2001-04-30 - 4:10 p.m.

Always Two There Are

... a master and an apprentice.

Thursday before the Covenant show was bring your child to work day. I like children, but I don't have one, nor do I feel like I'd be a good parent. Favorite uncle maybe, but parent? Gee, I nearly set fire to my own apartment.

So naturally I do what any good Dark-Sider would do, I try to convert other people's kids to the Dark Side. It is actually fairly easy. Kids seem to be more comfortable around people their size, and I'm kid sized. They also like colourful people. With blue hair and an office full of toys, I think I count there as well.

Particle brought his son to work, and apparently Redwood and I were his favorite stop. Several people who spoke with Particle's son that day said all he would talk about was coming over to visit us. See, kids love offices filled with screaming ghosts, star wars legos, and spooky industrial bumper stickers. My office probably would not qualify as professional looking, but the most offensive thing I've got really would be my oversized Vader trading card.

Vader, how spooky is that? His image is everywhere?

Nightmares

As a child, Star Wars was my first live action (i.e. non Disney) film. I was so protected as a kid that I was never allowed to see Bambi. Seriously. My mom said that she was horrified that Bambi's mother was shoot at the beginning of the film by a hunter, and the last thing in the world she wanted was for me to ever think that she'd abandon me. I never had abandonment fears, but Vader ... yeah, he was pretty scary.

And nearly 30 years later she hasn't abandoned me. Saturday was her birthday, and I feel bad. I should have bought her some flowers, I had all Friday to do it. But I didn't know what kind of flowers to buy her.

Sometimes I wonder why my family puts up with me. I'm pretty different than the rest. Last night for dinner at their place, my sister was telling her usual stories. She likes to talk a lot. I do, but not about nearly the number of things she does. Anyway, I found myself drained. My family was poking fun at my mom for being a pack rat. My dad went on to say that we were only allowed to buy her plants for her birthday, so she could kill them and then throw the junk away. How rude!

My mom didn't look hurt, because she knew he was joking. But under every joke there is a shred of truth. Yes, mom is a pack rat. Yes, the house is a fucking mess. And it is true that I'm very unhappy there because of the mess. I dislike really messy places.

But I just didn't see how joking about the mess would help matters. The stuff is not my mom's alone. My sister, brother, and father have tons of crap in the house too. I have trains, a few books, and some Star Wars toys outside. The thing is, I usually take things I don't feel like I need and try and sell them on ebay or give them away.

If I had a digital camera I'd sell a hell of a lot more of my childhood.

Mentees

It certainly was fun having the kids running around the office. Since most of them were around 6 years old, I made sure to make eye contact and ask them about school. I remember as a kid it was a hell of a lot easier for me to pay attention when the questions were focused in my world. Some of the engineers in my office weren't nearly as good, they'd talk over the children's heads. That is fine, but it only bores them.

Hell, I get bored with some of their conversations, and find myself thinking about writting or music.

Speaking of CDs, my collection continues to grow. Some people eat like kings for dinner. I do it peasant style, but treat myself to 1-2 CDs on a regular basis. Fortunately this weekend's purchases were two CD singles. Aburd Minds (a Mixer recommendation) and Cleen (a industrial-techo side project of Daniel Myer and my own discovery). Actually the Cleen CD was found used at Rasputins.

On Talking to People

There are people I can talk to forever and people whom I have a harder time focusing. On Friday night I was terrified to talk to Cyber-Girl. It took me months to talk to most of my other female friends. Yah, girls scare me. But I found that she was pleasant.

Saturday was different. Shirtless pointed her out and told me she was a nice person before I talked to her, and he had said she wanted to meet me before. Bottomline is I started talking to her knowing that she was already curious enough about me to ask another guy to have me talk to her. How can you not talk to somebody when she already is marginally interested in you?

Yes, I could fuck up and she could loose interest in me. But that is silly, I want to talk to people that like me for myself, so that was so not a concern. If anything I wanted her to feel as though I wasn't being judgemental. You certainly can't judge somebody from talking to them once.

I feel like I made a pretty good dent in my shyness this weekend. I went out and talked to two women whom weren't friends of close friends or whom I've know for months. In both cases they were kinda strangers. But I also talked to one with coaching from Mixer and Musicia, and the other was under the encouragement of Shirtless.

But now I'm curious to see what kind of impressions I made on both of them. One of them I'm sure I'll see and will remember her (she did give me her email and I emailed her back). The other, probably not.

-=-

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