I lost my phone on the bus, or the Self Help Guide to being a Quiet One

If you want to be one of the quiet types, you should just shut up about how you lost your phone on the bus ride home from work.

You don't make a big deal about it to your customers, just to get them to feign a little sympathy for you, because you like feigned sympathy, because it is so much more interesting to you to see the pained looks on the faces of strangers who wonder why you have shared your dilemma with them, like maybe you are accusing them of something, when all you are... is tired of making small talk about what a great deal you have on sacks of red potatoes.

If you want to be the quiet type don't bother posting it on your facebook, or cry about it on your blog like a little baby.

Why cry at all when you weren't all that upset about losing the phone in the first place?  I mean maybe you were a bit upset.  And sure you kept thinking about it all day.  But mostly you just thought about "what an idiot you were" for losing the phone the way you did.

It's better to think like an adult.  Sit back with a little perspective, or rather try leaning back in a dirty undershirt on a folding chair and gain some perspective.

Perspective like you can't afford the payments on your phone anyway.  That you want an iPhone and the EnV3 is just a cheap substitute for what you really want.

And you don't even have the EnV3 you just have the EnV2, or rather you used to have the EnV2.  Now some fat girl on craigslist has your phone, and is debating what to do about all those videos of 18 year old girls giving you lap dances she found buried in the archives of your 4gb memory card.

I say she does nothing, because she will have a hard time explaining to the cops how she got your handset in the first place.

But let's move on.

You're already over the whole loss of phone thing, and the whole being cut off of the internet whenever you leave the house, and the whole staying busy at work by staying on task, rather than by distracting yourself by looking at the display on your phone every three minutes just to confirm that no one has left a comment on your blog, and no one has invited you to go drinking with them, and no one has died or left you any money, and no one likes your status updates on Facebook, and how no phone means no internet or "on demand" video, so no more listening to the news at break time, or determining when the next Cowboys game will be, so you might as well start taking both Sunday & Monday off, because with the government taking all your money and the utility bills sucking all the marrow from your old man bones... what the fuck difference does it make anyway?

Without a phone to distract you on the bus you have started to have fantasies that all the R/C Cola you stopped drinking magically turns you into a six-packed gleaming muscle dude with cheerleaders bouncing off your cock.

Maybe you don't need to stop drinking the soda, maybe you should just do the DRUG, because I hear it is a lot of fun, the kind of fun that strapping young boys have drinking Pabst Blue Ribbons before work, getting oiled up doing push ups, and cycling to work instead of sleeping in their stained underwear, oh wait I am sure they do that, sleep in their stained underwear that is, all men do that sort of thing if they aren't sleeping with a woman.

There is some kind of perverse pride a man takes in leaving streak marks on his bedroom sheet, bedroom sheets that have not been changed since you puked on them the night you thought you could win the battle against Wild Turkey, and then you found out why Wild Turkey is  a REAL MAN'S drink and not some kind of pussy drink, so maybe the idea of drinking a quart of it outside your apartment door that just happens to be open, because you know that your neighbor likes to leave her door open to the cooling temperatures of the desert in October, (a mild 81 degrees outside which is 5 degrees cooler than what you ran your A/C just 1 week ago) and the air cooled wind and Pabst Blue Ribbon is working it's magic, so much that you offer the your married next door neighbor's wife a bottle, but forget that you are plum fresh out of bottles, and then offer a sip of yours like we are six and mom forgot to buy us kids each a Mountain Berry Twist Capri Sun for ourselves, and she grimaces at you like the muppet that lives in the trash can on Sesame Street, and even if you are drunk you can still figure out what that means, you don't even need her to close the door on you, and go back to typing on her portable computer that sits on the coffee table in between plants that look like cactus, but you guess actually aren't cactus, not that you wanted to sit and listen to all the explanations that come out of her mouth about how plants are "comforting" and make the whole place "livable" and what you guess she means by "livable" is that her husband won't spring for a any new appliances, but he has a nice Harley,  and third wives with baggage (you sense you will be told of 3 kids and there whereabouts somewhere in Georgia) settle for a lot less than they admit to, because a toned 40 year old woman should have "value" in the land o' Walmart and fatties, because I am sensing an attitude over there young lady, a bit of the resentment for climbing the ol' Viagra pole now and then with the body of a half marathoner whose kids are living in Alabama, but whatever, for some reason that old man  has made no plans whatsoever about throwing a few hundred dollars around to correct the lime green appliances bought new circa 1973.

"I wasn't even born then."  You could imagine telling her.  Even though you were born then. You were born in 1970. 

But you are not drunk.

Even though you are sitting here on the porch steps contemplating the sinking horizon of your time line here on Earth and what a waste it would be to just keep getting older with no cell phone, no kick ass plans that involve mixing your time up by: working out, getting drunk, and getting laid.

Maybe you should get drunk.

You can't think of any reasons not to be drunk, since you are not going to pay your cell phone bill this month, you might even have a few dollars for a cheap 18 pack of beer, but staying at home getting drunk just sounds more depressing than doing nothing, and as un-fun-like as going to a local bar for reverse happy hour, when reverse happy hour means dollar well, wine and draft, even though the draft at that bar is crap and warm, and not at all suitable for shaking the lazy malaise that inhabits you.

Not that the malaise is much to talk about.  Not so much as sad, or even depressing.  It just feels like someone took all the taste away from you.  Well.  What I mean is like they have "a plan" to take all the taste away from you, but that they started by taking all the salt out of things.  Then they gave you fish sticks with no ketchup.

Fish sticks with no ketchup is what you feel like.   That is no emergency.  Nothing to get upset about.  It's just fish sticks and no ketchup served alongside room temperature ice tea with no sugar.

The ice tea comes in a giant purple plastic tumbler.  24 ounces of blandness that coat your teeth with a dull yellow grime.  You never swallow quickly anymore now that your stomach hurts.  So the ice tea sits in your mouth working on nerve endings in your teeth.  You never think about the nerve endings in your teeth until they start to bother you.

You try swallowing again with just tea to test things, and you wonder what your stomach would do with gin and tonic.  You would order something else at the bar, but you only know two grown up drinks.  Gin and Tonic & Screw drivers.

You assume screw drivers are for mid-day brunches with your fiance and your fiance's parents who drink too much.

You figure your order of Gin and Tonic to a bartender says you are like 60 (and grandmotherly in a dirty alcoholic way), but like I said you don't know too many other drinks that don't involve whiskey, or Wild Turkey, and you never liked the taste of hard liquor anyway,  you always like beer, because that's just the kind of simple guy you are.

You could just be a beer guy who lost his phone today and who went out to drink the dollar specials at the neighborhood bar.

But you aren't.  Today you are not drunk and out having adventures.  You are just thirsty for a soda.  Today is just like every other day, a day you forgot to drown away with beer,  a day where you spilled over a bucket of sunflower seeds, and left them to rot on your bedroom floor, a day you don't even have the desire to wish you had wished away, so I guess that's why you got today.

Because a guy like you, knows that a guy like you, always gets what he deserves.