humor

the reason i have overdue library books is not because i forget. i know exactly when they are due. it's just that i check them out and don't finish them, can't finish them, or can't start them.

today: i knew i would be going by the library twice. i knew i wouldn't read the books. but still i said, "maybe i'll read those books tonight. i'm not taking them back yet." that's why i have library fines.

swing shift is the worst shift here at shelter. here's why: when you arrive in the afternoon, the house is dead. then everyone comes home and the house is alive. there are meetings, there is laughter, there is bacon, there's a kid's birthday party. there is that hyperactive kid whose birthday it's not who tries to blow out the other kid's candles, then runs over to attack a pile of balloons with his mom chasing after him shrieking, "no! no! he likes to eat balloons! son of a gun, don't eat the ballooooooons!" there's me politely poking a piece of cake around a plate with my fork, trying not to interfere with bad parenting (even though i don't know what the fuck good parenting is). there's me listening and still not knowing what to say for the millionth time, so scared and ashamed of being 23, thinking that the world would make more sense if i was crying my eyes out to a 54 year old woman and she was telling me, "it's okay, you're safe now. look at what you've done for yourself! it'll be okay..." instead of the other way around.

and then, sudden silence. everyone's in bed and the house is dead. i'm listening to a girl talk about her boyfriend over the phone, tying to be affirming and present while i mindlessly perform my ritual of taping the eraser to my old desk drawer...layers and layers so the drawer will stay closed. clearly no one has done this since i left. we got disconnected. i hope she'd okay. silence. silence. empty sadness lingering. there are always insomniacs awake, but the house is dead again. so i've seen death, life, and death, and it's still my shift.

and my library books will be due in an hour. eleven hours ago, i was at the grocery store. i saw someone i wanted to avoid in the checkout line and ducked into the frozen food aisle just in time. a narrow escape. for some reason it made me feel like meg ryan in a lame-ass movie. who knows why...it just felt like something she would do. only in her effort to avoid said person, she probably would have backed into a display of canned peas stacked up in a pyramid, and they would have flown everywhere and she would have tripped on one and fallen down and everyone in the store would be staring at her in silence, including the person she was trying to avoid, who was probably someone she'd be in love with by the end of the movie, who would weirdly find those dumb awkward stunts she always pulls endearing.

i asked this 3-year-old if he had any good jokes to tell me. i need a good joke. he said, broccoli banana sweat! i asked if that was a food. he said, no, it's a joke. then laughed. he really thought it was funny.