bored bored bored

Sweet mother of sanity, I'm so devastatingly bored that I feel immobile. So bored that I actually tagged along with my mom to the grocery store. There are a few notable reasons as to why I would rather carve designs into my pasty-toned flesh with a spoon than accompany my mom to the grocery store. She doesn't make a list. Granted, that's only one reason, but it has enough impact to count for several. When one visits the grocery store without a list, it forces them to wander aimlessly up and down each aisle, and soon it's like an Easter egg hunt -- children with drool buckets in toe running in circles, sobbing in frustration because they can't find the prizes their parents hid given that they don't know what these unidentified prizes are, what they look like, or if they have enough value to trade for something worthwhile at recess. So my mom's pushing a gimp cart (you know, one of those carts with one wheel that seems to be possessed and tries to drift in different directions) though every aisle and examining every item, while I'm freezing my ass off and suffering from involuntary spasms because of the armies of freezers that border the entire store.

While my mom was ambling past shelves of carbonated beverages with me convulsing at her side, she carefully lifted a six-pack of carbonated water and questioned, "Doesn't Pat like bubble water?" I used to call it bubble water when I was younger, probably because I couldn't pronounce carbonated, much like I stumbled over "music" (ming` � is) and "guitar" (insert a random string of inaudible syllables here).

"Not sure," I replied vaguely. "He used to drink a lot of pop back in the day, but due to my persuasive influence, he's pretty much switched to water."

Her eyes brightened and she made a noise expressing her surprise, adding, "It seems as though you've had a good influence over him overall."

"You know it," I scoffed.

"Is he still depressed?" she asked further, referring to the "crash in November," as Pat and I have lovingly dubbed it.

"Depressed?" I parroted. The November crash occurred almost two years ago. "No, not really."

She went on to say that most people who become that depressed are prone to becoming depressed in the future, and that she herself continuously battles depression. My mom tells me more about herself personally than I'd care to know -- first about her experiences with birth control and yeast infections, and now about her depressive tendencies. I feel like shoving the money back into the ATM machine.

As I was bagging the groceries hastily as my mom wrote out a check for the clerk, I noticed an elderly man sitting at an AMVETS table near the exit, all decked out in his little brown, wedge-like military hat that was peppered with pins. He was offering cloth clovers to those passing by in turn for any sort of cash donation, and I found it callous that so many people pushed their carts past him without even casting him a sidelong glance. On our way out I gave him all the money I had on me -- a dime that I'd found while waiting in the check-out line. I'd probably be anarchist if I owned a firearm lethal enough to protect myself in place of the police force, but I figure that for all of the mental scars veterans have accumulated from seeing gruesome wartime violence, they deserve reimbursement for their suffering. Even if they never set foot on a bloodied field and changed sheets in the barracks, they still had to continue working efficiently and watch those around them drop like ants that had taken a mouthful of poison and/or school food.

Speaking of school food, last year for my 8th grade English class I wrote a story for a creative writing assignment about a student being cheated out of twenty dollars by a vacant-eyed lunch lady during his lunch hour and then angrily taking a bite from his dinner roll that, unfortunately for the student, contained a suspicious-looking goo that led to his untimely death. I received a perfect score as well as expressions of complete and utter horror from my English teacher.

You know how in elementary school, teachers dish out all of this bullshit to students that the reason cereal boxes come only half full is because the cereal settles as it rides in trucks to the stores? Yeah, I think everyone knows the real reason as to why boxes and bags of food are only filled to half-capacity -- to disappoint small children. After having copious amounts of sloppily cut out bar codes mailed back to them in marker-addressed envelopes asking for toys that the company never even insinuated offering, employees are soon driven over the edge.

"I'm going to take life by storm, I'm going to -- eat life!"

"I ate Life once. Wasn't half bad."