Today I had, by far, the strangest conversation I’ve had with a listener yet.

He approaches the booth. He’s a portly, balding man, about five foot and a half. He seems cheerful enough in his demeanor — enough so that you’d smile and say hi. I do so. He looks around the booth, and then over the side wall, down into our coveted “prize bin.” He spies a large pile of empty 97.1 Free FM bags.

“What’s in the bags,” he casually ponders. I smile, yet again.

“They’re just bags.” The man squints at me, accusingly. He sneers a little bit.

“Just bags? They’re empty?” Incredulous. That’s weird.

“That’s right, sir. They’re prize bags.” Satisfied with my explanation, I smile again — that’s three smiles so far. He’s definitely in the hole on politeness. I expect a firm handshake when he leaves.

“Why would you have empty bags?” He sneers again, and accuses again. This is becoming a trend. And we’re trending in the opposite direction I’d want us to. I start looking around the booth, nervously.

“To put prizes in, when we give them out. Or to give people that might need to carry stuff. Do you have any stuff to carry?” See, I’m being helpful. Combine that with the unrequited politeness, and this guy is going to actually owe me money.

“No.” He peers further over the wall. I’m not sure what’s he hoping to see back here. Maybe I’ve got the ultra super prize tucked up under the side wall, and the only way to win it is to see it. Maybe it’s a little dude, and you have to guess his name, and then he gives you his backpack. I don’t know. I start to wish I had that little prize troll back here; maybe it would get this guy to leave me alone.

He’s beginning to get impatient at this point. And I’m getting desperate. Obviously, he’s not buying my clever ploy to keep all the prizes. I feel around in random bags next to my chair. Finally, thankfully, I find a pair of sunglasses. I yank them out of the bag, and thrust them towards the sky. “Sunglasses. Free FM sunglasses.” Ugh. Now I have to do it. I don’t want to do it. Dear. God. No. Okay, fine. I smile. The man eyes the glasses suspiciously.

“I don’t want those.” Wait for it. Yes, there it is. He sneers. Fantastic. And just like that, he turns and walks away, leaving me holding the glasses.

Stupid glasses.

This morning, I woke up to a back ache, as I do every morning. I sleep on an air mattress that I managed to pop as soon as I got it home. Sure, I inflate it every night, but by the morning, I’m laying on the floor.

As you can imagine, when I wake up like that, I want something to cheer me up. This morning was no different.

I hobbled over to the computer and checked my email. Nothing.

Then, of course, I was hit with a flash of insight.

Cookies and popsicles.

A reasonable breakfast, I thought, and it’ll definitely cheer me up. I creaked out of my chair, walked over to my door, and out into the living room I went. Upon arriving in the kitchen, I made a discovery: there was a huge jar of protein powder on the top of the fridge.

Apparently, my roommate made himself some protein pancakes this morning.

Ignoring this, I picked some garbage up off of the floor, and opened the trashcan to put it in. I was met with yet another startling revelation.

Broken eggs.

This man had eggs and pancakes. And I’m out here trying to scrounge up cookies and popsicles.

I trundled back to my room empty handed.

It all started a few months ago. A friend and I promised another friend that we’d mail him a microphone for his camera, one that we had seen for sale at Best Buy. Turns out, that microphone was no longer available. To make a long story short, we could never find a suitable replacement microphone in the same price range.

So, I decided to part with my lovely Azden SGM-2X, a microphone both near and dear to my heart.

Today, I wrapped it and its’ associated accessories up in bubble paper, placed them into a box, and took them to the local Kinkos for mailing. Understand now, this package is bound for the United Kingdom, so I am already aware that I’m going to be paying a most unholy and indeed, quite unnecessary price.

When I arrived at Kinkos, the box was open and unsealed. I made my way to a small desk island in the center of the room, with packing supplies hanging from an end cap. My eyes darted quickly over the selection, and finally settled on a small roll of 3M Clear Packing Tape. Bingo.

I took it off of the rack and began the arduous process of sealing the box. A good five minutes went by before I felt that I’d sufficiently protected my precious microphone from the ravages of shipment. I got back in the line.

Oh, what the hell. Let’s call it a queue.

After “queueing” for another five minutes, I reached the counter. The gentleman looked at my package, then up at me.

“You shipping that?”

Hmm. “Yes,” I replied.

“You need to fill out the paperwork. It’s over there on that end thing. Right there. See it?”

I did indeed see it. I meandered back to where I’d been sealing the package, and, after a moment, plucked a hefty “International Airbill” from the rack. Terrific.

A few more minutes of my life waste by as I reach the section where I must report the value and contents of the box. Souvenirs, twenty-five dollars worth. This is Florida, we do that here. Y’know. We ship souvenirs to our friends in the UK, via FedEx Priority Mail.

After filling out the form, I queued back up and waited.

Upon reaching the counter, the gentleman looked at the box, and looked at my International Airbill.

“Shipping is over at that counter.”

Argh.

I got out of my queue, and got into the other one. Finally, I reached the shipping counter. The woman stares bleakly at the airbill, then finally, has to ask the question that’s burning deeply in her loins.

“What country is this?”

“Scotland?”, I fire back, confused.

“Scotland isn’t listed here,” she retorts, as if she’s got a B.S. in Geography.

“Try the United Kingdom.”

“Oh, there it is.” I’ll assume that the stresses of the job are getting to her, and let this one slide.

A few moments pass while she clacks away at the computer. I’m rapidly losing my patience. I contemplate not paying for the tape I used to seal the box. The dispenser looms large on the kiosk several feet away.

“What’s in this box? Twenty-five dollar value?”

“Souvenirs,” I reply nervously.

“Right. Well, I need you to fill out this separate manifest.” She produces a piece of paper that seems to contain very similar information to the one I’ve already filled out. In my head, I wonder exactly why she can’t just fill this one out herself.

I take the paper and move to a different counter to begin filling it out. Before I can strike the pen to the page, she speaks again. “It’s going to be a hundred and ten dollars.”

I freeze. “What?”

“Yeah, it’s over a hundred dollars. That’s the only option it’s giving me.”

“Well, keep working on that.”

“That’s how much it costs.”

“Well, I’m trying to figure out why I would pay this much to ship it, when I could take it to the U.S. Post Office and pay twelve dollars.”

“I usually always do my overseas shipping through the post office.”

She’s gone and bamboozled me at this point. I pick up my box, and thank her for her time, curtly. I stroll past the kiosk on the way out, and think to myself, at least I stole that tape.

And I broke my nose.

Oh, and I got burns all over one side of my face.

It hurt like a bitch.

I’m going to say we were doing at least 50 miles per hour when the car hit the ramp. It seemed to take an eternity for us to reach the ramp in the first place. We just kept driving and driving. The ramp loomed outside, but it never seemed to get any closer. I had my glasses off, so I couldn’t really see much. Then, it sounded like someone fired a gun. I think I blacked out for a few seconds, because the next thing I remember was trying to get the seat belt off. The car had gone through the air, hit the ground, and slid to a stop already. My face was covered with blood and explosive powder as I stumbled out of the car. What happened? Oh my god. The air bag is going to go off. Wait, no. It already did go off. I got out of the car already.

Someone handed me some water to pour on my face and clean off the explosive powder. I chugged the water and spit it back out, to get the same powder out of my mouth.

I think I had a concussion or something. I can’t remember anything after that. It’s all on tape, though, so I need to go back and watch it a few times.

My scars are so friggin’ hardcore. You don’t even know.

It came purely out of convenience. When I got back from Niceville in September, I was stunned to find out that I had actually remembered to bring the charger for my shaver back with me. I am always terrified I will forget it in the hotel. Alas, I did not. It made it back with me to West Palm.

I promptly threw it away.

During my rampage through the closet, cleaning out every box, bag and scrap I could find, the charger for my shaver managed to creep inside a garbage bag and lurk. I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know for sure that it went down like that, but anecdotal evidence suggests it.

Nevertheless, upon this discovery, my shaver was living on borrowed time.

Each day, I would shimmy quietly into the bathroom, and stare at the shaver. It would stare back at me, unknowing, ever the trusting appliance. If only it had known the fate that it would soon meet.

I would pick it up and cautiously trim, only cutting exactly what needed to be cut, only running it for the precise length of time I deemed necessary. Of course, I knew this couldn’t last forever. But I had to make it last as long as I could while I continued searching in vein for the missing charger.

A week passed. Then another. Finally, the fear of shaver death loomed so large that I shirked my shaving duties completely, letting scraggly, reddish-brown hairs grow every which way all over my face. Soon, though, that too became unbearable.

It was time for the shaver to receive its last rites.

I decided one night that I would enjoy one final shave with her before laying her to rest. I turned it on, and started to work. Slowly I shaved the right side of my face, nervously studying the process in the mirror, knowing that I must be ever vigilant of total shaver failure.

Then, suddenly, it happened. The shaver stopped. Dead. With only half of my face shaved.

This did not bode well.

I frantically searched the house for the charger. Surely, I had only misplaced it. I couldn’t have possibly thrown away the charger for my eighty dollar electric shaver. The one I can’t afford to replace right now. Nobody is that stupid. Especially not me.

Fifteen minutes of searching proved that I am indeed that stupid.

I sauntered out into the living room and crashed into the couch. My focus shifted around the room, finally settling on the keys to my car on the table in front of me.

I had to go buy a razor.

I picked up the keys and dejectedly headed down towards the car. Every person I saw was another set of eyes gazing at my ridiculous half-shave. They were all looking at me, I knew they were. I didn’t really know they were, because I wouldn’t even look up. But, why wouldn’t they be? I don’t care who you are. Everybody has time to stop and stare at the freak.

The back alley linking our street to the corner store looked mighty appealing. I took it, and made off like a bandit down the dark, single car width street. I knew that this had to be quick.

I dashed into the store. The automatic doors barely opened fast enough, but my advance would not be abated by glass and plastic barriers. I was a man possessed. Skirting hurriedly from aisle to aisle, I glanced at each sign dangling from the ceiling, looking for any sign of razors, shavers, or plastic butter knives that could be used to scrape each hair from my face.

Nothing. I couldn’t find anything!

“This is a drug store,” I told myself. “There’s no way they don’t have razors. That’s such a common thing to need.” And yet, I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t even find evidence of a past civilization of razors, once at the peak of its existence, and destroyed by the razors’ own hubris.

There was no chance I was going to ask for help.

Finally, I realized that I had sprinted right past them on my way into the store, before I’d ever started looking. I made my way back to them and snatched the first one I saw that I recognized.

Someone had ripped the back open and stolen the blades.

I went to get another one of the same kind. No more. Sold out.

I decide to upsell myself and get the four-bladed model. Why not? If three blades is good, why wouldn’t four blades be better? It took them years, but their marketing dollars finally got to me. I stuffed the razor and an extra pack of blades into my hand and bolted for check-out.

A line. Yes!

I knew that old woman standing in line behind me would be an annoyance. I made sure not to make eye contact, but I could see her looking at me. I stared at my feet and shuffled along in what might have been the longest, slowest moving drug store line I’d ever been in. The candy and knick-knack end cap did its magic, and more marketing dollars paid off as my pile increased in size to include a pack of gum and some chocolates. My face started to burn. It suffered from a lack of razor. Its only salvation was the four-bladed heroin that lay on the counter, between breath fresheners and caffeinated sugar cubes cut round.

The receipt printer on the cash register broke.

At that point, I requested forgiveness from the Lord for writing Selling The Faith, and informed Him that I realized this was punishment for that sin.

We all had to move to another register. I picked up my bundle of things and shifted it to the other side of the aisle, while the slowest cashier ever employed by this drug store lazily strolled over to it.

After what seemed like an eternity, I finally got to pay for my razor and candies, and get the hell out of there. This was shortly before I intended to rip the razor package open right there on the counter, attach the free blade to its handle, and use it to slice my throat open. Clean-up on aisle four.

When I arrived at home, I realized that I had forgotten the requisite after shave, but this no longer concerned me. I was working on a time table here, and I needed that hair to come off of my face. I had to finish the job that my fallen electric shaver had started, if only for her sake. Her memory had to be honored.

Shaving with a manual razor is not something I’ve done before, so it took me approximately nine years to do it. It was by far the closest shave I’ve ever had. While my electric shaver has served me well, I believe it’s time for that legacy to end, and a new one to begin.

Now is the time of the manual razor.

The electric shaver is dead. Long live the electric shaver.

We took the car out for a little fun today.

I won’t go into the details of our romps through the forest and wetlands, because I’m hoping to make a video of that here in a few days. I’ll save that until then.

I’ll instead talk about our little incident on Donald Ross Road.

So, we’re heading up Donald Ross Road, near Abacoa. The road is fairly open, with only light traffic. We’re in the Aspire. After going through a light, we realize we need to get over. A black Honda is bearing down on us, rapidly closing the gap. Being such a small car, the Aspire will still easily fit, regardless of the Honda’s intentions. So, we merge into the lane.

As soon as we merge, the Honda, the driver obviously frustrated by this emasculation, shoots out into the other lane and goes to pass us. Of course, being in the Aspire, we felt as if we were untouchable. The three of us in the car, all acting independently, did the following. The driver of our car swerved towards the Honda as it passed. I pointed out the window at the driver. And the passenger, of course, flipped them off. Hilarity!

The Honda whips in front of us, and immediately slams on its brakes several times. We stop just short of hitting it. The driver of our car turns around to check traffic in the other lane. Just then, the passenger door on the Honda flips open and a man jumps out. The look on his face was pure anger. He bolts towards our car.

At this point our passenger keeps flipping him off and smiling.

The drivers door of the Honda opens and the driver jumps out. This is in the middle of the road.

He too bolts towards our car.

The passenger of the Honda kicks our side mirror and almost breaks it, then kicks a dent into our door.

Finally, the driver of our car decides it might be a good idea to leave.

We go flying off into the next lane over and narrowly miss hitting the driver of the Honda, and the open drivers door of their car. They jump in their car, presumably to follow us. We bolt towards the next intersection.

Red light.

Traffic is backed up in all lanes. The turn lane is jammed and cross traffic is keeping anybody from turning right.

We stare out the back window at the Honda coming towards us.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity, the car in the right turn lane made it around the corner. We pulled over into the lane and rounded the corner behind them.

The Honda apparently gave up.

We did a victory lap around Abacoa.

This is a plea to the drawbridge on U.S. 1 between North Palm Beach and PGA Blvd.

Stop going up when I’m trying to get to work.

Honestly. You’re upsetting me.

Let’s cut to the core of the issue. You see, the thing is this. I leave my apartment at around seven-thirty each morning. I have a 12 mile commute up U.S. 1 to work. I start work promptly at eight a.m. Between me and my destination, there are approximately seven traffic lights, spread across three towns. There is also yourself.

The traffic lights do not concern me. It is you, and you alone, that defeat me on a near daily basis.

When you go up to let some random rich person cruise through on their sailboat, you’re causing me a great deal of inconvenience. This isn’t limited to me, though. There’s a lot of us out there, in our Ford Contours, our Nissan Stanzas, hell, our Volkswagen Golfs, and we’re all desperately trying to get to work on time. We honestly don’t care if you don’t open the bridge, and the rich person crashes their rich person boat straight into the bridge, causing it to capsize and subsequently break like matchsticks against the rocky shore. Broken boats do not concern us.

Of course, there is the matter of your structural integrity, if you were to allow boats to simply crash into you. I wouldn’t want you to put yourself at risk. I will let you make that call based upon your past experiences, as you’ve been a drawbridge for much longer than I’ve been driving across them.

I don’t want to make a federal case out of this. I realize that, as a drawbridge, you have certain needs, and society expects a certain behavior out of you. A standard you are expected to maintain on a daily, no, an hourly basis. I understand that this can be a great burden for you. So, I cannot ask you to simply stop doing your job. That’d be inappropriate, unethical and unprofessional for the both of us.

I’m just asking for a little leniency.

I know what you look like. I see you every day. I’m sure you know what I look like, too. Don’t deny it. I’m up there, every day, at the head of that line, waiting for those gates to go back up. You’ve seen me. Here’s what I’m asking. If you see me barreling towards you, headlights flashing, windshield wipers scraping dirt around on a dry day, and, quite possibly, horn blaring, do me a favor and just stay down for a good thirty seconds more.

How long is thirty seconds? It’s nothing. It’s practically like not waiting at all. This might be too much to ask, though. See, I’m not aware of your true motivations. I can only infer.

This might just be how you get your jollies.

Is that it? Is that how it’s going to be, then? You get your rocks off by making young upstarts like myself late for work? That’s how you have your fun?

That’s despicable.

I see how it’s going to be, though. I tried to reason with you, but now I see what you’re really like.

Just you wait, drawbridge on U.S. 1 just south of PGA Boulevard. You’ll get yours.

Just you wait.

It’s official. My employer now has me too terrified to sleep.

It all started a couple weeks ago, when I was late for work. Happens to the best of us, I know. Someone should have told them. Apparently, here, being late for work is inexcusable. Even the lowliest of level one support technicians is a vital cog in the machine, and said cog getting a five minute late start in a 9 hour day is unacceptable and ultimately harmful.

It should now be said that a week later, I came in two hours late for work.

That’s bad. I know that’s bad. I really do. I’m not trying to say, “Hey man, I should be allowed to be two hours late every day, I do what I want.” I’m not trying to say that by any stretch of the imagination. All I’m saying is, some times, these things happen, due to unforseen and unfortunate circumstances. My alarm clock not going off meets both criteria of that particular alliteration.

The day I was two hours late also happened to be the day I was scheduled for my 30-day performance review. Oddly enough, my performance review was late, and was being given on day 45. So we can assume that my alarm clock had lied in wait for this moment a full fifteen days after it was supposed to happen. My alarm clock has been in on it the whole time.

I entered the performance review knowing that I was going to get fired. This wasn’t one of those hunches, where you’ve been tipped off by body language, or you’ve shoulder-glanced some emails with your name in them. I flat out knew I was going to get fired, and it was going to be harsh.

I didn’t get fired.

It was threatened, sure, but it didn’t happen. “I know of places that fire people for less,” my manager said. “You shouldn’t even be a minute late, not in your first ninety days.” I know that. “Your alarm clock not going off is not an excuse.” Well, technically, it is an excuse. It’s just not an acceptable one. I kept that to myself; I don’t want to crack out that gem in my first ninety days.

(It should be noted now that the Dictionary definition for the word excuse contains several example sentences, all of which involve making an excuse for being late. I do not find this ironic in any way. To know why, look up the dictionary definition for the word ironic.)

I escaped my performance review unscathed for the most part. In fifteen minutes, we’d spent a good twelve of them mulling over my excessive tardiness, rounding out the session with a terse three minutes explaining how my performance in every other way is exemplary. I won’t assume that this is what spared my job — such people don’t seem to care about exemplary performance. I have a theory on this. It’s my opinion that finding people who know how to do this job, and people that have what it takes to do this job well, is easy. Finding people with the work ethic to come in ten minutes early on a Monday is not.

Fast forward to Monday morning. Early Monday morning. Two a.m. Monday morning. I sit at the edge of my bed, staring at my cell phone. I’ve now tested the alarm twice to make sure it will go off when the screen says it will. Somehow, this has done nothing to put my mind at ease. My eyes shift back and forth between the clock and the phone several times, before I realize they are the same object. A thought occurs — I need a real clock, one that doesn’t take a back seat to text messaging and dropping calls.

It’s now two-fifteen in the morning, and I’m digging through my closet for a clock. I have to be at my desk in roughly 6 hours. No, let’s be accurate. I have to be there in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Rounding time is what got me into this mess in the first place.

Two-thirty a.m. I have a sleek black digital clock in my hand, ravaged by time spent in a box that I probably packed when I moved out of my first apartment. (I’m on my third apartment.) I check the bottom. No backup battery. I’m placing a tremendous amount of faith in Florida Power and Light at this point. I plug it in and set it to the current time, which is now two fourty-six a.m. I wonder how it took me fifteen minutes to get from the closet to my bed, and realize it’s probably because I’m so tired. I wonder if getting to work five minutes early is worth all the trouble, and then I remember that managers don’t typically make idle threats when it comes to firing people. They love firing people.

After getting the new clock set up, I lay back and proceed to stare at it. I try desperately to get to sleep for another fifteen minutes. Every time I feel sleep coming, I startle myself awake at the thought of seeing 9:22 on the face of the clock the next time I open my eyes. I wonder if maybe I should just eliminate sleeping before work from my life, instead co-opting some sort of hybrid schedule in which I am awake for the first four hours before I’m scheduled to be at work. This way, even if I oversleep by like two and a half hours, I’ll still be able to get to the office before 8am.

My alarms all went off in sequence this morning. First, my cell phone calendar reminder woke me up at six a.m. sharp. Shortly after that, my alarm clock went off. After snoozing that, my cell phone alarm went off. I chose to turn that one off rather than snoozing it. Right after I did that, my alarm clock went off again. I was not going to be allowed back to sleep.

I made it into work on time this morning. I ran into several co-workers in the parking lot, including my boss. He gave me a curt nod before deciding to take the stairs rather than the elevator. I looked between those remaining and wondered if any of them had fought the same sort of battle that I had, just to get here on time. I wondered if any of them had been terrified of falling asleep, for fear of not waking up.

Honestly, I don’t even care.