A life-ier morning than normal everyday morning life
We're taking a break from the intellectual blogging for a second and instead going into a terribly written narrative experience of a part of my day that felt life-ier than normal everyday life.
A shitty day awaits when I must go to the USPS. Not just to deliver mail, but to get my passport renewed. Lines. Queues. Lines and queues; damnnit they're the same thing but there's so many of them that it feels like the same damn'd thing. I found myself a nice chair and pulled out my copy of Principles by Ray Dalio. I tried to pull out my laptop to work but it was dead. I'm glad.
I was 45 minutes early for my 12:45 pm appointment. About half an hour later, I overheard my line neighbors talking about how they were an 11 am appointment and the people from 10 am hadn't even got called up yet. I packed my bag and left. Sunk cost, I guess. I made my way downtown via the SEPTA to Everyone's racquet. Usually I shimmy through the revolving gate and save myself $2.50. I saw a homeless man do it once and I followed suit. Apparently the max fine in Philadelphia for this kind of thing is $20 anyway, so the risk to reward ratio checks out. At the 30th st station, there's only one gate and the rest of them are the big open/close doors that you can't shimmy through. There was not just one security guard but two. I reluctantly paid my ticket.
The guy at Everyone's Racquet charged me $41 for my strings. If I remember correctly, last time it was $30. Guess the different strings I got really jacked up the price. It threw me back for a second because I've never paid for $41 strings. That's 1/5 the price of the racquet. The front deskman was a chubbier older Bodega type guy who was yapping for a very long time about the different types of Babalot racquets and how all the people who tried to string themselves messed the racquet up. "Messes the racquet up real bad... real bad...", he nodded as he handed it to me after my credit card payment for $41 went through. I still heard him talking about it to the next customer as I left the store.
I had to walk from 12th street to 17th street next to pick up some hemmed clothes. I had a short and Jun had three items, so we split the work to have Jun go on the way there and for me to pick them up when they were ready. I didn't feel like listening to any music or my audiobook, so I landed on just spinning the racquet between my hands to entertain me on the way there. Somewhere around 14th street, a random older guy in some oversized dark grey attire and orange shoes made a funny snark comment about my racquet. He then started trying to walk across the street early. I love j-walking (the authenticity of a j-walker is not to be misunderstood) so I walked at his pace and we kept up a conversation. For some reason, we ended up walking until Rittenhouse together. From what I gathered from that highly awkward and quick-paced conversation: he is on a business trip to Philadelphia but lives in South Florida, where he is a baseball and tennis coach part of the time; he ran a firm called Lincoln Financial something which was a stock brokerage that collected 10% commission fees on investments; he had been doing it for "100 years" aka ~1985; his daughter was working for him now and his son will work for him once he graduates George Mason University, where he plays baseball for the team; he likes to go on night walks but thinks Philadelphia is too dangerous to do that so instead he was walking during the day. When I got to my destination, I told him he was an odd guy and said goodbye. We shook hands for our goodbye mid-walk and he told me his name with earnest, sparkling old eyes. I forgot his name. He never looked back.
I think I had a love at first sight moment with the cashier at the store. She must have been 5 or 10 years older than me but had a pretty smile and a kind air about her. That's pretty much all I have to say about that.
The first SEPTA bus guy didn't let me on without cash since I didn't have a card. Damn'd a-hole, but hey, he was doing his job well. Reminded me of Ronnie, aka my professor who gave me three zeroes and the worst participation grade ever since I skipped all of 7th grade gym. The second driver was nicer. I quickly realized that this bus was heading towards the Wissahickon station and not 40th street, so I managed to pull the yellow wire a bunch and jump out near 30th st. Craps. I was far away from my dorm and without water and that dumb 30th st station would make me pay another $2.50 to SEPTA back. A thought struck me... maybe the passport queue would be closer to 12:45? It was about 2:30 pm at this point. I made my way back to the post office and after some asking, I found out the guy who was set for 12:15 pm was just getting called up. I suppose a very angry mother on line overheard, and so she yelled "I mean at this point it's first come first serve!" and proceeded to point her fingers at the orders of people in which she viewed would be the new line order. This could be bad. "Okay ma'am, I'll just follow the status quo", I said in an effort not to incite her. Little did she know... I was definitely going to be claiming my 12:45 slot and getting out of here. So I pulled out Principles by Ray Dalio and read along until the USPS worker called for 12:45. I resisted the urge to look behind me in fear of a potential battlefield with the angry mother. A life lesson I hope I learned early was never to celebrate too early, lest your winnings be taken before they're even given. So I walked ahead in pretend obliviousness and sat down to claim my spot. About 10 seconds later I decided to look the other way and saw these demon eyes staring intensely at me. I looked away, and went on with my day.
The pictures you'll find decorating the basement halls of the USPS passport office. All of them filtered to an unjarring greenish-blue.
A moment of appreciation for a nice walk back to Penn's campus.