I’ve had some unusual interactions with customers over the last couple days. They are almost not story-worthy, because they aren’t overly peculiar. They aren’t stories I’d bring up at a party. When that’s necessary, I talk about when I worked at KFC and the time a lady bought a buffet, filled her plate, and then came back to the counter to ask me if I could watch her plate because she had to run home because she forgot to put in her bottom teeth.
Or the guy that had a baby skunk in his shirt.
Well, now I present to you:
Mediocre but slightly odd customers
A woman asked me where the corn meal was.
Me: Here’s our packaged corn meal options. We also have some in bulk if you’d prefer it that way.
Woman: Oh, I’m old school. I don’t understand that stuff.
Me: What? The bulk bins?
Woman: No, Georgia.
Me: ???
—
I was sorting some items on a shelf when a lady tapped on my shoulder. She was on her cell phone. She leaned very close to me and whispered in my ear. She even cupped her hand around my ear.
This is what she said: “canned chili.”
I don’t know why that was her method of asking where the canned chili is. I could only assume that she was buying a gift of canned chili for whomever she was speaking to on the phone and that that person must be very special to her.
Last night my boyfriend, Bryan, went out for awhile with some co-workers. He arrived home around midnight.
One of the first things he said to me was, “I did something bad when I was drunk. Because I’m really drunk.”
“What’d you do?” I expected to hear something about him getting kicked out of a bar or nearly starting a fight.
“I put bread on people’s cars.”
My look of concern evolved into confusion. I just stared at him until he continued.
“Their cars were in the walk ways.”
“Where did you get the bread?”
“I carefully spread it out on their cars. I put it on a lot of cars. They need to learn how to park.”
“Are you sure you were walking on the sidewalk?” I mean, he was pretty stinking boozed up.
“Yes. All these cars! That was bad of me. I’m a criminal–a miscreant.” (Okay, I just want to point out that he really used the word “miscreant.” While drunk.)
I eventually learned that he found half a loaf of bread at Kerry Park, which he apparently visited during his walk home. I don’t really know what compelled him to pick it up AND PUT IT ON THE CARS WHOSE PARKING SPOTS HE DISAPPROVED OF.
Here are some things that you might or might not already know about me:
1. I am the youngest of three. My sisters are 8 and 10 years older than me. We all, including my parents, live in different states.
2. I am a quiet person. I always have been. This is something that people have always made comments about. In first grade, during the brief time that I participated in Brownies, I was voted “quiet as a mouse.” That was twenty years ago. I partially feel that grad school made me uncomfortable because it is largely about talking, and a lot of the time I just want to listen and make jokes inside my head.
3. During my last year of college, I started a pelvic thrust revolution. What this involved was drinking, going to bars, and then getting on the dance floor with a group of friends and pelvic thrusting (along with other fashionable dance moves, like the running man) while other people took dancing at a rural Missouri bar far too seriously. At one point a DJ came up to me and said, “IT’S YOU. IT’S ALWAYS YOU!”
4. I can roll my tongue like this.. That is not my tongue though.
5. Piercings: For my 18th birthday, I got my bellybutton pierced. I took it out when I was 21, but now I wear a bellybutton ring as an earring in my upper cartilage (wow, so interesting!). When I was 19, I got my eyebrow pierced. That one eventually grew out. I can’t imagine ever having an eyebrow ring now. I also got my tragus pierced when I was 19 and I’ve never removed that ring. It’s been almost 7 years. My ear lobes each have three holes and the first is gauged to a size 00. I don’t really care about piercings now.
6. Without getting too preachy, here’s a list of how I contribute to my community (aka reasons why I am a good person without having to go to church): I volunteer 7 hours per week between two different organizations that strive to end homelessness and poverty, I volunteer about 2 hours per week to a literacy organization. I donate blood. I give money to the food bank. I buy newspapers from Real Change vendors. I fundraise for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society each year and also donate to the Susan G. Komen foundation. If you ask me to donate to a cause you support, and it’s not the Republican Party, I will likely give you a few dollars.
7. Here are some albums I can listen to over and over: Graceland by Paul Simon, Middle Cyclone by Neko Case, Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, Doolittle by The Pixies. I love listening to Bitches Brew by Miles Davis when I’m trying to write. I think that album saved me when I was trying to write my thesis in grad school.
8. I really really love eating and my grocery store job has only increased the amount that I think about food. Sometimes I wonder if I am a compulsive overeater, but I’m not. I’m just an overeater. This may be a problem when my metabolism slows down.
9. I have a soft spot for b-movies.
10. Literary things: I can recite “Funeral Blues” by W.H. Auden by memory. My MFA critical thesis explored Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt and their use of concrete description in their poems.
11. My favorite color is green. Maroon is a close second.
12. I once saw Def Leppard in concert with my sister. At the Missouri State Fair. There were a lot of women with leather skin, with torpedo boobs, wearing leopard print tube tops.
13. I can sing every word to the Jackson 5 Christmas album. I’m pretty sure my whole family can.
14. I don’t think Ben Stiller is that funny, but I am one of those people that can quote Zoolander. And I happily do so. That crap is funny, but not as funny as Wet Hot American Summer, which is my all-time favorite ridiculous comedy.
Dear Christopher Meloni,
How do you switch so effortlessly from Detective Stabler to Gene in Wet Hot American Summer to the ridiculous characters you play in the Harold and Kumar movies? I admire you.
Sincerely,
Tina
—
This post was inspired by the three awards I received this month from Christina, Amber, and Johana. I’m sorry that I don’t really know the conditions of each award and I’m not passing them on, but I do appreciate it!
What’s below is an excerpt from Steven Pinker’s 2007 book, The Stuff of Thought. This is in a chapter titled “The Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television;” I read this chapter–along with several other articles about language and the brain and aphasia and the piltdown man–multiple times while in grad school. One of my professors had us talking a lot about the brain and language–which is how Pinker fit into my graduate studies.
Anyway, I don’t really care about Biden’s use of “fucking” in “This is a big fucking deal” but all the headlines I’ve seen are reminding me of this part of the chapter:
The grammar of fucking in its expletive role made the news in 2003 when NBC broadcasted the Golden Globe Awards and Bono said, “This is really, really, fucking brilliant” on the air. The FCC originally chose not to sanction the network because their guidelines define “indecency” as “material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities,” and Bono had used the word as “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.” Cultural conservatives were outraged, and California Representative Doug Ose tried to close the loophole with the filthiest piece of legislation ever considered by Congress, the Clean Airwaves Act:
A BILL
To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(1) by inserting ‘(a)’ before “Whoever’; and
(2) by adding at the end of the following: ‘(b) As used in this section, the term ‘profane’, used with respect to language, includes the words ‘shit’, ‘piss’, ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’, ‘asshole’, and the phrases ‘cock sucker’, ‘mother fucker’, and ‘ass hole’, compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).
Unfortunately for Rep. Ose, the bill would not have closed the loophole after all, because it fails to specify the syntax of Bono’s expletive properly (to say nothing of its misspelling of cocksucker, motherfucker, and asshole, or its misidentifying them as “phrases”).
The Clean Airwaves Act assumes that fucking is a participial adjective. But this is not correct. As Quang notes, with a true adjective like lazy, you can alternate between Drown the lazy cat and Drown the cat which is lazy. But Drown the fucking cat is certainly not interchangeable with Drown the cat which is fucking. (Likewise, Drown the bloody cat does not mean the same thing as Drown the cat which is bloody.) Nor can you say The cat seemed fucking, How fucking was the cat?, or the very fucking cat, three more tests for adjectivehood.
Some critics have poked fun at the Clean Airwaves Act for another bit of grammatical illiteracy. If anything, the fucking in fucking brilliant should be an adverb, because it modifies an adjective, and only adverbs can do that, as in truly bad, very nice, and really big. Yet “adverb” is the one grammatical category that Ose forgot to include in his list! As it happens, taboo expletives aren’t genuine adverbs, either. Another “study out in left field” notes that while you can say That’s too fucking bad and That’s no bloody good, you can’t say That’s too very bad or That’s no really good. Also, as the linguist Geoffrey Nunberg has pointed out, while you can imagine the dialogue How brilliant was it? Very, you would never hear the dialogue How brilliant was it? Fucking.
And that’s it. I don’t have a point; I just wanted to share. Maybe you should get Pinker’s book. How interesting is it? Fucking.
And how big of a deal is this healthcare reform? It is a big deal which is fucking.
Today I called 911 for the first time. Things are fine; no one died.
As I do on Tuesdays, I spent the morning at a women’s transitional housing unit while the staff has its weekly meeting. I was sitting in the office, reading a paper, when a resident came in to the office and said that something was wrong with another resident; the resident was yelling in her room but no one could get her to tell them what was wrong.
When I reached the hallway outside the resident’s room, I could hear her asking for help. I knocked on the door and said that I was keying in to her room. I had no idea what to expect. Blood?
When I opened the door, I found her lying on her bed in her underwear. No blood.
She was, and please excuse this comparison for being insenstive, not unlike a meowing cat that keeps meowing–something is obviously wrong but there’s a major communication barrier, and as much as you want to help the poor cat, you also want it to please just stop making those noises for a second because meowing isn’t helping things at all.
I asked her what happened and she would moan. I’d ask her again what happened and she’d say, “Lord let them help me!” Then she’d moan a few times and say, “Lord let them help me!” a few more times. Her eyes were open, and she would look at me, but I couldn’t tell if she understood what I was saying.
Then she said, “Where’s my friend?”
She was talking about another resident. The other resident came in to the room and sat down on the bed. This made her calm down a bit, but we still couldn’t figure out what had happened, and her friend–the other resident–tried her best to make sense out of what was happening. She was bruised–maybe she fell? Maybe the room was too warm and she fainted and fell. Maybe she was having a stroke? But there was definitely something wrong (and she pointed to her head as she said this).
This all happened in about 2 minutes.
I went back down to the office and called 911. I talked to one dispatcher, and then this dispatcher transferred me to a medical dispatcher. I found that weird, because that is definitely not how 911 calls were portrayed on any of the episodes of the hit late 80s early 90s television show, hosted by William Shatner, Rescue 911. And, I don’t know about you, but I expect very dramatic moments in my life to play out like early 90s television.
So then the ambulance showed up and several members of staff burst out of the meeting room, and then I’m all thinking “Oh, I should have alerted them about what was happening so none of them have heart attacks, but HOLY CRAP IS THIS LADY HAVING A STROKE? SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH HER AND I’M JUST A LOWLY VOLUNTEER WITH NO POWER WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME THE MEDICS ARE HERE NOW.” But they thanked me as soon as I told them that a resident fell down and was acting weird.
The resident is fine–though I still don’t know what happened to her. The medics left and the staff went out for pancakes.
I was asked what I’d pick for my last meal if I were on death row. I answered: my arm, because I’ve always been curious about how human flesh tastes and since I would be put to death soon, I wouldn’t be too sad about losing a limb.
No, I do not support it because I have a family history or story about dealing with leukemia or lymphoma. There has been cancer in my family, but it hasn’t been this type.
I support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society because they put on an event each year called the Big Climb. In this event, participants climb the stairs (69 stories) of the tallest building in Seattle and fundraise to support the organization. This is what I’ll be doing tomorrow.
Here’s the deal: I’m not very competitive, but when I climbed last year I totally crushed my boyfriend, Bryan.
He started off like this: WHY ARE YOU CLIMBING SO SLOWLY YOU CHUMP I’M GOING TO PASS YOU ON THE 3RD SET OF STAIRS TO SHOW YOU HOW FIT I AM. I AM SO EXTREME AND AWESOME.
He ended up like this: Please ma’am, may we please take several breaks? May we please take this break when there’s only one story left?
(Trust me, that was a very accurate and detailed portrayal of last year)
This is one of the few things that I am able to do better than him and I like to rub it in his face. However, last year he raised more money than me.
And, friends, I want to crush him in all possible ways when it comes to the Big Climb. I want to humor him when he has to stop and rest, I want to raise more money than him, I want to dress more stylishly in my workout attire, and I want to refuse to nap when I get home from the event.
I know this is tacky and all, but I’ve never been not-tacky, so:
I’ve been offering my Facebook friends homemade cookies if they donate, so the offer stands for you, too, my bloggy friends. But if you prefer not to give out your address to tacky women in Seattle, I understand that. Maybe I can invite you to my apartment, which is far less creepy, right?—and I promise I will try not to act like Christopher Walken in his Continental SNL skits. But I can’t make any promises. Some things you can’t turn off.
For serious though:
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a great organization that helps those battling blood cancers by funding research and improving the quality of life of patients and patients’ families.
If you’d like to donate to the general fund (not on my behalf) you may do so here.
Also: no hard feelings if you don’t donate. I know what it’s like to be broke. At one point in my life I lived entirely off dried beans and ramen. My intestinal track did not like being poor.
My sister, Amy, and 8 year old nephew, Brady, flew in from Iowa for a visit over the last week and, other than having a hilarious time with me in Seattle and helping me eat cupcakes from three different cupcake shops in Seattle, they helped me achieve several of the items on my 101 things in 1001 days list.
First, I added something to the Waiting for the Interurban sculpture. I had a long beaded necklace that I was never going to wear. My nephew chose which person got the necklace and helped me put it on the sculpture. Then we all posed for pictures. Here’s how Bryan and I would like to be sculpted into the sculpture:
Second, we went to Blue C Sushi and I tried something other than a California roll. I didn’t try much, but I can safely say that despite my ¼ Japanese-ness, I am not a fan of raw fish in my sushi. I do, however, like the idea of little plates of food on conveyer belts and still think sushi is really pretty. I just do not want it in my mouth.
We also went to visit Bruce Lee’s and Brandon Lee’s graves. I’ve never seen a Bruce Lee movie (other than watching clips of him fighting Chuck Norris on youtube) and I only watched half of The Crow way back in high school. I got bored. My sister and I wanted to do this in honor of our Poppy (who died in October 2008). He had an obsession with dead actors and often sought out their graves and then had his picture taken with them.
We also all contributed our DNA to the gum wall.
And then there was the amazing food from Paseo. This isn’t the best picture because the sandwich is still wrapped in paper so you can’t really see it, but don’t you still want to eat it? Answer: yes, you do.
And, while this wasn’t on the 101 list it should have been: My sister and I split a 12 egg omelet from Beth’s Café. You can see the omelet before we dived in my post before this one. Here’s the omelet after we demolished it:
I’m sort of proud of how much I can eat in one sitting.
At Beth’s, the walls are completely covered with drawings from customers. If you stumble into Beth’s and see this:
Kind of. Yesterday I went to the Pacific Science Center’s special Mars exhibit. This was supposed to be a simulation of what it would be like walking on Mars and the harness was supposed to make me 30% of my current weight. It was difficult to walk and I think the crowd gathered around the area very much enjoyed my graceful moves.
My sister and nephew are visiting from Iowa! We’re having a fun, poop-joke filled time.
