Driving to work today I heard a not-so-unusual crunch under my tires as I pulled into UPEI. I had driven over a snard. Snard is Ryan's word for the ugly brown slushy crud that builds up and freezes in your wheel-wells. This time of year snowballs ice chunks and snards abound. There is nothing unusual about the sensation of running over and crushing a snard, especially in parking lots where people are in the habit of kicking said snards off their cars.
But today my imagination was getting carried away. Today I had the thought that the crunch of snards coming from under my car was not really just clumps of slush and road salt and dirt, but the squishing of little tiny people called Snards. Like elves, or gnomes, or something. The world is full of tiny little Snards trying to make their way across a snow-filled parking lot. And I just ran over one.
I am fully aware of how crazy this sounds, but I'd like to take this time to justify my crazy. I'm going to self-diagnose what's going on here. I can do that, you see, because I have a Masters in Community Psychology (that and seventy-five cents will get you a Popsicle). So here goes.
I have guilt wandering around my psyche with nowhere to go. I've recently given my notice at work. Since then, boss-lady really hasn't spoken to me or given me any directions, and I'm not feeling all that motivated to just make work for myself. But not doing work all day is making me feel guilty. Obviously, I can justify away that guilt with the logic that I have worked hard here and don't need to be breaking my back on this last few weeks to do work that's just going to sit somewhere collecting dust when I'm gone. But that logic doesn't make the guilt go away, it just prevents it from attaching itself to any good reason. So I've got irrational guilt left floating around to invent things like Snards. Little people who look like snowballs until you run over them, killing them, breaking the hearts of their tiny little wives and children. And so I have reason to feel guilty every time there is a crunch of snow under my car. Obviously, that makes perfect sense now, right?
5 comments:
Bahaha! Snards. This reminds me of that time I wrote about squishing gnomes with my awesome winter boots. But then, that came from a sadistic place, and less of a guilt-ridden place. The differences between you and I are subtle, yet significant.
Also, I like how you describe the value of your MA. I look forward to similar self-deprecation, you know, once I actually finish my degree.
Did I ever tell you about the time in class when I said "self-depreciation" instead of "self-deprecation" and one of my classmates corrected me? It kind of hit home the reasons I was so self-deprecating at the time.
Congrats on giving your notice. That's good. Very good!!
I got nailed for "self-depreciation" one time, too. This other time I read hors d'oeuvres aloud for the first time ever and I pronounced it [hors-dordurvz]. Robyn was laughing at me all day, but then the same afternoon she meant to ask me when daylight savings time was and she said, "When's daylight saylight, anyway?" After that, we called a truce.
IMO, the best way to deal with guilt is ritual sacrifice. You should put a lot of work into something beautiful and then burn it in the parking lot.
Dogville was a damn good movie. Hard to watch, but the end made it all worthwhile.
You know you're trapped in domestic hell when you're sitting home sober on a Friday night reading your friends' blogger profiles. Maybe after I finish up here I'll clip my fingernails while watching the channel channel.
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