Thursday, November 10, 2011
Life is a highway
Whenever I see a single shoe on the side of the road, it proves that the world was once covered in oceans, and a pirate had his leg cut off and replaced it with a stump and threw one of his shoes overboard.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
My coinundrum
People drop coins; these things happen to the best of us, as a general rule. When someone is receiving change at a shop, restaurant, bar etc, occasionally the fingers don’t always agree with the brain, and a handful of silver hits the ground. Whenever I am in the vicinity, the change-dropping frequency increases exponentially.
When this happens, two things occur:
1. I bend down to help the person collect their coins. Instead of being gracious for my assistance, the dropper of the coins will snatch each precious silver piece that I hold out to them and eye me with suspicion as if I’ve just pulled off a master heist to relieve them of fifteen cents. That’s right, dickhead, I carry around FAKE ten-cent pieces that I subtly use to replace real coins whenever someone drops their change. I have a funny feeling that a fake ten-cent coin would cost around eighty cents. Ocean’s 11 this is not.
2. A single coin lands on its edge and rolls past me, and continues to merrily defy physics as it glides along. As I watch it, I know that I have to stop its progress, and a conundrum presents itself to me - how far am I willing to chase this coin? The fact is, the money isn’t mine; I don’t even know the person to whom it belongs, so I don’t really have a vested interest in it, but the dropper has seen me watch the coin roll, so I feel compelled to do something about it. The coin is now a few metres into its happy little journey, so I take two quick strides after it, and bend down to snatch it up. The coin suddenly makes a 90-degree turn and I clutch at thin air and am forced to take another step or two to catch up with it. Finally, I’m able to corner the silver, and pick it up to return it to its owner. There they are, about eighteen metres away, watching me awkwardly chase a coin through a shopping centre.
Feeling stupid, I nonetheless give the coin back to the person who dropped it, someone who probably wouldn’t give a shit if they dropped twenty cents, let alone chase it for a half-marathon, let alone chase someone else’s coin. As I return it to them, I will attempt to be uber-casual and instead of handing the money back to them, the coin will drop to the ground once again. In a perfect world, we’d just laugh it off before having a beer together. In this world though, I usually dig through my own pockets for a coin and give it to them so they don’t have to chase theirs again. Sometimes, those things just need to be set free.
When this happens, two things occur:
1. I bend down to help the person collect their coins. Instead of being gracious for my assistance, the dropper of the coins will snatch each precious silver piece that I hold out to them and eye me with suspicion as if I’ve just pulled off a master heist to relieve them of fifteen cents. That’s right, dickhead, I carry around FAKE ten-cent pieces that I subtly use to replace real coins whenever someone drops their change. I have a funny feeling that a fake ten-cent coin would cost around eighty cents. Ocean’s 11 this is not.
2. A single coin lands on its edge and rolls past me, and continues to merrily defy physics as it glides along. As I watch it, I know that I have to stop its progress, and a conundrum presents itself to me - how far am I willing to chase this coin? The fact is, the money isn’t mine; I don’t even know the person to whom it belongs, so I don’t really have a vested interest in it, but the dropper has seen me watch the coin roll, so I feel compelled to do something about it. The coin is now a few metres into its happy little journey, so I take two quick strides after it, and bend down to snatch it up. The coin suddenly makes a 90-degree turn and I clutch at thin air and am forced to take another step or two to catch up with it. Finally, I’m able to corner the silver, and pick it up to return it to its owner. There they are, about eighteen metres away, watching me awkwardly chase a coin through a shopping centre.
Feeling stupid, I nonetheless give the coin back to the person who dropped it, someone who probably wouldn’t give a shit if they dropped twenty cents, let alone chase it for a half-marathon, let alone chase someone else’s coin. As I return it to them, I will attempt to be uber-casual and instead of handing the money back to them, the coin will drop to the ground once again. In a perfect world, we’d just laugh it off before having a beer together. In this world though, I usually dig through my own pockets for a coin and give it to them so they don’t have to chase theirs again. Sometimes, those things just need to be set free.
Shit. These coins have adopted the Phalanx formation. I have no chance
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