barriomulas.com - Rent: Rain, Tires, and Super Powers

I have bad days all the time. It doesn't really make me feel any different than when I have good days. I guess you can say that though I acknowledge that everything seems to be going wrong, nothing gets done, or I have more work than what my allotted time permits me to accomplishing, none of this really makes me *feel* any different. I think I do a good job at separating myself from the "bad". "I'm" fine, even though the day can be shitty. I mean; you can feel totally dandy even though everything else around you is shot to hell, right? Why not?

Today was one of those days. A pretty bad day. But my mind and spirit is intact. And boy, is this Chet Baker CD pretty good.

Work was nothing but dilemma after dilemma. "We have a problem!" an employee would tell me as they barge into my office every 10 minutes. "So and so doesn't want to sign a document." "We have no more funds in that account." "So and so said this and that behind my back." "The world is ending." Bla bla bla. ("Crisis management" is something that I slap onto my resume, cause I'm just so used to disarming bomb after bomb.) I can stare an employee with an emotionless blank face as they tell me that shit's going to hit the fan. It's alright. Problems are there to resolve, right? ("Trouble shooting" is something else that I include on my resume's "skills" section.) I mean, that's what I'm good at. Sometimes I'm even looking for problems to fix. I won't - on the other hand - let my superiors know that there is a crisis until I have a solution planned out for it. It's worked out so far. I mean; I hate when people come to me with crisis but no solution.

Well, today was nothing but all of the above. Those gram crackers that I found laying on an employee's desk were pretty good, though.

Anyways; after a long day of saving the world, I notice that it's pouring rain as I'm leaving my office building. "Whatever," I thought. "It's been so long since I've really wet myself in the rain that it probably feels good. Anyways, I'm going to shower as soon as I get home, so no loss."

So I make my way to my car, soaking wet and notice a flat tire. I weigh my options: drive a quarter mile to the nearest gas station or change the tire in the rain. I opt for the first option.

While homeboy was changing my tire, I munched on a few mangoes that an uncle of mine gave to me when we passed each other on the street. I would peal them with my teeth and bite into them as if I was some sort of spider monkey. I didn't have anywhere to wipe my hand so I would just clean them off in my pockets. I ate maybe five of those little bastards as I pondered what my real life super powers would be. I identified the following:

Immunity to bug bites; they never bite me, really
The ability to change the tire with the snap of a finger; when I feel like it
An enhanced memory address; a computer term I stole, referring to my super human ability to remember things like instrument solo placements in a song I heard five years ago or the location of a specific CD stuffed into the middle of a large binder.
A sexual super power that I will not mention for the sake of web ethics.

I think one has no option but to think about stuff like this after 10 hours of office politics (and real politics, in my case). Looking around my environment I noticed the following:

It's a banana stalk hanging from a shelf of tires. I tried to take it without anybody noticing it but I had the flash on. Nobody seemed to care, though. I suppose that they were hung out to "ripen up" and are casually picked by the workers whenever they are yellow enough. Who needs health care and over time laws when you have free bananas!?