Home Stretch

The last days of school are upon me, and this is beginning to affect me in interesting ways. I've noticed my sentences getting longer and my patience getting shorter. My hours of sleep have all but vanished, but my hours of staring into space have increased exponentially. I've decided I'm getting basically the same amount of mental downtime. I'm wrong, but that's what I've decided.

Noticeably, however, the same phenomenon has been affecting the people around me. Today, after kicking the proverbial posterior of my final exam (Boo Yaah!) I retired to the library to work on my last assignment before I graduate (Boo Yaah-er!). About an hour ago, a couple guys were sitting at a study booth just around the corner from me. In eyeshot, but not making-you-feel-like-you-should-say-hello eyeshot. One of them was booting up his laptop, or at least that's what I figured he was doing. I was wrenched from my blissfully ignorant-of-the-world work zen (by which I mean head-on-desk catnap) by a garishly over-volume-ed Windows startup music.

This wouldn't have been so bad, really. It happens. I felt kinda bad for the guy. I remember it happened to me. You feel like you've ruined everyone else's day. Which, I suppose, you have. But people need to relax a bit, breathe, and re-establish their study-Chi on their own.

But about a minute later, another sound blasted out from the computer. It sounded like the Muslim call to prayer, except not the opening part, because there weren't as many "a"s and a lot more "ee"s and "oo"s. I don't speak Arabic, but it is a beautiful language and I'd love to fail hopelessly at learning it some day in the future.

But this time it was not so much beautiful as it was loud. And disruptive. And long. And I looked over, the guys chuckling to themselves. I thought one might have even looked over at me and snickered.

Instantly I felt embarrassed and self conscious. Why should I be mad, maybe he has that as his startup music...after the startup music? Why were they laughing at me? Was it 'cause I was napping? Maybe that was the part of the morning call to prayer that says "prayer is better than sleep"? How could I tell? Should I speak Arabic? Are they still looking?

Eventually, I arrived at a tried-and-true answer to most of these questions. It's an answer that has served me well for many of my ponderings and confusions. It goes something like this:

"Hoss, you're being an idiot."

That helped me feel better. Like I said, I'm running on a bit of a short fuse. But I'm also, after four years of this song and dance, getting pretty good at talking myself down from some of the smaller cliffs. An hour later, though, I'm still perplexed as to what possibly could have prompted that musical outburst. And unless one of them reads this post and lets me know, I shall forever be condemned to mystery and wondering.

Bummer.