Pointless Moments In The History Of Jon: Do The Wrong Thing

In the first semester of my sophomore year in college I took a course entitled British Literature Survey I. It was the first of four classes I took taught by Professor Andrews. In my senior year I ran into her at some English Department function and we both commented on how odd it was, after four straight semesters, for me to not be in one of her classes.
She lamented my absence, saying that, while I seldom spoke up in any of her classes, based on my work when I was in one of her classes she always knew that there was at least one person who was actually thinking.
The next semester, when every other English major was taking Shakespeare or Chaucer, I was one of the few who took Milton, a class taught by the other Professor Andrews, her husband.
His personality was markedly different from hers, and I was always struck by what an odd pairing they seemed to be.
(In one of the in-class essays that I wrote on Milton, I had written something that had so completely missed the point of the particular play that I had written about that I probably should have gotten an F, but he was so impressed by how well-structured and earnest my essay was that, he noted on the paper, he couldn’t help but give me a B+. The flaw in my essay stemmed from the fact that it never occurred to me that, of all people, John Milton could actually have a sense of humor.)
The other classes I took that were taught by the distaff Professor Andrews – it wasn’t exactly a deliberate choice that led me to have her for four semesters in a row, it just happened that she was teaching the classes I wanted to take – were British Literature Survey II, Restoration and 17th Century British Literature, and Major Authors (Wordsworth and Coleridge).
To at least start to zero in on my point, one day towards the end of the semester in British Lit Survey I, I had a severe case of the sniffles. As I sat there trying to keep my snot in my nose, one of my fellow students – a girl – passed me a packet of tissues.
Now this would seem to be a polite gesture on her part, but the girl in question had some indefinable quality about her that just bugged me, and while I thanked her, I actually took this act of kindness to be some sort of passive aggressive act of condescension, and it made me dislike her immensely.
(If I recall correctly, another reason I didn’t like her back in Brit Lit Survey I was that she was friends with this dork who really irritated me.)
I didn’t see the girl in question – she was quite distinctive, and, I had to grudgingly admit, pretty, and my dislike for her had imprinted her image in my memory – around campus or in any classes again until the end of my junior year when she was in the aforementioned Major Authors with me.
Seeing her again brought my dislike for her to the forefront of my memory, and as we were walking out of the building after class I found myself – unwillingly – walking alongside her. While I was thinking about how much I didn’t like her, she turned to me and said, “Don’t I know you? Have we had a class together before?”
This annoyed me greatly, but I said, “Yeah, I think we were in British Lit I together – another class with Andrews teaching, actually.”
She said, “Oh yeah,” and then we parted ways.
Whenever possible I liked to take “block” classes – classes that were taught in two-hour blocks and only met two days a week. This minimized the amount of time I spent in class on any given day, and usually left my Fridays wide open. Major Authors, as I recall, met on Monday and Wednesday.
The next day I went to one of my Tuesday and Thursday block classes – American Literature I – and, much to my chagrin, there she was again.
Once again she struck up a conversation with me, and after talking to her for a bit I came to realize something: she wasn’t so bad after all.
She was smart, funny, and sarcastic. What was not to like?
From talking to her I learned that her name was Jen, she was about five years older than I was, had been to several schools pursuing several different majors, was now majoring in English, and had, at one point, been a bus driver, of all things. Not a school bus driver, but a city transit, Ralph Kramden type bus driver.
I also came to realize that the tissue thing was, in fact, simply her being nice, and not an act of passive aggression.
We got to be pretty good friends during the short time we spent together smoking before class, or walking together after class, and we always opted to pair up during any sort of group activities in Major Authors (though this annoying Eddie Vedder wannabe grad student usually latched himself onto us as well).
Though I wasn’t immediately aware of it, I was beginning to fall for her. She seemed to have an instinctive understanding of which of my buttons to push – though I don’t think that she was aware that she was pushing them – and how to push them. Bear in mind that this was when I was married, so I wasn’t lonely and desperate. These days my buttons are pretty much stuck down like the keys on a keyboard that’s had Coke spilled on it, and it doesn’t take much more than a pair of tits and a smile to capture my attention. Even the smile is optional.
In any case, the thought that I might be falling for her was the furthest thing from my mind because I was (reasonably) happily married, and certainly wasn’t looking around to see what color the grass might be elsewhere.
Though I thought about Jen all the time, I very seldom brought her up in conversations with Lorie. This may have been some sort of instinct for self-preservation, but I think it had more to do with me not wanting to share Jen with anyone else, in any sort of way. She was something…private.
My first inkling that something was up came one day when I was walking to American Lit. I’d grabbed the mail on the way, and while sifting through it found that I’d gotten something from the English Department. I opened it and learned that I had been selected to receive a scholarship for my senior year from the English Department.
Naturally I was very excited about this, and my immediate thought was that I had to tell someone. While I could have swung by the tutoring center where Lorie worked and told her, the thought never occurred to me. I didn’t want to tell my wife about this big news, I wanted to tell Jen.
She was absent that day, and I found myself crestfallen. I had so wanted to have her be excited for me, and impressed by me (One big button Jen often pushed: being in awe of my intellect. Every time I would demonstrate what a smart cookie I was and hear her say, “How do you know all of this stuff?” it was like a shot of endorphins directly into my ego.).
Still, this wasn’t exactly a red flag for me.
(Historical footnote: It was around this time that I started getting into The Sandman.)
It was a later event that actually raised the red flag and set off a bunch of warning klaxons in my brain.
At that time I was thinking about signing up for some summer classes. So was Jen. We were sitting together before class looking over the summer schedule and had selected classes that we could take together.
The classes themselves weren’t really even a consideration. What was most important, to both of us, was that we would be able to spend more time with each other.
That was when it hit finally hit me, and I realized just where it was that I was heading.
With that realization came another: I couldn’t do that to Lorie.
Jen was a far better match for me than Lorie could have ever been. She was smarter, she was funnier, she was prettier, and, to be blunt, and perhaps a bit unfair, just better in general.
But the fact remained that I had made my choice, and, more importantly, made a promise, and so, with great reluctance, I decided not to take any summer classes, and after the end of that semester I never saw Jen again.
As a result of all of this, I learned something about myself. When it came down to it, ultimately, no matter how much it sucked, I would do the right thing.
Given how things eventually turned out, there’s only one thing I can really say about all of it: I’m a dumbass.
To make a long story even longer, the apartment where Lorie and I lived in married student housing had walls made of cinderblock that allowed pretty much every sound to pass through them effortlessly.
As a result, we always knew when our neighbors were fighting, and, more disturbingly, when they had made up.
There was a period in which every morning found me being woken up by the neighbors blasting the song One by U2.
Several years later, after college and after the marriage, during the period of my drunken downward spiral, there came a morning when I found myself being awoken at a friend’s house by the sound of One playing. Confused and still a little drunk and having no idea where I was, my immediate drowsy response to this was to think that I was back in that apartment and that the last six or seven years of my life had all been some kind of horrible dream.
During that blissfully confused moment I thought that I’d been given a chance to do it all over again and that this time I would go after Jen and leave Lorie on the trash heap of my personal history before she got the chance to do it to me.
I would make things right by doing the wrong thing.
Of course, reality crashed in on me far too quickly, and I realized that no, I hadn’t been given that chance, and that no one ever gets that chance. The past was in the past, and there was no changing it.
So what’s the point of all this? What do you care? I mean, it’s not like you actually read this entire rambling narrative. Wait, you did? Why on earth would you do that to yourself?
Anyway, like most things in life, there really isn’t a point. For no apparent reason, Jen just popped into my mind earlier tonight, and I thought that writing about the whole meaningless, boring and not nearly sordid enough mess would help purge my former emotional and intellectual “mistress” and button-pusher from my mind, and give you all a view into a Pointless Moment In The History of Jon while I was at it.

Jon: The Triumphant Return...No, Wait. Not "Triumphant." Let's Just Call It The Return.

So it’s been a few days since I posted anything, and I can’t help but wonder how you managed to get by without reading about how boring my life is and how I don’t like people and I’d rather not go anywhere and I read comic books and etc., but somehow I’m sure you did.
What’s happened in the interim? I finished my Flash training...without calling the instructor rude names or telling her where she could shove various and sundry items.
God she was annoying.
Basically, any time she said something she would need us to tell her that we heard and understood what she said. She would not proceed until she got feedback.
And it had to be universal. It wasn’t enough for Scott and I to tell her we heard/understood, she would also need the people on the other side of the room to acknowledge her.
I can’t imagine how anyone could go through life being so needy.
While I avoided lashing out at her, I did make my feelings pretty clear.
Whenever she would ask something, like, “Guys, you with me?” I would respond in as annoyed a tone as possible with something like, “Yes, we’re with you.”
Scott found my unbridled annoyance amusing, though I think it went right over her head.
Beyond her neediness, she also didn’t seem to be very bright, and a lot of the Flash-based sites that she showed us as examples and referred to as being “tight” were perfect examples of all the things that are wrong with so many Flash-based sites, though in fairness some of them were pretty cool.
There was one chick in the class who was pretty hot, though much of her hotness stemmed from the fact that she had a really nice ass, which sort of balanced out some her shortcomings, though even with a lesser ass she still would have been cute.
At one point in the class I leaned over to Scott and told him, “I would totally bang her. I just wanted you to know that about me.” He said that he pretty much already knew that about me.
On Thursday Scott and I stopped at the comic book store on the way home from work. I dropped another $60 bucks, but that was largely because I bought the hardcover collection of issues 1-6 of All Star Superman.
Once I get into the groove of buying only the regular series I intend to buy, it should start getting a little cheaper.
I hope.
On Saturday we made another dash there because we thought we’d forgotten something, or rather, I thought we had, but it turns out it’s not coming out until this week.
(The book in question was Amazons Attack, which we figure we should read because we’ve started picking up the latest Wonder Woman series based on the rumor that Gail Simone is going to be taking over the writing chores. I hope it’s true and that she does it soon, because so far, New York Times best-seller or not, the current writer, Jodi Picoult, is not impressing me. In fact, she’s doing the exact opposite of impressing me. She’s kind of like the Anti-Gail, and Gail can’t come riding down from heaven to defeat her soon enough. The current penciller, whose name escapes me, is okay, but is not as good as the husband and wife team of Terry and Rachel Dodson, who had been handling the art on the book.)
While I was there, as I still haven’t been shipped the bags and boards I ordered almost a month ago, I picked up some bags and boards, figuring I could at least bag my latest purchases and some of the older stuff that’s precious to me.
Speaking of books that are precious to me, I also spent $50 on Friday ordering some back issues to replace lost and/or damaged comics from year’s past.
This picking back up an old habit thing is pricey. It’d probably be cheaper to start smoking again, and about as worthwhile.
Being able to sleep past 7 AM on a Sunday morning really doesn’t seem like that much to ask for, but, based on the barking dog, sirens, and helicopters that made doing so impossible this morning, it seems that the Universe just doesn’t see it that way.
I did eventually get back to sleep and make it all the way to 9 AM, but I had to put so much energy into making myself sleep despite the cacophony that I woke up exhausted.
I’m the only person I know who can wear himself out by sleeping.
Honestly, though, I think the reason I’m so angry all the time is that I really don’t ask for much out of life – a little peace and quiet here and there, a decent night’s sleep, etc. – and yet I don’t even manage to get that.
Oh sure, I’m doing okay as far as material things go, but when it comes to the little things…well, every once in a while I’d just like to have a day on which I don’t have to listen to barking dogs, I don’t bang my head against something, stub my toe, cut myself in some mysterious and bewildering fashion, or choke on food/water/my own spit.
Oh well. At least there are some things in life that are good, like The Venture Bros. Season Two on DVD, which came out on Tuesday.
On the way to the comic shop yesterday we stopped at Target so I could pick up a copy, though I actually ended up watching Scott’s copy while I was at work (very slow day).
I watched the entire season, except for one episode that, while great, I’ve seen a lot.
That’s twelve half-hour episodes of the show. And that’s on top of having read all the comics (except the All Star Superman HC) I’d bought on Thursday and several comics online, filling 100 comic book bags with backer boards and bagging all the comics I had with me. Add on some Web surfing, the aforementioned trip to Target and the comic shop, and some actual work, and you begin to get an idea of just how long a twelve and a half hour workday is when your job is almost entirely reactive and there’s nothing going on for you to react to.
(It’s worse when there is something to react to because it doesn’t make the time go faster it just makes it more irritating.)
Today, after talking to my mother and spending some time doing not much of anything, I decided, because it’s gorgeous out, to walk down to Subway to pick up lunch and dinner.
There were about eight people ahead of me in line, and out of all of the people there I was the only one who was ordering something only for himself. Everyone else was placing family orders.
So it took a while.
After getting home and eating half my sub I went to work on writing some Web site copy for Kathleen’s company. Her boss had called me on Wednesday when I’d forgotten to turn my cell phone off in class and asked me if I was up to maybe taking on some writing projects, which, of course, I was.
And all of that, brought me here, though not entirely in that order.
And now you have your fix of random complaints, observations, and pointless Jon minutiae.
Happy?