I, Nate Tucker

i just paid my ticket. i hate those guys. hate the system.

I chipped a tooth in my sleep last night. Bottom, back-left. You know how some of your molars have rising and falling ridges–like a miniature Wasatch front around the rim? One of the highest peaks is gone, which left a big hole–vacuity, the thesaurus says–and a rough edge, and my tongue keeps poking at it, almost like it’s hoping it can wear it smooth. I hope so too.

This is a striking reminder of my mortality. That part of my tooth will never be there again.

This confirms that I’m grinding. My jaw has been very sore for the last three days. I’ve got to de-stress. I probably swallowed it.

Something weird happened at work today.

I’ve been a little worried about my inability to stay focused. The problem is that I have the whole internet just sitting right in front of me, taunting me.

I’ll be going along, and then: Oh, I gotta email L. And then after a couple of minutes, T sends me a link to a Scooby Doo redo, and I follow the link. And one distraction always leads to another. It’s terrible.

So one of these many distractions was an RSS feed that said Google was doing a conference on Chrome OS. I couldn’t resist (you know me). So I put it up on my right monitor, and kept working on my spec on the left. Turns out that I didn’t need to watch it, mostly just listen. So I’m listening, and working away. And before I knew it, two hours had gone by, and I hadn’t left my InDesign screen once. Two hours of me staying on task. It was incredible.

The video conference was enough to keep my mind from wandering to other things. But it was undemanding enough that I was able to keep designing away. Hmm.

(Of course, this wouldn’t work if I were writing–too much mental conflict. But designing is a different story.)

There was this new guy at church. I sat next to him, and struck up a conversation with him. That was way out of my comfort zone. (This was in my old ward.) I went to Salt Lake with him and a group for an event at the tabernacle, and chatted with him in the car. I was patting myself on the back for trying to befriend him.

My girlfriend invited him over for dinner. (She was the one who first invited him to church.) She told him I was coming, and he was like, “Who’s that?”

I’m sure he’ll recognize me. But the point is: I obviously wasn’t as friendly as I thought.

* * *

Last night I had dinner at MacCool’s with T. We ordered five half-price appetizers. Sometime in the conversation he mentioned his credit-card debt and his problem with overspending. When the waiter was getting the bill, I said, “Give me the three more-expensive ones.” And T was like, “Let’s just split it half way. It’s not really worth bothering over a couple bucks.”

I’m not as generous as I thought was either.

* * *

And another thing. I write on here with the whole world as my audience, and I act like I know something. But, jeez, what do I know? I’m just a punk kid.

“Hey, dude. What ya working on?”

Pause. “Just the same old.”

“Ah. Okay. What’s this ThomasNet?”

“It’s just a site where you can order manufactured items.”

“Like what?”

“Mm. Anything.”

“So what are you looking for?”

“I… just looking for some stuff.”

Like stuff that says you’re not interesting in having a conversation with me? Okay. The feeling’s mutual.

* * *

I know what he works on everyday. And he knows that. The first question was meant to get something unique about the day. And he knows that. Four questions later, I’m still trying to talk with him. And he’s still trying to avoid talking with me. Freak. I just feel frustrated because I’m making an effort to invest in a relationship. And it seems worthless.

* * *

I wrote that literally seconds after it happened, and I was fuming. Looking back I realize the character that more accurately represents me is the one being questioned. And I have some repenting to do.

“It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”

There’s a girl in our ward who craves chalk–possibly because of a mineral deficiency (calcium, zinc, or iron). She said she’ll walk into a classroom and have the strongest urge to just lick the chalkboard. Sometimes she’s tempted to steal chalk and take it with her. It makes for such an interesting character. What if you had someone that had a similar obsession, say with Parker pens, I dunno. Ha ha. What?

* * *

I folded the newspaper down the middle, and creased it with my thumb and middle finger. Later, not having washed the black ink off, I ate pumpkin seeds, and licked my fingers. Mmm.

* * *

On the interstate, I cut off a dude wearing a camouflage cap and jacket. He was in a some small, older car. Usually when that happens, you can see the resentment on the driver’s face. Sometimes they’ll ride your bumper, or speed around you and glare. He didn’t seem to react at all.

It was very rude of me. And very compassionate of him.

Straight ahead, through the beads hanging down from Ben’s open door, I could see the blue sky, white clouds smudged across, the dark blue-almost-brown rock jagging across, highlighted with snow so bright it made the clouds look gray. And a rope hung down, a vertical line cutting the scene. And the line swayed. And then I saw boots. And a bucket. Then feet. And then a man with a squeegee. And I glanced down at my monitor, then back up at him. And I wished we could trade jobs for a day.