THE BOONDOGGLE I

November 1, 2011 3:44pm (CST)

I knew this was going to be a strange trip when a fellow who looked like he had played a pedophile in Law and Order: SVU sat next to me on my first leg of this ‘adventure’ (or boondoggle, as my best friend’s dad calls it). On the second leg ,as I am stuffing my face with ThunderCloud Nada chickn like a vegetarian held hostage in a meat locker, my row companion says, “I choose you. I wanna sit next to someone with a sandwich.” For his information, this sandwich was not for sharing. I contemplated who was stranger: me with strings of lettuce and fake chickn between my teeth or him for the Hawaiian shirt wanting to sit next to me. Given that my adventure and this leg of my journey was taking me to interview with a spiritual guru (see also: cult leader) for the next two weeks, I choo-chhooo-choose him to be the stranger of us two. My self esteem needs to be intact if I am going to keep a straight face in front of a man who claims to sell blessings on the internets. I mean, trust me, I waste a lot of time on the internet. I know that cats seem to run about 51% of internet stocks. I get it. But what about the rest of the internet that’s not composed of cats and porn? The porn part goes without saying. I know any English teacher from my past would be chastising me for bringing up a topic without properly introducing it. To that I say, my digressions are the best part of my (or anyone’s story telling!). Digression and scatter brains can tell you whether a person is really interesting, really boring or boring-crazy (yes, there is exciting-crazy, but we’ll address that later). You learn so much from digressions, hopefully, the big lesson is whether you ever decide to exchange with the digressor henceforth. God, I can see why so many writers were drunks. What I wouldn’t give to get Bad Romance out of my head.