The phone repair guy was working from atop his "cherry-picker" perch when I left; upon
my return a day-glo orange tag on my door which I noticed in sudden dread (fearing the worst),
but no: "The trouble reported on your line has been located
and repaired." Hooray! It hurts, nowadays, when your Access is restricted - once restored, all is Joy.
My job takes place in a temporary facility, a "village" of trailers
connected by covered plywood walkways. In my trailer right now there's
just me and this other guy, my to-some-degree supervisor. I think he
was indirectly attempting to address my anti-social tendencies yesterday
when he started talking about a grim yet aloof co-worker's performance
at a birthday get-together after work a while back (although I was there,
I missed this, since I was naturally among the first to leave - it was at
a sports bar - get me out of there!) He said this co-worker was usually
so quiet (and frankly, "cold"), and how they had to get some beers & shots
into him to loosen him up - then, of course, there was the unspoken urge
to get his new, shockingly social yet annoyingly drunken personality back
into the bottle. I think this guy (my supervisor) finds my lunchtime
habit (of slipping away to read while eating alone) disagreeable and would
like to confront me about it, but I didn't accept the bait; I kept the
conversational focus entirely on the exterior co-worker. He's of the more
nominal human personality who likes to eat with someone, and I'm the
nearest, you see... and I especially dislike eating with co-workers: lunch
is recess, time to get away. As for the drinks, there's been periods in my
life when I've found myself among people who think just getting me drunk
would be some kind of improvement - they don't know how I suffer from
hangovers; how opposed I am to avoiding that ghastly, wasted-next-day
feeling.
Here's a term the younger set has embraced, which I detest: freakin'.
(Or friggin'.) It's the polite, British way to use the f-word (they also use "effing").
I think it's wimpy - just say "fuck" if that's
what you mean. Go ahead, curse like a longshoreman - you won't shock
me, or anybody else in 1998 - we've heard it all. My reading of cussin'
is a curse is something harsh used in time of stress, which would never be
said in a more guarded, composed moment. To use this code-word in polite
conversation has no meaning therefore, than to take up space and make its
speaker feel tough - but it's a failure - the word's too silly.
I'm trying to assess if this applies to any of my own behavior - the only
coy usage of the F-word in my vocabulary are a couple abbreviations:
- I say BFD for Big Fucking Deal, and
- "It's a BFT!" for It's aBout Fucking Time!