Y2K Revisited

Trump and his made for television clown car of appointees will make the threat of Y2K seem. . . well. . . exactly what it was.  But I'll get to that in a moment.  

It was another perfect day, so I went out into it once again.  First, the gym, of course, then a shower and I was ready for lunch.  I've been wanting to go back to that little Michelin Awarded (not starred) noodle place.  It was well past noon and working people's lunch time, but the place was still packed.  I got a cramped table for one in a corner by the kitchen.  I had brought my big Fuji GFX medium format digital camera with the brand new (used) hundreds of dollars adapter that would let me use my Canon lenses on it with full functionality--autofocus, iris control, etc.  

Have I lost you yet?  Still here?  

Have you ever had one of those days when everything about you seems off?  When your movements seem awkwardly robotic and your facial expressions don't quite feel right?  Maybe my goofy clothes were the problem.  I don't know, but I felt WAY off yesterday.  The waitresses were very, very cute, so maybe that was it.  Surely, though, it was the combination of it all.  I felt quite like a circus freak.  

Maybe it was carrying around that big camera with a big assed bag holding lenses and camera paraphernalia.  Feeling stupid, after I ordered and while I waited, I picked up the big camera and took out of the bag a case of magnifying filters that were not made for the lens that I was using, but they were larger in diameter than the lens, so I just held one up against it and did a little macro photography, just to see.  

Total nerd.

Shutter bug.  Photo geek.  But I had a new toy and had to play.  

When my lunch came, I took my phone out.  Of course.  What is eating alone if you don't send photos to distant friends?

The waitress who brought the food explained to me what I was eating and how to eat it.  I could feel my head flattening as she looked at me, my neck compressing.  I felt I was sitting in a hole pulling my head back to look at her.  I was glad, though, that she explained to me what was in the bowls and in the little dish, for I hadn't an idea.  

I looked across the room at a group of Asian girls, four of them, as they ate.  They were elegant with their chopsticks and knew what they were doing.  One picked up dry noodles from a bowl and washed them around in the broth of another.  I should be more adventurous in ordering, I thought, but I would need someone to show me what to do.  The girls were very pretty and I didn't want to stare, so I lowered my gaze to my food.  Should I use the chopsticks or the big wooden soup spoon?  I tried both.  With neither was I elegant.  

As I ate, I was thinking about a text I had gotten in the morning.  Y2K.  1999.  It was from Skylar.  It was a surprise, for I hadn't heard from her for some time.  I had been "cancelled," I knew, but I understood.  But this. . . .  The first night she stayed at my home was on New Year's Eve, 1999.  If you are a reader here, you know all about that and I won't revisit the evening but to say it shaped both our lives, even now.  BUT. . . I never, not once that I can remember, thought about the Y2K of it all.  Y2K was a joke to me even then.  Oh, there were lots of symbols of our relationship from car accidents to hurricanes, but for whatever reason, Y2K never made it in.  And now I wonder why?  Was it the end of one century or the beginning of another?  The 21st, I said, was hers.  So far, though, the century hasn't been all that.  Indeed, Trump and his clown car of made for t.v. cabinet appointees seem to be putting an exclamation point on things.  

Maybe we were, though, the two of us, infused with the Y2K bug ourselves.  

I'll have to watch the movie, I guess.  There may be some clues there.  

I have lingered too long now.  The new maid's crew comes today and the house is a littered mess of books and cameras and bric-a-brac that needs to find a home.  And so. . .