The Namesake

It's been almost a month since my latest oh so clever contribution to the literary world wide web, and I feel I have to explain: my neighbors in the apartment next door are getting a divorce, and since the walls of this particular complex have apparently been salvaged from a military bunker, I've spent the better part of the last few weeks with my ear firmly pressed against the tile wall of the bathroom, which by now has what appears to be an ice glaze on it since I left the window wide open for maximum listening ability. It's only been recently that one's moved out, so the fighting is over and I've gotten down to business. While I was massaging out what I initially assumed was a permanent honeycomb imprint on the right side of my face, I worked on putting a dent in my 400 message inbox and found that several people are interested in where the title comes from. Simply, it's something that I say to my sister all the time. The situation is never the same but the feeling is, and I'll elaborate with an example.

Today my sister and I decided on a trip to Guitar Center, and the traffic was absolutely monstrous. Understandably it's Christmas, and we are just passing a busy mall, but the freeway had been reduced to a stadium parking lot at maximum capacity. As we made our way inch by inch to the nearest exit, we proceeded to vent our frustrations on the only possible causes of traffic, at least in our minds. We decided on tourists from the Southwestern United States and drivers from Mexico, but mainly the former. Mexicans at least have been here often enough to go with the flow of traffic, but more often than not my poor car ends up plodding along the road as I watch both my fuel economy and gas levels fall nearly as far as my spirits, while Johnny Utah is holding up the traffic pointing at the sites and reciting everything he read about the University of San Diego while he was stuck in the airport security line. An hour and ten feet later, after my sister and I have sufficiently rallied our anger towards him, we finally see the cause of the hold-up: several severely mangled and twisted steel carcasses are lying on the side of the road, while emergency crews try to clean up the remains of the cars and clearing the road. We fell into an uncomfortable silence and as we exit off the road I turn to my sister and ask, "do you feel bad about yourself?"