it's all about the benjamins baby

Incidentally, the walk from the SBahn station to my house is a rather lengthy one, of about 16 minutes. Now I know, walking for 16 minutes is not necessarily that taxing, but if you are me (which I hope you are not), this means that a certain measure of planning must be done, before any undertakings that happen to be located outside the patch of area between my house and said SBahn station, can be undertaken. What this implies, is that because of the distance, time taken and the imperative nature of planning, I am not able to roll out of bed, and throw myself across the distance with untied shoelaces and a group of actions I named “staggering-while-rummaging-and-doing-my-hair-badly”. The 16 minutes require commitment. If I happen to be late, I am left stood staring after the train, having hiked there, probably in a state of half-sleep, extremely annoyed because now I have to wait in the cold, after rushing needlessly, probably being laughed at by all of the other regular train waiters present, when I could still be at home. In bed. The essential difference is, had I been late for, say, a bus about 4 minutes away, I would have been able to brush it off (in a fit of denial) as an intentional early morning stroll, and gone back home to wait for the next one.
So from this negative starting point, comes a litany of negative embellishments, that make the walk to and from the train station unbearable for me.
So, needless to say, I have a certain strong dislike or hate for the 16 minutes, on principle. The scenery presented is unbelievably ratty and vexing, in addition to being peppered with lamp posts in in-the-way places, and weird pavements that disappear, making an erratic pattern of movement inevitable due to the number of times one has to cross the street in search for the continuing pavement.

The result of this rather lengthy exposition is, that it was 12.30am, I was cold, and embarking once again on the dreaded 16 minutes. My normal method of coming to terms with it is a mixture of listening to my iPod, and employing a walking style I call “the bop”- wherein I walk bouncily, and try to convince myself that I am indeed walking on sunshine. Whatever the case, on the day in question, I happened to be on a rather long stretch of pavement that cummulates in a curve, shrouded in darkness. I had my earphones on, and quite unexpectedly shuffled to the song “Tip of the Iceberg” by Owl City. A song that is quite literally made of sugar. The temperature inexplicably increased, the deserted street seemed to glow with light. In the heat of the moment, and with the energy that the song gave me, I felt an ill-advised exhalation. I started skipping and singing along at the top of my voice, rounding the spectacle off with a series of pirouettes that were accomplished with great vigour, and brought me, hands horizontal, spinning at a great enough speed as to make my hair spin parallel to my arms, closer to the end of the road.

Somewhere in the middle of the particularly sugary bit of electronic composition, I kicked into overdrive, and spun and spun and spun and spun and- wait, there was a weird blob in front of me- spu-n- and yes. There was indeed a man and a dog about 3 metres outside of spin radius. Ah…oh, what? After a brief lapse into confusion, I decided it was time to think. Salvage what was left to salvage of the situation, with the least bit of awkwardness. I determined that from distance the man was from the corner, he must have been a witness to most of my singing and dancing. I could not just stop spinning, because that would make the situation even more awkward than it already was. I decided, therefore on a course of action that would result in the minimum embarrassment. I thought 2 more, slower spins would make it seem like I was actually deciding to stop my prancing about, and not actually admitting that this was indeed a highly awkward situation.

After I had slowed down to a bumpy-stumbly stop facing the person, I was able to fully assess the situation. It was a man, his eyebrows in his hairline, and a hat, loosely balancing on his head, and a dog on a short leash that was sniffing the snow. To add insult to injury, it occured to me that a third pary had been conscious of my blunderings; a car that had evidentally come around the corned with its headlights on me. There was a strange burning sensation that spread over my whole body, concentrating however on my face.

Perhaps it was the overload in humiliation and annoyance that made me say the subsequent words, or maybe it was my innate ability to make already uncomfortable situations infinitely more uncomfortable. I stood rooted to the spot, and utterd a noisy “Uh, yeeeaaaaah”, before I uprooted myself, and hastily tried to bypass the man and dog, ignoring any looks they might shoot me. This bypass involved steering onto the snow, as the man and dog occupied the entire pavement between them. I then proceeded to awkwardly scale the icy face of the snow as fast as I possible could, to get away from the the man’s mocking eyebrows. Wobbling and half-slipping a bit, I managed to get back to the pavement, and then ran home as fast as I could.

I am happy to report that the rest of the way home was completed without further incidence.