two by two, hurrah!

There was a small package sitting on my chair when I got back from lunch today. It was a package from my friend out in -- bother. Where is it? I'll have to lean over now and fish the envelope out of the recycling bin -- Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. How odd. I know someone in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Oh no, wait. Ardmore, Pennsylvania, which isn't much better.

(Bryn Mawr?)

Birthday present.

Thanks, Alex.

I came home on Tuesday thinking vague thoughts about cleaning up the apartment. I'm always thinking vague thoughts about cleaning up the apartment; I have difficulty actually following through with those plans, excepting those occasional spasms of energy when I rip through the place, scrubbing things down with a ferocious, fanatical hatred of disorder that fails to sustain me through the course of the week. The dishes had been piling up in the sink for a while, though, and the kitchen needed work. As I say, I was thinking about doing some housework.

So I walked in the door, put down my stuff, looked longingly at my bed, then hauled myself out to the kitchen to inspect the pile in the sink. "If it isn't too bad," I told myself, "I'll just let it go for another day or two."

The pile wasn't bad. In fact, as far as piles go, it was a rather unspectacular one: a midget of its kind.

What was bad was the train of tiny ants marching solemnly down the wall and across the kitchen counter.

Ants are all well and good -- I have my own affection for the insect world, and ants are high on my list of Good Bugs -- but there are times and there are places when ants should make their appearance, and in my kitchen after a long day of work is not an appropriate time or place. Investigation revealed a parcel of crumbs stationed on the kitchen table, beneath a little basket. Behind the basket was a piece of chocolate that some idiot had left behind, partly open. Cursing sourly to myself, I scooped the ants up, one by one, and flicked them out the window. It took me ten, fifteen minutes to clear up the caravan enough that I could do my dishes without hurting any of them. It took me a total of ten minutes to finish washing the dishes and wiping down the counter, and another ten minutes after that to herd the next company of ants out the window to join their buddies.

Remembering 'A Bug's Life,' (I really need to watch the Discovery Channel more), I attempted to confuse the ant train by placing bottle caps and toothpicks in their path. The ants were unimpressed. Apparently, Disney is not a big franchise in the insect kingdom. Soapy water did the trick; I built little toll bridges across their accustomed path, and that did the trick. Baffled bugs paused at the walls of foam, dithered uncertainly for a moment, then turned around to hike the long road back home. "This isn't on the map," they told each other, irritated. "The occasional spoon or fork is one thing. When the creature from the Palmolive Lagoon comes out to block the path, that's something else altogether. We're Union. We don't need to put up with this. We need to go talk to Management."

Armed with a soapy sponge, I built my walls progressively higher up the wall until eventually, I'd blocked off even the pinprick hole they were using as their entrance. I was triumphant. I went to watch TV.

When I came out half an hour later to get a drink of water, I found the same trail of gravely marching ants trickling down my wall again, headed for their old sources of manna. Management had sent out another group of ants to verify earlier reports of foam dikes and sponges. "That's what comes of sending drones out, unsupervised," they told each other, wisely. "They cut loose and start smoking things."

I was irritated by this point. When did a cup of water turn into a production? Somewhere in the middle of scooping this next wave of ants out the window, I went a little mad and started squashing. Squish. Squash. "Take that." Squish. Tiny ant bodies crumpled under my paper towels. Squash.

All in all, I slaughtered twenty or thirty of them before my conscience struck, and I started scooping them out the window again. One of them bit me. Poor thing. I squished him, too.

That night, by way of karmic redress, I suffered terrible nightmares and woke up sweating and upset.

I blew up a building full of people I didn't like. Boom. They were gone. Okay, so maybe I was tricked into it, but somehow I knew exactly what I was doing when I pushed the button. All dead. Pieces of building flying everywhere, police, ambulances, medics--

--and after the explosion and the massacre, I was promptly remorseful. I tried to turn myself in, but people kept interrupting and pulling me away. Well-meaning people. "Are you crazy? You want to turn yourself in? Shut up. Shut up!" The police wouldn't listen to me.

"It's a terrible thing," they said, wagging their heads sorrowfully. "Terrible. Terrible."

Five minutes after I woke up, I brushed my teeth. I forgot all about the dream until I spied an ant on the shuttle bus.

"At least I was willing to take responsibility," I told it, sternly. I let it crawl across my hand, since it seemed determined to do so.

It bit me. So much for remorse.

I've been saying for a while that I wanted to buy more plants, so on Friday, the Guy Next Door (next cubicle, really, though he's changed cubicles since then), drove the New Guy and I to Home Depot.

"Are you going to take back Spud?" he asked me, hovering over a Spid-sibling in the nursery. "Because I've kind of grown attached to him. If you're going to take him back, I'm going to buy a new Spock."

"SPID," I snapped.

I let him keep it. "I'll buy you a new Sput," he promised me, and paid for one of my plants, a bigger, more robust version of the original. I've named him Spid 2.

The other plant is now housed in a massive clay pot on top of my cubicle ledge, a hanging Golden Pothos on steroids. I've yet to name him. The others in my group, who remember when I went shopping for two helium balloons and a card and ended up coming home with forty dollars worth of plants for people, regarded my new acquisitions with bemused amusement.

"How many plants is going to be enough plants?" they asked me.

I told them that any plant I keep is doomed to die eventually. They nodded, unsatisfied, and have taken to hovering protectively nearby whenever I approach either of my new plants with a water bottle.

Incidentally: my manager -- my old manager -- has his last day here tomorrow, and so we went out to lunch today with our entire group. "Buy him a present," our new technical team leader suggested, and all eyes turned to me. I've somehow become the official Present Person for the group.

"I'm going to buy him a kite," I told them.

"Haha," they laughed. "Yuhri, you're so funny. No, seriously. Go get him a present."

"I like kites," I insisted, and became quite obstinate on the subject. "They're neat. They're fun. They're colorful. They fly. I'm going to get him a kite."

"What will he do with a kite?"

Duh. "Fly it."

"You're very strange. But really. Go get him a nice present. You're good at picking out presents."

"I'm going to get him a kite."

"Whatever."

They didn't think I was serious. I was serious. I bought him a kite. I showed them when we came in to work this morning; they regarded it with some astonishment, laughed helplessly, then meekly paid up. It wasn't cheap, this kite. I ogled it in the kite store with lust in my heart, and dammit, he'll enjoy it. He will. It's a stunt kite, a two-handed deal with the capacity to swerve, dip, even go backwards if you want it to. I got him an instructional video, too.

"I told you so."

"We didn't think you were serious."

That should teach them.

"I only lie sometimes," I explained to them, kindly. Early on in my career here, I told them that I'm a liar. I bend the truth with an arbitrary, if democratic, unconcern for the state of my immortal soul. I lie for stupid things. To wit:

"Hey, you seen that movie, you know, the one with Brad Pitt?"

"Yup."

And what the hell's that all about?

I'm tired of writing.

(On my file cabinet is a new bumper sticker, purchased at Seattle's Bumbershoot. "Earth is full. Go home.") Posted by yhirata at September 5, 2000 10:03 PM