The Documentation of my Gradual Departure From Sanity

Right now, the Augie Choir is on tour in Tanzania and I am not. Because I'm just not good enough, damnit. Instead, I am sitting behind a desk on a Saturday morning waiting for the phone to ring. I think I might be going a little crazy, but it's hard to tell because many of the people who call the newsroom are a little crazy as well. They're not straight up nuts or anything obvious in a Beautiful Mind, hearing voices and "working for the FBI" kind of way...More of a vaguely unbalanced, "just ignore it, she's old " sort of way. I'm worried because I know I've always been teetering on the brink of sanity. Now, surrounded by the kind of company I've been keeping recently, it will to be hard to tell if I actually do slip over the edge. Read these few conversations I've had over the past couple weeks and see for yourselves what I'm dealing with.

Me: Newsroom, this is Caitlin.
Old Man: Hello, I have a comment or a complaint or I don't know what.
Me: OK...
Old Man: Well, there was a country music award program on a couple of nights ago and I didn't see anything about it in the paper yesterday...

-pause while I slowly realize he has already stated his entire complaint-

Me: Well, I don't know what to tell you...other than maybe there just wasn't room for it today...um...
Old Man: Well I don't know about today, I'm saying there wasn't anything about it yesterday and I just wanted to put my two cents in.
Me: All right. I'll make a note of that. Thank you for your feedback.
Old Man: You're welcome.

(The best part of that conversation was the fact that, when I said, "I'll make a note of that," I actually lifted a pen to my little notepad as though I was about to start pantomiming the writing of a pretend note. Like he could see me. See? Crazy.)

As you read this next conversation, keep in mind that the "man on drugs" sort of shouts everything he says, and most of the "words" described here as being "spoken" by me aren't so much words as indiscriminate mumbling that could be mistaken for frightened throat clearing:

I was walking down fourth street on my second day of work when a middle aged guy with bloodshot eyes turned onto the sidewalk at the same time as I did. Shoot, this will be a little awkward, I thought, but whatever. I'll pass him in a couple of seconds. Then, to my horror, he spoke:

Man on Drugs: I'm not following you or anything. Hopefully I'll pass you in a couple of minutes.
Me: (smile and nod)
MOD: I mean, it's nothing personal or anything. That's just the way it is. It would be kind of awkward if we just kept walking next to each other without anything to say.
Me. Um...that's true.
MOD: I'm going to have to cross the street here now. I mean, it's nothing personal...you're a very good looking woman...but it would just be awkward. Hey, at least I'm being honest.
Me: That's true.
MOD: (Heading into oncoming traffic on Broadway) I mean, have you figured it out? How to talk to somebody...?

And that was the last I heard from him. He might have gotten hit by a car. It was hard to tell because I was running away pretty fast. Does that make me a bad person?

More recently, a woman called to give me a piece of her mind about repeated errors in the pollen count the paper publishes.

Yeah, you heard me. The pollen count.

"Somebody needs to check that because the count on the Mayo Clinic Website and the one in the paper...well they never match up."

Frankly, I find the remarkable part of her complaint not to be that she cared enough about the pollen count to give me a call, but that she cared enough to check at least two different sources. More than once. I wonder why she waited as long as she did to complain. I can just picture her reading the paper, eating breakfast or something...maybe some oatmeal...and saying to herself, "OK, this has to end. I've kept my silence for too long. Today is the day I fix this. Today, I stand up for what's right. Today, I call in about the pollen count."

Whatever. She probably got a higher ACT score than I did. Which makes her a better person.

Somebody e-mail me and save me from myself.