Today is Broken

There’s something wrong with today. Am I the only who noticed this? My universe seems to be functioning within the manufacturer’s tolerances, but everyone else seems to be having a hard time of it. Well, not everyone. There is a group of people out there who always seem to walk on the edge of complete confusion. Most days these people somehow muddle through. You know the type, they get on the elevator without knowing which floor they are going to beforehand, then look at all the buttons in a perplexed, panicky horror. They just don’t think ahead enough. It’s as though they took the advice to “live in the moment” just a little too literally.

It doesn’t take much to send these already confounded folks over the edge. Usually a personal problem is the culprit. As such, their cataclysmic collapse into chaos goes generally un-noticed by the rest of us. But every now and then, you see it occur en masse. That’s when you know the day is broken. There’s just something wrong with the universe and the fragile state of their condition cannot withstand it.

Today I witnessed the aforementioned elevator problem. How exactly do two people get on an elevator, watch the doors close and then not know what to do next? I’m reasonably certain they have used an elevator before. How the hell do you not know that you need to know the floor number? I mean, isn’t that pretty much inherent in the concept of the elevator in the first place? Perhaps we need to put up large placards that read: “Warning! To use this machine, you must know why.”

On that same elevator ride, a different person moved their fingers around the buttons for at least 10 seconds searching for the “6” button. For a building with only 6 floors, that’s a pretty long time. He was articulating his thoughts as he searched… moving his index finger in circles over the panel of brightly lit buttons: “Where’s six? Ummm. Six? I can’t find six.”

IT’S RIGHT FUCKING THERE... NEXT TO FIVE!!!

I saw a woman struggling to open the door to the entrance of my building. She tried and tried but the door would not yield. I watched this for a while. After failing she attempted to think through her problem. She looked around for help, peered through the glass door. Looked up at the sky for a bit (perhaps hoping for some divine intervention) and after a long pause… she tried the same door again. You see, it’s a double door. There are two doors in this entrance, one of which is always locked. It never occurred to her to try the other door. So she was forced to stand there outside and wait for someone to come out. She simply gave up. The quandary with which she was confronted was simply too difficult.

Then there are all the occurrences of the little things, people not watching where they are walking, people spending 5 minutes negotiating a 45 point parallel parking maneuver only to see that they parked in front of a fire hydrant, and more generally just a lot of people walking about with their mouths open, looking nervously from side to side like a chipmunk in an owl sanctuary. I don’t know how these people get through life perpetually confused but they seem to manage it. They seem to have survived to adulthood somehow. But all it takes is for the day to be a little off, the universe just not quite right and it all falls apart like the Picaso-inspired house of cards that is their daily existence.

It must be exhausting. The world must look completely different to them. Colors, shapes and numbers must all blend together into sameness. It can’t be easy. Imagine trying to make change for someone when quarters nickels and dimes all look like silver pennies.