Yesterday

So. Yesterday. Yesterday the dogs woke me up at three or four thirty in the morning...for no good reason. I left the house around seven in order to get downtown early enough to get a few last minute things figured out for the class I was going to teach at nine. Those last minute things were, primarily, to get certain things printed and copied for the kiddies. Alas, coming early meant that none of the places I had planned on printing the necessary papers were open. Strike one.

I checked my email and found an intriguing message from a fellow Chicagoister offering a free dinner (appetizer, entree, dessert) to the first person to respond. I responded but I didn't make it very clear that I was, in fact, responding with the hope to get that dinner into my belly and because of this, did not get to have that dinner in my belly. Strike two.

I continue to struggle with the teaching. Or the students continue to struggle with me. I'm not sure what it is. I only know that they're not talking no matter how vague, specific, general, open, closed or non-related-to-any-thing-we're-doing the question/topic I bring up may be. This continued to make me feel large amounts of despair. Strike three.

You'd think I was out...but, well, I wasn't.

After the class, my belly full of Earl Grey tea, desperation and dread, I plugged my ipod in and started walking towards the Adams/Wabash brown line stop. I was smoking a cigarette and generally feeling shizzy when a clean, not homeless type dude stopped in front of me and gestured at me. I interpreted his gesture as 'hey can I bum a cigarette' and was not feeling overly giving. But then he asked me if I lived in Chicago...and that's when I got my 'wary, you're trying to sell me something or rape me' face and said yes and started to move away, slowly. He then said something to the effect of: I work at a hair salon in Chicago. And I realized that the original gesture was not one concerned with cigarettes but, rather, with hair. But at this point my wary/sell/rape face's vibe had gotten into my circulation and I simply continued staring at him weirdly and shaking my head. It wasn't until I was waiting on the brown line platform that I realized that there was a good chance that the dude was offering some sort of discount (if not outright free haircut) and I refused it (I got roots like you wouldn't believe and am, in fact, in need of a trim). Strike four.

Small things, really, but accumalated all before one o'clock in the afternoon. Waah, waaah, waaah. No, really, it made me feel bad...like I'm not taking chances or some such nonsense. Or, maybe it's not about chances so much as being open. I mean, wouldn't it be cool to randomly get a free haircut? Yes, yes it would. But I'll never know. Whatever. Blegh.