The Dirt Field

[1] On Monday, some tremendous asshole person in the parking lot of my office opened their car door into mine and left scuffs and red paint. I love my car and try to keep it pristine, so this was very upsetting. By Tuesday, attempts to locate the perpetrator had failed and I whined to a friend by email, saying that it had made me cranky for the past two days. He replied, “Somewhere in Africa, a child is without food…”

[2] When I got home from work today, I asked the dogs, “Ready to go outside?” But then I stopped for a moment to put my groceries away and when I turned around to the open door of the refrigerator, Scout was trying to find a way to climb in. I guess when you are blind and it is winter, an open door through which cold air is coming seems like the way outside.

[3] I had lunch with my father today. We wrapped up the meal by comparing grisly murder stories from recent news. I think my “fifteen year-old girl kills nine year-old girl to see how it feels and subsequently journals that it feels amazing” was trumped by his “man kills his wife on a camping trip with their young children and waits until he is allowed supervised visitation with the children at his home before locking the social worker out, killing the children with an ax, and burning the house down” story. People are great. So was lunch.

When I went to get out of his car (he’d picked me up from the office in his fancy car…apparently the obsession is hereditary), I moved to turn my seat heater off. “That’s the wrong button,” he told me. “You just turned on your seat cooling fan.”

I stared at him before replying, “And somewhere in Africa, a child is without food.”