Apropos of Nothing

A girl at work seems a little weird. 

That’s okay, anybody who’s anybody is weird.  It’s the “normal” ones who aren’t worth knowing and should all be put into camps, but I digress.  Anyway, she seems to enjoy talking about herself (and yes, everybody enjoys talking about themselves, and I’d like to stop digressing or I’ll never finish this thing), but in strange, semi-personal, oversharing ways, such as talking about bad experiences she’s had with other jobs and arguments she’s had with people I will never know.  Today, she mentioned that she hates it when people poke her in the ribs.  “It’s one of my pet peeves.” 

“Do people poke you in the ribs a lot?” I asked, because it certainly doesn’t happen to me (although my uncle is fond of grabbing my buttocks during Sunday dinners, so I can relate). 

“Yeah, sometimes.  My ex-brother-in-law used to do it all the time.  And sometimes guys at work do it.”  I nodded and continued my work.  “See,” she continued, “I’m really, really ticklish.  So I hate it when somebody does that.” 

“Oh,” said I. 

“Also, it kind of hurts.  Not a lot, but just enough that it bothers me.”  I could not see why she was explaining in such detail, but ah well. 

“Alright,” I said, “I promise I won’t poke you in the ribs.” 

“That’s good, because I’d probably hit you if you did.”

Fair enough.  Except that, now I kind of did want to poke her in the ribs, just a little bit.  Not enough that I’d actually do it, but apparently enough that I’m writing a blog post about it an hour or three later.  Maybe I’m the weird one, huh?

 Rish Out—

 Okay, that’s not the end.  I thought it was, but she came up to me a few minutes later and said, “Sometimes I’ll get a side-ache, mostly because I’ve drank something that has milk in it.” 

 

“What?” I asked her, not sure if I heard her right. 

 

“My sides will ache, because I drank something with milk in it.  That’s another reason I don’t like to be poked there.” 

 

“Oh,” said I, wondering if maybe she’d also had this conversation with somebody else, but was misremembering it as being with me, “are you lactose intolerant?”  My nephews seem to both be that way, and have to drink soy milk, which may or may not taste like actual milk, but I’d never drink it because I’ve a bias against soy, unless it’s soy sauce.  Or soy, the Spanish work for “I am.”  But guess what?  That’s another digression.

“No,” my coworker said, “I’m not intolerant.  I just have a milk allergy.” 

 

“Okay,” says me, and continued to do my work.  Potato, potato.  Which I realize just doesn’t work when you type it.  Maybe I could type ‘poh-tayto, poh-tahto.’  Does that make sense?  This post may well not be heading anywhere at this point.

A few seconds later, the coworker says to me, “So, don’t poke me in the ribs, okay?  If you’re gonna poke me, do it in the stomach.”  I kid you not, she said this, which is probably the whole reason I felt I had to describe her as weird.  I imagine that’s what they mean by ‘show, don’t tell,’ which was always a weakness in my screenwriting.  It’s easy for me to say, ‘Adelaide was weird.  She was short and thin and wore big glasses that made her look like a nerd on a Disney Channel sitcom, and she absolutely adored Robin from the Batman franchise, but not necessarily Batman.  She had an upturned nose, which was a little weird, but it was mostly her personality that made her weird, not the way she looked.  Oh, and her name ABSOLUTELY sucked.’  Rather than illustrate how she was weird through action or anything other than dialogue.  That was a fault in my writing, and probably still is.  I should work on it sometime, but I think it’s more important that I work on getting to a point in my writing, rather than going off on useless tangents that do nothing to tell the story or get to the end, which is what any reader truly desires, right?

So, I finished my shift, and didn’t see her—the employee in question (in case you had forgotten)--until I was walking out to the parking lot.  She saw me and said, “Hey, I’ve decided you can poke me in the ribs if you want to.”

The end.