Engagement and the Retired Thug

My friend Angela recently had a Netflix and Chill day date that she was very excited about. Whenever she tells me about a new beau I hold my breath, because she is a notoriously bad partner picker, primarily because she is a heavy proponent of thug love. And I have been here through all of them: the trapper, the rapper, the swinger with OCD. Before she even got started with the story, I was already preparing myself for the BS. 

Apparently, this guy is not a thug...he's a retired thug. He's gone legit everybody, making gourmet food for a laundry list of clients. She said that he opened her car door for her and was a real gentleman. He actually sounded like he may not suck until she told me that he is engaged. 

I swear, anything flies in Atlanta. How do you date someone who is engaged?! I know that people are grown and that they are going to do what they are going to do, but Angela's baby daddy was a cheater. She has been cheated on before. I brought this to her attention and her response was, "Yeah, I felt some type of way about it. But I'm bored."

?

She assures me that the retired thug is nothing serious. She says he has proven that he can't be taken seriously because he is engaged and dating. That's the understatement of the season! As I continued to listen to the deets about the day date, I thought about his fiancé who was possibly snuggled with him at that very moment. I also thought about the boulder of karma that could be rolling full speed at my friend's face. Listen, when I was younger and did something stupid that was karma-able, I would dedicate some months to the universe for forgiveness. These days, I try to stay on the straight and narrow. I don't have months to give away! And neither does Angela. I see this going nowhere fast, hopefully. It's hard to watch friends you loved do dumb ish. 

The 20 Year Itch pt 2: Merch

So, yesterday I logged on to Facebook, minding my own business, when I came across a post from a Toni, a woman that went to high school with me. She's on the planning committee for our 20-year reunion. She did a post to let us know that the Target closest to our old high school sells the high school's merchandise, and we would also be able to purchase high school merch (t-shirts, hoodies, etc.), at the reunion! Yay! 

I stared at this post blankly for like five minutes. It astounds me how different other people's high school experience was from mine. When I think of high school, I think of bullying and being immensely unhappy. I think of how this high school was one of the last ones in Georgia to take down the Confederate Flag from the flapping proudly in its lawn...I think. Well, I assume it's down now. Back in the 99s and 2000s when I was there, the parents had voted to keep it. Can you imagine being 15 and Black trying to explain to a 55-year-old White teacher why the Confederate Flag is problematic?! There are no memories from this place that make me want to put on a tank top with the high school's mascot plastered on it, believe me. 

Oddly enough, Toni had reached out to me a few weeks earlier via Facebook message, asking me directly if I was coming to the reunion. She and the committee were trying to figure out how much food to get and what venue to book. Toni was always cool with me. We were in remedial math together. But my instinct to reading that message, which was very sweet by the way, was to tell her to kiss my ass! I wanted to ask her why she was so eager to celebrate this nightmare? Could my poor Black experience had been that much different than her middle class Asian one? I guess so. If it had not been, she would have known to not even waste her time reaching out to me at all. 

Merch. Incredible! 

Oh, and I didn't tell you the best part: Bradley Barker is on the committee too! This for me is truly unbelievable. Bradley was then what he is now: a fat, Anime-loving, horribly dressed weirdo. This boy was made fun of so badly for being himself that I used to wonder if the student body was in cahoots to make him lose his mind! He was socially rejected and lost every SGA office race you could possibly run for! I should know, I was his campaign manager for his race for Regional President of a club we were in together. I guess 20 years has erased these memories for him, because he is now posting on social media posting about reunion ticket sales. What?! The boy had been so hurt about losing the Regional President race that he literally cried in my lap! 

I can't wait until the reunion goes down so that the publicizing for it will end and I can stop being traumatized whenever I go online. I try to pretend like high school didn't happen, and I'm eager to do that for the next 20 years. 

COVID Brain

Question: has society become completely inept?

I only ask this because, as I go through life trying to handle business and participate in adulting, I notice that those that I am communicating with seem to have no idea what is going on. They never know what I am talking about. They can never find the email. Everyone at the call center has different info on their screens. Nothing is being shot with troubleshooting. All the agents are giving is the verbal equivalent of a shrug, whether your warranty is up or not. WHAT IS GOING ON? There can't be something in the water because there has been something in the water. I have noticed that there has been a significant lag in humanness since COVID. 

A long time ago, a breast cancer survivor came and spoke to the organization I volunteer with. She said that, because of the chemo she had gotten, she was very forgetful. She said that people would walk up to her, tell her about times when they'd gone out together and hung out, and she could not remember them. This is called Chemo Brain. I think that working America is suffering from COVID Brain. A mixture of being allowed to chill too hard for too long mixed with the nostalgia of receiving stimulus checks has made those required to be even mildly produce completely unproductive, and let me tell you something, I CAN'T! 

Sadly, I do not have the temperament for the neverending runaround that has become trying to get something done in the post-COVID world. This means that I have a frustration-induced anxiety attack whenever I need to contact the bank or anyone's customer service line. It's like walking on eggshells! I hope that the flow of life straightens this...situation out naturally. Every professional interaction I have can not continue to end with me screaming.