Of Mice and Men and Crickets

I had a bit of a tiring day today. By that I mean I had to actually work, which is something that I would like to outsource. You do the work and send me the money. If it doesn't go well you can be the fall guy; if it does, I'll take the credit. I have it all worked out. I spend most of my considerable free time trying to figure out how to game the system. If I spent as much time working as I do trying to avoid work, I'd be really, really tired. When I tell my sponsor that I'm tired he always asks: "Is it a good tired?" My mouth says: "Yes, yes it is." while my brain is muttering: "Ah, go !#*%!! yourself." I know he wants me to be grateful for having a job and a bank account and other stuff that I couldn't seem to hang onto when I was drinking, but he can be such a punk.

At one point I pulled off the road to get a cup of coffee that I didn't need and that I knew was going to taste poisonous. Truck stop coffee. Not hard to figure out where that's going. Being . . . ahem . . . outgoing and lacking most normal human inhibitions, I like to talk to just about everybody I bump into. This is mostly good, I think. My intentions are admirable and my behavior falls mostly within the normal limits of human behavior.

At the gas station there was a kid sweeping around the coffee maker and emptying garbage. He said hello - probably more grateful for his job than I am for mine - so I asked him how his day was going. He kind of shrugged.

"Well, are all of your dreams coming true?" I said. He stopped and looked at me for an increasingly uncomfortable moment. He was short and was wearing impossibly thick glasses. I couldn't tell if he was glaring at me or laughing with me or having a seizure. He shrugged again. "One dream?" I ventured hopefully.

He smiled and walked over to me, leaned in close, and whispered: "Someone stepped on my cricket." He nodded and said it again: "Someone stepped on my cricket."

Check and mate.