SEEING RED
I was at the Czars gift shop in the Pyramid the other day, and I stumbled across some random philosophy.
To share: never, under any circumstances, do certain people sign their names in red.
At least, the man that I spoke with doesn’t.
“Some people believe that it’s bad luck,” he revealed, recreations of one of Russia’s more ostentatious periods sparkling all around him.
“I’m one of those people,” he said, as I watched him sign his name in black.
Good enough. No red signatures for me. No way. Are you superstitiously challenged when you glide across tidbits like these, too?
But then…
Hungry as hell and with no will to remove myself from the beauty of my couch, I had a Papa John’s night soon thereafter. Oh, the cheap food, the quick turnaround, and the delivery policy that embraces the convenience of checks! You probably already know this if you’re anything like me.
Papa John’s is a dear and perfect solution for the unmotivated moments that we all find ourselves in, um, more or less regularly depending upon the individual.
So to cut to the chase here, the only pen in the five-foot radius in which I was willing to search wasÉ you know where this is going.
Red.
A blood red Jenn Hall stared at me from check number 442, opening the door to sustenance and damning me to a life of broken mirrors. Well, maybe.
Will I now live my life cursed, enslaved to the fast food pizza company of America’s impatient dreams?
Alas, I mourn and wait for the moment to come when the universe comes back around to deliver my judgment. And if so, it better come with mushrooms and pepperoni as a parting gift.
There will be an off-key knock on the door.
I will answer, carefree and having forgotten about all that mess with the red signature and all.
And there he will be, that adorable older delivery guy that the Midtown location on Union uses, come to take me away.
He’ll wrestle me to the ground, branding a giant “PJ” into my forehead, and stuff me into the PJ-mobile and deliver me to my sentence—eternal servitude to the company that collected my unguarded soul. The name scrawled in symbolic blood. My grave mistake.
But seeing as how my picture is up here I’m going to ask you a favor.
If you ever see my flailing inside said red and green vehicle, rescue me, OK?
I’m counting on you.
And be careful when you grab for pens in this world. You never know who you might be giving yourself away to.
