Who Am I?

Once again, a short story for your enjoyment. Although this one is not quite as short as my previous ones. Please enjoy Who Am I?

"Zwangggggg!"

"Zwang zwang zwang zwanggggggggggggg!"

You would think that by now, such startling noises wouldn't even phase me. But really, how can one not be jolted from solace when being yanked from peaceful slumber by such an atrocious violation to the ears?

I will admit that after many years of observation of people and experiences, I have come to realize that you would be hard pressed to conjure an act or thought that could be considered inconceivable. Most of my evaluations are in retrospect. After all, in cases where evaluation and analysis commands significant attention, my first and foremost goal is, as a rule, to remove my physical presence from the immediate area.

In retrospective moments, I surprise myself in that I often find my thoughts second-guessing an event that I have personally witnessed. I attempt to justify the incident by reflecting on my most recent meal, wondering if the alleged experience was nothing more than hallucination due to, as Ebeneezer Scrooge suggested, "a fragment of an underdone potato."

But alas, my conclusions rarely attribute the instance to ill-prepared vegetation.

If you insist on attaching me to a profession, you could describe me as a People-Watcher. You know, the type to settle myself in a random spot in a food court at the mall and take mental note of the seemingly random absurdities exhibited by those whose minds and bodies obviously have conflicting agendas.

Money? I don't really need it. I have provisions to survive as I find sufficient. The source of which you need not be the wiser. Let's just say they vary. I would need another three-hundred plus pages to explain...and possibly convince you of the arrangement. Besides, right now I have a story to tell.

Before I get to that, though, I think you ought to know a little about who I am, and a few of the people with whom I have found it interesting to associate.

I had mentioned that I am a People-Watcher. I am also a Drifter. They mutually complement each other when I find it necessary to seek a new residence. This often happens when my current roommate decides that, for instance, the constant rain in Seattle is intolerable, and the hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico are a more tolerable environment. I don't mind travel, though. If the destination is acceptable, and it is agreeable, then I will tag along and set up shop anywhere.

When that time comes that requires me to find a new pad, I once again turn to the mall. You might be surprised at how easy it can be to find, simply by eavesdropping, someone looking for a roommate. When I find one, it is in my character to easily make friends. I am usually settling myself in my new home that very afternoon. I guess I've just got that certain type of personality that you just can't not like.

As much as I would love to reminisce of all the people with whom I have formed a friendship, I too would like to get on with the story, so I will tell of only one relationship at this moment. We parted ways little more than two weeks ago. Although the separation was unpleasant, the reasons were not what is termed "irreconcilable differences."

Her name was Sandy, and I don't think there is another human being on this planet who is so absolutely purposely unorganized, and at the same time, so particular about it! There is no precedence to which I can compare her character, so I will explain by example.

Basically, Sandy made an intense effort to avoid any pattern of consistency or common organization in any matter. She always said (well, she didn't really go around saying it aloud all day...you know what I mean) that if you establish a pattern in your life, then you are vulnerable to other people. She didn't like thinking that someone else might know what she was going to do before she knew it herself. To one suffering from OCD, the symptom of insanity would also be added to someone knowing her.

The anti-routine would start as soon as the day woke her. She was retired, so no alarm was ever involved. She would open her eyes to the analog clock on her nightstand. Then she would glance at the notepad lying beside it where she had noted the time, to the minute, at which she had awakened the previous morning. If the times matched, she would lie there for a few more minutes (sometimes dropping off for a few more hours, depending on the intensity of her activities the night before) before rising.

When Sandy did finally accomplish vertical orientation, she would take the piece of paper with the outdated time note, crumple it up and throw it away...but never in the same waste can as the note from the morning before.

Aside from daily non-routines, her house was just as much a fiasco as you might ever see. Not messy, you understand, but impossible to understand. If ever it were the scene of a crime, I'm sure the profiler would head for the hills.

Sandy loved books of all sorts. She hadn't read them all, but none of them were irrelevant to some topic of which she held an interest. She didn't buy a book, you know, "just to have." Her library was lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves. Even the door played a double agent as a holder of tomes. It was not this massive collection that set Sandy apart from every other living soul, it was the way these books were organized...they weren't.

This may appear a simple concept, but it was more than your everyday lack of organization. This was purposeful disarrangement.

On any given shelf, no run of books could be found that were alphabetically arranged. The encyclopedias were not consecutive, forward or back, nor did any volume sit right next to another. Even the number of books between each volume of a set were varied. No two books touched covers if they were the same height or contained the same number of pages. As for covers and dust jackets, if two adjacent books were of similar color, they had to be separated. No two books by the same author or publisher shared the same section of shelf.

When Sandy acquired an addition to her collection, she scrutinized each potential position to find a place for it that would not yield to any pattern. Sandy was very adept at this behavior. To an outsider, it would seem that this kind of scrutiny would take more time and thought than one lifetime, and one brain, would ever allow. But to Sandy, it had been a way of life since childhood. Telling Sandy that something would be too much of a bothersome chore would be like telling Stephen Hawking that using a computer would be impossible. If Sandy was told she would not be capable of doing something, a new journey was begun to do just that. And she usually proved the offending party wrong...Boy, do I miss her.

My incumbent roommate comes from another dimension. His name is Mark, and I will admit that he is not the sort of person with whom I would normally choose to associate. In fact, you could say I was swindled into the relationship.

My relationship with Sandy had just ended, an abrupt incident that proved awkward for both of us. I was feeling depressed, regardless of the high flying sunshine and mid-spring cleanliness of the air that just called out for the birds to contribute their songs. As I sauntered along the wide sidewalk through the middle of town, I considered pausing in one of the plastic white chairs set up in front of the one café in the entire town that boasted of nostalgia.

This was a town confused of its own identity. It was founded in 1884, and the local library had photos of the one brick road that ushered carriages through on their journey out to better places. The brown-toned pictures showed the storybook hardware store on one side and the drug store/soda shop on the other.

Lacking a formal education, I offer you this lesson, not from hours hovering over history books, but from tagging behind the visitor tours through the two room museum above the hardware store turned short-term loan business down on the corner.

That drug store in the picture was the same building where I was now engaging in a pausing moment on this sunny day. Only it no longer sells drugs or soda, nor does it employ school kids in paper hats and stars in their eyes. Now, you got a pressed turkey sandwich on wheat bread (everybody's health conscious nowadays) with a cup of coffee, and you carried it on your own plastic tray if you wanted to enjoy the sunshine. Personally, save for inclement weather, I don't know why you would stay inside, anyway. I cannot enjoy a meal with the constant beeping of registers and electronic voices blaring orders to another person standing not more than three feet away. It offends my ears and my digestion.

I mentioned that this town was confused. One glance down the street will tell you the story. A sidewalk café does not belong alongside a bank with a revolving door and a luxury car dealership...with a glassed-in showroom! It is a town of a new millennium, but with scraps of nostalgia that no one has bothered to sweep away.

I wasn't hungry on this particularly lovely afternoon, so I decided to simply settle there into one of the unoccupied plastic chairs outside of the café. I thought maybe closing my eyes and just listening to everyone bustling about around me would soothe my depression.

It worked for about two minutes. I was then startled from my meditation by a couple of college boys who decided this was the best table for a nice boisterous chat. They sat down, apparently taking no notice of my presence, and spouted constant babble that scattered on like a celebrity glamour star selling perfume on one of those home shopping television channels.

I was about to excuse myself (actually, I was just going to leave quietly...they wouldn't have noticed the difference), when I was discovered in a moment of breath-catching pause in conversation. One of the boys greeted me and began talking as though I had been an active participant all along. The exchange was one-sided, however. He talked to me so incessantly that any attempt of response would have been useless, so I let him rant.

My tolerance of the noise was not wasted, so I soon realized. By the end of his constant outflow of monologue, I had learned that the boy was looking for a replacement roommate, and I was an optimal candidate (I guessed he might have said that to anyone who would accept the position). Regardless of my sudden yearning for a case of earwax buildup, I kindly accepted the offer. By nightfall, I was cozied up in my new home, a tiny dormitory with one bedroom, a bathroom, and a small living room that served triple duty as second bedroom and kitchen. Cramped, but warm, I fell asleep with my feelings of depression left far behind at the table at the café.

The next morning, Harvey...that was his name (still is, as far as I know)...informed me that our acquaintance was to be temporary. He said I was not to worry, though. I didn't have to leave. He was turning the place over to a friend with whom, so he said, I would get along "like salt and pepper."

Enter Harvey's friend, Mark.

And as it turned out, it was more like oil and water.

My first encounter with Mark was not unpleasant. He seemed like a cordial enough fellow. But he had obviously learned of the mind-capturing advantages of a good first impression, no matter how deceiving. And that first impression was not to continue.

I learned that Mark, like Sandy, did not utilize an alarm clock. A blessing for Sandy, this factor proved to be a curse thrown upon me that was not one from which I could escape if I wished a roof over my head.

Which brings us to where we were...

"Zwangggggg!"

"Zwang zwang zwang zwanggggggggggggg!"

Mark played the guitar. Being a rather young man, and keeping appearances at the foremost of importance, the model he chose to strum was of the electric persuasion. I, on the other hand, would have preferred the softer, more pleasing sound of the acoustic.

But then again, these are the types of perils I must endure in my condition. As a consolation, and perhaps a bit of payback, I must simply go out to the fence around the dumpster and do some caterwauling.

Oh, didn't it mention, I'm a cat. Nice to have met you. My name is Bryan!

Thanks for Visiting!!!