When the Assman Testifies!

Maybe I do this because I like to write, but sometimes, when I am bored, I find myself describing what is going on around me as though I am narrating a book.

Am I the only one to do this? Am I weird? I mean, I know I am weird, but are other people weird like this too?

I'll give an example. I work at a company that specializes in people dressing up in colonial era costumes and providing entertainment to Philadelphia tourists. I don't engage in the dress up, (they do make me wear a polo though... rrrrr), but I spend my day in the company of silly looking men and women.

This... but somehow sillier.

So the other day, when I was sitting around waiting for one of our programs to start, I found myself again narrating my surroundings. The problem? Once I started narrating I realized exactly what was going on around me:

I was perched on a high wall of the original 2nd Bank of the United States, which, coincidently, looks like the parthenon, surrounded by wooden muskets sweating so hard in the heat that I was actively losing weight. Thomas Jefferson was standing in front of me, cap at a jaunty angle, checking his blackberry. A hornet the size of a small eagle was noisily attacking, and then eating, a locust above me in a tree, and a German family was loudly and angrily changing a baby's diaper behind me.

Excuse me, universe... at what point did my life become a bad acid trip? If a purple unicorn had blasted up out of the ground and pronounced me Duke of Transylvania in Sean Connery's accent, would that have thrown me off at all?

Image of purple unicorn removed because it was too awesome.

The reason I am writing all this is because, despite how ball bustingly insane that particular narration sounded, it was JUST ANOTHER DAY AT WORK!

It is amazing to me the things that we can get used to, the things that can become normal. For most people having Benjamin Franklin tell you that he "likes eating clams... Bearded Clams" and then winking, would be a soul shatteringly strange experience, one that would, at least, result in years of therapy.

For me... it was just another Tuesday. Granted it was a soul shattering tuesday and they just don't make water hot enough to wash away the memory of one of our Founding Fathers making that antiquated double entendre, but it was still just office banter.

I'm sure there are lots of things people are asked to get used to, situations similar to mine. Another example, people in Finland walk past this sign every day and probably never crack a smile:

He is number 2, because I am number 1. *

I guess it is a testament (see, the title isn't random, I'm tying it together, muthafuckahs!) to the human spirit. We get through what we have to get through and, with enough patience, we can accept and overcome anything.


But just pray you never have to hear Ben Franklin say some of the things I have heard him say... Jesus Christ.

*photo by Gracen