| ennui
Posted: 5/13/2008 9:44:33 PM | Momentum
Sam began another day, cursing the need to awaken from sleep and go about his usual routine of shower, shave, breakfast (usually a cereal bar), and braving morning rush hour to get to his job. The car acted as though it wouldn't start, and Sam toyed with the idea of going back to bed after calling in sick , but then the engine turned over and he pulled out of the parking lot and was on his way.
The sky was grey, full of heavy dark-grey rain clouds which threatened a downpour of rain and Sam was grateful that it had chosen to wait awhile as rain made the already horrible morning commute even worse. Sam eased his car to a stop behind a line of cars at a redlight and reached over to change the station on the radio, trying to find music instead of insipid morning radio blather. Suddenly, someone was knocking at his driver's side window.
Sam looked over, startled, and was angered at his startled reaction, and that the person had seen his startled reaction. Sam always tried to remain calm and cool in all situations, but biology betrays us all at times.
The knocker, a scruffy looking fellow, had a very serious expression on his thin and sunburnt face and was gesturing for Sam to roll the window down so as to give Same one of the day-glo orange flyers in his hand. Sam waved him away, giving him the universal gesture for "no thanks..not interested" but the fellow would have none of it and started knocking on the window again, even though Sam was looking right at him gesturing for him to go away.
Sam glanced over to the light, which was stubbornly red, and begin to get angry. He toyed with the idea of telling the fellow off, but decided against it. Sam was no shrinking violet, but he made it a policy to refrain from unnecessary drama when possible.
The fellow took one of the flyers from his stack and then, very clumsly, tried to shove it into the driver's side windshield wipers. His fingers got caught and he was in the process of trying to retreive them from the wipers when the light changed. As if keyed to the light changing from red to green by remote, horns begin to honk behind Sam. He honked the horn at the hapless fellow, but this did not help him in his efforts to remove his fingers from the wipers.
"fan-****ing-tastic!" Sam muttered as he rolled down the window. "Hey! I need to go!" he said to the fellow just as he managed to get his fingers free. Sam drove off, almost hitting the man as he took off. Sam noticed that the flyer was ripped a bit, but he could read most of it as it faced him.
It read, in bold black letters:
DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO GET YOU TO VOTE FOR A FAR LEFT MUSLIM !!!!!!!
Below this heading was a characture of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, his head on an ape's body, with a banana in hand.
Below the characture, Sam could see the words: WHITE CHRISTIANS UNITE, but the rest was obscured as the flyer flapped in the wind as Sam drove.
Sam groaned inwardly and decided to pull into a convenience store, even though it would probably make him late for work, and throw the flyer away. The flyer was all tangled up in the wiper and Sam could only get most of it. None of the message could be read on what remained, so Sam shrugged and continued on his way to work. As he attempted to pull out of the parkinglot and back into traffic, he recieved a series of honks from the driver of a Hummer who had been busy texting while he drove and was startled by Sam's entrance onto the road.
Sam, who was driving an old Accord, well past its prime, felt he had behaved himself enough for the day and began breaking sharply as the Hummer tailgated him. It occured to Sam that he might get injured or killed in the potential accident that this behavior might cause, but he didn't care.
It struck him that the only thing that kept him going was momentum and, he thought, perhaps it was time to call a halt to that momentum.
The driver of the Hummer must have realized Sam's lack of concern for safety as he suddenly began to decrease his following distance. Sam felt a little satifaction at this, but not much. He could see the entrance to his place of work ahead, and toyed with the idea of passing by and driving on to....where? As this thought occured to him every day when he was near the entrance to work and he never had an answer to the question of "Where?" he pulled in an parked.
It began to rain
lightly, but with the promise of heavier rain to come.
Sam got out of his car, shut the door, made sure it was locked, and walked into the building. "Maybe the storm will cause the power to go out" Sam thought as he reached the stairs that would take him to the third floor. Happy thoughts of there being no working today due to power outage cheered him a little, but that cheer soon faded as it occured to him that it would take more than a temporary power outage to stop the momentum.
Much more.
No one seemed to notice that Sam was seven minutes late, so he sat down at his cubicle and tried to look as if he had been busy for atleast sixminutes, if not seven.
Much much more. | |
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