Spamboy

The flight felt brutally long. Unlike the last time I flew overseas, when Continental Airlines had been kind to stock their planes with in-flight time-wasters such as movies, video games, and friendly flight attendants, their codeshare partner Northwest Airlines had skimped on such amenities, ensuring that they would continue living up to the nickname of “Northworst“.

Normally I sleep on international flights.  But this being a flight of firsts for me — first westbound overseas trip and most timezones jumped at once (ten, including a penetration across the international date line) — I was too unsettled to doze away the hours.  I had nearly completed one of the two novels I had brought for my entire two week vacation and there were still hours to go before we land. I began to worry how I’d kill time when I was on terra firma, as finding things to read in English is not a trivial task where I was heading. I worried even more about my return flight in two weeks, as I would once again be blessed to fly the same airline.  With my current and future flights, a full 24 hours of my life will have been wasted flying such unfriendly skies. Despite my upcoming destination, I craved entertainment now lest I die of boredom. Sitting in my aisle seat, I returned to my book and tried not to think about the endless amount of flight time remaining.

After an hour more of reading, I paused to rub my dry eyes. My will to read further was waning, so it seemed like a good time for a break. I put down my book and took a moment to survey the cabin. All shades were drawn tight, as it was still daylight outside. The actual time of day was lost on me, thanks to a combination of no wristwatch, no cell phone, and the fact that I would have been half-a-dozen time zones off were I to guess. Everyone but me was alseep, the lucky bastards. I planted my elbow on the armrest, buried my chin deep into my palm, and sighed.

An elderly Japanese lady walked down the aisle past my seat. Right as she passed me, she halted and slowly turned around. I took notice and looked at her face. She seemed slightly bewildered, reaching a hand up to her forehead as if she was starting to feel queasy. She used her other hand to grip the headrest of the seat in front of me. Then her leg quivered and she tumbled over, falling to her side.  She bounced off my lap, flipped back the opposite direction, and landed on the floor with a dull thump, coming to rest in the aisle next to me.

Pings echoed across the cabin, as I and several others quickly jabbed our “call attendant” buttons.  The ceiling was a constellation of blue call lights. Two flight attendants rushed to the lady’s side. Even more followed, carrying oxygen canisters and a defibrillator. Passengers nearby stood up in order to get a better view.

I was not one of them. Inches away from me was a comatose woman, being poked and prodded into consciousness by highly-trained professionals. As I seriously pondered the possibility of someone dying next to me, I curled my body towards the left, putting the spectacle to my back, and did my best to bury myself in my book.

Tokyo couldn’t get here fast enough.

Once again, I’ve been out for an extended absence.  But at least this time, I brought pictures — check them out on my family blog Mattifer.net:

• Road Trip Day 1
• Road Trip Day 2
• Road Trip Day 3

No stories today, although some new ones will be coming soon.  I’ve been rather busy with other stuff in life, mainly the news that I am going to be a dad.  Me and Jenn are twelve weeks pregnant!

Jenn and I were walking along the path, underneath a patchy canopy of trees that bordered the coastline. In a clearing of burnt grass and exposed earth, we encountered Matt, a groomsman from our friend Bob’s wedding. He was sitting alongside a faded green Ford Escort that likely dated to the early 1990s.

From a keyhole atop the thin back hood grew a scraggly fruit tree just a few feet tall. Although the summer air was unbearably hot, the tree was covered in a thick frost, like the walls of an old freezer that had not been defrosted in many millenium.

The two of us asked Matt if he could explain, and he simply said that the tree was known as St. September. An odd feeling rushed over me, as if this woody creature, with a name like that, had something to do with the local art and music scene.

Upon closer examination, I could see the tree was broken at its base but not completely severed from its roots. Typical of most broken trunks and branches, it remained attached by thin, stressed strips of bark and wood, its upper half resting on horizontally on the trunk. I reached out to touch it and could feel the cold — and also the sweat as it thawed under the sun. The tree was definitely laboring.

I grabbed the tree and raised it back vertical, but realized it needed some support to stay in that position. Looking around, I saw in the dirt what looked like soda can tabs with rubber rims, like the colored jackets people buy to put around their house keys. I jammed two of these in the gap between tree and roots, then let go. The gap was filled up sufficiently that the tree once again stood tall.

Time appeared to pass, and I caught a future glimpse of the plant. Gone was the Ford Escort, and the tree was now planted firmly in the earth. A tight, 3′ x 3′ chain-link fence surrounded and provided it with all the protection it was missing. It was a taller tree, but it appeared to be just as skinny as before. Its greater height was reinforced with various hardware such as C-clamps and makeshift braces. But up it went, a truly magical thing.

Matt reappeared and informed us this would now be a magical and famous place. On cue, Jenn pulled out a sign that appeared to be printed from the side of a Pioneer baking mix container. It read “Texas Peachtree Memorial”. We posted it under the canopy of trees near the water, then stepped back to ponder/admire our work.

Then I woke up.

The flight attendant gently shook me awake.

“Sir, we’re about to land. Please return your seat to the upright position.”

It took several moments for me to process her words, I had been sleeping so deeply. On this leg of the flight, I was fortunate enough to have a window seat. I looked outside but could see nothing but the inky blackness of the Yellow Sea below. The lights of Incheon International Airport soon blinked into sight, and after a routine landing I was on the ground thousands of miles from home.

One-and-a-half decades of dreaming of Asia were finally coming true. I was in Korea on opening night of the 2002 World Cup.

We filtered out of the airplane and sifted ourselves into evenly-spaced lines at customs. Incheon was a brand-new airport, built on an island far west of the capital Seoul. Built as a shiny yet inanimate ambassador to those like myself that had never set food in Asia, it was designed to be large and efficient. No less than fifteen booths were manned with customs inspectors, a far larger number than I had seen in my previous foreign travels. Behind the booths was a broad balcony overlooking the lower floor of the airport and its baggage claims and shops.

Either I was still asleep, or processing passengers seemed to take longer than expected. Yet after moving in the air for fourteen hours, I was in little rush to move any faster than I had to.

Suddenly, the air was snapped by a sonic boom of human design. It began downstairs in the baggage claim area. Like an tsunami of sound, it swept upwards into the customs area and blew past us, so concussive that I felt the hairs on my arm snap to attention. It was a loud roar, a cacophony of humans cheering, and the building shook from its power.

Before we could process what happened, a door on the far right wall opened up. Out popped the customs supervisor.

He was yelling something in Korean as he briskly approached past each agent’s stand. Occasionally, he grasped an agent by their shoulders, looked steady into their eyes, and quickly exclaimed the same untranslatable news.

Several agents popped up and ran off downstairs, leaving their boothes unmanned and us standing in line. If we so chose, we could have snuck into the country illegally without gettng our passports stamped. Those agents remaining were high-fiving and hugging one another. Quickly, the roar subsided, the absent agents returned to their posts, and our processing continued. We still had no idea what had just happened/

I got through security, headed downstairs, and scanned the crowd, hoping to find the friendly face I expected. Behind me, I heard a familiar voice.

“Spam!”

Noone else in Korea could be expected to answer to that name. I whirled around, and there was my best friend Jim. He had been on a separate, earlier flight to Korea — he had apparently made it alright. We embraced in relief at seeing one another.

I asked Jim what the hell was going on. The roar, the ensuing chaos. “Oh, you mean everyone celebrating the South Korean team scoring?”

It turns out that the noise was the collective celebration of an entire scoring their second goal of the night against mighty Poland, during the World Cup opening game that was ocurring right at that very moment.

Jim waved his hand towards the several flat-screen televisions mounted in the terminal. Each was broadcasting the game live. Jim explained that when Korea scored its earlier goal, the entire building exploded in a similar celebration. The scary thing was that everyone, from security guards to shopkeepers and cab drivers — abandoned their duties upon each score. Each left their post in a rush towards the nearest television, which would replay the glorious, impossible moment several times. The World Cup was amazingly important to South Koreans, so much so that they’d be willing to leave the airport momentarily defenseless in order to share a moment as a nation. The place could have been robbed blind, or a bomb set off, and noone would have noticed anything but Hwang Sun-Hong pounding home what would prove to be the only goal needed by The Reds.

Now that both of us had arrived, we had a ride to meet. We went out to the curb, where Jim introducted me to our driver for the evening. He was to drive us the long route from Incheon to Seoul, where we would be staying at the home of a family whom we had never met before. We could only hope they spoke English.

I sat down at the computer, armed with a steaming cup of instant coffee. In the midst of my morning routine of simultaneous web-surfing, podcast downloads, and lacing up of my running shoes, I saw evidence that Jenn had once again failed to sleep through the night. My RSS feed reader showed that her blog had been updated during the night.

Her most-recent entries contained three specific things she was thankful for that particular day. Reading each of those reminded me that I used to also maintain such lists myself, in a journal that I handmade from raw materials.

Although we had recently moved and many of my older things were still in boxes. I knew exactly where that journal was. So before I headed outside for my morning run, I dug it out of the closet and inadvertently journeyed eight years back in time.

The first entries were in 2000, inspired by my friend Ellen and her suggestion that tough times are easier to navigate when we remember what’s most important. In fact, she wrote the first entry, listing her five “thankfuls” that particular day:

May 1, 2000:

1) Brown eyes
2) D Milk
3) Horns
4) No fear of dog spit
5) My health

The next day, I started writing entires on a regular basis, each day trying to list five things that I hadn’t previously recorded. Some of my specific “thankfuls” require little explanation, and they all apply today:

“Poptarts and coffee — the breakfast of champions”

“A nice set of boobs”

“Being a Skeeball wizard”

“Knowing it’s not always my fault”

However, the context for others have faded with the passage of time. I once wrote “That Zoe has such good friends.” I have no idea who Zoe was, but I hope she’s doing alright. And I can only imagine the fun I had the night before I wrote “Not knowing where I was when I woke up!”

For a good stretch, I was dedicated enough to write five “thankfuls” per day. However, the entries began to peter out around July of that year. That was the month before I relocated to Austin — perhaps I had packed the book away in preparation for the move? If that was the case, it was eventually unpacked, as entries resumed again around October.

However, the last entry was dated October, right before I returned to Denton for my college’s homecoming:

October 4, 2000:

1) Hope that I’ll find love again
2) Pajamas
3) Big baby eyes
4) Celis White
5) Historical perspective

No more entries after that. It was during the following weekend I found out that Rebecca was engaged to marry someone else, as big of a kick to my spiritual nuts as could ever be given. I imagine that’s why I stopped writing altogether.

Yet as I reread that distant final entry, I winced at the thought that I had lost the ability to count my blessings. Obviously since then, I’ve rediscovered this resource, and nary a day goes by where I’ve not motivated by how incredibly freakin’ lucky I am. My homemade journal was so beautiful. Handbound with needle and thread, with a cover of delicate rice paper and rose petals, it would be a shame for this piece of art to continue gathering dust. That just wouldn’t do.

So I pulled out my pen and wrote the first of hopefully many new daily “thankfuls”:

May 21, 2008:

1) My home
2) My health
3) My wife

Thanks to Daynah, a GeekBrief.tv fan, I’ve discovered my plan to remain fairly anonymous was dealt a blow. She let me know that during Wordcamp Dallas, I was captured on video asking a question of Cali and Neal about their upcoming road trip. The video proves two things: the fact I was photograph proves once and for all that I am not a vampire, and that my voice sounds as bad on video as it does in real life.

Zoom ahead to 27:22 in the video to catch me — but do watch the whole thing, as it was an inspiring presentation. It helped to get me get out of the creative ruts I was in just prior to WordCamp.

Thanks to John Pozadzides for documenting this event.

Everything was hazy.

“Matthew,” called a muffled voice, “time to wake up.”

My surroundings, although fuzzy, would come into slow, painstaking focus as the voice gently called to me.

“Matthew, how do you feel?”

I was cold, despite the thick blanket draped over my listless body. I was sitting in a dentist’s chair and was awake. I guess that my oral surgery must be over.

Buzzing around me was my surgeon, whose name I did not remember, and a couple of comely assistants, whose names I wish I did. They kept asking me questions, attempting to discern if my anesthesia had worn off enough to permit discharge.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, “I am ready to leave.” Each of the assistants took hold of my hands and helped me out of the chair. When I seemed properly set on my feet, they asked if I was doing alright. I nodded. They gently released their hold, and down to the floor I fell like a wet noodle.
They tried to help me up, but I would have none of it — I slapped their hands away, frustrated at the unwanted attention. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I barked. But instead of standing up, I started to crawl towards the exit. The doctor, embarrassed by my display, barked at me to get up. “No!” I yelled. I reached up, turned the doorknob, and continued slithering into the lobby.

My mother was at the receptionist’s counter, in the middle of writing a check for the procedure. When the door popped open, she stood stunned at the site of her youngest, doped-up and army-crawling into the room. Other parents in the room emulated my mother’s reaction, while their kids giggled in highest of amusement. I reached my mom, wrapped my arms around both her legs, and settled down for a well-earned nap.

My brother Michael was in the audience, sitting on a nearby couch and enjoying every minute of my show. Mom bent down to wrench herself free from my grasp, and Michael popped over to rib me in the process. I don’t remember much of what he said, but the words “Spaz!” and “Idiot!” come to mind. At the very least, he prevented me from starting my nap, and for that I hated him. If I wasn’t so doped up, I might have been able to fire back a witty retort about the patch he was forced to wear for his lazy eye.

Mom was terribly embarrassed and you could hear it in her voice. “Matthew, get up!” she snapped. Grabbing my wrist, she forcefully directed me out of the office, into the elevator, and beyond to our waiting car. Dad was inside, and any happiness at seeing his family was muted upon catching my mother’s sour expression. Not needing to ask what happened, he flatly declared, “Alright, Maffers, let’s get you home.”

“No!” I retorted.

Dad was taken aback. “What do you mean, ‘No’?!”

“I wanna go t’ Simon David,” I slurred.

Simon David was Dallas’s oldest gourmet grocer. Earlier in the day, I read they had just opened a small handful of supermarket-sized venues. Somehow in my drug-induced state, this sounded interesting to a ten-year old child.

“No, we need to get you home,” Dad said.

I screamed, “No! I wanna go t’ Simon David!”

As Mom and Dad still needed to buy groceries that night’s dinner, they relented.

When the four of us arrived, I assumed my usual position as cart handler. My parents walked at the helm, excepting me to take up the rear as usual. A minute later, they turned around to check on me, but I wasn’t there. I had disappeared along with the cart.

I could be found on the opposite end of the store, briskly navigating each aisle and filling the cart with every bright color or shiny sheen that industrial packaging could provide. Soon it was overflowing with various sundries, a super-majority of which did not need.

My family eventually discovered me. Mom would later tell me that she was more embarrassed at that moment than at the doctor’s office. Dad assigned Michael to keep an eye on me while the two of them went through the laborious task of putting back the sundried tomatoes, Black Sea caviar, and fizzy French water that wasn’t on our grocery list. Then we checked out and drove home.

When we returned home, my brother and I discharged our official shopping duties: he unloaded dry goods into pantry, while I filled the refrigerator. I opened the door and bent over to transfer vegetables into the lower-level crisper bins.

Unbeknownst to me, the gravitational pull of the planet earth was beginning to exert a stronger pull, but only on myself. In one slow motion, I was brought down to one knee while continuing to unload groceries. Then came both knees. Soon enough, I sat on the floor in a side-saddle fashion. After the final item was inside the ice box, I closed its door and sat with my back against the cold, steely metal. My eyes felt heavy, and a shit-eating grin emerged on my face.

The air was then pierced by a determined squeak. I looked down, and there was our oldest Siamese cat Martha Mitchell. Three years older than me and already ancient by this time, with her trademark blue eyes now a steeled grey, she was frail but still full of vigor. Time had turned her purring meow into a single note of a screech that sounded like a rusty screen door. She sashayed up to my side and began to purr.

I looked outside and caught glimpse of our swimming pool. Then I looked back at her, and an idea came to mind that seemed just as logical as visiting a grocery store half-drunk.

“Hey, Martha! Wanna go schwimmin’!?”, I asked.

The last thing I remember is my dad yelling, “Goddamnit!” as he snatched me by the shirt collar, then tossed me into bed, where I immediately passed out.

I didn’t wake up for two days.

I drove into Round Rock for a regular visit with Micha. One of the first things I noticed in her living room was a shiny new electronic component prominently displayed atop her television.

She explained it was TiVo, a brand-new product called a digital video recorder (DVR) that recorded live television for later pausing, skipping, and sorting. I wasn’t too familiar with the technology, so Micha demonstrated its features. I witnessed responsive menus, heard addicting pings whenever options were selected, and I came away fairly unimpressed.

“You know,” I sighed, “that’s neat and all, but I already watch too much television as it is. A TiVo is the last thing I want or need.”

However, Micha’s life had changed as a result of TiVo, so she continued her effort to win me over. She told me how she doesn’t watch more television, but more shows, as she wastes less time by skipping through commercials. Everytime I rejected one of the DVR’s benefits, she fired back with a new feature I should consider. This tit-for-tat continued throughout the weekend.

Sunday came around, and along with it came the Super Bowl. That afternoon we drove to the home of Jay’s boss Eric for a watching party.

Eric’s sprawling home stood high in the hills west of town. When we arrived, our host took us on a tour. Composed of Tuscan marble, Spanish tile, and Austin rock, the abode screamed Central Texas Mediterranean. The living room featured large bay glass windows, affording grand views of the little people dwelling in the foothills slums below. A never-ending staircase took up to the upper floors, and as we rose I caught glimpse of a side room downstairs. Inside I could see a young boy with a mop of blonde hair. Eric explained that was his son. The child was being supervised by a nanny who appeared to hail from the Pacific. If I didn’t already have money on the game, I would have bet she didn’t speak any English.

Upstairs, we were led into The Media Room, worthy of proper nounification because of its sheer manliness. The chamber was high and deep. Stadium seating on one side stood opposite of a bare white wall that begged to be bathed in the candy-color glow belched from the overhead projector. When informed this is where we would watch the game, all of us scrambled to call dibs on the best seats. I staked claim on the dead-middle seat and found out it was already occupied: sitting on the cushion was a wireless keyboard, or something akin to it.

It wasn’t quite your standard 101-keyboard: although it had a full QUERTY keyboard, an array of function keys and an elaborate tracking device took the place of the 10-digit pad. Eric took notice of my examination and slid over to explain the device. Taking it from my hand, he demonstrated its use. After some quick finger strokes, the lights dimmed, the projector burst alive, and surround sound echoed. Eric explained that each key had its own special function: one would churn through the 100-disc DVD changer, another would raise and lower the window blinds.

“And the coolest part,” he said, “is that you can use this thing to control the DVR, just like TiVo!” Those nearby in earshot snapped to attention at that part, their imaginations drooling in curiousity.

Eric’s wife called for him from downstairs. He handed me back the keyboard and excused himself.

Micha slid over with the shit grin that can only come from vindication. “See, even Eric has a TiVo!” she said, “All the cool kids have one. Don’t you want to be cool, too?”

I parried Micha’s blow. “As I said earlier, I don’t need a DVR.”

She chipped away further at my defenses. “Dude, no one needs a DVR. It’s all about ‘want’. TiVo wants you…don’t you want it?”

The crowd around us begged me to listen to reason. “Once you go DVR, you never go back,” they yearned. But their Jedi Mind Tricks wouldn’t work on me, not this time!

Mercifully, the game started, and all attention was on the Panthers and Patriots instead of me. The first half passed quickly, with more action occurring during the commercial breaks than on the field. The headliners were Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, a pairing that had enough musical potential that we all felt possessed to watch. The two sang Janet’s current single “All for You”. This bled into a medley as “Rhythm Nation” started. The duet was then capped by the more-contemporary Timberlake single “Rock Your Body”.

The two strutted and posed alongside one another. And as the show came to an end, Justin foreshadowed the outcome with the lyric, “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song.” He reached out with his left hand and tore off part of Janet’s black leather bustier, revealing a patch of color that looked just like the rest of Janet’s skin. Then before anyone could process what just happened, CBS changed the view, first to display an aerial shot of the stadium, then to an immediate commercial break.

The room erupted into chaos. Shouts of “Dude!” and “Holy shit!” mixed with the occasional “No way!” filled the air. Suddenly, their screams were directed at me. “Dude! Dude! Rewind!” they pleaed. Suddenly it dawned on me. On my lap was the DVR-controlling keyboard. Everyone had to know if they just saw 38-year-old black boobie. I would be their savior.

I snapped to attention and scrambled to understand the controls. Eric had shown me everything but how to operate the DVR. So I pressed button after button until something happened. All of the other men in the room, who like me hadn’t read the instructions, offered their unsolicited advice on how to run the complicated machinery.

Finally, I discovered the right combination of keystokes, and before us was an echo of the recent past: the latter half of the concert was once again being broadcast. I tweaked the controls further, getting us near to “the moment”. Precise control was difficult, as I was just guessing how to run the DVR.

Finally, we got the image paused correctly, and a two-foot tit was frozen on the wall.

Then the room became quiet as we became aware of a foreign presence in the room.

Standing in the doorway was Eric’s son. He was rubbing his sleepy moist eyes, as he had just woken up in the middle of the night and was looking for mommy. As he blinked through the grogginess, he was attempting to focus on the weird image on the wall.

The silence was swiftly broken. “Out! Out!” bellowed everyone, as the child’s presence was impacting our participation in Boobgate. Eric leapt up, shuttled his boy out of the room, and slammed the door shut. We continued rewatching the image over and over. And as everyone giddily enjoyed their unity with 200 million other people in having witnessed a nanosecond of unintentional porn, I stood up, raised my finger, and announced, “I’m getting a TiVo!”

I was sold.

And everyone cheered in support.

As I hit the outskirts of Shreveport, screaming down westbound I-20, it suddenly dawned on me that the national championship game was being played at that moment. In fact, it was within the state I was currently speeding through. It was LSU versus Oklahoma. Although the former school didn’t register on my empathy radar, the latter institution was high on my shit list for their perpetual tarring of my Texas Longhorns. I flicked on my car radio and danced around the dial in search of play-by-play.

In doing so, I finally paid attention to Kilgore’s fuel gauge and discovered we were drops away from empty. Shreveport was the last major outpost before entering the no-man’s-land that is an East Texas winter night. I pulled off the highway and stopped at the nearest gas station.

After filling the tank, I waited for the gas pump to provide a receipt. Such lingering proved futile, as the printer revealed itself to be out of paper. “No problem,” I thought. Since I was feeling a bit puckish, I trudged into the station’s mini-mart to stock up on some man-fuel and get a duplicate receipt.

I cruised through the aisles and grabbed my dietary staples: Red Bull, sunflower seeds, and Chewy Sprees. I then hopped in line. Ahead of me was one person who eclipsed my view anything ahead of me, including the station attendant behind the counter. When their purchase was complete and they moved aside, I was frozen by what I now saw.

Neither male nor female, a most-sexually ambiguous human being stood behind the counter. They were tall and wide with gray hair bundled into a ratty ponytail. Clad in a red uniform tailored to no specific gender, my only clues to this person’s “down-there” identity were some pink earrings. “It” rang up my purchases and said, “$4.76, sir.”

I had a 50/50 chance, so I went female with my response. “Here you go, ma’am,” I said with emphasis on the polite address, all the while holding forth a Lincoln. She didn’t react negatively to my choice, so I must be on the right path, I thought.

When she reached for my bill, I gathered another clue to her identity. On the inside of her lower arm was a fuzzy, thick blue tattoo spelling the word “JESUS”. The letter strokes were long and sharply-angled, resembling Celtic runes in their lack of curves. The technique was so crude that it looked like a flathead screwdriver was used for lack of a needle. I knew that tattoos such as this were often the product of an extended stay in prison, and I began to feel uneasy.

As she fished my change from the cash drawer, I tried to discreetly scan her body for additional sexual characteristics. I lingered on her upper torso, attempting to observe some evidence of breasts. On the skin of her chest, peeking out from under her shirt, were additional carvings: five roughly-hewn, upside-down pentagrams in row as if she were a five-star general…of Satan! I stared at the designs, pondering their meanings and momentarily calculating the amount of danger I was in.

“Sir,” the attendant said coolly.

My attention returned to something besides the boob hunt. I caught her eyes, which communicated that she was quite aware I was looking where I shouldn’t. Her stare chastised me, and I blushed.

I collected my change and attempted to slink away with the few shreds of my remaining dignity. I turned around, and immediately I was face-to-face with a man. The man.

He was a tall black man, slender and aged in quite a fine fashion. Sharply dressed in a camel-skin jacket over a goldenrod turtleneck, he was also adorned with a well-manicured, peppery-gray moustache that seemingly floated above his upper lip. His whole visage stood in the shadow of his felt fedora, complete with the bushy feather of some probably-exotic bird.

His calm, dark eyes bored holes into me, as if he was curling up with my soul and reading it like a book. He likely observed everything that just transpired between me and the station attendant, and I quickly grew afraid.

This man slowly measured me with up and down looks. He then broke the silence with a deep baritone and a cadence usually reserved for stern fathers, federal judges, and Darth Vader.

“Why aren’t you watchin’ the game, boy?” he purred menacingly.

His question was so seemingly random that I thought, “Surely he must be talking to someone else!” I looked to my left and right, yet I was the only person he could have possibly been addressing.

Something rose up within me, a reaction that meant I was through being harassed by citizens of the good state of Louisiana.

I narrowed my eyes and obstinately replied to his question with one of my own. “Why aren’t you?!”

The man’s eyes shifted just a millimeter off-center, evidence that he was seriously pondering an answer. After an eternal moment had passed, he looked off into the distance and drawled a resigned, “Yep.” He then turned away and disappeared, seemingly bested by my answer.