Now This is a story all about how... wait a minute.

I need to listen to myself more often. How many times have I said that a person should never ever ask how someone is doing, but yet I still do.

I shouldn't ask people how they're doing because I don't actually care. And even if I did care, which I don't, I don't have time to listen. Today I stupidly asked an 89-year-old man how he was doing, and he said, and I will do my best to relay his exactly ramble:

"Well," he started, "I never would have thought it. Never would have thought I would live this long. I'm almost ninety, you know. Everybody asks me. Asks me how I did it." Now, it took the man almost two full minutes to drag that terrible use of the English language out of his mouth-- damn slow-talking old people-- and so at that point I tried to interject some sort of failed segway, asking 'what is the lowest line on the chart', but to no avail. He'd started, and darn it, he was doing to finish. "Well," he continued, "I stayed away from the Whiskey. Never touched the stuff. Other guys did, but not me. I was born in Colorado you know, and I remember, I remember being a boy. 11 years old. And I took a raft and I across the Mississippi river... " ... At this point I realized that his story was starting to sound suspiciously like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, simultaneously I realized that this man was balls crazy with oldness. He came into the office wearing an over-sized crazy horse belt buckle, and one of those southwestern style turquoise bolo neckties, and a confederate hat that said 'Bush Gardens' in big gold letters across the front-- but only then did it dawn on me he was not in complete control of his mental facilities. So, I put drop in his eyes and that shut him right up.

If I ever get old enough to weave elementary texts into my own history, I hope I end up a Faulkner novel. But I probably wont. I'll probably be the Catcher in the Rye or something. I imagine by the time I'm 89, there will be an actual diagnosis called 'emo dementia', where not only do you have bouts of forgetfulness, but because of years of listening to crying, whining music, patients also experience deep depressions brought on by previous girlfriends they never actually had.

Am I going to need a helmet for this?

In continuation of a previous post: http://kimwar.blogspot.com/2009/11/did-we-ever-find-out-what-was-eating.html

I still think there is a chance that I'm involved in an elaborate conspiracy to conceal the fact that I am a full blown retard. But I'm still in the process of collection evidence. Yesterday I got a little closer to the truth. To explain, let me first say that our office has a very relaxed dress code. Some people wear flip flops, some people where sweatpants, I normally wear scrubs, and on Mondays and Wednesdays when I do office work, I wear appropriate office clothing. Yesterday, Monday, I wore a sailor's outfit. I don't know why. This weekend at TJMaxx I found a blue and white striped cardigan with gold buttons, and it matched perfectly with a pair of white button-front pants that I already had at home, so I picked it up. It was exactly the kind of outfit that would look adorable on a child, or maybe a terrier. And when I strolled into work that morning, my co-workers didn't say a GD thing to me about it. It probably just looked natural to them, like I was coming into my own. Just as a man-child looks natural in a pair of well-worn overalls, perhaps I was meant to wear dog-costumes. I am currently on the look out for a adult sized pink, prima-ballerina outfit.

All this brings me to my main point. That fact that I have a job that I wear scrubs bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I like my scrubs, but don't scrubs look suspiciously like pajamas? And I don't know about you, but when I see someone out and about in pajamas, I tend to wonder if they're retarded. And thus, I rest my case. For now anyway.

Hey. I'm e-mailing you something.

Interoffice spam mail has become the bane of my mid-day work week.

Cute Panda babies, scroll-down forwards, Top Ten worst si-fi movies worth seeing-- its all fair game in my work place right now. And I hate all of it. See, aside from gender, and a common employer, I don't have a lot in common with my co-workers. And I never pretended to, so when my inbox suddenly started to become flooded with irrelevant, time wasting video clips, I had to ask myself -- what did I do to deserve this? What cultural sign did I erroneously give off to make my co-workers think I wanted to see a 2 minute video of a skeleton with a boner? And how did they get my e-mail address to begin with?

Humor is the worst. Or what they consider humor. I fancy myself slightly humorous, but what they're sending should not qualify as entertainment. I find myself dreading the outbursts of laughter I hear from around the corner. I know whats coming. They call out from their desk to inform me that they've sent me something, and I am obligated to watch it immediately. As if it were, I don't know, my job. -Did you get it?- Yes. I got it. And, methodically, they wait, the exact time it took them to carefully and diligently look over the e-mail, then they ask me-- no, they tell me-- Isn't that funny -- Yes. Funny. Good. Moving on.

How can anyone possibly enjoy this cycle? I imagine in the future there will be a name for this mental illness. The forced perpetuation of mediocre humor via e-mail. Until then, I will strive to master the art of sounded enthusiastic about a joke while simultaneously deleting an e-mail.

Dear Facebook,

You are making people into liars.

Well, maybe that's too strong. You're more enabling people who are prone to lying to do so more freely.

You know that personality type that is always trying to one-up you? The person that, when you cook dinner for your family, they just cooked dinner for a soup kitchen? Or when you're excited because you just became an aunt for the first time, they're more excited about the fact that their Godchild was just nominated Soldier of the Year. And its exponential, and they can't stop. They have a problem. Well, thanks a lot, Facebook, because you just made that person a thousand times more annoying.

I'll admit that I post what I'm doing on facebook-- almost daily. Where I'm going, what room in my house I'm cleaning; but that annoying one-upper is posting hourly. And much like real life, they're posting about stuff that never really happened.

Other than one time where I outright asked one of my friends how the 5-K went, and they admitted they slept in, I don't exactly have proof-- but I feel I have the makings of solid evidence. For example: You are not doing your grad-school homework. You're on Facebook. I'm not even convinced that the Community College of Vermont offers a long-distance grad program, but thats a different issue. And I have an unrealistic number of friends who go to the gym, and THEN go running. Really? You're at the gym, then running?-- Funny, because 12 minutes after you posted "Running" you posted "Whipping up some homemade hummus. YUM! ;)".
And then there's the 'super woman' post. The: "Just got home for work: crockpot boiling, cookies baking!! Cleaned the bathroom, finished my core thesis, and about to go for a 3 mile run before starting another knitting project tonight!! I <3 Life "

I think you love Lie.

Did we ever find out what was eating Gilbert Grape?

It has been brought to my attention that I may be a retard.

I can't say that there weren't signs: People calling me adorable, or patting me in the head like a child, when in reality I'm an average sized human being and lack any adorable traits. Or My boss congratulated me on a job well done when the job I did wasn't done very well. Or My boyfriend constantly calling me a retard.

What if everyone is in on it? My parents, and my 'friends'; I graduated college a semester early-- but what if I didn't actually graduate at all? What if I'm not actually getting paid money at my job right now, but sparkly stickers? What if I'm not even typing right now, but instead drawing pictures of kitty cats on an old white board?

But, of course, if I was retarded, I would know. Wouldn't I? But then, That girl in my high school, the one with downs syndrome who thought my female friend was a boy and would call her 'handsome' and give her pictures of them holding hands-- she didn't know. She thought she was Normal.

But... All that being considered... things are going pretty well for good ol' RetardKim, so, I'm not about to rock the boat.