Dispatches from the Introverted Mind: Please Stop Talking
Too many sentences aloud make me want to set myself on fire.
Irma, my mother’s caregiver, asked me to buy a handheld blender. I said I would. Then Irma told me she needed the blender to make my mother homemade cookies, and that I should stop buying my mother store-bought cookies. I said I would stop buying them. Then Irma told me there were too many flies in my house. (She comes over once a week to take care of me, too.) I agreed, and explained that I had been trying to murder the flies several ways, and I didn’t know what else to do. She repeated that there were a lot of flies. At that point I had no choice but to go lie down. Too many sentences said aloud at once.
Yesterday I got a call from an unknown number. It was the new assistant for a guy I went to high school with, who was now a macher in Los Angeles real estate. She said she was going through his an old contact list. I said okay. She asked me if I remembered the macher. I said I did. She asked me if I wanted to be on his mailing list. I said sure. She asked for my email address. I gave it to her. Then she asked me if there was anything I needed from the macher. It was this last sentence that sent me into spasms of a dark rage, my brain pulsating. She, a stranger, had already interrupted my day with four unexpected…
