Literary Rhetoric and The Guy with the Flags

Everyone needs an airport ground crew and air plane staff in their lives. (“Air plane staff” is not right… What do you call the group of people who work on a plane? Don’t answer that because I know there is an answer but I have been reading entire books on Irony and books like “The Act of Reading” which actually deconstructs what we do when we read… a whole book! Like, you know when you sit down to read and you string the words together… A whole book is written about that. So my brain can literally take in no new information. Even if you told me as a favor, I am so angry at the book about reading and the B+’s I am still getting despite all the reading, I would be rude about it. Just the other day I was rude to one of my best friends. It is indiscriminate though; I also decided it was fine to insult all redheads as well. I guess for a moment I thought it was okay because I live with two redheads. But this is like producing misogynistic music and saying it’s okay because you know a woman. It still doesn’t make sense though, because normally I try not to insult anybody… I blame the reading book. Any text that puts so much effort into making your mind feel like scrambled eggs should be banned, or at least sit unread on your shelf, making you look smart. Anyway, I severely digress.)

          Back to the airline people: everybody needs them but there would have to be lots of them because they have to be specific to each person’s needs, on a case by case basis. For instance, I would specifically need people who fly me where I want to go and people to bring me tiny food whenever I want it. You may be thinking, I just want to be rich… and you would be right but my needs are very specific. I need to see my family whenever I want to. But also my metabolism runs roughly at the pace of an alarm clock: slowly ticking over one minute at a time… reliable enough to keep my heart beating but if I eat anything bigger than tiny prepackaged plastic food it freaks out and gains twenty pounds. It’s afraid I will soon be participating in a famine. However, what I really need is people driving my stuff around in tiny little cars with miniature little trailers behind them. You know the one’s with the cool spinny wheels so they can get in and out of tight spots. (It would be cool if they could also get you out of a metaphorical tight spot as well… I find myself in these way too often and it would be nice if they could drive you out of these too. But it would be hard to drive someone out of a metaphor... maybe in the future when we finally have flying cars.) Because I live forty minutes from the town where I spend the majority of my time, I have to take all of the things I may or may not need with me. Which is fine, until late one night in the library, I meet a lovely tiny lady in the elevator. We have a friendly impromptu conversation about how I am failing at life. (I am doing this everywhere so the conversation is not unique but the stranger partaking in it is… normally people just cut me off after the third time I beg them to understand how horrible it is that I am getting B’s in my Master’s class.) She is lovely but when she exits she says “oh, it’s raining…” and tries to make her small body smaller against the wind and rain. I offer her a ride but then must clear a space for her by moving the sixteen books (including the stupid book about reading) off the front seat, the cooler with bottled water (in case tap water is attempting to kill me… this is real - don’t judge me) the yoga mat, see this post. The pre-yoga clothes, the soaking wet post-yoga towel, the computer, the computer cord… Meanwhile, she says, “I could just sit in the back…” not realizing the back is covered in seven winter coats (yes, there are only three people in my family but I get cold! Not like “oh I’m a bit chilly…” it’s more like: “Oh my body uses energy to produce cold instead of heat …” Like a fridge; so they need one each and I may need to borrow their back up coat at any moment.)

This is why I want that guy in his tiny spinny car. He could follow me around and help me carry things.

          If I can’t have the guy in the tiny car, I at least need one of those guys with the flags that help the pilots park the plane. (Again I am sure they have a title but I have done too much research in the last two weeks and I am tired of finding meanings and spelling of words I should know - but don’t - IT MAKES ME FEEL STUPID!) Anyway, I want one of those guys because, over the last few weeks, Alan and I have had way too many “brilliant ideas” that needed to be waved off with a big X or even two flags shooing us to the left or right.

          First, Alan decided we should buy a house. These may seem like normal words to all of you reading it. They may even seem like they are in the right order. But ever since we owned a downtown apartment and went bankrupt and subsequently fled the country, (if a law enforcement agent reads this, we didn’t really flee the country, treat this as metaphor you literalist bastard - sorry that anger may be misdirected from the book about reading…), we are completely scared of houses. Now when we look at houses online we say, OOHH and AHHH appropriately and then we are mad at each other for at least two weeks, fighting over things like. “You are trying to torture me by telling me the electric blanket is on and then making me get into a cold bed.” (Remember, I feel like I live in a fridge most of the time.) Or this may just be me… but Alan is worse. He just sits in his room in the dark listening to rap music for two weeks and I accuse him of torturing me from the hallway. This is what happens to our psyche when we think about owing the bank money.

          But this time we didn’t get depressed right away. Which was strange. So he went to an actual bank to try and figure out what all the money things actually meant. (Not the bank we would use but another bank because I convinced him to go get all of our stupid questions out of the way before we went and saw the people we were going to actually ask for a loan. He said this was unnecessary and that we could just ask the loan people. But I told him they would laugh at us and then not give us a loan. I won this argument… with him rolling his eyes and sighing.) So, while I spent endless hours on the phone and doing math calculation that I am not good at, Alan went and asked questions which he is not good at. He asked things like, “can we have more money so we can make the house look like we want it to look?” As I clearly predicted she laughed at him and said, “No. Why don’t you just buy a house that looks the way you want it to look?” Then we went and saw the house again and realized it might fall down soon. Since we can’t even fix the safety chain on our door (please don’t see this as an invitation to rob us, think of it as metaphor) we thought we would be unqualified to fix a house that had fallen down. In this case, I needed the guy with the flags to make a big X. Perhaps he could live close by, in a little apartment. Then, when Al comes home and says we should buy this cute little house, flag guy could run in, blow a whistle and make an X with the flags. He wouldn’t even have to explain why he came bursting into our house; we would just know that he was there for our own good.

          Next, I decided I needed a job. Because of all the above mentioned reasons, I want money. Now you would think the people in my life would have said, “Hey, you just started walking again maybe you should hold off on the job thing for a while…” and by “people” I mean Alan. You should definitely blame him. He encouraged me to get the job and even talked to the manager for me. (Secretly, you should not blame him because I played the “I miss my family card” and I should be very careful when I use it because I get whatever I want when I play that card). I sold myself in the interview because I am (or was) a rock star nurse. And of course they hired me. So what do you think happened? Yep, four hours into my shift, I could not walk and the nurse orientating me kept saying “Are you tired?” as she stopped and waited for me while I took tiny tiny steps to disguise the limp. I laughed, “HAHA! Yes I am tired. Aren’t I pathetic?” Still hoping that the pain I was in was a fluke and I could keep the job. Also I did not want to tell her what was actually wrong. (Because I hate telling people what is wrong with me.) When I arrived home, Alan had to lift me out of the car. He said, “You have to quit this job.” I burst into tears and accused him of trying to kill me again. In this case, I needed the guy with the flags waving me to the right where I wait and see if I get a tutoring job next semester. A job where I sit and talk to people and secretly get the undergraduates to help me with the words in my Master’s classes that I don’t understand.  Please for the love of all of the monkeys will someone explain paleoprofitering!

          Also you should all know I did catering again… the day before a five thousand word essay was due… where IS that guy with the flags? Although, to be fair, I was not at home when I agreed to cater so that would mean I need the guy with the flags to follow me everywhere. It could be weird but I think incredibly helpful. Because, he could stop me from saying yes to catering the day before a huge essay is due but he could also stand just in my peripheral view and wave me off if I start insulting people or asking questions I should not. Like when I asked my professor if I should include some quotes from Wolfgang Iser’s book “The Act of Reading”.