I'm Such a Delightful Ass

5/4/06

As any of you who have had the pleasure of spending extended periods of time with me knows, I'm a bit of a cock-ass. Sometimes I genuinely delight in the discomfort of others. But I don't want you to think that only my friends and loved ones must suffer; I reserve a special sort of sarcastic evil for those in humanity I consider not worth my time to actually talk to. This group consists of roughly the population of the world minus thirty people or so. If you are a member of this larger group and actually have the audacity to speak to me unsolicited, you're pretty much taking a craps roll as to what awful thing will fall from my mouth. I submit, as example, a conversation I had with a coworker earlier this morning in which I was being deliberately and (I thought) maddeningly obtuse.

Bear in mind that at no time in this little interaction do I actually look at the woman, much less make eye-contact.

Woman: Morning, Ry. (I hate this ludicrous shortening of my already minuscule 4-letter name.)

Me: Mmghn.

Woman: Looks like your hair is getting longer.

Me: Yeah, as hair is wont to do

Woman: Are you growing it out?

Me: Uh, yeah. I really have no control over the matter.

Woman: I just thought maybe you were trying to let it get longer.

Me: It happens more or less automatically. (At this point I've actually started working in a ditch-effort to get her to leave me the hell alone.)

Woman: Well are you going to get it cut?

Me: I'll wager that is an inevitability at some point in the future.

(PAUSE)

Woman: What kind of juice are you drinking?

Me: (internally) Are you fucking kidding me? (I turn the bottle of orange juice-colored liquid to where the label clearly displays Orange Juice.)

This pillar of engaging conversation doesn't say anything for a moment and I turn, hoping she has either popped out of existence or turned into a statue of salt as a curse for her brain-liquefying line of questioning. Sadly, neither was the case.

Me: What?

Woman: Is that grapefruit juice?

Me: (after finally wrapping my mind around the staggering lunacy of this question) Noooo...it's orange juice. Says so right there.

Woman: I can't see it. (She's two feet away.)

Me: What?!

Woman: I can't see that far.

Me: (goggling and a bit terrified over the fact that this woman has a driver's license) I have no idea how to respond to that.

Woman: (cigaretty laughter.)

Mercifully, this is where the cold-sweat-inducing diatribe ends, and she walks off either toward her cubical or perhaps in search of another victim to talk at while gray-matter drips from their ears, and I'm left thinking, "Now just what in the holy mind-fuck was that?!" And then I go back to testing the boundries of our company's internet porn filter.