Monday, November 12, 2012

I'm Not Like Everybody Else

I'm sitting in my truck eating my lonely sandwich today, and thinking.

It was a bonus day. November 12 and I am sitting in my truck in shirtsleeves with two windows open. There is an excellent chance today was the last time that will happen for six months.

So I dug it. After devouring my lonely sandwich, I closed my eyes for a couple of minutes and pretended that it was still summer. But it wasn't authentic because there was little in the way of bird serenade. A couple of chirps here and there from misguided or underachieving birds, but there was no happy symphony of song like there is in August.

There was a girl sitting in her truck diagonally to the left in front of me, eating her lunch. There was a kid sitting in a car behind me eating in his car. Still wearing his Market Basket hat. At least I take my goddamn name tag off when I leave the store, although I am still marked by the cutesy purple shirt. In the heat of summer I do take the purple insult off and sit in the truck in a t-shirt. That feels right.

There is something so wrong with America. Something so wrong with life.

People all over America who sit in their cars and eat lunch with vacant stares on their faces. None of us had music playing. Apparently it was such a relief to be outside the work place that that was enough. Or maybe listening to music offers false happiness or a contrast so stark to the soul sucking job that it is just inappropriate or unbearable.

I see people in their cars. I see people sitting on the curb with their back against the building. I see people alone a lot. Sometimes just smoking a cigarette and texting. The ultimate expression of human hopelessness. Openly inviting cancer while engaging in a petty waste of time.

I do not understand how we came to this place.

If there is a God, I don't think he anticipated the day that his most amazing (?) creation would look forward to eating lunch alone in a soul-less parking lot just to get some peace. A bitter peace tarnished by the fact that lunch has to end. Maybe he didn't think it through.

If there is a God I'd like to believe that it breaks his heart to know that millions of people do this all the time and that they shuffle from work to the car and back to work like automatons just looking for a little validation. A little hope.

If evolution is your thing I can't accept this behavior as proof of evolution. Devolution makes more sense.

We started out somewhere, there was humanity somewhere at some point. But it got taken away.  Or we lost it or pissed it away.

I watched a movie called God Bless America this past Saturday night. Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. The plot is about a guy who gets fed up with the stupidity in America and goes on a killing spree. The movie is not spectacular and really is a vehicle for Bobcat to express his disgust with the cruelness and pettiness in this country. I dug it but you probably wouldn't.

On the soundtrack is a song by The Kinks called I'm Not Like Everybody Else. When they sing the chorus the music gets heavy, ominous, intimidating and challenging. Perfect. It grabbed me by the cojones because I am not like everybody else. Even though I have spent fifty eight years doing exactly what everybody else does, I know I am not like everybody else. I know that I will break free someday.

Maybe.

It occurred to me today that if I played that song loud in the parking lot, my two lunchtime companions would have come alive with rebellion and rocked their way to a finger flipping salute to the life they are currently living. I would have joined them.

But for now we are like everybody else. That is what is sad. That is what is wrong with America.

Maybe there is only so much room for individuality. Maybe only the rich can afford the rent.

But there is no denying the soul deep longing to express human uniqueness and to fight back and lash out against the forces that box us in.

Even as we eat our cold cut sandwiches in the close confines of the cars we are struggling to make payments on.

I am fighting with everything I got to avoid eating lunch in my truck for even one day in 2013.

Because:

"I'm not like everybody else
I'm not like everybody else
And I don't want to ball about like everybody else
And I don't want to live my life like everybody else
And I won't say that I feel fine like everybody else
"Cause I'm not like everybody else
I'm not like everybody else"

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