Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The universe is stalking me

Not like I feel as if the universe is following me around everywhere I go, everybody feels that. It's standard human paranoia.
What I mean is that the universe is actually stalking me, and probably out to get me.
See, the other day I went to buy new shoes. I walked into the shoe store and the overly helpful salesgirl bounded up and asked me if I need help.
I said I was looking for comfortable walking shoes. The ones I was currently wearing were completely worn through. (Yes, I walked holes in the bottoms of my shoes. It's possible, it just takes a lot of walking).
She steered me towards the correct corner of the store and let me browse for a few minutes. Once I had picked up and admired all of the shoes she came over again and I asked her if she could me this shoe in my size.
She smiled and asked what size is that.
I shrugged, since I didn't know. So I took off my shoe and looked in the tongue.
Would you believe me if I told you that my European shoe size is 42?
Well, it is.
That suddenly brought it all home to me.
Over the weekend I didn't check my emails or anything. So when I logged in this week I was expecting a lot of unread mail.
What I wasn't expecting was the exact number.
That's right. The window title proudly proclaimed that I have 42 unread emails.
On Sunday a few weeks ago I went to the gym, and when I was done I was kinda hungry. Fortunately there is a little café on the premises. I'd never been to this café before, and took my time poring over the menu, looking intently at all the sandwiches and trying to decide which one I want to eat.
Finally the guy at the counter asked me what I want. I randomly chose a sandwich from the list. I'm still not entirely sure what was in it. Some kind of cheese and tomatoes, also pesto and some other green stuff.
Anyway, I payed the man and he gave me my receipt. While I was waiting for my sandwich I idly glanced at the receipt in my hand. It had the name of the establishment, the name of the waiter, my order and the menu number of my order.
Sure enough, my random sandwich was menu item number 42.
And it gets even worse.
Last week I went to go buy new pants.
Now, the store that I went to sells cheap pants, but it's hard to find the correct size.
Not because of the selection, but because of the whole size system.
It's not like the sensible American system where you have 2 numbers, one for your waist and one for the length. The numbers make sense too, because they are precisely those measurements in inches.
Not here. They were using some weird European system where each pair of pants has a single number, which is supposedly the size of the pants. The numbers don't seem to correspond to anything in particular, just a random integer between 36 and 60. Usually an even number.
I have no idea whether this is the waist, the length or some strange computation of the two. The numbers seem to have no bearing on the physical description of the pants, yet they are clearly the pants' size. And even then, two pairs of pants bearing the same number are not necessarily the same size.
Anyway, at long last, after many trials and many errors I found a pair of pants that I liked and that mostly fit me.
I looked at the size, and sure enough, they were size 42.
I don't know what this means, only that the universe is probably up to no good and should get a ticket for stalking.
Hmm, all this writing made me hungry.
I think I'll go buy a sandwich.

1 comment:

  1. It might not be the universe, Max.. it could be the ghost of Douglas Adams!

    -UAPGS

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