Thursday, September 16, 2010

I WHINED BECAUSE I HAD NO SOCKS, UNTIL I MET A MAN WHO HAD THEM TATTOOED ON HIS LEGS …


As nonchalant as I tried to be, he caught me staring at his legs. I smiled rather weakly and said, “They almost look real.”

“Thanks,” he said simply, nodding at what he undoubtedly considered one of his wiser decisions. “I’ve been wearing them for eighteen months straight and they’re still as good as the day I put them on.”

By “put them on” he meant tattooing socks on his calves.

“Won’t they eventually fade?” I asked.

“Yeah, they do somewhat,” he answered. “But I’ll just get them darkened.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked.

“I just hated wearing and washing socks and having them fall down and, you know, just the whole hassle,” he said. “So one night, feeling sort of numb from a few hours of drinking with my buddies, I figured for some short-term discomfort, I’ll get a lifetime of freedom.”

I nodded, with a half-smile on my face. Not in any sort of agreement with his decision, but I guess in that, “I’m so grateful I’ve never been that drunk” sort of way.

“A lot of people think I’m nuts,” he offered. “But we’ll see whose laughing when the price of socks goes up.”

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “The best reason he can come up with to justify his drunken decision is to hope the price of socks goes up?”

I boldly went where no man had apparently gone before, and asked him, “So what do you do when you want to go swimming?”

“What?” he said blankly.

“You know, go swimming.”

“What?” he repeated, still blankly. “Umm, I don’t swim.”

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”

“Uh, yeah,” he said, still looking rather blank. “That’s, that’s a good thing.”

I thought about crying because I had no coffee until I met a man with no forethought.

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