(Lack Of) Prowess And Dignity

One unpleasant life lesson I took on board last summer was that boredom can render a person bed-bound. A sheer lack of useful things to do, people to do useful things with and bad television that surely isn't useful to anyone at all can result in only one way to pass time, and that's lying in bed aimlessly. I thought that wouldn't be the case now I'm older, wiser and more geographically/socially mobile in Germany - like boredom is a childish emotion that you eventually grow immune to. Sadly, this has not happened; now I have nothing to revise for or any immediate responsibilities, I have nothing apparently productive to do with myself. Lying in bed with nothing but my own crippling ego and sombre thoughts to keep me company seemed like the only solution - Floraidh vs. Time. Apparently doing housework would be productive, but I strongly believe that's an artful lie devised by my mother to make me "contribute". It's gotten to the stage where I walk to the NAAFI to get a Twirl (those who live in Germany will be shaking their heads at the pure ghastliness of it all) because it's a reason to shower and get dressed.

Yesterday though, I was due my time for another outing in the big bad world; with my brother's NRA being today, Finn needed a tie. Finn could have gone to Gutersloh to get a tie, there are plenty of places that would certainly sell ties in Gutersloh, but Finn wants to go to Bielefeld because it's got a Pizza Hut, and it's bigger. But mostly because it has a Pizza Hut.

Did I complain? Hardly; if I were a horse, I'd have broken out of my stable and drawn in the mud with my hoof - "I'm ready to go shopping now". A few amusing things happened - not by a universal standard, but by my own.

You know when you're just cruising down the street, you've got a little sass-walk going on and your hair looks cool, so you generally feel like a pretty fabulous chick? Yesterday this happened to me, the realisation that I did have my moments of being a straight-up goddess, and no, you can't have a picture taken with me. I went to Bielefeld to perform my sisterly duties and help my brother with finding a tie for his NRA; whilst he scoured the shelves of Peek & Cloppenberg, I had headed down the road to H&M after discovering that nobody in the right mind should pay over 40 euros for a tie.

I sashayed down Bielfeld's Bahnhopf Platz like I was Agyness Deyn working the catwalks in Paris, swishing my hair and hoping people were admiring my new sunglasses. But - so wrapped up in my own prowess, I was! - I managed to walk full-frontal into an elderly German man, who was understandably thrown by the whole charade. Though I'm not the most fluent German speaker, I scrambled to find the right words to utter some kind of apology; after a bit of self-deprecating, a little "I'm-mad-me!" kind of chuckle, all would be forgotten and I would forget I was such a dick as to walk straight into an old man. He would remember me as the girl who walked into him, and would eventually track me down to have a sentimental chat about my errors. He would leave me a note before he died. This would also be sentimental.

Instead, I uttered a very pithy "eungfh". He laughed and patted my shoulder, before walking off and giving me a wave like we were old buddies who had fought in the war together.

And now he follows me on Tumblr!

                                                          
In the same shopping trip that I'd based my day around, my mum downed an extraordinary amount of Diet Coke when we were in Pizza Hut; put it this way, if it had been an ice cold Heineken she was chugging in such a short amount of time, I'd have been genuinely impressed and would have cheered her on like a football hooligan. An hour later, her knees were practically buckling from needing to go to the loo so desperately. After embarking on a quest to find the nearest loo in which even a frail woman having a stoke in the middle of the street could not distract us (metaphorically speaking. This obviously didn't happen) we finally found one in a desolate restaurant on the third floor of a department store. At this stage, she was starting to tell my brother and I about her "not needing to go so bad since she was pregnant" - we crumpled our faces in embarassment. Some things you just can live without knowing.

It wasn't her relief that amused me, though; it was her sudden drastic change of behaviour and outlook on life afterwards that was both incredibly unnerving but quite funny. She started rapping to Eminem and Dizzee Rascal, Eminem and D12 at roughly around 120 decibels - in the middle of a busy shop, much to my brother's dismay (Finn is currently experiencing the teen "I must look as cool and mysterious and aloof as possible" stage and so endeavours to always look cool and mysterious and aloof, with not even our pesky mother to hold him back).
Lynne Clement was living it large, like a reckless teenager in a filthy underground rave. She declared herself as "Mrs Rascal". She did a little jig on her beloved "flatforms" right there, in the middle of Karstadt, like the 1980s had returned. Her sudden vitality for ghetto life and being nothing less than funky fresh  is faced by Finn walking away with his head down and his hands in his pocket. Like a mother trying to rein in her particularly hyperactive child, I tried tactfully tell her that her behaviour wasn't suitable for the public. She told me I was simply jealous, because I didn't know the words to any cool songs.. I tried to tell her, honestly, I did - but she really was a bat out of hell, perhaps even worthy of a slot on the Discovery Channel.

I'd never seen anything quite like it.

But like many amusing memories written down, you just wouldn't get it unless you were there at the time.