Meccanized

I, Lindsay Mecca, accept that I have a problem…with Robert Pattinson.

Two problems, actually.

1)    I can’t get enough of him.  Those eyebrows.  The charisma.  And, oh, that hair.
2)    I can’t decide if I love him or hate him.

The first problem seems to resolve itself (or make itself worse, depending on your perspective) because HE IS EVERYWHERE.  You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Rob Pattinson likeness in some form.

The second…well, that’s a tougher issue.  On the one hand, he’s maybe the biggest tool in Hollywood (in and of itself a veritable toolbox) and I feel like I lose brain cells when I listen to him in interviews.  (Though he’s not as bad as Kristen Stewart, who I liken to a gaping whole on the screen where an actress should be.)  On the other…yum.  To elaborate, Twilight was scarily engaging, largely due to him and his Brando-esque charisma.  (Somewhere, Marlon Brando is rolling over in his grave…metaphorically, of course.  He’s too fat to turn over fully in that tiny wooden box.)

Yikes, I am being mean in this post.  For those of you who have never seen me mean, this is what it looks like.

Anyway, I see the faux-brooding and the questionable personal hygiene of the lanky, handsome Brit in question and think he is just asking for Meccanization.  Then my heart flutters a bit and I find myself shelling out $3.95 for a copy of US Weekly (ok, fine, $19.95 for US, People, OK!, Life and Style and Teen Beat) and I am suddenly struck by a strong urge to self-Meccanize.

Opinions?

Gentlemen, take note.

Lesson #1: If you are going to propose to a girl on a street corner with a Cheerio (I know my hands are small, but that is a little overboard), you can not throw the box at her when she walks past and ignores you.

Fortunately, Cheerios don’t stain. Awkward, however, leaves a lasting mark. And there are few things more awkward than getting hit with a cardboard box in the middle of the Mission and then having to crunch over pieces of cereal as you walk away…head held high.

This city’s endless supply of crazy, you are Meccanized.

For the past month or so, I have been uncharacteristically un-peevable, hence the stalling of Meccanized.  Fear not, dear readers, the happy spell has passed. Today, I experienced extreme rudeness that really ground my gears.

I was sitting in my usual seat on the bus home (by the front door) when a middle-aged woman with a cane approached the bus.  Before she even got on the first step (and before anyone sitting had the chance to get up), the woman rudely and angrily looked right at me and yelled “Jesus, you people are so selfish.  Is someone going to get up?”  Now, I am usually the first person to give up my seat (and I very much relish the moral superiority that goes along with that), but today I froze.  My reasons:

- There were 10 other people sitting nearby that could have gotten up.

- I had several bags with me, so standing and holding them all would have been challenging.  The other 10 people nearby had less in hand.

- This woman’s approach was really rude (and that rudeness was for some reason immediately directed at me), and I was partly stunned and partly unwilling to validate that behavior.

Was it worth the Karma points to let her win, stand up and deal with holding my heavy bags and not being able to reach the stability bar (ironically, being the bigger person)?  Would I go to hell if I stayed the course, kept my butt in the seat and waited for someone else to crack under the pressure?

I’m curious to know what you would have done.  I decided that no one has the right to talk to me that way and that someone else could give up their seat.  For about 10 seconds.  Where no one else got up.  At which point my moral strength (or pressure weakness) took over and I yielded my seat to the woman.   She didn’t say thank you and, actually, rolled her eyes at me as I stood there with all my bags.  I fumed silently and mentally composed this blog post to Meccanize her.

Maybe this is what I get for needing to sit near the front of the bus.

Yoo-Hoo.  Shorty.  Schmecca.  Meccalizer.  Tiny dancer.  I’ve had a wide variety of nicknames in my 25 years.  I can now add another one to the list:

PPH girl.

You know what that stands for?  Pesto-Parmesan Ham Girl.  You know who gave me that nickname?  The deli employees of Mollie Stone’s.

Full disclosure: I like pesto-parmesan ham.  I order a quarter pound of it pretty much every week.  I use it to make sandwiches and omelets and ham and cheese quesadillas.   And, sure, maybe it has been a few…months…since I have gotten any other deli meat.  But there are always different servers, so it didn’t even occur to me that anyone would notice.

Well, apparently, deli people talk.  And, also apparently, I am the only person who consistently orders pesto-parmesan ham.   Hence the nickname, “Pesto-Parmesan Ham Girl” (or PPH, for the cool kids).  In fact, the man who served me tonight told me that there was a bet going as to if PPH would finish the entire slab of meat all on her own (and how long it would take her to do so) — he could have been kidding, but I’m not so sure.

Of course, he told me this as he was slicing me a quarter pound of…what else…pesto-parmesan ham.  I felt compelled to buy something else at the deli counter just to prove that I couldn’t be pigeonholed that easily.  So, right now, I am staring at a container of salmon covered with mango salsa.  You know what that mango salsa has in it?  Cilantro.  Foiled again.

It alarms me that my life has become so routine that the local deli has a nickname for me.  It alarms me more that my inner-competitiveness is driving me to continue to order pesto-parmesan ham until I finish the whole slab (just to prove that I can).

You know what really winds me around the axle?  (Someone who shall remain nameless but who lives with my mom and answers to the name “dad” told me that I needed to find a new phrase for “grind my gears,” because, according to him, “when you read all the posts in a row, it gets a bit repetitive.”)

You know what really grinds my gears?  People who shamelessly self promote.

But I can handle grinding my own gears (and, by definition, I am kind of already Meccanized), so here goes:

I wrote a post for my company’s blog describing a cool PR experience I recently had with a client.   Check it out!

http://tinyurl.com/cotgje

Just a quick post before I go to sleep.

“Hearts of Palm.”  It was an item on my grocery list yesterday, important enough that it had its own line on my note pad.

I go to Mollie Stone’s.  I get my hummus without incident.  My yogurt with no problem.  My quarter pound of pesto parmesan ham sans difficulty.  All I have left to buy is one damn can of hearts of palm …

… which, of course, is on the highest possible shelf in the canned vegetable area.  I stare at it for a second, wondering if there is some way I can safely knock one down without hurting myself.  After vetoing that idea, I notice a 40-something man a little farther down the same aisle.  Like any civilian in need, I explain my predicament and ask him for assistance.

His response (before even getting me the can)?

“Wouldn’t this be a great story to tell our kids someday?  That mom and dad met because mom couldn’t reach a can of vegetables?”

An uncomfortable few seconds ensued.   I stood drinking in the proverbial big cup of awkward, a frozen half-smile on my face (a relic from the happier, normal times a few minutes before).  He made no attempt to pluck the can in question from the shelf for me.  I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, mumbled “oh, I forgot I need this,” grabbed the first can within my reach from the shelf and skittered away with my basket.

I just wanted some hearts of palm.  Instead, I got an unsatisfied craving and a can of creamed corn (yuck) that now sits on my counter silently reminding me of the discomfort of the afternoon.

I’m not even sure what grinds my gears about this.  Asking for help and instead getting an unwelcome pick-up attempt?  Asking for help and not actually getting help?  Having to go through my weekend without my hearts of palm fix?

All of it.  Meccanized.

From philosophical, back to petty and trivial:

Strangers (and friends … cough *Shelly* cough) who criticize my sandwich as I am having it made, you are Meccanized.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about timing (which I have Meccanized over and over again pretty much for my whole life).

This past week in particular, there has been a lot of timing snafus — I’ve felt like Little Bobby Buttons (i.e. Benjamin Button, for those of you who aren’t a certain industry analyst who misnamed the movie) fairly frequently. Some good (narrowly avoiding getting rained on because I opted to sprint across the crosswalk rather than wait for the next light, thereby making into my office building before it started pouring) some less than good (more just-missed busses than I care to admit, hearing things in the present that I wish I had heard years ago).

It’s sad to think how many things don’t happen or don’t work out because of a few ticks around a clockface. Then again, it makes the things that do work out that much more special, because you appreciate how close you could have come to never experiencing them at all.

… but jury duty really grinds my gears. Especially the way this state conducts its juror summons. I’ve ranted a lot about this today, though, so I will simply sum up my experience:

On the plus side:

- The jury assembly room is really nice (though the chairs are horrific. I think I permanently lost an inch or two from having to hunch in them all day, and those are not inches I have to spare.).

- The instructional video went down smoothly with a big heaping spoonful of irony. 2 minutes in when the narrator said “You may not get selected for jury duty. Don’t worry — it’s nothing personal,” I started laughing pretty loudly and didn’t stop for … oh … the rest of the morning.

On the minus side:

- There is very much a social hierarchy in the land of Civic Duty not dissimilar to high school. And, also not dissimilar to high school, I was not one of the cool kids. I was working the whole time, brought my lunch instead of purchasing food, and actually asked questions of the clerks in front of the room (I’m curious about our city’s legal system … so sue me!).

- Anyone you meet while serving jury duty is a fairweather friend. A very nice 40-ish gentleman sat down next to me at the start of the day. We chatted, discussed our work and our hopes and dreams — it was very pleasant. I thought we had a real connection. They called his name and excused him, and it was like I didn’t even exist. I got a hurried and incomplete “nice to meet y…” as he gleefully fled the building. I felt so discarded.

So, all in all, an annoying thing to have to deal with but not a totally terrible experience.

And I forgot the biggest plus: the recommendations for how I could get out of serving, my favorite of which was to swallow a bunch of coins so I couldn’t make it through the metal detector at the entrance to the court house.

Jury duty, you are Meccanized.