It was a little after 11 in the morning on Monday and I was free from my Chaucer class. We watched the last third of Beowulf 2000. The way my professor operates is we study the text, we watch movies based on said text, both excellent and stupid, and when test time comes around we are tasked to write out a page and a half essay on what we’ve learned from all of these sources. She likes making her students write “under pressure” to make them think on their feet.
A moot point for me since I’ve been willingly writing essays for a little over two years now. So the art of pressure writing, I own that bitch.
Beowulf 2000 has settled me into a daze. There’s nothing like watching a mythic millenia old classic poem get turned into a pile of cold shit by the Hollywood machine. Not even a useful steaming pile of shit. At least that would warm your hands on a cold night. No this shit was rock solid and icy. You put your tongue on it… it would stick.
But enough of that shit.
The sad, amusement of the movie was fading. The weight of my world was beginning to press on me again.
How am I going to pay bills? How much is gas today? What am I going to do with my life? What am I going to eat tonight? You know, the usual suspects.
I quickly ID’d one suspect with a visit to Super Target.
Still in a fog, I wander down the bread isle making a beeline for a pack of beef sausage. It’s a Zatarain’s Jambalaya thing.
Not the healthiest choice, I know. Leave me be.
At the end of the isle another buggy(that’s a cart for you northerners) peeks its nose around the corner. My doppleganger or twin if you will. It was blocking my path.
Forcing myself to be courteous, I wait for it to pass. Impatience surpasses me 10 seconds later.
I prarie dog around the corner wondering, “What the fuck is my twin waiting on?!” As I did this I noticed another face whipped around the twin buggy’s corner simultaneously. It was my doppleganger’s driver.
Our gazes locked for half a second. Two angry deer caught in headlights.
Then almost as quickly we share a laugh. Most likely at our dual stupidity. I know that’s what I was laughing at. I gesture for the nice lady toddle into my isle. Still chuckling she wished me a good day in a Russian accent and I genuinely returned the pleasantry.
Then I went on to my beef sausage.
For the rest of the day I was silly with laughing at myself. It was such a small thing but I was amused as shit because of it.
I guess the little things really aren’t trivial, if you are open to the moment.
