You don't do anything
TUESDAY
“You don’t do anything.”
“Yes, I do. I do lots of things.”
“You don’t do anything. You sleep in until the afternoon and then eat and drink until you’re tired enough to go back to sleep.”
“That’s not true.”
“I bet you’re in bed right now.”
“I’m not. I’m wide awake and I’m even outside on the porch.”
The grinding buzz of the alarm clock on the bed stand revealed my lie. All I could do was breathe a sigh into the telephone. Even if she was right, even if I was still in bed and it was 3:30 p.m., I had set the alarm. I was being proactive. I wanted to get up. Didn’t my desperate motivation add up as anything?
Oh, and also, see this too, I woke to answer the phone. Didn’t I? I woke up earlier than the time set on the alarm to talk to her on the telephone. That’s motivation too. If I had known that on the other end there would be a telemarketer, then I would have knocked the phone through the wall in a somber rage. But the mystery hiding beneath the seemingly simple little machine nudged me out of my restfulness. Now I was slightly thinking that I shouldn’t have answered this no-longer-mysterious phone call. At this early hour on this day of all God’s green summer days I didn’t have the stamina to take criticism like this. I was too much. I wasn’t prepared so I stepped on the cat accidentally and hung up purposefully. She was squealing about health hazards or something when the click cut her short. 24 blocks north on 2nd and two east on 9th she was probably wondering if I had: (1) thrown the phone at the cat, (2) been eaten alive whole by the cat, (3) fallen down the stairs onto the cat. It would be too absurd for her that anyone even in my present state could hang up on darling Lillian Sandburg. Would she have to go to the hospital to see if I had stroked during our conversation? Had I hung up to dial for an ambulance or would she have to make that emergency phone call?
If so, would she bring up my sloth and good-for-nothing qualities in the hospital? She would. She might as well have already.
Well, damn her for that. No one kicks me while I’m down. She thinks I will propose to her if she deconstructs my lifestyle while I have a feeding tube snaked down my throat? This will not stand. I will not take this grim abuse. It’s over between us. I will tell her tonight.
But first I needed to find the off switch to this childish alarm. I had been tapping my feet to the solid tempo of digital honks in an effort to lower its exploitation of my nervous system. But the damage was obvious. It was going to take a lot of rest to recuperate from the damage.
“You don’t do anything.”
“Yes, I do. I do lots of things.”
“You don’t do anything. You sleep in until the afternoon and then eat and drink until you’re tired enough to go back to sleep.”
“That’s not true.”
“I bet you’re in bed right now.”
“I’m not. I’m wide awake and I’m even outside on the porch.”
The grinding buzz of the alarm clock on the bed stand revealed my lie. All I could do was breathe a sigh into the telephone. Even if she was right, even if I was still in bed and it was 3:30 p.m., I had set the alarm. I was being proactive. I wanted to get up. Didn’t my desperate motivation add up as anything?
Oh, and also, see this too, I woke to answer the phone. Didn’t I? I woke up earlier than the time set on the alarm to talk to her on the telephone. That’s motivation too. If I had known that on the other end there would be a telemarketer, then I would have knocked the phone through the wall in a somber rage. But the mystery hiding beneath the seemingly simple little machine nudged me out of my restfulness. Now I was slightly thinking that I shouldn’t have answered this no-longer-mysterious phone call. At this early hour on this day of all God’s green summer days I didn’t have the stamina to take criticism like this. I was too much. I wasn’t prepared so I stepped on the cat accidentally and hung up purposefully. She was squealing about health hazards or something when the click cut her short. 24 blocks north on 2nd and two east on 9th she was probably wondering if I had: (1) thrown the phone at the cat, (2) been eaten alive whole by the cat, (3) fallen down the stairs onto the cat. It would be too absurd for her that anyone even in my present state could hang up on darling Lillian Sandburg. Would she have to go to the hospital to see if I had stroked during our conversation? Had I hung up to dial for an ambulance or would she have to make that emergency phone call?
If so, would she bring up my sloth and good-for-nothing qualities in the hospital? She would. She might as well have already.
Well, damn her for that. No one kicks me while I’m down. She thinks I will propose to her if she deconstructs my lifestyle while I have a feeding tube snaked down my throat? This will not stand. I will not take this grim abuse. It’s over between us. I will tell her tonight.
But first I needed to find the off switch to this childish alarm. I had been tapping my feet to the solid tempo of digital honks in an effort to lower its exploitation of my nervous system. But the damage was obvious. It was going to take a lot of rest to recuperate from the damage.
posted by Gary Crane at 6:26 PM
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