Up Against the Wall

I'm sitting on the couch with the overhead light on, even though sunlight is pouring through the blinds. I have the laptop on my lap but I'm looking past the screen at my Shogun. It's leaning against the bare white wall like a piece of artwork, except of course, bicycles don't qualify as art. Or do they, I wonder.

I'm trying to keep my mind off of the task at hand, which is doing my paper. It is supposed to be a well crafted piece... of art.

"You'll have all day Saturday," she said on Wednesday, "to do your paper." She said that in order to convince me that it was okay to hang out with her like husbands and wives do from time to time. I much preferred hanging out with her to doing my paper, so we made plans. But there was a problem with our plans.

If I were still in high school, I would have called it "planning to blow off school." I would have been setting myself squarely on the path to delinquency. I would surely have become a bad person altogether and not a clear headed individual.

Now that I'm married it's called "being there" for my wife, which always wins, against doing a paper that probably won't be read. So, Wednesday night we went to the Garden Theater in Princeton and saw the movie Juno. Now it's Saturday morning and I still haven't started my paper, which is due Monday. I'm really in a tight spot, I suppose.

I keep staring at my Shogun, hoping for Windows to crash again. That would be a reasonable reason why not to get started. Seeing that the laptop is ten years old, and has been giving me the blue screen more and more frequently, it seems that every moment it continues to operate is another miracle. But a miracle that is not really in my favor.

I suppose that makes it more like a curse.

I was there for her on Wednesday night. We had a good time and that's what you want when you're married. But I still feel as though the rules from high school still apply. I am a hardened delinquent. A lifer.

"You have all day," I say to myself. I go over to the Shogun and pick it up. Despite its steel frame, it's incredibly light because of the special rims with their paired spokes. The frame is too small for me, but with the seat post all the way up, it barely fits. Or rather, I accept it as it is. I suppose it is a piece of art after all.