienced the euphoric shrieking of a woman on the swing set being pushed by her lover to the left, and two men on a grassy knoll praying towards Mecca to the right. I sat down in the grass and watched two courts of guys playing basketball. I was noticed by some of the guys shooting around because I was the only girl out there, so they started acting all swoll, quickly glancing over at me when they made a shot or dunk to make sure I saw it, or staring at the ground and looking intense as they ran after the rebound if they missed.

At one point a college girl walked by. She was super dressed up and strutting down the catwalk that was the edge of the courts, demanding alpha attention. Halfway across, she starts whistling and yelling dramatically for her dog, who was only a couple of yards away, never breaking her strut. She was determined to be seen. She got her attention, but I was suprised when she didn’t make another pass along the courts. If you’re gonna get that dressed up and come up with a plan, you may as well maximize your hoochie exposure.

Heading back to my car, I saw a guy jumping on the plastic bridge of the plastic kiddie-pleasure fort in the playground. He would test it with his weight, and then start stomping on it. Up down up down with his hands on the rope handrail to support his weight, pounding on the bridge like he was convinced it was a trampoline that had morally wronged him. Then he would stop, testing it gingerly with his weight again, before repeating his masculine stomping ritual. He was so engaged with his project that he didn’t notice me standing at the edge of the sand lagoon, staring at him. When he finally glanced up, his head jerked in surprise. “Are you trying to break that?” I asked, diabolically trying to keep my tone neutral so he couldn’t quite tell if I was a mayhem co-conspirator or someone about to call the cops. He laughed the way my six year old cousin laughs, a reflex of innocence and happiness that bubbles up from the gut. He paused to grasp an answer before shyly saying, “No…it’s just that…I haven’t been on one of these things since I was a little kid. It’s so springy it’s amazing!”

I looked at him for a moment, at the guilty smile buried in his mischievous eyes, then burst out laughing.

“It looked really funny. And you did it for like 10 minutes and were so intense about it, you didn’t notice anyone watching.”

He laughed, lowering his head slightly but not breaking his glance. He had beautiful teeth.

“This must look weird…,” he said.

“Oh no. I meant…” I fought a brief tug-of-war with my impulsivity. “It was really cute.”

We stood there smiling at each other for a long moment, before I suddenly processed what I had said and panicked. I felt like a deer caught in headlights–I turned around and walked away, settling on tucking myself into a grove of trees by the basketball courts. I looked out at the stars for a little while. Or planes. I couldn’t figure out if the dots were stars or planes. Then I started thinking about how those missing-until-the-dumped-body-is-found stories always start out with how the missing person’s last known whereabouts was heading to or inside a park, so I left.

I finally hit Best Buy and got my videotapes. In line at the checkout, there were three middle-aged, working-class Hispanic guys in front of me. One was buying a DVD set of Tarzan and a documentary about pirates. I envisioned this guy going home, popping in a DVD about pirates and watching it with the contentment of having his children gathered around him. That vision gave me warm and fuzzy feelings. When you think about all the things that make people happy, all the different, random, unique things that can be drawn out of even difficult life paths that can bring a person contentment, it really points out how there are so many things that could be wonderful sources of peace and contentment that most people take for granted. Like watching a discount Pirate DVD after dinner with your family.