Human Canonball

During freshmen year of college, a lot of my friends from high school became devastated that a lot of their "friends" from high school weren't keeping in touch with them. I tried to explain to them that sitting next to someone in a class and getting along with them does not count as a friendship. This would usually get my friends pretty bent out of shape. "Are you saying that this friendship was fake?! We had so many deep conversations!" I would respond by telling them that if they weren't having these deep conversations outside of class, they were merely acquaintances, or (gasp) just classmates. This usually just added to the betrayal that my friends felt, but I thought it'd be better that they hear it from me than waste hours trying to hunt down people that were just "classmates". People just lose touch. It's a fact of life. I wasn't trying to be a downer. I even suffered this same betrayal after college. Even with the technological advancements in recent years like Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, and e-mail, people have still found a way to not keep in touch. It's almost harder not to keep in contact with someone than it is to keep in contact with them.

My friendship with Bruce (BFF!) is kind of anomaly. Not only have we kept in contact despite being in different states for the past 16 years (California for me, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Jersey for him), we didn't live that close to each other when we both lived in Minnesota. We didn't live in the same neighborhood, not even the same school district. So while most kids see their friends every day at school, and often after school as well, I saw Bruce on Sundays at church and sometimes that was it. Occasionally I would go to his house after church or vice versa but there were never any spontaneous "Hey are you done with your homework? Come on over!" phone calls since it wasn't worth it to our parents to drive us over and pick us up after only a couple of hours.

When we did get to go over to someone's house, we usually got a pretty substantial amount of time to wreak havoc. Usually this consisted of a lot of video game playing. There were other toys (train sets, Transformers), but typically we were more interested in Tetris and Rampage. Occasionally we'd wander outside but once the sun went down, we were usually crowded around the Nintendo. Dinner would be served and then the parents would come to pick us up. We learned that we could buy a couple extra hours of play time if we could convince the arriving parents to stay for tea. This was a gesture offered every time, and almost without fail, we were able to get our couple of extra hours.

At one point, my Nintendo started acting up to the point where it was kind of hit or miss whether it would work. This caused me to later "upgrade" to a Sega Genesis (hindsight doesn't necessarily agree with that). This problem caused us to be creative and come up with an alternate activity that we could do if the Nintendo wasn't working. We came up with something that we called Human Canonball. It was an activity that consisted of jumping off a ledge in my room, trampolining onto my bed, and then into a pile of pillows onto the ground. Bruce recalls this as being terrifying, but if he was truly terrified, he definitely wasn't against participating. Not once did someone get hurt, which is probably quite incredible with the amount of danger involved. We were like 8, so we didn't really think about any potential ramifications.

For some reason, I never introduced Human Canonball to any of my other friends. Perhaps it's because my other friends and I would play sports and wouldn't need to find some mindlessly dangerous activity to kill time. All I know is that I never invented anything like Human Canonball with any of my friends from school. This is not to say that they weren't as smart as Bruce or that I didn't have fun with them. I had a lot of fun with my neighborhood chums, but some reason I just slowly started losing touch with them when I left Minnesota. It definitely stung, these people that I used to see everyday, were no longer in my life at all, not even by snail mail. I'm not even sure many of them would remember who I was if I showed up at their door and introduced myself. I probably spent a lot more time with them but perhaps Bruce and I were just much more efficient. We had inside jokes (tea!), a game we invented, and we shared many many meals of great Korean cooking together. Maybe the cliché is right. It's not about quantity of time as it is quality of time. We've had plenty of great memories, and luckily at least once of us remembers it all.

Handshake Deal

"Do you want to take my hand?" and the girl said, "Take it where?". And although he afterwards thought he should have said, "Everywhere", he only just mumbled. - Looper "Impossible Things #2"

It was a Friday when Dave called me. I was surprised when I saw his name come up on the called ID of my cell phone. We had kept in touch sporadically since college but we hadn't actually intentionally hung out in years. He had recently been trying to get me to intern at the company he was working at, but I had to decline since I couldn't fit an unpaid internship in LA into my schedule. He asked me if I was willing to help out with a shoot on Sunday in Orange County. He needed me to film an opening of a church center and the idea was met with a great deal of resistance. Operating a camera wasn't one of my strong suits, and working for free on a weekend wasn't a very appealing idea either. He told me that the shoot was going to be in Fullerton and since I was going to be there anyways, I decided to help my friend out.

Dave told me I was going to be working with his co-worker Cynthia and that he'd be passing my phone number along to her. While I knew that I'd be working with her on this Sunday, I didn't know that Dave wasn't going to be there. That made this shoot that much more nerve racking for two reasons. 1) I had never met this girl before, let alone seen her. 2) We were filming a live event which means that there's no chances for reshoots. This was a total recipe for disaster and that is exactly what we got.

Cynthia was very nice to me throughout the shoot, probably seeing that I was totally stressed out the entire time. She told me that she had heard stories of how creative I was from Dave and praised my choice of shots. At the end of the shoot, she told me that even though it didn't go according to plan that she believed that we had met that day for a reason and that we should keep in touch. Apparently her boss had lost her phone during the shoot, but she told me she'd get my contact info from Dave.

I didn't hear from Cynthia again until a couple of weeks ago. I was down in San Diego visiting my parents. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was receiving a call from her and was even more surprised by the fact that she didn't know she was calling me. She knew she was talking to a "Ryan", but then asked me who I was. I had to explain that I was "the Ryan that filmed that video in Fullerton" before she was able to identify me. Instead of apologizing for calling the wrong person and hanging up, she asked me how I was doing, what projects I was working on, and proposed that she, Dave, and I grab lunch sometime. Some of my friends think this was not an accident and that she was looking for a reason to call me. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

On Saturday, a couple of friends and I went to a show that Dave's company had organized. He had asked me to go even though he wasn't going to be there. When we arrived, I took a quick peek to see if Cynthia was there (the staff were wearing t-shirts) and she was nowhere to be found. During the intermission, as I walked to the doorway, there she was (she wasn't wearing one of the staff t-shirts). She was happy to see me (opposed to not knowing who I was), and stuck out her hand for a handshake. We shook hands, but there was something odd about her handshake. It's not that I noticed her hand being hot, cold or her handshake being limp, or firm. It was just a long handshake, kind of in the same way that Irvine has long yellow lights. It's just long enough where your brain goes out of "auto pilot" mode and you start to think about what's going on but not long enough where it's super awkward. When driving in Irvine, you can actually think "Should I go? I'm kind of in a hurry, so I'll go" and still make it through. In the case of Jennifer's handshake, I started to think "So when is she going to let go?" It's not that I necessarily wanted her to let go, it was just so unexpected that all I could do is feel confused.

We chatted for a bit and I returned to my seat for the second half of the show. After the show was over, my friends and I headed for the door to leave. Cynthia was there, once again, and I said goodbye and we shook hands again. This time around, the handshake wasn't as long, but there was still something about it. I couldn't explain to my friends until the next day where I finally found the words to describe it. Her handshake was affectionate. I could feel all this endearment during the exchange and I've never felt anything like that in a handshake before. While I don't remember any of the small talk that we had that night, there was another conversation that was happening simultaneously between her hand and mine.

She asked "Do you want to take my hand?" I asked "Take it where?" with the anticipation that the answer was "Everywhere".

Stop Following Me

There's the corner office. That's what you aim for when you work in an office. If you can't get that, then you shoot for some other sort of status symbol to show that you're superior to others. For some, it's their own office (versus a cubicle), or an office with a lot of windows. For a certain co-worker of mine, it's having computer speakers. This probably doesn't sound like a very big deal, but it is. The issue here is not jealousy, it's the fact that my co-worker has one of the worst tastes in music of anyone that I've ever met.

There's a difference between a bad taste and music and just a different taste in music. My co-worker listens to ethnic techno music. I don't really care for it and if this is all he was listening to all day, I would consider this a "different" taste in music. This is not the reason I consider their taste in music bad. I consider their music taste bad because they like to listen to the equivalent of the "NOW! That's What I Call the Worst Songs of the 90s mix". When Kurt Cobain unexpectedly passed in April of 1994, not only did he leave a void in the hearts of his fans, but he also left a void in the playlists of radio stations across the country, leaving programmers to scrounge around for sad and sometimes angsty music. That's the only sound logic for the sudden rise and fall of bands like Live and Collective Soul.

If my co-worker had decided to listen to headphones while listening to these songs, I wouldn't care, but I don't blame him for taking advantage of his speakers. I just show a little more tact for my co-workers in earshot. This is why you don't hear prog metal being blasted at 11 from my laptop. (Yes, that's right. I'm finally cool enough to listen to metal.) As critically beloved and awesome as Mastodon is, I don't expect it to be accepted in a work setting. It might just be considered a bit distracting.

Unfortunately for some reason, these songs do not affect my co-worker like they would a normal person. Usually upon hearing a song like "Lightning Crashes", I feel like someone is taking a dentist's drill to my ear drums, and then to my brain. From what I've surveyed from my friends, that song elicits similar reactions for them. So, I must understand that my co-worker doesn't find these songs offensive. The best I can do is to throw on my headphones and try to not let this affect my working relationship. Music, aside, we get along great.

A couple of days ago, his playlist of music gave me a grand idea. I asked my friends on Twitter to help compile a list of terrible alternative rock songs from the '90s. Most of my entries came from what I was hearing from my co-worker's computer, so one of my entries happened to be "December" - Collective Soul. My friends helped me get to about 20 songs before we stopped, and then I noticed that I had some new followers. I used to have my privacy settings set to have me verify all new followers but I decided to relinquish that since I don't really talk about anything all that private on Twitter, like my social security number and PIN numbers. So now when I get new followers, I am not informed who they are until I check on them. Somewhere during this list making session, I started being followed by a band, and not just any band. I started to get followed by the official Twitter of the band Collective Soul.

So somewhere during my list session, my mention of Collective Soul popped up on the public timeline, and I guess they thought I was a fan, which I'm obviously not. At least I hope that's what they thought. If not, I guess I should watch my back at all times, since I'm probably public enemy #1 on the list of Collective Soul, the most beloved band of all time. Hey, if I could survive them at the height of their powers as an awkward adolescent, I'm sure I'll be fine now. Bring your worst you inoffensive emotive band, I'll be ready.