where were you
This morning, someone asked me where I was. They didn't even say "You know", even though not saying it was even worse than saying it. I realized I was dealing with someone who was just trying to be nice and say the right thing, so I spared them my most cynical and cruel rejoinders, merely replying as was the case...I was asleep. I was going to buy the Bob Dylan album that day and my psycho girlfriend called me and said "America's being attacked!" I asked her what she wanted me to do about it and hung up, then went to Figlio for Joe's eggs (one of the great dishes of that part of town), and watched the planes crash about eighty times, then went home. The year after that where I was was somewhere being asked where I was that day. And then you know what? The year after that, the same thing happened. And the next and the next and so on.
Then I stopped talking, just short of saying "eventually, today, six years later, I'm starting to think I'm going to be answering that question every September eleventh for the rest of my life, and that maybe we ought to just call it WHERE WERE YOU day", because that would be, you know, mean. But really, and you can tell I mean it because of the pitiable note of hope, maybe making the asking of "where were you" what's expected is the only way to get people to realize how OBNOXIOUS and REPETITIVE and ULTIMATELY MEANINGLESS it is. Yeah, some fanatics knocked a building or three down. Did ANYONE learn anything from it that made anything better AT ALL? That would be worth celebrating, but as a nation, our reaction was a million pejorative adjectives you can read anywhere on the internet. Not the least accurate of which is cowardly.
Also, this is the birthday of my mother-in-law, so Happy Birthday, Sue! I'm having a beer for you right now. Looking forward to having you down. And I promise not to ask you where you were.
This post brought to you by Pabst Blue Ribbon, selected as America's best in 1893, back when standards weren't what they are today.
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