Monthly Archives: May 2013

I got a huge speeding ticket. Thanks a lot Facebook.

I read this thing online one time, I think it was somebody’s Facebook status, it wasn’t a real status, it was a meme, some picture with text written on top of it, like who knows who came up with it, whoever “liked” or “shared” it on their timeline, it showed up on my newsfeed. It was a picture of a cop, and it said, “If you’re speeding and you see a cop hiding on the side of the road, and it’s too late to slow down, try waving at the officer. He’s more likely not to pull you over.”

So sure enough, I’m driving, months later, not thinking about cops at all, not about cops, not even about driving really, which is dangerous, because my mind wanders when it should be alert, my mind wanders and my foot gets tired and the next thing I know, yup, I’m speeding. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a cop, a New York State Trooper, hiding out in this little clearing in between trees. He’s got his cop sunglasses on, his giant highway cop hat.

I let off the gas because I don’t want to just do a ridiculous slamming of the brakes. Let’s see if I can’t make this look natural. But I’m going like twenty, twenty-five miles over the speed limit, and as I pass him, yeah I’m not giving it any more gas, but I’m still flying, and I look to my left and this trooper, he’s looking right at me, directly at me, like turning his head as I pass and we make eye contact, he maintains eye contact, and he’s got the radar gun out, and that’s following me too, and I look back to my speedometer, and maybe it’s thirty miles over the speed limit.

So I remember that Facebook thing and I act, quickly, I go to wave to him, but I don’t have the time really to think it through, like what kind of a wave am I going to give him? I’m not going to be like, “Hi! Hello!” all overly enthusiastic. But I don’t want it to be, “Yo. Sup,” either. I shoot for the middle and I wind up doing this weird almost half-salute two-fingered wave. Immediately as I’m doing it I’m thinking, Jesus, what the hell kind of a wave is this?

And the cop must have been thinking the same thing because as soon as I pass, he tears right out of his hiding spot and hits his lights. Getting pulled over is the worst. Sometimes they’ll ride behind you for a little bit, they’ll make you sweat, following you, tailing you for miles, lulling you almost into a false sense of security, like, don’t worry buddy, I’m not going to hit the lights. I’m just going to follow really closely, very, very closely, right on your ass and, guess what? I actually am going to hit the lights. Pull over.

But like I said, this is an immediate hitting of the lights, and so I just know I’m in for it. I’m in the left lane, so I think, do I have to get over to the right lane, pull over to the right shoulder? I put on my right turn signal and wait to change lanes. The cop gets even closer and his car makes a loud siren noise. So I figure, OK, left shoulder it is. I flip on the left turn signal, but the cop does the same thing. So I just slow down, like, OK, I’ll stop right here, but he gets on his loudspeaker and starts saying something at me, but you know how those speakers are, I can’t understand a thing, and I’m still going like fifty.

So I just pull into the left shoulder and stop. The trooper gets out and comes to my window. Every time this happens I always think about how on TV, in the movies, the driver says, line-for-line, “What seems to be the problem officer?” I always consider saying it, but how many people actually say that to a cop in real life? Does it happen like way too much? Maybe it’s a cop’s pet peeve, pulling somebody over, somebody who knows they were speeding, and they roll down the window and they’re like, “Huh? Problem?”

So I don’t say anything. And he just looks at me for a minute and then finally he’s like, “You want to play games? Are you fucking high?” and I’m like, shit, thanks a lot Facebook, and so I try to tell him, “No, officer, sorry it’s just that, I read this thing on Facebook about waving to a cop as you pass by. I’m sorry.”

And he just goes, “License and registration,” so I take out my wallet, I take out my license, I also take out this PBA card, like if you know a cop in real life, they give you this card to show to other cops, maybe they’ll be a little more sympathetic. He sees me go for the PBA card in my wallet, he reaches into the car, takes it, throws it into the woods, far, like he was one of those trick card thrower that you see on TV, like that card’s gone, and he repeats, “License. And. Registration.”

And he gave me a big ticket. Fucking Facebook.

My first piece of IKEA furniture

I always sit down to write at my kitchen table. I’m having one of those days where I can’t think of anything to write about, and so I’m just kind of staring straight ahead, past my computer, at the wall. I have this piece of IKEA furniture, it’s a big unit, I don’t even know what to call it really, but it’s like five pieces of wood horizontally by five pieces of wood vertically. So the end result is this standalone piece, with sixteen square shelves. Does that make sense?

It was the first adult piece of furniture that my wife and I bought when we moved in together after college. I felt like such a big shot, such an adult, driving to IKEA, spending over a hundred dollars on something that I don’t even know how to describe, hauling it home, assembling it, figuring out where to put it and what to keep on its shelves.

I used to have this really small two-door Hyundai Accent. My wife used to call it Porky; she came up with this because its short and stout shape reminded her of a little pig. Also she loved how much it drove me nuts to hear that nickname in reference to my car. This IKEA unit, even disassembled, had absolutely no chance of fitting in my car, and only after making the purchase and wheeling it out to the parking lot did we both realize that neither one of us had the foresight to consider how we’d actually get this thing home.

But what were we going to do, return it? Come on, I was an adult now. I’d figure this out. It’s a good thing that IKEA gave out free rope so you could tie everything to your car. I laid the flat boxes on top of Porky, rolled down the windows, and started tying. I don’t know about you, but whenever I need to make a really strong not, I just start improvising. I’ve always found the strongest knots to be the ones where you don’t have any plan at all. You just start looping and pulling and twisting. Any structural integrity defects are cancelled out by the fact that I’ve knotted and reknotted like fifty times. There’s no way that rope is going to come loose unless I cut it.

All the while my wife, my girlfriend at the time, she was like, “I don’t know Rob, we should call my dad. I’m not sure about this at all,” and I was just like, “Be quiet. I don’t need anybody’s help. I’m a man now. I just co-bought a piece of IKEA furniture. I’ll do this myself.” Yeah I was a man. I was cohabitating with my girlfriend. So what if I was too scared to tell my parents that we moved in together? So what if I had them drop me off several blocks away from our apartment in a lame attempt to trick them into believing that we were still maintaining separate residences?

“There we go,” I said out loud, putting the finishing touches on my knot, giving the boxes a couple of pushes to simulate any bumps we might hit on the road, “We’re good.” And then I tried to open the car door, and it wouldn’t open, because I didn’t think about the fact that I had strung the boxes on top of the car, looping through both open windows, effectively tying both of the doors shut.

“That’s OK,” I tried to act all casual, “we just have to climb in through the windows.” And before she had a minute to protest, I picked up my future wife and shoved her through the passenger side window. I can’t believe we made it home without a major incident. Those parking lot simulation bumps weren’t even close to matching the bumps on the road. Every time we made a turn, I had to keep my arm out of the window, providing some support to prevent the boxes from sliding right off. I’m telling you, that rope should have snapped.

We left that apartment after a year, disassembled the furniture, moved into a new apartment, reassembled it, disassembled it again when we left for the Peace Corps, and put it back together in our current residence, where I barely give it any thought as I stare right at while I’m writing every single day. Most everything else that we own is some sort of a hand-me-down. The couches and bedroom set were given to us by my aunt. The kitchen table is from my parents. The TV stand is from my wife’s cousin, the coffee table we found on the street. But this cubby-hole shelf thing, that’s ours. We bought it. We’ve hung on to it, haven’t lost any its thousands of screws every time we’ve took it apart and put it back together.

People knock IKEA furniture. It’s cheap, yeah, but this piece has definitely made up for the couple of hundred bucks we dropped on it six years ago. Right now the bottom shelf serves as a liquor cabinet, the upper shelves are where we store all of our dried kitchen goods. On the top level we have all of our photo books, our wedding album, the now-dried bouquet that my wife carried as she walked down the aisle. It’s such a generic piece of contemporary living, and I rarely if ever consider it as it stands up against the wall. But when I do notice it, when it occasionally pops out of the invisible background of my life, I still get that feeling, those first steps into adulthood. And I can’t imagine my home without it.

Boss, I’d like a raise

A few weeks ago I was getting so fed up at work, I was like, man, I can’t do this anymore, I’ve got to get out. But how do you just leave a job? How do you get out when you don’t have anywhere else to go? So I sat on it for a while, my frustration, my bitterness, everything growing steadily until I couldn’t, like I really couldn’t do it anymore.

So I figured, well, maybe I’ll act like I’m going somewhere else. Maybe if I started going through the motions, then everything would just fall in line, all universal, like the universe, like all of those new age self-help books that I see people reading, about unlocking the secrets of the universe, you’ve got to, like, you’ve got to act on it, and then you’ll get it, right?

So I was like, boss, I need a raise. And he was like, no way, waiters don’t get raises, company policy. And so I was like, fine, well, maybe I’ll find a different company. And he didn’t even look up from his papers, and the tone of his voice didn’t change at all, but I could tell he was annoyed, he was like, fine, go ahead man, good luck out there.

And then I left his office and I was like, shit, that’s not what I was going for, a raise? No, I want out. But then I got in there and, you know how it is when you have to talk to your boss. It doesn’t matter what you had planned out, you get in there, he’s not looking up from his papers, you have to knock on his door even though he’s just sitting there, you see him through the glass just sitting there, like I don’t get what a knock’s going to do differently than if I just open it up.

But still, it’s like, hey Rob, you mind knocking next time? And so I knocked. But was that too gently? Did he hear me? Maybe I should knock again. And I did, and he was like, all right, I’m coming, I can hear you, hold your horses there partner, and he was clearly annoyed.

And then I was like, hey boss, can I ask you something? And he didn’t say anything, so what do I do? I asked about a raise. That wasn’t what I wanted to say, but he was already nodding in disapproval, and I was just thinking, get out now, but I didn’t, I said the whole maybe I’ll find somewhere else to work bit.

So then after work that day I asked my buddy Pete to call up the boss, pretend you’re somebody else Pete, somebody from a different job. Call him to ask about me as a potential employee. And so my boss answered, I was sitting right there, right next to Pete, and he was like, hello? Yes, this is Pete, I mean … Peter. It was already off to a weird start. And he was like, yes, I’m calling about Rob … Robert. For a job. Yes. OK. Nope. Got it. Terrific.

And I said, Pete, what happened? And he was like, nothing. He didn’t say anything. He was just like, yeah, Rob had been mentioning he’d been looking for work. Do you like him? Do you have any questions? And that was it.

Fuck, Pete. Come on, you’re supposed to play some hardball. You’re supposed to be making it, like for my boss, so he’s like, shit, I didn’t think Rob was really going to go, maybe I should give him a raise, screw company policy. Maybe he is serious about leaving. Now I was like, shit, what am I going to do? Do I say anything to my boss?

But my boss didn’t say anything to me. Not for a week. Not for another week. So finally I knocked on his door again. I waited after I knocked, like a minute. Two minutes. I raise my hand to knock again and he was like, all right, come in. I said, hey boss, thanks for putting in the good word for me. And he just kind of nodded.

But you see boss, I think I’m going to stay. I’m a part of the team, right boss? So, yeah, I think I should stay right here. Nothing. So boss, maybe like a little raise? And he was like, I told you already Rob, that’s just not going to happen. And I was like, well, could I maybe have like something? Like a free lunch? A free Coke? And he just nodded, nope, and then held up his hands, like, sorry buddy. But I don’t think he was sorry.

And it’s crazy because I didn’t even want a raise. I didn’t want anything. I just want out. I don’t know why I thought I’d talk to my boss. I should be talking to other bosses, other potential bosses. Not my idiot friend Pete. But come on, not even a free Coke? One free glass bottle of Mexican Coke? That’s total bullshit, because I see the boss giving a free Coke to the grill guy like every other day, definitely every Friday, and he doesn’t even say anything to him, he just kind of tosses it to him, and while it’s still in the air, while it’s perfectly in between both of them, almost suspended at the top of the arc of the throw, they look at each other, they have a little nod and a wink, a really subtle keep up the good work man, we’re all really proud of what you’re doing. Enjoy this ice-cold Coke man, on us, on me, we’re fucking tight you and me, drink up.

The pizza place close to my house

I went over my brother’s place to hang out and watch some basketball. We drank some beers and ordered some pizzas, we played some cards and I then I got tired and called it a night. “Take the rest of the pizza with you,” my brother told me. “You sure? You don’t want any?” I always feel bad going over somebody else’s apartment and taking anything home, but I really did want that pizza, so I didn’t put up much more of a fight when my brother told me he didn’t want it.

I love pizza so much. It’s been a constant in my life and, as I’ve grown up, as my love for pizza has grown up, so has my appetite for pizza. It’s one of those foods that I could eat continuously without having to stop because I’m too full. If I’m eating pizza for dinner, I need a minimum of four slices just to be satisfied. But I could easily throw back a full pie. And I’m not talking any of those weenie personal pizzas. I’m talking eight real slices.

It was just my brother and me, but it’s always better to get more pizza than less pizza, and so we ordered two whole pies, knowing that there would be a few slices left over. I headed back to my place, only like five blocks away, but when I got to where I was maybe one block away, I saw my pizza place, right on the corner. I didn’t think about this. I’ve never had to think about this, because I’ve never walked back from my brother’s place holding a pizza box.

And so I thought to myself, what if my pizza guy sees me walking past his pizza place and I’m holding a different pizza box? You might think this a little egocentric of me, just assuming that these guys have nothing better to do than stare out the window all night and watching what I’m up to. But that’s exactly how it is.

This pizza place has been there forever. It’s one of these restaurants that changes owners like once every six months. And so something’s not right, not with the business, I mean, the pizza’s good, that’s where I always buy my pizza when I’m home, but maybe the location? I really don’t know what it could be. They have an A rating stamped on the door. They’re all really nice. Like I said, yeah, the pizza’s good.

But there’s never a line. They’re never too busy so as not to notice people walking by. I thought to myself, I’m being crazy, they’re not going to see me, I’ll just hold the box to my side and walk by as fast as possible without …

“Hey! You!” the pizza guy came outside, “Yeah, I see you. I can see the pizza box behind you. What the hell man?”

So I was like, “Hey! Oh, sorry, yeah I didn’t see you. Listen, I’m coming back from my brother’s. We ordered way too much pizza so I’m bringing back the extras. I love your pizza, we were just …”

“Well, why didn’t get pizza from us? Come on man!”

“No, it’s just that, you know, he lives a little that way, so we just …”

“So you what? Why didn’t you just give us a call? We’ll deliver! We deliver anywhere. Or on the Internet. You could have ordered on the Internet.”

And I didn’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t owe this guy anything. Look, I get it, you thought, I’ll buy this pizza place, I’ll turn it around. Where five or six owners before me couldn’t get the business right, I’ll somehow make it right. But whatever, maybe the oven’s cursed or something. Like the pizza comes out all right, but nobody ever walks by. I don’t know. I have no idea. But I couldn’t let it go and I kept running my mouth.

“No, it’s just, the pizza place by my brother’s, they do the brick oven style, and it was closer, so you know, we just …”

“Brick oven? Come on man. We have a great oven. Look, just next time, call us up, all right?”

“Yeah, definitely, you got it.”

And I went home and felt like shit, like man, do I have to have pizza again tomorrow? The next day? Like do I have to show up at this guy’s pizza place, like a penance? I didn’t go the next day, or the next day. I had so much leftover pizza that I didn’t need to, and the day after that I wanted Chinese food. And then I worked a couple of night shifts and all of the sudden it was the next week.

That’s when I was like, yeah, maybe I can go for some pizza. So I walked down the block and there was this big sign, “New! Brick Oven Pizza!” and I was like, fuck, I should have just kept my mouth shut. I walked in and the guy was like, “Where’ve you been? Look, I got one of those brick ovens.”

I had to order brick oven pizza. I didn’t even want brick oven pizza. I made the whole thing up about brick oven pizza. Nobody in New York wants brick over pizza, we all just eat regular pizza. It’s the best. And I felt bad, like the guy made me buy a whole pie, like he didn’t make me, but that’s what I always get, a whole pie, and so right away he was like, “A whole pie, right?” all smiling, and I was like, “Yeah! All right! A whole pie!”

And it was terrible, way overcooked. The cheese was all squeaky from, I don’t know what from, the oven, the brick? It was terrible. I never went back. The place was out of business in like two weeks. Every time I left my house I’d be looking over my shoulder, expecting to see this guy, the pizza guy, screaming a big, “Thanks a lot for ruining my business, asshole!”

Don’t give up on therapy; it works

I was getting so upset because the therapy wasn’t working. So after a couple of months, my talk therapist suggested I try some alternative therapies. She referred me to a dance therapist. The whole idea was to explore what was blocking me, through music, through the movement that my body craved to discover. It worked for like ten minutes, but then I remembered that I never liked dancing. Or maybe I just felt too stupid dancing. The dance therapist was like, “Rob, don’t give up, you felt something, right? Tell me you felt something.”

And I was like, did I feel something? I couldn’t be sure. I definitely felt more awkward as the minutes dragged on, and finally she was like, “OK, that’s it for today. I’ll see you again next week?” and I said yeah, sure, but she could tell that I wasn’t planning on coming back, and so rather than pretend like everything would be OK, she referred me to an art therapist. I thought, OK, I like art, I like to draw and stuff. Maybe this one will work out a little better.

The art therapist was all about telling me to unlock stuff. I didn’t really understand, she’d be like, “Unlock the feelings within!” but we hadn’t even done any art yet, we were still just sitting around. And there were supplies everywhere. Was this just a really long introductory session? Finally I made a motion for some colored pencils and the art therapist scolded me. She told me that I “wasn’t ready for the what the pencils wanted to show me,” and that I had to start with finger paints.

And it was, you know, it’s finger painting. I don’t even know if I ever really finger painted, or if I just associate finger painting as an activity that all preschoolers take part in during some point in their lives. Either way, the consistency of the finger paints made it impossible to really draw anything. And the colors just blended together. This stuff wasn’t drying at all. It was a huge mess. I got out in a hurry and cancelled the next week’s session.

I tried just putting it all behind me but I couldn’t get a grip on daily life. Little chores piled up. I wasn’t functioning. I went back to the talk therapist, and that definitely wasn’t getting any easier. The first ten minutes were her and I just staring at each other, me not knowing what to say, her just not saying anything either. I wanted to be like, “Why aren’t you saying anything?” but I could just tell that she’d turn it around on me, make it like I was the one shouldering a hundred percent of the problem, and she’d be like, “What would you like me to say?” and I’d be back at square one.

Finally I started moving my mouth, motioning as if I were about to say something, before stopping. The first time I did it, she did it too, because she really did think I was going to say something, but that only worked the first time. After that, it was just me half opening my mouth, occasionally gesturing my arm out, like I’m going to do it, I’m really going to say something this time.

The therapist said toward the end of the session, “Rob, I’d really like you to explore some more alternative therapies,” and I really wanted to resist, to protest, but I hadn’t said anything the whole forty-five minutes, and so, I don’t know, in an effort to preserve continuity, I kept my mouth shut as she told me about horse therapy, a pretty niche area of practice, something about me connecting with myself through horseback riding. It sounded nuts.

But she handed me the information, told me she’d make an appointment for me and I took it and left. The session was scheduled for two days from then, probably to discourage me from canceling, not giving me enough time to think it through, to forget about it, remember it, and then cancel. Sure enough, the whole next day I didn’t think about horses once. And then the day after that, I thought about it in the morning, and by lunch time I remembered that I had to call the whole thing off.

I found the card she gave me and called during my lunch break. “Billiards therapy,” the guy on the other end said. Billiards therapy? I’d never heard of billiards therapy. I confirmed my appointment and left work an hour early to head to the billiards therapist. There wasn’t too much instruction. It was just your classic game of eight ball. The guy kicked my ass like five times, but I got a few balls in. There wasn’t too much in terms of advice, aside from one point where the billiards therapist had all but the eight ball to clear. He lined up his shot, paused, looked up at me and said, “Rob, it’s almost like your problems, they have you,” and then he sunk the ball in the corner pocket before continuing, “by the balls.” After forty-five minutes he was like, “All right, that’s it for today. See you next week.” I asked, “Really? That’s it? And this is all covered by my insurance?” and he was like, “yeah.” I asked him for a note to get out of work early every week. I asked him if he could make it two hours early instead of one hour. He totally did it. And it’s working. Billiards therapy, man, it’s totally working.