I can’t quite put my finger on what it is about this guy that stirs up my contempt to the degree he does. Maybe it’s because he didn’t live up to the expectations created by the last driver. Most any driver following up the last guy was bound to be respected only as much as any rebound slut, but… well, let’s start with the cabin of the wretched machine he drives. It’s a cramped and filthy scumhole…
If you couldn’t tell from the first photo, the dashboard is littered with egg shells, a rotten banana peel, a rotten apple core, and a Gatorade bottle that looked like it had been there for weeks. God knows what infections are being incubated in that small space…
Perhaps it’s superficial of me to judge a driver by his truck… even if the truck looks like it was auctioned off by Mayfield Milk decades ago after one too many manufacturer’s recalls, missed oil changes, and shattered clutches… even if its coil springs buckle and sway like a poorly designed suspension bridge on every bump… even if its transmission creaks and pops louder than grandpa’s knees when forced into gear.
It’s true that conversation skills are important when one is assigned to be stowed away in a filthy scumhole with someone for a stretch of time. In all relationships — whether with a co-worker, roommate, friend, or romantic interest — Pulp Fiction taught us the ability to share a comfortable silence with someone is much more important than anything you could possibly have to say. Here’s another exam our school boy failed. Jesus-pill-popping-Christ-on-a-stick, this guy never, never, ever shuts the fuck up.
It’s not just that he yaps. It’s that there’s not a hint of irony, sarcasm, humor, or, really, any sign of emotion or intelligence of any kind in anything he says. That’s not even what bothers me either, though. I’ve had friends like that before, and it becomes endearing after a while. Sort of like the retard who walks around the lunch room picking up pennies people drop on the floor for him.
Maybe it’s the constant uneasy feeling that there’s an awkward conversation lurking just below the surface. Within fifteen minutes of meeting him and starting our route, the subject of the Iraq war came up, and I was put on the spot for my position on it. Some icebreaker, eh? I had heard nothing to give any hint of what his political stances might be, and politics is always dangerous territory for getting-to-know-you chit chat. The way I see it, there are three possible outcomes when starting a political conversation with a total stranger, and only one of them is good:
Good Outcome: The person shares your political beliefs and is interested in comiserating/gloating depending on the outcome of the last election.
Bad Outcome 1: The person does not share your political beliefs and will resent the hell out of you for putting him/her into defense mode about his/her beliefs.
Bad Outcome 2: The person does not have any interest whatsoever in politics, and resents all people who have an interest in politics. Often, this person will resent you more than the person from Bad Outcome 1.
Shit, man, everybody who works outside hates the fuckin’ rain. Try talking about that. .333 might be a good average for a baseball player, but it’s horridly low as conversation starters go.
Before we move past the subject of awkward conversations, here’s another example. At some point we were talking about Asian women versus Brazilian women versus Italian women. God knows how I let that continue past one sentence. Anyway, he felt a need to defend the fact that he’s 45 years old and has never been married, which I didn’t know and hadn’t given a second thought about until that point. Even better, he said he’d been dating a girl for about a year and that “things got real intimate, real early.” Like I didn’t hear him the first time, he repeats, “real intimate.”
My God. I could probably sit here and make fun of him for another 2,000 or 3,000 words, but I’ve got to meet Reggie for beer at 9:15. So… later.
