I’m a very boring person. It can take a crane to get me out of my apartment. If it’s raining, forget about it. I’m living in a working retirement, so I’m making the most of my time.

Ordinarily, my day goes breakfast, hygiene, art (or draw on the train and for an hour before doing my job), then work in the morning, veg out in the afternoon and write in the evening. On the weekends, instead of working in the morning, I go to a coffee house.

This weekend in particular, I mostly lavished my attention on an ambitious art project, but I also wrote two thousand words of a new short story, and on Saturday, I had an outing. I went to my new favorite café, Ididos, my now-second-favorite café, Kaldi, and stopped at the art supply store for an art emergency. I came home, began this very post, and looked over my proofs.

The reason I don’t think of myself as a boring person is because I see every inconvenience as an insurmountable obstacle, every irritation a test of my moral character. Every time I get lost, I’m exploring a new territory, and my walk home from work is a journey. It’s how I keep myself from going insane.

My outing for this week was to hang out in Kaldi, because it was close to an art store. I had to go to the art store because either Oscar or myself lost my eraser. If you’ve tracked my artistic progress over the past two years, you know it took a while to pair with the best eraser for Jeremiah. This could not wait until I could visit to the one around the corner from work. This was urgent.

I raced to catch the first train to Maryland, which I thought was 7:15, but was actually 7:45. I was not waiting thirty-plus minutes in the station. But if I went home, I would immediately have to turn back around and take the uphill walk to the station. Basically, if I went home, I was staying there.

I strategized and concluded that I’d go to my Ididos and make the art store a tomorrow problem. From the Metro station, I was halfway there anyway. I ordered an egg sandwich, an iced coffee, and a berry beet smoothie, some of which smeared a page of my sketchbook.

I first discovered Ididos last Wednesday, so I was unprepared for the weekend crowd. They were Elder Millennials, and they looked like they were handling the economy just fine. Most of them were hauling babies around in papooses, except for the dad who hauled around a small Scottish Terrier. There were anywhere between three and forty-seven more mobile children, demanding the attention of parents who ignored them.

And let me tell you, I was fucking awesome. I did not get overwhelmed, I did not get frustrated, I did not get infuriated. At worst, I was annoyed, because I knew with conviction that this would end. I drew the barista and left when I started feeling antsy-in-my-pantsy.

Energized, I caught the train to Maryland, sat at the counter in Kaldi, enjoyed another fantastic smoothie (among its diverse ingredients were pineapple, ginger, and turmeric), and drew a barista, who was very different than the last one.

I was not feeling overwhelmed, like I often did during my outings, so I finished my drawings. However, while I was self-bussing, I realized my belt was malfunctioning, and I was about two steps away from my pants being around my ankles. I deposited my empty glasse, grabbed onto my pants, and walked, with dignity, to the men’s room.

That was not the most awkward thing to happen to me today.

The art store was not awkward. The art store lady did not look happy to be there. When I asked her to open the marker cage, she hemmed and hawed and rolled her eyes. I bought my eraser and the markers and left, to stand on the aboveground Metro platform while an older woman announced, with gusto, that Jesus allowed horrible things to happen to him four our benefit, and maybe she should be grateful for something for once in our lives. When the train arrived, she had the car to herself.

The first thing I noticed after I settled in was that the big, balding dork was reading a physical book. Point to the nerd. Then I noticed it was a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual, and he won all the points.

You know what? I was going to tell him. I was making it my mission to complement people more, so I tried to catch his eye and give him a thumbs up. This was the extent of interaction I wanted to have with anyone at that point. I’d had a long morning.

No luck. He was deep inside that manual. He was memorizing it. When the train pulled into the station, I was going to step outside my comfort zone. I was going to use my words. The best part was that I had timed this perfectly. I could say, “Good job!” then jump off the train before it got awkward.

I waved at him. I stepped closer and waved again. He looked up, and I said, “Hi! Dungeons and Dragons is awesome! Let your geek flag fly, man! You’re awesome!” I even gave him a thumbs up.

He pulled his earbuds out and said, “What?”

I went through the whole thing again, without as much passion. He told me was going through the new edition to see what’s different from the last one. I told him I wasn’t up to date, and he said, “I know. It’s pointless.”

And a hush fell over the car. I suddenly realized the door hadn’t opened yet. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had no idea what to say after that. How do you follow, “It’s pointless”? And the door still hadn’t opened!

It did, and I rushed to the escalator so I could walk down the stops, but a Maryland-bound train had also arrived, so it was a full platform. As I navigated the agreed-upon flow of foot traffic, I realized, to my horror, that D&D guy was behind me. The escalator was clogged, so I had to ride it. With him on the step behind me. I lost him at the turnstiles.

Tuesday, when they’ll ask me what I did over the weekend, I will tell them, “Went to the art store. Worked on my art.” No wonder people think I’m boring.