i (prepare for shocking personal revelation!) am a neurotic, vaguely obsessive compulsive person. (fake-deep Rick Moranis voice: FOOLED YOU!) how else can you explain the way i ritualistically engage in the identical lunchtime routine day in and day out for, well going on 6 mos. now? sure, i had to up my daily BMT quotient from .5 to 1 (feet) due to the rising demands of hunger, but my lunchtime is a painstakingly crafted oasis of ritual comfort in the middle of a day that is either boring (85% chance) or extremely vexing ([100-85]%). lunch is a time when i am in control and can indulge that control down to the tiniest (and therefore most important) detail. i had, i think, pretty much reached the pinnacle of lunchtime efficiency and, by careful planning of when i took my break, largely managed to avoid the worst of the sandwich makers. but lo, this safety blanket of mine was rudely snatched last Friday by an innocent (or not so innocent?) question.

i was silently congratulating myself on my excellent planning as i entered, noting that Kevin Kline and The Tattoo Guy were working the counter. both guys will make a respectable sandwich and offer some friendly nothings while they work. but disaster struck when, as i walked up to the counter, (calmly chatting up Kevin Kline) Mr. Tattoo says to me in an offhand tone and completely without prompting, "I didn't catch your name...?" (i have added "...?" to try and convey the tone of expectation with which Tattoos said it, but honestly it wasn't even a real question, more of a statement of fact with a questioning tone appended as an afterthought.) well, my first instinct was to reply, "no. no, you didn't." but i didn't want to be an asshole, so i told him my name. and as it turns out his name is Jason, which, by the way is a much stupider name for a man with lots of tattoos than "Mr. Tattoo", "The Tattoo Guy", "Needles McTattoo" or any one of a dozen actually funny instead of fake-funny nicknames that someone more hilarious would come up with.

we had a deal! is what i felt like yelling. a deal whereby i come in and can be minimally interested in you and your day while you make my sandwich and we just leave it at that. if i've gotten a sandwich from you 10,000 times and it's never occurred to me to ask your name or share mine, maybe there's a reason. that reason is probably (definitely) that i do not want to.

i want: 6" of bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, green pepper and vinegar.
i want: idle conversation with a minimum of investment on my part.
i want: sunchips and a drink.

i do not want: to know your name, dammit.

is this really all that big of a deal? probably not. but that's part of the fun of being (or claiming to be) neurotic. you get to be upset over stupid things like how somebody moved the icons on your desktop around and how your shirts just won't fold right and how the idiot grad student in your Latin class thinks that 1375 A.D. is the 13th century and how the guy at Subway...

okay, wait, i'm over it. plus, it's hard to stay angry when respected academic institutions are throwing money at you. this is the follow-up announcement in case some of you don't read the comments: i will, this time next year, be living in Palo Alto, CA and getting paid (sort of) to study. i am very excited about this, but there's nothing interesting or funny about my being excited (unless i pee my pants, which i am not ruling out).