Slow down now blog

I parked in the garage downtown last week. I like to park there on a regular basis as I’ve still some parking validation stickers left from the health club where I played squash. I dutifully stuck the validation onto the parking ticket and handed it in.

“We don’t take those yellow stickers,” the young attendant said.

“But I paid $1.50 for each one of those at the health club.”

“Well, they’re not for this garage. You can use them at the garage that takes them,” she said helpfully.

“They are for this garage. I bought them for this garage,” I explained. She used her intercom to talk to god, or some sort of authority in some higher place; and then rather grudgingly lifted the barrier and let me out.

Now the last time I parked there was only three years ago. See what I mean, regularly. I’m a frequent flyer too. I have a card to prove it. I fly at least once or twice every two years. But I am trying to cut down.

I left the health club only three years ago when I decided against playing squash because I kept slamming my elbow into the wall. You are not supposed to slam you elbow when playing squash. They don’t teach it as a tactic. Why did I repeatedly do it? I have no idea. It was beginning to hurt, so when a new badminton club opened up I switched to that game. I am happy.

I only went to the health club because they had squash courts. They put them in as an afterthought. Squash is not the most popular pastime here in Northern California. The club was designed for mirror-gazing narcissists, or masochists who have developed the skill to watch TV while pounding on a treadmill. Didn’t they use treadmills in prison until quite recent times? If this isn’t blatant multi-tasking, I don’t know what it is. It’s horrible to watch someone on one of these infernal machines. Now, I must point out that I’m not saying narcissist and masochist like they are bad things. This is the San Francisco Bay Area. Live and let live I say.

It seems that in three short years since I left the club my parking validation has run out. Is this a metaphor?

Not long ago my friendly Yemeni convenience store was an untidy place, but I liked going in there. I moved a mile down the hill four years ago, so they are no longer exactly local.

Now I have a local Trader Joes and I valiantly get on my bike and freewheel further down the hill, only to struggle up loaded with apples (I admit to being an apple-a-holic), potatoes, and other not so lightweight groceries in my saddle bags.

I’ve learned that there are some foods that have negative calories. You use up more calories chewing than they give you. Riding my bike uphill probably burns a few calories and leads me to think that if I just idly sat on the couch and looked out the window, I might not need those calories in the first place. I could save, time, money, and effort. And saving time, money, and effort are slow and worthy values. But we humans are not always rational so off I go to Trader Joes.

It just goes to show how rich we are when we are worried about consuming too many calories. There is something wrong here. When I was a young fellow living on my own my mother always worried that I didn’t have enough to eat. She was right sometimes. But that was a long time ago. And because I can remember things that happened a long time ago, time seems to be speeding up.

Yesterday, I went into my friendly Yemeni ex-neighborhood store and the place had been transformed. No longer was the non-English and incomprehensible Al Jazeera on the TV. Shinny shelves reach now to the ceiling with exotic offerings. The place had been up-scaled.

When you slow down, sometimes it throws into sharp relief how everything else speeds up.

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