Odd perception.

Last month I was at the beach and I ate a banana, and then I ate some cherries, and I ended up putting the stems and little bit cherry flesh-covered pits on the peel, and then after I was done reading a free newspaper, I put the newspaper beside my towel, and the pit-covered peel on top of it, so I could just wrap it all up and go throw it out without dropping anything, the next time I got up.

A bit later, a (white) (mildly hipsterish) guy I know who works at the library walked by.

"What's that?", he was like.

"Oh, a banana peel and some cherry pits from some cherries I was eating," I was like, looking at the thing and noticing just then that it looked weird.

"Oh," he was like.  "I thought you were foraging."

. . .

He must have thought it was some weird roots or herbs.

Observation about Beethoven.

Last month I was at an outdoor concert with a college friend, where they played some Beethoven.

After it was all done, "Imagine composing all that while you're deaf," she was like.

I agreed, but afterwards when I wanted to tell that story to other people, I wondered how disabilities folks would feel about that statement, so I didn't.

It's almost like valorizing the disability as something that someone nobly struggles against, and is just a little bit too pat.

I wonder, though, can a person recognize that dynamic anymore, where a disabled person perseveres despite challenges from their disability?

Odd morning commute obstacle.

The other day before going in to work at my school's library, I wheeled my bike out from the back enclosed porch, and around the house and over the sidewalk and over the mini-lawn onto the street, and then I hopped on it in order to go south, after saying "Good morning" to a(n older) (husky) (bearded) (white) guy who just happened to be walking by then.

But, from the construction site just south of me where they had demolished some houses and are now building some new houses, there was a van double-parked on the one side of the street, and two guys hauling this thin, like thirty foot board across the street, one towards like one end, and the other towards the other end, though the board was remarkably stiff and really didn't sag all that much, as it stretched across the entire street and just kept blocking it and blocking it and blocking it.

So, since they were walking slow and the board kept stretching across the entire street, I actually just turned around and headed north, to go around another way to my job.

"Never expected that obstacle on my morning commute!", I said to the guy who I had said "Good morning" to, as I biked by.

A story of a gym gate attendant.

The other week I was going into the gym on campus, and I said a chit-chatty hi to the gym gate attendant like I always do.

The gym gate attendant that day was this short kind of brown (white) (bro-ey) guy, and when I asked him how he was, he was not only like "Tired," but then he was like, "I was up way late last night because I had to go to the ER."

"I'm very sorry about that," I was like.  "What happened?".

"Oh, it's no biggie," he was like.  "I was moving furniture, and I gashed my leg."

"Ouch," I was like.

"Yeah, I had to go to the ER and everything," he was like.  "Then, when I get home at four in the morning, I still have to move the furniture before I can go to bed.  So, I'm tired."

A graduating senior's two stories:

1) He was so mad at that new Democratic slogan that debuted a bit ago that said "Better Skills," and he thought that it encapsulated how out of touch the party elites were, to even be thinking that way.

2) His apartment this summer shares a courtyard with a bunch of (young) (Irish) people, most of who are here on summer work visas, but some of who are here illegally and found work anyways.

The other day they were up drinking till like six-thirty in the morning, and then one of the (Irish) guys stopped drinking for ten minutes, and then left to go to work to shovel concrete all day.

"That must have sucked," the graduating senior was like.   "To be drunk and tired and hungover and shovelling concrete in the sun all day."

My mother's stories of books (2 of 2): Serendipity.

During that same conversation, my mom was saying how the reference librarian had hopped online when she was there to get a nutrition book for her coworker with cancer, since she had been wanting it, and since it wouldn't really interfere with her treatments, but was more like palliative care and would just make her feel better and like she was doing something.

"Then we look down into the book donation box," my mom was like, "And right on top there's a new copy of that book, isn't that freaky?".

"I guess so," I was like.

"But you never get nutrition books in the book donation box, the rest of it was all like suspense novels!  And it was new, too, and sitting right on top."

I right away wondered if the reference librarian hopped back online to cancel her order, but my mom never said, and we got to talking about other stuff.

My mother's stories of books (1 of 2): Popularity.

The other weekend, I was chit-chatting with my mother on the phone.

She's been back at work at the local library in my hometown even though she's retired, since one of the workers got cancer, and she's been filling in for her.

When we were talking about the general state of the economy, I was mentioning how the internet gutted a lot of professions, like how call centers and coding got shipped abroad, and how many legal services have gotten automated where you just use a program to write wills and whatnot.

"That's our most popular book at the library," my mom was like.  "It's about how to write up your own divorce papers."

Then, she paused.

Then, she was like, "Actually, it's two books, one for dependents, one for without."