In Conversation With Myself

Last week I wrote a quick post on doing weird things and needing to be taught how to recognize and correct these errors. While putting away some papers that have been sitting on my desk for a while, I found this transcribed conversation that I had with myself about a month ago. This is probably as close as anyone, myself included, will get to the sober conversations that continue unceasingly on in my head.

I put this picture a number of years ago, when I had more of an interest in photography. I dug it up for this post.
I put this picture a number of years ago, when I had more of an interest in photography. I dug it up for this post. It seems fitting.

“That’s fucking weird, man. That’s a weird thing to do.”

“Fine, but why?”

“Really? You don’t see how that’s a weird thing to do?”

“No. I wanted to send her a pen, so I sent her a pen.”

“Dude, who sends a pen across the country to the daughter of an ex-girlfriend who you haven’t seen in fifteen years? That’s a weird thing to do.”

“I mean, if I would’ve sent the pen when I sent the notebooks, it would’ve been fine. Why is it weird now? It’s her birthday, and I would’ve sent it if I had found it then. It would’ve made more sense if I had sent it with the notebooks, fine. But, she’s a writer and she knows I’m fascinated with fountain pens. It makes sense in my head. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Think about it. You haven’t seen her since high school….”

“Well, the summer I got back from Finland.”

“Whatever. It was after high school, which was years ago. You only recently started having short, sporadic conversations with her, which, by the way, happened only after you found out that she is separated from her husband. So, what, six months?”

“Yeah, about that.”

“It’s weird enough that you keep up with her blog and comment on it. But, the emails, man, that’s too much.”

“I’m just trying to be a nice guy.”

“No. What you’re trying to do is connect with her again. Think about it. It was nice of you to send her a note when you found out she is getting divorced. You can’t see that as a way to get back into her life again.”

“Well, she’s already dating somebody.”

“What? How do you know this?”

“We chatted on Facebook Messenger a couple of months back. It was nice to have a conversation with her again. Well, whatever a conversation over Facebook Messenger is.”

“She’s being nice to you, guy.”

“I don’t want to get back together with her again.”

“She lives in Calgary.”

“She lives in Calgary. I live in Toronto. It’s not that, man.”

“Ha.”

“Seriously. Okay. Fine. I would like to be friends with her. It’d be nice to be able to grab a coffee with her when I visit Calgary. I don’t know, that seems a bit weird, though.”

“That’s not weird. Sending her three-year-old daughter a fountain pen for her birthday is fucking weird.”


I never did send a pen, and I likely won’t. If I had, it would’ve been the Pelikan Junior.

I did, once, exchange refills with a cousin of mine when we had coffee together last. He didn’t like the one he was using and the one in my pen was what he preferred. I was on my way to purchasing more, anyway. At the time, we remarked on that being a strange thing to do, in a nice coffee shop, at 9:30 in the morning, on a weekday before he had a meeting, after he had shown me the quality of his notebook (the brand I sent). I think his kids each have a Pelikan Junior, and they’re normal.

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