Empty

I pass this phone booth every day on my dog walk.

I don’t even see it most of the time. The only time I see it is if the sky looks likes it’s going to open up and drench me, and then I think: “Well, I could always just duck into that phone booth if I had to.

I don’t see things in my environment if I can’t connect my life with them. Like McDonalds. There’s a McDonalds in my town, and I drive past it fairly regularly, but since I never eat there, I don’t even see it. It’s almost like my brain blurs it out, the way the editors blur out the nipples of the girls on Survivor if their bathing suits happen to “malfunction”during the Immunity Challenge.

It’s like it’s not even there.

There was a time in my life, however, when I was very aware of phone booths and I used one almost every day. I spent a fair amount of time waiting in line to use an occupied one, and cursing the blabbermouth inside yakking so long (though I never had the guts to bang on the door to rush them along, like people used to do to me!)

Another phone booth I pass on my dog walk acts like a whistle and when the wind blows, eerie sounds emerge from it. It sounds like the voices of the ghosts of everyone who has ever spoken into its receiver.

(Creepy.)