Sometimes I become upset about my place in life, and start to believe that I am basic, even boring in my simplicity. But then, I think about the small events that spatter my day, Pollock-esq, with drama and intrigue. Frankly, sometimes more life is more exciting then I would like. Take for example:

That moment every day when I speak to someone who has a complaint. Let’s imagine that they have expressed the problem, and lets say I have answered it, to the best of my ability. Sometimes answers are better then others, but either way, I eventually have to pause. My point is made and I lapse into silence. (Of course, there are those that do not allow me to even get to this point, but they are not drama. They are not intrigue. They are just anger, with a touch of stupidity.) Regardless, the pause must come. And this is the crucial moment: will the caller be pleased with my response, or is their own agenda stronger then anything I could say? It's a tense moment. If the first word out of their mouth changes the tenor of the discussion, or moves its phase, then all is well. However, if they pause, or bluster for a second, it often means that their brain is deleting what I tell them and they about to launch into the same diatribe again. It’s as if they re-connect to the heart of their original argument, and, like Popeye and his spinach, are reenergized to return to the fight. My arguments are brushed aside like the Lilliputians who foolishly have landed a few blows on King Kong: for a moment it appears that the beast has fallen, but in fact it has just gathered its strength for another more violent upheaval.

Sometimes, this moment is a passing grade on my success at answering questions. Other times, it is failing one. And still others are rendered moot by the grade giver, a sweeping incomplete as I realize that my answer was subsumed in the massive cloud of their own internal logic, sucked in one end alive and well and spit out the other, a loose fish skeleton wrapped in oily newspaper. Regardless though, it is packed with the great strength

Or that other moment.

Scene: Subway. The crush of people getting off the train, heading for the stairs.

Pontius is in line, but sees a small woman in front of him, literally half his size, angling in for the spot on the stairs. He pauses for a moment, she glances up and is past. The whole thing takes less then a second.

What I will never understand about the New York attitude is the Challenge that was in that woman’s eyes. She was small, under 5 ft 4, Latina, with a flat face and a frizz of hair under some sort of loose wrap. And she looked at me as if to say: you might be able to walk down these stairs, mi amigo, but know that if you do, I’m taking a testicle. I swear to god, her eyes said that to me. I didn’t really understand. I mean, I was trying to convey a sense of community, comradely, and general You-go-first-atude, but that was just destroyed by her frost! And at the end of the day, I had every intention of allowing her to go first. It just felt like my good deed was minimized by the fact that, offered or no, her eyes conveyed the understanding that she Would be going first, regardless of how I felt about it. This, frankly, was not a good feeling. How can I develop a sense of community when a little old woman looks at me like she would be perfectly happy to force me to lick the third rail? The moment in which she passed me, I was literally frozen in fear. It took me the rest of the walk home to stop checking behind me to see if she was coming after me with a baseball bat. If that’s not drama, I don’t know what is.

Or this one

There I am plowing through the end of my day, answering questions and entering data. Suddenly, a single sentence on the radio catches my attention. What was said? I couldn’t tell you, but when I return to my screen, there is a completely unknown thing there facing me.

MM: pldg RN, OP at $50, p07norah added to acct.

I feel a little ripple of fear in my gut. What do these strange letters mean? I believe that I have typed them, but it’s almost as though they are something completely new, beyond what I could have created on my own. I am angry at these letters and numbers. There they are, staring at me, chins jutted collectively in the air. I can almost here them, pounding on their chests, yelling: Here I am! And they are. But I don’t know why. The logic that once connected those pixels is completely absent and I am left parsing the different parts. MM? an expression of lust? Or an appliance warming up? Ask not for whom the refrigerator hums, it hums for thee. Then there is the illicit Dollar sign, that sexy capitalist S -- $. There is intrigue there, and a callous coldness as well. And what is this hint to a woman, hiding behind more inexplicable numbers? She is laughing at me, this Norah, and I resent it. After a few seconds, the meaning beings to filter back into this strange code, and I am able to take a deep breath and forge ahead again. But for the rest of the day, the things I type and the people that I speak to are tinged with the strange fear of illiteracy, and the chance at once again being plunged into the confusing world where I can only feel my way through hieroglyphs and signs.