Do you ever...?

Do you ever find yourself doing something purely for your own amusement even at somebody else's expense? Too vague? Sorry, I often have a problem with that.(I'm doing it right now. I know what I'm talking about but you don't and you're getting frustrated. I am trying to maintain my composure as I watch you scrunch up your forehead and squint, in hopes that these facial contortions will help you to gain better insight into what the heck I trying to convey, even though I want to burst into laughter. You with me? You ain't with me.

It's not like what you're thinking. I wasn't doing anything harmful to anybody. I wasn't taking advantage or anything like that. Do you ever come up with a theory about something and then have the need to test that theory and then the opportunity to prove that very theory presents itself and its just too good to pass up so you just go ahead and put your theory to the test right then and there?

Are you starting to gather what I'm getting at? Now if I'm losing you, just tell me and I'll double back. -- A life in the Day of Andre Benjamin from Outkast's The Love Below

I was talking to somebody at work during lunch and they started to tell me a random story. About two sentences into this story I started to zone out like Denzel Washington's Bleek Gilliam when he starts to get lectured by Ms. Clarke Betancourt and subsequently reaches for his horn. The brilliance of Spike Lee's film-making allows us into this zone by slowly muting the voice of Cynda Williams who was playing Clarke, while turning up the volume on Washington's character's actions. You could hear him breathing. You could hear his heart beating, and you could hear him assembling the different components of his trumpet. Meanwhile, Spike pans the camera back over to Williams, now very excitedly delivering an angry diatribe in total silence. This was like my zone. She was talking as I felt myself struggle to maintain an interested-looking, affirmation of attention being paid eye contact while I reached for my sandwich and took another bite. I counted the number of times that I chewed each bite, tried to predict the flight pattern of the gnat that I noticed flying around near the spot on the counter where somebody had placed some bananas, before switching my gaze methodically over to the clock where the second hand seemed to move like the shadow on a sun-dial, settling in for what was destined to be a very lengthy story about something that had happened to her or her husband or one of her kids or her in-laws. I don't know. She was speaking in silence now.

It was then that I got the idea to test the theory that I had half-heartedly come up with the last time I was caught in the midst of one of her soliloquys. You see, this is why some of us were better suited for working from home. Some people look forward to such human interaction and would probably argue that this is the very thing that makes going to work worthwhile for them. I'm not one of those people. Work, in the office, for me, is equated to being in that class back in junior high or high school that you absolutely did not want to be in and could not wait until the bell rang so that you could leap from your seat and sprint out of there. I have no desire to just hang out at work. If I can get something done from home, I usually will. This is why being busy at work is so crucial for me. If I'm busy, I don't notice such things as much. Well, maybe I do notice them, but they don't annoy me and I'm not restless because I'm very engaged in whatever I'm doing. So here I was feeling like a character having a seminal moment in one of those Guy Ritchie (Snatch) or Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's 11 series)films and Steven or Guy has called for a freeze frame while some cool clothing store/club music plays and a narrator explains what is going through my head. Not familiar with these movies or with such scenes? How about in the old Batman show with Adam West and Burt, um...what was Burt's name (the guy that played Robin)...um...? Oh well, not important. But you remember when they would do an action scene and when Batman punched somebody the scene was freeze and the word KABLAAAM! would appear or the Riddler would get hit by a barrel that had been hurled by Robin and SPLAKATT! would appear in the freeze frame. Mine was a little less dramatic as a subtle grin, a light bulb overhead and a slight cock of my head to the left side took shape.

Returning to real time, I executed the plan. Keying in on some remote detail of her story that was probably not in the least bit germane to its point, I interjected a question that she immediately attempted to answer and proceeded to drift woefully away from the main topic, never to return. This was too easy. It couldn't be working this well. About 2 more minutes in, I interrupted again, this question even more absurd than the previous one. She again took the bait, starting in on the new topic as if we were on a game show and I was the host and she the contestant having to make up a story about whatever I read off the flash cards that I retrieved one by one from the golden box on the stage during the lightning round. About 3 more interrupting questions and 10 minutes later, she was so far off the subject that she had no hope of ever returning to whatever story she was so intent on telling when this conversation started. Sufficiently amused and at the same time bored with the situation, I finished eating my sandwich and let her continue. Somehow, she finally wrapped it up (whatever IT was at this point), or someone else came in and started another conversation and then they both eventually left me sitting there alone to eat in peace. I'm not a bad person. Really.