Reunion Night

Sometimes you find yourself plodding through life, finishing all, or at least the most important of what is required of you. You block out most of the rest of the world aside from catching up on a few of the current events, and then Friday comes.

The alarm goes off first thing, and you're ready to throw the fucker out the window for interrupting your dream about Elisha Cuthbert or Keira Knightley, or whoever. Then, in your light sleep between snoozes, some dolt on the TV station you fell asleep watching the night before starts ranting off some christmas shopping bullshit.

Its still only November 17th.

And then...because the shopping wasn't enough...they have some group of overeager, happy-go-lucky kids on playing jingle bells on the trumpet. How about we commericalize this holiday a little bit more. Because the month of December isn't already the biggest month for commerce, at least in North America and Western Europe.

So after not clearing those fateful tones from my ears, I roll my ass out of bed to polish off some arbitrary, highly subjective assignment for one of my courses. It being the last assignment, and me being highly unmotivated, I put a half assed effort in, but enough for what I feel to be sufficient with the wording given.

Bike in through the wind in the face, and the snow, and the mud, which of course leaves the unavertable mudstripe up your ass and back and hand in the assignment, and even show up for a tutorial.

I find out about two hours after getting home that I 'apparently' tanked half the assignment...but being that its Friday, and that my week has been excessively long already, I ignore it and decide I'm gonna hit the bar with a buddy and some friends of his. Now a night at the bar is always good times, but in the right company, you get the priviledge of some hilarious stories. The funniest of which being from the one guy who does some troubleshooting work via the telephone for a major wireless communications company talking with a service provider about his kid: (all below paraphrased)

Service Provider Guy (SPG): ...yea, I have 2 and a half kids at home, one just reached the 'What just happened stage?'

Wireless Comms Guy (WCG): oh, one of them just hasn't reached the no crying stage?

SPG: no no, he's blind...and every time something happens we get 'What just happened?'

WCG: ..... (face it you wouldn't know what to say either)

SPG: yea, every time he trips over something: 'What happened?' 'Well, you fell on your face'.

WCG: *stifling laughter* (yes its bad, but you'd laugh too) Aww.

SPG: yea, and we took him to the zoo the other day...

At which point the conversation went off on a bunch of tangents, with the most important being, who takes their blind kid to the zoo..."what are they gonna do, smell the different kinds of shit?"

Label me as cold or whatever you will, but that's just funny, and so true...what parent brings a their blind child to the zoo, and doesn't consider the obvious sleight to the kid, come on. Then, as a curious bookend to the conversation, not five minutes later, this gaunt middle aged man sidles up to our table and starts handing out cards to everyone, not saying a word. We take the time to pass the cards to the rest of the people at the table before reading the card:

"I'm a deaf-mute (and I cannot read lips). I make my money by selling these cards, please pay whatever you feel is appropriate." On the reverse is the sign language alphabet. And me being the sucker I am, and the most likely among the group to ever carry change, I throw all the change I have his way (probably no more than $2) and watch him move on and do the exact same to the next table. After dwelling for a minute, which admittedly was a minute too long, I suggested that I should have challenged him to a game of pinball. And despite our subsequent conversation about how much money panhandlers can actually make...and then drive home to their $300 000 homes, I let it go and moved on, because after all a couple bucks is just a couple bucks.

Then, the weirdness really began. Within the next half hour we ran into 4 people we hadn't seen, and had only heard gossip about since elementary school almost 8 to 9 years ago. And after the quick calculation to check that it had infact been 8 or 9 years, and that I was infact that old, a brief exchange of that period of time occurred as we made our way out. A quick dash to the urinals on the way out, and on the way out I see 3 other people I hadn't seen since highschool on the way out. I don't know why it happens, but it always does. Always in bunches, and not just because one group of people is associated with another, as was typical of my cliquey highschool, but just random people from all over the place, and every time it throws me for a loop, mostly because it reminds me on every occasion of just how much time has passed.