Sadness Piranhas

The saying goes "Don't let the little things get you down".  These are most definitely wise words, but some days it's just not possible.  The little things seem to have planned to gang up on you, gnawing away like a pack of piranhas, until you feel stripped right down to the bone, leaving only a skeleton of throbbing profound sadness.  This was one of those days.

This is a sadness piranha.

It started with waking up at quarter to ten.  Now, any other weekday, that's fine, but Thursdays I have classes begin at 9:30.  Thank goodness that I have the car today though.  Otherwise the process of waiting for the bus would have been absolutely miserable.

Now if I were trying to make up the tedium that wore me down today, the car would have been out of gas, but the sadness piranhas felt that would have been too obvious.  Instead, by the time I got up to the school, all of the street parking was taken.  Seeing as I refuse to pay to use the parking lot, this was a problem.  I know, I know, this is really, at most, a minor inconvenience, but driving back and forth, seeing a bumper-to-bumper wall of parked cars was reallllllly not what I needed.  I checked along 49th avenue, along Cambie St., along whatever is one block east of Cambie; I even checked the half-block of residential parking that can technically be parked in that is always available to fit 8 cars or so, and, wouldn't you know it, also all full.

After 10 minutes, I was finally able to get a spot and that ordeal was over with.  Time to go to class...  For a discussion about the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Abu Grahib situation.  Debating that everyone has the capacity for evil with a classmate who felt that all these people had some sort of undiagnosed mental psychoses was pretty much the opposite of what I would have liked to be talking about.

In case you were wondering, the opposite of that topic is Doctor Who.

By the time classes were done, I felt a vague numbness to my surroundings; uninterested would be a good description.  This is the point where the piranhas have breached all your defenses.

I got back to my car, and the song that was playing on the radio was Mumford and Sons "The Cave".  I'm pretty sure it's a happy song - I'm not certain, but there's a banjo; that's usually a giveaway - but a funny thing happens when the sadness piranhas are gnawing away at you:  they slip into your ears and contort all music so that it sounds sad. enveloping you in an acoustic blanket of depression.

Everything feels colourless; just shades of gray (and realizing that I had inadvertently dressed entirely in grey did nothing to quell the feeling).  I stopped by Kits High to pick up a cheque for the basketball tournament the team I coach is in this weekend, and ran into a former teacher of mine.  We chatted briefly, and she said "Well it's great that you seem to be doing so well!"  I do a good job of disguising my piranha attacks, you see.

I nearly hit breaking point when I drove up to the gym.  The entire block that I always park on was being occupied by production vehicles.  Who needs production trucks parked on a one lane side street?!  Seriously, what the fuck?!  Again, I know, objectively it's a minor inconvenience, but for the second time today, I was feeling despair while looking for parking.

But then a funny thing happened.  Not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in at odds with the rest of my day.  I had an appointment to help my sister's friend study for her physics midterm, which is tomorrow.  A quick sidebar: Although I have only one actual sister, I think of two of her closer friends as sisters as well.  This is one of them.  In the spirit of equal, unconditional brotherly love, I jokingly rank them.  End of sidebar.  Helping her review physics while chatting about whatever popped into our minds - at one point the conversation was me telling an anecdote about dumb blondes who managed to somehow confuse computer programming as being connected to geology.  That's a true story, which is rather saddening in and of itself.

The funny part was that doing this obliterated all the building sadness from earlier.  By the time she felt entirely confident with the material, I was feeling mentally back to normal.  So, thank you Emily; I don't know how you did it, but I am awarding you the title "Emily the Sadness Piranha Vanquisher".

They don't look nearly as intimidating like this.

Also, for this feat, you have been upgraded to sister #1: