Pinkeye-ponderings

As I sit alone in my dorm this Friday night wondering if I have pink-eye, I ponder. I have been doing quite a lot of pondering this semester, so this is in no way an unusual activity for me. Some may think that it is… an unusual activity… for me. I regret to inform them that they are mistaken. It seems as though some have mistaken my silence and learned indifference to be an indication of my stupidity. Although I may at times, or most of the time, seem rather vapid… I assure you that I am thinking. You can comfort yourself with the thought that I may just be trying to figure out a way to end our conversation. 

Back to the pondering (the meat).

My pondering begins almost as soon as I wake up (I say ‘almost’ because I usually begin my days with several minutes of confusion—“where am I?” “What happened to the tree that was about to fall on my bed?” “why did I just have a dream that I adopted a monkey with a human head, and why was I showing it pictures of tigers in my grandparents house?”—you know, the usual—I have to get this stuff sorted out first before I can start learning… learning in college… “I fucking hate college”—I have heard that one before). 

I ponder while trying to snatch a few more minutes in the warm cocoon I affectionately refer to as my bed (am I a fetus? —maybe), before heading to the shower where I continue my pondering. I ponder as I pick out my clothes, spray them with febreze, and then put them on, only to be assault them again by several sprays of cologne. 
“You smell REALLY good today!”
I will later ponder this statement while trying to stifle my laughter.
“Oh… (sheepish smile), thanks. Its Lacoste.”

I ponder as I brush my teeth, and floss under my false one (food has a tendency to gather underneath it—disgusting--I know…). I ponder as I avoid the elevators on the way to class (I prefer the stairs—elevators are awkward, and I can use the exercise). 

My pondering continues after I enter class. Should I go to my usual seat or should I mix it up a bit, throw the others off? (I feel as though my new vantage point has given me a new perspective-- “I’ve never seen that mole before.”--“Wow! You see something new every day.”). There are new faces to read, lives to analyze… I ponder the questions of my classmates.
“Did he really just ask that?” I think. 
“Is he retarded?”
“Maybe he has Aspergers.” 
“Assburgers?” (Hi. My name is _________ and I am here today to talk about my assburgers)
“He does talk funny.”
“I really shouldn’t role my eyes at all of his comments if he has Aspergers, because that would be mean—he can’t help it.” 
“Do I really go to school with retarded people?” 
“Am I retarded?”
“Should I even be using the word ‘retarded’?”
“Don’t some people find that word offensive?”
“Special?”
‘What’s for lunch?”

I ponder on my way to the dining hall.
“What ridiculous combination will I come up with today?”. 
Fried rice… burrito…. baked potato…. and…. a Danish? I am rather proud of my inclusion. I will make such a wonderful cultural anthropologist.

I ponder as I search for a seat. I like to turn this into a game, a hunt. As my eyes scan the room I analyze each table. I access their pros and cons. 
“Do I want to sit with my back to the door?”
“I can’t sit there. It is by the door. When people walk in the wind from outside will blow my napkins all over the room. It will look kind of pretty--the way they will frolic about the room, free… unstained, joyfully escaping my messy mouth-- but I won’t pick them up, I need to conserve.” (I think of Greenpeace and cringe).
“A booth?”
“No, I sat at a booth yesterday.”
“Hmmmmmmm……”
“That table over there?”
“No.”
It turns into a dialogue. I realize I have been standing in the same position for an unnatural amount of time. I panic. I walk to the corner booth. There is shit all over the top of the table.

“Fucking—balls!”
I sit.
“Did I just say that out loud?”
“Shit…”
Ponder. Ponder.. Ponder…

Jake Tomlin inc

Jake Tomlin hated it when people defied stereotypes. He hated it because it made it that much more difficult for him to pre-judge them. As he sipped his third cup of coffee and surveyed the rest of the people in the twenty-four hour café, he managed to pre-judge all of the other customers in a manner of sixteen seconds. Jake, it should be said, based his entire existence on the validity of his pre-judgments, most of which were based upon sixteen seconds of observation, and most of them were false. Had he based the validity of his pre-judgments on seventeen seconds of observation this would likely be a different story. Jake had once managed to pre-judge every person who had ever lived in a manner of three seconds. However, this was an unusual feat for Jake. It had followed an all-nighter for his philosophy class in which he was instructed to write an essay on “bullshit”. He had come to the conclusion that night in a manner of three seconds that all people who had ever lived, including the Greeks, the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Phonetians, the Hittites, the Romans, the Huns, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh, the San, the Jews, the Gentiles, and especially Bill O’Reilly were or are proliferators of bullshit. The reason for this judgment? Jake could think of several. They were all clearly incorporated into his well organized essay of three body paragraphs, held in place between a rather clever intro paragraph and a rather condemning and incendiary conclusion. After Jake paid his bill, he surveyed the room one final time. His eyes fell upon a booth that contained six drunken girls who were clearly trying to wind down from a night of bar-hopping.

The booth the girls were sitting in was a rather normal booth, one you might expect to find in a twenty four hour café. However, what the girls did not know about the booth was that it had been a womanizer named Darryl Jones in its previous life. Darryl had spent the majority of his adult years trying to feel up women in bars, without much success. Now, as a direct result of karma, he had been reincarnated as a booth in a twenty four hour café. A café that was frequented by drunk women who freely sat on top of him every night. However, without any hands or the sense of touch the booth that had once been Darryl Jones was unable to enjoy this sensation. The irony of the situation was probably lost the booth though. It had given up on trying to think years before, although it was not aware of this. Thinking, it must be noted, is a rather difficult skill for a booth to acquire. Most of them give up very early on in the process although a few have gone on to get PhD’s. Had this booth, who had once been Darryl Jones in a previous life, attained the ability to think it would probably have been very worried about the rather suspicious stain it had recently acquired. 

As Michelle Adams stared at the rather suspicious stain on the booth she was sitting in with her five sorority sisters, she couldn’t help but think about her boyfriend Guy Stripling. She and Guy had been dating for the last seven months and were madly in love with each other. In fact, they were so in love with each other that they couldn’t stand being around each other, a trait they share with most happily married couples. Michelle and Guy had recently spent their spring breaks together in Cancun, but that wasn’t what Michelle was thinking about. For some reason she kept getting the mental image of Guy laying in bed and her standing over him holding a knife. She was rather disturbed by the image, and she had a hard time thinking of anything else. She had also had a hard time earlier in the evening when she tried to explain to her sorority sisters why Guy had not joined them in their evening of bar-hopping. However, her thoughts were temporarily interrupted when her waitress who was apparently trying to defy physics, failed in her endeavor. 

As Audrey Blackman watched the plates that she had been balancing four seconds before tumble to the floor and shatter into two thousand three hundred and thirty nine pieces she couldn’t help but feel satisfied with her life. She was living her dream. Single mother at age twenty seven, three children under the age of five, an ex-husband who refused to pay child support, a sixty hour work week, and fifteen pounds gained over the past two months. Hers was the life. As she picked up the pieces of her culinary fresco, she caught sight of Daniel Renfrow who was sitting at a table close to the wall typing madly on his laptop. She had forgotten to take his order. 

As Mammie Proboscidea (the one who is writing this) sat at his table and moved his fingers rhythmically over the keys he couldn’t help but think about all of the homework he had to do before finals started. He had also recently come to the realization that he was out of ideas, and if he wrote anything else it probably would not be very good. He stopped typing, saved his writing as a word document, and shut off his computer. He would likely upload it later onto his blog, marvel at his cleverness, work on some French homework, and then fall asleep in a sea of narcissistic thoughts