Berkeley Bowl, Ashby, Smog Check & Chipotle

I had one of those days today. You know: one of those days. Everywhere I went, I felt like an alien. And every person I saw looked to/at me like a zombie.

I found myself walking the aisles of Berkeley bowl, and if traveling for 12 days and then packing/moving/unloading for 24 hours straight upon arriving home doesn't give you an uprooted, displaced, where-the-hell-am-i feeling, then certainly produce shopping with your local brand hippies will. These people are straight whack jobs. Worse than the Trader Joes populace--for real. Yes, i know it's judge/mental. Moving on. My experience so paralleled a Don Delillo novel that I wondered a couple times if I was dreaming. The 25-year old woman behind the cash register, dressed in pigtails with little pink balls on her scrunchies, was running items over the scanner (complete with the traditional beep-beep chorus) while staring up into space and cracking her gum every five seconds. She literally looked like she was standing in the shower, letting the water wash over her scalp with that euphoric and other-worldly look on her face, while the woman buying every locally grown, organic product on the Berkeley Bowl shelves stood way too close to me in line. She smelled like patchouli. How quaint. Hippies consider themselves humanists, right? So why do their people skills suck? She even took my divider off the market run-way without asking so the checked-out checker almost mixed our items! Then the patchouli-smelling, dreadlock dangling diva had the nerve to look at me as if it were my fault.

Next I had the all-too-familiar and unpleasant experience of being stuck behind a left-turning car on the corner of shattuck and ashby for 10 minutes in rush hour traffic. Let me just say this for the record: all things ashby should be avoided except from midnight-4am on weekdays. Moving on. I witnessed 3-near accidents, one including a biker who thought he could dash the traffic signs and then screamed at the truck who almost hit him--a truck that had a green light and the right of way. I'm sure his pride about "saving the oaks" enables him to have the spiritual right away all the time, but tell that to the 6'9 tattooed construction worker who has now pulled his Ford F-250 over and is getting out to come have a word with the entitled cyclist. Fortunately the car ahead of me turned left before I had to watch the altercation ensue.

Next I take PSR's honda accord to get a smog check. Pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and efficiency of the man-behind-the-counter, I make the decision that my day is normalizing only to walk pass the Watchtower (or whatever the hell that scary magazine is called) sitting in the waiting area. Why is it that unwarranted friendly--the kind of friendliness that feels too good to be true because it always is in these cases--always seems to come with the desire to proselytize? Since I'm in no condition to convert to Jehovah Witnesshood, I decide to go down the street to Chipotle. Burritto in hand and handily prepared to distract myself from the hawaain-shirt wearing, loud-talking lunatics in the corner, I pull out my most recent obsession, a Philip Roth novel, only to discover way too many similarly silly narrative scenes waiting for me in literature.

Sometimes things feel so unreal that I have to write about them, just to stay sane. If you had the patience to read this: good for you and thanks. If not: I don't blame you and congratulations for avoiding my rant.