Manolo says, it is Monday and you are back at your desk, the 2011 stretching out in front of you in the bleak progression of workdays, each one floating briefly into the present time, before slipping silently beneath the waves like the drowning swimmer.
This is not what you imagined your life would be like when you were seventeen, all this incessant working.
But, when you consider the alternative, which would likely involve the not working, to be closely followed by the not paying your bills, the not driving your current car, and ultimately, the not not living in your parent’s basement…
Ayyy! The basement!
Oh how you remember the basement, from when you were seventeen, and you and Tommy Grebbish slipped away with the six pack of the Coors during your parents annual “Welcome the Spring” garden party.
You were so hot for the Tommy that semester, even though now, when you look at the pictures in the yearbook, you realize that he was something of the nerdish pipsqueak, with the buck teeth and the pimples and the wispy mustache. (Although, in his favor, at the time, his mullet was thought quite stylish by all of your friends.)
And so, you were in the basement with Tommy Grebbish, drinking the Coors Banquet Beer, and canoodling on that ugly couch with the wagon wheel arms, and thinking to yourself as Tommy made his move to the second base, “perhaps this was not the good idea, in fact, I don’t really like Tommy Grebbish all that much.”
You were thinking this exact thought when suddenly the door to the basement flings open and your father shouts, “What’s going on down there!”
Apparently, even though there were seventy other peoples at the party, when you disappeared with Tommy and the Coors, your father’s spidey-sense started tingling, and he went to investigate, leaving your brother in charge of the grill.
This, of the course, was bad news for Tommy Grebbish, because at the first note of fatherly bellowing, Tommy leaped to his feets and spilled the Banquet Beer down the front of his pants, causing him to shriek like the little girl, so that when he answered “N-n-n-nothing, sir” it was as if his voice had unchanged, breaking several octaves higher than the carefully practiced imitation of Don Cornelius he usually favored.
Good times, good times.
And then you remember that that same ugly couch is still in your parents’ basement, and you can’t remember if your parents have ever had it steam cleaned.
So you realize that work, while not exactly the perfect way to spend your days, is not really all that bad.
Hey, shoes!
Perhaps the working is not so bad, because not only will it keep you from having to sleep in the parental basement, but it can also give you the moneys to buy the beautiful things such as these strappy suede wedge sandals from the Alexandre Birman
