un poco lento

i changed my walking route to pass by more pecan trees. i became irritable. i was sitting on a picnic table with tablecloths made by anheiser-busch, where fifty-something laborers and forty-something amateur investors discuss the way things are and the way things would be if the whole world wasn't crazy. men with dark glasses and suntanned wrinkled faces, whose accents all aspire towards the ideal state of the proprietor's accent. so i became irritable and i looked up from the cookbook where the glued binding was coming undone. no, didn't look, up, but moved my attention upwards and yelled something gruffly.

here was an inflection point.

i helped a girl do her homework then sat and listened to her telling stories to fill up the rest of the scheduled hour. something in those stories of frat parties, puddles of shitty beer, car keys, hastened drives to far off cities, sleepiness, missing english class, reminded me of myself of six years ago, things that i would have dismissed with condescension, talking about myself, but that she related with such conviction.

i tried out enthusiasm at the grocery store where i spent the hour break with duylinh. examined the different kinds of onions. a can of garbanzo beans fell and didn't land on anyone's foot. i bought a beef roast to make boeuf bourgignonne

back at work: "now, you understand, jesse, the fastest man in the world can run 100m in a little less than 10 seconds. this guy, and he has a twin brother; 300m in 33s. coach made me run with him. i did it in 37s. i was starting to break down."

"coach thinks you're fat."