The girls are angels to Arrrgh! Put that down! In spite of the toddler attitudes, you also have the beginning of real empathy for others. They’ll give you a little hug or kiss when you least suspect it. On the downside, they’re giving all of their best material to Grandma and their child care provider. They’re little freak’n angels when Grandma’s around, they never fight when they comb their hair or put them down for bed and we hear tales of politeness and super cuteness. By the time we get them, they just want to pretend you’re feeding them live worms, instead of dinner. Or bedtime is some sort of code for medieval torture. Speaking of tourture, there is nothing worst than twins toddlers with colds especially when they do them one after the other so the complaining, lack of sleep and cries of: “Nose!” (Indication that they want you to get out of bed and blow their noses at 4 AM) last for 14 days instead of 7. And then, you get your cold!
Both squabs can count to 3 (when they want) and they’ll repeat the most difficult to say things back at you. Like I said: “It was a nice day, huh guys? It’s nice outside.” Then I heard them both say: “It’s nice outside.”
“a” can catch a ball and “m” can throw it pretty well so I guess I’m on my way to that female softball team.
"Please put that candy in your anus."
"What?" Says J, This woman I really hate at work. She's going around offering people candy on Valentines Day
"Please put that candy in your anus." I repeat in my head, imaging that her next question would be: "What did you say?" To which I would say: "Oh, I'm sorry, I tried to use the polite version. I meant to say; you can shove your candy up your ass, sideways."
"No thanks." I really say. I really have no need for blood spiking, fake chocolate sugar bombs. Just what a pre-diabetic needs.
In order to combat my Pre-DB I’ve signed up for three free classes at the hospital: Pre Diabetes and You (as opposed to who else? Pre Diabetes and that bastard that lives across the hall from you?), Stress management and coping with Anxiety. You notice that most classes are stress reduction. I could have signed up for Baseball Bat Swinging in a Crowded Room or Do it yourself Vasectomies, but I chose stress reduction instead.
When I got there, the anxiety class was empty except for two people—a married couple from New York. He was the one with the most problems. He was stressed because he couldn't find a job and he worked a block away from the Twin Towers during the big hoo-ha. He witnessed the planes crash as well as seeing people jump to their death. What a crybaby! In my day planes crashed into buildings every day and it wasn't a Sunday unless you saw at least 5 people jump to their death!
We waited for a few minutes until this chick shows up, “Is this the Anxiety class?” She yelled, throwing a handful of lit firecrackers into the room. She seemed puzzled that only three people showed up. She goes to the class next door and discovers the rest of the class had gone into the wrong room. After cattle prodding them into the right class, she announces that there seems to be some missing literature. Off she goes to Xerox™ the info, leaving us waiting in the anxiety class, alone! With the sound of wolves in the background! I'm surprised no one died. 12 years later, she comes back and the class starts. She tells us that this is an “info only” class, not a seminar type thing, in other words: Go waste your tears somewhere else or she’ll point and laugh at you. But she does ask why we're here, so of course there's a little bit of gut spilling. Besides couple #911, there's the woman who literally can't remember her childhood (Oh, if only I can forget the time I stood up in 1st grade to adjust the bulging cloth of my pants which to the rest of the class looked like I was standing up to do a Michael Jackson crotch grab!), There was the usual: My job sucks the crap out of an elephants ass, people like me and my personal favorite, Just a week after a female postal worker went nuts and gunned down 5 employee's, a female postal worker who's so stressed by her boss, she once went to the hospital because she thought she was having a heart attack.
The class was mostly: What is anxiety? What causes it? Why Mel Brook's High Anxiety is so fucking funny etc…
The next class was Pre Diabetes and You...Yes you! This class was packed, which is a testament to the fine people at McDonalds and Nintendo for creating a race of fat, inactive couch monkeys. I learned a lot about diet and just how misinformed other people are. One guy’s Dr. told him he couldn’t eat fruit anymore. That’s a good idea! You should go on the curvy scurvy diet plan! When the instructor heard that the guy only drank water for breakfast, he left the room for a few minutes and then came back. My theory was, he went to go pummel the Dr. for giving stupid advice. Upon not finding him, he found his office and hid a bucket of raw shrimp in the air ducts. There was only one guy around my age, the rest were old to very old. One was a blind woman. Talk about double suck. You have diabetes from all of that food you’ve never seen. Like getting VD from a Playboy. My next class will be a six weeks long one on stress reduction. I heard they’d be lots of blowjobs, no wait that’s at the Learning Annex.
So, even after all that stress reduction training, my life continues to throw ape feces at me. At work they dragged us all into a meeting in order to threaten me with being fired if we didn’t get our accuracy up. It’s amazing that they can take my job which use to take 3 people and expect me to be accurate, fast, underpaid and happy at the same time. They actually expect me to not only do my job, but proof read it as well. Now, I’ll do what I can but I was told, even in high school that you should never proof read your own work. I mean really, I look at hundreds of jobs everyday. Give me a break. But alas, either they’ll get it or I’ll be fired.
In the outside world, I was walking to the station and came across a little old Chinese lady, laid out on the sidewalk. This White guy is with her and is on the cell phone talking to someone, I thought it was 911 but apparently he’s talking to the woman’s nursing home, with her phone. Guh? Hello! First step, administer first aid. If you need to call for help, and there are millions of people walking by, get them to call. Not that I know what the hell I’m doing. I stop and tried to remember about concussions. I check her pupils for dilation, asked her if she knew where she lived, the date and to get her head off the hard sidewalk, I took my jacket off and made a pillow for her. When I lifted her head I noticed she had a lump the size of a baseball on the back of her head. Meanwhile, as we’re helping her, people are walking by, A MUNI bus rolls by, and no one stops! Finally a bicyclist stops and he knows as much as I do. The guy on the phone says the old lady was getting on a bus, slipped and feel back. It was then that I realized: “Hey, wait! The bus is gone!” The driver and a busload of people watched a little old lady fall on her ass and drove on!!!! And people say New Yorkers are rude. My Ass! Luckily a fire dept. truck thingy with 3 EMTs happens to be passing by. They get out and do their mojo while I stood around as useful as a bible at an orgy.
When I saw those guys in action, I couldn’t help but think, sure they have some suck ass days: A head coming off, intestines unraveling like a yanked roll of toilet paper, blood that goes Whoosh! But at least at the end of the day they say:” I did no harm today and I helped save the world. That’s what I want from a job. Imagine having a shitty job you loved?
That’s it.
EM
