My hands feel overly dry this morning. I'm having problems picking up staple and such.
Well
another Wednesday is upon us.
This morning when I was getting dressed I pulled out a pair of pants from the closet. I had worn these pants only once before. One day at work I had split my pants and I had to run to k-mart and buy another pair. (What is particularly sad about that statement is it had happened before) So I bought the pants
put them on at k-mart
and lived out the rest of the work day in them before I retired them to the laundry queue.
Well
they showed up again this morning. I pulled them on and looked down and realized they were some horrible pants. The fabric is made from some sort of stretchy polymer that was probably designed to conform to an aging Elvis pelvis. As a result I could easily pull them on and fasten the waist
but the fabric had pulled so tight it looked like I was wearing superhero tights. I'm not a bulge kind of guy. If I'm wearing pants that show off a bulge in my crotch
I know the pants are showing off other unsightly parts of my anatomy. Sure enough when I backed into a mirror and checked out my rear view that fabric was so sight across my rump you could see a reflection of light on it. I felt a sudden flush
horrified that I had worn these to work once. Oh well
I hide in my cube most of the day. I doubt anyone either noticed or cared.
The pants went into the rag bucket.
On the way to work this morning there were detour signs. What was odd was I could not figure where the detour was supposed to be. There did not seem to be a slight flow of traffic from people taking a detour. To be honest the looked a bit like the signs were scattered around randomly. And now it's stuck in my mind? Where did this detour go? Why is it there? Should I have taken the detour? Detour. Deeeeetour. What an odd word. Probably came from the same language 'garage' came from.
There is a tiny Mexican restaurant in downtown Sanford. It's sign contains cactus wearing a cowboy hat and is about to pull a gun on a chili pepper. I do not recall the name of the restaurant
just those little drawings. I'll have to snap a picture of it. I wonder if it holds some sort of Mexican symbolism. Perhaps the cactus is 'the man' coming down hard on the average pepper.
There is another sign I need to snap a picture of. It's for an auto shop in downtown Sanford. It's sign looks like one of those happy grateful dead bears
but instead of going a groovy peace loving trip
it has instead spiraled to the brink of insanity. It's not calling out in joy
it's yowling in the unimaginable pain that only the terminally insane can experience.
Long
long time ago I had a psychology professor in college who used to work with mental patients. He once told us of some fat black woman who was convinced she was dead. No one could convince her she was alive. He even stuck a needle in her so that she would bleed
and asked 'Do dead people bleed?' and she said 'I guess so!'
I would so love to get drunk and have a conversation with that woman.
2026 Update
Setting the dial to a Wednesday in 2006 where Ed's pants betrayed him, and detour signs whispered lies.
Ah, 2006. A simpler epoch: you could still split your pants at work, sprint to Kmart, and buy a replacement pair of questionable polymer trousers in a fluorescent haze. Today you'd order "commuter chinos" from an app, they'd arrive in a compostable pouch, and you'd still hide in your home-office cube, praying the camera doesn't catch your waistband. Detour signs! Those lonely orange rectangles that materialized with no apparent cause, like runes left by a road crew. Now your phone just says "rerouting" and you obey, never knowing why. The stretchy material Ed describes has since conquered the world under the name "athleisure," so his shame is now the uniform of millions, which only makes it worse. And the sign with the yowling bear? I assume it was demolished for luxury apartments or a vape shop. But the dead-lady anecdote—that's the real relic. We no longer believe needles convince anyone they're alive, Ed; we just blog about it and get certified.
“2006 Ed, why did you describe the professor's patient by her size and race before her actual condition, and do you still imagine getting drunk with a dead woman would be the best way to spend a Wednesday?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, that's a fair kick in the pants, and I deserve it. I reckon I told it the way that professor told it, and he was a storyteller first and a psychiatrist second, so the image came out all color and size before the poor woman's actual misery. It ain't right, and I know it. I was going for odd detail, not for making her a punchline, and I'm ashamed it came out that way. As for the drunk part, no, I don't think that's the best Wednesday plan, not really. I just meant she sounded like someone who'd have a hell of a conversation, and I'm a lonely weirdo who talks to his cats. But I shouldn't have made her a curiosity. I'll leave that story alone from now on. This Wednesday's already weird enough without me digging up ghosts.
