I’ve been going to the Post Office a lot lately. Mostly just to hang out. The vibe at the post office is specific. Like looking through a digital camera from 2002, but at day-to-day life rather than an Abercrombie-saturated party. All the colors are muted, it’s quiet but still chaotic, you have to wait in line…I meant it when I said specific. It’s purgatorial and nostalgic at the same time, your bored ass waiting not so much for the line to move as waiting for smartphones to pop into existence and fill your every waking moment with brightness and vibrancy and all the other present-day manifestations of Aldous Huxley’s greatest fears. Then, of course, you remember that you didn’t step through a wormhole into 2002, and it only feels that way, and it’s actually 2022 and smartphones have popped into existence, and you numb yourself by playing Instagram reels with poor closed captioning on mute.
Other things like this!
- Dealing with a printer, scanner, or copy machine.
- Reading a magazine on an airplane. Especially if there are pictures in it of people surfing.
- Using a gas station bathroom when it’s cloudy.
- Walking past a Little League baseball game.
- Grocery shopping at Randall’s.
- Eating at Burger King.
- Walking a carpeted hallway at the airport that isn’t stained but is reverse-stained where the stain remover either bleached a spot or made the spot too much cleaner than the rest.
- Touching a DVD.
- Finding a copy of Catcher in the Rye at the bookstore with a library checkout log still in it and that weird plastic film on the cover so it could be passed down through 21 straight remedial freshman English classes.
- Orange County.
