Worn Thin
It seems like it's been ages since I've written. It's not that nothing has happened, quite a bit has, it's just that every time I think about writing I don't know where to start or what to say.
The lights are always on
but no one is ever home
staring at a closed door
and feeling so alone.
A lot of the time people come to me a bit flustered or frustrated and say they don't even know where to start. I just always tell them to begin at the beginning, so I suppose that's what I'll do, too.
I saw my biological father for the first time in years a couple weeks ago. Whenever he calls and I see his name on the ID, I don't answer. Nothing registered, so I picked up to hear the familiar phrase he always uses when he's leaving a message that he doesn't believe I'll ever listen to. I always listen, though. I've been reading letters and listening to messages for years without responding. They stopped for a while, and when I realized that they'd stopped I felt sort of angry. If it were me, I reasoned, I'd never give up, even if I never heard anything back. I'd have to keep trying.
But he didn't give up, and he kept trying. I don't know him anymore, and he surely doesn't know me. He still has love for a small child who was neglected, abused, and abandoned by us both many years ago. I saw him a few times off and on in the beginning, but all in all haven't been under the same roof as him in nearly eight years.
"This is your dad," he said, his shaking voice giving away obvious surprise and nervousness at hearing me speak. He hesitated for a moment, waiting for me to hang up on him like I always do. When I didn't, he ran forward full speed, afraid that I'd change my mind at any second.
He was near town, he said, and wanted to take me out to eat or something. Anything. I made it sound like no big deal when I said yes. I guess it really wasn't. I'm finding out more and more that I work extremely well under high pressure. With a monotonous robotic tone, I agreed to meet him at The Olive Garden.
I'm not particularly fond of The Olive Garden, but a free meal is a free meal. Of course, no one is going to buy that that's the reason I went, but honestly, as I was driving there, I couldn't think of any other reason I was going. I didn't feel anything for him. I didn't love him or miss him or care what he was doing or how he felt. I wondered what he looked like now, but that was about it.
I took my time and let him get there first. I didn't want him seeing me before I saw him. The cruel thought to stand him up crossed my mind, but as pure as the evil running through my heart is, I know all too well what it's like when something that vile happens. To have a hope forged and destroyed is more painful than to never hope at all and all that jazz that I say.
Vile. Scrambled evil. Odd.
Years of construction and he's still a scrawny creature. Big glasses, the same haircut he's had all his life, tucked shirt with no bagginess, high pitched voice. My first thought was, "Thank God I look like my grandfather." But the actual words in my head were, "Oh my fucking God, what a total fucking dork."
Dorkery is forgiveable, I guess. I'm not exactly outside of the nerd class, due mostly to being polite.
We shake hands, and he has a weak handshake. I frown at it. Inside, the waitress asks us for our drink orders. I order coffee and he stares at me with the surprise one might have at a five year old ordering...well, coffee. He orders three different generic soft drinks that restaurants never carry before the waitress makes a suggestion that he takes. I felt embarrassment and wanted to smack him for the error.
We ate and there wasn't much talking. He tried to be verbal, saying that he had questions and was sure there were probably things I wanted to ask him, too. Truth is, there weren't. I didn't have anything to say to him, didn't have anything to ask. I was having dinner with a stranger for whom I felt nothing.
That's why I went, I decided. To see what I'd feel for him. And what I felt was absolutely nothing at all.
He asked inconsequential things. Why I'd taken my great grandfather's name, what I was doing in school, why I decided not talk to him. Why my sister hadn't associated much with him. Some of them simply didn't have real answers. Why take my grandfather's name? I liked it better. He seemed to want to hear me say something like, "Just to spite you because I hate you," or that like. I think that would've been easier for him to accept in a way. I wasn't giving him a lot of straight answers, and he knew it. I could tell he wasn't pursuing things because he didn't want to drill me...didn't want me to get pissed or defensive and not talk to him again. I wouldn't have cared.
We finished and left. Rather, he finished and told the waitress we were done. He was oblivious to his surroundings outside of everything he wanted to say but didn't know how to word. He reminded me of my internal self five years ago and made me realize how far I've come from such a pathetic form.
I took him to a bowling alley on campus. Bowling seems fun, from the three times I'd done it before that night, so I said I'd go. Maybe I'll feel something later on, I'd thought.
The first game he'd beaten me easily and, true to the way he always was, puffed up and smirked a lot about it as if I'd be impressed at his skill and the ability to beat someone who's played all of three games in his life. It made me want to smack him again, and the next game, probably due to his pride and my anger, I held a resounding victory. I told him I wanted a tie breaker; I didn't tell him it was because I was tired and either wanted to beat him or get over with losing because he'd have made me play another anyway for the chance to beat me. The computer scorer screwed up during the third round, which was okay with me because he would've probably won.
That was pretty much it. I still didn't feel anything. I showed him the way back to his car. He gave me some spending money and visibly debated whether to try and hug me or not. He went for an awkward arm-clasp (the beginnings of what I call a manhug or Italian hug) that I didn't return. He asked for my address and email address. I gave them to him, not because I wanted him back in my life or even to hear from him, but because I was apathetic.
Now I still feel nothing. If anything, I feel a little sorry for him. Not a whole lot, because he brought a great deal of things on his own head. But a little, simply because I know that he has the heart-killer hope, whereas I have nothing. I don't even have the want of anything. I don't at all mind feeling nothing for him. I grew up without him, practically raised myself and learned everything I know by myself. There's been nothing to miss, nothing to want back. Having a child is different, though. Seeing other people with children when you no longer have one of your own is different. The extent of my emotion has been an occasional curiousity at seeing friends' parents and wondering what it's like to have any close family at all.
In academic news, I found out that I can't advance to the department of education because my cumulative GPA isn't high enough. In order to raise it to what it'd have to be by next semester and continue without any setbacks, I'd have to make a 3.8 this semester. Since that's not going to happen, I can't take any education courses next year and have to hope for the best this semester and next. I've gotten high Cs on the first two of my three political science tests, which is disappointing considering how well I thought I did leaving the exam each time. In German, which would normally be an easy A, there's a new dean who's decided that a bunch of people getting As is a bad reflection, so the material is now ridiculously impossible on the exams and I'm not expecting more than a C in there, hopefully a B. My creative writing course should yield a B if not an A. I missed some classes at key points, but if I keep on top of things for the rest of the year I should be fine in there. My lower-level education course should be okay, it's only a pass/fail course. Problem is, if you pass, it doesn't count in your GPA, but if you fail, it counts as an F. What bullshit...and what's hurting my GPA so much right now is that I didn't drop it in time the last time I signed up and ended up having to take a fail for it (as well as for a math course that I didn't even bother taking the final in because I was doing so poorly). My higher-level education project should be a decent grade as long as I can keep getting by without having actually read any of the material. I only got a 66% (that's an F, Canadians) on my first test because the textbooks had sold out. I love how my school plans ahead and doesn't order enough, let alone extras. There are a few group projects from here on out which should be okay. As long as I act enthusiastic my groupmates should rate me well. I'm trying.
I'm kind of late to register for next semester, since I didn't know what classes to plan on. Basically everything in the education department is based on recommendations or prereqs, so it sucks to have to register for a bunch of stuff only to find out you can't really take it and then have all the other classes full. Since the guidance people won't register you anymore and you have to do it all online yourself, it took me forever to trail through the twelve million proper links and files in order to get what I needed. Even then I was only able to register for three classes that I'll eventually need, and none that I want to take right now.
For instance, I could take a world religions class to satisfy a gen-ed humanities credit that I was originally told I didn't need. Or Roman culture, or another mythology course, or some fun philosophy courses. What's left? Philosophy of Language. Now, I suppose I am going to be a linguistics instructor, but seriously. Philosophy 411 or 441 or whatever it is concerning Phil o' Lang is NOT where I want to be when I'm trying to boost my GPA. Philosophy anything will be cumbersome at this point, let alone a 400 level course. Then there are a couple other boring classes. Symantics of Literature or some bullshit that no one in their right minds would ever find interesting. I'm dreading it already, and so far I've only got 9 credit hours lined up. I don't even know if that counts as being a full-time student, and it's definitely not worth the tuition and parking and all for only nine hours.
So let's face it: I'm going to be in college for four years attempting to become an English teacher and do great things, but because I don't have the 3.75 required to apply to the Department of English, I won't get my interview and will end up at a two-year technical school pounding about inside of computers. And even if I do and get the interview, I'll somehow manage to screw it up and not be one of the only 65 allowed in.
That's right. We have a shortage of teachers nationwide, and tons of people are trying to become educators. So what does my university do? It caps the number of people who are allowed to go on. If 65 people had a 4.0 and outstanding interviews, and the next guy had a 3.99 and an outstanding interview, the 3.99 guy wouldn't get in. How fucked up is that? Work for probably four or five years by that point only to have no guarantee whatsoever that you'll get in. I'm lucky, too. My department is capped at around 65 but usually only has about 40 applicants. Special Education only allows 10-15 people in, and it's the most understaffed field there is. You can't convince me that there aren't people rejected from that department, which is utterly stupid (the rejection, not the department).
Anyway, I guess I just need to hang in there. And I definitely need a better study environment where there isn't constant drinking and drug usage and loud music and faggots with fake lisps in the hallway outside my door talking about their gay music and gay movies and gay clothes and gay superfluous shit because, you know, they're gay and want everyone to know it because it's important that they're gay.
Which is why I'm presently looking to move into an apartment and out of the dorms, starting in January after Christmahannukwanzaakah Break. There's talk of moving in with Chaos and his womanfriend, however I don't know if being the third wheel would be a good idea. As long as there's no audible sex. Audible sex=bad for roommate. I'm sure they'd be on my ass, too, with my bad habits and all. I'm clean and hygenic everywhere by at my desk, so that wouldn't be a problem. Just my occasional cigar binge or when I get a new videogame and don't budge from the couch for days on end.
I don't think it'd be bad, though. His lady and I can cook, I don't know about him. So at least we could have real food sometimes, and splitting the rent between three people would cut costs down 80ish bucks a month. There'd be more utilities, but we'd be splitting that three ways anyhow. I'm all for it, but it'll be another several months before it happens. My lease would start in January, and theirs runs out in the summer, so they'd have to just let theirs out and move in with me. The problem with that is that I have to either pay the cost of a two bedroom for the several months until they moved in with me for a room that wouldn't be used, or pay the half year of rent for a single bedroom that wouldn't be used to avoid breaking my contract after I moved in with them. I think that it'd be cheaper to just break the contract. There's the slim chance that it wouldn't be considered a breach if I was still living in the complex, however I doubt it since only one apartment would be being rented and not two. We'll figure that all out when the time comes. I may not be able to even get anything yet, in which case I'll be in the dorms til summer anyway, or Chaos might not even be allowed to move in with his lady and I. The only really obvious difficulty would be that my mother couldn't be allowed in because she hates Chaos with a burning passion and doesn't know I still talk to him. She'd catch on eventually, but fuck if I care. If she's still pissed about something that happened well over five years ago, she needs her head checked.
She needs her head checked anyway, but still.
I should've been home Friday night at around 8:00 p.m. During cleanup at work, there's a large cutting board, probably about five feet (1.66 metres) long and a foot and a half wide (.5 metres). It's made of pretty heavy plastic and fell on one of my coworker's feet. I saw it happen but was too far away to catch the board. I asked her if she was okay, and she said yes. After an, "I know you're not okay," look, I turn back to my work for all of two seconds before she gasps, "AH!"
I look over, and the end of her shoe is covered in blood. I have her lean back on one of the counters and prop her foot up on me, working carefully to unlace her shoe and not hurt her. I get the shoe off, and her sock is totally drenched in thick blood. I grab some scissors and tell her that I'm cutting the sock off and she makes no objection.
When I get the sock off, she sees the blood pouring out and looks away. I throw some paper towells under her foot. I wasn't really thinking of the fact that we serve food, just that I didn't want her to get any contaminants in her blood. My hands have sterile powder on them from our gloves, so I take off my gloves, wipe away the blood, and tell her I'm going to feel the giant uprise on the top of her big toe that's bleeding like crazy. She cringes and nods.
I'm worried that it's a compound fracture, but it's soft to the touch and I don't feel any bone. One other coworker who doesn't like either of us is smirking and has just continued cleaning, the other is in the back washing dishes. I ask the girl if she'll be okay for a second while I get some gauze and she says yes. I run back to the supervisor and tell him what's happened. He barely takes time to hand me a "first aid kit" which is really just a couple bandaids and some old out of date gauze. It doesn't even have burn salve, and burns are the most common injury at our workplace.
I loosely wrap the girl's foot and tell her that it's loose and I'm going to need her to apply as much pressure as she can stand as I take her to the hospital. She objects to going to the hospital and insists she'll be fine; she hates doctors and hospitals.
I tell her that no, she's not going home, she's going to the hospital and I'm taking her now. She stalls around, saying she needs to get her things from the office first and such and just wants to go home. Since you can't give someone medical treatment against their will, either doctor or civilian, I agreed to simply take her home. By the time we got her to her sorority house, she was still losing blood and was still in pain.
Earlier I'd brushed the bottom of her foot, tapped the end of her toes, her leg, to make sure everything felt all right and wasn't either numb or painful. Now, doing the same things, she could not feel some and others were painful. Some of her housemates saw and insisted she go to the hospital. She finally agreed.
She went with three of them to the emergency room and I tailed them. In the emergency room they wrapped her foot in some proper gauze and the long wait began. Two of her "friends" left to go do other things, and she was visibly nervous. Not meaning to treat her like a child, I tossed her a caramel I had in my pocket to distract some of her senses from her toe.
To cut out a lot of superfluous details, the remaining housemate and I stayed in a hospital emergency room for a long, long while with her until her boyfriend and a doctor showed up.
The doctor told me to hold the injured girl's hand as she was given a couple small shots in her toe. I started to tell the boyfriend to get over there and do his job, but he and the rest of her associates had all acted unworried and distracted the whole time, as if they were being inconvenienced. Finally my hands had stopped shaking the way they had been since the beginning when I was trying to put on the ancient gauze without hurting her. Hers, on the other hand, moved nervously and emanated heat.
The doctor rinsed her toe out several times with sanitary fluids. She opened the cut up, saying something like, "Ah, I can see your tendon." I looked in and sure enough, there was the white tendon, luckily undamaged. The girl tried not to look as the doctor put in three stitches before going to retrieve an x-ray machine.
The girl called her parents to tell them what had happened, only to be greeted with unpleasantries that went unheard of on my end of things. By the time she hung up, the girl was crying, more hurt by the uncaring of her mother and sister than by her injury.
X-rays were taken and a fracture was discovered on the joint. The chief result would be that she would have an early onset of arthritis, but that it would be restricted to that toe. Nothing major, simply use a hard-soled shoe that doesn't bend until they instruct otherwise and come back every seven days for two weeks for them to check the stitches and take them out when the skin is healed.
We were finally released around 11:00 p.m., and I left her in the care of her friend and boyfriend, hoping that they'd show some affection and, well, care.
She's a good kid, I thought to myself, I hope she heals okay and ends up happy. No good people should have shitty parents. Or shitty friends. Or have to cry.
When I got home, I pulled out my little box of cigars that had two left in it and stuffed it in my coat pocket. It was bitter-cold outside, but I didn't care. I'd been saving them for when I felt I'd earned them, and I told myself I'd earned one that night.
So maybe I'd earned one, but I ended up smoking them both. Hands shaking or not, I still had the jitters. I had been so efficient and reacted so well even in the urgency and magnitude of the situation that I was astonished at myself. I didn't care that all the blood spilling onto my hands might have a disease in it, or that I'd had to clock off early and wouldn't get full pay, or that I could've been somewhere else. I just wanted to do my best to make her not hurt, and I did.
On the one hand, this makes me happy to know that I would be an even more caring father to my own children than to someone who (despite being older) I view as a sort of child of mine. On the other hand, if my hands shake that much for someone I don't even see on a daily basis, I could only imagine how short a time my heart would hold out with children that I myself had made.
Back in my room, I turned on some soft music and collapsed. I was in a deep, silent sleep in seconds.
The lights are always on
but no one is ever home
staring at a closed door
and feeling so alone.
A lot of the time people come to me a bit flustered or frustrated and say they don't even know where to start. I just always tell them to begin at the beginning, so I suppose that's what I'll do, too.
I saw my biological father for the first time in years a couple weeks ago. Whenever he calls and I see his name on the ID, I don't answer. Nothing registered, so I picked up to hear the familiar phrase he always uses when he's leaving a message that he doesn't believe I'll ever listen to. I always listen, though. I've been reading letters and listening to messages for years without responding. They stopped for a while, and when I realized that they'd stopped I felt sort of angry. If it were me, I reasoned, I'd never give up, even if I never heard anything back. I'd have to keep trying.
But he didn't give up, and he kept trying. I don't know him anymore, and he surely doesn't know me. He still has love for a small child who was neglected, abused, and abandoned by us both many years ago. I saw him a few times off and on in the beginning, but all in all haven't been under the same roof as him in nearly eight years.
"This is your dad," he said, his shaking voice giving away obvious surprise and nervousness at hearing me speak. He hesitated for a moment, waiting for me to hang up on him like I always do. When I didn't, he ran forward full speed, afraid that I'd change my mind at any second.
He was near town, he said, and wanted to take me out to eat or something. Anything. I made it sound like no big deal when I said yes. I guess it really wasn't. I'm finding out more and more that I work extremely well under high pressure. With a monotonous robotic tone, I agreed to meet him at The Olive Garden.
I'm not particularly fond of The Olive Garden, but a free meal is a free meal. Of course, no one is going to buy that that's the reason I went, but honestly, as I was driving there, I couldn't think of any other reason I was going. I didn't feel anything for him. I didn't love him or miss him or care what he was doing or how he felt. I wondered what he looked like now, but that was about it.
I took my time and let him get there first. I didn't want him seeing me before I saw him. The cruel thought to stand him up crossed my mind, but as pure as the evil running through my heart is, I know all too well what it's like when something that vile happens. To have a hope forged and destroyed is more painful than to never hope at all and all that jazz that I say.
Vile. Scrambled evil. Odd.
Years of construction and he's still a scrawny creature. Big glasses, the same haircut he's had all his life, tucked shirt with no bagginess, high pitched voice. My first thought was, "Thank God I look like my grandfather." But the actual words in my head were, "Oh my fucking God, what a total fucking dork."
Dorkery is forgiveable, I guess. I'm not exactly outside of the nerd class, due mostly to being polite.
We shake hands, and he has a weak handshake. I frown at it. Inside, the waitress asks us for our drink orders. I order coffee and he stares at me with the surprise one might have at a five year old ordering...well, coffee. He orders three different generic soft drinks that restaurants never carry before the waitress makes a suggestion that he takes. I felt embarrassment and wanted to smack him for the error.
We ate and there wasn't much talking. He tried to be verbal, saying that he had questions and was sure there were probably things I wanted to ask him, too. Truth is, there weren't. I didn't have anything to say to him, didn't have anything to ask. I was having dinner with a stranger for whom I felt nothing.
That's why I went, I decided. To see what I'd feel for him. And what I felt was absolutely nothing at all.
He asked inconsequential things. Why I'd taken my great grandfather's name, what I was doing in school, why I decided not talk to him. Why my sister hadn't associated much with him. Some of them simply didn't have real answers. Why take my grandfather's name? I liked it better. He seemed to want to hear me say something like, "Just to spite you because I hate you," or that like. I think that would've been easier for him to accept in a way. I wasn't giving him a lot of straight answers, and he knew it. I could tell he wasn't pursuing things because he didn't want to drill me...didn't want me to get pissed or defensive and not talk to him again. I wouldn't have cared.
We finished and left. Rather, he finished and told the waitress we were done. He was oblivious to his surroundings outside of everything he wanted to say but didn't know how to word. He reminded me of my internal self five years ago and made me realize how far I've come from such a pathetic form.
I took him to a bowling alley on campus. Bowling seems fun, from the three times I'd done it before that night, so I said I'd go. Maybe I'll feel something later on, I'd thought.
The first game he'd beaten me easily and, true to the way he always was, puffed up and smirked a lot about it as if I'd be impressed at his skill and the ability to beat someone who's played all of three games in his life. It made me want to smack him again, and the next game, probably due to his pride and my anger, I held a resounding victory. I told him I wanted a tie breaker; I didn't tell him it was because I was tired and either wanted to beat him or get over with losing because he'd have made me play another anyway for the chance to beat me. The computer scorer screwed up during the third round, which was okay with me because he would've probably won.
That was pretty much it. I still didn't feel anything. I showed him the way back to his car. He gave me some spending money and visibly debated whether to try and hug me or not. He went for an awkward arm-clasp (the beginnings of what I call a manhug or Italian hug) that I didn't return. He asked for my address and email address. I gave them to him, not because I wanted him back in my life or even to hear from him, but because I was apathetic.
Now I still feel nothing. If anything, I feel a little sorry for him. Not a whole lot, because he brought a great deal of things on his own head. But a little, simply because I know that he has the heart-killer hope, whereas I have nothing. I don't even have the want of anything. I don't at all mind feeling nothing for him. I grew up without him, practically raised myself and learned everything I know by myself. There's been nothing to miss, nothing to want back. Having a child is different, though. Seeing other people with children when you no longer have one of your own is different. The extent of my emotion has been an occasional curiousity at seeing friends' parents and wondering what it's like to have any close family at all.
In academic news, I found out that I can't advance to the department of education because my cumulative GPA isn't high enough. In order to raise it to what it'd have to be by next semester and continue without any setbacks, I'd have to make a 3.8 this semester. Since that's not going to happen, I can't take any education courses next year and have to hope for the best this semester and next. I've gotten high Cs on the first two of my three political science tests, which is disappointing considering how well I thought I did leaving the exam each time. In German, which would normally be an easy A, there's a new dean who's decided that a bunch of people getting As is a bad reflection, so the material is now ridiculously impossible on the exams and I'm not expecting more than a C in there, hopefully a B. My creative writing course should yield a B if not an A. I missed some classes at key points, but if I keep on top of things for the rest of the year I should be fine in there. My lower-level education course should be okay, it's only a pass/fail course. Problem is, if you pass, it doesn't count in your GPA, but if you fail, it counts as an F. What bullshit...and what's hurting my GPA so much right now is that I didn't drop it in time the last time I signed up and ended up having to take a fail for it (as well as for a math course that I didn't even bother taking the final in because I was doing so poorly). My higher-level education project should be a decent grade as long as I can keep getting by without having actually read any of the material. I only got a 66% (that's an F, Canadians) on my first test because the textbooks had sold out. I love how my school plans ahead and doesn't order enough, let alone extras. There are a few group projects from here on out which should be okay. As long as I act enthusiastic my groupmates should rate me well. I'm trying.
I'm kind of late to register for next semester, since I didn't know what classes to plan on. Basically everything in the education department is based on recommendations or prereqs, so it sucks to have to register for a bunch of stuff only to find out you can't really take it and then have all the other classes full. Since the guidance people won't register you anymore and you have to do it all online yourself, it took me forever to trail through the twelve million proper links and files in order to get what I needed. Even then I was only able to register for three classes that I'll eventually need, and none that I want to take right now.
For instance, I could take a world religions class to satisfy a gen-ed humanities credit that I was originally told I didn't need. Or Roman culture, or another mythology course, or some fun philosophy courses. What's left? Philosophy of Language. Now, I suppose I am going to be a linguistics instructor, but seriously. Philosophy 411 or 441 or whatever it is concerning Phil o' Lang is NOT where I want to be when I'm trying to boost my GPA. Philosophy anything will be cumbersome at this point, let alone a 400 level course. Then there are a couple other boring classes. Symantics of Literature or some bullshit that no one in their right minds would ever find interesting. I'm dreading it already, and so far I've only got 9 credit hours lined up. I don't even know if that counts as being a full-time student, and it's definitely not worth the tuition and parking and all for only nine hours.
So let's face it: I'm going to be in college for four years attempting to become an English teacher and do great things, but because I don't have the 3.75 required to apply to the Department of English, I won't get my interview and will end up at a two-year technical school pounding about inside of computers. And even if I do and get the interview, I'll somehow manage to screw it up and not be one of the only 65 allowed in.
That's right. We have a shortage of teachers nationwide, and tons of people are trying to become educators. So what does my university do? It caps the number of people who are allowed to go on. If 65 people had a 4.0 and outstanding interviews, and the next guy had a 3.99 and an outstanding interview, the 3.99 guy wouldn't get in. How fucked up is that? Work for probably four or five years by that point only to have no guarantee whatsoever that you'll get in. I'm lucky, too. My department is capped at around 65 but usually only has about 40 applicants. Special Education only allows 10-15 people in, and it's the most understaffed field there is. You can't convince me that there aren't people rejected from that department, which is utterly stupid (the rejection, not the department).
Anyway, I guess I just need to hang in there. And I definitely need a better study environment where there isn't constant drinking and drug usage and loud music and faggots with fake lisps in the hallway outside my door talking about their gay music and gay movies and gay clothes and gay superfluous shit because, you know, they're gay and want everyone to know it because it's important that they're gay.
Which is why I'm presently looking to move into an apartment and out of the dorms, starting in January after Christmahannukwanzaakah Break. There's talk of moving in with Chaos and his womanfriend, however I don't know if being the third wheel would be a good idea. As long as there's no audible sex. Audible sex=bad for roommate. I'm sure they'd be on my ass, too, with my bad habits and all. I'm clean and hygenic everywhere by at my desk, so that wouldn't be a problem. Just my occasional cigar binge or when I get a new videogame and don't budge from the couch for days on end.
I don't think it'd be bad, though. His lady and I can cook, I don't know about him. So at least we could have real food sometimes, and splitting the rent between three people would cut costs down 80ish bucks a month. There'd be more utilities, but we'd be splitting that three ways anyhow. I'm all for it, but it'll be another several months before it happens. My lease would start in January, and theirs runs out in the summer, so they'd have to just let theirs out and move in with me. The problem with that is that I have to either pay the cost of a two bedroom for the several months until they moved in with me for a room that wouldn't be used, or pay the half year of rent for a single bedroom that wouldn't be used to avoid breaking my contract after I moved in with them. I think that it'd be cheaper to just break the contract. There's the slim chance that it wouldn't be considered a breach if I was still living in the complex, however I doubt it since only one apartment would be being rented and not two. We'll figure that all out when the time comes. I may not be able to even get anything yet, in which case I'll be in the dorms til summer anyway, or Chaos might not even be allowed to move in with his lady and I. The only really obvious difficulty would be that my mother couldn't be allowed in because she hates Chaos with a burning passion and doesn't know I still talk to him. She'd catch on eventually, but fuck if I care. If she's still pissed about something that happened well over five years ago, she needs her head checked.
She needs her head checked anyway, but still.
I should've been home Friday night at around 8:00 p.m. During cleanup at work, there's a large cutting board, probably about five feet (1.66 metres) long and a foot and a half wide (.5 metres). It's made of pretty heavy plastic and fell on one of my coworker's feet. I saw it happen but was too far away to catch the board. I asked her if she was okay, and she said yes. After an, "I know you're not okay," look, I turn back to my work for all of two seconds before she gasps, "AH!"
I look over, and the end of her shoe is covered in blood. I have her lean back on one of the counters and prop her foot up on me, working carefully to unlace her shoe and not hurt her. I get the shoe off, and her sock is totally drenched in thick blood. I grab some scissors and tell her that I'm cutting the sock off and she makes no objection.
When I get the sock off, she sees the blood pouring out and looks away. I throw some paper towells under her foot. I wasn't really thinking of the fact that we serve food, just that I didn't want her to get any contaminants in her blood. My hands have sterile powder on them from our gloves, so I take off my gloves, wipe away the blood, and tell her I'm going to feel the giant uprise on the top of her big toe that's bleeding like crazy. She cringes and nods.
I'm worried that it's a compound fracture, but it's soft to the touch and I don't feel any bone. One other coworker who doesn't like either of us is smirking and has just continued cleaning, the other is in the back washing dishes. I ask the girl if she'll be okay for a second while I get some gauze and she says yes. I run back to the supervisor and tell him what's happened. He barely takes time to hand me a "first aid kit" which is really just a couple bandaids and some old out of date gauze. It doesn't even have burn salve, and burns are the most common injury at our workplace.
I loosely wrap the girl's foot and tell her that it's loose and I'm going to need her to apply as much pressure as she can stand as I take her to the hospital. She objects to going to the hospital and insists she'll be fine; she hates doctors and hospitals.
I tell her that no, she's not going home, she's going to the hospital and I'm taking her now. She stalls around, saying she needs to get her things from the office first and such and just wants to go home. Since you can't give someone medical treatment against their will, either doctor or civilian, I agreed to simply take her home. By the time we got her to her sorority house, she was still losing blood and was still in pain.
Earlier I'd brushed the bottom of her foot, tapped the end of her toes, her leg, to make sure everything felt all right and wasn't either numb or painful. Now, doing the same things, she could not feel some and others were painful. Some of her housemates saw and insisted she go to the hospital. She finally agreed.
She went with three of them to the emergency room and I tailed them. In the emergency room they wrapped her foot in some proper gauze and the long wait began. Two of her "friends" left to go do other things, and she was visibly nervous. Not meaning to treat her like a child, I tossed her a caramel I had in my pocket to distract some of her senses from her toe.
To cut out a lot of superfluous details, the remaining housemate and I stayed in a hospital emergency room for a long, long while with her until her boyfriend and a doctor showed up.
The doctor told me to hold the injured girl's hand as she was given a couple small shots in her toe. I started to tell the boyfriend to get over there and do his job, but he and the rest of her associates had all acted unworried and distracted the whole time, as if they were being inconvenienced. Finally my hands had stopped shaking the way they had been since the beginning when I was trying to put on the ancient gauze without hurting her. Hers, on the other hand, moved nervously and emanated heat.
The doctor rinsed her toe out several times with sanitary fluids. She opened the cut up, saying something like, "Ah, I can see your tendon." I looked in and sure enough, there was the white tendon, luckily undamaged. The girl tried not to look as the doctor put in three stitches before going to retrieve an x-ray machine.
The girl called her parents to tell them what had happened, only to be greeted with unpleasantries that went unheard of on my end of things. By the time she hung up, the girl was crying, more hurt by the uncaring of her mother and sister than by her injury.
X-rays were taken and a fracture was discovered on the joint. The chief result would be that she would have an early onset of arthritis, but that it would be restricted to that toe. Nothing major, simply use a hard-soled shoe that doesn't bend until they instruct otherwise and come back every seven days for two weeks for them to check the stitches and take them out when the skin is healed.
We were finally released around 11:00 p.m., and I left her in the care of her friend and boyfriend, hoping that they'd show some affection and, well, care.
She's a good kid, I thought to myself, I hope she heals okay and ends up happy. No good people should have shitty parents. Or shitty friends. Or have to cry.
When I got home, I pulled out my little box of cigars that had two left in it and stuffed it in my coat pocket. It was bitter-cold outside, but I didn't care. I'd been saving them for when I felt I'd earned them, and I told myself I'd earned one that night.
So maybe I'd earned one, but I ended up smoking them both. Hands shaking or not, I still had the jitters. I had been so efficient and reacted so well even in the urgency and magnitude of the situation that I was astonished at myself. I didn't care that all the blood spilling onto my hands might have a disease in it, or that I'd had to clock off early and wouldn't get full pay, or that I could've been somewhere else. I just wanted to do my best to make her not hurt, and I did.
On the one hand, this makes me happy to know that I would be an even more caring father to my own children than to someone who (despite being older) I view as a sort of child of mine. On the other hand, if my hands shake that much for someone I don't even see on a daily basis, I could only imagine how short a time my heart would hold out with children that I myself had made.
Back in my room, I turned on some soft music and collapsed. I was in a deep, silent sleep in seconds.
posted by red at 23:46
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