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Double
Double
So at my new job as an executive assistant, my boss, the CEO, ask me to get him a double-double (coffee) from Tim
Horton's. I agree and kindly ask him if he would like any cream or sugar in it. He gives me a weird, empty look and says after a few silent moments, "don't worry, they'll know what to do." He's never looked
at or
treated me the same since. Evidently, 'double-double' means double cream/double sugar: someone who's not a coffee drinker and not from Canada isn't
inherently supposed to know. Either way I looked dumb, real dumb.
Samaritan
Snare
I consider myself a latent hero...waiting eagerly to pounce on 'guts-n'-glory' hero opportunities: saving a drowning child, bursting into a house
raging with flames, or apprehending a violent, career criminal in the act. So it came as no surprise that on my way to work, when I saw someone had veered off
of Leitrim Road deep into the snow bank, that I immediately thought about helping. Realizing that the only way I could
possibly help was to call for assistance on my flex, I reduced speed to pull over. As I'm coming to a slow stop on the
shoulder, the whole right front-end of my mom's SUV sinks into the snow, leaving the back corner almost in the air. No problem, I'll just put the SOB into four wheel drive and back out. Wrong! I was stuck good. Evidently the
'shoulder' was in fact a huge ditch, filled in with snow. So I get out in my suit and tie and begin
shoveling my way out. Wrong! When I tried to walk on the right side of the car I sunk
waist-deep in the wet snow, on what looked like the edge of the road! Being in Canada, some chap stopped and helped me shovel what he could. Appearing helpless, another
mincer rolled up with a tow rope (and a 4 cylinder import). It wasn't until yet another man stopped with a diesel dually, that my car was finally
pulled out, kicking and screaming, from the obscured trench.
The whole ordeal reminded me of the The Next Generation episode called the "Samaritan Snare," which unfolded along much the same lines. When I embarrassingly recounted this to friends, after ridiculing me,
they inevitably asked me what happened to the other guy, to which I indignantly replied, "Peace to him--my attention was focused on getting to work on time and getting my momz car out, not on the fool who
inadvertently triggered my mishap with his errant driving. Seriously, peace to him."
The
Slumber of Spirituality
The nights
during the North Carolina Bahá'í youth conference (The one where I
was asked if I was 15 when in fact I was 20) were spent talking,
chilling, and playing cards. Sleep was a luxury. Waking up in the
mornings was correspondingly difficult. At the Bahá'í Center, where
we all reconvened in the morning, we began the day with rounds of
prayers in the dimly lit main room. I was very moved the first few
minutes until my tiredness began to overtake me. I would catch my eyes
taking rests, flickering back open after moments of repose. None of this
bothered me, since from the days of high school, I had the remarkable
gift of being able to doze off discreetly in any posture--in this
case, sitting. Things were going well until I am suddenly wakened when
my head goes crashing down on the lady's lap beside me and I
practically fall off of my chair! My embarrassment is multiplied when
I later hear reports, from a few of the 25 youth who were there, that
I had begun to snore prior to the tumble. God 1, Martin 0.
Sensational Segway
This has to be included. One of the
assignments for my Master's English class was to write a executive summary on the Segway company, using information from their website. I was worried when I turned it in because had my friends not alerted me that day that it was due, I wouldn't have even be able to submit anything. So he's passing them out after they've been graded and everyone gets one except me. So my mind begins thinking like Conspiracy brother from the movie Undercover Brother..."Another injustice for the Black man. You don't see him losing anyone else's paper..." My thought was
interrupted by the professor's words, "Overall I liked the executive summaries you wrote up. But there was one that really stood out; one that had all of the elements that I expected, and took the
assignment to the next level. That paper was Martin's."
For those of you who have never seen a black person turn red. And he kept blathering as he hands me back my paper,
which wouldn't have been so bad had I not printed it on thick, creamy resume paper, and embedded the page with vibrant, color photographs, and bound the entire assignment in a high-class, plastic coated presentation spine. My jaw-dropped classmates were all staring at my
masterpiece--their glances turning into envy, giving way to anger, and finally materializing as a series of pointed comments aimed at my flagrant and reprehensible butt-kissing. In what should have been my proudest moment, I felt the onrush of shame for 'showing up' the class.
This is my default embarrassing moment because it parallels an embarrassing story that I shall never forget. So while in Middle school,
a friends of mine and Brian's, a Michael Romanoff, always offered this whenever asked for an
embarrassing moment: So when I began going out with this girl, we were saying good bye at the bike rack (come on,
don't' scoff, they were in middle school), I went to give her a pop kiss while she tried to go the French route. So we broke away and then she went for the pop kiss while I tried to get some tongue action. Wow, it was really embarrassing! So while Brian and I were building up the courage to talk to girls, and shared awkward stories of
inopportunely releasing gas or having a mid-class voice cracking mishap, this dink is telling us an embarrassing story that we would have died for. Hence, in like manner, I present the above 'embarrassing' story for all the dimwits who would have lusted to be in the academic limelight but can't--in retaliation for my protracted and vexing absence from the dating game. Peace.
Trois
Lettres
During a period when my onerous
class work at UF was consuming me: sapping my energy and stealing my time, I found myself out of contact with my
closest friends--the ones I really cared about. I decided to write them a letter since calling them was prohibitive for a reason I can't quite recall. But instead of writing 3
separate letters to them, as an efficiency freak, I decided to just write one letter and just give the other photocopies with their name inserted in the 'Dear
xyz" field. It all made so much sense.
I wrote a killer letter--complete with all the fixin's: you're such a good friend, I miss you the most, we should get married, you should come visit, blah blah blah. Well, not even a week after I distributed this contrived
correspondence to these three isolated lady friends, did they all uncover the craftiness of my ways. What was supposed to be a sincere letter expressing the depths of my friendship, turned into a
venomous snake that threatened to poison my dearest relationships.
While it's easy to imagine how pernicious such a letter can be, this asinine ploy fortunately failed to sever
the bonds of friendship I had steadily built up. Notwithstanding, this has to top the list of premeditated stupidities.
Multi-tasking Master
No one can multitask as well as I can. So while the world of
Biology was buzzing around me one day in a boring lecture, I was hard at work writing a 'love letter.' While my
Professor preached to the 250+ pre-med kids (I was in this sad group for 2 years), I was writing poetry as prose and dancing in the realm of rich, creative thought. I dedicated about 5% of my processing power to hearing the old man talk about cyclical cohorts and overheard him pose a question to the class: "Have any of you ever read the yearly World Almanac?"
Note: When I was younger (~12) I was ensorcelled with facts and fact books, so I had read through a few Almanacs containing detailed information on each country--the amount of textiles produced, their quantities of livestock, a list of their imports and exports, and other completely useless
but nonetheless engaging trivia.
So, without breaking concentration, I instinctively raise my hand. As it is going up, so is my awareness of the situation. I slowly raise my head to discover the horror of 250 piercing pairs of eyes--all focused on the only idiot desperate enough to sacrifice his social standing to placate the
professor. Not that swiftly lowering my hand did anything because the
Prof was happy to string me along for conversation saying things as, "So having read the
Almanac, I'm sure you noticed that the population mortality rates
dovetailed with the birth cohort to align with the peripheral perfunctory
adjunct...etc" which made me look even more foolish. Needless to say, that was the last time I raised my hand in that class!
All My Friends
The one significant injury
I had playing football was a shattered right ring finger. So much
force impacted my finger on an errant pass, during a game of
competitive Intramural Flag Football, that the bone was crushed into a
toothpaste-like consistency. $4000 surgery was the prescription,
seeing my under the knife in less than a week. Using general
anesthetic, I remained woozy for hours afterward, while under the
motherly care of a great friend, Jaleh Khorsandian.
Months later we were playing a
staple coffee house game, All My Friends. Basically the person
in the middle says 'all my friends who, say, are wearing socks'.
Everyone wearing socks would then get up and compete for the a
seat--of which there would be one short. The unlucky sap who didn't
prevail in this test of skill and strength would be left standing in
the middle, ready to begin this cycle again.
So the game is going along well
and I was comfortable on the fringe, when someone calls out, "All
my friends who've ever had their toe nails painted." So all the
girls are running around, shrieking, and trying to find a seat. Jaleh,
seemingly the last one standing, walks over to me and orders me to get
up. My face turns bright, bright red as I know that my spot had been
blown up. Without putting up too much attention-grabbing resistance, I
get up to the laughs, howls, and gasps of all those in attendance. I
even faintly remember hearing someone say 'I knew it,' whatever that
was supposed to mean.
At this point I'm laughing as you would
to play off a joke, but my discomfort is readily apparent. So as I'm
doubled-over in mock laughter, I attempt to sway an admittedly decided
group that while I was knocked out from finger surgery, Jaleh, in her
boredom, painted my toenails with a clear glaze. I'm not sure if
everyone believed me, but I refused to play that game the next few
times it was offered, feigning illness and disinterest, all to cover
up any other secrets that could escape under the guise of good, clean
fun. |
