My phone was dead. I was in the center of an 11-hour shift and I had left my charger at home. I felt like I was on a cold island. There’s pleasantness in the distance and detachment, but I always feel like I’m missing something. I was wondering what filters people were using on their photographs of sandwiches. And just what kind of sandwiches were they. You know, important stress inducing pressing shit. In those moments I try not to ponder the starving Indian child in search of a few grains of rice, I prefer let my mind wander over what how earlybird looks on a bottomless bowl of Ramen beneath the bright san diego sun, it’s just easier that way. The shift was moving Sunday slow and phoneless, I found myself reading the liner notes to jimmy buffet cds, the ingredients to a bag of chips and any other short burst of distraction that would captivate me for seconds at a time. At some point I heard a commotion out front. There was a woman who came barreling down the street like a bowling ball decorated with lipstick and Tourettes, she was snarling and cursing and took out a few locked bikes with her. Strike! This was cruel torture because it lasted. When someone lets out a brilliant firework of insanity, I generally think that I’m just catching the finale and there’s no sense in attempting to document it. But she was just breaking the ice with her madness. I had ample time to grab my phone and capture all of it, maybe even get David Attenborough or Sigourney Weaver to narrate it at some later date. But alas, there I was, impotent phone in hand, missing her crowning moment when she lay in the middle of a busy sidewalk in a puddle of her own urine, hurling her shoes into the street like they were Frisbees and she was attending a 1994 H.O.R.D.E. festival. I got home later that night and plugged in, charged up. I expected a flood of pings to welcome me back, inundating me with messages missed. It pinged once. It was a voicemail from my mother to inform me that I was still a nerd loser and nothing had changed since 1994. Though now, with a charged phone, I’ll document bigger losers than me, it’s all relative.