Today is a historic day for this blog. (AN: I understand that, technically, it is grammatically incorrect to say a historic. However, I believe that voiceless glottal fricatives are consonants too and deserve to be treated as such.) For those who are not neurotic and obsessive-compulsive, you may not have noticed that, prior to today, I have only updated my blog on days ending in 1, 4, or 7. This pattern, like so many of my other irrational self-perpetuating habits, began as an accident but ended up being a fundamental rule governing the updating of this blog. Today, however, I'm making like Linkin Park and breaking the habit. /Pointless prologue.
A summary of my life, to wit:
One of my many charming traits is that I am as naive as I am vulgar. I remember being in a taxi on a family vacation and marveling at the disproportionate number of beautiful women whose cars had broken down on the side of the road. Why had God singled out these fine maidens for mechanical trouble? And, furthermore why had he chosen to do so when they were all on their way to a cocktail party (I had inferred from the length of their skirts that they were on their way to a party. Weird that it should take place in the middle of the day, but it was Italy and they are weird there.) It took me several days of reflection (one-track mind), before I realized that these women weren't having car trouble and were, in fact, prostitutes.
It is in this vein that I spent most of my metro ride to the library yesterday pressed quite intimately up against a man I thought had a degenerative muscular disease, a sweat gland disorder, and some form of functional epilepsy until I realized he was just a meth addict going through withdrawals and having trouble getting that slice of cheese into his mouth. This revelation was precipitated not by his guttural moans or by the sores on his hands, nor even the track marks on his arms (those were just freckles in a line), but by his asking me if I had any drugs.
Having finally made it to the library without catching BleedingSoreitis (that's inflammation of the Bleeding Sores for those of you who don't speak Latin), I proceeded to try to find the book that my professor had recommended we read. (Quick sidenote about French professors...and more specifically about French discussion section leaders. They are brutal. Like Genghis Khan, rip your eyes out and spit in your eye socket brutal. Like hand back your paper and ask if you meant to put it in the trash brutal. But some of them are cute!) This involved a quick search of the library's online catalog, a trip to the place where the internet had promised my book would be located, and crushing disappointment when I realized that the book was not there.
Persistent as I am, however, I decided that I had simply misread the book's code. So I went back to the catalog computer, searched again, and walked back to the same place, determined to find that for which I had come. I hadn't just endured MethBreath (that's a really good name for a mint I think) for twenty minutes to walk away empty-handed. Shockingly, the book had not appeared in the two minutes it had taken me to walk to the computer and back. Undeterred, I decided once more that I had misread and so went back to triple check. A small part of me wondered if, after three times of looking and deciding that I had read it wrong, I shouldn't just declare myself illiterate and call it a day. But instead I repeated this process two more times until a French student, taking pity on my clearly tortured and stupid soul, asked me if I needed help finding something. Sensing an opportunity to make a friend, I responded by squeaking and walking in the other direction. Which might have been ok if I hadn't left my phone sitting on the bookshelf.
In conclusion I'm making no native French friends but I'm pretty sure there's an adult daycare out there just waiting for me to show up.
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