Feb 19 2010
No Quick Escape for Me
I wait. You wait. We wait. Enduring the endless chatter of the inane news loop where all commentators laugh, joke, and mock trying their best to be comedy central.
The commentators tell me I’m supposed to think it’s funny that a guy bulldozed his foreclosed house to get back at the bank, forgetting he will most likely go to jail. Then they chuckle at some crazy guy who flies a plane into an IRS building in his pursuit to “fight the man,” ignoring the injured workers who endured a day of horror. They annoy ad nauseam and I cannot turn it off. Do they never tire of their own voices?
I cringed when I read that the king of Saudi Arabia kept a giant television on blaring the news while the Secretary of State was visiting him. The news reporter conjectured that maybe he didn’t want their conversation overheard. From Dale’s experience in Iraq and mine in the U.S., I think it is simply that rulers and waiting rooms love to have giant televisions blaring the news.
“It will take an hour and a half,” she tells me at the start. An hour and a half comes and goes. At two hours, I’m told more work must be done. “An hour and fifteen minutes more,” she says.
I brought the paper full well knowing I should have brought a book. The next story breaks. “Oh no,” I think. “Now I must endure the big apology broadcast to the world live in HD.”
Then, a little luck. Suddenly, I’m called. “Yes! Escape at last!” I jump up in a hurry and grab one strap of my purse. I go forward. I go backward. The other strap is caught on the chair. I fall back and catch myself on the side table where sets a man’s full cup of coffee. It spills in slow motion. My pants soak some up and the rest covers the floor.
No quick escape for me.
I apologize profusely and grab napkins to cleanup. He is annoyed, not at his lost coffee or the mess, but that I have interrupted the news. Luckily for him, he can hear it again in fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes after that and fifteen minutes after that.
