Friday, January 13, 2012

Hey Neighbor

So I was holding a glass in my hand, right? Yeah, a drinking glass, and the next thing I know there’s nothing to hold, there’s nothing in my hand, but I didn’t get that rush, you know? That flash of trepidation you get when something slips out of your grasp, you know what I mean right? Yeah, that split second of fear when something that is firmly and safely in your hand suddenly is not—suddenly it's away from you and it's an object, fragile and free-falling, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s2 towards a hard and indifferent surface and all you can manage to do at that point - once the physics have taken over - is freeze like some stupid deer caught in the headlights until the half-second crash course with the floor is over with, right?—No, I didn’t get that feeling at all, I just noticed the glass wasn’t in my hand anymore. So when I realized it was gone I looked to see where it went. The first direction I looked was down—pretty clever, right? Yeah, I went to college, but when I look down I don’t see it. What I see looks nothing like my glass. Not even close. So expecting to see my glass but instead seeing what I do, my mind just draws a blank. I have no idea what I’m looking at. If I had said out loud what was going through my mind at the time I would have said something like, “What am I looking at?” Real creative, right? But that’s just how much I didn’t know what it was. So I’m standing there looking at something I can't for the life of me comprehend and my poor stumped brain is whirling away, rifling through the filing cabinet trying to find a match to what it is it sees, and then it finally puts the pieces together. It’s the pieces. I am looking at pieces of my glass. Shards of what was my glass. Then good old brain finds even more pieces to add to the picture. I was drinking water see? But good old brain knew that what lay mixing with the pieces of glass wasn't matching up with it's notion of what spilt water looks like, right? Even on the floral tile my brain saw that there was too much color on the scene. Way, way much too much color. Now at this point you don’t need to be some sort of mathematician to put two and two together and figure out what had happened and even though at the time my brain was finally grasping the gravity of my situation and what I had done, I still can’t explain why—Why on earth did I squeeze that glass so hard? Why on earth did I not feel a thing? Why, when my brain finally realized what had happened, did I just stand there dribbling much too much color all over my socks and the floral tile? Anyways, can I borrow your broom for a sec? I need to sweep up the glass.

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