My Musings

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Friday, February 06, 2004

Insight #3

Last night there was a moment when I really didn’t feel like doing any homework. Such moments occur on a regular basis, resulting in a clash between my desire to get something done and my desire to do something else. In this particular instance, the latter won, and I headed over to Jim and Kevin’s room to see what they were up to.

Upon entering their lair, I found Jim mysteriously absent. Kevin was furiously typing up an email and had headphones on; I casually slid into the room and waited expectantly for him to turn around and greet me or otherwise express his awareness of my presence. However, my hopes were let down as Kevin continued to stare intently at his computer and peck intermittently at the keyboard. When I stood directly behind him and he still did not respond—my stomach was inches away from his head at this point—I realized that Kevin had absolutely no idea I was in the room.

I could not believe my luck. Kevin’s total detachment from his environment afforded me with the perfect opportunity to unleash havoc and mischief! Imagine all the crazy things I could do! … Well? Are you imagining them? Because I sure as hell couldn’t think of anything. Instead I stood there like a complete moron and desperately tried to figure out how to resolve the situation. I could tap Kevin on the shoulder and surprise him, but that wouldn’t be very funny. I could stay there and quietly watch him, but that would be kind of spooky. I could leave the room as unnoticed as I entered, but that would be kind of gay. In vain I tried to read the email that Kevin was writing, but unfortunately the font was too small on the laptop monitor for me to read at that distance. Since I couldn’t very well risk detection to lean over and get a closer look, I was completely stuck, immersed in a situation of amazing potential without knowing how to take advantage of it.

Then the phone rang. After several rings it became apparent that Kevin did not hear it. The phone was my saving grace—it gave me something cool and exciting to do, because answering other people’s phones is always fun.

“Hello?” I said. Kevin did not budge.

“Hi, is Jim there?” the other voice responded. This was not my first time answering Jim’s phone (I forget the reason for the previous occasion), so I recognized the voice as Jim’s mother.

“No, Jim isn’t here right now, but Kevin is. Would you like to speak to him?” Kevin continued to not budge. When Jim’s mom replied that she did indeed wish to have a word with Kevin, I tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the phone. There was the faintest glimmer of surprise and utter shock in Kevin’s usually cool and placid face as he took the phone from me.

It turned out that Jim’s parents had come for him and couldn’t get into the building. Jim was off doing homework in the study lounge, where he couldn’t hear the phone. Kevin and I found him in the lounge and told him to go downstairs to let his parents in, whereupon he started bitching something about how he had told his mom to call him on his cell phone. After the matter was taken care of and Jim scampered downstairs—or rather didn’t scamper, because he always uses the elevator even though the dorm is only four stories high, that lazy waste of glucose—to greet his parents, Kevin asked me just how long I had been standing there and what exactly the hell I was doing. I responded that if it weren’t for me, Jim’s parents would never have gotten into the building and that there would have been a heap o’ trouble, and we left the argument at that, though I think Kevin was a little disturbed.

Earlier tonight Jim asked me if I wanted to have any of the rice that he was about to make. I gladly accepted and resumed procrastinating on my homework. An indeterminate period of time later, I found myself extremely bored and running out of ways to put off doing important stuff, so I decided to pay a visit to Jim’s room and see if the rice was ready yet. Upon opening the door to his abode and taking a look inside, I was shocked by two things: 1) Jim, who had been hanging around the dorm all evening, was not in the room; and 2) Kevin, who had been gone all evening, was. He was sitting in his chair, much like the night before, actually, with the headphones and writing and everything, except that this time he was writing something in longhand in a notebook (this turned out to be a rough draft for an English paper that Kevin has due tomorrow; his topic is “Pythagoras was an incompetent buffoon,” or something like that). I walked into the room and, sure enough, Kevin did not so much as twitch to welcome me. The previous evening’s state of affairs was being repeated!

You may be wondering if I experienced the same quandary the second time around as I did the first. In fact, I did not. In a bold and daring move, I took one of Kevin’s boots—the left one—and exited.

I spoke to Kevin later on—he also partook of Jim’s rice—and he gave no indication whatsoever that he knew I had been in his room.

And now you may be wondering how the story ends. If so, then you are obviously not a very attentive reader, because if you were, then you would know that the event I just described took place this evening, and so of course there has not yet been any sort of conclusion to the story. When I look to the right, I can see Kevin’s boot lying on the floor, my view of it partially obstructed by one of the bedposts. The tip of the boot points at me. To the right of this tip lies my backpack, perched against said bedpost; and to the left of the boot aligned perpendicular to it is my small wastebasket.

Kevin has music theory tomorrow at 8:30, whereas my first class, English, is not until 11:30. Thus, I will still be sound asleep when Kevin has to wake up and go. He may decide to put on shoes and not realize at all that his left boot is missing. Or he may try to put on his boots and, upon failing to find half of them, frantically rummage around his room (it’s a mess) in a mild panic trying to find it. That would be pretty hilarious. I’ll be sure to let you know how the boot story ends up.

.: posted by Boris 12:22 AM

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