Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, May 1
Bought a new house shirt during my shift at the retailer Monday night…Except for the color, it’s identical to the one I bought a few weeks ago…They’re really soft cotton with little white dots in a horizontal pattern…These dots are connected by smaller white dots and they were love at first sight…Call it the instincts all the great ones have if you must, but I knew – knew! – these would be comfy and exactly what I need for thru-the-day putzing around the house…And I was right, too…The first one was brick red and the puppy I picked up last night is blue…Somewhere between royal blue and navy blue…Not quite either and I slept in it today while I washed the red one for just the second time…It’s surprising how smelly a house shirt can get when all you do is sleep and sit at your desk in it.
They’re doing some work on Ricky and what’s-her-noses house down the street…(You can see it from my office…It’s down Maple Street, a block down from the blue house the neighbors recently moved out of.)…Both Mr and Mrs Ricky worked at the retailer before moving to Louisiana for some reason last year and the house has been vacant since.
They’re putting some work into it, too…The windows appear to be being replaced and they’re fussing with the roof, and I’ve seen workmen going inside, too…Good…It needs every bit of attention someone wants to give it…The Wife had been there a few times and it was plain it had been neglected over the decades…It was sold earlier this year for a bit less than we paid for The Shire four years ago, which really means it’s a dump because it’s a seller’s market right now, even in our small town, which is older and pretty much a blue-collar community.
Some customers annoyed me at the retailer today, pretty rare, especially when I’m well-rested like I was today…I’m usually pretty tuff to annoy.
First up was a younger guy who wanted to return a small lamp that didn’t really work with the dump he lived in…It was actually two pieces, the stand and the shade…Something came unscrewed on the stand and he was trying to screw it on and wasn’t able to…I told him I’d take care of it…He kept at it tho, so I told him I would be delighted to take care of it for him, in my usual relentlessly cordial tone…Repeat this excitement two more times…I wanted to smack him…I’ll take care of it means I’ll take care of it, it’s not your cue to continue to effect repairs…Ultimately, I reminded him of a policy I just made up that customers cannot work, which made him laff and stop.
Then a Hispanic gentleman comes up to send some money…He gives me his ID and I ask for his phone number because that’s how you’re recognized in the system and he rattles it off like I’m the world champion numbers enterer…I asked him to slow down – in Spanish, no less – and he recites them extra-slow like I’m a retard…I sigh and smile, but I could tell he got the message and the rest of the transaction passed harmlessly.e
Then this wizard came up wanting to return a plastic storage case and exchange it for a smaller one…For this exchange, he offered a receipt from a purchase of work gloves…I am not making that up…
– Do you have the receipt for the this???…I asked this hopefully, tapping on the container…Instead, he pulls a pair of work gloves from a bag.
– I bought these gloves around the same time…
Do you have the receipt for the container???…
I thought you could look it up…
Like others today, I wanted to smack him upside the head: YES OR KNOW WILL SATISFACTORILY ADDRESS MY GODDAMNED QUERY!!!
I didn’t say that…I thought it…But didn’t say it.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 8:30am Tuesday morning until 3:30pm Tuesday afternoon…Seven hours, straight thru until the alarm clock, with no getting up to use the can, which I fretted over…Tuesday/Wednesday is the usual long day and I wanted to get all the sleep I could without waking up every couple of hours…I even considered taking a PM tablet to help facilitate this, but I’ve learned it’s best not use the PM’s when you have an alarm clock…Either one, you sleep straight thru and you wake up groggy or, two, you worry so much about getting to sleep it takes longer, which defeats the purpose…For those of you keeping score at home, 20.5 hours so far this week, about average.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
