Dan Conley

(yet another five minute writing exercise, not at all a real letter)

Dear sir or madam:

I occurs to me that perhaps your store is in desperate need of a reorganization.

Not a shuffling about of employees; no, instead I think you seriously need to consider exactly why your items are where they are, and whether they couldn’t perhaps be put somewhere else. Perhaps somewhere that makes sense.

I suppose that may be a radical concept. Perhaps there’s some secret law of product placement, known only to the upper echelon of supermarket managerial staff, that can somehow maximize product sales by placing them in the exact opposite place a patron would expect. One might think that, being dairy products, it would follow that when milk and cheese are next to each other, that yogurt would also be next in line. And then eggs, perhaps. Not so, you say! I’ll give you that they are all in the same general quadrant of the store, taken quite broadly, in that they are all in the very back of the store, but I suspect that this is more for economical reasons, as it would require multiple refrigeration sections to store the eggs in the optimal area, likely between bread, avocados and children’s cereals with ‘O’ in the title.

Instead, you must be content with having the dairy items scattered willy nilly along the refrigerated section. I have put much thought — much more than I should have, I know — into trying to discern exactly what the overarching philosophical design is. Are your meats organized by animal, or by cut? Are eggs next to poultry because they both come from chickens? If that is the case, why is cheese so far from the ground beef, next to pork chops? Is it because the source of cheese can be any number of animals, and so you consider it a grab bag of sorts? I admit to visiting your store as infrequently as possible (my doctor has informed me that a cardiac condition makes it inadvisable to try to navigate your labyrinthian aisles), but do you perhaps change the location of your cheeses weekly in order to maximize the randomness of it all? Or is it instead some sort of astrological imperative, handed down by superintelligent beings as an experiment, your security cameras transformed into scientific observation points? Will, one day, a human skull made out of crystal appear in the middle of your snack cake display?

It should be noted that the grievances described above are but the tip of the iceberg as it relates to your establishment, but as previously noted I have a health condition that prevents me from thinking about such matters for more than a handful of minutes, lest my heart burst from my chest and throttle my brain in a futile attempt to make it all stop.

Yours, sincerely,

DRQ Conley III

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I find it nearly impossible to talk at a normal volume on the phone, at least if others are around. While most people seem to take the absence of another person physically and translate it into a need to shout, as though more decibels will ensure that their message gets through the phone lines safely, I feel more self conscious. There’s nowhere there to talk to; what am I doing carrying on a conversation with myself for?

More than that, I think, it’s that I don’t think it’s anybody business what the hell I’m talking about. This generally goes for all conversations, but at least when I’m face to face with a person they get the whole picture. Maybe. it’s hard to describe, but the end result is that you should never call me on the phone, ever, especially if you’re my wife and insist on using speakerphone in the car even though that further obscures what I’m saying.

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(This is another five minute writing exercise, though I modified it a bit to meet my whims)

The olive polo shirt I’m wearing is a thatched weave, almost. Were I to know more about sewing and fabrics then I could be more specific, but instead I will have to allow it to suffice in that it is certainly not smooth. Down the front of it the texture remains the same but darkens, as three — no, sorry, four — dots of varying sizes mar the fabric. These are from wearings past, which inexplicably outwitted the washing machine. The collar buttons up, all the way today even though I’ve been told that it looks better open just because it felt too free, almost like not wearing a shirt at all. Now I can feel the comforting closeness of it, the mystery texture, around my neck.

Today’s pants are corduroys, which I admit to giving a lazy attempt at spelling before right clicking and allowing OS X to correct for me. There is a famous story about corduroys, though I cannot remember now exactly what it is, and so each time I wear them I am reminded vaguely of my childhood. Alternating ravines and mountains, perfectly straight, run down the legs, creating a whooshing sound — though not as obvious of one as I had been led to believe — which makes me call them, if only to myself, my Ninja Pants.

Black socks (they never get dirty; the longer you wear them, the blacker they get: another childhood reference for some reason) wrap around my ankles, digging in. I’ve said in the past that the greatest joy that comes from wearing socks pulled up your legs is the feeling when you take them off. Thinking about them now has driven the itchiness into a frenzy of sorts: I long to lift up my pant leg and scratch, bringing blessed relief. These are the second kind of black socks I have (three total, including the fancier, thinner, oddly patterned ones), and have much thinner, sleeker ribbing. They seem to be legitimate dress attire instead of tube socks that happened to fall into a vat of dye. Which sock I wear on any given day is random, of course, though I do take care not to combine the varieties except in cases of extreme sartorial distress.

My shoes, also black, are smooth, and would be shiny were they not scuffed with dust placed there by the opposite foot resting on top in a tic I can’t quite explain (do I feel compelled to turn my lower body into a diamond shape?) Around the laces the smoothness of the material bunches up, drawn together in grooves by overly tightened laces. Perhaps this means I buy my shoes too large for my feet. The laces hang, haphazardly, to one side or another, double knotted in a ritual dating back to my grammar school days to ensure they wouldn’t come untied (as all my shoes did, which is why I was always grateful for a new pair that was velcro). It honestly had not occurred to me, nearly 25 years old, until this moment that I can probably safely tie them only once.

The bottom of the shoes is different from my previous pairs, despite the outward appearance of being identical (dress shoes and my wife appear to be the only facets of my life I am disinterested in changing repeatedly). Rather than multiple groups of four circles connected in a square, almost clover-like, these are a myriad of diamonds with perpendicular lines in the middle forming crosses. They litter the bottom of the shoes, in theory providing traction but in practice giving just enough room in between each other to pick up small bits of paper and rocks that may be unwittingly tread upon. They cover the entire bottom, with the exception of the arch, where it narrows for no reason that I can see besides giving the illusion of thinness, mirroring my foot stretching slightly into the air. What sort of person looks at the bottom of their shoe enough to make such aesthetic changes necessary?

This took far longer than five minutes. I hope that’s not against the rules.

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