Anecdotes

Accidental Peeping Tom

When I was a kid, I was cutting through my neighbor’s side yard to get to the next street over, and as I passed Kloberdanz’ house, I saw a motion in one of the basement windows and glanced down. I saw Matt Kloberdanz in the basement, and he looked up and saw me. I was walking pretty quickly, so I really didn’t see much, but apparently they thought I did.

Mrs. Kloberdanz called my mother to complain that I was peering in their windows, implying that I had been kneeling down by the basement window looking in, with my hands cupped around my face. Of course, my mother yelled at me, and no matter what I said, no one believed that I happened to glance at the window while walking past.

This past summer, I was leaving for work, and as I was walking out the front door, I heard a noise and looked around to see my landlady walking through the dining room door naked. I said, Oh! and hurried out the door so I wouldn’t see any more of her. Apparently she got up to let the dog out and since it was hot, didn’t throw on any clothes.

Every day I walk up the stairs to my apartment. The windows on the stairs face the house next door, and happens to look directly into a bedroom window where a woman sits in bed watching TV almost every night, sometimes partially undressed, and sometimes nude. She’s usually smoking in bed, too, which sort of freaks me out. I can’t possibly avoid seeing her, and she has to know when she sees the light come on in the stairwell that I can see her as well as she can see me.

Why is it I’m always seeing people that I don’t want to see?

Kodama
Kodama
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My Family Christmas Letter – 1999

My cousin Sarah wrote her family’s Christmas letter this year, which I just got in the mail. If I’d written the Christmas letter for my family, it probably would have gone something like this:

This year was pretty amazing for the Mineart family — no one flunked out of school, or got thrown in jail, divorced or held up at gunpoint. Stacy found a dead guy on her doorstep one morning when leaving for school, but it turned out he was a resident in her building and he just died of old age, so it was all okay.

In addition, practically everyone in the family who isn’t already married got engaged in the past year, which just goes to prove two things: we can be a charming bunch when we have to be, and there’s a sucker born every minute.

No one went broke this year, and as usual, Dad made a big pile of cash, but there’s nothing new about that. He bought ANOTHER Corvette, which I think is just about enough for any one guy. I mean really, you can only drive one car at a time. (Kidding, Dad.) Stacy and Scott both finally graduated from college, and Riley went to kindergarten that was set up by Ivy Kids Franchise, which means, folks, that we are getting OLD.

Mom got a big dog and an invisible fence, and Todd and Denise got a second cat. My fish died.

I think Dad and Carol went to Australia, because I got this cool aboriginal art thingy for Christmas, and all the boys got boomerangs. I’ll bet it was a swell trip.

Stacy went to England for about the bajillionth time, but this time is different because she actually conned them into letting her stay there permanently by getting engaged to Roger. Those English don’t know what they’re in for. Then Stacy ruined the whole thing by actually giving us her address and telephone number, which means we can go over and visit her, which defeats the purpose of her leaving the country to get the heck away from us.

My only trip this year was to Chicago, but I had fun and I did get to see all those cows on the Miracle Mile.

Paul ran in the mini-marathon, and Gary’s still swimming. I actually played volleyball all summer. Seriously, I did.

I worked on my webpage constantly, but Scott hasn’t touched his in ages, and I’m thinking of turning it in to the “Cobweb Sites of the Month” website and see if it wins an award. Dude, get to work.

Nobody was in any musicals or anything, but that’s probably good, because I’m the only one who can carry a tune, and that’s after years of practice.

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Adventures in a Chevy Chevette 2

I picked up my car this afternoon. It’s a 1987 Chevy Chevette, dark blue, and it’s falling apart. I had to have the alternator replaced, $141.69. This is the second time it’s been in the shop recently; two weeks ago, I just got it back after having the starter and flywheel (what the hell’s that?) fixed to the tune of $517.

Retro CarI’m feeling a bit disturbed by this; have been for awhile. I want to buy a new car, but I keep spending my savings on keeping this one running.

In Indianapolis, you have to have a car; public transportation is only for people who are seriously poor. There is only a bus system and it doesn’t run everywhere, all the time. Catching a bus is time-consuming and difficult.

If I wanted to catch the bus to work, I’d have to get up three hours earlier than I normally do, walk six blocks to the correct bustop (in the dark), and catch the bus north for a two hour bus trip. The bus will only go as far as 96th and Meridian, so I would have to walk six more blocks to 103rd, where I work.

It’s amazing to me how much not having my car affects my sense of identity. I feel helpless without a car, and less than a person. Which is, in this city, how you are meant to feel. In a country and a city where the car is king, if you don’t have one, there’s something wrong.

Which really makes me want to move.

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Adventures in a Chevy Chevette

I got stuck in my car. It’s a 1987 Chevy Chevette, dark blue, and it’s falling apart. It was freezing cold this Indiana morning, and there was a thick layer of ice over everything. I made the mistake of not looking outside at this inclement weather before I got dressed for work, so I was wearing my good long overcoat and my best leather shoes, and I had put everything in my briefcase rather than my backpack before setting out. I also had my lunch in a separate bag, and I was carrying five library books that I needed to return.

Old CarThe doors were frozen shut; both of them. They were unlocked, and the handle was working; the latch was loose, but the rubber of the door was frozen to the sides. By this time I was dropping the books, so I set the books, lunch, and briefcase on the hood of the car.

I kicked the door to try to get it free. (oh, yeah, also because I was mad. and cold.) When I kicked the door, everything that I had set on the icy hood slid off onto the ground. So I retrieved it all and set it on the top of the car.

The doors were impossibly stuck. So I went to the hatchback and opened it up. Of course I still had a bag of recycling in there, and three 25-pound bags of cat litter so the car would be weighed down in case it snowed, and a box of car supplies, like oil and antifreeze, which I was highly tempted to pour all over the outside of the car.

I had to move them, because I was going to have to climb in. But then I had no where to put my coat, which I had to take off to get in, so I fidgeted a bit in the cold trying to figure out what to do with it. I finally set it on top of the cat litter and hoped it wouldn’t get messed up.

I climbed into the hatch without any problem, but I couldn’t get over the back seat, so a spent what seemed like an eternity trying to unlatch it to flip it down. I finally did that, and was able to crawl through. I got over to the front seat, and remembered that everything I needed to take with me was still on the top of the car.

So I slithered back out and retrieved those things, in a jumble, because they were almost too much to carry. I set them ahead of me in the car and started to climb through. Instantly, I kicked my briefcase and it fell down on the floor between the front seat and the back, upside down, and all my papers spilled out.

I cursed, but ignored it, and continued climbing. I push the front passenger seat forward, so that I could climb over the stick shift to the driver’s side. But first, with great Insight (or so I thought at the time) I moved my lunch bag to the front passenger seat so that nothing would happen to it. [ foreshadowing…. ]

Now I had a dilemma. How to get both my legs through the narrow gap between the seats? I decided I could do it. I sat down on the backseat, and put through my left leg first, thinking that I would just slide through and my right leg would follow effortlessly. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the width in the near-dark; my left leg slid into place, and my butt did too; however, my right leg, or rather my right foot, stopped just behind the front passenger seat.

So I was sitting in my drivers seat, with my right leg folded behind me and my foot locked, and stuck in the back seat. And I was wedged there. In what was probably the most unnatural position I had ever been in. And my possessions were strewn behind, haphazardly in my wake.
I tried reversing the process, but I didn’t have anything to push backward from, and nothing to grab to pull myself up. I tried working with my foot, but to get it loose, I would have to break my leg, or twist it at an angle that no human leg should go. Damn, why didn’t I see this would happen before I started?

I started to panic, and remembered suddenly the last time I was stuck somewhere; in college when we were trying to carry my couch up a narrow set of stairs to my new apartment, and we aimed the couch at the wrong angle; I was stuck behind it for half an hour as I and three other English majors tried desperately to recall any physics principles that would help get the couch free, and thus me as well.

“Think. I’ve got to think.” I told myself, and I remembered; the doors. They may not open from the outside, but from within? I pushed on the driver door forever, but I couldn’t free it. So I stretched over to the passenger door, which, with a little wrangling, popped open. Promptly spilling my lunch out of its bag, into a puddle of water on the ground below.

I was too frustrated to swear anymore; by pulling myself across the seat, I could free my foot and get out of the car. So I wasn’t stuck, but I wasn’t driving either. I took the time to pick up my briefcase and sort it out, as well as retrieve my soggy lunch, before I tackled the task of getting over the stick shift.

This time I kept both my legs together (always a wise choice, it seems) and swung in from the roof of the car like Tarzan. “It’s working!” I thought delightedly, as I glided through the air, but my glee was short-lived as my butt landed with a sickening crunch between the two seats. “Oh, my god, I broke the emergency break.” I thought, “how do I explain that to a mechanic?” as felt around beneath me trying to determine the exact cause of the plastic cracking sound.

But it was only the plastic cup holder, which I could afford, so I climbed on through and shoved the pieces on the floor behind the seat, where I throw everything these days. I started the car and sat for ten peaceful minutes listening to the radio while we both warmed up. Then I drove to work calmly, deliberately, pretending that Nothing Had Happened. Nothing At All.

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Embarrassing Elevator Stories

Ah, the elevator. Such a delightful way to interact with your fellow man, especially in a workplace environment. Such a great way to act strangely in other people’s personal space.

Sixth Floor

I work on the fifth floor of a six floor office building here in Indianapolis. I was going home at the end of a long day, and instead of looking at the light to confirm that the elevator was actually headed in a downward direction, I just got on as soon as the doors opened, assuming it was going down.

Naturally, I was wrong. I rode up to the sixth floor. When the doors opened, the president of the company was standing there, waiting to get on. Since sitings of the company president are as rare as Elvis’s, I was so surprised that I didn’t even have presence of mind to jump out as though I had actually intended to get off on this floor, maybe to visit the lunchroom, or something.

I just stood there like a doofus, and as the doors closed and we rode down, he said to me, “Are you just joy riding on the elevator, or what?” To which I replied, somewhat inaudibly, “Uh, unintentionally, yes,” sounding remarkable like Butthead, when he’s trying to figure something out. The president said nothing. He looked like he wondered who I was and if there was any way he could conveniently fire me.

Fortunately, he never found out who I am.

Singing in the Elevator

Again, I was riding down the elevator on the way home, only this time I stopped to look at the light, hoping to avoid looking like a wonk in the same way twice.

On this trip, though, I was alone in the elevator, and I was so tired I couldn’t even think. Instead of going to the back of the elevator like most people do, I parked myself right in front of the doors. Also, though I didn’t realize I was doing it, I started singing, which I frequently do when I’m alone. I was performing that Possum Kingdom song that seems to be about vampires. I got all the way to the verse, “And I promise you, I will treat you well, my sweet angel, so help me, Jesus…” and the doors of the elevator opened on the last few words. In front of me was an older woman from Human Resources, looking a little surprised.

Three things dawned on me all at once:

  1. I was singing,
  2. she heard me,
  3. she wanted to get in the elevator and I was standing in the way.

So I said, “Hi!” and backed up so she could get on. After a second, she said to me, “That was you singing, wasn’t it?” I replied with a yes. She said, “OK,” and just gave me a look like, “stay over on that side of the elevator, and we’ll both be happy,” as we rode the rest of the way in silence. I am so grateful that I was not up to the end of the song, where he sings, “Do you want to die?” over and over. I’m pretty sure that she would never have gotten on the elevator at all. At the very least.

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