Get Lost (if you can)

My story starts with a freckled-faced eight year old and ends in a domestic dispute.

See, freckles weren’t the only thing on little Sally’s face (named changed to protect the selfish parent that sent a sick child to school  - the day I was called in to substitute - in lieu of staying home with them), her nose was dripping with vibrant green boogers that seemed to change consistency throughout the day. One minute it would look like a slim scene from Nickelodeon TV and the next, a fifties B-movie Swamp thing type coagulation. “May I go blow my nose?” she would ask and I’d say “Oh child! please do! With haste!” And I would run and dunk my head, hands, and elbows in a bucket of Purell.

But it didn’t help, and I know I can’t entirely blame Sally Snot Face, but I can blame the entire second grade because I contracted some kind of disease in the germ incubator they call elementary school. I’ve been suffering all week, the week where I happened to get a few job interviews.

My wits were not about me during the last interview, an hour long phone panel complete with awkward pauses and verbal missteps. I failed to answer questions like, “Tell me about a time you have used written communication to convey an important message.” Mucinex made me think this was a trick question, I wanted clarification on what would be considered an “Important Message” and I could only think of scenes from the new John Cusack movie, messages about an impending violent apocalyptic situation, or just messages about  donuts now available in the break room? I was not of right mind.

After the exhausting phone interview, B came home with a broken cell phone and bad attitude and I just wasn’t having it so I left in an abrupt dramatic fashion (in a way I thought would best punctuate a domestic dispute) and started to drive around to look for a place to get lost (and blow my nose). During this journey I became painfully aware of the limitations of my new home town. There is no place to hide, unless you want to be hidden forever if you know what I am saying. I caught a movie about Coco before she was Chanel at the Ridgeway but that was over by 9:30 and nothing else was playing after that. I drove up and down Poplar and examined my options for burning up some time – gas stations, Krystal Burger, and Kinko’s  - not a whole lot of options since even the Chili’s bar starts to wind down around ten.

I debated looking through my car to find something to photocopy and bind at Kinko’s, but thought against it. I would have probably contracted more germs. So instead I went home, longing for the days of Los Angeles where you can shop for decent lip gloss past ten pm, where you can be invisible everyplace, and drink alone without interruption or judgment within a block of your overpriced apartment. Or the days of small towning in the Michigan country where a contemplative corn field or gravel pit is only a half-can-of-beer’s drive away. I will someday find comfort in a city that forces me to go home, but not until this snot goes away.