Henry Marken
You get excited over simple activities:
There comes a point in time when something so simple and presumably thoughtless can fire you up and excite you beyond belief. Clean dishes, wireless with high speeds, a full fridge, and driving home from the carwash are just a few simple things that now get me juiced with happiness. The other day, for example, I had to go to the grocery store to buy food for myself. Usually I hate going to the grocery store. I mean sometimes the stores are so big, you’ll need a map and search party just to find where the toothpaste is. The lines are also always a nightmare. It’s practically a felony if you walk into a Safeway or Kroger without your goddamn club card.
“Do you have a club card, sir?”
“I do not.”
*Gun clicks.
Boy, now you’ve done it.
After you break the bad news, they stare at you for 20 minutes, hoping to guilt you into buying club card, all so that you can save 3 fucking dollars on oranges and bananas.
Well the other day, I went shopping at a hometown grocery store. As soon as I walked through the doors, I was met by a clerk who asked me what I was looking for. He then guided me to each item before sending me to the cashier station, where my food was scanned, bagged, and ready to go in less than two minutes. It was so efficient, I thought I was being pranked. I was so excited about how smooth that process was, I almost sought out the store manager to shake his hand. I was probably in that store for seven minutes total… and yet I was left wanting more. It didn’t hit me until I got to the store parking lot that I was almost salivating over my grocery store shopping experience. Jesus christ, I’m getting older.
Running sucks:
You don’t have to be a division one athlete to be in shape. At the same time, you don’t have to be in your late 40s to hear an orchestra of sounds coming from your knees when you go running. There is a hilariously large threshold of people of different ages, demographics, and sizes who find running unpleasant even though they probably shouldn’t… especially college kids. I would consider myself to be in fairly good shape, and yet… running sucks. It just does. It’s not getting any easier, there’s no new thrill that comes with it… it’s just the same shitty workout that I choose to do almost every day that somehow finds a way to worsen over time. I blame my age.
You check the weather before you go outside:
This might not hit home with everyone. There are some regions in the United States, such as the Midwest, where the changes in weather are so frequent and so dramatic at times, your best chance of predicting the weather is by rolling dice. I’m serious, the alleys in between Midwestern news stations pop off. The weathermen and women are all high rolling and hooking up with each other after they correctly predict the weather over a game of craps. If you live in the Midwest, you kind of have to check the weather each day to see what you’re workin with.
But in most regions of America, I’d say you’d have a pretty good idea of what the weather will be based on the season and what it looks like outside your window. Growing up, I never checked the weather reports, partly because I was that kid who was penciled in to wear shorts every single day, no matter what mess the outside world would bring. I was on somewhat of a pants-strike.
I’m not saying that my ways are the standard of all norms, I just feel that I’ve seen too many memes that my pants-strike has to be familiar with some people. If you wake up and religiously check the weather and let that determine what your outfit looks like, rather than just looking out the window and throwing on some clothes, then you are an intellectual and a logic-based thinker… something that only comes with age. Congratulations my friend, you are getting older.
Your hangovers are beginning to hurt more and more:
There was a time, maybe my junior year of high school to the end of my sophomore year of high school where I could drink like a belligerent camel in the night and wake up the next morning feeling like an Arabian thoroughbred ready for the derby. A bite of scrambled eggs was all that was necessary to wash away any sign of a hangover. Now when I drink like a fish, the next day is canceled. It’s a three hour production to cure my hangover and then I’m queasy, tight, and cranky for the rest of the day. I don’t remember changing my drinking habits that much since last year. Well, maybe there’s a little bit more tequila in the mix than I’m used to, but I wouldn’t isolate tequila as the variable. Maybe I’m in a minority. Perhaps I’m not really built that differently. Oh well.
