tragicflapjack

[tragicflapjack]

The tragedy of unshared secrets

It never ceases to amaze me what people are willing to tell you when you ask them. This is especially true for people you just met and will probably never see again. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it, since all people feel the need to unburden themselves of some obscure secret that they would never dare to share with someone that could damage their more important relationship. I mean what better way of unburdening your guilty conscience than by telling some poor kid about how you recently cheated on your boyfriend when he naively asked you to tell him a bit more about yourself, in an attempt to avoid one of those dreaded awkward silences. Needless to say that what followed was indeed one of those incredibly awkward silences. So, in the course of my relatively short life I have asked many questions and were told many interesting stories. What surprises me even more, however, are the stories people sometimes share without you ever asking to hear them. One such a story involved me travelling back from my home country on a very long and tiring flight, after which I had to take another long train ride to my current city of residence. Now, I’m not sure how many people here have taken flights of 12+ hours, but for those who have not, I’ll tell you that by the time you get off the plane you tend to resemble something more along the lines of a blobfish than an actual human being. After dragging my now fairly bloated body to the platform and onto the train, I set about searching for my seat. When I finally reached the pretty modest chair that had been assigned to me, I realized to my great despair that there was someone sitting next to me. “No matter” I thought optimistically, “I know how to deal with this, it is after all not my first rodeo”. I plonked down on my seat and gave the universal sign of please do not disturb by putting on my headphones. Unfortunately, however, my travelling companion must have skipped that particular chapter of the traveler’s unwritten guide to public transport as she immediately dove straight into a very enthusiastic conversation. Now, before you think me a total oaf, I do not mind chatting with strangers, in fact I rather enjoy it. On this occasion however, I just felt too tired and self-conscious about my potentially malodorous breath, to exchange pleasantries with someone who’s name I had forgotten a full second after she had introduced herself. But after telling myself that I’m a nice person, as opposed to just being too socially awkward to say no, I decided to engage my new found friend in some small talk. It turned out she had been on the same flight as me and that, that was the reason (though heaven only knows why) she felt compelled to embark on this voyage of words with me. Anyway, after a few minutes I found that I actually really liked this lady and that she had lived a rather extraordinarily interesting live. Her work had taken her to many exciting places where she had met many exciting people and I was honoured to now be considered one of them. Eventually we circled back to why she had been visiting my home country, to which she replied it was because of work, go figure. Anyway, I asked if she had enjoyed her stay and what she thought about the place, and she said she absolutely loved it. Being the patriot that I am, my heart swelled up to about twice its normal size. “But…” she said, and I could feel my heart immediately deflating like an untied balloon, “I think it might have been a little too cold”. “Strange…”, I thought, since I come from a country that is traditionally considered to be quite warm by most and in some parts people wear shorts even in winter. “What do you mean?” I asked rather concerned. “Well, you see” she said, “I like to take a swim early in the mornings, and the place I stayed at did not have a heated pool. So, I think the cold water was bad for me because after a few days my herpes started to act up again”. “Ah ok” I said. Wait, what the f*ck? My ears started ringing as my face took on the expression of a proboscis monkey and I completely missed the next five minutes of the conversation. Now, it must be said that I really couldn’t care less about her having herpes, I was just somewhat taken aback by the manner in which she chose to divulge the information. Though, in retrospect, how does one casually bring that up in a conversation? Anyway, we continued to have a lovely little chat for the remainder of the train ride and afterwards said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. However, that story has stuck with me ever since, but for different reasons than you’d think. You see, the most interesting thing about telling that story to other people is that it seems that only about seven out of eight find it funny. Now, how’s that for a statistic?

Kind Regards

[tragicflapjack]

The tragedy of the socially awkward

You know those times when you see someone and somehow, from some forgotten cubbyhole in your brain, a single lonely neuron seems to whisper to you that you might know this person from somewhere? It also then invariable seems to always shrivel up and die before affording you the curtesy of telling you how or where exactly you know this person from. This then leaves the rest of your brain to frantically scramble to figure it out in time to avoid death by awkward social encounter. Miraculously you figure it out nick of time and proceed to share a wonderful little chat, at the end of which both of you promise to get together for a drink soon and catch up. Yeah right, like that is ever actually going to happen. Anyway, this story is nothing like that at all. I was driving back home with my parents after we went on a short holiday at the beach and decided to stop for breakfast at a lovely roadside restaurant. A very lively young fellow showed us to our table in a nearly empty room except for one table that happened to be placed across from me. Now, being a curious human being, I naturally took some time to inspect its occupants, which turned out to be a family of four with a, quite lovely, daughter roughly my age. We locked eyes for moment and shared a polite little smile and a nod, as one does in such situation and sitting down, I had started to browse the various delicious treats the restaurant had on offer. Throughout this time my eyes occasionally wandered back to the girl sitting opposite me and found, to my surprise, that her eyes had done the same. We continued this exercise of shooting glances at each other for a few minutes and I could feel my ego growing just ever so slightly. After a short while however, I was drawn back into a rather interesting discussion we were having about how it was possible that such a wonderful people as the Canadians could possibly elect someone like Justin Trudeau for not only one, but two consecutive terms. Incredible. I think we finally just chopped it up to them being so extremely kind and that since he had asked, they simply did not have the heart to tell him no and promptly sent him to a mental institution. Through the course of our breakfast and while discussing these, and many other enigmas of human nature, I soon completely forgot all about the good-looking stranger. So after deftly finishing off some bacon, eggs, sausages, roasted tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, baked beans and a hash brown or two, I thought it would probably be good idea hop over to the restroom and clean up, since I was starting to look uncannily like the little green cretin from the Ghostbusters. I did my best to wipe away most of the grease from my face and started make my way back to our table only to come face to face with our femme fatale, who walked straight up to me, and to my great surprise, smiled and started talking. At first, I thought she just wanted to know where the restrooms were, but when this proved false, I thought: “wow, maybe she is really into me” and then, gradually, the uncomfortable truth began to dawn on me. This girl recognized me from somewhere. All this time I had mistaken our back and forth eye contact for flirting when the poor girl was just racking her brain to figure out why this stranger kept looking at her. In my sudden panic and in an attempt to buy my brain some time to play mental catch up, I went along with the conversation as she apologized profusely for not instantly remembering who I was. After a few seconds, I was still drawing a blank and started to suspect that this might be a case of mistaken identity. The final nail in the coffin came when she asked me how some couple named Kevin and Rachel were doing. I do not know a Kevin and Rachel. So, I did what any normal adult would in this situation and told her they were doing great, and I would pass on her love to them. I also learnt that I was apparently moving to a different city to start a new job. How exciting! Sadly though, I suspect my acting skills proved rather lacking as about five minutes into our conversation, I noticed she was becoming somewhat confused. The poor soul seemed to have finally realize her mistake but seeing as I was already so committed to playing the part, neither of us had the courage to admit to what actually was happening. Bizarrely however, we continued to talk for another 2 good minutes and even made the empty promise of someday getting that drink together. As we hugged goodbye, I caught I look in her eye that said something along the line of: “Did I just hug a mentally unstable person?” to which my only answer is, you quite possibly did, my dear. Anyway, I don’t think being a crazy person is that bad really, maybe one day, I too could become Canada’s PM, who knows?

Kind Regards

[tragicflapjack]

The tragedy of human imperfections

Isn’t it a terrible feeling to be caught in a situation when you are confronted with, the flaws of your own humanity? To look in the mirror and find what you see to be somewhat, lacking? I think we all have been caught in such a situation before, but it seems to happen most often to me when I am at an airport. It is as if when those sliding doors open up to reveal the large open hallways and high ceilings, the door of my very soul slide opens simultaneously. Those fluorescent lights shine through the temporal plain and pierce through into the spiritual realm to reveal all the dirty crevices of my cavernous soul. I guess it has something to do with the fact that people seem to lose about half their already meager allotment of IQ points as soon as they enter the building. Normally fully functioning, competent adults are reduced to a squinting, head scratching shadow of their former selves as they wander from the one checkpoint to the next to perform the same rituals required by the aviation overlords every time, we humble plebeians want to set foot on one of their sky birds. The sheeple stand in endless queues witnessing some poor, half-deceased looking airport official ask the same documents (usually your passport, boarding pass or both) of every single person preceding them only to be flummoxed by the notion that, they too are expected to handover said documents. They then proceed to make an already unbearable experience even worse for all the luckless souls stuck behind them by frantically beginning to pat down a curiously large number of pockets on one of their several nifty travel packs. Each one is filled with a variety of little tidbits they only decided to bring along since it seemed to fit so snugly in the pocket in the first place. Well, after a small eternity of searching and decorating the airport floor with their personal effects, they manage to finally produce the desired documents and stumble on to the next queue to repeat the process. Here it is time to go on a slight tangent to say that I don’t necessarily blame said sheeple for their seemingly mindless conduct. I do realize that I am a child of the late 20th century and thus grew up with airports, the stale air and monotonous intercom voices forming part of some of my fondest childhood memories. I cannot therefore expect others, the elderly in particular, to know the ins and outs of successfully navigating these admittedly confusing buildings. Though it does beg the question that if we can’t manage to find our way in a single building then what happened to us in the time since our brave explorer forefathers? Sadly though, as human nature would have it, this knowledge does not stop the delightful mix of frustration and sense of superiority to rise up as you zip past the confused masses. When you already have your laptop out of its bag and ready before the guard can even open his mouth and you just imagine him tipping his hat in respect to the single competent traveler, he will probably meet all day, as he blankly stares at you. Now, you are probably guessing that I am referring the intoxicating cocktail of feelings of supremacy and resentment for my fellow human being as being the dirty crevices of my soul. You would of course be dead wrong. No, if only it were. Rather, I consider myself a victim of these very feelings since they set me up for my eventual disillusionment and immediate fall from grace. It was after completing all the required checks that we finally started to board the plane and my sister and I, having a degree in medicine and engineering between us, got stuck in an automatic revolving door. Cursing our luck, we start to move around the little wedge for the sensor to pick us up. As the seconds pass by our frustration turns into lowkey panic as we start to wildly flail our arms about in hope that by some miracle the now clearly broken door would start moving again. Finally, defeated, we turn around and call one of the airport staff to assist us. He stumbles over with an expression between confusion and embarrassment as these two young professionals glare at him for this slight inconvenience. He then, without a word and a somewhat cheeky smile, gives the door a slight push causing It to start revolving again. A silent moment passes as we realize that the automatic door never really was automatic as we looked up to find an elderly couple, who stopped patting down their pockets for their boarding passes, doubling over with laughter (those self-righteous prigs). My sister and I thanked the kind airport official and promptly decided to change our names, flee the country and start new lives as alpaca farmers in the Andes mountains. Farming is a tough life, I’ll have you know, but at least here I don’t have to listen to the mindless dribble of people like CNN’s Don Lemon. I wish that I can tell you that this is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me on an airport, but it isn’t. I have however, made peace with the fact that I am no different than my simple-minded fellow travelers. I learnt that there is no shame in accidently sitting on the wrong seat on a plane (twice on one flight unfortunately) or that it isn’t the worst thing to ask for alcoholic beverages on a 7am flight. In fact, there is a sort of freedom that comes along with embracing this somewhat flagrant behavior. But, for the love of all that is good in this world, if you ever catch me clapping after the plane landed, please do me a favour and shoot me in the head.

Kind Regards