July 20, 2007
July 16, 2007
how do you like them apples?
Back in Lincoln, Jake and I are walking around the totally deserted UNL campus. We go down to the sunken sculpture garden. It's always been a good place to sit and talk, or just sit, and this time proves no different. That is, until drummer boy appears.
This kid sets up a drum, puts on headphones, and proceeds to pummel the art quadrangle with poorly executed drumming exercises. There is absolutely no way we can talk over this. The sunken garden has become a foxhole, and we're screaming over the machine gun fire to be heard.
We get up to leave, noting with irony the one consistent theme of this trip: personal dynamics wrecked by the external, an invasion of the off-kilter. We give up on the conversation. Jake goes over and asks the guy a few questions before we leave, like "does it usually sound like that? I mean I've just never heard a drum sound...that loud..." But the dude either doesn't pick up on the subtlety or just doesn't care. After all, he's right next to a music building with plenty of practice rooms, so more and more this looks like attention-seeking behavior, plain and simple.
At this point I hatch a plan. "Let's go over to the bagel store. If they have apples, we're going to buy them." They're closed. So we try the Juice Stop next door. No apples in sight, but the guy behind the counter pulls out a bag of apples like it was a magic trick. For 45 cents each, we get the most beautiful red apples you've ever seen: shiny, firm, jeweled with condensate...baseball-sized.
We're like little kids again as we run back to campus. I've got butterflies in my stomach. We plan our escape route, leaving our shoes some distance away so he won't hear us, then find the optimal vantage point. There are a few innocent bystanders we must wait out, the tension almost unbearable as we peek over the lip of our sculpture garden trench. He's still up there hammering away when we launch the apple grenades on the count of three.
It's a dead sprint back to the nearest cover. When it's obvious no chase is being given--but that Mission Apple Silence has been successful--we take a leisurely stroll off campus, laughing and speculating.
Yeah I know, but the thing is, passive aggressiveness is just so much more fun.