Beep. Beep.
This morning I woke up, and as I was getting ready, I heard the little round speaker I am using until I can afford real speakers beep intermittently from the living room, searching for its Bluetooth partner. Little round speaker’s beep is mid-range and hollow-sounding, and I’m not trying to play Wall-E on y’all, but with each new beep I felt a growing sense of sorrow. My cell phone’s union with the speaker last night made the most beautiful music, and when the cell and I went to bed, I assumed the speaker would shut off as it normally does after a certain period of time with no partner. This morning’s beeps spoke to me of those penguins who break away and head off in the complete opposite direction of their waddles, further and further up into the mountains, until they’re in the middle of nowhere without any penguins around, only to keep pushing forward into nothing. Those penguins with a sense of purpose that leads to their ultimate demise. Only this little speaker penguin was trying to find his way home. Beep. Beep. Had it been searching all night?
On my way to my physical therapy appointment, I wondered how I was going to work speakers into a conversation so I could talk about my experience this morning. (Just so I was prepared, I also had an ‘in’ with Bluetooth, cell phones, music, soul mates…) Would I need to hail a “listen to this…”, or would the conversation arise organically? Why was this so important to me?
Wouldn’t you know it, after the bridges, clam shells and leg lifts, my physical therapist started talking about speakers. Wait, what? No, seriously. So I told him what had happened. “You know I’m not your head specialist therapist, right?” is something he did not say. On a scale of 1 to Enjoy, I would say he 18 Liked my story. “Is it a big deal to you that your speaker would have paired up with anything with Bluetooth at the time?” He knows just how to work me.
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At work, it was Ricky’s day off, so I sat in his chair for the 9am meeting. There are not enough chairs around the conference table to go around, and since I was the last one hired, I have been relegated to playing musical chairs every morning based on who sits where and who’s out when. Today was arctic outside so we didn’t see much business. I lost my first deal. The truth is I haven’t made one yet.
I did start walking during my lunch hour at work. I walk from the dealership through three corporate yards over to my gym, where I then climb on the treadmill and walk at a speed of 4.2 and watch “Pitbulls and Parolees.” “Fixer Upper” is on on the TV directly above “Pitbulls and Parolees,” “Pioneer Woman” plays on the TV just to the left of the TV with “Fixer Upper” on it, and there is some dumb soap opera where everybody has been on there for about 100 years playing in the bottom left quadrant. My attention is primarily focused on “Pitbulls and Parolees,” which is great until some dog mom gets on there and starts talking about how this dog saved her life when she never thought she’d be able to go skiing again, and she is crying, and then they cut to the lady and her dog Sampson in skiis sliding down the mountain. I cry at those things every time, and you can’t just cry when you’re walking on a treadmill, you might slip, so I have been coaching myself — looking away, opening my eyes really wide, nodding with my head but letting my brain fly off somewhere else — and great news! I think I am becoming tear-resistant. But please do not try me.
My dad used to hit my brother with his open-faced hand right on the back side. He hit me, too, and while I would run around the house crying before he even laid a hand on me, my brother would look my dad straight in the eyes after the spanking and say, “I didn’t cry, did I?”
And now it is my turn to sit in my brother’s chair at the conference table and say to all of you, in regard to the sad little speaker and the doggies on TV, “I didn’t cry, did I?”
(Your line is “no.”)
