Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Mr. Smith Steve Goes to Washington School

MrSteve finally made good on the threats he's been making for as long as I've known him and quit his job. So for a number of weeks now Melle, the bartender and I have been experiencing "No Rant Steve". Where once we could count on our Thursday nights being filled with vitriolic anti-Bush, anti-sports or anti-traffic discourses peppered with lists of reasons why everyone he works with should kindly perish, we are now subject to mock-ignorance of the daily grind ("Work? I don't understand this word you are using.") and cheerful recollections of his free time experiments ("I made my cat yawn!"). He's very happy now. It is oddly disconcerting.

This confusing change of disposition may or may not continue. MrSteve has decided to use his break from gainful employment to obtain a Masters degree. He's been very excited about this, whereas I've been very excited about the prospect of his being assigned homework. For some reason I'm quite amused by the whole going back to school thing.

Today MrSteve came downtown to have lunch with me before heading over to the library in hot scholarly pursuit. "Have fun at school," I quipped. "Do you have your backpack? Do you have your sack lunch? You don't want to miss your bus!" I started skipping in place, pretending to be Steve on the way to school with his lunch bag.

He glared at me. "I was bringing lunch in a bag and taking the bus before you were even BORN!" he retorted. This is 100% true.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Is that supposed to be insulting to...me?" I am, after all, about to turn 30 in five days.

He paused to think. "Damn it!"

It's good to have you back, MrSteve.

2 comments:

mrsteve said...

Wow. Four new posts in three days. And to have myself featured as the subject in one of them. I'm deeply flattered.

As for my former coworkers, I got along swimmingly with nearly all of them. It was only a couple who rankled.

However, I did not wish any of them to "parish". Does that mean you try to force them to join a different church?

- S

amberance said...

Bah! Stupid spell-check that can't fix my spelling if there's another word just like it. It's fixed.