The Dose

• Every once in a while an ambulance will go roaring by and I’ll see someone on the sidewalk look incredibly annoyed and hold their fingers up to their ears, and I’ll find that very selfish considering what could be going on inside the ambulance at that moment.

• Some cars have aggressive looking headlights to me, and when I see them in my rear view mirror at night, they intimidate me.

• I can’t take a compliment. I “discount the positive” and come up with a list of reasons that negate it. I need to learn to smile and say thank you, and more importantly believe the words.

• I want to go to the Christian Science Reading room and casually read an issue of Juggs magazine.

• I tear up pretty much every time I watch “13 Going on 30.”

• A dream of mine is to have one of my dollar bills be the first bill spent at a new restaurant or café so it’ll be the one framed on their wall forever. I subscribe to local restaurant blogs and secretly stalk new places in an attempt to achieve this dream, which to date remains unfulfilled.

• Sometimes I sing the lyrics as “My Brown Eye, Girl.”

• I get mad when I see people riding those really low recumbent bicycles around the city. I feel like they’re really unsafe because cars can’t see you, and I feel like the only reason someone would get one these bikes is to get attention.

• This weekend I took a friend allergic to gluten to a placed called Flour. Idiot! This is trumped only by the time I took a friend suffering from cancer to the movie “Dying Young.” (I thought it was an action flick.)

• I’m still amazed that Ashton Kutcher never punked Bruce Willis. P*ssy.

• I don’t allow myself to get mad in relationships. It’s because I fear it will be an irreversible expression that will mean the end of the relationship. It’s not healthy and I’m working on it. But at times it’s what leads me to have exaggerated anger over other things. It’s because it feels empowering. I can direct anger at an inanimate object, situation, company, whatever, and it still feels safe because I’m not really risking anything personal in the process. It can be kind of funny and it makes you laugh.

• And I equate your laughter with like, so I do it more.

This week I managed to send a work email that contained lingo from VH1’s The Pickup Artist in it. The email was a brief one in which I stated that something on our website was “not giving us the DHV (Demonstration of Higher Value) that I had hoped for.” The reference went undetected, as planned, and I giggled at my desk a little bit. Sadly it was probably my biggest success of the work week.

• When my car is parked in my neighborhood and I need to go out and get something from it, I wait for there to be no cars driving past before I do it because I don’t want anyone to stop, thinking that I’m freeing up a spot for them only to find out that I’m really not. Sometimes the street is busy and I have to pace or pretend I’m engaged in something really interesting on my cell phone until the coast is clear.

• When I reach into the self-service bin to get my free local papers, I can’t take the very top issue. I need to grab one from somewhere lower in the stack. Something about the top issue seems contaminated to me.

• If a place attempts to limit or restrict my napkin intake (they hand me napkins with my order but don’t have any dispensers), I don’t like it. I vow in a declaration of injustice that I will never give them my business again because I’m a grown man and if I want more napkins I should have access to more napkins. I say this to myself mind you. And I never follow through with the boycott.

• I hide a lot of emotions from people because I don’t want to be “that guy”. But the emotions are still there and the effects of not letting them out is probably worse. I should just be “that guy” and let the chips fall where they may.

• I don’t want to be the first customer when a place opens for the day because I feel like I’m burdening the staff. They’ve just unlocked the doors and started their work day, I’d rather give them some time to adjust and get in their groove. I know I don’t like getting calls at 9:01am at my desk.

• When I’m in Western Massachusetts where the “stop for pedestrians in crosswalk” law is actually obeyed 100% of the time, I mill around and wait for others to cross first so I can just tailgate on them and not be the one to initiate the traffic stoppage.

• Sometimes the fraud department of my credit card company calls me because they think some suspicious activity may have happened on my card. I avoid their calls because I can’t face the situation of having to tell them that the online porn purchase was indeed my own and not a sign of credit card fraud.

• Beware, these phrases are all meant to dupe you: Dry Heat. Reverse Commute. Quaint Studio.

• Whenever I’m in CVS and pass by the fans or heaters made by Holmes, I say “What’s up, Holmes?!” in an accent like I’m a latin gangster.