embarrassing moments

i recently found the most exciting and thoroughly frustrating emotion.

there are few things more embarrassing than standing in a bathroom and waving your wet hands. you're looking at the brand new, and most likely hideously expensive, automatic towel dispenser and wondering to yourself if it's going to spit out a towel before your hands have dried from flailing hopelessly in front of a black box on a wall. you look at the little green or red sensor as it blinks merrily to itself and it's difficult to discern whether this means that it's supposed to be dispensing or not dispensing. an interesting side note, one that will earn my ire at a later point: green and red elicit very different, and very consequential, actions and reactions in every other scenario - traffic lights, for instance. you never look at a traffic light as it blinks between red and green and expect something that isn't going to happen. red means stop. green means go. awfully definitive it seems. red and green have no place on ambiguous automatic faucets, soap and towel dispensers, or any item unsure of its stop/go future. a push for yellow is needed as these items of convenience are like the driver coming from your left at the intersection as you sit stopped: he/she comes flying up to the light that you can see has just turned yellow. there is a moment of panic as their car makes the subtlest lurch then rockets forward (to the best of said car's ability - the difference between a new bugatti veyron and a 1983 peugeot need not be mentioned, just the relativity of "rockets"). yellow is unclear. let's coup against yes or no and replace them with maybe.

so there you are waving your hands like an idiot. sure no one is in the bathroom watching you, but rather than serve as a comfort it only seems to exacerbate the foolishness of the situation. if you were being watched perhaps you would embrace the silliness of it all and become more cartoonish in your motions. but no. you're alone and you have a ringing cellphone in your pocket and your hands are wet. you hate putting wet hands in your pockets, don't you? while you're standing there you remember a feeling similar to this: that moment every person has while driving in a car alone where you, perhaps after a long day, begin having really loud, awkward conversations with yourself. you laugh hideously, fart, sing crudely or do just about anything considered socially deviant. maybe you even make some horrible remarks about someone. this is when it gets real and you snap back into consciousness and feel suddenly embarrassed. you'll even look around the car to make sure nobody else just heard that or saw that.

you know, i have become so lost in the quagmire of my own writing, the end goal has been completely lost. perhaps, someday, it will return to me and give this sorry post some reason to live.


-e