Meeting About Death

I'm honestly not even sure where to begin with this post.

I feel like this is a story that needs to be told, but I know me, and I'm afraid that I will keep writing these tangential anecdotes that will eventually lead me to forget what I was talking about in the first place...

I know me, I've seen me do it...



Ok, I think I've created some semblance of an outline for writing this in my head... how very 9th grade English class of me...

I have a fantastic friend, and despite her best efforts, her family hates her... Now, I need to clarify that her immediate family only consists of two people, and we assume they love her, despite how misguided their love may be. But, her extended family is huge, and they are kind of like a religious cult. A cult with all the bad and none of the good. Are there good religious cults?

See... I need to stop right there...

Anyway, they all 'love' each other, but really they show that love by trying to prove that they are better then each other.

So, as the dutiful friend that I am, whenever there is a 'family' event, I tag along.

As it turns out, everyone loves me (this actually happens a lot) which I use as a complete license to kill. I take no prisoners, I say and do the most inappropriate things to no avail... I remain loved.

My friend and I understand that any 'family' event is much more tolerable when we have strength in numbers, even if our number is two. The 'family' also tends to treat her with at least basic respect when I'm around mainly because they don't want to look bad in front of an outsider... that's me baby... where as if I was not there, they would talk about her behind her back... while she is standing in front of them...

Why does she bother to go to these 'family' gatherings you might ask? Well, because her absence would be 10 times worse. There would be phone calls, e-mails, facebook and myspace posts, there would be texting, tweets, faxes, telegraphs sent, Western Union telegrams (do they still do that? well, no matter, these people could force them to start back up).



I've have never felt comfortable at funerals. In a way I'm lucky, I've never had to deal with someone I truly care about passing. Every funeral I've ever been to is someone who I am at best, loosely associated with. So while, I'm sad that they are dead, and I'm sad for those who loved them, I'm also sad that I have to be there. Funerals are kinda like meetings... there's a lot of protocol involved, and I never know what's going on, because I lack the ability to pay attention. I tend to find humor in the least humorous situations so I sometimes have to suppress not only my inner monologue, but I have to keep it from escaping... and it is a difficult job...



Here I am with my friend at a 'family' funeral, oh joy... we're in the parking lot of the funeral home which is a brightly yellow painted old building, and it's maybe 9:50AM. The funeral was scheduled to begin at 10:00AM. The funeral people (I'm sure they must have an official title, but I can't think of what it might be) are directing traffic into parking spaces, because while the funeral home is quite large, the parking lot is um... not...

Everyone is backing up into parking spaces so that we can all block each other in and make sure that no one will be able to escape before what I'm sure will be the bitter end. I'm good at backing a car up, so after I wait for the car in front of me to figure out how to make what should have been a simple parking maneuver happen, I swing into the next space. We sit the car and figure we'll just take a second to take a deep breath and put our game faces on...

This is when I notice that a woman in the car next to us is pounding a can of beer... Apparently we were not the only ones who felt that we "needed a moment"...

I for one feel like this is a ray of bright light in what is otherwise almost guaranteed to be a dark and boring day.



We abandon the safety of the car and head towards the door of the funeral home. It is now 10:00AM. There was no waiting around, the funeral people are all pissed that we are late. We are shuffled off to a small room right off of the main front foyer which is clearly an overflow room. We have it all, bright pink flower print wall paper, a shelf of little, overly decorative tea cups, furniture from a time when people must have been much, much smaller, and not placed any value on the comfort of sitting, and... a little flat screen TV in the corner.

So, we are now watching the service on the flat screen while having no idea where in this large funeral home the main event is actually taking place.

There is a religious guy at the podium speaking. As it turns out, I apparently can't be any more specific then that because I was paying so little attention to the actual service I'm not even sure what religion the speaker was.  I'm still trying to suppress how funny I find the ridiculously decorated room we're in when I spot it... 

Crossing the bottom of the TV screen is the top of a dark blond head belonging to some small child who has managed to escape their parents... the head slowly moves across the TV screen again... now I am fixated on the TV. This funeral is starting to become entertaining, and not my inner monologue entertaining, I mean literally entertaining. I look over at my friend to see if she has also noticed 'loose small child'... she clearly has, and we exchange a wry smile.

Then we see the little blond head go across the TV screen at a much higher rate of speed. This fantastic visual is accompanied by a distinct "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." in the floor.

Luckily, because the building is old, and clearly there are wood floors under the beautiful fuchsia carpet, the "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." sound tells us that the 'main event' room must be very close.

So the little blond head continues to streak across the bottom of the TV from one side to the other, the "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." continues, the religious guy at the podium hasn't missed a beat. God, whatever... dead guy, whatever... blah, blah, blah, whatever... little blond head... "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." it's really a beautiful service. Then the little blond head runs right into the room we are sitting in.

At least now we can identify the child as a boy... maybe 4 years old, and of course other people in the room know who is he, and they want to hug and fawn all over him, and no one seems to care that he has been running back and forth in front of the podium for the last 10 minutes, particularly his parents who haven't bothered to stop him while he was at least in the same room with them. I'm therefore not at all surprised that they don't bother to see where he has run off too...

Ok, tangent... not that I remember going to funerals when I was 4, but I can guarantee that there is no way in hell I would have tried to run away from my parents and cause a scene in front of other people. Had I done that, I would have had to take my 4 year old ass right out the door and never come back, because I would have had a greater chance of survival on my own at 4, then heading back to my parents after doing something like that...

I have to turn to my friend and say, "are you fucking kidding me... who's fucking kid is this?" She understands both my annoyance and sheer joy at the situation.

So, this single brief visit from little blond boy (which is now how 'he' will be referred too because I never cared to find out what his name was)  has now devolved into the kid literally running laps around the funeral home.

I am now laughing, I'm trying to keep it as quietly and too myself as possible, but I am obviously laughing out loud, and anyone in the room who isn't mesmerized by the religious guy's words has noticed that I find the complete absurdity of what is going on quite funny.

All you can hear other then the TV is "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." and here comes little blond boy... and there goes little blond boy, and more "thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump..." and then you see his little blond head streak across the bottom of the TV, and this process just repeats itself over and over again.

Through all of this religious guy still doesn't slow down at all.



Now, I'm sure you're thinking this is funny, and ok, little kids are unpredictable, and sure little blond boy's parents are assholes, but that this is the end of the story...

Oh no... no, no, no... we're just getting warmed up here people... take a moment, get up and stretch, use the bathroom, get yourself a drink... whatever you need, because we're in this together.

Ok, ready?



Religious guy finally brings his 25 minute long string of words that I didn't listen to, in for a landing... and once he touches down, as he's taxing into the gate he finishes with "is there anyone else who would like to say a few words?"

All that anyone could hope to do is reuse all of his words, but try to string them together in a different order. Religious guy has already said every word there is to be said.

Or so I thought...

After a long pause where I am thinking two things. 1, I'm surprised given the number of people who must be here, there isn't a single other person who wants to say a few words. 2, maybe we'll be able to get the fuck outta here.

Then someone stands up. I can't see this, but it must have happened because I can't think of any other way they would have managed to facilitate their arrival at the podium.

New guy begins to speak. I begin to listen. After about 5 minuets two things become clear. The first is that I have no idea what new guy is talking about. He seems to be simply relaying stories of all the places he's traveled when he was much younger. The second is that none of anything he's saying seems to have a single thing to do with the dead guy.

This goes on for nearly 15 more minutes, and again, I really can't believe how this funeral service has gone. We're almost 45 minuets into this thing, and this has been, in totality, the most ridiculous funeral I've ever attended. New guy is still talking entirely about himself, little blond boy is still lapping the funeral home, however he has started altering directions, perhaps he was getting dizzy. I'm am wishing I had a cocktail, something of the late breakfast variety would have been excellent, vodka and OJ would have hit the spot. Vodka and Veuve would have probably been more appropriate for the way my friend and I were dressed, but I'm no drink snob...   

Then it happened, the new guy said "and then when I was 14 my parents sent me to Boston"... ok, at least a city I have been to, so I'm now re-focused on the speaker. Suddenly after 15 minutes of talking about himself the dead guy becomes a participant in his story. As it turns out the dead guy picked him up from the airport... or bus depot, I really don't remember which, and so the story goes on about how the dead guy shows him around the city, and they go here, and they go there, and it's all very run off the mill, and then he says the dead guy took him to a bathhouse...

Have you ever had a Scooby-Doo moment? A moment where you actually tilt your head and make an audible "whhhoooaaaa"... kinda sound... I had a full blow Scooby-Doo moment, I had to turn to my friend and ask, did he just say "bathhouse?"...

I know for a fact that the first speaker... remember religious guy who used all the words?... well I know he omitted the word "bathhouse"... Had he said "bathhouse" I would have had a Scooby-Doo moment 45 minutes sooner.

New guy, now has my fully undivided attention. I'm not even noticing little blond boy who I'm sure is still flying around the funeral home. New guy continues on, apparently feeling completely uninhibited by his surroundings or the various ages of his audience, to talk about how he had never been to a bathhouse. Apparently, because he wasn't sure if everyone listening knew what a bathhouse was, he then proceeded to describe in rather vivid detail what a bathhouse is and what is done there. I mean, he even talked about the towels, although from the story, he was the only one wearing one.

I must have had a grin from ear to ear... it is literally all I can do not to be high five-ing the people sitting around me. This has been the best funeral ever. This funeral has seriously delivered.

-People were drinking in the parking lot before this even started,
-Little blond boy is running around like someone had clearly fed the poor kid meth just to see what would happen,
-New guy is talking all about how he didn't feel comfortable at 14 being naked around all these older men in the bathhouse he was taken too by the dead guy while in Boston.

And for the record, I'm sorry, but there is no way he remembered all those details about the internal workings of a bathhouse from the 'one time' he went there when he was 14... I think he liked it, and has visited many other bathhouses over the years. That not withstanding, the fact that the best thing he could come up with to regale the audience, at poor dead guys funeral, was a story about underage homoerotic nudity... well that's just art...

It was... it was like watching really good performance art, where you and only a few other people realize it's art, and everyone else is either too stunned or too polite or too stupid to know what's going on, and/or to say or do anything.

New guy finally wraps up his long ass and completely inappropriate story and religious guy then dictates how the processional will walk past the casket. Of course being in the 'arrived too late to get seats in the main event room' we get to go first, and then proceed to do the walk of shame in front of everyone who arrived early. I would normally have felt some sort of uncomfortableness about this whole process, but I'm still so high on life from how this funeral has gone, I could have walked down the line naked, but that ship had already sailed 20 minutes ago.

Please feel free to comment, -Me

The Good, the Bad and the Keyless...

I have two cars...

Now this is not for the reason you might think... at least not for the reason I would like you to think, which is that I'm completely loaded, and I can afford two vehicles that say, not only am I affluent, but I might also kill people for a living.

No, the real reason I own two cars is that I've become paranoid that if everything completely goes to hell, and I can no longer afford the payments on the one car, I can still have another car to drive, as I own the second car outright.

But this isn't about the second car, no, no it's about the first, and it's ability to cause people to loose their common sense.

The first car is big, it's black, it's badass. It's very loaded, heated and cooled seats with massage loaded, and it's an American made automobile (for those who maybe thinking Mercedes or BMW). But I digress, my car seems to have the ability to cause people, who are not me, to lock my keys in the trunk.

This has now happened several times, and it has caused me to ponder why. Is it the scary big blackness of the car itself? Is it the sheer enormity of the volume of the trunk that causes this? Perhaps I am simply friends with stupid people. I for one would like to think it is not the latter of those potential options, but I guess I'm not ruling anything out here.

Anyway, because I have two cars, and despite my best efforts, I have yet to master operating both of them simultaneously, so I do from time to time lend the big one out to friends when the need arises. Yesterday not withstanding.



Incoming text message:

"I locked the keys in the trunk!"

I wouldn't think that particular type of message would require an exclamation point at the end of it, as if it was something exciting and fun that just happened, but I wasn't the one who wrote it, so perhaps it was merely a poor punctuation choice caused in the midst of frustration for having locked you're friends keys in his car, several states away from where he lives... maybe that was it.



At this point in the post I need to tell you about the second time the keys were locked in the trunk. I was with the person who did it. Not physically with them at the moment of the trunk closing, but I was only maybe a hundred feet away, rather then hundreds of miles away.

Here is what 'we' discovered... When the car is locked, you're screwed. As it turns out, you're screwed on a multitude of levels, but we had yet to discover those other levels.

Level 1: The realization that there is no way that 'you' are going to get into your car.

Level 2: The realization that this particular car does not have an actual keyed lock on the trunk. Meaning that without the remote fob (I hate the word "fob") or pressing the little trunk button in the car, there is no way to obtain access to the trunk.

Level 3: Waiting for AAA.
AAA arrives and the guy comes to looks at the car. I don't want to say the guy panics, but he clearly doesn't look thrilled. AAA guy, goes back to his truck five stories down (by the way, did I mention the car is parked in a parking garage) and finally returns with a bunch of pry bars and a little inflatable pillow.  I will give the AAA guy credit, he managed to pry the frame of the door away from the roof of the car without causing the side window to explode, and reach in with his little grabby thing, and pull up the lock.

Level 4: Holy fuck the alarm in this car is loud as hell. Maybe it's the concrete parking garage it's in, but I think even out in the open the alarm would have been half a step away from causing you ear bleeding full blown deafness if you were too close. The AAA guy yells to me that he'll be right back, heads to the elevator and is never seen or heard from again. He may very well have died on the way back to his truck from loss of blood caused by the ruptured ear drums I'm sure he had.

Level 5: My car is a fighter and it is not going to give up those keys easily. Sure we may have thought we won, but we were wrong. After waiting for the alarm to stop, we cautiously approach the car. I'm not sure why we were being so cautious, but at the time, after the explosion of sound and flashing lights I guess it seemed prudent. I press the little trunk release button inside the car. The trunk does not release, and the alarm goes off again, causing us to once again scatter. My car is in full lock down mode. Approaching the car again, I open another door, the alarm goes off again. At this point I think we are all suffering from what I'm sure will be permanent hearing damage, so this time we don't flee, we just deal with the noise. We've now opened all the doors and when someone shuts one, we discover the car will immediately re-lock the door. This is some next level shit right here. This car would lock you inside of it and starve you to death if it could. My car may be a killer...

Level 6: Why is the battery under the back seat? Who thought this was a good idea? We've now gathered a group of people who are helping, or standing around, one of the two. We remove the back seat, disconnect the battery and wait. After maybe a minute I reconnect the battery and oh yes, you guessed it... flashing lights, horn losing it's mind, doors frantically re-locking in the hopes that we'll be in the car, and us bleeding from the ears. This cycle goes on several times over the next five minutes or so. Not because we're stupid and don't learn from our mistakes, but because we couldn't think of anything else to try. We connect the battery, the car loses it's mind. Disconnect the battery, wait, repeat... Finally the battery is connected and car does nothing. I contemplate if this is some sort of ploy, like perhaps the outside of the car is now electrified and when I touch it I will immediately be electrocuted. I'm not putting anything passed the abilities of my killer vehicle. I press the trunk release button... the trunk opens...



It only took hours to retrieve the keys...

And now I'm looking at this text message "I locked the keys in the trunk!" replaying every moment of the last time this happened in my head.

I reply "are you in the car?"

I receive a second text message:

"I'm outside the car. I was so excited to be loading some of my favoritest beer ever that I had a brain fart".

Did I question whether I was friends with stupid people? At least my friend won't slowly starve to death while trapped in the car. Although I'm not sure if the car will try to kill you until you set the alarm off. We already know, once that happens, it's on...

So, I write this long ass text message back about how the AAA guy can try to pry the door, the alarm is loud, the doors will keep trying to lock, the battery is under the back seat, disconnect it, reconnect it, disconnect it, reconnect it, disconnect it, reconnect it, disconnect it, reconnect it, disconnect it, reconnect it, hope the car forgets that is has been violated, press the little trunk release button.

A little more then an hour passes and I receive the third and final text message:

"Success!"

Well, it was a succinct message...



Please feel free to comment, -Me

"I'm sorry, what was the question?"

This post requires a little context;

This is an e-mail that I sent to one of my coworkers that failed to attend this meeting. To make sure you understand who the players in this poorly acted farce are, I’ve included this brief description of them, and the room we are housed in.

-Sasha, is my boss and department head.

-Mari would be my boss if I worked for her company, doing exactly what I do for Sasha, but probably enjoying myself more.

-Deb, was my boss (sort of) when I worked with her, but I hated that company and the person who actually was my boss hated me, so it was a mutual spiral of hate that led to me quitting and giving them as little notice as possible, because I’m apparently a bad human being... or at least I was in that particular situation.

Now this meeting was comprised of all the people who do what I do from all of the surrounding companies in the area. I guess it would be an actual collaborative if everyone didn’t (not so secretly) think that everyone else was an egomaniacal ass. But because everyone does in fact think that, they are the only wasting each others time with fake pleasantries and inconsequential discussions. Anyway, this as it turns out is a large number of egomaniacal asses, seated in what can best be described as a amphitheater, a large multi-tiered semicircle, in a large uncomfortably hot room... and most of these people are like dry white toast. They would just be primarily dry and white, but it was really, really hot in there...

***

from:  Me <wehatemeetings@gmail.com>
to:  Pat XXXXXX <pxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.org>
date:  Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:37 PM
subject:  meeting last night...
mailed-by:  gmail.com



So, you didn't miss much from the meeting last night, but I thought you would find this funny...

First off, I sat between Sasha, and Deb so it was like my former boss and my current one... which was great...

There was a rousing almost hour long debate about changing the public admission fee from $8 to $10. Someone felt a study on the expenses of the event we’re charging people to get into should be commissioned. Because clearly, how else can we justify raising the fee if we don’t know for sure that we need the money. Someone else then chimed in to mention that we’ve lost money on this event for the last several years. Oh, but where is the money going replied the first person. Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself, ‘well, someone’s clearly stealing it, cause these events always suck’... but I somehow manage to refrain from saying it out loud. The bickering continued, more people had to add their opinions, because you don’t want to look unimportant in front of your peers by not having something inane to say to help keep the dialogue stuck in neutral.

Now we’re about 1/2 way through the meeting I'm totally off in la-la land, staring out the window wondering why the ambulance is in front of the building, and secretly hoping that the EMTs will rush in a take me away, when I realize that Mari is like, intensely staring at me, and doing this weird thing with her neck... So I kinda snap back into reality, and I'm looking at Mari, and she's giving me that "that's you" kinda look, and I of course have no fucking idea what is going on right now, so I look around the room, and it's totally silent, and I look back at Mari and she's still pointing her face at me with her neck, and I finally have to turn to the room and loudly ask:

"I'm sorry, what was the question?"

So the question is who will host the convention... So I say "oh..." and look back at Mari, and there is no way unless she is a yoga master that her neck can't be hurting by now because she is still doing this not particularly subtle pointing at me with her whole head, like I've apparently been chosen to do this in some meeting I wasn't a part of, so I then blurt out "Yeah sure."

Moments later it dawns on me that I'm sitting next to Sasha, who has, I'm fairly certain, been completely oblivious to Mari, as Sasha seems a little surprised that I just volunteered us to host this event out of the blue, so I turn to Sasha and ask, "hey can we do this?" Meanwhile, there isn't a person in the room who isn't fixated on the two of us, and she says "sure" because she couldn't give two shits right now, she's more concerned with the fact that it's 90 degrees in the room, and I've been telling people that she's hot because she's sitting next to me... (I don't think she was concerned with the second part, probably more annoyed). So anyway, I then turn back to the room and say, "Well, Sasha say it's ok... so we're in..."

Which received a full 'smattering' of laughter from the room...

And that's how we became the hosts of this years convention... :)

***

Please feel free to comment, -Me

1st Post

So, it is true... shocking as it may be, that I do in fact hate meetings. I used the word "We" in the title of this blog instead of "I" because chances are (I would guess) better then average that you also hate meetings. I can't think of a single time that I have spent any time, any time at all in a meeting and came away thinking to myself, "that was a worth while experience, and I am a better person for having had it"... This even holds true for meetings that I have held, where I'm the one presenting whatever the "it" or "thing" is that needs to be displayed, discussed, argued over, whatever the case may be. Usually in the end I feel guilty for having forced innocent coworkers, to have participated at all.

There is a single thing that will make a meeting at least tolerable. Have you figured it out yet? Are you even guessing? Yes, yes you're right... it's booze...  Who doesn't love a well prepared cocktail, a cold beer, a little (or not so little) glass of wine. Booze is a welcome distraction that not only allows you to be physically doing something with your hands, but helps you to care less about how much you might have otherwise been considering taking your own life rather then spending another single second in this meeting.

Plus, depending on how much a little drink affects you, maybe you raise your hand, or if you've had more then a little, maybe you stand right up and blurt out some unbelievably great idea. It will probably happen at some unbelievably poor moment in time, but booze helped you to be assertive and get noticed. So 10 points for you, and 10 points for booze. It also helped everyone who just witnessed your explosion of 'great idea' to enjoy themselves a little more.

While I think booze is the secret to meeting success. I'm thwarted almost every time there is to be a meeting. I'll suggest, "hey, why don't we have the meeting at (insert nameless generic restaurant) down the street, you know so that we can get a bite to eat"... 'bite to eat' being thinly veiled code for 'drink a lot'... if I'm to be honest on rare occasions this has worked. But those occasions are way too few and far between. Sometime I just flat out say, we should bring drinks to the meeting. That, I can tell you with 100% accuracy, always goes completely nowhere.

Now for a painful truth, my plan and I use the term "plan" loosely is to write this blog as if I was speaking. So I think we can all assume that good grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, etc. are going to go out the proverbial window.  Also, fair warning in case you hadn’t noticed, I am a big fan of ellipsis... yes, "..."

If reading this blog with my unusual typography pains you, please stop. If not, continue on.

My plan continues with me writing about whatever I feel like, at no prescribed intervals of time. So if that isn't a recipe for success, I'm really not sure what is.

Please feel free to comment, -Me