Crackers...

So I stepped outside to enjoy a cigarette, the sunshine and my new MP3 player...I wandered down the street and around the corner while listening to the opening of a David Sedaris book...I decided to hover at the edge of a nearby park, not daring to go in as I might just have to horizontally occupy one of the benches and never return to the office...there I stood, rather, there I leaned, on the black faux iron fence absorbing the audio book, sunlight and nicotine...I stared vacantly at nothing, though really it was up at an apartment that I had been to a couple of times recently for a failed tryst and puffed at my cigarette...I thought of nothing but David's voice and the words he wove together, rich images of kids in bushes and family dinners fought for air in my mind....I realized, rather suddenly, that I should head back to work though I wanted nothing more than to stay and absorb...On my way back, just before I turned the corner, a woman, looking bored, approached me - her arm outstretched, offering me something. I have become accustomed to simply accepting whatever it is that is handed to me (hence the 30 some odd sample size Honey Bunches Of Oats cereal that I've thrust upon my coworker) and so I stuck out my hand and said thank you. For all I knew she could have been handing me a bunch of worms or a million dollar lottery ticket but, being the Pavlovian dog that I am, I simply take, regardless.....It turned out to be...well..two packets of Ritz Crackers...Not a box of crackers, not some foam cracker that will amuse me like the foam ear I have from Cingular...No, two packets of crackers that look like the remains of a desk eaten lunch...you know the crackers, they sit in your desk drawer and you only review them when you're searching for that elusive packet of catsup...You never throw them out because some day they might come in handy, like when the communists invade ala Red Dawn and you are forced to survive on what you have shoved in that drawer, but you know that you will never eat them. No, they will get shifted around and overlooked until at least one of the crackers disintegrates, not so much because of the shifting, but because of the shear lack of interest...and there they will remain, until either you get fired, you quit or your office moves...and that is exactly what happened to these to packets of Ritz Crackers...sigh.....