Tiny Victories

Status
Not open for further replies.
A

Aerem

Guest
Original poster
ITT we celebrate the small victories of every day life. Everything from a purchased thing we thought we could never find again, to good news that is not on the levels of "I'm having a child" or "I won the lottery." Simple, normal victories.

Allow me to give mine as an example.

*ahem*

AND NOW, FOR A THRILLING TALE OF THE MUNDANE!

Cue our protagonist: a man on his way to a doctor's office. He is late, and running late, and just as he arrives his phone blows up with notifications. Oh no! PAX East badges are on sale! Of course it would be at this most inconvenient of times. Turning off his vehicle and carefully setting his car keys in a cupholder, our hero races online on his phone to purchase the badges for four people. As luck would have it, he manages to snag the purchase, and feels again at ease. Thus, he opens the door, steps out of the car, locks the door behind him, and heads to the clinic office.

Cue a realization, by a man who has just locked his keys in his own car.

Curses! He is distraught. And nothing then comes to brighten his demeanor. The nurse receptionists carefully remind him of how late he is in tempered tones. All through the physical with the cold-handed doctor, our hero attempts to come up with ways he might obtain the keys. After the exam finds he has nothing wrong with him, and that he is a healthy individual, he endeavors to call his roommate.

A series of plans are concocted; options are lain out. Option one: stay at the strip mall, not near anything, and wait for three and a half hours until somebody gets there. Option two: call a locksmith or AAA and have an expensive drive home or an expensive break in to the car. Or option three: see if other friends aren't working as long, despite our hero knowing that most of them totally are.

Our hero has a choice. Our hero is wounded, in both pride and capability. Having suffered the slings and arrows of a doctor poking and prodding, having been told he should just sit by and wait, something stirs in him. A primal thing. Something old, and American.

Our hero chooses... option four.

He is a man.

He is strong and strong willed, and he marches back into that clinic with those receptionists who all told him he was five minutes late repeatedly, and asks for a door wedge and a coat hanger.

Because he is a man.

He is a man who uses tools, and shoves things into other things, and whose ancestors hunted meat with sticks, and burned fires, and made things and stuff.

And our hero is going to open that door himself, because by god, he is a god damn man.

It takes a sweaty 15 minutes of ramming a rock onto the wedge to create enough space in the door. Carefully, our intrepid man sticks the coat hanger in, probing the locked depths of his own vehicle as would a caveman approach his own cave after a day on the hunt. With the long, metal finger of sweet release in his grip, he takes his time. A fisherman is patient. Our hero knows this like he knows the smell of smoke and the difference between the taste of walleye and halibut. A fisherman waits, and sweats, and wriggles his metal line in order to hook the entrance he's been angling for.

Minutes pass.

The parking lot becomes a placid scene of determination. No, our hero tells a passerby, he is not a robber. Merely a rushed idiot now slowly correcting his own idiocy, by his own hand, in his own way. And he wrangles, and he nearly gets it. And he fails to get it.

More minutes pass, and time grows heavier like snow on the crumpled leaves of autumn. Time presses down like a iron on a shirt, and along with it hopelessness. Perhaps this modern day is not for men. Perhaps he was too bold. Visions of sitting in a Burger King, meek meal already digesting, and waiting for a ride that takes hours to arrive pass through his mind.

In the throes of this great angst, he gives in. Idly, he keeps at it with the coat hanger, calling AAA. The bright, uncaring woman on the other end of the line asks him for an address he is not familiar with, information that seems far away to memory. He is displaced in both this moment and his own concentration.

The emptiness of it all, the great uncaring banality of this frustration, sends him to a between place. It is that perfect place of doing, that place you pull back from when you have been trying too hard. It is above surrender, but below perseverance. It is the tired place of running through motions, and just hoping something works out.

And just as all is lost, just as he is being told that the ride will be there in an hour, just as all things seem to be totally out of his control... a click.

Our hero shouts jubilation! The calm woman is startled. He tells her - in his victory - that no, he does not need her services. No, he does not need another man to come and drive out. He is his own man. His own, capable, unlocked man.

So then I got Taco Bell and listened to Kendrick Lamar all the way home the end. ^_^
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I LIKE THIS STORY.


Today, I made a boss ass bowl of fancy as fuck ramen noodles, just with shit in my kitchen and garden. PACK OF RAMEN NOODLES turned to delicious dinner, thanks to a cup-pack of miso, some garden spring onion, rosemary and mint. Frozen carrots, shrimp and potstickers out of the freezer. A little ginger and splash of lime juice.

So good. So fancy. =______=
 
Today, I made HOME-MADE GORDITA CRUNCH WRAP SUPREMES.

Fuck. Yes.
 
This wasn't a victory per se. Closer to a "holy shit I'm glad she's not mine".

Lady pulls into gas station behind me while I'm on lunch break. Three pumps. End two are regular, center is diesel. I'm at the end. She's in he middle. Didn't sound like a diesel, but what do I know? I've never seen them much.

She's filling up while chatting with the girl in the passenger seat.

"Ma'am? Is that a diesel?" Referring to her 2015 Jeep Wrangler.

"...Oooooh no... Is that bad? It's just gas, right?"

"If you drive it you'll likely ruin that engine."

"... Oooooh no.. What do I do?"

"Call a tow truck."

Guess it feels like a victory. I may have saved her an incredibly costly mechanic trip. Except she drove around to an actual gas pump and kept filling.

Two of my tutoring kids passed their reading and writing tests today. Went from near zeros in August to a B and an A respectively. Inner city kids absolutely LOVE Lord of the Rings and Tom Clancy.
 
Got outta lab early
 
The other day I drew a comic strip in under a day. A small victory, since I procrastinate on everything, even on drawing, which I love, so drawing takes a lot of time for me.
 
I had an 8 hour shift tonight with an hour drive both two and from. In under 15 minutes, I poured drinks for about 70 customers essentially by myself. I was cold, I was held on after my shift was assigned, but there's silver linings. I got excellent tips, and I was able to provide a guy who is currently without a home with some warm coffee and nuts. That, and the Bruins shut down Toronto 2-0.

Exhausted, cold, but at least I have those small victories.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Adelaide
Why hasn't anybody mentioned releasing that one poop after awhile? Pretty sure that's a major victory.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Minibit
Today I went and hung out with a new friend, who happens to be male, cute, funny and nice. Went into it expecting nothing more than friendship but nervous as I always am that my somewhat overbearing, extroverted, never-knows-when-to-shut-up self was going to put him off. I am ten kinds of done with the part of my life where I suppress myself for others though, so I decided to just be myself and rock how I am and if he can't deal with that I'm high-energy, a little childish, really exciteable, and a chatter box then we wouldn't be good friends anyway.

We had fun; he wants to hang out again and doesn't mind that I talked his ear off the whole time

*victory fist*
 
Started picking up the pieces
 
I finally finished a very long document that i thought i could never finish, and done it just before the deadline.
 
I sprained my ankle falling on black ice today. Now how is that a victory? I came up with a song that made me laugh so hard that it sent my bad mood away.

There's something happening here,
What it is exactly clear,
There's some black ice on the ground over there,
Telling me I got to beware,
Time to stop we stop, people what's that sound? Logic is falling down.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.