I have a lot of video apps on my various devices. I have a lot of great ideas for videos, unique and delightful videos, charming, short and entertaining. Videos that will capture a whole weekend of kayaking, cooking out, and restful cabin in the woods living in two minutes of blissful photos, film and music. People will watch and say, “I wish I had been there.” And they will mean it, too, because they will feel like they had been there, thanks to my brief cinematic masterpiece.
Here is a sample of one of my ideas, a stairway inside an elevator, that still kills me.
I plan to put a stairway down when I push the down button.
I am going to evaluate them, and let you know which one is the best for the money.
Unfortunately I was born in a state of constant nervous self-doubt. My hands shake slightly all the time. My photos and videos mostly look as if they were taken during a mild but noticeable earth tremor. It makes the videos and slide shows a little nauseating to watch. But, I keep trying.
Another thing I was born with is a slightly skewed, unusually developed sense of empathy. Not the good kind of empathy, sharing the pain or joy of friends and family, but a type that takes the joy of others as proof of my inability to find happiness. Happiness becomes a zero sum game, and when somebody is so happy it proves my misery. Maybe empathy is the wrong word.
Take, for example, this woman who delivers supplies to the company where I work. She is aggressively cheerful, belligerent in her happiness. When I answer the intercom connected to the door and hear her cheery voice it makes my skin crawl.
“Hi, it’s Jane,” (not her real name), “from Tortuous Paper and Corrugated with a delivery.” (Not really the name of the company for whom she works. The names have been changed to protect the guilty).
She smiles and buries me under a barrage of sunny, upbeat small talk. Hammering away at what remains of my will to resist with tales of grandchildren, pets, weekends fishing from the boat. I am reduced to a quivering mass of exposed raw nerves, trying to escape, looking for something to hide under. One time I contemplated faking an injury but I was terrified she might know first aid.
“Here, let me put a splint on that. Oh my, it looks like we might need to open you up. Fortunately I bought a box opener with a sterile blade. I’ll just sedate you with a story about my trip to Pigeon Forge and this will be over before you can say ‘where do I sign.’”
One day I made the mistake of asking her, “Are you always like that?”
Then she really turned up the heat. Her happiness was terrible, intractable. Waves of untrammeled good will smashing into me, driving me towards the abyss, the merciful silence of the end.
I was telling my wife about it.
“Are you crazy?” She asked.
“No, I’m sensitive.” I said. “What I need to do is have an EKG and a complete neurological workup before and after her next delivery so I can prove she is stealing minutes from the end of my life. The good minutes, where I am retired and not subject to the painful cheerfulness of hostile delivery people. If I can prove that I can convince my employer to make somebody else accept that delivery.”
I’m not sure she heard me. She had turned away, turned up the volume on the television and didn’t respond. I cursed the evil genius who gave us remote control.
That isn’t what I wanted to tell you, and I don’t really remember what this was originally about, but when I remember I will return.
