negotiations marriage to self realization...

Any good negotiation starts devoid of emotion. This by any sense of the notion goes against the very make-up of a human being. There’s an end result; a goal seeking attainment. Any time you pull up a chair up to the negotiation table, any good negotiator knows that at some point the possibility of walking away from that negotiation with the desired outcome not prevalently attainable exists. You have to be right with that idea internally. Going into it under any other pretense is indicative of a loss before the first word is even uttered.

Take going to buy a car, for example. The understood rule of the buyer is to never show an overwhelming love of any car – even if said car is your dream car and you teeter with the idea of buying it whether you come to an acceptable arrangement or not. Beyond that, the buyer has to be prepared to walk away from the purchase. Furthermore, the car salesman is looking out for #1 and conversely, so is the buyer. If that salesman can get you to pay just $1 more, they hear the sound of a cash register going off and the phrase – there’s a sucker is born every day – playing over and over.

In December of 2007, I purchased my first car all on my own – no cosigner. My father attended the negotiations under the sole context that I had no clue what I was truly in for and that purchasing a car is unlike any other type of sales negotiation. I found this difficult to believe as I had spent the last 5 years of my life entrenched in sales. However, his warning proved to be no understatement by any stretch of the imagination. I found myself quietly watching my father say and do things that would be considered very out of character for him on any other given day in any other given situation.

For example, Honda offered me $2,500 as the trade-in value of my 2001 Honda Civic that had barely hit 60,000 miles and not 4 years prior purchased at $14,000. My father calmly pulled a 50 dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the desk. His next words are forever filed under the category of – my father’s a badass. He says (and I quote), “I will give you this 50 dollar bill and kiss your ass on the 50 yard line at half-time of the next Dallas Cowboys home game, if I give you this car for $2,500 1-week from now, I will see this car on your used car lot selling for $12,000.” And my staunch Catholic father leaned back in his chair and found the sound of silence with an unrelenting stare dripping of disgust at the sheer audacity of the situation.

The salesman looked up from his computer and says, “What is it exactly that you want for your trade in?” It’s in that moment, that the salesman was on the ass end of a negotiation that was not headed in his favor and that simple statement lent for the calm and patient predator that was my unrecognizable father to pounce.

“$8,000”

That was the only thing my father said while remaining leaned back in his chair, one foot poised on the salesman’s desk. He said it almost flippantly, expecting no doubt to negotiate down to $6,000 if he had to but was unrelenting in his state of devoid emotion and inability to let the quick talking salesman dictate to him what he was going to do.

After what seemed like an eternity of fiercely moving hands over the keyboard coupled with the mutterings of what in its low tone sounded like – this guy’s crazy, I can’t do that – he leans back in his chair and rubs the top of his head. It was in that moment, that I realized we’d won this stand-off.

“Ok Mr. Williams. We’ll give you $8,000 for the trade in.”

I don’t remember what I was doing in that moment, but when I look back on it, I imagine that I my chin was dragging the floor at a loss for words coupled with an new found respect for the man I call dad.

They say that if you can take a theory and apply it to all aspects of life, it’s truly brilliant. Einstein's theory of relativity. While, the initial wording of his thoughts scribbled on a bar napkin (no doubt) may not have made sense to everyone who read it, it is undeniably applicable, valid and real. And we – all of us – now live by that theory. Sheer brilliance in its rawest of forms.

I don’t hold the illogical notion that in order to be considered brilliant you have to come up with some kind of theory, build a machine that does something that no other machine has done, understand quantum physics without ever picking up a quantum physics book or any thing else “they” dictate as truly being genius. I do, however, believe that there are brilliant people (geniuses even), while not in abundance albeit, that find their roles within the bovine herded in its common direction. It’s truly a rarity to find that person who is able to get their thoughts out, put it on paper, and give it to people resulting in common acceptance. It’s that aspect of it that truly fascinates me.

Einstein, Machiavelli, Newton, Freud, Plato, Aristotle... Steve Jobs for shits sake.

I don’t think that genius lies in what you can find in a book or how many books you’ve read for that matter. I truly think that it’s as simple as this… it’s the ability to see things as they are, in their simplest form and in the purity of a relentlessly open mind. You know perfectly why it makes sense, but you struggle to express to someone who hasn’t had the same realization – insight – that you have had. It seems blatant. It seems obvious. How is it that you just don’t see how this absolutely makes perfect sense?

My best correlation to illuminate this is the premise of the movie Good Will Hunting.

I by no stretch of the imagination classify myself as a genius. I don’t think I am all that brilliant and often times wonder how it is that I get myself through the day without donning a helmet. But what I do think and as I grow older feel – that I am not normal. I will spare the droning on and on about what really qualifies and/or quantifies normalcy and rely on the idea that it’s the best word that the English language provides to meet on an understandable common ground.

I feel often times that I misrepresent myself to the word. It’s not like I feel like I owe something to the world or that I really care ultimately how I am perceived. But I do. I think it’s getting to the self-realization that while I believe in the way I think and see things, I lack the ability to effectively express that outwardly. While it’s simple for me to say that I don’t care or it’s just that people don’t get me – it’s only recently that I have realized that that way of thinking is just a beard.

In order to survive in this world, you have to appear to act like everyone else. Even when standing in the middle of a party, you find yourself feeling like the only person there. Scanning the crowed of faces seeking out the returned stare of a person across the room who by ocularly connecting share an understanding. This happens rarely, or at least rarely in my case.

I have traits about me that mask a lot who I am. I’ll call them personality flaws; as simply put, they are flaws. I have a loud voice and generally speaking, use it to my advantage. I have been fortunate enough to have acquired a quick but often times dry wit. I am terribly independent and at times exude the idea that I don’t need to have personal relationships in life. I am content with who I am; even if that ultimately meant that I am alone in life – then so be it. And as it might be for most people, the thought of being alone in life is like a life of torture or living without purpose. For me, and more often than not as I attempt to determine who I am, am not in the least bit saddened by the thought.

I share 2 sides of personalities. First there’s the one that most everyone who knows me, knows about me; the extravert. The second, whom I find I favor the older I get; the introvert. Blah, blah – who isn’t both sides given the situation?

It’s the introvert that writes; that writes poetry. Sometimes I write things and try to read them back and have no idea what it was that I was trying to say, but that in that moment realize that I’d felt a way and try as I might, I could not make the marriage between the mind and the pen. I can count on one hand how many people have read anything that I have written in a serious mind. I like to think of myself as a thinker. I over shadow how much time I actually spend thinking by allowing my extrovert side to take the wheel. It’s like cruse control. I let her go and can just one person in a crowd; a chameleon. I am drawn to people who make me think – however inadvertent or advertent; trivial or life changing. Provoking thought within me is where I find I am happiest.

I have been asked on several occasions why it was that I stayed with the Russian (in college) for as long as I did given the underlying and at times blatant argument for the opposite. For all the he wasn’t, all that I wasn’t and all that we weren’t he still challenged me in ways outside of my natural comfort. He could do things I couldn’t. There wasn’t a longing or even a desire to be able to do any of the things he was brilliant at, but more a quiet respect. He wasn’t normal either. We weren’t normal separate and we certainly weren’t normal together. For all his short-comings, there was something bigger that found its inherent place within cancelation of one another. I wasn’t faultless in its demise either. Rather I’d even venture to say that looking back on it; I was an active factor in its failure. One of the many things that I took away from that 2-year moment in time was that I do not view self-inflicted failure as an option.

Last night, for the first time in easily 5-years, I sat across from someone who was once a stranger to me and saw my brother. He chose to walk a tough path in life stemming from self medication, self loathing and a complete disregard for his life or the lives of anyone around him. It was over the last 5 years that I had lost a best friend to a mind that just would not quiet down for even 1 minute of relief.

There was lying.

There was hatred.

There was betrayal.

In my world, I rationalized (negotiated with myself, even) that self preservation was far more important than playing the role of a forgiving sister. All of my childhood, I spent it practically raising myself. My brother had so many issues that it was impossible for my parents to chalk it up to the notion that he would one day outgrow these behaviors. The focus went to my brother almost 100% of the time. They say that children are astute and understand far more than they can verbalize. Looking back on my childhood, while at the time I had no grasp of the larger concept, I knew that no one was really watching me.

I can recall several times when I was younger, going to my parents and telling them that I felt like something was wrong. I struggled to read and often times cheated when a class in school tested our reading capabilities. I went to my mother and shared with her that the best way that I could describe what I was experiencing was that I couldn’t see. No matter how close I sat to the chalk board, I still felt like I couldn’t see. I couldn’t read and retain what it was that I was reading. While I intently loved reading, it quickly became a chore that I regularly ignored.

My mother looked at me and in a calm yet directed tone and said, “I will not have 2 children like this. You are fine. You’re just starving for attention.” It wasn’t until years later, while in college, that I was diagnosed with dyslexia. I had spent the better part of my life find work-arounds and the coping strategies that were given to me seemed extreme and how I had found to survive made sense to me even though I could not truly verbalize how it was that I was able to learn. What I did know was this – I never studied but I always attend every class. I excelled in classes like history. History never changed and therefore made memorization simple. Classes that required me to postulate theories from text that I was charged to read, caused me great grief. Find the irony in the degree I chose – Psychology; once over bachelors of arts.

All that aside, I have struggled over the last several years with the strained relationship that I have had with my brother. At its core, I simply feared 2 things – failure and the pain that came from having a brother like mine. And it’s now, when the time I have with my brother is short, that not only is he in a phenomenal place personally, but so am I. It wasn’t until last night that I really even realized that.

My brother is in the Infantry. I’ve never been prouder of one human being in my life. His military journey hasn’t been a simple one (much like his life in general) starting from having to do basic training twice to finally finding his calling to be an active-duty military man after he’d created a family; more specifically, a daughter. It was over beers last night…

Quick aside: I never thought that I would ever be in a position in this life to sit down across the table from my brother and share a couple of beers. *Such a simple action that I generally feel most people take for granted.*

It was over beers last night, that I realized that my brother and I are almost exactly alike. Not that I didn’t think that before, but before I thought we were exactly alike, except he’s crazy nuts and I’m not. He’s not crazy, not at all. He sees things in a way that others don’t. He makes no apologies for what he sees or how he chooses to express it. In his world – it just is. In this world – they called him bipolar. Being diagnosed as bipolar is almost as common as the cold these days… it’s like the word bitch. It lost the harshness of its meaning by its overuse and general societal acceptance.

Now would I call my brother bipolar? No, I don’t think that that one word sums him up. He’s 100% medication free – on all levels. This does not stunt his existence by any means. He’s merely found his survival techniques somewhere within the roads he’s walked and the things he’s experienced. And I respected that in a way that felt so deep, that I questioned how much of the conversation I was hearing and how much of it I was internalizing. Either way, there was a provocation of thought and a thought that made perfect sense to me.

He confirmed for me, for the first time ever, that he had animosity towards me because while I was doing a lot of the same things that he was doing, often times doing those things right along side of him, I was able to function in the normal world; and he was not. I got a degree. I got a job. I moved out and moved on. He was stuck in his own personally created hell where he felt like he was standing still in front of a green-scene of quickly moving scenes of his life highlighting his failures.

I knew he had hatred and animosity towards me. What I didn’t know was what the root of those consuming feelings that he found every opportunity to outwardly express to me right when I was at my lowest points. It wasn’t until he found his own personal middle ground that he truly understood why it was that I could move from world to world seamlessly. It is my honest belief, that because my brother required so much attention as a child, my parents refusal to deal with any issues that I had growing up and my desire and keen ability to fly under my brothers radar gave me the ability to strategize, plot and execute without being detected. My brother simply called me a functioning addict. And that may have been true.

I don’t live the life of an addict today. I don’t think I would ever even classify myself as an addict. I think I have addictive habits and traits, but I have always been able to walk away from anything when I was ready to walk away. I think I did those things during that time in an attempt to cope with a world that I most likely secretly hated with a brother who was once a best friend turned poison. Even reliving that statement saddens me in a way that I cannot describe. I wouldn’t take that time back and I certainly wouldn’t have done it any differently, but on the same note I wouldn’t go back and live it again. It’s simply a memory of a survival story – two-fold.

So there we were. Two adults who in a lot of ways need to say nothing to just understand one another. It has always been that way between my brother and I – even when our relationship was viciously deteriorating; ripping at the seams. Having that moment with my brother last night is probably one of the best moments that I have ever shared with him – and believe me, we have some good stories. All the animosity, hatred, fear of failure and pain seemed so distant that it was hard to imagine that it ever felt like that before. I felt like I finally had my brother back; my best friend. And we talked for hours about all kinds of things that in all the time we have known each other, had never found those common grounds before. It was last night that made me realize that my brother and I are almost exactly alike. That realization wasn’t even remotely scary to me but slightly comforting. Comforting to know that while I struggle to find where it is in this world that I fit and tangling with the notion that maybe I don’t fit… there was my brother, who just knew – without words – what that felt like.

I told my brother the story of a date I went on several months back with a guy who I can only describe as simple. This guy shot down every possible avenue that I extended to have some kind of thought provoking conversation while simultaneously offering nothing in return. There came a point in time during the dinner where I was quiet and he was quiet. It was in my silence that I realized that I wasn’t the normal one sitting at the table – a feeling that I had never really felt before. Up until that point, I thought I was normal and figured it was my clumsiness with words that prevented people from understanding me or getting to know me on a deeper level. But as I sat their quietly, I envisioned how he would describe me to his friends.

“She’s pretty, but I’ll tell you what though, she’s a bit eccentric.”

Eccentric was how I felt but was probably never a word this guy would have used. To reiterate, he was a very simple guy. I’m sure he would have said something like she’s odd or a little out there or something to that extent. That’s not to say that I thought he was unintelligent that I was smarter than he was or anything like that – we were just 2 very different people struggling to find a connection within the conversation. It never came.

I was telling my brother the part where I had had the very real feeling that I was not the normal one at the table and my brother responded with, “you’ve never been the normal one at the table, you just found an extraverted personality to hide behind – have you been doing some soul searching lately?” And I had. He’d pinned me and I was reaching my arm out to tap the matt to get out from underneath this self-realization and go back to the beer that we were having… but he wouldn’t let it go.

Over the last 8 months or so, I have been met with what I would call personal lows followed by what I can only refer to now not as a all time high, but more of a time of self-realization, understanding and coming to terms with things that I had chosen not to think about for an infinite amount of reasons. I am the happiest I have ever been. A statement I make without even flinching or having a hint of doubt in the back of my mind. It just is – and I am beyond content with that feeling. The kicker is that my situation currently isn’t where I expected to be when I felt a sense of total personal happiness. Kinda funny how it worked out that way. It just makes me laugh and know that no matter what happens in life, I can always feel like this – if I choose to.

I feel that since I have found this personal happiness, it has really eliminated the need for me to be extraverted all the time. I find myself not cutting people off to talk over them. I find myself doing a lot more listening. I don’t have to be the life of the party. I don’t have to make jokes. I don’t want to verbally spar with you outside of anything designed to be fun. I don’t want to pick fights with people and if a fight rears its head in my world, I am more apt to back down and walk away. I don’t want to intentionally make other people fee stupid. I don’t want people to meet me and deduce instantly that I am negative or that I am gruff and rough around the edges. I don’t want them to see anything other than that I am a thinker. It has been exceptionally hard for me to break outside of what I had always thought I’d found comfort in. Oddly enough, the better I get at being who I really think I am, the more I find comfort in that.

My brother leaves to go overseas soon. He left for San Antonio this morning to rejoin his unit in preparations to make their first tour. It was last night that he told me where he was really going to be stationed and what he was really going to be doing while he was there. It was not the plush job he’d made us all think he was going to have far out of the sight of danger and destruction. He hasn’t told everyone and has no intentions of telling some people just under the pretense that it’s just better that they don’t know what he is doing so that they can make it through back here at home. I won’t share where he’s going either, but I will tell you that he said that 1 out of every 2 convoy units don’t make it back from their tour.

It made the thought that this might actually be the last time I see my brother hit a little harder. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to shed a few tears before I pulled myself together. Here it’s been 5+ years of not having a relationship with you only to find that the best moment I ever spent with my brother might very realistically be the last. I was stricken with sadness, but not for the reasons you’d think. This was the first time that I felt like he was my big brother. He had made decisions in life and they were well thought out and executed. He spoke maturely and calmly. He didn’t pound his beers – rather he sipped them over the hours we spent there. He was a man, a brother, a father. And that was something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. And I know that if he dies over there, that that is exactly where he belonged. That he died a respected man doing what he was born to do and did it well. I was saddened because I knew that if he died over there, I wouldn’t be sad. Which sounds kind of shitty, but when I said it to him his response was, “I know exactly what you mean” – and then we nodded and shared a silence.

I suppose after spending that time with my brother, I came to the conclusion that one thing after another – at least applicable to my life and his – has been a negotiation. Knowingly or unknowingly has seemingly proven irrelevant. It wasn’t until recently that I removed the emotion from my self-negotiations. Breaking it down to the facts, dissecting it, finding the rusty parts and sandpapering them and then putting it all back together. The metaphoric clock, so-to-say has been keeping perfect time ever since.

I have found what I believe to be true. I have begun to find the person inside that makes sense. The person who doesn’t hide behind a shroud for fear that someone might just figure me out. I am my father sitting in that salesman’s office leaning back in my chair with my foot poised on the world.

I finally feel like me.

Considering breaking up with Bob…

I have yet to have my official invite from Bob on the old lunch date. That’s getting a bit annoying, really. Especially with all the small talk I have had to make with this dude. I’m nearing being over this whole saga, quite frankly.

Yesterday, I’m walking in from lunch as Bob is walking past me in the other direction out to lunch (I’m guessing). He says hey or something – I don’t really know as I wasn’t really paying attention to him. I think I said hey back. Whatever I said and/or however I said it caused Bob to be concerned that I wasn’t having a good day. Great.

10 seconds passes and I can hear his quickened footsteps approaching me followed by a –Hey Angela… wait a second. I didn’t stop or turn around. And then in an instant he sends a salvo of questions in my direction.

Is everything ok?
Are you having a bad day?
Is there anything I can do to help?
You look sad today.

Ok, I look sad today?! That’s a pretty bold statement to make when you’re not even standing in front of me. Did I look sad from the back? How does one even look sad from the back and if I did, in fact, look sad from that back that would kinda concern me a bit – enough to walk backwards everywhere I was going for the next week. I’d prefer you see my happy front.

I said something benign in return, like – No, I’m good. I think I even chuckled a bit when I said it. Like, how dumb are you for even asking, kinda chuckle.

He didn’t get it.

Context clues… inferences… must have been wasted on him during his SAT prep courses. Wow. I think I just gave this guy more credit then he deserves. SAT prep course?! Yeah, I’m laughing at the mere thought he even went to college or had plans of attending college after high school (most likely, though – GED).

Bob has now made it side-by-side with me and we are walking together. I really didn’t want people to see us together, honestly. Well, with the exception of Dave seeing us – I’d like to keep the sandwich alive – but it seems as if Dave has grown weary of competing with Bob. I don’t blame him. It’s a damn fulltime job, because Bob’s everywhere.

I picked up my pace and as he was in a slow jog to keep up, he moved in front of me – between me and my salvation – the door to my office. *sigh* Now I HAVE to deal with you. FINE… what do you effin want?

He inquires about my buddy who I was meeting for lunch last week. The one that cancelled on me at the last minute because of “work” (which we ALL KNOW you don’t work – whatever). In an attempt to keep my own interest in the garage dater saga, I’d told Bob that I was meeting a friend who was going out of town for a week or so. Bob pressed into more details asking me where he was heading and I said overseas (which wasn’t true) to backpack or something. I’m not sure why I felt compelled to make that part up, but lo and behold, I did and then I filed that lie away into the category of that’ll never come up again… commit to memory?! I checked the no box and moved on.

Now here I am face-to-face with Bob and he says – your friend… you know the one that’s out of town the one you met for lunch last week?

And seriously, in that moment – I had zero recollection of what he was even talking about, that I had even lied about that lunch and what friggin friend was he talking about?!

At a minimum… 30 seconds passes.

I search my lie database frantically trying to retrieve the proper lie and the exact right lie to further the lie that I couldn’t even remember I had lied about in the 1st place. It was in that moment that I realized I was a far better liar when I was a kid. I miss that.

After enough time passes without me saying anything, Bob goes – you know the one who went out of the country?!

*DING* Thank you Bob… memory recovered… back in tact, prepared to lie further.

I say something to the affect of – yeah he’s still out of town.
And Bob in typical Bob 150watt bulb in my face followed by the interrogative questioning says – so what? Is he like your friend? Boyfriend? You want to be with him, or what?

He’s given me the perfect opportunity; the perfect out to say – yes, yes that’s my boyfriend and we’re madly in love and living happily ever after… and I am 3 months pregnant with his kid – but instead I decided to say no, he’s just a friend.

Bob says his standard I’m going to take you to lunch bit… which hasn’t even made it past saying he is going to do it... and scurried off.

I’m sort of over this whole gay ordeal. Lunch date or not. I’ve been building it up to be funny and that I could get the one up on this date, but really… all I’ve gotten out of this is annoying conversations and possibly a stalker. Hard to say.

Nonetheless, I think I will come up with something to repulse him… Maybe I will tell him I got knocked up. Maybe that “lunch” with my buddy that was leaving for overseas… was a nooner resulting in a lovechild. I could pull that off. Well except the being pregnant part after a few months, I think that they’d be asking how come I’m not showing. That’s no good. I’m going to have to come up with something to shake this dude, because it’s like a damn fulltime job to keep up with him and the lies.

Plus I would hate for him to bust into a 24-hour Fitness or Bally’s or something and shoot down a room of women doing yoga or some shit and mow them down with an automatic gun only to leave a note saying he did it because he was tired of being rejected. People are nuts… and I probably shouldn’t be poking the guys in a straightjacket with a stick… One day, they’ll free themselves and return the torment – however, I don’t think it’ll make it to a blog per-se.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/04/bridgeville-gym-shooting-_n_251411.html

The Angela Sandwich…

Ok, I think that this story has perhaps truly gotten out of control. I’m now in the midst of a love triangle called The Angela Sandwich. Truthfully, I wish that I was a good enough story teller to be making this all up. I’m not. This really happened…

I’m outside sitting on the bench, taking a breather… playing Bejeweled. (I should be embarrassed by my obsession with that game, but I just dare you to try and beat my top score… you know what?! Because you can’t!!) It’s around 11:00am at this point.

Code Name: Bejeweled Loser.

Bob comes strolling up and says – Can you go to lunch today?
I say – No I can’t. I’m meeting a friend for lunch today. (Which I already knew my friend couldn’t meet me for lunch because he was being a HUGE loser. I digress.) He says – When can you do lunch this week?
I say – How about tomorrow? (I just have to see how this plays out… I’m beyond intrigue.)
He says – I can’t Wednesday, but how about Thursday at 1pm.
I say – Yeah, alright that should work.
He says – I will see you then. (And walks off.)

It’s now 12:45pm and the scene is the same, except I am on the bench outside my office on the phone with my brother (gasp, not Bejeweled… I know, it was hard for me too).

Bob spots me for the 2nd time today and says – I thought you were meeting some for lunch today?! (With that tone of you lying bitch!)
I say – Huh?! (I’d actually forgotten that I’d lied about that not 1-hour before! Oops. This is getting quite complicated what with keeping track of lies and such…)
He says – You said you were meeting your friend at 1pm for lunch today. (Dude’s now officially calling me out on my lie.)
I say – Yeah, I am meeting him at 2pm. (Returning the look of confusion… like it was always at 2pm and you’re an interrogative little prick).
He says – I could have sworn you said 1pm.
I say – I actually didn’t tell you a time when we talked. You’re just stuck on 1pm for some reason. (There was a total sense of confidence in my voice when I said it.)
He says – Oh, ok. (Defeated and sporting a bewildered look, questioning if I had in fact said a time and if I did, was it 2pm? In which case, he just made himself look like an ass.)

Angela: 1:0
Bob: 0:1

It’s 1:30pm and the scene is the exact same as the previous. There’s some family drama happening on the other end of the phone… another story for another day. And Bob has now managed to spot me for yet a 3rd time in a 2-hour span. Concerning, much?!

As I hung up the phone, he says – I am going to just sit here and keep you company. (I figured it was as good of time as any to converse with the guy for a bit, sans Bejeweled.)
Before I can even say anything to his 1st statement, he says – I don’t really believe in organized religions. (Uh… what the fuck?!)
I say – Oh really, I’m Catholic.
He says – (and I shit you not) Oh well it’s not you’re fault that you’re a Catholic.
I say – Uh, I’m not sure I know what you mean? It’s not like being Jewish, where you’re just born that way?!
He says – Well, when I raised myself up, things were different. I’m a lot smarter now then when I was a kid. You know about denominations and all.
I say – Uh… huh… I would hope you were… (In a sluggish, probably appalled tone.)

It’s about this time that I noticed he had cracked into a Lunchable. He was literally having his Lunchable Lunch while keeping me company.

Three seconds before I made an off handed remark surrounding him not being smarter as an adult and Lunchable related (it would have been clever) another guy I know in the building came outside and sparked up a smoke. His actual name is Dave. I had talked with him, last week about what he does and all that good stuff and had even given him a potential lead on some things. It’s not like we were best of friends or anything… but I was happy to see him walk out there to offset creepy dude. Turns out Bob and Dave work together – good lord!

I say – You never stopped by to give me your card last week.
Dave says – I know, I forgot. I will drop by this afternoon and give it to you.
I say – (In front of Bob) Ok, but I have a lunch apt at 2pm. So if you come down then, I won’t be there.
Dave says – Alright, I will stop by today though, for sure!
I say – Ok, and head into the building.

Sure enough at 2:15pm, Dave shows up to see me. Right in the middle of my fake lunch plans! Crap. I’m not a very good liar! Before he could even open his mouth to speak, I say – It’s a good thing my lunch apt canceled, otherwise you would have had to leave that with the front admin. (I’m not exactly sure why leaving it with the admin would have been a bad thing, but I was pressured… and semi-folded under that pressure of needing a quick lie).

This is getting out of control.

He wanted to tell me more about his company, what they do, how our company and his company could partner, etc. Blah, blah… who cares? I didn’t. I was just making small talk outside earlier, as a way to not have to talk to Bob or watch him build his Lunchable sandwiches and carefully nibble around the entire outside before shoving the rest in his mouth. I zoned out on Dave’s conversation.

When I did eventually check back in, it was to the words – So where can I take you to lunch next week? Where do you like to eat around here?

Wait, what?! Did Dave just ask me out to lunch?? Yep, he sure as shit did. Before I could even process that question, he’d somehow managed to mention that he was 39 years old and something else… I don’t know. This conversation was all a semi-blur.

When I finally did speak the only words I found were – Is this a joke? Seriously, is this a setup?!
Dave says – What are you talking about?
I say – well you know that… by the way, what is that guy’s name – the one you work with?
Dave says – His name’s Michael. He’s a little squirrely, but completely harmless.
I say – Right, well you know that Michael has been asking me out to lunch for weeks now?!
Dave says – I didn’t know that. Michael is our front office admin. He’s not all there, but again harmless, a teddy bear really. (Like now that he knew Michael was courting me, he felt compelled to reiterate that he wasn’t a lunatic, but rather a teddy bear… harmless…)
I say – Uh, huh…
Dave says – I tell you what… I won’t tell Michael I was even here today. He doesn’t know I even came down right now to talk to you. We just won’t tell him about it and I will come down sometime and see if you are available for lunch. My treat. What do you think?
I say – Yeah, sure… stop in and if I am available, I would be more than happy to go with you.

I mean, I figured that at this point, why not. This has spun itself completely out of control. And now I am smack in the middle of an Angela Sandwich, a friggin love triangle!! I would like to see Michael and Dave fight over me though. Now, that’d be pretty funny. Or if we all end up at a carefully orchestrated lunch (by yours truly of course) where I start out the conversation by saying… guys, we need to talk…

Nonetheless, I at least know Bob’s real name is Michael and he’s an office admin. Eh… respectable, but not impressive. I suppose that kinda makes me a bitch.

I could care less… dating either one of these guys that I have zero interest in but would like to see how it all unfolds, kinda makes me a bitch to start, why start caring now?!

To be continued…

The garage dater strikes again...

Last week, I saw Bob outside in the parking garage several times. Every time he spotted me, he would wave frantically and from distances that ranged from 5 to 50 feet away and he would shout, “Hey Angela!!” to which I would always look up from what I was doing and say in a boring bland tone, “Hey” in return. He managed to spot me 4 of the 5 days last week. I’m sure it would have been all 5, but I worked from home one day. And honestly, I was sure I would run into him, on the day that I worked from him, in my apartment complex where he’d share with me that he’d just moved in and in a star-crossed fate that proved our impending blossoming relationship, he lived 2 doors down from me. Why? Because that’s just my luck.

It didn’t happen. There’s still time. All he has to do is ask a few more properly placed inquisitive questions, which apparently I am readily available to answer in perfect truth.

Side Note: I need to get that under control. The next time I share where I work and my work schedule with someone, I might actually acquire a stalker.

Side Note to the Side Note: I kind of want to acquire a stalker, you know – just for fun. It’s like the girls that get knocked up for the sole purpose of having another being need them and love them. I’m positively certain that a stalker would make me feel desired and potentially wanted. And now thinking about it, I want one. To be continued on a different day when I am not utilizing all my creative juices to craft a cleverly plotted strategy of breaking one man’s heart.

I digress.

So, each time he said hey to me, he was with a different person, to which I can only speculate were different co-workers. In my head, I imagined that given my lackadaisically unenthused “hey” back, that each different companion asked him, “Do you know her?” and he responded with, “Of course, that’s Angela. We’re going on a lunch date soon. We know each other.”

His, what seems to be, innate confidence has actually made me do a double take on how close he and I have become during this disjointed waltz we’ve been dancing over the last month or so. I mean how close can 2 people be, when one person can’t hear the words – no, I’m not interested, and the other hasn’t committed their name to memory? Nonetheless, this dude is straight up committed to the cause.

Code Name: Double-Oh Rejection.

His tactics however, are a little sideways, falling into no standard category of proper courting techniques. I feel that I could, with definite certainty, guesstimate what his justification for such measures would be – he’d say he was only trying to keep me guessing. (If he only knew.) I mean he doesn’t want to look desperate or anything (because he certainly has not up to this point, clearly).

Garage Daters Timeline (with my best guess of the dates and times)…

• Friday, July 10th // 4:30pm – Stop traffic to oogily ask a girl out and make finite plans for that next week – Tuesday 1pm, I’m coming down to take you to lunch. (Which I only heard… yeah sure, I’m going to have my admin let you down easily in t-minus 5,100 minutes… starting… NOW!)
• Tuesday, July 14th // 1pm – Stand a girl up on those plans. (Granted, I had planned to stand him up 1st; he just beat me to the punch and it wasn’t nearly as funny.)
• Friday, July 24th // 1:30pm – See her 2 weeks later and apologize for forgetting and say you’ll come down and take her to lunch the next week. (With my repetitive response being – no don’t worry about it.)
• Week of July 27th thru the 31st – The week that he was supposed to ask me to lunch a 2nd time to make up for blowing off on the 1st scheduled lunch date, I see him 4 of the 5 days, and all he manages to do is shout a “hey there” to me. (Laaaaaame.)
• Monday, August 3rd // 10:00am – Still no 2nd lunch date established. (Frustration ensues… how am I supposed to break your heart when you just won’t let me, damnit?!)

Keep in mind that I told him NOT to worry about making it up to me. There was no need for him to apologize for missing the original Tuesday lunch date, I didn’t care. Actually, I didn’t care before he stood me up but now I definitely do not care. For a person who I have openly rejected on at least 2 separate occasions, he’s trying awfully hard to make sure I don’t forget who he is. Which the irony in that is simply the fact that I don’t have the 1st clue as to who he is… starting with his name. (He does drive a gay car, though. That I do know and as it turns out, that’s enough.)

Bob made no attempts to talk to me in any extended form, outside of the courteously afore mentioned – hey there’s.

However, the intrigue of actually attending the lunch date might have gotten the better of me. As I last left it, I said I thought it could present a funny situation (even if manufactured on my end), should I actually attend. I stand by that proclamation and I think that my intrigue might just be satiated this week!

• Monday, August 3rd // 1:00pm – Bob spots me, shouts “hey” and then follows that up with a very unexpected – “I’m coming down to your office this week to take you to lunch! Non-negotiable!”

Non-negotiable, eh?! We’ll just see about that…

To be continued…

Headline: Man run over at the Lewisville 5K. Last words “seek shelter”.

People in crowds are downright amazing. There’s documented proof that when a group of people get together and are put in a stressful situation (I hesitate to call the events that I experienced today a crisis); they react in ways that are completely irrational and often unexplainable. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is a readily accessible instance to justify such a point.

Katrina was and will forever be considered a true crisis, I think for the obvious reasons. Granted Katrina is slight overkill as a point of reference in respects to the point I will eventually make, however conceptually it directly correlates. That being said, ordinary people who spent their lives, up until Katrina and most likely post Katrina, working, living and maintaining some kind of social ordinance, created mass-chaos in the face of adversity. Enter the horror that was those tragic events. Those same people now found it acceptable to loot, rape, kill and act as an unrecognizable uncultured group of individuals; a modern day Lord of the Flies, if you will.

I say all that to preface that when people in a group are put in crisis-type situations, they collectively act in ways that would be considered socially unacceptable by any standard. To bring it down a notch, I was personally in what I would qualify as a crisis situation several years back. It only involved 2 people, but how many people really qualify as a crowd? More than 2? 4?

I came home to find my best friend extremely ill and to spare the details in the middle the end result is that she had a brain aneurism and eventually had brain surgery. When I walked in, took one look at her, realized the left side of her body was paralyzed and she was in convulsions. I uttered the phrase “hospital time” and set a plan in motion. My instant reaction was to change my clothes, which I did. Uh, I don’t know about you, but it seems like the furthest thing from logical is to take any amount of time to change your clothes in such a situation. To this day, I cannot justify or explain why that was my initial reaction. I jokingly explain that if I am faced with a crisis, I will need to change my clothes and that’s when we all know, it’s bad. Point being, you never know what how one will react to a crisis.

Bottom line, there’s no sliding scale or standard deviation to indicate how a person and/or a group of people will react given the occurrence an out-of -the-ordinary event. Psychologists as far back as Freud and Jung, refer to it as crowd psychology and in some instances an anomaly.

Why the elaborate build up, you ask? -Especially since I specified that I personally, would not qualify my experience today as a crisis by any stretch of the very definition of the word crisis.

Crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.

To bring it full circle, the buildup was merely an attempt to justify my initial statement that people in crowds are downright amazing.

This morning, I found myself at the new Lewisville Bridge in full running attire, bib number securely pinned to my shirt and anticipating the 5K commiserating the opening of the new bridge. Let’s start at the amount of runners participating in this particular 5K. There were so many people registered to run that in an attempt to prevent mass chaos, they had scheduled heats of 500 runners separated by 45 minute spaces. I was scheduled for heat 4 running at 8:45am. There were a total of 5 heats. That averages out to 2,500 runners. Add in the spectators and the companies representing in tents and it’s fair to say there was somewhere around 5,000 people in a collective and confined area. That undeniably and unequivocally qualifies as a crowd.

Now, on to the “organized” parking situation. I had a pass to park very close to the race. Since my run started at 8:45am, I arrived at 7:45am giving plenty of time to park and make my way to the starting line with time to spare to stretch and possibly have a warm-up run. My parking area ended up being full by the time I arrived which led to being detoured, getting slightly lost, and eventually parking in a parking lot that was not designated as 5K parking. I said screw it parked and started to follow the crowd of runners that were walking towards the race. Let me just say, that I was so far away from where it started, that I questioned the existence of a bridge.

After walking close to 20 minutes, I arrived at the entrance and any initial frustration had subsided – momentarily. I was met by a police officer who was refusing passage to the starting line on the basis that a storm coupled by lightening was quickly approaching. The only heat to have made the run was the first heat. Everyone else was delayed.

The sky didn’t look too bad at that point. Grey, yes – but gave leniency to the passing thought that the clouds would move over not giving way to a storm. I have run several 5Ks in the rain before and was relatively unaffected by the thought. The event coordinators calmed curious minds by saying that the bridge was being evacuated and that they would most likely resume the heats at 10am. My running mates decided not to wait it out; a brilliant thought in hindsight. I decided that since I had paid $30 to run it, bought new running pants and shoes for this race, the fact that I would have to almost walk a 5K back to my car, that I had gotten up early and that I was already there – I would wait it out and see if I could get in a run at 10am. A lot of people were leaving but equally as many had my same thought to wait it out.

What happened in the next 15-20 minutes is the purpose of the build-up and ultimately this story. As I was talking with some of the waiting runners, I felt a few sprinkles on my face and knew that inevitably the sky would open. I did not, however expect it to monsoon. As my running mates accurately referred to it later, the sky looked ominous. And it did. In an instant the quickly moving rain clouds turned into a grey-green sky. Alas, I was committed to my initial desire to wait it out. The sprinkling turned to soft rain and the sky was giving no indication of retreat. That’s when I questioned my dedication to the wait.

All the while, the event coordinators were on megaphones saying the race would most likely resume at 10am. A conflicting story was coming from the police car speakers indicating that a storm was inevitable and to evacuate. Some of the waiting runners had given up on the idea of the 5K and were heading to their respective parking spots. I still waited; hope is unrelenting. The sky had gone from its ominous silence to an all out barrage of downpour. Big fat offensive rain drops littered the pavement and all of my hope of successfully participating in this 5K had subsided.

Now, there were easily around 2,000 people still out there and some of the 1st heat runners were just finishing their 5K. The cops then manned their speakers and in what was an unmistakably direct statement shared by a tone of panic saying, “THIS IS A CRISIS!! SEEKS SHELTER!!” To which I thought, this isn’t a crisis… it’s friggin rain. I’ll be wet when I get to my car; annoying yes, but definitely not a crisis. Plus I had no desire to change my clothes. Definitely not a crisis.

But there were those few people in the crowd, who I can only deduce had been lucky enough to never experience rain, who panicked. I’ll spare them some leeway given that the cops were selling this situation as a “crisis” and to “seek shelter”. My adrenaline was slightly elevated until I remembered that it was just water. I wanted to take a damn megaphone and say, “what did we all come here to do?”, and in my head the crowd roared, “RUN!” and I say, “right, so let’s RUN!” – like leading a horse to water.

Instead people started running the wrong way on the same street that other panicked runners who’d made it to their close parking spots, were frantically trying to evacuate. Children were crying. People were getting into cars with other people they didn’t know again “seeking shelter”. People were running in circles to nowhere trying to figure out where they should be running to. Other people took off running to their cars. I was in that group of people. Cars were honking moving to the wrong side of traffic to avoid hitting panicked runners moving in droves on the wrong side of the street. People were cussing and yelling. I continued running towards my car. After all, I came to run and the downpour of angry rain motivated me to double time it.

I think I was heading for a personal all time 1-mile record when this guy who was in the group of people running, stopped and crawled under a car. I stopped, stooped over and said, “what the hell are you doing?!” He answered, “Taking shelter!!” I replied, “How does getting under this car make any sense? Is this even your car?” He says, “No, but I am going to wait it out here!!” His tone was heightened and panic dripped from his quivering expression. I still had no urge to change my clothes. Nope, still not a crisis.

By now, a few other people had stopped to inveigle him from under the car with no success. I was drenched and begging for the comfort of my enclosed car, but was easily ¼ of a mile away. I gave up on the deranged runner clinging to the underbelly of a car that wasn’t his and accelerated my pace. The thought occurred to me in that moment, that there might actually be causalities because of the improper evacuation methods assumed by what we generally consider to be figure heads – the police. After that fleeting thought, I thought more rationally, expecting that the 5 o’clock news would report one casualty.

Headline: Man run over at the Lewisville 5K. Last words “seek shelter”.

I chuckled.

As I turned onto the street where I was parked, I saw a sea of red break lights. I knew that if they were as “organized” about getting us parked initially, that I was in for an hour of dead-stopped traffic coupled with car loads of people reveling the thought of how they narrowly escaped this crisis. A story I’m sure they’ll tell over their dinners this evening where they somehow played the role of a hero saving the life of at least 1 person.

Screw that! My dinnertime story will be short.

Crowds of people are amazing. No. No, I didn’t save anyone. I tried. But he wouldn’t release his taloned grip from what he thought was the security of the underside of a vehicle that wasn’t his. What? No. I didn’t try as hard as I could of to coax him out. It was pointless, can’t you see? Yes, I just left him there. I refuse to feel badly. How dumb could you be to get under a car on a bridge in a lightning storm? Yeah, he died. The owners of the car ran him over when they were frantically trying to, one seek shelter and two evacuate on the command of the police. Yes, I see the irony in that given that the dying mans last words were “seek shelter”, what’s your point?

As I sat in the predicted dead-stopped traffic, there was no reveling in my successful escape. I was more in a state of quandary. A quagmire. Entrapped by the thought that a situation that shouldn’t have happened in the way that it did, did. It was a well designed domino effect of self-produced chaos; initiating from an ill thought out heeded warning by the police. I can actually pinpoint the self destruct of a crowd of 2,000 people from that one instant.

I guess on some level, I should be thankful that I wasn’t run over, that I didn’t feel the need to change my clothes, that rational thought won over irrational, and that I made it safely home after what was supposed to be an otherwise uneventful 5K, outside of its normal satisfaction. But I can’t help but think that the power of a crowd supersedes any one individual and furthermore, rationality. It gives credibility to the reasoning that groups of people die in fires when in a panicked moment bum-rush the exits preventing anyone’s ultimate escape.

It only takes one person to react irrationally. It only takes one person to freak out, outwardly express that emotion evoking a similar, while otherwise unwarranted reaction from onlookers and the dominoes line up in true perfection. It is justified by a direct example of today’s events.

Crowd or what could, in this instance, classify as mob mentality is truly scary and inexplicably unpredictable.

While I felt nothing towards the idea of terror, fear or panic today, there was enough of a presence in a handful of others, to involuntarily result in a crisis situation.

As I stated at the top of this semi-pointless rant, I don’t consider heavy, or if you want an extreme, torrential rain a crisis. Yet, even as I write down my refection on today’s events, it seems likely that it should be properly diagnosed as a crisis situation. Maybe not at the same level of a Katrina, but nonetheless, my attempt to prove that this wasn’t a crisis has proven that it was – by very definition.

Crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.

At this point, what I am left with is the begging question – are there true crisis situations or is it the irrational, unpredictable reaction of others in a group that IS the crisis?

This, I may never know. But what I did take from my experience is this: if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck it’s safe to say that there’s a very high probability that it is in fact, a duck. In which case, when the likelihood that that every credible resource – the weather channel and my eyes which could clearly see that rain was inevitable, in this case – says that something’s a bad idea… it probably is. Heed personal intuition.

My final thought is this – had we all taken heed of what seems like a blatantly obvious outcome now (i.e. the rain resulting in the 5Ks cancellation), would there have been a crisis? Furthermore application of such question to any situation denoted in history as a crisis – would it have still been a crisis?