Bored on the 4th of July

Well, I wasn’t really bored. But, I’ve been waiting forever to use that title, and I’m just gonna go ahead and use it.

I don’t recall being at a mall to shop on a day when it was virtually empty. You certainly get the brunt of everyone’s fake enthusiasm for whatever product they happen to be selling. Cell phone sellers have always been bad, the people at the Chinese food place in the food court tried to stuff me with samples (even though I was already next in line at Sbarro’s), even the slackers at the t-shirt store tried to sell me an extra keychain and a bumper sticker that said, “Fuck Off!”

However, the most intrusive sellers were the foreign people at their respective kiosks. I don’t want to make generalizations or sound racist, but everyone who stopped me that wasn’t selling a cell phone had a thick foreign accent. This might just be a selling tool, perhaps it helps sell the product on a sub-conscious level. Or maybe it helps when you try to tell them they short-changed you and they suddenly forget the language.

“Excuse me, miss. Thank you for the demonstration and telling me about the product, but I believe you owe me another $5 in change.”

“Que?”

To my credit, I was able to resist the lures of all the sellers involved. I went in, got what I needed, grabbed dinner and got out. Done.

I was even able to resist the charms of the, “Buy this product or they will send me back to my homeland and we will never be together!” girl. She approached me as I passed by and said, “Excuse me sir, do you have a lady in your life?”

I knew right away that she was selling something. No woman has EVER asked me that and not been selling something.

“No.” I said.

She seemed shocked. She must not have originally gotten a good look at me.

“How about a mother or sister?”

“Um… yea.” Arg! Stupid! I should have known from experience not to say that. I should have said they all died in a go-kart accident or something.

She took me by the hand and said, “Well, come here, I know they will love you for this!”

I let her take me. It was more contact than I’ve had with a woman than lately, so I just went with it. I was experiencing a weird sense of déjà vu. (I wrote about a very similar experience in Dec 2003).

She then proceeded to buff the fingernail on my middle finger with a block featuring various fabrics on each side.

“Feel that?” she said. “That buffs the nail and gets the blood flowing. Doesn’t that feel good?”

I agreed, but for some reason, it was also making me feel lonely.

“OK,” she said, getting ready to reveal my fingernail. “Are you ready to see this? One… Two…” There was a long pause after two. I began to wonder if she was waiting for me to say “Three.” I, wanting to show as little enthusiasm as possible, waited for her to say it.

“Three!” And there it was. My fingernail. Shinier than it was before. Probably shinier than it had ever been.

I realized at that moment, that despite the attractiveness of the girl buffing my nail, or the unprecedented shininess of said nail, I just didn’t give a fuck. No one I knew needed this, much less me. I said what I should have said from the start, “Thank you, but I’m just not interested.”

She abruptly dropped my hand and let me go without so much as a, “Goodbye,” or “Remember all the good times we had!”

So yes, it was just like last time, except I managed not to buy anything.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was just hanging out with friends and family, and then getting a few things done, like waxing the car and checking the tires (you know, that they’re not about to fall off).

Monday night we had a blackout. There was no storm, no wind, no rain, the power just done gone away. It went out at about quarter of ten.

After everything went dark, I decided to go to be early. I picked out my clothes for the next day and took a shower by candlelight (which was so romantic that I had to cuddle with myself afterwards). I then went to bed.

Somewhere around 10:30 our neighbor, diagonally to the rear of our house, thought to himself, “Well, I got all these extra fireworks, I might as well be a dick and fire them all off while it’s so dark and all, and while people who have to go to work are getting to sleep.”

That lasted until about 11:15. I didn’t want to be a party pooper and tell him to shut up. It was still July 4th after all.

Then, just as I was drifting off at about midnight, the power came back on. That, of course, is when you have to get up and reset all the clocks and turn off all the lights you accidentally left on. I crawled back into bed at about 12:15.

The next day, I dozed off for a moment at my desk and dreamed about trying to get to sleep with a black bag over my head while someone was shooting at me.