Pick up lines

So. A few months ago I was on the subway with my friend Leigh coming home. It was really late; probably about 5 in the morning. We had both been drinking (but remember, we were on the subway... so it was safe drinking). I decide to call my friend in Armenia because it can be hard to get in touch with him, and for some reason, it works best when I call him at 4 or 5 a.m. There is much less static and delay.

Leigh and I had been having a conversation, then I rudely make my call on the subway. The entire time, there is this weird guy sitting across from us (picture that famous sketch of the unabomber, but without the glasses--you know, the one that looks like Weird Al), just staring, and occasionally smiling. Repulsed, we both ignore him. I believe he even started somewhat "touching himself" but being that we wouldn't look at his general direction, who knows?

My subway stop is about twenty thousand from where we were, so it took a good amount of time. The guy ends up standing up and standing next to Leigh. He mumbles something like, "My stop next. You want to get off?"
"WHAT?"
"You want to come with me?"

Leigh (rightly so) says, "You need to back up and leave me alone. BACK UP! GET AWAY FROM US!" (or something similar) and he finally just gets off the train.

But the point of this story is this: does that EVER work? Is that guy ever on the subway, sees a total stranger, smiles while touching himself, then says, "my stop is next, you want to come with me?" and get a response like, "you know what? Yeah! That sounds like JUST what I wanted to do tonight..."

Sometimes I just want to understand the thinking process behind all of this.

Camponotus

When I first moved into my apartment, within about a month I developed an ant problem. It was those chunky big black ones (see left), the carpenter ants. Now, I try to be nice to buggy little things. But those big guys really freak me out.

Anyway, they were pretty much hanging out in my bathroom. I would go in and see 1 running from under the radiator towards the tub, and then in a day I’d see 2 more doing the same. So these were apparently the scouts. And I let them go, and would freak out and scream a little (I mean, look at those tiny little waists and flapping antennae), but I let them live.

This was going on a for a bit, and then one Sunday morning I got up and went to take a shower. I got all ready, opened the curtain...and saw TENS of ants!
(I don’t want to exaggerate, so although HUNDREDS or MILLIONS would have been a lot more impressive here, it was really just tens. Maybe about 50 total.)
But 50 of those big black ants is a lot, especially when you are naked and about to step into a tub with them. There were about 5 at the bottom of the tub, and maybe 10 just crawling on the walls. And the rest of them were smashing themselves down underneath and next to my shampoo bottle, as though it was their little ant church where they were congregating on this lovely summer Sunday. Because I don’t use sugar shampoo, I’m not sure exactly what the draw was. But ewwww. So I was screaming and jumping around, and grabbed a towel to cover myself (because I didn’t want their ant eyes to see me exposed). I ended up turning the shower head on them, and then watched them all just wash away down the drain, their creepy bodies and antennae swirling around in the tub. (The image of it is still burned into my brain; it was like a massacre, all by my hand.)

I decide that day that I’d rather just not shower, and go on with my life. The next day I shower, and when I look over, I see an ant that jammed itself up between the clear shower curtain and the decorative outside one. It was just sitting there, not moving, not doing anything. I think it was judging me. Silently. Effectively.

I still live with the guilt of that massacre today. Enough that I think about it and write down the experience 4 years later. I am haunted. And I am the person that was crying uncontrollably in “Honey, I shrunk the Kids!” because of that scene where their little anty friend defends them against the scorpion. Wait, I must be remembering wrong... Didn’t they live in the Northeast? Who knows.