It’s been a busy week and my desk reflects this. It looks as though a stationary grenade went off. There are papers, paper clips, scissors hiding in a book. There are enough pens and whiteboard markers to color a full-grown adult in a variety of colors. My colleagues are in the same boat. It is late in the semester and we are tired.

The light sounds of someone knocking on the metal door jamb finally pull us from our work.

The student is small, nondescript, the Biblical definition of someone who will eventually inherit the Earth. She is here for me and I wipe apple juice off my fingers and pull up a chair. She comes to my office hours once in a while for help with her writing. She is as nervous as a little bird.

She may be meek and her demeanor apologetic, but she is neither dumb nor complacent. She stands out because she actually takes advice, uses it, improves her work. When she comes in for more help, it’s because she has hit another hurdle, not looking for an easier way to tackle an old problem. In any event, I give her about thirty minutes every couple of weeks and don’t think about her again until she surprises us all with her quiet metal-knocking.

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The barber is the most trusting relationship I have.

A barber is someone I don’t know very well and into whose hands I put my looks. Moreover, a barber probably gets closer to me than just about any stranger I meet on a normal day. She stands behind me with sharp scissors, pulls a tarp over me, and cuts off a distressing amount of hair. And yet, she somehow makes me relaxed.

I have been going to the same tiny barber shop in a city metro station for ten years. There are probably five barbers who rotate and it doesn’t matter who I get, I love whoever it is.

The barber I have today is beautiful. She was touched by the pretty fairy when she was born and twenty-three (give or take) years later, she can surely stop traffic or get out of a parking ticket. It should be noted that all of the barbers here are women and that probably makes them hairdressers and this place a hairdresser’s, but I just cannot bring myself to say “I went to the hairdresser’s today,” so this is a barber shop and she is a barber.

And she begins cutting.

And cutting.

OK, let’s pause.

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If you’re anything like me, then may Dog have mercy on your soul. Also, you probably do a lot of weird things throughout your day. You might sing to an animal, apologize to furniture you just knocked into, or time how long you pee.

Hypothetically.

Also, if you’re anything like me, then you sometimes pause and say (to a nearby lamppost): “Holy crap, I’m weird. No normal adult does this stuff; what the hell is wrong with me?” And then you envision any number of scenarios in which a counsel of your ex-partners will judge you in every way.

Relax.

Being weird is your birthright. Being weird is fun and it makes you smile or feel more comfortable somehow. Besides, if you didn’t do something a little weird every day, how would you know what normal was, right? In commiseration with your weirdness, here are a few weird things that many of us weirdos are doing.

Read, relax, and most of all, call a doctor if you pee in less than ten seconds spurts.

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I am sitting in my office trying to write, but it’s not coming. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize I’ve had that whisk head massage thingy on for an hour. I remove it and put on my writing kufi, which is the only thing one should wear when trying to write.

Naturally.

I look up at the wall in front of my desk. A piece of paper hangs there with the words “What if…?” on it. Since my writing kufi isn’t drawing forth the inspiration it usually does, I play the “What if…?” game to get my creative juices flowing.

What if the pimple on my back exploded and began singing Mamie?

What if the Pope wrote a letter to my penis for its 40th birthday?

What if the zombie apocalypse happened and the only people I could communicate with were my Tinder contacts?

Hm.

It’s very improbable that the Pope is going to write to my genitals and if the pimple on my back sings to me then I’m going to Bohunice (the mental hospital in Prague). But the zombie apocalypse Tinder idea has me intrigued.

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It’s Wednesday night, I am lounging on the couch full of bologna and liver dumpling soup – my favorite. Despite that, I am a bit glum, it’s been a long week already and my plan tonight is to lethargize my brain with inane sitcoms. As I queue up one such sitcom, my phone rings. A quick peep tells me that it’s my dad.

But it’s Wednesday.

My dad and I chat twice a week – Thursday and Sunday. We are men of routine and this is one we adhere to with gusto. But like other people of routine, any break from that routine is an instant red light – something’s wrong.

It’s Wednesday.

“Hello?”

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If you are older than twelve, then you know there are so many universal truths out there. Your bus only breaks down when you are running late, the tallest person in the theater will sit right in front of you, and your water only gets shut off when you reek of bourbon and fried meat and have a meeting with your boss in an hour.

They are universal truths and sometimes we get reminders of them.  And then we let loose with a number of colorful vulgarities that your mother would smack you for uttering.

And why do we get reminders?

Well, if you paid attention in your religion class, you know that the universe is run by evil little imps called jerks. And every now and then, the universe likes to use these guys to remind us that we are its bitches.

These reminders are usually doled out in minor increments, one every month or so. But now and then you endure a week which consists of so many universal reminders that you feel like the butt of an intergalactic prank. This was one of those weeks. And I suppose in order to not throw myself in front of a bus, I jotted them down. And now you get to read them.

Lucky you.

This is not nearly a comprehensive list. Add to it.

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I have a recurring dream.

I am in church and dressed to look like a demented elf with a plaid fetish. A nun asks (orders) me to go up to the pulpit and write The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in cursive a hundred times. However, I find that I am not wearing pants and that my clip-on tie has a tomato sauce stain on it. This, I know, will be two demerits. The nun takes out her ruler.

I wake up in a sweaty mess shouting for mercy.

Let’s be honest, everyone in their twenties and beyond is dealing with their own little tailor-made version of hell. If you went to Catholic grade school, then you were given a dose of guilt, rules, and memories that you will have the joy of working out for the remainder of your life.

Here are some of those things. This list is not comprehensive, please add to it so that the healing begin.

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It’s the Ides of March today so you should beware. If you don’t know what the Ides of March is, there is a solid chance you have lived a completely normal life suffering absolutely no ill effects of not knowing that March 15th of every year is a day of bad omens.

March 15th is the day that Julius Caesar was stabbed by Brutus and gang outside of the Roman senate in 44 BC. Ever since then, March 15th has symbolized a day of pending doom, so much so that the fact that our weekend has included a Friday the 13th and the Ides of March should suggest that a meteor is about to plunge into the Atlantic and send us the way of the Tyrannosaurus and Vanilla Ice.

But it didn’t…hasn’t.

Having inherited a familial interest in everything related to doom, pestilence, and death, I decide to look up the Ides and see what this if there’s anything else to suggest March 15th carries some more evidence of bad juju. Not only did Caesar get filleted on March 15th, but Germany took over Czechoslovakia in 1939, and CBS cancelled Ed Sullivan.

Fair enough.

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I am pumping myself up before class. I’m imagining the scene, the human circus I’ll be greeted with when I enter the room. I prepare my opening line and get ready to make them laugh before lowering the boom with some grammar.

Tonight, I enter the classroom expecting to enter the multicultural zoo that I walk into every Tuesday, but there’s nothing. Not a soul. I put my coursebooks down and look at my watch. Two minutes, I dare to dream.

I decide to take a moment’s pause. At first I focus on my breathing, which stops the minute I hyperventilate. So instead I look out the window at picturesque Jarov, which sits on the outskirts of Prague. Jarov is not exactly the Prague that shows up on postcards or on decorative plates.

There’s the car dealership across the road, the Kaufland next door, the tram depot loop beneath. There are the stop lights along Koněvova Street which runs up into Žižkov, and construction workers stepping into the herna (casino) bar across the road. I can hear the car horns going and the people who got drunk too early in the day shouting at each other. An ambulance is speeding along.

Above it all, there’s a blue sky breaking into the light gray of dusk. It’s framed in the horizon with orange pink. Two things instantly become clear. Spring is springing in Prague and I am not going to have any students tonight.

A Prague spring is something marvelous. It’s a warm sun, cool shade, fresh air. It’s bright mornings, cobalt blue late afternoons, and evening suns that stream into your windows warming your belly as though you were a cat. A Prague spring means walking along the Vltava, Italian tourists, and drinking beer outside. It means getting yelled at for opening windows on the trams. A Prague spring is enjoyed so much more since it comes at the end of a winter full of short gray days, long dark nights, and ample suicide fantasies.

A Prague spring’s onset is evidenced also by a palpable mood lift across the city. People’s faces go from winter yellow to spring pale. Soon they might even be flesh-colored or tan. Nobody still smiles on the trams or in the streets, but as spring breaks there’s less open hostility between fellow Praguers. In Prague time slows down in the spring. People take it easier, and take things less seriously than they do in the winter. It’s as though the whole week becomes one big Thursday afternoon, people are eyeing up the weekend, or in this case, the slower summer months just around the corner.

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Due to a chest cold, I decide to stay home on Friday and spend the day enjoying the comfort-style foods and influences that make me feel better. There has been soup, tuna sandwiches, old sitcoms, and sweatpants.

And at some point in the evening, I decide to call my parents.

Me: “Hi Mom.”

Mom: “Hey! How are you feeling?”

Me: “Sick, you know.”

Mom: “The funniest thing happened when we were on vacation. Your cousin—no, it’s not there.”

Me: “Mom…what are you…?”

Mom: “Sorry. Sorry. So anyway, the baby was sick and there…was….try in the top cabinet. Not that…does that look like a cabinet?”

Me: “What’s going on?”

Mom: “Well, we have to….have to…there’s a….Dad needs….”

A male voice again interrupts from background.

Mom: “…well you have to go get some then.” My mom then has a four-minute conversation with my dad, who’s desperate need for a snack has superseded our long distance conversation. When she returns she continues.

Mom: “So anyway, you can go get anything you want at the Giant. There’s a huge deal…”

Me: “Mom!”

Mom: “What?”

Me: (breathing deeply and slowly) “That wasn’t the conversation we were having.”

Mom: “Oh…”

Me: “Cousin. Baby.”

Mom: “Oh, right. Anyway, when we were in California. Oh shoot!”

Me: “What?”

Mom: “Well, you know the Eagles traded McCoy, right?”

As my mom and dad discuss this and I become a spectator to the conversation, I spill into the fetal position and think.

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