Blogging Houseplant
July 10, 2009
As one day runs into another, I'm starting to feel like a blogging houseplant. Regardless of my perceptions, however, things are moving along faster than I expected. I thought I had another week before getting my staples out, but the doctor's office just called to confirm my appointment on Monday. A pleasant surprise. It also means I'll soon start putting a little weight on my foot and test the new hardware. I'm not sure if it also means I'll be graduating from crutches to a cane or not. When I mentioned the possibility to my friend Richard, he reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld:
Jerry: No more crutches, that must be a relief.
George: Yeah, with crutches, everyone has questions.
Jerry: Not with a cane?
George: Nah, with crutches it's a funny story, with a cane it's a sad story.
A cane I can deal with (although I'll probably get even more people telling me I look like Dr. House than usual), I just hope that a gradual progression back to frolicking in the playground doesn't involve an orthopedic shoe along the way.
Crutches = Funny. Cane = Sad. Orthopedic shoe =Eww.
A friend from work, James, dropped by last night. I offered him a beer, and we went to the roof. The sun was setting, and the sky slowly turned a dark pink while the buildings glowed a somber orange and their lights twinkled various shades of yellow. The traffic on the expressway below whooshed like crashing waves. Some car headlights were dim and tawny, others burned like icy blue lasers. The Brooklyn Navy Yard dominates the view to the west, a view simultaneously dismal and dramatic.
James works at a production company where I occasionally freelance, but I haven't been there in a while, and we made small talk about the office, but that quickly got boring. The last time I saw James, he told me that his girlfriend had moved in with him, so I changed the subject to hear how it had been working out. Before this new arrangement, he’d lived alone for ten years, so it’s been an adjustment, he said, but it was all good.
"What does she do anyway?" I asked.
"She's working on her PhD," he said. "In Molecular Biology."
"There's good money in that racket."
He told me he finds it a little boring, or hard to relate to, and when she gets on a tangent, he has trouble paying attention, feigning interest while his mind wanders. Of course, that would probably be the case regardless of her field of study.
"Have you ever gone to her lab?"
"Sure."
"What kind of stuff does she do there?"
"Oh, she mostly just dissects fruit flies."
"Wow, that sounds pretty challenging."
"It's all done with a microscope, of course. The flies are anesthetized, and there's a tiny suction device that holds them down while she operates. Then she uses tiny instruments to do her thing."
"Wait, she does this while they're alive?"
"Yeah, usually."
"What does she do to them? Inject them with stuff?"
"No, she usually cuts their genitals out."
"Seriously? While they're alive?"
"Yeah. She needs them to be virgins."
"And you sleep next to this girl? I think you'd better start paying attention."
