The China Match

So before I tell my story about what happened today, I first want to share one from… musta been five or so years ago at this point. Geez. Anyway it was late in the summer and my family and I had been doing some yard work — my parents love yard work more than they love me — and Dad’s like forty-year-old hacksaw just wasn’t cutting it (get it? get it?) because it had gotten really dull. This being late July and Dad’s birthday being early August, I decided to get him another one as a present. Now I think I had a car at this point but I decided against taking it, because there was a hardware store about four walking minutes from my house, and in what is certainly the exception that proves the rule in Texas, driving just didn’t seem worth it.
So I walked over to Breed and bought a rather sizable hacksaw. Maybe three or so feet long? Big orange one. Thing was, of the short walk home, about two minutes of it had to be spent walking down Bee Caves, a pretty well-trafficked road. Considering that it was five in the afternoon at that awful, awful light by the Walgreens, traffic was naturally backed up for about half a mile. Come to think of it this means that Austin traffic engineers have done nothing to ameliorate this intersection’s traffic problem for at least five years. Huh. Anywho as I was walking past all the stopped cars on Bee Caves and I noticed that nearly everyone was looking pretty intently at me. After a second I realized this was probably due to me carrying a big ol’ hacksaw, which not only didn’t have a bag or anything obstructing it from view but moreover didn’t even have a blade cover. I recognized the sight of this might be a little odd, hence all the people staring at me, and so it made me smirk a little bit.
That was a problem, though, because as soon as I started to smirk, I realized now I’m the kid carrying a big hacksaw and looking quite pleased with himself. Which made me grin. Which looked even creepier. Which I also recognized, but found even funnier. So I smiled more and more, and quickly wound up with this absolutely huge maniac-grin on my face, walking within a foot or two of these cars, carrying a saw. If I recall correctly I may have even laughed out loud a little bit and there was nothing I could do to stop myself because the fact that I was happy was what was (indirectly, through the increasingly-horrified looks of the drivers) making me more happy.

So today, my Ipod rickroll’d me on my commute home. For those of you unfamiliar, to be rickroll’d is to have this song, usually accompanied with this video played to you when you don’t expect it. The two most popular rickroll videos have a combined sixty or so million views on them. People rickroll each other a lot. So yes, my Ipod was on shuffle in the first time in forever, and after ten songs Rick Astley began crooning about how he just wants to tell me how he’s feeling — just wants to make me understand he’s never going to give me up, etc etc.
Now: why, you might fairly ask, do you have this song on your Ipod in the first place, Kevin? To which i would shamefully be forced to admit that back in the day my friends and i would occasionally rickroll passerby from our vehicles, because we were stupid and we felt it our duty to make sure everyone in the city heard “never gonna give you up.” Needless to say my Ipod is pretty old and I guess I just never actually took it off.
So yes, I was about to get on the 1 when I got rickroll’d, and I immediately laughed out loud at the pure bizarrity of hearing Mr. Astley on the swarming platform of the chinese subway system. It was just completely, completely unexpected*
I cracked up. Which immediately prompted the six nearest people — I did, in fact, count — to wheel around on the platform and just goggle at me. Which lead to a rush of perspective which subsequently put me back into that feedback loop that I just spent like 600 words describing so I spent a solid four or so minutes on the subway home just trying and failing not to laugh (for whatever reason, it never occurred to me to turn Rick off). It didn’t at all help that halfway through it, I remembered the hacksaw story. So now my fellow commuters may think I’m somewhat of a lunatic but it’s fine; just because I ride the same train with them at the same time every afternoon does not at all guarantee that i’ll ever see any of them again. Not even sarcastic. It’s a funny world…

*For those of you who’ve read the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy series, if I had at this point tripped over something, I definitely would have missed the ground.