Being Me

You know how, if you're quick and clever, you can catch an annyoing, narcissistic dickhead utter the phrase, "It's not easy being me"?

Well, it's Thursday morning, and it's officially your opportunity to be quick and clever because...

It's Not Easy Being Me.

At ten o'clock on Tuesday evening, Mrs. Apron and I returned from our foray into the snowy depths of hell known as Rhode Island for our decidedly non-vacation. We set sail in my wife's Honda Fit at 11:45am, stopping only briefly (about forty-five minutes) in da Bronx to see her former roommate and said former roommate's new baby.

Charming, both.

Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6:15am for my first day back at work in Ye Olde Mental Hospitalle since Christmas Eve day. I slip on the ice in the back alley and nearly fall on my ass whilst throwing out dog shit, and I think to myself what a terrible way to go it would be, had I went that way: lying there on the ice in back of my house, all mangled up like a broken, Jewish pretzel, clutching fervently onto a baggie of dog turds as if they were some kind of golden chalice or swag from a successful bank heist.

My Volvo was half-covered in snow and ice, and I started it and let it run with the ass-warmers, defogger, defroster, heater, and such work their magic for thirty-five minutes before even busting out the scraper. I had to access the trunk to get it, which truly began the It's-Not-Easy-Being-Me Adventure.

See, once I got the ice-scraper out, ya see, I set about de-icing the car. Which is a lot less exciting than icing a cake, or a stripper's nipples, I would (and have) imagine(d). When it came time to put the ice scraper back inside the trunk, I found I couldn't close the trunk. Well, it closed maybe 85% of the way, but the right side was grotesquely askew. Something was very wrong. But, at 6:45am, you kind of can't see shit, so I couldn't ascertain what the problem was. I figured it was something stuck under where the trunk hinge was supposed to fold, but, like I said, I just couldn't see, damnit. So I did what any Master's level individdle would do: I opened the trunk and slammed it down.

Repeatedly.

About, oh, I don't know, eight or nine times.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" I hissed loudly during attempt six, trying not to awaken the neighbors with a full-blown curse-attack. (Sidebar: they're considering suspending us at work for swearing-- in the chart-room, away from the patients. Isn't that fucking niggardly?) Anyway, the trunk, it would not close.

So, I immediately started having penny arcade fantasies of getting carbon monoxide poisoning while driving to work with the heater on and all the windows tightly rolled up. Surely exhaust fumes would seep through the gaping cracks in between the rear of the car and the trunk lid and kill me mid-way through my commute. This shit happens. I once read about a police officer in Maine who died in the 1960s because he had parked his car with its rear into a snowbank in a parking lot so he could write a report. The tailpipe got clogged with snow and the poor sonofabitch inadvertantly killed himself.

So, what did I do? Well, after slamming the trunk-lid down an additional four times, I resigned myself to a chilly commute, driving thirty-seven minutes to work with all of the windows down, in temperatures registering 31 degrees. At least I had the ass-warmer on.

Upon arrival at work, I got out and opened the trunk-lid again. Now that it was light out at last, I could see a huge hunk of solid ice wedged underneath the trunk hinge. I went bananas at it with the ice-scraper, beating the merciless blue fuck out of it.

"It was you all along, cunt-face!" I yelled, laughing as I went about my hacking business. Just then, one of my co-workers alighted from his vehicle and furrowed his brow at me. I waved. He waved back. No explanation needed. After all, we all just got our asses kicked by some serious-shit snow, so we're all a little bit off, and, of course, we do work at a mental hospital.

Fuckin' aye.