There used to be this older man that lived in the house diagonally across from my own. He’d sit on his porch seemingly every inch of the day. He’d be rocking away on his old-school rocking chair well before I left the house for work at 7:00 in the morning, was there when I returned anywhere between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon, and then, just because I’m the curious kind of neighbor, I’d peer out my shades just before I’d ready the bed, and sure enough there he’d be, nearly 11:00 at night, and although I couldn’t tell if he was awake or not, he was there, rocking gently, back in forth in the summertime air.
A group of grade-school children, presumably from the neighborhood, would go around and try to sell these raffle tickets for useless prizes, like gift cards to X-Box live or a brand new BMX bicycle. That type of stuff, not the ideal prizes for the predominant demographic that comprised this village, but, nevertheless, these old folks all seemed to chip in nicely, filling the young tikes baskets with all sorts of donations. This generosity always made me feel guilty, for not being able to afford tossing the kids a few bucks, but instead, times have dictated my personality for me, therefore I sit and outlast my dog’s barking at full volume, perhaps peaking out the shades here and there to see if they’d left yet. And I must admit, these kids sure did have persistence, as they’d wait and wait and wait, until I guess the idea struck them finally that even if the owner of this car in the driveway is at home, he’s most likely not going to answer the door.
Sixteen years ago a group of emissaries from some third world nation were protesting some trivial word-choice posted in some ad campaign for some local brewery. They went up on about 13 or so billboards throughout the area and although I can’t readily recall the exact terminology of the campaign, I realized at the time that these protests were pretty ridiculous, as I couldn’t find a single thing offensive in the ad. I remember it was supposed to be humorous though, which, if I were going to get upset, I guess it would’ve had to been due to the fact the billboard’s weren’t all too funny.
Sometimes I travel slowly through impoverished sections of towns, not just to make myself feel bad, but simply to make myself feel better at the same time.
Occasionally I stop and pass sandwiches out to the homeless, those in-need, which it always struck me oddly, that it never would take long for these people to throw the sandwich back at me, stating they don’t need my cooking, they don’t need my food, they need the money to go buy their own food, which of course, has quite the subtextual implications in my mind.
Anyhow, I guess you can’t satisfy anyone some of the times, and at other times, perhaps one is all that’s needed to make a mission satisfactory.
I wake up some days, wondering what it would be like to have unlimited funding, to do whatever the heck I chose to do. I don’t necessarily think of mansions and having 16 cars all with Italian last names, but I do daydream, about underwater estates or houses chiseled into mountainsides, or perhaps the world’s first home with a built in cloaking device, or how about my favorite one, where the driveway raises at the hit of a button and you just pull on in, driving into your personal underground parking garage.
Apercus of Apperception 