My wife dropped me off at work today because she needed our car to take our baby boy to a doctor visit. I packed a lunch for myself and left it in the refrigerator. Isn't that the worst? This is even more of a problem than any other day because where I work on Mondays has nothing nearby to walk to for lunch options. For those of you not from the Chicago area, the neighborhood of Devon street near Damen Avenue has a milieu of cultures ranging from Nigerian, Pakistani, Indian, and you name it. I found a middle eastern restaurant, and I must admit it didn't look very clean and didn't smell too great either. I think I may have actually given it a shot, but then I saw a sign that was happily announcing "Camel meet on Fridays!" That actually scared me off, so snuck out and walked another few blocks to a McDonald's. My stomach was upset from the synthetic food, so I may have been better off with the camel meat.
Why not on Wednesdays? Hump Day!
My tummy was in knots as I worked my way back down Devon to get back to work in time when an elderly Caucasian gentleman walking in the opposite direction stopped to talk to me. Only he didn't appear to be speaking English. I listened hard to see if maybe it was just a thick accent and actually English. I told him, "I don't know the language you're trying to speak to me in." He said some things and I think I heard "Bosnian" in there somewhere. So I said, "Yeah, I don't speak Bosnian. Sorry." Maybe I just have a Bosnian look to me? Or maybe if he sees a white guy in the area, he just assumes Bosnian? Whatever the case, it's too bad I don't speak his language because he seemed very excited about the prospect of conversing with a fellow Bosnian buddy.
So, like I mentioned in paragraph one (if you're still reading), the wife and I have a baby boy now. When Mrs. Noisewater was very, very pregnant we went to a Chicago Cubs game together. She met me after work at a nearby bar and told me that some random drunk had just stopped her on the street and said, "That's a boy!" and pointed at her belly. I think people are going with the old wive's tale that if you carry your baby all up front and not in many other places, then that means it's a boy. So, we left the bar to head into the game and another random drunk homeless man said, "You' havin' a boy!" Well, the drunk homeless prophets were right; He's a boy, and he's beautiful.
They say it's good to talk and to sing to your babies, so he already has some go-to songs that we sing to him. One is "Beautiful Boy" by John Lennon. I think that is a song I would have thought was totally corny in my pre-daddy days, but now I absolutely love it.
The other song is "He's Misstra Know It All" by Stevie Wonder, only I sing "He's Mister Cutie Man." Yes. Mister Cutie Man. You read that correctly. I am no longer the least bit cool, and I fully accept this as fact and as a way of life.
I went out to lunch during a work day, and I saw one of my coworkers sitting in a booth. He eats there just about every Monday through Friday. Even if I really wanted to sit by myself and read about Chicago sports and text jokes to my friends, the right thing to do was go sit by him. I just didn't feel like hearing him bitch about work because getting out of the office for lunch is a time to think about anything but the office. Actually, he may have been thinking, "Oh crap. Here comes Dr. Ken to come saddle in here and make annoying observations for his stupid blog." That's entirely possible. Sometimes I wish people could be honest with each other and just ask, "mind if I join you?" and the other person could respond either way without hurting anyone's feelings.
So this guy was telling me how excited he was to go to the Kentucky Derby with some friends to drink a ton and bet a bunch of money on little men riding on horses running around in a circle. He really likes gambling. He spends every few Saturdays at a race track near his house drinking three dollar beers and betting every race until the joint closes. He really seems to know his stuff, but then again, gamblers never seem to tell you about the times they lost.
I asked him how he got so knowledgeable about betting the ponies, and apparently his mom's ex boyfriend would take him to the track when he was a kid, starting when he was around eleven years old, and schooled him on how to research and pick a winning bet. The mom's boyfriend used to be a bookie for the mob, but he had left that life behind to drive a taxi cab. Still, it was still strange that he drove a taxi in the suburbs but somehow always had giant wads of one hundred dollar bills wherever he went. I guess he was a pretty great guy, and he took my coworker out for a steak dinner and gave him two hundred bucks for his birthday every year. Even after his mom and the guy broke up, this dude continued to take him out for his birthday dinner until my coworker was around 19-years-old. That is around the time his health started failing and he soon passed away. I think he was a little bit older than the mom.
I asked why it didn't work out, and he said, "I don't know because he was a really great guy. I think my mom was just too much to deal with."
I said, "So the ex (but probably current) bookie for the mob wasn't the problem in the relationship; your mom was."
"Yeah, pretty much," he said, finishing the last few bites of his omelette and getting a look at his check.
Sunday, February 08, 2015
Mrs. Noisewater and I went to Costco yesterday after the gym, and all the free samples in the world couldn't stave off our hunger upon finishing shopping. We needed to eat instantly. I told her that the Vienna Beef hot dog factory was up the road, and I was pretty sure you could eat there. Turns out you can, and it's pretty awesome. It's also the cafeteria for the people who work there, so there are coffee machines and things there too. Mrs. Noisewater had her first Chicago dog, and I had a pastrami and roast beef sandwich on an onion roll. We split an order of tater tots with a cup of cheese sauce. It's a bummer this place is relocating to the South Side far away from us, but I'm glad we got a chance to get in there before that happens.
Open for business.
While we were enjoying our meal, two Black ladies came in and the one was ordering in a most unusual manner. She would say each part of her order and end with a "por favor," pronounced like asking someone a favor. I guess it was nice of her to try to speak a little of the staff's native language, but is it possible she has only seen the words in print and had no idea how to say it correctly?
"One Chicago dog . . . por favor."
"With no tomatoes . . . por favor."
"And sport peppers . . . por favor."
A couple of middle aged white women were in there too talking about a guy they know who has a wife who cheats on him left and right,
but he won't do the same because of his Christian beliefs.
"Go F' yourself, por favor."
Then this guy who looked just like Gene Hackman was in there lecturing the young ladies on how you can never put ketchup on a hot dog.
I was extremely hungover from cheap draft beer while on my lunch break at my part time job, and it seemed as if it was Bring Your Screaming Kid to Work Day. They were all playing off each other like the most perfectly awful orchestra of all time. The worst culprit, of course, was seated (more like standing in his booth) directly next to me. This young man looked to be around four years old and was just yelling away, and not in the way of an angry fit because he was smiling. No, this rapscallion was bellowing to his heart's content just to get his jollies, and what really bugged me is that the parents didn't say anything as he did this over-and-over.
You have to understand, after dealing with the public for all those hours, I just wanted those 15 minutes to be somewhat quiet. I realize parenting is difficult, but if you don't say anything to the kid screaming for no reason, the kid gets the message that he can do whatever he wants. Why don't you just let him drive home if that's how it's going to be?*
After the seventh or eighth howl, I let out one of my own. If he did another, I did another. If he banged the table, I banged the damn table. As this continued, I started to get odd looks from the surrounding patrons, and some moved away from me, but I could get no reaction from the family I was trying to annoy. At long last, the kid's mother said to me, "Could you please stop doing that?" I said to her, "Gee. That's something I thought you might want to say to your kid, since he has been carrying on like that for my whole damn lunch break, but you feel it easier to ask a perfect strange to stop doing it, even if in my case it was just to make a point?"
Zing! I had this awful parent right where I wanted. Nope. This is when she told me that her son has Autism and can't help doing that. "Oh," I said. "That's a rough one. God bless you." Then I got the hell out of there and some tables booed me, some threw fries, and I narrowly missed getting dowsed in a Jamba Juice.
---------------------------------------- *The events in this story stop being true after this point.
