MOA and the High School Conundrum

So I like going home because it give me the opportunity to see people who I never get to see when I am in Minneapolis. The downside of this situation is that it puts me in the position to see people I have not seen since high school.

This situation was not bad at all, but a little weird, and is emblematic of many worse potential situations. Katie and I went to the MOA on Sunday and had some shopping to do along with the walking around which is usually the hallmark of our visits. We hit up the Banana Republic for a pair of pants, looked at some crystal, looked at some china, looked at some other clothes, Katie made me look at shoes, the usual deal. There are only two good things about Katie looking at shoes 1) I have a good concrete argument as to why she shouldnt buy them (she has approximately 400 billion pairs) 2) there are always plenty of seating devices in the shoe areas. The exception to these rules is the Designer Shoe Warehouse, a store I had not encountered until one very very sad day at the Walden Galleria here in Buffalo.

Here's a thought experiment designed to simulate the Designer Shoe Warehouse. I stole most of it from Douglas Adams. Here is the idea, imagine the biggest thing ever. Now discard it, you cannot even begin to imagine the size of the DSW. Gigantic times huge times enormous is the sort of thing we are getting at here. There is another Douglas Adams reference to an immense workshop where this ancient race of people builds custom planets. The workshop then has to be larger than a planet. The DSW is large enough to build several planets. Its fucking huge. They just put walls around all the space they could possibly find and then filled the entirety of that space with shoes. Incredible amounts of mostly butt ugly shoes. No one could ever need this many shoes. Let me tell you how many pairs of shoes you need. One. One fucking pair of shoes. Here is the criteria you need to use to select shoes. 1) Are they comfortable and 2) Do they adequately cover your feet. End of fucking story. I will even allow those shoe fetishists among you to have some more shoes, as long as you recognize that you are indulging in a ridiculous and extravagant excercise. You can have a pair of brown shoes, a pair of black shoes, a pair of red shoes, a pair of sandals, a pair of flip flops, a pair of boots, and a pair of sneakers. Thats all. Seriously, that is it. I may make some exception if you have a job that necessitates a different pair, like you need golf shoes or cleats or whatev, but besides that call it quits. If you want some of these shoes to be high heels, thats fine. I don't know why you wear high heels, I would imagine they hurt like fucking hell, but wear them if you want.

The biggest probelm about the DSW is that you don't get to sit somewhere while Katie wanders and looks at shoes because you would never find each other again. So you have to roam up and down these supermarket like aisles of heels and boots and sneakers and clogs and blah blah blah blah blah. The only thing I have found to entertain myself in the DSW is to grab a shoe horn and smack things with it as you walk down the aisle. Its not that amusing but its leagues better than the alternative.

Why the fuck did I go off on the DSW, fuck, MOA. Alright, so we were shopping. We are just about to leave and we walk by a Bath and Body Works. Katie decides to pop in for a pumice stone and some lotion or something and we are standing in front of the foot area (I am quite sure that Bath and Body Works used to be organized around different flavors, there were only like 5 products and they each came in like 20 different scents, and that is how the store broke down) and all of a sudden I here "Mike, how are you."

I turn around and there is Carly Roetter. I haven't seen Carly in a long time, literally I dont think I have laid eyes on the woman since the day we graduated. I like Carly, she was a nice chick and a pretty incredible actress who is apparently now managing one of the two MOA Bath and Body Works. If you do a google search on her I think you can find some pictures back from when she was the lead in Rosemount Theater production of Cabaret. I really liked that play and Carly was good in it. I think I saw every show, it gets two thumbs up the butt, which is the highest rating possible from the Mike Baxter Academy of Dramatic Review.

So I talked to Carly for a couple minutes, told her I was working on my PhD and was getting married and shit. I mentioned the people I still saw, she mentioned the ones she did. She told me a little about the reunion. She remarked that Katie Kauf looks a little like Katie Lord, which is somewhat true, and we discussed the fact that she and Kos just get married (or so we had both heard, neither of us was there).

Anyway, nothing bad happened, it was just a conversation between two people whom hadn't seen each other in a long time. It was nice to talk to her, it was just really weird. That same shit is always possible when I am back in the TC, I mean, I don't know how often it will happen, but it always could, and that is fucked up. Running into people you haven't seen in a long time is fucked off, especially when you didnt know them that well in the first place.

I cannot really imagine going to a high school reunion for that exact reason. I was in MPLS-SP for like 6 days, one friend got married, one parent came out of the closet, and I ran into one person from high school and that fucking wore me out. Imagine what it will be like when the weddings ramp up and I go back to high school. I doubt I will have many more sexual orientation changes, but I guess you never know.

That was alot more random than I imagined it would be, my bizad.

Peace,

MB-K