Best of Waiting for Squirrel ... Think!

From September 1, 2005:
I get my news from the internet - mostly Yahoo, CNN and Fox News (I like to compare and contrast). I'm thanking my lucky stars that I don't have cable television. Just reading the news about Katrina and her aftermath is hard enough. I've read exactly one victim's story since this began. It was about a man with lung cancer dying because his oxygen ran out. His common law wife had him wrapped in a sheet and lying on a broken door until help came. (I wonder if they are there yet?) That story was the end of the line for me. I can bear no more.

I think I have post traumatic stress disorder from 9/11. OK, it's not officially PTSD, but it's close. After 9/11 and the initial onslaught of reports, I didn't watch or read the news for a good eight months. I couldn't handle it. It made me sick. My reaction to the Katrina reports reminds me of that time. I get a knot in my throat and feel sick.

The first time I had an adverse reaction to violence/bad news was after a movie. While at UNCW, I went with my friend Cathy to see a movie called The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. It's a horrible movie, so I don't mind spoiling it by saying that the lover is killed. The scene was so graphic that I was repulsed by all violence for months.

So the last $23 of the $456 that I spent on books this week went to the Internationalist Bookstore for a little number titled Making Democracy Work Better. While there, I spotted the Think ... It's Patriotic button. Last one in the store and it's now adorning MY bookbag. But the actual point of the story is the interaction I had with the clerk. Here goes:

Clerk: Do I know you?
Me: Nope, don't think so.
Clerk: Not from UNCG?
Me: Yeah! I did go there. Cool.
Clerk: Sociology department?
Me: [quite cheerily] No, Social Work! Same building! [smiling like a cheerleader]
Clerk: Not sociology?
Me: Nope.
Clerk: You didn't take abnormal psych or deviant sociology?
Me: Nope. [But if I had, it may have helped me with this conversation.]
Clerk: No?
Me: No.

At this point, he puts my change down on the counter and turns back to his computer without another word. Hmmph. Intellectuals.