in which Fluorescent Lighting predictably withers souls.

living in an urban area affords many Privileges that members of suburban or rural communities try to keep out of their lives at all costs. for instance, affordable and efficient public transit. the city i loosely refer to as Home is notorious for having overpriced and inefficient public transit, but it soars like a really patriotic-looking hawk or eagle or something above the bus system in, say, harrisonburg, va, where every single line ends at wal-mart. i think they have some deal. please tell me they have some deal.

another Privilege that i cherish in the way that you cherish a well-worn, sweet little teddy bear that has accompanied you in your slumbers since you were an incontinent toddler is the Privilege of Rarely Experiencing The Soul-Withering Intensity Of Fluorescent Lighting. not that it was always soul-withering for me personally. in my youth i had a healthy Immunity, thanks to being raised in suburbia. when i lost the spelling bee in 3rd grade for forgetting the 'a' in calendar, flickering and buzzing tubes of fluorescent goodness watched from above. when i wasn't paying attention to learning el indicativo from my freakishly eager spanish teacher, the fluorescent lights turned off and on at random, providing a much-needed light show for my daydreaming. about jesus, of course. sweet, sweet jesus. when i surrendered my time to scoop ice cream or to help people find video rentals or to fetch steak sauce and an extra baked potato for inane tourists, whenever and wherever i went out in public, it was inevitably to a morbidly obese corporation/chain, which meant fluorescent lights trailed and preceded every single fucking step i took.

but being urban means there's not as much room for multi-mega-plexy-stores, which means to procure Cereal And/Or Takeout and anything else i need i am treated to the soft brilliance of incandescent lighting. this also means that when i do have to subject my soul to withering, it withers really fast. i've lost my Immunity, so that when i had to go pick up a package from a plexy-mega-multi delivery company, i kind of freaked out as everything around me took on this impersonal, sterilized hue. i'd been submerged in a frigid tank of unconnectedness, and the people around me seemed annoyingly unaffected by it. i could do nothing but watch them have a very Serious discussion about packing tape and wonder what in the hell kept me from being able to connect with that kind of Serious discussion.

so i want to publicly apologize to the Lady behind the counter, who politely asked how she could help me. that was an extremely reasonable question, to which 'soul-withering' was not an appropriate response. next time i'll just show you, wordlessly, my ticket thing that the delivery person left on the door.